Angus McGriddle, Doctor of Robots!

Stained clock faces with bent hands hung on the to-do wall. There were black cast-iron barrels full of 5-cent odds and ends, though at least one must have served as a wastebasket. The only source of light were bright LED bulbs that hung from elegantly retrofitted Victorian chandeliers and wall scones. Dusty posters of obscure and just plain awful films suffocated the varnished mahogany.

A lab coat was carefully folded over the back of an efficient Scandinavian chair by the door. This must belong to the good doctor, I thought. Hanging over a broken-in workbench under a blackened window was a corroded fume hood; thick ionic smoke wafted up into it. Pausing hesitantly to wipe his bald head, Doctor Angus McGriddle of the San Serriffe Font Foundry labored away on his latest calligraphic robo-strosity.

“They say you make a pretty mean killer robot.”

McGriddle flinched, then grabbed his hand. Thankfully the thick work glove absorbed most of the diamond cutter’s brunt. “How did you get in here?”

“I checked myself in,” I grinned, showing him the library card I’d won off Hermann Zapf. “Now, shall we rock or shall we roll?”

He flipped the diamond cutter to off mode nonchalantly. Bushy eyebrows connected thoughtfully over his protective goggles, and I briefly wondered whether he had laser vision.

“Look kid, I don’t know what that loon told you. Angus McGriddle doesn’t do pro bono.”

“Naturally we’d be willing to compensate you for you trouble,” I purred, opening a crate of plastic eggs behind me. “This is just the down payment. You’ll get the rest later.”

“No deal. We moved off the plastic egg standard when General Pica was hung by his pinkies from the palace walls.”

“Then what? Liposuction?”

“No! This is all muscle!” he resolutely resisted, manhandling his love handles. “I want revenge against McDonald’s. After their McGriddle breakfast sandwiches came out, I had to stop selling the McGriddle 2000™—something I’d spent the better part of the last decade developing.”

“What was the McGriddle 2000™?”

“Highly concentrated pancake-sized chlorine tablets. A single puck could kill an African elephant. The lawsuit would’ve forced me to make them unscented, take the word ‘flavor’ off the packaging, and stop advertising using cartoon characters. I refused.”

“I remember those! They were delicious!”

Jalas’ leafy voice tore through the laboratory. “Exactly. So they did the only thing they could: embrace, extend, extinguish.” She swung down from the chandelier, bouncing off the chemical hood and landing gracefully on a small stack of MAD magazines.

“Have you spies everywhere?” McGriddle croaked.

“Jalas, I’m videoconferencing in person. What gives, yo?”

“Navens are raiding the Foundry.”

Even though I couldn’t remember ordering my henchmen to raid the facility, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that some higher power had acted on my behalf.

“Do they claim to have received a divine missive?”

“They claim they haven’t eaten since our airship took on several thousand refugees—I mean, displaced persons—so I sent them on a... fact-finding mission. They got past the Foundry’s high-tech security system in under ten minutes.”

“Implausible! I designed that security system—with my bare hands,” Angus anguished. “What about the sonic turrets outside the cafeteria?”

Jalas donned her most sympathetic game face. “I’m afraid the Chef’s Special today is Lasagna with a side of shrapnel.”

“Sweet Electron of the Rubicon! Why? Why?!” he asked feebly, teetering backwards over the workbench. “That lasagna could have been yours.”

“We’re merely taking what we need to survive; you should appreciate that, having been cast to the sidewalk yourself. Join us,” I offered. My hand hyperextended in a magnanimous display of contortionism. “Let’s build that robotic hover-bridge to the 21^st century.”

“It already is the 21^st century,” the decorated doctor demonstrated, diligently drilling his diabolical day-planner.

“Then we’re almost eight years behind schedule. Look, you want to sell chlorine tablets outside restaurants? I can make it happen. You want to poison African elephants? I can do that, too.”

“African elephants were only a metric, I have nothing against the gentle giants.”

My second-in-command unsheathed a broadsword with the head of a chameleon for a hilt. “I’m going to go stop all the looting and violence now.”

“Bring me back a liver,” I urged laboriously. “Now, Angus-”

“Doctor McGriddle, please.”

A silence overtook the room following Jalas’ departure. I felt I could finally strike a deal with the amorphous substrate.

“Caramel apple?” I held out a tray.

“I’m going to want more than that. Like I said, Angus McGriddle don’t work for free. You want Angus McGriddle? You want a giant robot?” He threw down his gloves. There were four gnarled fingers on one hand, and six on the other. “It’s going to cost you.”

“No problem! We recently robbed a bank, and have about ten times that much!”

“I never... mentioned a number...”

“Fine. You can have the crate,” I conceded, passing him the large box of plastic eggs. They were clearly well aged, and some Serriffian collectors would surly still find them valuable.

My eyes wondered around the old scientist’s room. There was a rack up against one wall, several shelves, full of action figures and masks. Photos of celebrities shaking hands with various people, and several of Ronald Reagan with the eyes cut out. There was no carpeting (this was a workroom, after all) and a double helix scar etched deep into the concrete. What from, I could only speculate.

“You enjoy working here, don’t you, Angus?”

“It keeps me busy.”

“Would you like to work on some of the bigger budget stuff?”

“I’m already the lead roboticist...”

“Work for me and I’ll make you the lead roboticist of the entire Earth,” my cape flapped behind me. “Or turn from me, and I’ll feed you to my pet hydra.”

“With friends like you, who needs anemones?”

“That’s a good one, doc,” I affirmed as he packed a ratty old suitcase. “Keep up the puns... you stuffed pig.”

“What?”

“I said ‘puffed jig!’ We’re gonna do a puffed jig when we get back to Skylair One!”

***

“That’s a pretty swanky killer robot.”

“It’s mostly cardboard and newspapers.”

Angus was competitively humble. In truth, the automaton was so huge that he could only work on the head onboard. The rest of the body would have to be completed at the Foundry by unskilled laborers.

“Is it going to cost a lot to get the body completed? We’ve got a lot of people working overtime.”

“Don’t worry, lad. There’re no labor laws on San Serriffe. About two years ago, the leader of the Labor Party, Antonio Bourgeois, was asked by a rookie journalist during a routine interview if he was in Labor. When Bourgeois said ‘yes,’ the reporter asked how far apart the contractions were. That was the day the labor movement died.”

“Aren’t most of San Serriffe’s workers pregnant women?”

“Politics be a strange art,” McGriddle gritted, squeezing the blowtorch handle. “Finito!”

“It’s done?”

“The head part of it, anyway. It still needs the body for power and awesomeness.”

Featureless and rational in every respect, the face basked in our pride. Its eyeballs were cannons, the nose shot heat-seeking missiles, and the mouth could projectile vomit burning oil. Surely, this was the pinnacle of form, the apex of function, the convergence of everything simple and beautiful and evil and good.

“Put some flaws in so people will have a reason to buy a new one in five years.”

Lost & Foundry

“I couldn’t possibly have any more... I want to say ‘octopus...’” Rubbing her belly, Jalas politely pocketed another handful of the squirming creature. These Regionals sure have some strange appetizers!

“And I’ll have the beef strudel,” my stomach growled at the stationary maître d’. He (clearly a he, female Regionals have short nose hair) sniffed at me suspiciously and set off to the kitchen, a bloody towel draped over his left shoulder blade in the traditional manner.

If you’ve never been sniffed by a Regional, the trick is avoiding eye contact. Not between your eyes and their eyes, for you see (pun intended) they have no eyes. It’s strictly echolocation. Tiny holes around the base of their necks, some emit the sound, others accept the waves.

And in the area where a human face would be are four (five in childhood) nostrils. When they all flare up in unison to sniff you... well, let’s just say I’ve been through two pairs of glasses.

“Put the polycarbonate on my tab,” a chillingly tortured voice rasped from the potted plants.

In lieu of shivering, I siphoned off my excess adrenaline for later. One of R & D’s latest projects in a fear-powered hovercraft and I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t pitch in.

Jalas had no such reservations.

“Zapf. I vowed over the burning ruins of Caldera that you would... know... strudel...” She threatened, becoming increasingly distracted by the waiter returning with my dinner. No Novan can resist another man’s strudel.

“Hermann Zapf, fontographer! How’s that Foundry of yours doing?” I inquired pleasantly. Too pleasantly.

“I’m retired,” Zapf grinned, twirling a wine stem betwixt his fore and aft-fingers. “Although I do keep busy.”

“You sold the Calderans their fonts!” Jalas screamed. “They never would’ve posed a threat if not for those begotten fonts!”

“Restrain yourself or the light won’t blink off,” I said, tapping my portable dashboard. One of the table legs vibrated and I handed Jalas the attached phone; my arch-enemy the Generic Canadian had recently started a telemarketing campaign directed at all international airbases.

Humming disconnectedly, Zapf reached into the potted plant behind him and unearthed some yellowed papers. He proceeded to look them over and hum while Jalas stared at him murderously. I took advantage of the unexpected break to look around the landing bay.

Less than a week since we’d declared our rented airship an international refugee base, hundreds of people had come by biplane, triplane, hot air balloon... enhanced ostrich? We get all sorts here. All come looking for a better life, and as the self-appointed diplomatic head, that burden is ultimately mine.

Fortunately I’m trying to be evil so I don’t have to care about any of them.

A group of young Regionals and some of my less faithful Naven henchmen were gathering by the cardboard boxes piled to separate the main galley from the toiletry bucket. Each Naven was wearing the standard issue garb: a bright orange jumpsuit and tennis shoes; the Regionals wore ragged animal skins over sinewy coats of grime. One of them had six nostrils. Freak!

“Are you a betting man?” Zapf asked. Veins bulged on his eyeballs.

“I’m a betting man than you.”

He laid five cards out on the tabletop. Each had a different sentence written on it:

“Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow!”
Adjusting quiver and bow, Zompyc killed the fox.
Few quips galvanized the mock jury box.
“Now! Fax... quiz Jack,” my brave ghost pled.
Five quacking (!) zephyrs jolt my wax bed.

“Which one doesn’t belong?”

My goatee trembled. “That one... no, that... no, I was right, that one,” I held up the first card.

“Why that one?” He fanned out the remaining four, unconsciously tracing the characters with an invisible pencil.

“Simple... this one, you can tell from its diagonal stress that it’s an old-style serif font. This one has a huge disparity in line width, it’s definitely a modern serif. This one is smack dab in the middle, totally Timesian. And this one... oh, I just love slab serifs! Beautiful and underappreciated.”

“Why that one?” he repeated. “What makes this card different?”

I knew the Regionals couldn’t understand speech very well but this conversation was turning personal, so I set off a series of supersonic longitudinal waves. The kitchen staff fled in terror, running blindly into walls and furniture.

“Clearly, those letters are all the same width. Though it has serifs, it is technically monospaced.” Leaning back, I congratulated myself on a job adequately done.

Using his tongue like a boneless arm, Zapf snatched the phone from Jalas and brought it to his fuzzy earhole. “She’ll call you back later,” he slurred, beads of greenish saliva warping the plastic case’s coloring as gravity guided them home.

“How uncouth!” my second-in-command commented conceitedly, counting the contradictions of our company’s casual cordiality and (currently) condemnable churlishness.

“Yes. Button your tongue,” I chimed alongside her chide.

Zapf picked up the table (an incredible feat for an old man, considering it was bolted down) and punched it so hard that several reams of paper fell to the floor. “No.”

“Fair enough.” I stammered hastily. “Do I win?”

“Your observation was correct,” the geriatric German grimaced. “So I’m giving you my library card. With it, you can open any door at my offshore foundry by San Serriffe.”

Courtseying, I delicately took the card in my palm. An uneasy feeling coursed through my appendix. “Isn’t San Serriffe ruled by General Pica? A tinpot dictator with dreams of conquest and boundless brutality?”

Laughing ominously, Zapf sulked toward the latrine. With a single pinky, he bust the sink up pretty badly; then with both hands and a foot, peeled the back wall like an orange and slid down the pipes. The faint sound of rotors and an occasional karate chop could be heard from beneath the floorboards.

“That was an awful lot of trouble to go through for a library card,” Jalas grumbled, finally recognizing the right of the paper reams to exist. “We got into Zapf’s foundry, but now we’ve got to deal with some kind o’ Ozymandias wannabe?! What is so important about this foundry?”

By all rights I should have struck her down where she stood, but something about her drawn dagger gave me pause.

“Canada, Jalas.” I turned my head to draw her attention to the world map hung over the cardboard room divisor. My nemesis’ non-face was drawn boldly over the tundra. “The San Serriffe Foundry is within striking distance of Canada.”

“What of the Generalissimo?”

“That was in the 70’s. They’re a democracy now.”

“You just said...!”

“Times change, you naive Novan! Secure the railings! Rally the Navens!” A blood-red cape with black spirals sprouted from my shoulders. “And find me a puppy to drown!”

Man, this library card is burning a hole in my pocket.

“Can I Crash Your Place?” or “A Doom With A View”

Jalas rubbed her throbbing temple. Eureka!

“Plan 2: we break into Superman’s fortress. That way we get a lair and an arch-enemy! It’s win-win!”

I stroked my beard wickedly. “Interesting... yes... yes! Yes! No wait, the Navens can’t take on Superman. We’d be up to our ankles in community service by next Tuesday.”

Another dream crushed thanks to those hapless haploids! If water finds its own level, these guys are deuterium.

“What was wrong with plan 1?”

She rolled her eyes. “Creating a subduction zone under the southern Atlantic to drag Antarctica north isn’t feasible.”

“But I have a flag ready! And a national anthem!”

“Why don’t we just stay here?” She asked, stretching her arms upwards at the great iron framework. “A mobile base would give us numerous tactical advantages.”

“Plus, we have squatter’s rights.”

The airship dipped left. Jalas and I were startled to see every Naven run to the left portholes, shouting like grendels. My curiosity finally got the better of me.

“Stand aside!” I pushed past them, trying to avoid direct skin contact. Navens are covered in thick brownish-orange hair — not fur, hair — and they often smelt of wet dog.

The porthole view was breathtaking! Mountains, purple in the distance! Deep shades of blue sky blending into bright turquoise ocean waves over an endless horizon, broken only by brilliant patches of orange and yellow sunlight.

Also, there was a man in a cape flying outside. Faster than a hummingbird can whistle Dixie, he tore the porthole off the wall and threw it into the ocean.

“Everybody get back!” I yelled. Any supervillain worth their salt would have ordered their henchmen to attack en masse, but this particular case was a cause for variation.

“How a-boot that? My greatest pupil — now my bitterest foe, eh?” the intruder snorted.

I clasped my hands and bowed, keeping my fists trained on him the whole time. “Has it come that far, Generic Canadian?”

Perhaps I should explain things a little more at this point.

Back when I was a youthful prototype, I was “liberated” from a top-secret military installation by Peta agents who thought I was a dog. Having proved them wrong by melting through their groovy van, I rocketed myself across North America, looking for a home. One day, I heard a rustling sound coming from just outside the Canadian parliament — all the way from Florida. My hearing has since degraded, but what happened that day will stay with me forever or at least until I get really old.

Apparently, a six-foot anthropomorphic octopus-like insect with a headband had planted a bomb in the parliament for no discernible reason. I managed to destroy the bomb by firing generic missiles at it, and the resulting explosion bathed the House of Commons in dangerous Generic Radiation.

While most of the members were protected by layers of incumbency, one MP received such a high dosage of the stuff that he became a superhero.

The Generic Canadian.

“I took you under my wing, eh, taught you how to fight evil an’ play bingo! And now you’re on the side of evil?” He slumped his shoulders mournfully at me. “Still, I know in my heart your goodness will win through. As they say in my country, there’s no such thing as a bad donut.”

“Well as they say in my country, you’re over international waters now. Your national powers can’t affect me here, you faceless bureaucrat!”

The front of his head contracted sharply. “That’s aboot as low as you can go! You know I lost my face in a silly putty accident when I was five.”

“Yes, I suppose I’ll have to face the music,” I jeered. Taunting (done with the right puns) is classic super-villainy, as my awesome great-grandfather used to say.

“Enough!” He instantly produced half a dozen steel maple leaves in each mitten. “I’ll do to you what I did to the American dollar! En garde!”

“You CAD!”

Shurikens of Saskatchewan! Twisty, tiny metal maple leaves left four of my furry flunkies buckling in agony; Jalas was nowhere to be seen, and the Navens that weren’t minced by my newfound nemesis were hanging their heads out the side of the blimp, panting like pigeons.

A spiteful sneer cracked through my joyous veneer. Grabbing a bleeding Naven by the ankles, I swung him/her like a bat. “Go back to your shadow puppet government and all its trappings!”

Before I could throttle my adversary, a sound not unlike the Voice of Zeus swept through the dirigible’s innards. “Attention all passengers,” the in-ship intercom buzzed, “As per the request of the McDermott Bagging & Airship Co. the United Nations has just declared this airbase an international embassy, conferring full diplomatic immunity on its registered owner — Kyle al Zabar.”

“That’s the fake name I used on the licensing papers,” exclaimed I!

The Generic Canadian fumed; steel maple leaves fell from his mitten, turned into crumpled, dried-out organic leaves and blew away. “Ballots!”

“Yeah. You can’t fight him here, he’s got diplomatic immunity!” laughed a balding Naven. Taking his lead, the others swarmed around me in a side-splitting filibuster. I can only assume they thought candy was in my pockets.

Humbled, Generic Canadian made a beeline to the damaged porthole and swung a leg outside. “You may have won this round, mon ami, but as they say, you must sleep sometime — in Canada.”
As unexpectedly as he had come, the Generic Canadian vanished over the golden horizon, along the line where dark purple clouds bled into the sepia sea.

Politics took over then, and I shook the hand of every Naven but fortunately I didn’t have to kiss their babies; Jalas strode in ominously and surveyed the ravaged area.

“Skin the corpses and patch this hole,” she ordered. The Navens gleefully ran to obey.

“You’ll never guess who has diplomatic immunity,” I drooled. “I can park anywhere!”

“You don’t really have diplomatic immunity. That was me over the intercom. I was lying to get rid of that fool until we can devise a more... permanent solution.”

Sadness and Apprehension! “Won’t the Generic Canadian come back when he realizes he was tricked?! This is just the kind of thing he’d hate.”

“I doubt we’ll see him again for a while,” she shrugged. “He’s lost face.”

The Impossible Room

Stars Hollow: McDonald’s Restroom
841:A B.O.P.P.

From the cradle of civilization to the peaks of the Andes, from the primeval to the postmodern, would-be thieves have grappled with a consistent problem: how does one get into a locked room?

The only way to ensure success in my mission of bank robbery would be to consider the worst possible scenario. Lo! Chuck Norris has locked himself inside the Stars Hallow local bank vault. In one hand he wields a welding torch, which he uses to seal the entrance. Pow! In the other are three fists which spontaneously sprout from his palm. Also, mudslides have opened a sinkhole to the center of the Earth and that’s where the bank is now: floating in a sea of white-hot magma.

Burrowing Worboles of the Flesh-Eating Wormholes! Someone would have to be out of their mind to break into a place like that!

“Exactly.” My vast new horde of mild minions stood motionless. “Which is why the place will break into us!”

The Navens stared blissfully at me. Yes, you fools, don’t question it!

Leaning against the paper-towel dispenser, my second-in-command Jalas (a Novan scholar learn-ed in the art of Naven breeding and training) whispered a short prayer to herself. Crocodile tears. If we succeeded, there would no longer be a need to pray.

“War-mommy!” the station monitor choked. “The shiny light on the tunneling beam is red now! You said to tell you when that happened.”

“It’s war-master, but you can still have apple-drink because you tried.”

Miss Manners approves of positive reinforcement as a learning aid, after you get past her nihilistic rhetoric about shaking hands and bathing.

I turned my attention to the continuity accelerator. Blue light poured from its undercarriage, illuminating the ground under the crystal sink. A red light by the USB port signaled a new era in bank robbery, and the Navens fidgeted as if sensing the full scope of what they were witnessing; on the other hand, they had gone several hours without restroom breaks, despite our location.

“Fiddle those knobs! Twist them dials! We need precision, semi-people!”

“Warmaster,” Jalas nudged, “have you considered alternatives? Telekinesis? Underground tunnels? Bribing a guard?”

“All alternatives have been considered and rejected.”

“Warmaster, please! We’re about to open a hole in space and time, teleport ourselves outside the universe.” She shuddered at the accelerator. “It has never been attempted. No life can exist outside the universe, can’t you understand?!”

“That is why we’re wearing scuba gear, Jalas! This was all in the briefing I almost sent you.” I handed her a snorkel. “You should be more precognitive in the future. What number am I thinking of, you, you...”

“Who did you lose?”

“...”

It took the wind out of my argument. Dumbfounded fugue state. A distinct absence of thought plastered my faceplate as the question played over and over in my mind. “I’ve got a sick chimney, Jalas,” was all I could say.

She stared at me with kind eyes that held an inner and most excellent wisdom. “How did it happen?”

Doctors had asked me the same thing many times this year, but I’d evaded them all. I’d never felt comfortable with this topic before, but something in me just... let go.

“Last autumn a chimney sweep came by, charging reasonable rates... too reasonable, I guess...” Numbness. “There was a storm the previous week, and I wanted to be post-paired.” He never took off his boots. “There was something strange about him, but I let him in anyway. The smoke was white, Jalas. It was always black, but then it was white.”

“He never took off his boots.”

She knew.

“No. He didn’t. I read up on it, after the winter ended, when the symptoms really started.” Hiccup! “It’s dying, Jalas. Brick by brick. No mason will touch it, no mortar will heal it. Can’t you see what’s at stake now?”

“You can’t be that selfish,” she scathed. “Risking the universe for one chimney?”

“It’s my chimney!” I shouted loud enough for the Navens to hear.

“Is everything all right in there?”

Jalas slapped a cold-blooded hand over my eyes, knowing that that’s how I really communicate: not through speech, but by facial ticks and gamuts. “Who’s there?”

The knocking stopped. “I’m Marvin Gale, the manager. Some customers complained that the door was stuck, are you all right in there?”

“The door is welded shut from the inside! An eye for an eye, eh, Chuck Norris? He sent you, didn’t he?!” No advisor would prevent me from exercising my right to free speech.

“I’m calling the police if you don’t come out in five minutes,” said this so-called ‘manager.’ What kind of manager didn’t carry a pulse cannon to enforce his will?

“Ignore him,” I held out my hand to the Navens. “The Manager is obviously one of those super-heroes trying to foil our plot. But Marvin Gale made one crucial mistake — he told us his secret identity. Full steam ahead!”

Sweet Passenger Pigeon of the Nexus Ribbon! I had preoccupied myself so much with my knaves that I’d overlooked the viper in my cuckoo’s nest. Just as my hand began the final initialization sequence, Jalas pitchforked me in the back!

“Pitchfork fight!”

Shock. There was a memory lapse, objects glided past my head. Brief disorientation; then sudden remembrance. Betrayed by Jalas? Why?!

“Jalas!” Wrenching the pitchfork from my spine, I acted quickly to dodge a rambunctious Naven as he swung a javelin unintelligently and laughed. “¿Qué es el dillio?”

She slammed the machine frantically. “The Sus idled while our people were subverted by the Calderans! Our credibility, our nobility, our future, all taken away — by you!”

Moi? I pointed to myself. “There must be some mistake, I’m perfect!”

“These! And these!” Documents appeared at her uniform’s hand-holes, shooting out like magicians’ bouquets. “Incontrovertible proof that you provided aid and comfort to Darl the Bloody in his coup! Thousands of Hinterlanders died at his hands. My people, shamed forever.”

“There’s not a violent bone in my body,” I protested, stabbing my pitchfork at a smiling Naven reaching for a hug. Miss Manners will have to bite the bullet on this one. “I resent this.”

I inched closer to the accelerator. Jalas wasn’t trained in quantum tomfoolery, and I much doubted anyone could stop the chain reaction at this point. The status indicator was almost green.

“Take my hand.” Waves of anger hit me. Daggers in her eyes! Fear, uncertainty and doubt! “It is far too late to stop it. Take my hand, and together our fingertips will kiss ever atom that has ever been born. Join in my chorus.”

Around us Navens danced in their carnal ignorance. Our eyes connected, reflected the paradox of grief. But I think we both knew our paths would never again converge.

The light blazed green.

Outside the Universe
±00:00

Mundane things: the prism created by a glass cup, fragments of the sun passing through a cloud patch, a bear on a unicycle, clear, rural water lapping at the banks of a small-town river. Mundane things.

If the right person sees one of these things, it can cause them great pleasure, or pain. Suffering or joy. Morning dew on a freshly-cut field can trigger a dormant childhood memory, and a single lumpy cloud in an otherwise clear sky can inspire sonnets.

Being outside our universe, where the infinite smacked of the unlimited, where the clocks ran backwards and forwards simultaneously, at the place where matter and energy blended into nonexistence, I felt... mundane.

“Have a little mineral water, you silly.”

I peeked an eye. Light from every part of the spectrum came from all directions. No walls or floors or ceilings denoted dimension, but luckily I’d just found a guide.

“Al Gore!” The former vice-president helped me up and patted me down for bugs. Satisfied, he handed me a bottle of Poland Springs.

“Welcome to my special place, Gyrobo.” he motioned to a large steampunk supercomputer hovering over the undifferentiated floorboards. “Welcome to the universe.”

“I don’t get it.”

He licked his lips, and I was disgusted. “It’s like the Matrix...”

“Is Keanu Reeves here, too?”

“The world you know is all just a simulation.”

“Is Keanu Reeves a simulation?”

“Yes,” he conceded.

“But... if Keanu Reeves is a simulation and he stared in the Matrix, which was a simulation, that cancels out and makes him real. So he should be here.”

Al Gore thought that over. “No. Maybe I should use Socrates’ cave analogy.”

“Can I kiss every atom with my fingertips now?”

“You can’t-”

“Why not, you green-thumbed emo kid?!”

“The matter and energy you know exist only within this computer,” he tapped the glowing behemoth. “And, like the Matrix, we can hex-edit the universe to whatever purpose we will. It’s called ‘miracles.’”

“If you can alter the universe, why are you such an environmentalist?”

“Clean code is easier to document.”

I’d totally vote for him.

“So...” I teetered comically, “What’s that over there?”

“That? That’s just the floor. Well, it’s not a real floor. Funny story, actually...”

What luck! With Gore off on one of his long-winded rants, I brought up the universe’s hex editor somehow and used my knowledge of trigonometry to isolate the Milky Way. Schrödinger’s ghost! Free cable! “Don’t get distracted... eye on the ball, eye on the ball... mind over matter...”

“...16^th century France, where cats were burned for entertainment. Complete barbarism. Louis the 14^th-”

“Thanks, but I have to go home now. Just point me to the nearest airlock.”

He blinked. “But can’t you stay a while longer? I can bake some ginger snaps, and we can talk about cat-burning...”

“Sorry, but I’ve got a bank vault full of ill-gotten dough to kneed through waiting at my bungalow. I’ll just burn some cats when I get home.”

“No! Don’t do that!”

“Yeah.” A green light on the holographic display blunk. “That must be my ride! If you have some free time in the future, send Babylon 5 a telepath with a penchant for wedgies, would ya?”

The blood in my arms froze as I was thrown back into normal spacial rotation, but that’s not something you’d notice during bouts of unconsciousness. I felt unburdened and very, very heavy. There’s no reason I should remember being torn between worlds. I definitely was unconscious. But... for one tiny fraction of a second... and this I remember...

My fingertips kissed atoms.

Stars Hollow: McDonald’s Restroom
8:35 P.M.

“I’ve called the police, they will be here in-”

Crash. The restroom door fell off its frame; surviving Navens with fresh play-battle scars walked out first, dragging Jalas behind them on a bed of expertly-stacked pitchforks. At last I emerged, my flashlight glowing with enlightenment.

“Call the police back and tell them... tell them someone miscast a string as an integer.” I winked.

“I... what were you all...” Marvin Gale grabbed the unhinged frame and gawked at the sight of pitchfork-splayed Navens and fortean anomalies still emanating from the accelerator. “What happened in there?”

One short burst of a synapse. Ripples of laughter, a joke come and gone. I chuckled outwardly, but the exact words took a second to process. Taking a sip of bottled water, I grabbed the stocky man and projected my ambient personality into the deepest depths of his soul. And smiled.

“The Angus was a little undercooked.”

The Trains Will Be Overclocked

Bottleton Marine Habitat 1, Gift Shop 2
95:15 B.M.

Numbers.

It was all about the numbers.

“They say that when fire ants are dowsed in water, they grab onto each other in a semi-sentient lattice. The resulting ball will float on water, so that half the ants are above the water, half below. After a few seconds the ball rotates, then rotates again a few seconds later, so that no ants drown. After equilibrium has been reached, the ants lash out their hundreds of arms collectively, groping in the ether like an amoeba, flagellating, praying for something to grab onto. Working in unison, the many can accomplish what the few cannot.”

“We don’t sell fire ants.”

Like a knife through my heart!

“I was merely making a point, Beryl,” I skimmed her name tag, “a point of purchase.” Wringing her arms in a soldier-like fashion, she sat down by her register, looking for the inventory sheet. “Unless, of course, you have some fire ants in the back room. Maybe you could... check again-”

“This is a fishery, sir. All we sell here are immature cuttlefish.”

“Immature cuttlefish... does that mean they’re prone to... prank calls and food fighting?! That’d be just what I need!”

She looked like she was about to cry. “That’s what I thought when I started here ten years ago, but it’s not that at all!”

Trying to ignore her suffering was hard; the tears running down her two cheeks totally reminded me of the Novans’ translucent eye-stripes. I was never sure whether those eye-stripes were a different skin-tone, or mere decoration. Either way, to see their eye-stripes in battle was to know certain death...

“That’s it!”

Atom by atom, the room erupted into cheer at my epiphany! The despondent Beryl, her boss (who was currently breaking his promise to his wife and doctor not to eat red meat), the 22 children there on a field trip, their teacher (who retired the year before from a major pharmaceutical firm and saw teaching more as a way to keep busy than as a calling), Morgan the bus driver (a man who would give you the shirt off his back if you only asked for it), and Jim, all ran up and congratulated me: a slap on the back, a hug, one or two gold watches. Still, no balloons... not at all like a fishery not to have balloons handy...

Naturally, the cuttlefish took the opportunity to unleash a series of whoopie cushions — too little, too late — but my mind was already dressed and made up.

“Morgan, give me your keys,” I asked/demanded of the 36-year-old Capricorn with a beard but no mustache.

“Sorry chief. I’ve got to get these kids back home.”

“Then give me the shirt off your back, that I might pawn it for transport fare! I cannot keep the Novans waiting — they aren’t expecting me!” I waved, harpooning my way out.

Desk draws spilled in celebration as I exited, octopi and squid danced in unison. Electric eels shot off sparks as I passed their tanks, immaculate white-hot embers landed in my wake. Bioluminescent starfish brightened each display with a panoply of colors; for once I could physically taste the rainbow.

Base of the Anorak Mountain Complex
306:20 B.R.

“Bingo.” Side 8 was always unguarded. The doors were handcrafted from the bones of long-dead whales, but they’d clearly done the floor molding on the cheap. Disgraceful.

Hallways upon hallways, a labyrinth that would put King Minos to shame; but the creatures which dwelt here were far more dangerous than any minotaur. And I’ve seen minotaurs before, so I can say that with complete certainty — unless we involve the uncertainty principle. But that principle only applies if we’re trying to find the location and momentum of a minotaur simultaneously. Now that would be dangerous.

For every voice in my head that said this was crazy, ten more told it to pipe down. Then it came: “I do believe you are looking for something forbidden!”

My heels froze, in a bad way! Before me was an unromantic metallic pink/purple figure. Its skin — chainmail, really — was dark green in the torchlight and small horns lined its skull. “Can you take me to the Novans? I have no appointment with them.”

It hissed, shaking a fist in my direction, and causing me anxiety! “In this holy place, we are the Sus! You will call us that, in accordance with our highest customs, or leave.”

“That’s a completely reasonable request, but I choose not to follow it. After all, your highest law says the customer is always right, eh what?”

It sighed, gestured to a beaded curtain my pride had helped me ignore earlier and said hello the proper way.

“What lies beyond the veil?!” My outstretched arm rubbed the beads. They were so soft and gel-like, I almost didn’t want to let go. For a second — just a second — I wanted to relive my youth and eat those beads like candy.

“There is no candy in there,” it prophesied as if reading my thoughts, “but you will find the seeds of a small army, and the implements to grow them.”

“Can I buy the fertilizer here, too? Or is there a special store for that?”

“That is in aisle infinity,” the sage soothsaid.

Behind the Curtain
308:43 B.R.

The ambiance was all wrong. In the middle of the small room was a flame pit, but there must have been too much oxygen. The flames weren’t red enough for a dramatic flair, the shadows on the wall were not menacing at all, and the walls themselves weren’t all that rocky and ancient. The whole thing was a prefab nightmare, painted some hideous shade of light blue.

My delicate pallet was offended, and I let the Novans know this in no uncertain terms: “Your holiest city is ugly, and I’d like your people to do menial work for me for little or no pay.”

Thank the Heap looks could not inflict fatal wounds! One unsheathed a poorly-carved whiffle-bat. “We’d like to welcome you, stranger, with a ceremonial beating!”

“That will have to wait. We need hard currency to fight off Lord Vista.” The mystic I’d acquainted myself with in the endless hallways strode through the curtain, now with a cape and toaster pelts on each shoulder. So, he was their grandfather all along.

“You should all definitely listen to whatever benefits me most. I’m the only real person in the universe, the rest of you are figments of my imagination.”

Unfolding a collapsible bridge table from my back pocket, I laid out a map of Mainland military installations. The critical ones were in red, the moderate ones in orange, and Jim’s house was in blue.

“The edges are torn.” The mystic licked the edges with callused fingertips. It was easy to see where the page had parted ways with a pretty nifty paper shredder; a word to the wise, never try to shred plastic eggs.

“You’ll get the rest of the map once I’ve got my henchmen trained — unless you don’t have a few dozen warrior I could borrow for a while, just to help me unpack all my furniture at the summer house,” I lied. They had no way of knowing my properties in Connecticut weren’t real. Nothing is real, except your own mind! History never happened!

Bowing like a bowlegged tarantula, the lead Novan nodded sideways and pulled out a Magic 8 Ball. “The ball foretold of your arrival and desires, days ago!”

“Then I was not unexpected!” Crestfallen, I solemnly took stock of my beliefs. Every decision I’d ever made was based on the assumption that the Novans were not expecting me. If this was a fallacy, then what else could I have been wrong about? Was Morgan the bus driver a Scorpio?!

“Resources are tight, mon friar. But for several hours our forces have been marshaling for a total inventory... we’ve got a handful of Navens left over from the beforetime you could use.”

“What manner of creature are these Navens?”

“A failed genetic experiment,” laughed a fat Novan. A Jovian Novan! “They were mocked and persecuted in the beforetime, almost completely wiped out. For a thousand years we thought them a legend. But we found some in cryo-jello in an old abandoned science mine!”

“Can they fight? Are they obedient?” These Navens sound like an increasingly poor investment.

Scratching his belly while looking particularly evil and merciless, the mystic shrugged. “All we’ve ever seen them do is grab onto each other in water, rotating themselves so they never drown while reaching out for something solid. Like a giant amoeba.”

I dropped to my knees and sobbed openly; droplets of sulfur hexafluoride vaporized upon impact with the ground. Shaking like a leaf, my unconscious mind (the one that doesn’t exist) used my hand to surrender the remainder of the map.

“Take me to these wonderful creatures.”

For Great Dishonor!

“Mister Garibaldi, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You want to tell me what you people think you’re doing?”

Alfred Bester leaned back, his permanent half-smirk temporarily erased. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“O Rly?” Garibaldi pointed directly down. “Bester, I’m not wearing pants.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Is that something the Psi Corps should be concerned about?”

A fatigued Garibaldi craned his neck. “Do you know why I’m not wearing pants, Mister Bester?” Another awkward pause. “We’ve got a rogue Psi Cop running loose on the station, probably higher than P-12.”

“We don’t have any P-12-”

“Let me finish. Five days ago, a telepath came by as our new ‘liaison’ with EarthGov. The next day, five lurkers were admitted to med lab with severe wedgie burns.”

“What?”

“The perpetrator couldn’t be identified, because none of the victims recalled their attacker’s face, almost as if it had been... wiped from their minds. So we had your ‘liaison’ trailed by three station guards. And guess what, pal? They’re all in med lab right now, severe wedgie burns all around.”

“This is insane!”

“I’m glad you appreciate what we’re going through, Bester. After the confrontation, your Psi Cop went completely rogue...”

“We never assigned a Psi Cop to Babylon 5.”

“This isn’t a game, Bester. Earth Force has already lost twenty-six perfectly good pairs of pants. Do I need to make that twenty-seven?”

“This has got to be a joke.”

“Do my sweaty knees look like they’re joking to you, doc? Sheridan had to ban pants in the name of public safety, and we had to crank up the furnace. This place is hotter than a crate of dust. What’s wrong with you people?”

“I want to talk to Sheridan!”

“He’s just gonna ask you the same thing: what’re you doing? What’s EarthForce doing about this? Is EarthForce even up and running back home?”

“Of course it is!”

“Then you’d better go catch it!” I laughed, slamming the viewscreen against its cradle like an aluminum baby.

Various inanimate objects within earshot rippled in delight as my isomorphic generator powered down and Garibaldi exploded into artifacts; another successful prank phone call!

“Why don’t you have any real ambition,” my self-portrait asked coyly. Fixed to my cherry-coated bunker wall, he was an unpleasant holdover from my Dorian Gray days. Back when I thought a mere — scoff! — painting could guarantee my immortality. Instead of a repository for my age and disease and disfigurement and decapitation, I’d accidentally created a two-dimensional doppelgänger! “The universe is begging to be conquered. There’s a real market for global domination.”

“Do I look like I have four right angles? Ambition is for squares.” I tore my eyes from the accusatory canvas.

“Now who’s being two-dimensional?”

“I seek neither your council,” I froze to accentuate the tensitude, “nor your fashion sense,” my subvocalizer roared as I scooped up the phone faster than you could gut a trout. “I am a prank caller. My father was a prank caller, and his father before him, all the way back to my great grandfather. That guy was awesome.”

He strained against the inlaid frame: “Then prove him right. I’ve got a boarding pass here, you see.”

My interest spiked! “A boarding pass, you say, you say? A boarding pass, you say?”

“Yes, oh yes, a boarding pass, you see! A boarding pass to the Plaza Station.”

“Where is that,” I asked absent-mindlessly, packing my puce pantaloons in pear-shaped pods. “The Hinterlands? It isn’t safe to travel to those places, they say, not until Lord Vista has broken the resistance.”

Marble swirls formed on the wooden mantle beneath the belligerent portrait. I heard the chimney cough, but I was powerless to help it; the disease was viral, it would have to heal on its own. Weep inwardly.

“Hinterubbish! Macintrash!” it spat, “Lord Vista is nothing. Six centuries, and he still can’t mount an insurmountable offense.”

“I call blasphemy.”

“What you call it is inconsequential, you three di-moron! What I’m saying is...” he reached from the canvas and placed a boarding pass in my front pocket. “...you could do better. How now, go down! The flying machine awaits.”

Each letter on the pass was golden, and handwritten — not printed. “And once I’ve become a super-villain...?”

No words, no thought, no signs of intelligence past or future; the simulacrum was silent against the wall.

“An excellent omen!”