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.Stopover in a little louder town	By : keithcompany Category: S through Z > The Twilight Zone Views: 2464 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight Zone or any characters or settings from the show. I make no profit from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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More disclaimer: This work is my own. Do not repost this story beyond the limits of the Fair Use standards of Copyright Law (quotes, examples, ;you gotta read this; excerpts, the usual).

Author's Note: Stopover In A Quiet Town was a Zone episode where a couple explored a strange, empty village they woke up in after drinking a bit too much at a party. At the end of it they discovered that 'Centerville' was a playset that belonged to a giant little girl. They were now her pets, a gift her daddy had brought 'all the way from Earth.'

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"Personal log," I said to the control panel. "I've completed the first leg of the trip and deployed the first relay. Communication with the home planet is secure. The ship is recharging from the local sun. And I have this scathingly brilliant idea.
"The trip so far has been so boring, I've read all the books and seen all the vees in the library. The next twenty legs of the trip are going to reduce my brains to putty." I reached down and stroked the box beside my chair.
"But I remembered a gift someone gave me before I left Home. A small doll-neighborhood. This is the more elaborate one, the Pleasantville version.
"I think my aunt told me she had one as a little girl. She had the simpler 'Centerville' design, but her dad didn’t just get her humans from Shar or Tella. He went all the way to the source and got her a married couple from Earth.
"Amazingly enough, Relay Number One is in now in orbit around Earth's sun. I'm going to take the shuttle down to the surface and find some pets. They should keep me engaged for the rest of the journey."
I signed off and set up the little town of Pleasantville. It was just the right size for the old navigator's table. Since that function had been automated, I didn't need it for charts any more.
It was an interesting little toy. A few buildings representing a town with church, a school, offices, homes, a railroad running around it.
I set the supplier to making properly sized foods and went to the shuttle.
Earth's population had everything. There were people living a stone-age existence and there were people in orbit. I thought about grabbing some of the most savage. I could easily convince them I was a god. But they'd be lost in the ship. If they ever got out, they might do fatal damage without knowing or meaning to.
The most advanced ones I rejected for similar reasons. They might do fatal damage to the ship exactly because they meant to. So I looked for something in the middle of the curve.
The computer lead me to some of their more advanced educational sites. I wanted young ones with potential to learn, but not a whole lot of technical knowledge yet. An understanding of the concept of Hard Vacuum would be nice.
I hovered over some sort of athletic competition. Or a display, it was hard to be sure. I thought about grabbing a team, or just randomly pocketing people from the stands. Which would be better, if they did or didn't already know each other?
Then there was a different display. Some females in matching clothes moved onto the field and jiggled. I thought it was an amazing coordination. It involved music, somehow, and sometimes they all did the same thing, sometimes they did different things.
At the end, ten of them formed a pyramid, two others danced on either side of it. I decided to take them right then. A few smoke bombs scattered around the field covered me. I leapt out of the shuttle and scooped them up into a satchel. I was halfway back to orbit before the smoke cleared.
I turned a scanner towards the field to see the reaction to the disappearance. Most thought it was part of the act and cheered. I thought it might go down in their history as an impressive mystery.
Back at the survey ship, I sat down at Pleasantville and eased the women out of the satchel. They'd passed out during collection, of course. Then I had to decide what to do with them. There wasn't any real barracks or dorm in the doll-neighborhood. I didn't want to use the various houses, it spread them out too far.
But there were plenty of racks in the jail. That would give them quite the mystery when they woke up.
I opened up the building and slid out the cells. Then I got some tweezers and lifted the girls into place one at a time.
Right up until I held them, I hadn't realized just how tiny they were. I stretched one out across my finger. She was barely as long as one knuckle.
I lowered each onto one of the bunks and slid it back into place. I adjusted the lights according to the note on the box. At the right settings, the walls would be opaque to human eyesight and the top of the case would look like a sky.
Then I went to get the ship started.
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Lisa moaned. Her head ached in a familiar way. She must have gotten wasted after the game. She scratched at an itch on her thigh and realized she was still in her cheerleader uniform. Very wasted.
The bright light overhead kept her eyes shut as tightly as possible. No biggie, she knew where the aspirin was. But her hand couldn't find the nightstand. It wasn't where it was supposed to be. That still wasn't completely unheard of. She peeked a bit, trying to see whose room she was in.
The first thing she saw was a toilet. That did not bode well for the evening that had passed or the day to come. Beyond that was a bed with another cheerleader sleeping in it, also still in uniform.
Lisa couldn’t see the face, but it was one of the brunettes. She slowly raised her head to look around. There were bars. Bars on the window, a wall of bars across the end of the room.
"Oh, god," she muttered. She rose and looked around. A brick wall was about an arm's length beyond the window, wan sunlight coming down a shaft.
There was another cell across the way. Leslie was sprawled half on and half off a bunk. Her cheerleading skirt was rucked up around her waist, her panties showing. "Well, she's okay," Lisa said.
The other figure was arranged more chastely. It had to be Bree or Halle, just from the color of the legs where they showed.
To her right there were at least four other cells. From the snoring, one of the had to have April. Chances were, the whole team was in here. To her left was a heavy steel door with rivets.
"Hello!" she called. "Can I get some aspirin, please? And a lawyer?" There was no response. She looked around for cameras or intercoms. "Hey! Barney Fife! Are we all in here or is anyone left to arrange bail?"
"Please, please, stop yelling." She turned around and saw that her cellmate was Kate.
"Oh, good," Lisa sneered. "I thought we were in prison. But if you're here, it's no worse than Juvie."
"Shut up, Lisa," Kate said as she stood. "I'm eighteen."
"The baby of the squad," Lisa said. "Hey!" she yelled. "How about a drink of water at least!? I'm sure that's a fundamental civil right!"
"What about the sink?" Kate asked. She stepped to a metal panel next to the toilet. It folded down to reveal a plain sink basin. Lisa pouted, not wanting to admit that she'd missed it. True, she was still hung over, but she didn't want to admit anything in front of Little Kitty.
When Kate turned the faucet, though, nothing came out. "I tried that," Lisa lied with a sneer. "That's why I'm calling for the jailor."
"Oh." Kate joined her at the bars, looking up and down the hall. "Where the hell are we?"
"How should I know?"
"It's just, Desmond County Jail doesn't look like this. This looks like something from the Fifties."
"How do you know what the county jail looks like?" Lisa asked.
"She bailed me out of it," Fiona said. The Irish girl's voice came from a cell on the same side of the jail as Lisa and Kate's. Try as they might, they couldn't get an angle to see that far.
"Fi!" Lisa shouted. "I can see Leslie and either Bree or Halle. And there's me and Kate. Who can you see?"
"Um. Bobbi's with me, I can see April and Jackie."
Over the next half hour, the full 12-girl team woke up. No one knew where they were or what they'd done to get locked up.
Meg was sure that alcohol was not involved, as there was no sign that she'd thrown up. Bree agreed, mostly because Leslie's panties were still in place.
The inevitable charges of slut and prude were exchanged. Lisa screamed for attention before the fight broke out.
"Hey! Seriously! If we're all in here, who's going to get us out? Anyone have coach's number?"
"Third number down on my cell phone," Donna said.
"Do you HAVE your cell phone, genius?" Jackie asked. The silence was all the answer anyone needed.
Hours passed with no sign of their jailor, much less legal counsel. Bree started to get agitated. "Help?!" she called towards the security door. "I need to go to the restroom!"
"That's what the toilet is for," Leslie said from her cot.
"I can't use that!"
"We won't look, Bree," Lisa said.
"We promise," Kate added.
"But you might!" Bree insisted. "I can't… No, not with her in the same room. Besides, if there's no water, it won't flush."
"Oops."
Everyone froze. The voice had come from everywhere and nowhere. It was male and very deep.
"Who was that?" Petra asked.
"The other man in the cell," Jackie said sarcastically. Before she could reply, water started to spray from the faucets in two of the cells, where the taps had been left open after experimenting. Water was available to the other taps and the toilets.
"Great!" Kate shouted. "Voice activated room service. How about some food!"
"And a phone call!" Lisa shouted.
"Screw that," Halle shouted, shaking her bar door. "Let us out of here or I'll-" In mid threat, all the lights went out. Not a single glow or spark illuminated the cells. Nothing leaked around the doors or shone through the barred windows. The girls froze in the sudden darkness. "I didn't mean it," Halle said in a much smaller voice.
The lights came back on just as suddenly. Sunlight and bulbs all at once with no buildup. Kate was about to comment on how weird that was when Lisa shouted "Food!"
A table had appeared in the middle of the passageway, between the first two cells. Twelve whole roasted chickens rested on it.
Neither Bree nor Lisa could reach it. Leslie popped up on the bars and extended her foot. She couldn't pull the table to her, but she did manage to push it closer to Lisa and Kate's cell. Kate started picking up birds and handing them to Lisa. Lisa passed them along to Halle, Meg, Fiona and Bobbi.
Then Kate copied Leslie to push the table to the other side where they distributed the rest of the food.
Lisa flung herself on her bunk and started eating. Kate looked at her chicken for a while. "Did you notice that these things are all the same?"
"They're chicken. It's not like any one of them is going to be Brad Pitt," Lisa said between bites.
"No. I mean, even the browning pattern is identical. The knots on the string. The way the wings folded under the breasts. Exactly the same."
"Three cheers," Leslie said, "for quality control."
"Don't look a gift chicken in the chest cavity," Donna advised from down the row. "Just be grateful that we got food."
"Oh, I'm thankful," Kate said.
"You're welcome," Voice said.
"Who are you?" Kate finally asked.
"I… guess you'd say I run the place."
"What place? Where are we?"
"Can't tell you that," he said. Half a dozen voices rose, asking for questions, demanding explanations, asking to go home.
Bree cut through everything, demanding a private restroom.
"If," Voice said, and everyone shut up. "If I let you use the private room in the squad room, you won't make me regret it? You will come back here, not try to run away?"
"Promise," Bree insisted, twisting in place. The door to her cell clicked and swung open. She gingerly stepped out, looking around for the voice. The door swung shut on Leslie, then the security door clicked and swung ponderously inward.
She ran through it and found a stairway. Skipping up that, she found a room full of desks. The open door to the toilet beckoned like a lighthouse. She ran in and used the facilities.
On her way back, she pulled open a few drawers in the desks. They were all empty. "Looking for the keys?" Voice asked.
Bree jumped up in the air and squeaked. "Looking for a letterhead," she finally said. "You know, something like 'Joliet Jail' or 'Cisco County Courthouse.' To figure out where we are."
"Oh." There was a change in the quality of the voice somehow. Bree realized that it had been talking only to her, now it was talking to everyone. "This is generally known as the town of Pleasantville."
"Where the hell is Pleasantville?" Lisa was asking as Bree stepped through the door.
"You're in Pleasantville," he said.
"But where? On a map? What state is it in?"
"Can't tell you that," he said.
"Can't, or won't?" Donna asked.
"The answer wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to you. Look, I have to go… Do something."
"Hey! Hey! Hey!" Several girls complained. "Fair's fair! If Bree got to go…"
"Alright. Alright. One at a time. Then back to your cells." The doors all opened at once.
"Me first!" Lisa said, scurrying through the door.
"I hate it when she does that," Bobbi muttered as the rest of the team lined up by the door.
"When doesn’t she do that?" Donna asked.
There was a flushing sound and everyone turned. Meg stepped out of the last cell. When she saw all eyes upon her, she shrugged. "Hey, everyone's down there, this is private enough." A couple of girls nodded and moved to the now-empty cells. Others shuddered and stayed in line.
After her turn, April came out of the bathroom and paused. "Voice?" she asked. "Are you watching?" He had said he need to do something. And she really didn't want to go back to the cells. She drifted over to the other side of the room and tried the door. It was locked. All the doors were. She tried the windows. Most of them looked out onto the same light shafts that led down to the cells. One looked onto an empty parking lot.
She worked up her courage and picked up a chair. The glass smashed easily under it and she dove through.
"What was that?" Kate asked as the smash of glass. Kate and Halle moved towards the door.
"Stop!" Lisa shouted. "We can't go out there. That voice said-"
"Something's happening to April!" Halle replied. "We have to go see what's going on."
"Look, I'm in charge and-"
"Of the team, on the field," Kate said. "Not in empty jails in Pleasantville." A piercing scream sounded from the stairway. About half the girls rushed through the door, the rest following after nothing happened to them.
The broken chair lay on the floor, one leg pointed towards the window. Looking outside, Leslie saw April in a parking lot. It was about three stories below them.
The fire escape was on top of her. Little scraps of the walls had given way under her weight and the entire assembly peeled loose. April sobbed under the metal ladder.
'Hang on, April!" Leslie shouted. The front door was locked but the frosted glass was as easily broken as the window had been.
Outside the police office was a long stairwell going down three floors. The team took it quickly, spilling out the unlocked front doors into the street. The parking lot was found by following April's cries.
There were enough hands to lift the fire escape straight up off of the girl and move it to the side. Fiona knelt by April and grabbed her hand. Bobbi probed her limbs until she screamed.
"Broken leg," she said. "We need to find a doctor. Where's the hospital?" Everyone looked up. They were in what looked like the downtown of a small civic area. There was the courthouse, a church, what looked like a diner, a bank and train station.
It seemed lifeless. There were no cars. No people. No lights. Nothing moved and there was no sound except for April.
There wasn't even a breeze blowing through the branches of the trees planted along the main street.
"Never mind a doctor," Kate said. "Where is anyone at all?"
"Ah, rats." Everyone jumped, looking around. The voice still seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. "I need everyone to go back inside, please. Just leave, who is that? April? Leave April on the pavement."
"No!" Jackie yelled. "We're not leaving her! You have to get her help!"
"I will. I just can't do it while everyone's watching."
"Can't or won't?" Donna asked again.
"Will you give it a rest?" he said. There was a sigh. "Well, okay. I didn't want to do this. Not this soon. Everyone at least back away from April."
Some moved quickly, some slowly. After a few seconds, though, everyone had moved a few feet from April. Fiona pat her on the hand and stood. She took one step away and glared around the lot.
A giant hand came down out of the sky. Kate saw it coming down and first though a satellite was crashing. The thing was as big as her house, coming straight down from a cloudless blue sky. There was a clear line where the arm stopped. She realized she was looking at a hologram of a sky.
Or, maybe, a hologram of a hand? She'd have to find a way to test it.
It came as a fist, gripping something. It stopped about twenty feet over April. One finger extended, pointing straight at her. Then it moved and gently shoved Fiona farther away. She pushed back against the fingernail but it bulldozed right along.
"I said, move back," the voice said, but not angrily. Fiona looked pissed but she didn't try to return to April's side. The hand twisted and moved what it was holding. It turned out to be a bulb of something. He moved the tip down to hover over April.
"Leg broken, but not badly. A few bruises, nothing vital or life threatening. I'm sure it hurts, though. I'll fix it, April, don't worry." April stared at the bulb, the giant hand, the arm disappearing into the sky. Her eyes were wide. "Don't worry," he said again, then squeezed the bulb. A clear liquid started to fall.
Kate thought it looked like nothing as much as her brother pouring model cement on a scale figure. The liquid fell to April's lower leg, well below the break. It moved like something alive, swarming up her leg to encase it.
As it moved, April's expression softened. Her eyes fluttered, then shut. "Did you kill her?" Bobbi asked.
"Sedative," the voice said. "Perfectly safe. She's out of pain. And when the stuff hardens…"
Shortly after he spoke, the clear fluid turned milky, then opaque white. It was a cast. It even looked like it was made of plaster wrappings.
"Like a special effect," Petra muttered.
"She'll be okay in a couple of days," he said. The hand withdrew. They all watched it climb up into the sky and disappear.
It showed up a few blocks over, dipping down to something they couldn't see. Then they saw it lift a roof. Another hand, the left, dipped down. Before they knew it, he was placing a hospital gurney down beside April.
"Put her on that, you can wheel her down to some houses at the end of the street. Pick whichever ones you want, I'll stock the kitchens. I'll, uh… I'll let you alone until tomorrow." Then there was silence. Leslie and Fiona moved to pick up April. The others either watched or stared up at the sky.
"Like a man with pets," Halle said.
"Tiny pets," Bobbi said. "An aquarium."
"No," Kate said. She couldn’t get the modeling glue image out of her head. "Toys. Like a train set."
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Kate ended up in a split-level house at the end of the road. Her roommates were Bree, Halle and Meg.
Leslie and Lisa were next door in an A-frame that looked very out of place. But Donna, April and Fiona's log cabin was nearly as disconcerting. She was headed to the next home, a salt box painted a bright crimson, when she found Bobbi sitting on the curb.
"Which one's yours?" she asked. The other girl just stared up at the sky. "Bobbi?"
"Whichever one I pick, the voice in the sky is going to give us food."
"Yeah. That's what he said, anyway." She sat down beside the other girl. "Aren't you getting hungry?"
"He's going to reach down and pick up the roof." Kate shrugged. "Just like taking a hamster cage apart to clean it, to put food in the bin, to fill the water."
"Well…now that you mention it, that's going to be scary. Maybe we can all go hide in one house while he stocks others."
"I used to always give my hamster a treat before I cleaned his cage," Bobbi said dreamily. "But he always tried to run away when I took the top off. Will the voice let me run? Or will he catch me? Maybe he'll put the whole house in a bathtub."
"Tub?" Kate asked.
"Used to put the cage in the tub when I opened it. If Spark ran away, he couldn't get anywhere. Couldn't climb up out. Couldn't go home."
Kate put an arm around the older girl's shoulder and hugged her. They sat there for a while before the voice spoke up. Once more there was that odd touch to it that seemed to make it personal.
"You guys should get inside. I'm about to turn the sky off. I'll leave the streetlights on, but it's still going to get pretty dark."
Kate felt Bobbi flinch under her arm. She turned to face upwards. "Hey, uh…do you have a name?"
"Several," he replied. "You can call me…Hmm. Carl?"
"You don't know you name?" Kate asked.
"Had to find something that you could use and I'd remember to answer to. What do you need, Kate?"
"Uh…" There was an odd sensation, realizing that giant Carl knew her name. He must have listened to them talking to learn it. They hadn't even known he was there. She shook her head to clear the thought. "Carl, Bobbi doesn't want to be in the house when you stock it."
"Oh? Why?"
"She doesn't want to be in a house that you take the roof off of. It would be a little scary."
"Ah. That's no problem. The houses are set up so the supplier feeds them directly. Your iceboxes are already stocked. Now, go on inside. Get some sleep, we'll talk tomorrow."
Petra and Jackie stood in front of the house they'd chosen. Kate gave Bobbi's arm a tug and walked her over. They took her inside, telling her all about the place.
Kate turned to go back to her place. She was about halfway there when she stopped and looked straight up. The streetlights lit up as she did. Then the blue sky turned black. There were stars. Straight and even lines of glittering spots. The only constellation she could imagine making from them was a net. Or a cage.
She shuddered and ran for home.
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.Stopover in a little louder town