• Not long after I gave my business card to DuoPolarity of Boston, N.A., they called up my employer and hired me. I didn't even have to go to their nasty downtown Boston location or anything; the company president and vice-president came out to the suburbs to talk with me. They also got to see our company office, so they know we're not a fictitious company or anything. Hey, more companies should do interviews like that.
• I was hired to do two things: (1) Help the Chief Pilot of DuoPolarity develop piloting algorithms to help other people pilot the famous Challenger II spacecraft. Cool. (2) Be on call for emergencies. Ick. But they promised it would only be for life-saving stuff. Not like the phone companies who declare emergencies whenever the schedule might slip one day. And in return, they paid for my lodgings on Cape Cod near their launch site. I decided I could live with that.
• So, one night there was actually an emergency. I showed up on the launch pad with my motorcycle twenty minutes later. (I had thirty. I win.) Our job was to bring replacement oxygen supplies for the Russian astronauts on the UNITY space station, who'd had an equipment malfunction. The company founders Ted Clark and Hudson Ramo couldn't make it for this mission, since they were off in the Netherlands visiting DuoPolarity van Rotterdam E.C.
• So, my piloting software and I would be flying this mission. I'd be along because people trust us programmers more when we stand to go down with the ship. Ingrid Bodil would command, with her sister Karen doing the extra-vehicular activity.
• We made it! Okay, Ingrid says I have to debug the satellite avoidance software, but we got up and connected okay.
• Karen took over then. The supplies got delivered - but then Karen disappeared in a burst of light! The Russians had no clue what happened, and neither did we. I wanted to stay to investigate, but Ingrid commanded us back home. That's her right, she was the commander. But it isn't over yet. (12 December 1995)

• It starts with Karen Bodil, the astronaut of DuoPolarity Boston who disappeared in space when we flew our rescue mission for the Russians in the space station. We couldn't track her down then, but now we've got our whole company's resources working this. They think Karen disappeared through a teleportal, but they can't tell where, maybe into another universe.
• Commonly not known fact about me: I can summon people from other universes. I unconsciously do it with relatives and superhumans all the time. Obviously it's time I controlled this.
• I talk the others into believing me, since they have no immediate better idea for invading an alternate universe. For safety, they slap a spacesuit, a tether, and a tracking device on me. Then I try to summon Karen back.
• She doesn't come to me, but I go to her. She's in a wrestling ring, taking on four street urchins in teams of two. She gets almost pinned by the last one - before I come in with my spacesuit and disrupt the match. Later I find out she took on two other sets of four before this, and won.
• And my spacesuit gets exploded off me! However they did this, it would explain how they got Karen's suit off her in hostile conditions.
• Some robots are watching - and I recognize them as the mechanical Volga Boatmen who invaded Grafton, Massachusetts once. Their leader announces that the real game will start tomorrow. Karen and I get shown to a cell, with one bucket of water and some bread. Most of the water goes towards washing her; she's sweaty and exhausted. She has to admit, any sort of washing is healthy.
• The next day, there's another game against the Strategos, the would-be conqueror who commands the Volga Boatmen. This time the game involves a football, two suits of powered armor, a limited power supply, Ivana Trump, and a piggish U.S. senator. Ivana and the Senator are one team, Karen and I are the other. Karen insists she should wear the armor, and she threatens to wrestle me to prove it. As tempting as that is, she mostly convinces me because I think I should work the controls for the power supply.
• The game doesn't look good for our side. Early, it becomes clear that Ivana Trump's team has more power than we have. Maybe they bribed someone for it. So it's mostly delaying tactics for our side. Karen mostly throws herself down in front of Ivana to block her rushes. I give only enough power to get the throwing done. Still, Ivana knows nothing about football, so it's about even.
• Luckily: Remember that tracking device I'm wearing? DuoPolarity Boston finally tracks it! It's what Hudson our Chief Pilot would call a "hot landing", but we make it.
• How'd they track it across universes? Well, it seems we weren't in another universe; we were "just" on the far side of the Moon! Our rescue mission was not only the first manned spacecraft there since 1971 or so, it found a human colony there!
• So what do we do about it? Well, we can't go back and wipe them out, as much as Hudson and Karen and I would like to. So Ted says, he'll tell the Gov. Things that threaten US security are their watch, after all... and it's hard to imagine anything that threatens it more than an invader with his own lunar base and an army of automatons which has already intruded on United States territory once. (15 December 1995)

DuoPolarity of Boston, the Strategos, and Tekno-Otelo are copyright © 2008 by Eiler Technical Enterprises. And all the real people in this document, including me, are really celebrity impersonators. I'm really a guy named Wyatt Ferguson. So there.