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Prank 50: The big global prank

Prank 50: The big global prank

After the press conference, Penny secluded herself in her laboratory and spent an entire day in the Learning Machine, then she designed a beautiful alien form and created a digital model of it. She also designed a cute alien creature and made a robotic pet with the best technology she had available, even contemplating stealing a cosmic cube from Transformers and making it alive, but decided against it in the last moment. Then, she spent another day packing all her gear from the laboratory in her pocket dimension. It was finally time to move to the new location she spent so much time and effort to prepare and by that I mean Raven spent building, preparing and outfitting. It was time for Penny to move to her secret island base or layer, depending in what mood she was feeling that day, like industrialist or supervillain.

It was amazing what you could do in just a couple of months with unlimited resources and tireless robotic assistant at your disposal. With the help of the life pod, Raven found an underwater volcano and built a geothermal reactor around it, then with the unlimited resources from Minecraft and a few other games, she erected an entire island around the reactor. In the base of the new island, Raven constructed the different layers of a laboratory complex and arranged equipment from all sorts of games, but left the rest for Penny to transport from where she needed it. And on the lowest level of the complex was a place prepared for the biggest server farm in the world, capable of storing all files on earth at least twice over, or it would be, once Penny finished installing a few more fabricators and making the servers. Then in the visible parts of the island, the construction of new buildings and infrastructure had begun, including the new headquarters of Tinker Toy Technologies, farms, roads and piers. For now the entire island was hidden by fog, but once she unveiled it and possibly pronounced it as a new country, she expected the population to increase and start living a life in her tropical paradise.

For the rest of the week, Penny transported a few more fabricators from Subnautica, arranged the devices from her old laboratory to the new one, fabricated all the servers she would need and then enchanted an access device, then had Raven construct little underwater facilities in some strategic locations, after which she filled them with fabricators and then enchanted to disintegrate when receiving a signal. Oh, and she stocked on lots and lots of potions, just in case. Everything was ready for the global prank she had planned and tomorrow it would be the day she would pull it. Now, she laid in the new bed she had made for herself, using the latest innovations in comfort and sleep assistance and slowly drifted off.

Today was the day historians would remember and everything was ready for Penny to make it so. She got up early and started the day with her morning exercises, then she clothed her avatar in The Prankster suit, then activated the holographic projectors on its body to make it look like the alien she designed. Then she put the avatar before a camera, took control of every television and communication network in the world and started transmitting. She was talking in Klingon, a language she learned to speak fluently during the week, but under her image there were subtitles in the language of the country it was transmitted in.

-People of Earth, today at 1200 UTC, I will initiate an attack. Stay indoors and avoid stairs or high places and no one will get hurt. This message will repeat every half hour, until the time of the attack. I repeat, today at 1200 UTC, I will initiate an attack. Stay indoors and avoid stairs or high places and no one will get hurt.-

Penny walked her avatar away from the camera, then stopped the transmission and put the recording on a loop and programed it to air on every television every half hour. Then, she clothed Raven in some new clothes, hologram and armed her with sleep inducing weapons and the sword umbrella she had made, then put them on a flying platform and waited for the right hour to arrive.

Half hour before the time of the attack, a cloud formed over the coast and out of the water emerged the flying platform with the avatar and Raven on them, slowly flying toward land, with the cloud accompanying them. People were people and of course didn’t believe the message, so they were walking around, minding their own business, when they saw the platform emerging from the water and stopped to stare. Some had seen the news and thought this was some stunt using holographic technology, others thought it was some kind of performance, but most just stood and did nothing. Okay, maybe not nothing, they just started filming with their smartphones and posting online, but that was basically doing nothing. A few decided to cover their bases and call the authorities and twenty five minutes later, a police car arrived at the scene. The two police persons, because one was a woman, got out of the car and immediately recognized Penny’s avatar from the message, so they pointed their guns at her and asked for her surrender.

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-This is the police. Surrender peacefully and come down from the flying platform with your hands above your heads.-

There was no response from Raven or the avatar and the police couldn’t exactly climb up to arrest them, nor could they shoot at them unprovoked, so they spent the rest five minutes at an impasse. And then, the drones started emerging from the water, followed by alien soldiers in full battle gear and weapons at the ready. The policeman turned to the army and shot at them, but his bullet didn’t seem to do anything, he couldn’t even see if it bounced off, stuck in the target or anything else, then the army shot back and he fell down to the ground. The policewoman managed to squeeze one shot at the avatar, but Raven’s prediction algorithms saw when and where the bullet would go and unsheathed the blade in the umbrella, managing to bisect it and prevent any harm to her companion. Then the policewoman was also shot and fell down. The next moment panic spread and everyone was running away and screaming bloody murder, even thought there was no blood around the bodies. They were shot by the drones with I.C.E.R.S. while shooting at the holographic invading alien army. No one spotted the little drones crawling to the bodies and started wrapping them in toilet paper, then drawing realistic eyes on their eyelids. Now it was time to do the same to everyone else in the world.

Penny changed the message being played on every television screed in the world to one that advised them to find a comfortable place to lay down for when they are rendered unconscious by her armies, while wave after wave of said armies emerged from the coasts around the world and started advancing inland, rendering everyone they came across unconscious. When they approached buildings they activated the device copied from the life pod, which could render large number of people unconscious, then swept the buildings for wounded people who fell of stairs on hit themselves at their fall and administered potions to heal them. All patients in the hospitals they conquered also got healed while they were at it. There was of course resistance and drones were destroyed in the process, but Penny was implementing swarming tactics and throwing an unending waves of enemies to crush any resistance. Also, she blocked any GPS signal and messed with all communications, making it very hard to organize a coordinated assault.

Everywhere the alien army moved through, people fell unconscious, got wrapped in toilet paper and eyes drawn on them, then the drones copied the contents of every computer they came across and planted a new flag in place of the old ones. Penny’s avatar stood on her flying platform, stroking the alien animal she held close and laughed maniacally under a stormy sky with lightning flashing behind her. She looked like a very proper mad supervillain. A few hours after starting, she received news that some of the smaller island nations were already conquered and all their citizens wrapped in toilet paper. Penny avoided rendering people in power plants and other hazardous places unconscious, she didn’t want to accidentally create a meltdown, but everywhere else was fair game and no tanks, planes, helicopters or infantry could deplete her fighting force. In at most a week, this world would be hers together with every digital secret and when it was, she would start the second phase of the prank.

The last human fortress fell and together with it the last flag in the world was changed to that of the conqueror. At first once people woke up, they joined back in the fighting, only to be sandwiched between old and new waves of enemies and rendered unconscious again. Now, there was no one left fighting, then again, no one was hurt and after their second times falling unconscious, people started accepting there may be no reason to fight back. Now, Penny waited for everyone to wake up and see the world conquered by her forces, before Penny, or more accurately her avatar, stood before a camera and started her speech to the world. She started speaking in Klingon, the subtitles again appearing bellow in the languages of their country.

-People of Earth, I am victorious. I have conquered all your lands and now it is time to announce the identity of your conqueror.-Then she deactivated the holographic projector on the avatar and Raven’s bodies as well as on every drone, then continued in English, still being translated everywhere else.-It is I, The Prankster. Oh, how funny it was, when you believed a bunch of drones and holograms were and alien army here to conquer you, when it was in fact just me. And when I wrapped everyone in toilet paper, did you think the aliens made some kind of cocoon? Hah, we had fun, right? Anyways, I now return all conquered lands to their previous owners and activate the drones’ disintegration command. I will keep all data I copied from every computer I came across. There are some juicy secrets there. It was fun playing with you all. Until next time. Bye.-

And that is how Penny’s global prank came to pass and how her stock of information grew by leaps and bounds. There were some geeks that recognized the language the alien was speaking and suspected something, but who in government could recognize something like that and even if they did, what could they do about it? In the end, Penny used her superior technology to conquer the world, just to prove she could, but then gave it back, because she didn’t want to deal with the paperwork involved in running the whole thing. She barely managed to run her company and even there she mostly left it to her people.