90: A Hardy Boys and Tom Swift Ultra Thriller #1: Time Bomb Franklin W. Dixon

gellaho

In one hour, get zapped in A Hardy Boys and Tom Swift Ultra Thriller: The Alien Factor

Spotty:Actual Witchcraft Scholar

Penetrating a field with a 10 foot cylinder? I've seen this before.

FancyShark

Weird to have the Protoss show up in a Hardy Boys/Tom Swift book

gellaho

Hmmm, I seemed to have made a minor mistake due to the fact that these books are not numbered. This is the second one

FancyShark

huh

oopsie

gellaho

So, quick 🚨 Poll Time 🚨

1️⃣ Time Bomb

2️⃣ The Alien Factor

gellaho

For reference

FancyShark

There better be balls

gellaho

Number your goddamned books

Ozzie

The Hardy Boys are absolutely not equipped to dodge dinosaurs.

gellaho

Looking like Time Bomb, so here's the new preview

gellaho

Everyone knows broken physics = purple

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

It's the colour out of space! Nic Cage told me so!

Oh shit, I'm purple

Any moment now I could clip out of world

gellaho

I hate to interrupt, actually no I don't. People have this discussion constantly

It's time to begin the process

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Yeah, never mind that shit, here comes Book Cage!

gellaho

We open with the robot that I'm pretty sure killed itself in the first book

gellaho

AND COSMIC RAY'S

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Fuck yeah, cosmic rays! They'll either give us superpowers like the Fantastic Four or give us cancer like everybody else!!

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Unfortunately robots can be cruelly yanked from the embrace of Death anytime.

Brendan

If my robot starts questioning my wisdom but also doesn't know basic science facts, I'm going to pull his battery before he kills me in my sleep.

Agent of SVVERVED

oh fuck it's the Hardy boys

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Do........cosmic rays fall like rain? Have I been missing out on infinite cosmic power this whole time?!

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

"When my satellite is right overhead", give or take a few hundred thousand miles

LyraV

Sweet I didn't miss too much

gellaho

Then 23,550 cubic feet of cylinders

gellaho

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Right on time in fact.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Yeah because Cherenkov radiation is what you want to look for if you want to have a good time

If your Geiger counter ain't rockin', don't come a- knockin'

gellaho

Sure, that'll prove that... what?

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Fuck yeah, its gonna get all STALKER in here.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

It'll prove Tom Swift is fucking rad as shit, is what

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Fuckin tachyons, how do they work?

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Subatomic penetration rapid fire through your skull, mostly

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

And how can I use it to destroy armored vehicles?

gellaho

Tom understands these quantum particles, but not the portable phone

LyraV

Hey maybe ask me if I want to actually answer first?

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Missed opportunity to have Rob open a panel on his body and hand him a physical phone receiver

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Toms robot invents wifi like 30 years early.

In three weeks it will invent sexting.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

; if (you) = up

then (nudes) = send;

gellaho

Just coasting off the A-Bomb for twenty years

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Mostly he's remembered for being the waterfall that Moriarty and Holmes fell from.

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

"No, he's not the one quoting the Bhagavad Gita. No he was probably not a Nazi."

"Probably."

LyraV

I guess Princeton was cool with it, he wasn't teaching or anything just hanging around the cafeteria

gellaho

I'm not entirely sure why Tom had to be here for his dad to read his mail, but sure

GDC

Reisenbach was one of the Operation Paperclip guys

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

GIF

gellaho

Laundry lists are terrifying

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Oh god. What kind of madman needs a list for his laundry?

GDC

Who makes a list for laundry? Just wash all the stuff in the hamper, you don't need to itemize it

LyraV

It's his love letters to Lucille Ball

He was too shy to send them

gellaho

The ninth dimension is my favorite

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

The erotic poems will be published in a hardcover volume.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

50 Dimensions of Gray

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Booooo I came here for enternainment, not string theory, boooooooo! Make a dimensional bomb out of robot parts, Tom!

GDC

The good doctor is going to make a portal to the Hardyverse

Ozzie

My Madeleine L'engle fanfic! Where did you find it?

gellaho

You can tell the equations are for time travel without the design notes?

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Hahahahah fuck you, dont give Tom Swift a time machine! He could barely handle an electric shirt that makes you Boyka.

gellaho

I'm sure nobody bothered looking at the famous, disappearing professor's unpublished papers

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

It's just one of those things that's really obvious in hindsight

LyraV

Yeah maybe someone should have looked at those notes at some point.

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Yeah I know when some old science freak dies and I get his unpublished notes I just assume its all weird slashfic and poetry about Lucille Ball's delicate fuckfarts.

gellaho

And he didn't publish any of it. Because.

GDC

Tom swift is going to go to the library's card catalog and look up "uncatalogued scientific papers"

LyraV

Annotations like 'hahaha I'm just doing this for shits and giggles fuck science'

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

It's too dangerous for the muggles to have their hands on. Which is why he didn't destroy it

gellaho

Very scientific

Ozzie

He was fucking the time machine and knew it would come to light once the papers were published.

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

It was probably all the drawings in the margins.

Ozzie

Yeah, yeah, the Flux Capacitor, obviously

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

He could never have their torrid affair come to light. What would his interocitor think?

gellaho

Black Dragon has agents at every public library. How much could that possibly cost

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

It's not like public libraries are funded anyway, so it can't be a lot

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Not that much. I'd do it for less than a hundo.

gellaho

Completely revamped because it turns out the professor's designs were horseshit

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Because of course Tom Swift only needs two weeks to redesign and fabricate a fucking time machine.

gellaho

What could go wrong with testing a one way time machine

Brendan

This book is rad to the maximum.

FancyShark

Sorry I'm late. Someone please catch me up

gellaho

Choo-Choo

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

A mysteriously German scientist has left Tom Swift his notes on time travel.

GDC

wait, did they replace the transistors with microchips or the other way around?

Brendan

Tom Swift got sent a box full of notes by the time machine's inventor's heirs. They didn't even look at it!

FancyShark

lol

Thank you both!

I'm sure this won't backfire

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Also he discovered tachyons but that's not even an issue

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Tom Swift is about to go full Sliders.

Ozzie

"We have to recreate this disappeared scientist's experiments in time travel!"

Brendan

Gonna call my organization the Black Dragon but we just do a lot of urban garden volunteer work and Big Brother coaching.

gellaho

Time to give the past

puts on sunglasses

cocks gun

Some lead poisoning.

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

GIF

FancyShark

Time is like a train and we are cows on the tracks

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Harlan Ellison?

Should have known that prick would be involved

GDC

"Harlan is ready with a string of verbal abuse for you, son"

LyraV

this slew me

Brendan

Sounds like he's going to Timeline a Sliders, which is lamer but hey, pretty dope for a kid's book older than both of them.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Shitty on the Edge of Forever

Brendan

"Fuck Harlan Ellison."

gellaho

Harlan Ames is their security guard. They're sending the lead bar into his safe

The scientific purple

FancyShark

Harlan, the 800-year old security officer?

GDC

FYI Reisenbach worked on building an atomic bomb in the forties but the book is cagey about who for.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I made the same Harlan Ellison joke the last time he showed up.

I'm a very simple input-output sort of creature.

FancyShark

It's Hitler. It's always Hitler.

gellaho

Hopefully there was nothing important in that safe

The one they are time flinging a lead bar into

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

The machine catapults that iron bar thru the security guards torso and Tom has to get a replacement from another timeline.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

The lead bar goes flying into Harlan's gut on the opposite end of time, passing cleanly through his skin and organs

FancyShark

At the funeral, Tom states he prefers his friends unleaded

GDC

That was a precisely calibrated science bar

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Fuck, scooped

gellaho

Is that better?

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

It's like Dont Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead but with time travel.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Cockamamie

GDC

Well Doc Brown ran this test on his dog, so a lead bar is probably an improvement

Brendan

If their calculations are off by a femtosecond or a nanometer, Harlan is either floating in space or Philadelphia Experimented.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

A word we will most definitely be using in The Future

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

He's right tho, it IS pretty cockamamie.

Wouldnt that mean the bar was in the safe the whole time tho?

FancyShark

Some kinda dole-gurn' extra-dimensional traverse contraption

Brendan

I like that we as a society have agreed that blacklight is the color of unknowable alienness

gellaho

Well, la-ti-da Mr Fancypants

Brendan

How much energy does this time machine require?

LyraV

I mean unless you're a stoner, then it's what makes your tapestries look dope

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

That's usually the conclusion one draws when they run a blacklight over the average shut in's bedroom, so it's appropriate

FancyShark

That's "Chrono Trigger", Swift

LyraV

Thank you it was right on the tip of my mind

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Pretty bizarre says the man driving a hovercraft.

gellaho

I was worried, but fuck it

gellaho

gellaho

It is very annoying discord makes me upload these individually

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Hahahahah telefrag.

GDC

"Wish we hadn't tried it on all those dogs first"

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

"We invented a time railgun and almost murdered Harlan with it, but no harm no foul amirite"

FancyShark

"Some Persian kid showed up with a dagger and told us to knock it off, but we shot him"

Brendan

This would be the end of war one way or another.

It's either a can't miss gun or an existential erasure.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

This is all dangerously close to a Doctor Doom plot

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

and the start of TIME WAR!

Brendan

Tom Swift IS Kang the Conqueror

gellaho

Eat radiation, the past!

FancyShark

He's so close to supervillain already. Any second now he's going to get that final push

gellaho

Don't worry about why the dirt didn't explode

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Tom Swift is why the final season of Enterprise got so fucking weird

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Five minutes with Frank and Joe should do it.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Granted it did make pretty good fodder for Star Trek Online. Silver linings

LyraV

He's NOT a supervillain?!

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Technically

LyraV

I have been reading these way wrong.

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Yeah I mean he has a sweet battle van, so technically he is a good guy for now.

Brendan

Twinkie Reactor

gellaho

It was nice of the helicopter to wait until the experiment was over

FancyShark

I love that we're getting "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and all they're bringing to the table is "Not Evil Supervillain", "Robo Boy" and "Immortal Expl-

Actually, this could work

Brendan

Wait is all this plot just to make the Hardy crossover temporarily real?

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Most definitely

gellaho

The widdlest helicopter

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

A book written before Predator drones, clearly

gellaho

Spoiler alert: nope

Brendan

This Tom Swift novel is better sci-fi than the last six sci-fi books we read.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

The best we could imagine for attack drone tech was that one RC plane mission from San Andreas

Brendan

Some pulp pud writing about dragon-planets and starbarians while the kids' book is like "Yeah, you'd want a highly radioactive isotope so you could measure its journey by half-life..."

gellaho

Hardcore

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

He's got Steele rocket-tubes!!

gellaho

I will not have you disparaging the good name of Maximilian Dragonard

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Yeah Max can disparage his own good name well enough on his own

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Hahahahah his security guards have anti-armor weapons, he really came prepared.

Brendan

Nothing I could say about that anger-lord is worse than the truth.

gellaho

Everyone dies

Brendan

Just grimly marrying a woman he met for one drink in his head.

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

To be fair, Dragonard got brain surgery so he might be less of a weirdo in book 2.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Children's book, by the way

At least shit like Star Wars swaps out the bullets for fun colored lasers

gellaho

Mr Swift immediately abandons all his security men

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Hell yeah this is what a growing child needs. Amphibious assaults for science.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Y'all didn't put a deadman switch on that thing?

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Also great establishing the stakes, book, like.......im genuinely impressed.

Brendan

Yeah, this book, as the kids say, fuckslaps.

gellaho

And as for how the Hardy Boys get involved? Fenton is just hired by someone

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Wait this is all contemporary?

LyraV

What?!

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

I thought Tom Swift was in The Future

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

hahahaha yeah of course it is.

Brendan

But Mr. Hardy, said Drake. Reisenbacj is a Nazi war criminal!

Committing TIMECRIME

LyraV

They could have done it any way in the infinite of imagination and went with...yeah alright.

gellaho

The strongest of all men: old professors

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

"The professor shook his bald head" is truly sublime as a sentence

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Old bald guy really looks like he can bench press a truck, the book just decided we didnt need to know it.

gellaho

"Hey boys, I'm going to take a nap. Why don't you two get a head start on this."

gellaho

Joe believes Sandy Koufax might somehow be involved

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

"Shut the fuck up about baseball, Joe."

LyraV

Seriously.

gellaho

Fat Cat Burglar

gellaho

LyraV

The library association's network ruled over by people quietly telling you to 'shhhhhh'

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Makes sense. I know I am stealthy as HELL, I could do cat burglary.

Also its real easy to steal from public libraries.

Brendan

This is the most distinction Joe and Frank have ever had.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Social engineering will get you farther than spandex catsuits. Though the spandex helps

gellaho

It's always the (life) insurance money

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Gripping paper trail action.

gellaho

Oh, thank God it got Italian. I was worried this wasn't a Book Cage

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

The ghostwriter heard of that thing where narrative has to have peaks and valleys but didnt quite execute on that right.

Brendan

if I get a time machine I'm just going to go sink European ships approaching other continents.

gellaho

You are so brave

GDC

But doctor, I am pagliarusso

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

I'd trade Bablyonians their beer recipe for AK-47s.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Brendan fucks up the calibration on his time torpedo and sinks the Lusitania by mistake

gellaho

That doesn't seem legally binding, but sure

FancyShark

GASP

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Where in Canada tho?

gellaho

Those Irish immigrants trying to escape the potato famine are going to have a real rude awakening

GDC

I have a house in Canada, you wouldn't know her.

LyraV

I'm headed to that trial where the Pope was already dead, it's sure to be surreal laugh riot.

FancyShark

"If...shows up...gets...Canada...got it."

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Like a Yukon fortress compound and a duplex in Alberta are not at all equal.

gellaho

Look at Mr Fenton Hardy here

FancyShark

They are when you see how many caribou are crammed in there

Brendan

Uh, I think I can tell the difference between a quartersloop and a steam-flongled hidgepidge, Frump.

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Oh Ontario? Not bad.

Spotty:Actual Witchcraft Scholar

Who the hell just knows that off the top of their head?

GDC

Niagara is not a city in Ontario.

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Least its not Quebec or Alberta.

Brendan

Oh yeah, lots of people want to meet Jesus, I'm just going to make sure Paul doesn't get up from the road to Damascus.

GDC

Niagara Falls, or Niagara On The Lake are real cities.

FancyShark

Brendan waiting with a baseball bat

gellaho

So not that good of care then

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

So the professor is probably having fun machine gun dueling the cyber-apes of the future in the Cenozoic era, just leave him alone.

LyraV

Eventually scientists will figure out that all time travel is just people going back in time to see cool shows. Like 90% of the people at the Hollywood Bowl seeing Monty Python are time travelers.

gellaho

Frank felt uneasy

gellaho

Frank began to feel uneasy

Ozzie

Between "History's Funniest Show Trials" and "I Saw Them When", I'm very interested in subscribing to your time travel YouTube channel.

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Uneasiness comes in waves, like nausea

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

And has a knife, look out, Frank!

gellaho

Joe with a special report: steel door difficult to open

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Locked. Severely.

Joe discovers Al Capone's lost vault

Ozzie

He can only pick locks up to Moderate

GDC

The lock had a little frowny face on it.

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Time bunker!

GDC

I wonder if the time bunker has a time blender in it.

For time smoothies

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

This is why you always keep a copy of the magazine that boosts lockpicking skill on your person

gellaho

They go into town where it turns out everyone is very into minting

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Listen, minting is cool as shit.

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

You have to eat so many bugs to learn how to make Fortify Lockpicking potions, Frank may be out of luck.

gellaho

Baldish

FancyShark

Baldish is balding's noncommittal sibling

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

Bald-ish was a weird direction for NBC to go after Black-ish

GDC

Kept making terrible puns, kept a crypt

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Hahahaha gas prices are a riot.

FancyShark

"Kind of bald, but with hair that was white"

gellaho

Like he, I dunno, traveled from the past er something

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Hahahaha I just checked and gas was like 31 cents a gallon in the 60s, no wonder he made a face.

FancyShark

"He also seemed like he'd contracted every disease that'd become commonplace since the turn of the century"

Badger Fell Down the Cop Stairs

This is a lot of setup to get these characters into the same room together.

gellaho

That's where you go for the newspaper

gellaho

Old Uneasy Frank, back at it again

Paws of a Goose Flippant Sausage

Yeah cos who wants to buy a newspaper?

FancyShark

I love you all, but if I see you have a coffee-table book on The 1960's, I'm leaving your home and never coming back