Kintobor Options

[April Manha]

In a universe of animals and a planet called mobius where on earth did a single human come from?
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Ivo looked up from his papers, a rock had just smashed his window and now lay in the corner of the room looking small and boring. He would have like to think this was a shock but in all honesty it happened with such regularity he had taken to buying the cheapest glass to repair the hole. The robot that he had built to perform the task however was the most reliable and efficient on earth.

He stroked his mostache and reflected on the fact that the only reason he drew such ire from the general populous was because of his unbeliveble talent for building machines. Of course he would not give up his gift for the world but it would be nice to find more people resistant to his little problem.

You see Dr Ivo Kintobor is a Psykic, quite a powerful one at that, and his power revolves around being able to create almost any mechanical device he can concieve, even if it breaks many known laws of physics. No normal man could comprehend how he did what he did and even the few other psykics he had encountered over his lifetime were of the same type as he and thus were not much company.

His enhanced brilliance however was not the reason for the stone currently residing on the floor of his room. As a person of active psykic ability his brain unconciously sent out a slow level of a special beta wave, which would normally allow two psykics to connect together, but to a "normal" person it caused a strange level of hated.

As the Window-pane-cleaner-repair-robot (He was not very good at naming his inventions) detatched itself from the wall and moved to do its duty Ivo decided that it was time to work on resting his massive brain in preperation for tomorrow. It was actually quite an important event, his new space propultion unit was being given it first field test and if he was right it should easily out strip the hopes of the big cats in GUN who had hired him to build it. The only problem he had come across was that fact that noone on staff other then himself could work out how use the damn thing and as such he was going to get a first hand chance to travel into space if even for just a test run.

As he driffered off to sleep he wondered what would go wrong with the mission.

---- Next Day

"So how has the changes to the project going?"

"Perfectly Sir" The uniformed flunky saluted "But Sir why did you want order us to change our own project on the day before launch?"

The GUN commander massaged his temples with his hands, he was not so sure of his motivations himself but the fact that with the blueprints stolen from Ivos computer would allow them to create a lifetimes supply of inventions to sell and money seemed a good enough motivation to him, "We felt that some of the power generated by the engine was going to waste... so with the changes we have made everything should go with a blast."

The flunky drowned, he knew a blatent lie when he heard one but if he superiours were going to do something then he was not going to try to stop them, "Yes Sir, I perfectly understand!"

"Very well, return to you quarters, and don't forget to take the case of drinks for your victory celebrations tonight" He waved to a pair of boxes stacked on the table on the side of the room.

"Of course Sir and thank you Sir!" The Flunky snapped off a sloppy salute and hefted the boxes off the table, he was not sure why they were being given drinks for a party BEFORE the launch but he and the others were not going to turn down an offer of free Beer. The glass bottles clinked together as he manhandled their containers out through the door and down the corridor.

The Commander rocked back in his chair feeling smug with himself, it was obvious that he was a very good actor, after all he had gotten the flunky to believe his rather shaky excuse, no one had any idea how the engines worked or even if the changes they had made would be enough to destroy the ship when it actuvated once it achived orbit. The Bomb that had been planted under the alterations however almost certainly would though. He felt a bit bad about taking such extreame measures but if the media were to sense something was off, and they would be watching like a hawk, then he would be hung, drawn and quartered in the public eye. Infecting his staff with a light case of food posioning from Tainted beer however was just an unlucky accident and hopefully the lible case he planned for the manufacturer would actually turn out with a signicant profit.

----

Ivo unlocked the door to his office and happily dropped into his chair. Someone had blocked him from getting the lift this morning and he had to climb the 12 fights of stairs to his office, and given his rather considerable lack of physical prowess it had been a gruelling challenge. As he got his breath back he gazed out the window to where the rocket was being prepped for launch in the distance and thought about that Organic-to-Mechanic-Converter he had thought up a few weeks ago, sure the ethics of such a machine were questionable but maybe it would be worth it if it ment he would not have to worry about bursting a blood vessal if he had something more strenuous to do then walking around his room at an accelerated pace...

His train of thought was interrupted by the merry trickleing of water over musical pipes that seemed to be eminating from his phone, it had been hard to miniturise a musical water park and still retain its beautiful sound but it made for a much more interesting sound then that irritating din it had originally came with.

"Hello?"

"#Crsshk# Hello? Dr? This is Commander Vargen."

"Good moring Commander, Yes this is Dr Ivo speaking"

"Ahh Doctor, we need you down at the launch platform as soon as you can, we have a bit of a situation with the other pilots."

Ivo frowned in worry, he had hoped the Launch would go smoothly but it seemed fate would get in his way today. "Certainly I will get over there as fast as I can- ~Crsshk~" The end of the line went dead as Commander Vargen hung up. It had sounded important so Ivo decided that it was better not to try and battle with the Lift again and just take one of his own Transportable-Flying-Chair-Devices to make better time, the Gun Commander had seemed rather nervous about something after all.

The chair he was sitting in rose slightly off the floor as he pressed a consealed button under its arm-rest and quickly clanked though its transformation sequence until it stood a foot off the floor, a half sphere dome surrounding the chair like a cup, with a single long spike decending from the bottom to act as a balance and help power the anti-gravity abilities of the chair.

With a slight lurch it shot through the windo, shattering the glass as it passed. Ivo slapped his head, he had forgotten to remember to raise the window again! brushing fragments of glass from his hair he set off towards the distant launch site.

----

Commander Vargen was feeling uneasy, not because he was going to have to explain to his superiors about how the beer was tainted in the first place but how to convince the Doctor to continue the mission regardless, after all a single man launch had never been attempted before and he was sure no sane man would want to try it, Blast how could he have overlooked this part of the plan! If only he had been willing to let two men crew the ship with Ivo and sent them off to their doom along with him but he had felt that it was to much even for the price he was sure to fetch after this whole ordeal was over.... Curses curses curses!

"Commander?" A voice called from above him.

He looked up and stared at Ivo looking down on him from what seemed to be a floating egg cup. His felt the usual flow of loathing for the man and knew that this was the moment, his best chance to rid himself of the doctor in such away that would leave him totally without blame.

The chair touched down and quietly folded back into its base.

"Ahh Doctor, Glad you could make it in such good time!" The Commander put on his best face and tried to ignore the rather impossible floating egg chair he had just seen, "We hae a problem with your co-pilots, they all seem to have come down with food poisoning!"

Ivo looked rather shocked, "Goodness! How unfortunate for that to happen on today of all days. They will recover soon I take it?"

"Not for a few days I'm afraid, and to make matters worse, the boys over at control tell me that if we can't launch today then they are going to ground us for another month!" This of course was another lie, the top brass were very eager to see how well this new engine performed having heard and seen some of the smaller test examples, and were happy to launch as soon as possible. "If only we could launch today, but the only trained pilot left is yourself, Doctor!"

"Oh is that all?"

A look of shock flashed over Vargens face "Pardon?"

The Doctor waved his hand up and down looking really quite cheerful, "Thats no problem at all, I've already automated much of the standard launch procedure, I really only need to be onboard for monitoring the ship passed its reaching orbit"

"So you mean you can still launch today?"

"Of course, as long as thats alright with everyone else."

The commander could not believe his luck "Certainly, its no problem at all, we can launch as soon as your ready, sooner the better really!" He patted Ivo on the shoulder in the most comradery display of affection he had ever displayed to the Doctor "You had better got get prepared!"

Ivo simpily nodded and felt slightly arquward.

----

T-minus 2 minutes Blared over the intercom as Ivo ran a third check over the array of computers infront of him, searching for any minor fault in the reading. Everything seemed normal.

----

5
4
3
2
1

The Thunder of rockets shook the ground as the ship lifted itself from terraferma and lifted it with ever increasing speed up and out of the atmosphere leaving behind a gaggle of media teams for nearly every station tracked it as it went wondering if they would get to report on a great success or a horrific desaster, and one Commander Vargen hopeing beyond all doubt that the rocket would detonate in orbit, safly away from him and his soon-to-be pile of money.

----

Ivo checked the instremants again.

"Ground Control, everything is working perfectly up here, I'll begin charging the Peutron-Hydron-Pulse engines now"

This was a major step now, if the PHP engine (As everyone else called them) worked correctly the bosses of GUN hoped to see an engine capible of performing the trip to mars and back in under an hour. Dr Ivo Kintobor Knew that if all went correctly he would be able to loop the solar system at just a touch under the speed of light in that time.

"Good luck Doctor, you have permition to activate the PHP Engines"

Light flashed across the monitors and bars moved to inticate the progress of the powering up phase.

"Energy mass achieved, going to begin.... wait... This isen't right"

"Repeat Doctor, Repeat, is there a #Crsshk# problem?"

"Base.. the Peutron-Hydron mass is not stabalising, its growing faster!"

"#Crsshk# Repeat Doctor, Re#crsshk#et, your breaking up"

Ivo's fingers flashed across the screen altering values and changing settings, desperatly trying to work out what had gone wrong. He knew why he was breaking up and didn't bother trying to contact ground control, the engine had begun to run wild and was pulling enegy waves in from all around the ships exterior, including the radio waves of the communicators, and worst of all he knew what was going to happen in exactly 1 minutes 32 seconds if he didn't manage to release the energy safely... a critical mass over load, and even he didn't know what that would do.

Fingers blured and his pace raced, commands raced through the computers network and panals began to shift as the core of the ship opened into the vacuum of space, he still had 1 minute 3 seconds to spare and one more button would....

wait...

the core was pointed at earth, and dropping a critical mass of Peutron-Hydron onto the planet, sans protective shielding would probably ignite the atmosphere. 54 seconds...

hang on with the shields open that would mean the core can pull light energy from the sun, thus growing faster, which would mean...

a quick recalculation...

ohh 0 seconds left...

and that nowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

----

The one media teams not at the launch had rather cleverly been recording through a local observatory and reported that the new highly experimental ship piloted by the world acclaimed genius Dr Ivo Kintobor Disappeared into nothing after a mechanical fault onboard the ship.

The disturbing thing was the way they insisted it just vanished without a trace, even though the respectable Commander Vargen insisted that the ship had exploded to all other media crews and was greatly saddened by everyones loss of a great mind.

---- 30th August 02:36