Painkillers and Headaches

Painkillers

An Iris Tale

Everything was going according to plan.

Iris sat upside down in her chair. She blew a kiss to the “NO BURGER GOFRY” poster on the wall of the surveillance truck. The mission clock showed five minutes, Homer should be finishing up.

The monitor in front of Iris was still full of static and Homer had gone dark on comms. Apparently the Burger GoFry had some serious security systems in its basement - a Horizon dark site. She knew they were up to no good. She double checked her auditory support for good measure - she would not let being deaf get in the way of the mission.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a massive cloud of fire and smoke on her drone monitors. She sat up. Static crackled in her ear piece. Comms had come back to life. Her bomb had done the job! The explosion must have also destroyed the signal blockers.

“Wooooow Homer!” Iris chirped into her headset as she watched the fruits of her labor on-screen. “Bye-bye Burger GoFry!”

“I may be concussed.” replied Homer.

Iris knew what was coming, “Just don’t fall asleep, okay? People with concussions die if they fall asleep.”

Homer didn’t take the bait, “Now you’re worried about me dying? Your bomb could have decimated Otter Stadium!”

Iris replied matter-of-factly “Horizon fortifies their labs against earthquakes. Besides, overdoing is better than underdoing, right?”

Homer always worried too much. Everything had to go exactly to every detail of every original plan. Yes, she remade the bomb and packed it with double the amount of explosives. But she knew she was right, Horizon had clearly fortified that disgusting Burger GoFry. And c’mon - that wasn’t even the main part of the plan. He better have completed the mission.

“Well… you definitely got all of the lab, and then some.” Homer said with what Iris could only imagine was pride in her work.

Iris’ dropped her voice to a conspiratorial hush. “Speaking of getting things…”

Homer robotically replied, “Data retrieved.”

Yes. That data could change everything for Iris. Movement on her screens distracted Iris. The people that lived in the area were finally reacting to the chaos. She felt a little bit bad to throw a wrench into their lives. But only a little bit. She was waking them up to the real world.

“Focus, Iris. The blast disabled my optical support. I need an exit… or a place where I can focus.”

Iris quickly pulled up Griza Maps. Perfect. She double checked with her pair of drones still surveying the area.

Iris spoke quickly, “There’s a Dino Grease across Devore, on the left.”

“Which splotch is the gas station?” Homer spoke calm and collected. Iris sensed the tiniest bit of stress in Homer’s normally calm voice.

“Right, sorry! You’re facing northwest. Head east, about forty paces.” It made sense. Homer hadn’t been truly blind since they were kids but the smoke, yelling and debris in the area would overload his extremely acute senses.

Iris jumped over the computer terminals in the back of the truck, slid into the driver’s seat and peeled out of the parking lot onto the main street. Another sign of movement caught her eye on the dashboard computer monitor. Bad guys with guns. Goons that Horizon had paid off to do their bidding in the Griza outskirts, WHERE THEY HAD NO BUSINESS BEING. It was a shame they weren’t in the Burger GoFry with their friends, she thought. She could hear Homer’s phantom voice muttering “This was supposed to be a simple job” Shut up, Homer. This is all going according to plan.

“Bad news, Homer. You've got two armed men approaching…” Iris chirped. “Ahhh!” Iris shouted, interrupting her thought and accidentally hitting the vehicle’s horn. A car ran a red light right at the intersection zooming past her, almost smashing into the truck on her left side. Iris had to swerve around the other cars that had slammed on their brakes. “...Coming from the left!!"

Homer readied his pistol. ”Focus, Iris.”

Iris watched Homer turn around on camera and face the complete wrong direction. Away from the goon! What is he doing?? Then a dawning came upon her, she had said left instead of right. The car distracted her thoughts and she said what she saw instead of what she was thinking.

GOSH DARNIT!

The goon had just grabbed Homer in a chokehold. Iris grabbed the drone controls, “Whoopsie!” “I’ll fix this!”

Iris could hear the goon over Homer’s comms, “Horizon wants a word with you, buddy boy. And that word is—”

Iris’s left hand held the steering wheel steady while her right hand deftly maneuvered the drone nearest Homer. Iris locked the drone’s silenced gun on the goon and fired without hesitation. She saw the goon drop and she left out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Wait! There was a second bad guy.

Iris shouted, “The other guy’s on your left. Wait! Ack! My left! Your right!”

No. It was actually his left. Iris was still a little shaken from the almost accident.

Homer faced to his left and assumed the learned position of a trained killer and sat crouched in stillness. He must have only heard her first instruction, she thought. As the other assassin walked forward, she saw him pop-up in one instant and in the next the assassin had dropped lifelessly to the floor.

Time to exfiltrate Homer before he gets himself into more trouble, “Get to that Dino Grease, I’m on my way. Sit tight.”

Homer was moving, “Already on my way there.”

Iris put the pedal to the metal and zoomed off down the highway weaving her way through the cars in front of her.

***

Homer interrupted her concentration, “Iris. Look at your hands. The index finger and thumb make an “L” shape on your left hand.”

How rude of him! One mistake and… “I know my right from my left. The drone flips everything and then my brain flips it again and some jerk driver careened into my lane, and then my mouth does whatever it wants and-”

Iris glanced at Griza Maps only to find that somehow Homer’s GPS dot was now moving further and further away. “--aw crap! Now I’m near the airport?” Iris huffed.

Homer blurted in genuine surprise, “What? How did you…”

“You were explaining ‘left and right’—which I already know—and I took a left at another freakin’ Burger GoFry when I meant to turn right, so really, this is your fault.” Iris explained diligently.

More bad guys with guns were moving on her drone monitor toward the Burger GoFry. Hopefully they don’t check the Dino Grease anytime soon. Iris tried to not worry, Homer. “Oh, and more bogies are advancing on your position. Hang tight, ok?”

Okay, maybe the explosion was a tiny bit too big. Homer is never going to let this go. One little mistake and he pushes that button for months.

Screeching filled her auditory support as Iris hit the brakes. She muted her mic and cursed out the world. She smashed the steering wheel a few times for good measure. Then she took a deep breath and felt the calmness of mission concentration fill her chest. Sometimes one just needed to get the frustration out.

A lightbulb flashed on in her head. She had the perfect idea. Homer said he had a headache, right? She flew a drone over to the pharmacy whose doors had been blown away in the explosion and picked up a bottle of aspirin. She flew the drone to the Dino Grease, found Homer sitting cross-legged in the back of the Dino Grease and dropped the bottle of pain pills into his lap. Perfect. Distraction is the key. He will forget this little blip ever happened.

Homer annoyingly replied, “If I have a concussion, this will make the bleeding worse, Iris.”

“Eh, you probably don’t have a concussion. It’s just a headache,” What an annoying man!

Iris hit the mute button on her headset again. “Oh my god Homer, you’re so dramatic. My bomb didn’t give you a concussion, and I was joking…”

Homer spoke into the comms, “Iris, you may be deaf, but I hear everything you say, hit the mute button next time you need to vent. Right now - focus, I need my favorite pair of eyes to see for me, okay?”

What? He heard everything? Iris tapped the mute button again - it was indeed broken. Well… this doesn’t change anything.

Iris’ other drones were still tracking the goons in Homer’s area assembling near the wreckage of the burning Burger Go-Fry. “My eyes are on you, Homer.”

Iris pulled a 180 across the highway going the right way, causing two of three cars to honk and swerve, then she stepped on the pedal heading towards Homer's blinking dot. “I’m coming to save your butt, buddy boy,” she thought. In less than ten minutes, Homer would be safe, she would have the data and the world would be without one less Burger GoFry.

Everything was going according to plan. Details - schmetails.

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Headaches

A Homer Tale

Written by Matthew Garcia-Dunn

It was supposed to be a simple job, and now Devore Avenue churned with chaos.

Homer had envisioned the Griza Heights job as a simple mission: break into Horizon’s hidden lab beneath a Burger GoFry, download research, evacuate civilians, reduce the illegal lab to rubble, unravel secret intel over tea and biscuits. Simple.

Iris had listened to – and agreed with – each facet of Homer’s plan, or so he thought. What he underestimated was his friend’s hatred toward the lab’s facade: a Burger GoFry. Fast food was a blight upon modern society, she claimed. Plus, Iris loved cows.

So, as Homer lay strewn amidst smoldering masonry, twisted steel, and boxes of processed burger patties, he realized the critical error in the plan - letting Iris construct the bomb. He groaned as he sat up, wincing at the pain shooting through his skull. Standing only intensified the spikes of pain jackhammering at his brain.

Overhead, a high-pitched whine swooped around. It was Iris’ drone zooming around somewhere above him, surveying the damage.

“Wooooow Homer!” Iris chirped in his headset. “Bye-bye Burger GoFry!”

Homer winced as he massaged his temples. “I may be concussed.”

“Just don’t fall asleep, okay? People with concussions die if they fall asleep.”

“Now you’re worried about me dying? Your bomb could have decimated Otter Stadium!”

“Horizon fortifies their labs against earthquakes. Besides: overdoing is better than underdoing, right?”

“Well… you definitely got all of the lab,” Homer said. Around him, the normally quiet intersection of Devore Avenue and 33rd street roiled with chaos. Screams. Sirens. “And then some.”

Iris’ voice dropped to a conspiratorial hush. “Speaking of getting things…”

His fingers brushed the hard steel of the thumb drive in his breast pocket. “Data retrieved.”

“YES! Can’t wait to dive into their research. Me and some other Techies have a bet going. I wager that the strange element Horizon’s been experimenting with… is fuel from a crashed martian starship.”

“Aliens don’t exist, Iris, this is only Horizon’s dirty work.”

A smaller explosion, probably a gas line, tore through Iris’ babble… and aggravated the woodpecker incessantly jabbing at Homer’s brain. Noxious fumes choked him. Sirens grew louder. All the pandamonium overloaded his usually sharp senses.

“Focus, Iris. The blast disabled my optical support. I need an exit… or a place where I can focus.”

“There’s a Dino Grease across Devore, on the left.”

He squinted, but it was useless. He only saw amorphous chaos in jagged smudges of colors. What vision he had was like spinning Jackson Pollock paintings, far worse than his normal blurry blindness.

“Which splotch is the gas station?”

“Right, sorry! You’re facing northwest. Head east, about forty paces.”

It took effort to ignore the rock band blaring noise anthems inside his cranium, but with each careful step Homer took, slivers of his focus returned. Vibrations steered him away from onlookers. Sounds bouncing off solids helped him sidestep overturned cars. Homer mentally sketched out the landscape around him… the crater where the restaurant once stood, the fast food restaurant’s swaying sign, the yawning fissures cracking through the intersection. He followed the scent of diesel.

Sirens grew louder. All he had to do was get to the Dino Grease, and wait for Iris to extract him. Simple.

“Bad news, Homer. You've got two armed men approaching…” Iris chirped. “Ahhh!” She shouted, interrupting herself and laying on her vehicle’s horn. “Coming from the left!"

Homer readied his pistol. ”Focus, Iris.” He turned to his left, expecting to see a dark blob in the shape of a man.

But there was nobody.

Instead, he heard a boot crunch of glass from behind him. A pair of hands grabbed Homer and yanked him into a chokehold. He had turned in the wrong direction.

Between gasps, all Homer thought was: Iris mixed up her left and right… again.

“Whoopsie!” Iris sounded apologetic and small in Homer’s ear. “I’ll fix this!”

“Horizon wants a word with you, buddy boy.” The man’s breath smelled foul. “And that word is—”

Iris’ drone fired a silenced shot, inaudible to anyone except Homer. The man’s chokehold slackened as his body dropped to the ground. Homer’s lungs gasped, filled with air that reeked of sulfur and fast food.

“The other guy’s on your left. Wait! Ack! My left! Your right!”

Homer turned to his left, dropped low, and took a deep breath. He concentrated on the approaching footsteps, pushed through the headache that spiderwebbed pain across his brain. His senses attuned to the cacophony of Devore Avenue.

Shouting voices, crackling fires, screeching tires… countless auditory signals bounced off stone and steel, rubber and wood, flesh and fabric. Homer fused the sonic landscape with the abstract expressionism his eyes displayed and his mind rendered them into a picture-perfect image of Devore Avenue.

Homer “saw” the second assassin. His heartbeat was calm, like a trained killer. The other man gripped a silenced Groza assault rifle as he stepped toward Homer’s position.

Homer stood up and squeezed off a single round – a headshot. The assassin’s heartbeat stopped. The last sound the assassin made was his body thudding to the pavement.

***

Inside the Dino Grease, Homer chugged a bottle of water. Iris was driving to get him, which meant her hands were on a steering wheel…

“Iris. Look at your hands. The index finger and thumb make an “L” shape on your left hand.”

“I know my right from my left. The drone flips everything and then my brain flips it again and some jerk driver careened into my lane, and then my mouth does whatever it wants and--aw crap! Now I’m near the airport?”

“What? How did you…”

“You were explaining ‘left and right’—which I already know—and I took a left at another freakin’ Burger GoFry when I meant to turn right, so really, this is your fault. Oh, and more bogies are advancing on your position. Hang tight, ok?”

Through his headset, he heard Iris cursing as her vehicle’s tires screeched.

Homer’s headache came back in full force.

Iris’ drone whirred toward him and dropped a bottle of aspirin in his lap.

“If I have a concussion, this will make the bleeding worse, Iris.”

“Eh, you probably don’t have a concussion. It’s just a headache,” Iris responded. Iris paused followed by a tirade of words.

“Oh my god Homer, you’re so dramatic. My bomb didn’t give you a concussion, I was joking…” Iris had that rambly quality to her voice. She was talking to herself again.

“Iris, you may be deaf, but I hear everything you say, hit the mute button next time you need to vent. Right now: focus, I need my favorite pair of eyes to see for me, okay?”

Homer checked the rounds in his pistol, and focused. Ever since he and Iris became friends as kids, headaches always defined their friendship. He took the good with the bad, or in this case, the chaos with the order.

Iris’ drone swooped down next to Homer’s head. He heard its tiny rotors whirring, and its weapons systems readying for battle.

Around him, Devore Avenue continued to churn with chaos.

It was supposed to be a simple job.

THE END

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