Project: Magnus

Phineas stared. He wasn’t sure if he was hugely impressed, or supremely ter­ri­fied by what he was look­ing at. Either way, it held him in awe.

“What were you try­ing to do?”

“I was try­ing to cap­ture Santa!”

Phineas did a dou­ble take at Harley. Being four­teen inches tall and twenty seven inches long might be aver­age for a Dawg of his breed but it didn't’ allow much room for a grin the size of the one he was cur­rently wearing.

“Why.”

“Because I want my pressies.”

“What does that have to do with cap­tur­ing Santa,” asked Phineas as he sat on a stool and looked around for the plate of cook­ies he had brought down.

“You have to cap­ture Santa so he will give you presents. That’s how it works.” Harley, real­iz­ing some­thing wasn’t right cocked his head and looked at Phineas who was eat­ing a cookie, “Isn’t it?”

“Um, no. You don’t have to cap­ture Santa for him to give you presents. He brings them to all the good lit­tle boys and girls."

"And dawgs," Phineas quickly added, "He leaves them for you under the tree. No cap­tur­ing involved.”

“Are you sure?” Harley asked nar­row­ing his eyes and star­ing at the metal con­struct designed to hold Santa.

“Yes I’m sure you nut job.”

Harley looked crestfallen.

“Well he must have some really cool tech­nol­ogy,” he announced cheer­ing up and danc­ing around the room.

“I’m sorry?”

“How else would he be able to travel around the entire planet in a sin­gle night deliv­er­ing toys to all the good lit­tle dawgs everywhere?”

Harley bab­bled as he dashed around the room twist­ing dials and flip­ping switches. The Santa Trap was fairly new and had never been tested until today, but it was based on a pre­vi­ous design so he was con­fi­dent this would work.

Granted the pre­vi­ous design had blown up rather fan­tas­ti­cally. He cast glances over at the large metal object sit­ting in the mid­dle of the room. It eas­ily stood six feet tall, was shaped vaguely like a bul­let and had any num­ber of wires and hoses com­ing out and going in.

To this day Phineas was unable to fig­ure out how a Dawg as small as Harley was able to build some­thing so large. It didn’t seem phys­i­cally pos­si­ble since he was only twice his cur­rent height even when he stood on his hind legs.

Appar­ently Harley ignored the laws of phys­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties. At least it the the only expla­na­tion he could come up with.

“He must to have a quan­tum deluxe time dila­tor or flux capacitor.”

“A what or a what?”

“Or maybe he’s dimen­sion­ally transcendental.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

Harley stopped fid­dling with the screen he was adjust­ing and looked over at Phineas, “No idea but it sounds cool,” He said as he smiled.

They both jumped when the bang­ing started. It had been a quiet knock­ing at first, and think­ing back Phineas real­ized it had been there a while, he had assumed it was sim­ply part of the machin­ery. The sud­den increase in vol­ume and inten­sity dis­pelled that illusion.

“When you guys are done chat­ting would some­one please let me out of here?"

Harley flinched.

Phineas sim­ply stared.

“Who exactly did you catch?”

“I… I’m not sure.”

“You said this was designed to catch Santa.”

“Well yes, but that doesn’t mean some­one else can’t acci­den­tally get caught.”

“Some­one else did get caught,” came the voice from the metal container.

Phineas crept over to where Harley sat on the desk, “Dude, you caught the captain.”

Harley’s eyes widened. He stood, jumped off the desk and began to trot quickly towards the door.

“Where are you going, are you actu­ally run­ning away?”

“I pre­fer to call it a strate­gic retreat.”

Phineas walked over the the cap­sule and began try­ing to pry open the cap­sule doors, “Get over here and help me get the cap­tain out of here.”

“Are you insane? He’s going to kill you if you let him out.”

“No he won’t, he knows who is respon­si­ble for this. You’re the one he’s going to kill.”

“Me?!”

“Who else on this ship comes up with these kinds of schemes.”

“Seri­ously, you’re just going to throw me under the bus like that?”

“You two are aware of the fact I can hear you right?” came the muf­fled voice again.

Harley blanched. Which for a black and brown haired Dawg was an impres­sive feat.

Harley trot­ted back over this his chair and worked his way back onto the table. After a moments hes­i­ta­tion he flipped a switch and pressed a cou­ple but­tons caus­ing the metal mon­stros­ity to shiver. As it the door opened as the ships cap­tain slowly stepped out.

“Heh. Sorry captain.”

“Harley, what. Are. You. Doing?” asked the rather annoyed Cap­tain Remarkable.

Harley froze, his ears erect and swivel­ing back and form, search­ing, “I hear something!”

Phineas and the Cap­tain turned to look towards the door.

Out­side there was a sound. A faint, quiet lit­tle sound that echoed through out the entire ship. A sound that slowly grew slightly louder. It sound, at first, like a hard rain when it fell against the hull of the ship. As it grew it changed. Now it began to sound like bells. Hun­dreds of small metal bells. The kind one might find on a sleigh.

Phineas turned to look at the cap­tain, a look of dis­be­lief on his face,”Santa?”

Harley grinned, “Santa!”