You see before you a rarity in this storyline, a chapter that, except for a couple of high lob bank shots, went as I originally envisioned it. Treat I kindly as it is a lonnng way from home.


Slide rules, secrets, concerts, and life codes, oh my. And, will Nick survive the dreaded shopping spree?


Fox Out of Place, Rabbit Out of Time

Chapter 12: Twisted Horns and Twisted Life Code

The black fleeced teenage ewe looked at the four rectangular pieces of card stock paper she held in her hoof hands.

“I can’t BELIEVE he did it!” she thought in stunned astonishment.

“Why not? Crazy fox is a ‘wizard’; he got Cordell Madis to do a private concert so why is this such a surprise,” that mental voice in her head said.

What she held were tickets to a Gazelle concert in Zootopia. Not just any concert, it was the BIG one that she held once a year at the biggest venue in Savanna Central. The tickets, some 73,000 of them, had sold out in just under eight minutes after going on sale. Sheela had tried to score one but had no luck doing so. Neither had any of her friends.

“I’ll get swamped by them if they find out about these!” she murmured to herself.

“Then be sure they don’t,” the afore mentioned fox said as he eased the tickets out of her grasp then tucked them inside that pocketed vest he nearly always wore. “As far as anyone is to know, you and Sharla are invited to Zootopia for a tour to include sightseeing and shopping and attendance to the concert is an ’out of the blue’ surprise that happens while you are there.”

“Get used to keeping secrets, dear,” Sheela’s 87-year-old relative said as she worked at her computer station. “For all the talk of science being an open venue it has more than its share of those.”

“Amen to that!” declared Judy, not looking up from her work at a table.

Sheela looked the bunny’s direction to see her slip the center portion of the rule she held to a position, look at that point, then record something on a paper.

“Before she showed up, I had never even heard of a slide rule, let alone seen one in use,” she thought.

“A slide rule, also called a slip stick, is a mechanical analog computer. It is used primarily for multiplication, and division as well as functions such as exponents, roots, logarithms, and trigonometry, but typically not for addition or subtraction,” Sharla explained to her. “It was developed in the 1600s and underwent several major, and a number of minor, refinements over the following centuries. As astronomical work requires precise computations, a steel slide rule about two meters long was used, in 19th century Greminy, at one observatory. It had a microscope attached, giving it accuracy to six decimal places. The famed rocket engineer, Doctor van Bramm, bought two Nestler slide rules in the 1930s. Ten years later he brought them with him when he moved to the States after World War II to work on the space effort. Throughout his life he never used any other slide rule. He worked with them while heading the NASA program that landed mammals on the moon in 1970. They have often been specialized to varying degrees for their field of use, such as excise, proof calculation, engineering, navigation, etc. There are some circular versions, mainly for air navigation, the E6-B comes to mind, that are still used by some pilots and air crew to calculate fuel burn, wind correction, time en route, and other items before takeoff, and ground speed, estimated fuel burn and updated estimated time of arrival while in flight.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

They drove the RV to the outskirts of the city and parked it at a long term lot. Changing to a heavy duty SUV that had New Mexally license plates, Nick drove them into Savanna Central. After checking in at the hotel (twin adjoining suites) they stored their stuff in their respective rooms and then went out on a quick tour. It had been years since Sharla’s last visit to the city so there were a goodly number of changed and new things for her to see. Sheela had had a few forays into Zootopia over the last two years so was more familiar with parts of it. Still, there were a lot of places she hadn’t seen. She was particularly thrilled with the cable gondola ride in the Rain Forest district and having a double layered long coat for their trip through Tundratown was a decided asset. Shopping was limited to a few souvenirs and odds and ends. Not so, the next day.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Please, Papa! I SWEAR that I will NEVER doubt you again on your wisdom about females if you’ll help me get out of this alive!” Nick, his eyes canted skywards, thought in what was approaching desperation.

He trailed the two ewes and Judy as they walked down along the wide sidewalk. The one advantage to that was that they ‘broke’ any mammal or group of mammals coming the other way off to one side or the other. That cleared a path for him, and considering the load in his arms, he needed all the help he could get!

“One of thee most hazardous things any male can get themselves into is a dedicated shopping spree with a female. That hazard increases geometrically with each additional female added in,” Nick’s late sire had informed him years before.

Wilde was, now, living that endangerment. His two arms, lower parts out and forward like the forks of a forklift, were stacked high with boxes and packages. It wasn’t so much that they were heavy as that they blocked his view of what was in front of him. During one stop he had rearranged the load so that he had a slot to see through but it was still a pretty limited view.

“Though I have to admit, the view of a certain bunny’s tail and sway of her connected hips has some decided appeal,” he thought.


Sharla glanced over her shoulder back to the pile of boxes that had a pair of feet and legs, then looked to the rabbit walking close beside her.

“You think we’ve messed with him enough?” she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

Judy looked back then ahead once again.

“Nah, he’s good for a couple of more packages, at least,” she replied, a wicked expression on her face.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The music was as much felt as heard throughout the great hall. Tens of thousands of mammals danced and moved to it. On a large raised dais danced six of the biggest male tigers many had ever seen. They wore mid-thigh length pants and their fur threw off glints of light from the glitter on it. The big felines moved with a grace and agility that made any ferret, martin, mink, otter, or weasel envious. At the center of that dais was the star of the show, Gazelle. She wore a brief halter top and a frilly hip and upper, very upper, thigh length skirt with a belt of shiny bangles around the top of that skirt. She belted out song after song while doing her own dance moves.

“We could catch and store all of the energy being expended here it could power a large chunk of the city!” Judy commented as she moved and gyrated with the music.

“There’s some mammals working on that,” Nick said as he danced with the rabbit.

He alternated in dance partners, Judy, Sharla, and Sheela, with each song. In spite of her 87 years, Sharla held her own in dance moves. A ten-minute break came up and…

“Fox has got to visit the males room for some relieve,” he said.

Judy snagged the lapels of his shirt to pull herself up on him.

“Don’t be gone too long,” she, he eyes lidded almost shut, said in a husky tone of voice as she touched her nosepad to his.

“Yup, you two are ‘gone’,” Sharla thought, watching them. “Just remember to invite me to the wedding.”


Barely a moment away from the girls, Nick felt a band around his wrist vibrate; two short, two long, and then one more short.

“Like he would miss being here,” the fox thought with a grin.

After his visit to the restroom, Nick moved down along some of the passageways. As he did, he placed an earplug into the channel of each ear. They were selective sound plugs, letting some frequencies pass through while blocking others. A red LED began flashing slowly and, as he moved along, it flashed at an ever increasing rate until it remained constantly on. A turn and there he was. One would have expected that there would be some mammals passing through this area (it was happening everywhere else) but none were. That there were several high and ultrasonic frequency units broadcasting tones that made said mammals uncomfortable might have had something to do with that. So, only the fox and the buffalo were present.

“Get on with it, Wilde,” Bogo said. “I don’t want to miss anymore of the concert than I have to!”

Nick filled Bogo in about Sharla and her knowledge of whom Judy really was. The Chief’s expression remained neutral through the impromptu brief.

“You believe her to be trustable in staying silent on that…inconvenient revelation?” he asked.

“I believe she will. She’s…recovered a friend that she thought well and truly lost and has no desire to risk doing without her again. Also, as she’s pointed out to me, just who would really believe her if she talked about it.”

Nick grinned.

“She said she has no particular desire to be fitted out with a straight jacket and live out her days in a padded room,” he related.

Bogo thought on that.

“I’ll have a quiet check done,” he said, at last. “We may end up pulling her into the team.”

“Do one on her great-great-granddaughter, Sheela Rae Woolverson, as well. She’s showing a lot of promise for one who is 17 years old,” Nick recommended. “And, where Sharla goes, she goes.”

The buffalo nodded. Then, he gave Nick a long look.

“Yes?” the vulpine questioned.

“A ‘heads up’, Wilde. Coombs is rocking the boat. Getting more and more insistent about getting bio samples, a lot of them, from Judith. He bypassed me, sent a couple of his requests straight up to my superior. I’ve vigorously dressed him down for that, but….”

Nick thought on that as he looked at his administrative superior.

“Why tell me this?” he asked.

A short quiet where only the faint music of concert sounded.

“Nicholas, several of my older relatives were in Eirrope during the last big war there. Most were involved in the liberation, if you want to call it that, of many of the concentration camps there. They’ve seen what unfettered ‘science for science’s sake’ leads to.”

A second later, Nick stepped forward and extended his right hand out. Bogo took it in his own and shook it.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

As she trailed Bogo, Judy remembered her…their departure from Bunnyburrow. Sharla’s hugging of her was firm and warm but, there was something else in it, a reluctance to let go.

“Don’t be a stranger!” the old ewe almost growled.

She looked up to the close standing Nick.

“That goes for you too, scoundrel!” she said.

Nick gave her a slow, deep bow but said nothing in return.

Judy was already in the RV’s “shotgun” seat when Sheela came up to Nick.

“I’m sorry, but I have to ask,” she said.

“What is it?”

“How in Terra did you get Cordell to do the private concert for us? I know that he’s been offered hundreds of thousands, even a million or two, dollars to do something similar and turned almost all of them down.”

The vulpine gazed at her for a few seconds.

“What I tell you goes ABSOLUTELY no farther than you and me. Understood?”

She nodded.

“Cordell and I hail from the same neighborhood and we were pretty good buds. He always wanted to work, compose and play, synthesizer music, said it had a flexibility that traditional music did not. When he got out on his own, he was barely making ends meet. What he had left over wasn’t able to pay for even the cheapest unit of gear he needed. Add to that that a couple of items had to be imported and the tariffs on them, at that time, drove their costs waaaay up. I got a letter from him one time that he was just about despairing at ever getting to be the musician he wanted to be. In my ship’s crew days, I hardly ever spent any of the pay I got. So, I began gathering up things. Getting the ‘local’ stuff wasn’t that difficult, the imported items were a different story. Obtaining them was easy and I could have paid the customs fees but a part of me just couldn’t go that way. So, I used a couple of diversion techniques I picked up from some of the old timers to slip them past the Port Authorities.”

Nick’s eyes went unfocused for a couple of seconds.

“Was my first real smuggling gig, and it felt twice as good in that I not only got through it successfully but that it was, for me, for a good cause. With those items, Cordell got his rig together and started his composing. We stay in contact and, on occasion, I’ve procured a few expensive and hard to get items, now and then, and slipped them through to him.”

“Even now?!” Sheela questioned.

“Last time was about a year and a half ago. Custom made piece from a country that has an embargo, unjustified, in my view, on it.”

Sheela looked Nick over as if trying to decide if he was feeding her a line. Then she moved forward to give him a hug and a smooch.

“You really ARE a scoundrel!” she stated.

“I prefer the term ‘rogue’,” he said with a grin.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The one thing Judy had not expected upon return to the ‘Site’ was a call to meet the Chief at the building that contained most of the ‘Complex Watch’ team’s dedicated labs. Once she got there, Judy found herself following the cape buffalo through several corridors to stop at a door where he slipped his security card into a slot, looked into the retina reader and pressed his thumbs to the print reader plate. A click and a buzz sounded and the door open.

“Proceed, Miss Hopps,” he said, waving her through.

Going inside, the rabbit fem found herself in a room with a bewildering array of high tech gear. There was a kind of pedestal, some six feet in diameter with a top that looked to be made of glass, in the center of the room. Two tech. mammals sat at computer stations out to the sides.

“This, Miss Hopps is….” Bogo began.

“A Mark 23-Baker Sims and Draton holographic display unit, used to display complex 3 dimensional images such as the atomic lattice structures of crystals, metals, and other materials. Also for complex chemical and biological structures. I would guess that this one has been modified, upgraded for use here,” Judy plugged in.

“Impressive, Judith. You are catching up with things in this day and age,” Bogo said.

A mildly smug expression crossed her face at the tone of admiration in his voice.

“Lights!” he called.

The lights went out.

“Bring up the display, slowly.”

In the air above that pedestal, a vague shape appeared. Seconds later, it resolved itself into a more defined form. Judy picked out three evenly spaced structures, with gaps between them, that ‘twisted’ from left to right going from the top downwards. Further sharpening revealed that there were thin ‘beads on string’ like formations centered in each of those gaps. And in the middle open space, was a larger…

“Can you enhance the core structure?” she asked aloud.

They did. Initially, she had thought it was a thicker version of the ‘beads on string’ configurations but the closer, more detailed, view showed that, while similar, it was composed of three ‘strings’ that looked to be woven together like a braided cord. The whole thing had a beauty that would have made any artist rendering it proud.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Judith Lavern Hopps, meet your alien. Or, more to the point, its life code, something equivalent to our DNA,” Bogo told her. “Also, we have confirmed your idea that it does possess a natural exoskeleton.”

The rabbit turned to look at Bogo.

“How? How could you find that out?” she asked.

“Slowly, lights!” he called.

Rather than flashing full on, the lighting increased over several seconds so that it did not flash blind her or the Chief.

“Come with me,” he instructed her.

Through another door and down the corridor, the hulking buffalo led her into a breakroom that was at least twice the size of the one in the audio analysis lab area.

“Be seated,” he said.

Once sitting, he asked her what she would like to drink and after Judy told him, he got it out of one of the vending machines, then set it on the table in front of her. Then, drew up a chair suited to his size and sat down at the table.

“When Wilde brought you in from the complex, we had a medical team check you for possible hidden injuries that he or the EMT’s might not have detected.”

“Yes, Nick told me about it.”

“One of the ER techs, Alex Wood, worked at a major hospital in a big, very big, population center for several years before he joined us. When a mammal was brought in that was a known or suspected victim of an assault, one of his jobs was, if possible, to brush and clean out areas under the claws, on the fingers, and on the fronts and backs of both the hands and the feet. To put ANYTHING that he obtained into evidence bags, mark them, and store them for forensics if they required any of it. He did this with you while in the med center. When you and Wilde did your reenactment of what happened when the alien grabbed you, he noted that you clawed at his hands.”

“Yes, he asked if I’d done the same with the alien and I said ‘yes’.”

Her mind was trying to nudge her on something.

Bogo nodded.

“While you were in the sound lab he went to medical, gathered together the mammals that received you there, and asked if any of them had cleaned out under your claws. Wood went to a side room and came back with his evidence bags. In them we found particles and three small shavings whose initial bio checks did not match up to anything on record. Since then, over the last three months, we have painstakingly analyzed those bits and that structure you saw is what we have put together, thus far.”

Allen William Bogo looked at the diminutive, to him, lapin sitting across from him. For one so small she had accomplished many things since her release from that cocoon. For him to respect her for that was not unwarranted.


“Miss Hopps, our sciences owe you a big debt of gratitude because, in your panic those 61 years ago, you ‘collected’ the evidence that conclusively proves that there is complex, very complex, life beyond our own Terra.”