D: L&L - Part 38 | Narrator: Killing Timed

At precisely 2:59am SST (Shiz Standard Time), Ordinal Jones peeped around the corner of the well-lighted Grand Boulevard and breathed a sigh of relief. He checked his timepiece, nodded to himself and began to count in his head.

“6, 7, 8, 9, 10…”

He surveyed the street again. It was vacant less the monolithic figures that lined the street as far as the eye could see, arching wings and great claws holding the street lamps aloft and illuminating the central thoroughfare of the grand city of Shiz. It was too early for the perpetual morning fog, which again made him frown. He’d wanted to wait until later when the fog would settle in and obscure everything. There was less chance, he knew, that he would be discovered breaking the curfew. Breaking curfew was very dangerous – they’d all seen the consequences first-hand.

“35, 36, 37, 38…”

It would have been so much easier to just wait, he thought to himself for the umpteenth time. If only Dr. NaNa-omid hadn’t insisted on the meeting time at 3:05 SST sharp! As for the purpose of the timing, he couldn’t speculate, but it was reasonable to presume that by the time the fog settled in, the city would have begun to stir and the tik toks would be more copious.

The last thing he needed was an encounter with a tik tok.

“54, 55, 56, 57…”

Ordinal Jones readied himself and counted out the last seconds. A moment later, the street lamps winked out all at once, and he began to run. And count. “2, 3, 4, 5…” He only had ten seconds – that’s all they could promise him. “7, 8, 9, 10!” He hit the counterpart alley on the northern side of the Grand Boulevard just as the lights snapped back on with an electric bark, and he kept running.

Five minutes.

Ordinal smiled at himself as the dark brick of the looming buildings whizzed by. The pace was blazing but comfortable, as it always had been – the very reason he’d earned the nickname “Fly-by” back in Shiz Mercurial Academy, where he’d led the Junior League Schools in every race and eventually in every racing category. He’d blazed his name in the record books at every turn – long and short dash, cross country, hedges and walls, and even Combat Run. If the Mayor’s small but fabled protection force, the White Guard, hadn’t solicited his enrollment, he would have been disappointed. In fact, he had disappointed them and chosen to enroll at Shiz University to study Tele-ology, the sciences surrounding the quick and efficient transfer of things from place to place. It had made perfect sense considering he was so quick and efficient at moving himself from one place to another. He was sure he would excel at applying his talent to problems of transportation and communication, and in fact, he dreamt of a new method of moving objects and people from place to place, something he’d once heard about in old stories surrounding the departure of the former Wizard of Oz.

Dr. NaNa had been his first professor, a “man” who had enraptured Ordinal immediately and the person who had led him in just two short years to this very late-night run. An elderly but still formidable Cheetah, Dr. NaNa was appropriately named – “NaNa-omid” roughly translated to “no hope whatsoever”, and in the Animal categories, he had clawed his name onto every speed record, as well. He was the perfect mentor for Ordinal, and in that short time, they had become fast friends…and now co-conspirators.

“26, 27, 28, 29…”

The seconds ticked off in Ordinal’s head as he zigzagged through the maze of uptown Shiz alleys just outside the university grounds. Even if a tik tok were to appear out of nowhere, he knew, he would blaze by it so quickly the thing wouldn’t have a second to react. It could still call for more tik toks though, and that would be a problem for a resident outside in the streets after midnight. He couldn’t outrun a coordinated police effort, but he wasn’t going to find himself a subject of a public flogging, no matter what.

About ninety seconds out, he rounded the corner of Artisan Alley and bounded up onto the great trash bin squatting there in the shadows. It was like something out of the Combat Run final, using found objects to surpass obstacles, and he catapulted himself upward, fingers catching the edge of the flat wall and propelling him up to the top.

“47, 48, 49, 50…”

Dr. NaNa lived in a small walled compound only a few hundred yards south of Shiz University in a narrow two-storied home Ordinal had visited often and now stared at from atop the low wall. The house was filled with mementos of “past fast” glory, as the doctor would say, standing in the kitchen doorway with his pipe in the crook of his mouth, puffing away and smiling his toothy smile as he talked. He was the only teacher to use Ordinal’s nickname, and he said he rather enjoyed calling him “Fly-By”; it made him feel young again and reminded him of the days in the Thousand Year Grasslands, where he grew up blazing through the chest-high grass.

Then a frown would cloud his face, and he’d take a long draw on his pipe. The smoke would waft out in rings like exclamation points as he began his practiced oratories, speeches he’d written to speak out against the most recent restrictions on Animal movement, the curfews, the slow encroachment on the already limited rights of Animals, and the bigotry implicit in the term “human rights”. His speeches were published on the webs and on occasion he would speak to small groups or attend rallies in and around Shiz University, but most often his words were delivered in hushed tones behind locked doors in quiet, unused spaces. Young, energetic faces looked on with perked ears and eager eyes, and they nodded as he drove his points home, railing against the wickedness and discrimination of the “Glorious Regime” and now lately calling for a “Rapid Reaction”. “Fast tongues deceive, but fast feet achieve,” he’d said, and slowly that slogan had taken root and could be found scrawled in the most unexpected places.

“25, 26, 27, 28…”

The doctor had said he should be there at precisely 3:05am SST, and Ordinal, like the doctor, was a stickler for promptness. He would wait a few more seconds and then drop quietly into the grass below and rap softly on the back door only a few yards away. There was something important coming in tonight’s meeting, he’d been told – it was time to meet the other leaders of the rumored movement, a movement that might be the first stage of an all-out rebellion. Ordinal was terrified, but excited. Racing had been something, but this – this was going to be something else altogether.

“46, 47, 48, 49…”

Ordinal stopped counting and looked down to judge his landing spot. A moment later there was a crash that drew his eye up to the high window in Dr. NaNa’s home, and he looked on in shock as the elderly Cheetah burst through the glass and crashed to the ground with a sickening thud.