Transmissions from Mars: Pay Dirt!

2 AM - Silica's Lab.

“Propane,” squeaked Silica.

Silica seldom spoke and when he did it didn't make any damn sense to normal folk so it certainly wasn't outa the disrespect that we ignored him.

"What you got?" asked Tiny.

"Propane," Matrix repeated.

Tiny and I crossed our arms across our chests in unison, the international human being sign language for "this oughta be fucking good."

"Show them," Matrix said.

Silica pulled an old TV VCR combo up from under the table and placed in the middle on top of all the papers. He turned it on, and a very old version of Silica appeared on the screen.

"In the year 2099 we have re-concluded beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's no such thing as airtight," The old TV Silica said.

"Oh boy," muttered Tiny, under his breath.

You think we would be immune by now to the weirdness that happens in this room, but I think it's truly impossible to not be surprised in this house of mirrors.

" Propane or Methylacetylene is an alkylene, an unsaturated hydrocarbon containing at least one carbon—carbon triple bond between two carbon atoms."

"Forward," Tiny and I shouted

"Behave," replied Matrix.

Aa ancient TV Silica prattled on, I felt my eyes glaze over. It was hard enough to stay awake without a chemistry lesson at 2 AM. I was fading out.

I awoke with a start! Something small struck me right between the eyes. I heard the dime roll on the floor until it hit a table leg, and teetered onto the floor. Matrix looked at me with an eyebrow raised... peered back with my best “okay, okay, I'm awake” look.

Ancient TV Silica was really ramped up now.

"....... By the standards of construction and science of the early part of the 2000's, small trace amounts of airborne gases will leak through mechanical bonds. These gases may be undetectable and harmless to humans and even with the most advanced detection techniques of the day, it will still escape."

Silica leaned down and turned the TV off. Which began to melt ... obviously.

"What's this got to do with ninjas and dragons?" I asked.

Both Matrix and Silica smiled.

"A few months ago, just off center of the landmass over where the crypt is, a small railroad conglomerate built a depot to relay supplies and what not for the Worcester-Providence Railroad restoration project," she said.

My eyes to glaze over again, until I noticed her turning a shiny quarter between her pointer finger and her thumb. I made eye contact, and nodded to her, noting I had acknowledged the artillery upgrade.

"On that site they store three giant propane tanks."

"Thhaaat doesn't sound safe," interrupted Tiny.

"It's not. If they were to explode, the impact would evaporate everything in a mile radius and destroy everything in the next 3 miles," she answered coldly.

"Wow! It's like they built a bomb up on my roof," I said, mostly to myself.

"If only we had someone whose job it was to legal that sorta stuff away," Tiny said, with a deliberate amount of sarcasm.

"It's hard to keep your secret underground-base secret when you launch campaigns to stop people from building things on top of it."

"Fair enough," I said.

"The town was totally against it and I threw a bunch of money at its campaign; I even got some of my very expensive lawyer friends to lend a hand," she said. I could tell the subject annoyed her beyond whatever was going on right now.

"Your law friends are terrifying. How did Thomas the Apocalypse Engine and his friends beat them?" asked Tiny.

"Lots and lots of money," hissed Matrix. "Lots."

She let how shity and scary the situation was hang in the air for minute before she pulled us back to more immediate reality.

"Unfortunately, it is a problem for another day. Let's get back to the business at hand."

Your life really sucks when the potential for being evaporated isn't the worst thing you have going on at 1:55am on Tuesday morning.

"On the night of the multiple attacks, all of the creatures that we were able to retrieve - which was all but the dragon - had trace amounts of this microscopic propane residue on them. Which wasn't strange, because we were all attacked on the crypt within 3 miles of the propane tanks. Only Oracle and Andy Christ were attacked elsewhere, which is neither here nor there, for we didn't retrieve that creature," she explained.

I took a minute to consider just where the hell we would put a dragon. Silica would probably plug a synth into it.

"We hit pay dirt when Silica noticed that the soldiers and the ninja all carried the same microscopic amount propane residue that could only be explained by long term exposure. They also had all same identical amounts of microscopic information that the other creatures who attacked us had."

"This son of a bitch is in our backyard?" I yelped, in a weird vocal cocktail of relief, anger, and terror.

Tiny again began fidgeting with the sword. Me and Tiny are far from dumb. In fact, he's really, really smart, and a pretty great detective, but we work with some of the smartest people that ever existed. We leave most of the smart stuff to them. What we're good at is beating stuff up, and we both felt like "beat up" time was drawing near.

"If narrowing it down to the three-mile radius surrounding above and around our house was not good enough, all the specimens also had a tremendous amount of one other microscopic clue," Matrix said with an all too familiar cat-that-got-the-canary smile on her face.

Before we could ask, Silica yelled:

"Pig Shit!!!”

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