----- Chapters -----

The Dream . . . . . . . . . . I
Born  . . . . . . . . . . . . II
Decision  . . . . . . . . . . III
First Day . . . . . . . . . . IV
Emptiness . . . . . . . . . . V
Stroke of Genius  . . . . . . VI
The Morning of Change . . . . VII
A Birthday to Remember  . . . VIII
The Doctor is In  . . . . . . IX
Was She My Mother?  . . . . . X
The Figure In The Mirror  . . XI

-----------------------------


And now...
We begin...

"Memories" 
A Gadget Hackwrench fan novella.
Story by Robert Noel Hollingshead (robo212@aol.com)
Edited by John Anthony Kazos Jr. (jkazos@rvgs.k12.va.us)

I- The Dream -I

    "Ladies and gentlemen!" the loudspeaker exclaimed. "Welcome to our
fifteenth annual cross-country air race!" The crowd cheered as the pilots
began to step into their aircraft. "We are proud to introduce, going for a
fifth victory in this fabulous air race, Gadget Hackwrench!"

    Gadget climbed into her specially-designed racing plane and waved to the
crowd in the stands, who cheered even louder. She closed the canopy of the
plane and cranked the engine.

    The planes started and got louder and louder as the pilots increased
the throttle, leaving the wheel brakes on. Farther ahead along the runway,
a mouse was standing in a tower, getting ready to wave the starting flag
for takeoff. Gadget lowered her goggles and gave a ground crewman the
thumbs-up to remove the two pieces of wood from the front of her wheels.

    When the pilots saw the mouse in the tower wave the flag, they took the
wheel brakes off and began to move forward in a mad rush of speed. Farther
down, the first row began to lift off the ground. Gadget, in the middle of
the second row, started to feel the stick move, and then was airborne. But
before she could even blink her eyes, she saw the plane in front of her hit
her prop. Seconds later, her plane hit the ground, skidding in a shower of
sparks, producing a fire in the engine compartment. Before she knew it, she
was encased in a burning aircraft, gasping for breath through the acrid
smoke.

*-*-*

    "Nooooooooooo!" Gadget shrieked as she suddenly jolted up in bed,
sweating profusely and breathing rapidly. After a short moment she had
regained her breath, but not her composure, and put her paws in her lap and
looked down at them, sobbing.

    Chip bolted in the door moments later, followed by Dale, Monty, and
Zipper. "Gadget, we heard you scream! Are..." They all looked at Gadget who
was still gazing at her paws. Chip walked up to her bed and sat down beside
her, with dale on her other side. Monty and Zipper looked on.

    "Gadget, what's wrong?" Dale asked.

    Gadget looked up at him, then at Chip, then back at Dale, tears
streaming down her cheeks. "It happened again," she said weakly.

    Dale looked at Chip. "Gadget, do you want to be alone right now?"

    "I think...I'd like to talk to Chip alone for a moment." she whispered.

    Dale took Monty and Zipper in tow and left the room, closing the door
behind them.

    Chip watched them leave. "You've been having this dream for five days
now. Maybe you need to, well, talk to someone about it. Besides us, I mean.
Someone who could possibly help you."

    "It should have been me in that plane, Chip!" she answered, trembling.
"I *knew* he shouldn't have gone! I always worried about him in those air
races, Chip." She took his paws and clasped them in hers. He could tell by
her watering eyes how serious she was.

*-*-*

    Like a book that had closed too early, her father Geegaw had died when
Gadget was still a child. There was so much that he had wanted to tell her
about her mother, and about his experiences, the joyous occasions he had
shared with those he loved and the mistakes he had made that he did not
want her to have to go through. She had always wanted to know these things,
and much more, when he died, leaving her no one else to turn to for
answers. She had become so wrapped up in Rescue Ranger work that she had
forgotten about it, but now the memories of her father had come back to
haunt her, in her mind, and in her dreams...



II- Born -II

    It was a warm spring day with only a few lingering clouds in the sky.
The sun was shining like a beacon in the air, high above the people, and
animals, that lived above it.

    In a part of a run-down New York hospital was a small building not
known to the humans: a *real* animal hospital. The delivery ward waiting
room was quiet, with a few mice lounging around. One was sitting on the
couch, deep in nervous thought.

    A doctor entered the waiting room. "Mr. Hackwrench, would you come
with me, please?"

    Geegaw stood up and followed the doctor down the hall, into an office.

    The doctor walked over to his desk and moved behind his char.
"Maybe...you should sit down. I have something to tell you."

    Geegaw found another chair and sat down carefully.

    "So, Doctor, are they all right?" he asked.

    The doctor looked at the window. "It's not a question of they anymore,
more a question of which one."

    Geegaw looked down at the floor in shock and agony. "No, no, please..."

    The doctor's face seemed to grow old and weary. He had seen too many
deaths, too many horrors to make up for the successes; he could not feel
glad about the death of one making the life of another possible. He nodded
his head sadly. "Complications from the birth were too severe. She died,
soon after the baby was born." He stood up and walked over to Geegaw and
placed his paw on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. We did all we could. I wish we
could have done more."

    "Doc, I'd...I'd like to see the baby," Geegaw mumbled, trying to sound
coherent. He walked to the door, stumbling, as the doctor opened it and
steadied him.

    "We'd like to keep the baby here for a few days for close
observations," he said. "By the way: it's a girl."

    When they walked up to the hall window and looked into the nursery,
Geegaw could almost pick out the baby. "Is that her?" he asked, pointing to
one in the far back.

    The doctor paused, then answered, "Yes, that's the one." He motioned to
the nurse in the room to bring the baby closer to the window. Carrying the
baby in her arms, the nurse walked up to the window.

    Geegaw looked up for a second, then spoke. "She looks so much like her
mother."

    The doctor looked at Geegaw. "So, what are you going to name her?"

    Geegaw looked back, then turned around to the baby. "Her name will be
Gadget. Her mother picked the name."

    Geegaw knelt down closer to the window. "Hello, Gadget."



III- Decision -III

    A moth had passed. The golden sun disappeared into the horizon, out of
sight of Rescue Ranger Headquarters. IN the front room four Rangers sat,
all talking about the case they had just finished. Chip was just sitting
down on the couch.

    "Well, another day, another case."

    Dale turned to Chip. "Yeah, we sure taught ol' furball a lesson!"

    Chip grinned. "We sure did. I don't think he's going to be a problem
for a while."

    Dale glanced around, then turned to Monterey. "Hey Monty, where's Gadget?"

    Monty looked at the ground. "She's still outside. Poor lass, she's been
so depressed lately."

    Chip got up and resolutely headed for the door. "Let's go see if we can
cheer her up."

    "Uh, Chip," Monty interjected, "you might want t' leave 'er be. If this
is th' day that..."

    Chip turned around. "That what?"

    Monty looked toward the ground again, this time walking toward the
couch. "Well, today, is th' day..."

Dale blocked his path. "Stop keeping us in suspense, Monty! What is it?"

    Monty walked around Dale and sat down. "Poor 'ol Geegaw. Gadget's so
depressed today, that's because today is th' day that Geegaw died in th'
plane crash." Chip and dale exchanged a look of chagrin and sympathy.

    Out front Gadget sat, still in the pilot's seat of the Ranger Wing. In
her mind she was reliving that day, again and again. She just couldn't rid
herself of the vision of two planes, one holding her only family and best
friend, hurtling violently into the unforgiving ground in a shower of
sparks and flame. Oh, how she wanted to go back in time and change it all!
But, she knew, in her heart, that was not possible. But that couldn't stop
her from wishing.

    Chip's head popped up on the passenger side. "Mind if I join you?"

    Gadget didn't reply; she remained a mournful statue, the lump in her
heart as hard as marble.

    "Well, if it makes you feel any better, we understand."

    Gadget sighed deeply, closed her eyes, and laid her head against the
steering wheel, her right ear flapping loosely in the wind. "Chip, how
could you possibly know what it's like to have your only blood relative
taken from you so violently?"

    Chip answered as best he could. "You're right."

    Gadget opened her eyes and gazed at him. "Then you don't really know
what it's like, waking up to an empty house, not knowing how you'll survive
anymore. The pain of questions unanswered. Have youever had a question that
you wanted, *needed* an answer for, but never got one?" She closed her eyes
again. "Why did he leave me? Why did he die when I needed him the most?
Why?"

    ::Will I ever find the answers?:: she asked herself. ::And will they be
more painful than losing him was?::

    Gadget sat up, then reached to a switch on the dash and flipped it. The
motors instantly started spinning, making Chip jump.

    He looked at her in surprise. "Gadget, what are you going to do?" he
shouted over the din.

    She glanced at him with no expression. "If you don't want to come with
me, then get off now." Without another word, he buckled in, and the Ranger
Wing began moving upward.

*-*-*

    New York international is always busy close to 8pm; with all it's
planes arriving and departing, you'd think the noise pollution would bother
people, and the animals. Not Gadget. For as long as she could remember
before meeting the Rangers, this was forever the place she called home. She
set the Ranger Wing down with her trademark style beside the remains of
the old World War II Flying Fortress, Gadget's old house.

    She got out and ran to the entrance, followed by Chip. The way they
entered reminded him of the first time he had came and first viewed her
sweet, beautiful face, or her ugly, relentless Anti-Salesman equipment, to
be exact.

    After fighting cobwebs, which were the only noticeable difference, they
stood staring at the cockpit area of the plane. Chip remembered first
finding out ust how dangerous Monty's cheese attacks were. Gadget looked at
Chip, then started walking through the trap complex. "Don't worry," she
said, "they're all deactivated." Chip wiped his forehead with a sigh of
relief, then started following Gadget again.

    He watched Gadget, and realized she was searching for an answer to
something, perhaps some evidence, something her father left behind. When
Gadget turned around, all Chip could see of her was a silhouette made by
the moon coming through the cockpit glass, a vision hauntingly familiar to
the first time he had seen her. But he could feel more for her now than he
did then, because now he knew her. Love, sympathy, sadness, hopeful
understanding.

    Gadget walked toward the glass of the cockpit and looked out over the
ground. "Me, and Dad, used to work on modifying the Screaming Eagle in this
room. That was his favorite plane." Chip looked at the empty space,
remembering that pieces of the Screaming Eagle were now strewn all over
Glacier Bay.

    The area was musty, dusty, damp, dark, rusty, partly due to the
explosion of dynamite used to launch the plane that day. She walked over to
a large box and opened it up. It was a rodent-sized breaker box, an
ingenious combination of high-voltage rocker switches from hair dryers and
fuses from appliances. She flipped one of the large rocker switches,
evidently the master breaker, and the entire interior of the house was
illuminated. "Good! They all still work." Chip had no doubt in his mind
that the electrical system was completely out of her genius.

    She led Chip to a rusted door and opened it, revealing some stairs that
led down to a hallway. The destructive moisture hadn't gotten past the
door. The stairs were, to his amazement, made up of welded metal, unlike
the dominoes at RRHQ that they were forever having to restack. No one ever
had come in for the years Gadget had been with the Rangers. The hallway was
bare; Gadget had stored everything away at her workshop in RRHQ, so there
were no pictures on the walls, or anything else for that matter.

    They could hear the wind outside whistling through cracks in the
plane's cockpit and the open door in the glass that the Screaming Eagle had
made its last takeoff through. He now realized that some of the thin walls
were covering up and serving as patches for those cracks. They were the
reasons the wind seemed so loud.

    Gadget started walking down the hallway, then stopped and turned
around. "Follow me." She lead him to a door.

    "What's in there?" Chip asked, whispering, as if he didn't want to wake
someone up.

    "This was my father's room," she responded. "I never was able to open
it after he died. I felt, if I opened it, I would unlock a secret I didn't
want revealed." She looked at the ground and let out a weak sigh. "But,
now, I feel it's time I unlocked those secrets."

    The heating in the house was off, but it didn't phase Gadget; her mind
was on one thing, and one thing only: opening a door never opened since it
was last closed by her father. She reached for the knob, but stopped. She
leaned against the wall and sobbed tearlessly. "I just can't! You have to,
Chip. Please?"

    He looked at the knob, just as she had, but he couldn't touch it for a
moment either; the situation was just too spooky. Then he opened it, eyes
closed.

    He opened his eyes slowly onto a wondrous sight. Expecting to see a
dead body or something else so melodramatic, he instead finds a perfectly
tidy, but dusty room. They both entered and looked around. Everything was
perfectly tidy, except that the walls were bare, *everything* was bare of
coverings, and except for the bed (without sheets), and a dresser, there
was nothing else in the room.



IV- First Day -IV

    "Geegaw, have you ever considered...remarrying? I mean, I know, it's
been a week since Helen died, but, don't you think Gadget could benefit
from having someone to call Mom?"

    Geegaw turned to answer the doctor. He could understand the doctor's
concern, but he couldn't even think about marrying again. He could not
break his vows to Helen; he loved her truly. He looked at Gadget, then
smiled and looked at the doctor again. "Doc, I think the two of us will get
along just fine. How much longer do you want to keep her under
observations?"

    The doctor looked at Gadget. "We just wanted to make sure that she
didn't have any problems from the complications during the delivery. But,
if you'll wait a second, I think I can get her out today. She looks
healthy, and all other indications of health are present. I don't think we
need to keep her any longer." Geegaw looked at Gadget. She smiled at him.
"If you'll just sign here, you can take her home right now."

    Geegaw looked up at the doctor. "No catches, no people knocking on my
door to check up on her?"

    The doctor laughed. "No, Mr. Hackwrench, no visitors. All we ask is
that you bring her in for a checkup every other week for a while, just to
be sure."

    Geegaw signed it, then accepted Gadget from the nurse. "Thanks, Doc.
I'll never forget how kind you were to us." The doctor smiled again, and
Geegaw left.

    The doctor's smile melted, leaving a ponderous and sad look on his
face. "Nurse, file this somewhere save. I have the feeling we'll be needing
it again."

*-*-*

    As Geegaw got into his small motor skate, made by him, he suddenly
realized that, since he was taking a new baby home, he'd have to drive much
more slowly than usual. "Better keep you save. I wouldn't want anything to
happen to my little princess." He grinned. "Look at me...I sound just like
your mother." She smiled again, and gurgled. He tickled her nose; she cooed
contentedly. Geegaw strapped her in, started the motor, and began to drive
down the sidewalk.



V- Emptiness -V

    Both Gadget and Chip stood for a minute with their mouths open. The
bare room was definitely not what they had expected. Gadget was shocked.

    When she tried to speak normally, all that came out were squeaks, so
she let her desperation soak her tone. "What happened?!? Why isn't there
anything here?" She turned to Chip. "I'm sure no one has been in here! What
happened?" She walked into the middle of the room. Where were the answers?
Where was *anything*?

    Her stomach had dropped into her legs; her heart felt ready to explode.
All the color was gone from her face, and the cool dryness of the air
served to worsen the effect of desperation. She closed her eyes, but
couldn't shut out the horrible sadness she was feeling at the memory of the
empty room.

    Chip put a paw on her shoulder. He realized that, like the destruction
of the Screaming Eagle, this room served only to increase her grief. He
could feel her trembling. "Take the Ranger Wing and leave. I'm going to
stay here for the night."

    "But where will you sleep?" Chip objected.

    "Golly, Chip, there's a mattress here; I'll think of something." She
sat down on it. "I always do." She looked up again. "Tell the others I'm
just trying to get in touch with part of myself that's missing. That's all
I can give them."

    Chip looked at her in askance, but she just shrugged. He adjusted his
hat and jacket, hugged her, and left. As she continued to look around the
room, she noticed the emptiness more and more. "Well, Dad, you got me here.
What now?" She knew there could be no answer.

    She laid down and clacked her teeth in frustration. "It's no use."  She
sighed one last time. "Good night, Dad." She sneezed and cried herself to
sleep.