THE NEON LITES:

The Adventures of RoboScot (and Craig…)

"Earth?" Tasha said incredulously, suddenly realizing that her 24-hour-hold hair spray had only 23 hours of hold left. "We crashed into EARTH?!"

"Déjà vu," Mollie muttered, as the burly, military-type man before them frowned darkly.

"This is a highly restricted area," he informed them, tapping large fingers on a faux tortoiseshell desktop that Tasha thought was utterly tacky.

"What do you mean by that?" Mollie queried, as Tasha began redecorating the office in her mind.

"White Sands," began the officer, "is a --"

"Oh I know!" Tasha beamed (having just decided that a new window treatment would do wonders). "It's where the President and his friends go rafting!"

Mollie eyed her impatiently. "Tasha, that's white WATER! And it hasn't got a thing to do with raft --"

Here she was interrupted by a loud crash, as the door flew inward, and Hamish MacHamish, his plaid flying behind him, burst into the room and prepared for battle. "FREEDOM!!!" he bellowed, as Craig leaped in from behind him, followed at a more sedate pace by Snerdly, who was sulking.

The officer behind the desk leaped to his feet, furious. "What is the meaning of this?!"

Hamish glared balefully. "What's the matter wi' ye? Haven't ye seen 'Braveheart?'" he demanded.

Craig grinned. "Oh, what were ye then, Hamish lad… Wallace in another life?"

Snerdly sniffed. "I was Mel Gibson," he offered, but nobody believed him.

Sparki appeared in the door, radiant as ever, and gave Hamish a thumbs-up sign. "Way cool, man, like what're you? RoboScot?"

The officer behind the desk reached for a security buzzer, but froze in his tracks as Craig pointed the fiddle at his head. "Now lad," the young Scotsman tisked, "dinna make me use this." The officer blanched, and Mollie grinned.

Tasha popped her gum and opened her eyes very wide. "He said he was going to hold us prisoner," she informed the men (and Snerdly), "and he was rude besides, and what's more," she lowered her voice to a stage whisper, "I don't think he can be trusted."

"Ah," Craig agreed, not lowering the fiddle, "because absolute power corrupts absolutely?"

"Tasha patted his arm. "No, silly; because who would trust a man who would wear THOSE dark colors in the middle of SUMMER?! It isn't even Labor Day yet!"

Craig blinked. "Ummm, grrrreat…" he muttered.

While the others stared at Tasha (she was used to it), Mollie let out a sudden cry as the officer lunged and slapped a hand down upon the buzzer. Alarms and sirens began to blare in deafening cacophony (look it up, Tasha) and floodlights flooded the room. ("Well what else WOULD they do?" giggled Tasha, who wasn't really following the storyline anyway.) For a moment all was chaos. Then the floodlights swept over Sparki, flashing off the six billion sequins on her coat and back into the eyes of the officer, who fell into a dead faint on the floor.

"Great Scot!" said Mollie.

"Thank ye," Hamish beamed modestly.

"What happened?" asked Tasha.

Craig looked at his fiddle in astonishment. "I think I shot him!"

Sparki grinned. "Like, greetings again, Plaided Pipe Dude, Fiddler, Dudettes and blinded-most-likely-dead Military Type Buffoon. Oh, you too, Snerd man. Did I like totally make an entrance or what? Zappo!"

Tasha applauded brightly. "Good timing, Sparki!"

Craig carefully aimed his fiddle away from his own feet. "Indeed it was…"

The sound of approaching feet (likely attached to approaching soldiers) alerted them, and Hamish pushed them toward the back door of the office. (All military offices have to have back doors, of course, in case of rampages by recently armed and newly self-empowered anti-war hippies who have finally had enough. Let's see… maniacal killers paid by tax dollars, or free peace and free love and free music festivals… You decide.)

Mollie screamed as they raced through the door, and the floor dropped out from under them.

"Whaaaaat haaaaaappened?!" bellowed Hamish, as they began to freefall fifteen stories.

"According to the map I stole, "Craig said fairly calmly (all things considered), "the other door leads to the stairs."

Hamish grabbed the fiddler by the neck. "Making this…?"

"The garbage chute."

Mollie scrabbled helplessly at the slick metal sides of the walls, desperate for purchase. Tasha (also desperate for purchase) checked her purse for her MasterCard, in case heaven had a sale on when they got there. As their descent accelerated, the space travelers clutched one another desperately (for which Tasha slapped Snerdly nevertheless), as certain and undoubtedly messy death approached them rapidly from below.

Suddenly, when it seemed that they were doomed to end up a pile of broken bones and fiddle splinters, there was a shocking WHOOSH and an abrupt slowing of velocity, as Hamish's kilt billowed out around him and caught the upward rush of air.

"I'll be…" Snerdly muttered.

"Aye, ye WILL," Hamish assured him darkly, "if ye make so much as ONE kilt joke…"

Drifting slowly now, they wafted to a gentle landing atop a three-foot deep pile of empty PowerAde bottles, losing lottery tickets and cigarette butts.

Mollie smiled. "So," she remarked casually, "I guess REAL Scotsmen --"

"DON'T use their kilts as parachutes!" Hamish snapped, throwing his shoulder against the heavy iron door set in the wall. Unyielding, it remained immobile, a solid steel barricade to their recycling-impaired prison.

Tucking his fiddle under one arm, Craig climbed through the rubble toward the door. "Let me try."

Snerdly sneered. "The chances of YOU opening that door," he scoffed, eyeing the fiddler's sprightly build, "are in the neighborhood of 238,574,389,766.23584343 to 1. Against."

Craig turned the doorknob, and the door swung open at a touch. Snerdly gaped, and since he was standing there with his mouth hanging handily open, Sparki helpfully shoved a homeopathic nutrigrain energizer bar into it.

All through the courtyard beyond the door, chain link fences and barbed wire shielded laboratories, testing areas, and mysterious tax-driven machinery, all emblazoned with signs reading "KEEP OUT" or "TOP SECRET."

Smiling, Hamish pushed open a door at random. "Let's see what they're REALLY up to…" The group entered a dark shadowed laboratory, and were astonished to find it occupied by only one being of any kind. In one corner, a large Labrador retriever was busily gulping food out of a large bowl labeled TOP SECRET GOVERNMENT EXPERIMENT.

Mollie whistled softly. "Dog food? The government is making DOG FOOD?"

"A highly competitive market," Snerdly sniffed.

Hamish pushed his way past Craig, who was muttering "Fiddles and bits, fiddles and bits," amusedly under his breath.

Pausing mid-meal, the Labrador turned towards them, blinked once or twice, then said in a charming Oxford accent, "I say, would one of you chaps happen to have a bit of a chew toy about you?"