1
THE world was a snow globe, and it rested on the ass of a drunken man who'd passed out while watching Sunday night football. Every so often, a great rumble would be heard and felt from down below.
Riding out the raging quake, the gang looked around at the emptiness that surrounded them. It seemed the walls were made of crystal meth, as outside they could see giant children putting a lighter to them and attempting to huff the resulting vapour.
"Where in the world are we now?" Jones asked. Smith's getup-a puffy shirt and a pair of tight blue undies that said HOT on the rear-caught his eye and he snorted out laughter and snot. Feeling self-conscious and undignified, he quickly mopped up the mucous with a napkin he conveniently found tucked into his sleeve. After tugging on it for a solid minute, he noticed it seemed to be longer than the entirety of this Sci-Fi Loop adventure thus far. He gave up and just left the endless hankie gag to coil on the ground and die.
"What're ya laughin' at, snotty?" Kris-who wore an oversized yellow hard hat, two orange pylons that really hurt her boobs, a jean skirt with patches on her ass torn out; and carried a large inflatable hammer-thought Jones was more than likely laughing at her. She also thought that whoever the idiot was who was writing this crap probably Googled "funny woman outfit" to get the idea. She wasn't impressed.
Looking down at himself, Smith shook his head in embarrassment. He attempted to cover his lower half with the puffy shirt, but that somehow only made the shirt smaller. "Kris, I must say, milady, that you look positively smashing."
"Yeah, yeah, keep it in yer pants, bucko."
"P-Pardon?" He looked down and nearly fainted. Tucking himself back into the confines of the undies, he decided he'd better play up the personal revulsion: "My word! Heavens to Betsy, Job and Frank!" Good job. I think she bought it. He looked at Jones and saw he wore a monocle in one eye. Also, the man's top hat had been replaced with a multicoloured flat-brimmed hat that seemed to have a pole with two wings sticking out the top. Another rumble from below made the wings spin.
"So, might I wonder where we are?" Jones asked, oblivious to the stupid-looking propeller hat he wore.
"I wonder," Smith began, "and, believe me, I'm no expert- Is this another of those worlds which isn't even a real sci-fi sub-genre, but more like an attribute of an actual on? Like, er, what was it? Spiky Heroine?"
Kris bashed him on the head with her inflatable hammer. She smiled at its surprising heft and the way it made Smith's eyes bug out of his head like a cartoon. "Spunky Heroine. And hell yeah, boys 'n' girls. This be the Comic sci-fi part o' the Loop."
"Comic sci-fi? Now what on Earth do you reckon that could mean? Will nude robo-whatchamacallit clowns go parading through the streets?"
H'ver hmphed. "I hardly see anything about that which could be construed as being comic," he said with indignance, or about as close as a robot could get to being indignant without being snippy. Hard to take him seriously when he had a big wooden sign hanging around his chassis. It said, "WILL SUCK 4 OIL."
"What about-" Jones started laughing and tried to put a lid on it. "Now get this, team- What about a wee little squirrel with two nuts in its mouth!" He slapped his knee and swung both arms like a pendulum, elbows out. Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk. Two rolls of toilet paper came tumbling out of his sleeves, unravelling on the ground while they rolled.
"Oh, is that what y'all find funny?" Kris asked, rolling her eyes. "Sounds like ya'll'd be apt t' be a psychologist's wet-dream..."
Jones' eyeball spat out its monocle. "I say, madam! There's no need to be dirty! It's simply scandalous!"
"What, wet-dream? Honey, if you think that's dirty-talk-" She strutted her stuff, pressing together her jiggling jugs, making the pylons cross their pointy ends. She breathed into Jones' ear, "Then wait 'til ya hear me when I'm beggin' to be f-"
Smith fainted and H'ver's head threw up some toast smeared with a mysterious white jam, while the hairs of Jones' moustache all simultaneously quivered and attempted to mate with Kris' face.
Another quake rumbled Smith awake. "Oh, that smell is bloody horrible!" He fanned around his nose. While fanning, he noticed a strange, glowing green object in the distance. It appeared to be moving, albeit slowly. He picked himself up and started to follow it.
"Mr. Smith, dear chap?" Jones asked. "Where might you be heading, good man?"
Smith didn't answer. The others shrugged and took off after him, catching up when he'd gotten close to the mysterious green thing. It'd moved behind a rock and he was just about to pounce on it, when a not-bright black light blinded everyone.
2
WHEN the light had faded, they looked around and found a different, but still-familiar world before their eyes. It was WattPunk all over again. Books pelted them like hailstones. They ran for shelter underneath a giant letter A.
While running, Kris managed to snag one of the books. She was curious. The cover said "Lessons in Science Fiction World-Building." It sounded like a bore to her, but she opened it anyway. The inside wasn't what she was expecting. It had been hollowed out to house a bag of skunky grass and a stack of nudes. She saw that she was the star of said nudes. Quickly, before innocent Jones or that pervert Smith could see the goods, she stuffed the book into her cleavage. Safe.
"Why might we be here again, H'ver?" Smith asked the robot.
"This defies all logic my processors are capable of," the robot stated. "It seems we may have been thrown backwards in the Loop."
The black light came on again. Get ready, gang.
3
WHEN the light turned off, again the world had changed. They were back on the Singularity island, only it seemed a little different. Androids were there, too-all lined-up nice and orderly to use the John, which seemed to be a clean-looking building. Beside that was a separate line for humans, and it was chaos. People punching each other in the head and stealing raggedy clothing that wasn't in any better shape than the rags already hanging off their backs. The line seemed to be for those waiting to use the public shit-hole, which was actually the previous person in line. They'd take turns crapping into each other's mouths, you see.
"Smith," Jones said.
"Yes, Jones," Smith said.
"Promise me you'll be kind. If we ever have to... trade-off... like that..."
"Of course, good chap. As I know you will be to me. No dairy or Mexican food, please."
"Yes, certainly. And for me, please abstain from any of your chocolate-flavoured laxative shakes."
Luckily, they never had to take each other up on that offer of mutual respect, as the black light came on again and saved the day-and their own dignity.
4
LIGHT off. Back to the jungles of Alternate History. Now, it seemed that the dinosaurs themselves were Nazis. A T-Rex poked its head out from behind a tree and grinned at them. It wore a moustache like Hitler. It came stomping out and our heroes had the opportunity to admire the swastika-adorned armband wrapped around the tyrannosaurus' puny bicep. Before the dino could finish heiling Hitlersaur, the gang was already racing off through giant ferns and dodging anti-Semitic mosquitoes that seemed capable of sucking off your whole face, let alone your blood.
Light on. Thank Author (that's me!).
5
LIGHT off.
Castles and towers and all that other crap. Long Robin-not named such because he's tall, ahem-waited with bow-and-heat-seeking-arrow.
"Fuck!" Kris yelled. "CandlePunk again!" Then she had a bright idea and scanned the horizon for her turtle-tank. Spotting it, she shouted to the others, "Distract this goof!" She ran for the turtle-tank while the rest of the Loop Crew (patent pending) attempted to dodge arrows that could track them to the ends of the Earth.
"H'ver, might we kindly hide behind you!?" Jones shouted, not waiting for an answer. He pulled Smith in behind him. Just in the nick of time, too, as the arrows penetrated H'ver's metal chassis.
H'ver hmphed again, not appreciating the holes in his signage. "It seems, friends, that my circuitry confuses that man's weaponry."
Kris reached the turtle-tank and crawled in through the rear entry. Upon sitting at the controls, she realized aiming the cannon from such a distance, and hitting her target, would be tantamount to an old man shooting his spunk at a dartboard. "Not gonna work. I need t' get closer." She thought, quite correctly, that the turtle-tank was probably slow. "I need speed." So she proceeded to rotate the cannon until it faced backwards, and then she started firing. "Did this in Halo! Yeeeehaw!"
Smith heard the first explosion and turned to see the turtle-tank throw itself forwards. It fired again and again, jumping ten feet with each blast. Long Robin seemed unable to hear it, unaware of his impending doom.
Smith didn't know it, but Long Robin was deaf and vibrationally-impaired. After being kicked in the head by a horse he was attempting to screw, the teenage Long Robin had lost all ability to hear and feel vibrations. He got through life with an iron fist, a perpetual chip on his shoulder (actually on his skull) and a rather large organ.
It wasn't any surprise, then, that Kris crushed Long Robin with the turtle-tank, flattening him like a pancake and defying all science-fictional laws in the process. And right on time, too, as the black light came on again immediately after.
6
THEY emerged in an alien landscape of massive mushrooms. Two suns sat in the sky, on opposite sides of the horizon. Small spidery creatures scurried this way and that, peeking at the planet's new arrivals from the safety of their mushroom-homes.
"This isn't bad," Jones said.
"Not bad at all." Smith.
"Keep yer panties wadded, ladies," Kris ordered them, pissed that she'd lost her turtle-tank yet again. "'Cuz if I'm understandin' this right, then we're in Military again."
She was absolutely correct. The Evilstar-a huge spaceship shaped like an E-landed, all smoke and dust and fire. The gangplank lowered and met the ground. A tall, thin man with glasses and bad teeth exited the ship. He laughed weirdly and brought his creepy-long pinkie to the corner of his mouth. "We meet again, villains! Woah, Kris, you look... ravishing." He licked his rotting teeth and flinched, the pain surely indicative that he'd better stop ignoring his dentist's calls.
"Did he just-?" Jones put his hands on his hips, trying to look offended.
"Villains? Us?" Smith stroked Jones' moustache. "I mean, really?"
"Evilstein, eyes up here," Kris said, and she kicked a mushroom to show she meant business. "Stop followin' us. Look, yer not gonna get that powercube. So just stop tryin'. Damn."
The creep laughed maniacally. "Evilstein? MWAHAHAHAHAHA!" He wiped his eyes. "I'm sorry, villains, but you must have me confused with my twin brother. My name is... Evilstien! And, yes, I'm also a Doctor of Peace and Goodness."
"Wait. Kris," Jones said, "I was under the impression that Evilstein was the deplorable fellow's surname."
"Me, too," she said.
"I believe I can be of assistance," H'ver chimed in. "The two twins you are confused about are in my system as Evilstein and Evilstien Goodstone. They were the first test-tube babies to be made from both artificial yak and human DNA, and appear to suffer from some sort of unknown mental illness."
Kris had a comment about that, but she never got to say it. And, damn, was it a good one, too. The black light came on, and they were swept away from Dr. Evilstein's also-evil twin brother, Dr. Evilstien.
7
THEY were back in the throat-choking, lung-killing world of DieselPunk. But don't get too comfortable, folks, as they were only there to smell a big airship's fart-scented exhaust smoke. And then the light took them away.
8
TIME Travel time. The gang was back in Miami, inside a synagogue. They watched a young Archibald Mordechai Jones get circumcised by a Rabbi.
"I must say," Jones said, groaning and averting his eyes, "it really looks frighteningly barbaric when you watch it happen to yourself."
Kris shouted, "That's why I like mine with wizard-sleeves!" Feeling suitably aroused, she bucked around and started spanking her pert rump with both hands. "Yeeeeehaw!"
"Oh, dear God," Smith whispered. It was getting kind of hot in here. He tugged on the collar of his puffy shirt, but that only made it tighter.
"What's the problem?" Kris asked, down on all fours, wagging her butt from side to side. "Ain't ya never seen a girl in doggystyle before?"
"That's doggystyle?" Jones said in Smith's ear. "But it appears to be how the common canine would do such an unspeakable act! Woman, you must get up or these people will think you a harlot!"
"Shut up 'n' mount me, Jonesy!"
"Actually, Jones," H'ver interrupted the man's dizzy spell, "doggystyle is now the most-common position in the entire universe, aside from the Beta Reticuli cluster, of course. But there, the native species do not have buttocks with which to mount."
The Rabbi turned, looked at them and shook his head. "Goyim." He went back to his circumcision.
Smith made a little noise.
"What is it, fancypants?" Kris asked.
"Doesn't it seem to you that we already did something rather like this in the Time Travel part of the Loop?"
"Perhaps the author simply forgot," H'ver said, but nobody seemed to hear him.
"Oh, good," Jones said when the black light came on again. "Don't know how much more of this torture on little-me I can take."
9
TESLAPUNK. They were at a Tes-Locket Of My Heart concert and the light show was amazing. The band were playing their wireless instruments that ran on tesla-juice. The band's dancer provocatively thrust his junk into the shrieking faces of the front-row. Smith and Jones had never been to a concert before, so they were pretty astounded by the performance.
"What is this infernal racket they're playing?" Jones asked, plugging his ears. "And who is that wanton bloke, and why is he disrespecting those cheering, happy, smiling dames?"
Smith shook his head and wiped tears of pain from the corners of his eyes.
"Shock!" Kris screamed before jumping into the pit. She whipped her red hair around, punching and kicking square-dancing dames. Head-banging and shrieking out the lyrics like a banshee possessed by a whore. "Yeah, ya guys fuckin' shock!"
The other women backed away from this bestial lady-if such a word could ever be used to describe a woman of her untamed nature.
H'ver politely barged his way through the women surrounding the one-woman pit and pulled Kris out.
"What're ya doin', man!? I wanna shock! I love these guys!"
Sadly, she'd have to settle for listening to them on MD-Mental Disc-as the Mini-Loop had activated again.
10
A desert stretched far and wide. But our heroes couldn't get to it. They were inside a jail-cell in a dumpy little sheriff's office. Mutated rats dragged dead jaguars into the massive caverns that were supposed to be their ratholes.
"Space Western?" Smith asked his companions.
"Yup," Kris muttered. She was still peeved she'd missed the rest of the concert.
"I must say," Jones said, looking around at their new home, "it is rather relieving to have proper lodging for a change."
Kris glared at him.
A man with a cowboy hat and no teeth stepped in front of the cell's bars. A hand-rolled cigarette hung from his bottom lip and he glugged from a flask every few seconds. He brought a device to his throat, and when he did so, he would speak with a robotic voice.
H'ver was offended each and every time.
"Well, lookie hea'. Where'd ya'll come from, anywho? No matter. Jus' bes' b' warned. Ah'm th' new sheriff in town. See this?" He pointed a gnarled, half-chewed finger proudly at his chest. A cheap-looking yellow star, obviously fashioned from papier-mâché by a talentless moron, was stuck lopsidedly to his shirt. "This means Ah git ter have mah way wit' yer woman-folk." He licked his lips and toothless black gums.
Kris spat in his face.
He licked that, too. "Tangy. Ya got zest, lady. 'Nd Ah like whatchyer got on. Mmm. Trashy like mah sister..."
"Smith," she said. "Ya fancy donatin' yerself t' this freak?"
Smith shuddered at the thought.
Thankfully they were removed from the sheriff's presence just as he started taking off his jeans.
11
SNOW was falling from the sky, and the gang-feeling quite blessed to be away from that weird sheriff-immediately knew where they were.
"Christmas!" H'ver cheered. "Again!" He whirred himself past the automated Santa Claus and over to the pile of presents.
"Eh, H'ver, pass me one," Kris called to the robot.
H'ver tried lifting one and nearly broke his pneumatic pumps. "These things are heavy, guys! Better get them yourselves!"
Groaning, Kris ran over. Smith and Jones went, too, wondering what new gifts they could possibly get. Smith was hoping he would get a pair of pants. Jones wished for a cute dress he could give to Kris, dreaming of her thanking him and then he would ask her if she would, kindly, rather like to dance... Snap out of it, Jonesy.
They opened their presents at the same time and all gave each other the same dumbfounded look.
"Coal!?" Kris swore a few dozen times and kicked snow everywhere. "A lump o' coal!?"
"This isn't very Christmassy," Jones muttered.
Smith silently wept into his fist. He really needed those pants. Every second spent in these girlish undergarments brought him closer to an early-permanent-retirement.
"Destroy. All. Naughty. Kids."
"The fuck was that?" Kris asked, looking around and smacking her inflatable hammer into her palm. "Whoever ya are, ya best be comin' on out, 'n' I won't beat ya too hard!"
Cutting through the blizzard of snow, Cyborg Santa marched towards them, eyes red, and wielding a shotgun. He cocked the weapon and took aim.
Kris chucked her lump of coal at the gift-giver and watched it ping off the killer robot's head. Cyborg Santa's red eyes flashed with dollar signs and severed heads, then the robot fell forwards into the snow. Disabled and smoking. Kris hurried over and jacked its shotgun before the black light-
12
-CAME on. Well, at least she had a shotgun. She looked at it and saw it now had a scope on top, missile-launchers on the side, and a miniature machinegun underneath the barrel. "Hell yeah. My kinda weaponry."
"Mr. Jones," Smith started, scanning the red desert dunes of Spunky Heroine, "do you think that gorgeous dame-what was her name? Killer?-will still be here?"
Jones wasn't listening. He was too engrossed in the exposed mounds of Kris' juicy, bouncy butt.
"Where is that bitch!?" Kris spun around, caught Jones' wide eyes zooming upward, smirked and spun back to give him another look. "Come on out, ya trailer-trash skank! We got us some unfinished biz'ness!"
An ululating cry came from over a sandy hill. Killer rode in on her freaky dragamel. She jumped off and hit the ground hard, for maximum jug-shaking, then shoved a few Oreos into the animal's toothy mouth. "You rang, princess?"
Kris cracked her knuckles and tied back her flowing red locks. "Shouldn't've said that, bitch."
"Killer," Smith said, twiddling his thumbs. She eyed him up and down, grimacing at his new choice in fashion. "My dear, I was truly hoping we would have the benefit of being graced by your beauty once more. It seems my hopes and prayers have been answered, milady. Seems there truly is a God on this here graceful green Earth."
"Can it, fruitloop." Killer leapt into battle with Kris and they smacked their guns together, letting off pows, kablooeys, rat-a-tat-tats and a whole slew of other noises one might find tattooing the tattered pages of a teenager's comic book collection.
Kris got the upper hand, had Killer's lips sucking shotgun and was about to blow her head to smithereens, when the black light came on again. "Damn it!"
13
"BURNIN' trees, maaaaan!"
Despite the hippy, trippy, Summer of Love-style atmosphere, the gang knew the sub-genre dictated that things were far from perfect. For they were in Dystopian. The grey-garbed crazies from before now seemed to have adopted tie-dye colours. It looked like they'd grown up from their cult-like tendencies and were now a commune of free-thinking, easy-living tree-burners.
"What-" Smith wrinkled his nose in disgust. "-is that horrid stench!"
"Grass," Kris said as she rolled one up from her private stash. She bummed a light from one of the hippies and held in the smoke. Let it out in a thick grey plume. "Man, I needed that." She offered a hit to Smith and Jones who both shook their heads uncomfortably.
H'ver, however, gladly accepted. Shortly after, a ding! was heard. He tossed his offensive sign away and opened his front chassis. "Who wants brownies!"
All the hippies scrambled-and by scrambled, I of course mean they crawled, too baked to move faster than a snail's pace-over to the robot.
"Woah, man, trippy outfit," one hippy said, biting into a brownie. "Did you make that yourself, dude?"
H'ver nodded, too baked to talk.
"Coooool, dude. That's real cooool."
The black light was starting up again, so Kris quickly stole a lighter from a hippy's hand.
14
A world that looked like the motherboard of a computer graced the gang now. CyberPunk, ooh-la-la. Smith was flipping through his TV implant's channels, trying to find that cricket match he'd been watching before, but could only find Quidditch. Jones discovered he had implants in his eyes that allowed him to see through Kris' pylons, so he was enjoying that. H'ver actually seemed to downgrade-his processors couldn't add two and two. And Kris had apparently just been given unneeded breast implants. Jones wasn't complaining-well, that is until the channel changed and he had to save the sight of Kris to his mental hard drive.
15
THEY arrived in Superhuman and were greeted by the large green dude with a bad attitude and a worse costume.
"Well, well, well. Back again, are we? Guards!"
Kris shot him with her shotgun, which was now welded to her arm. Therecoil on it was enough to throw her shoulder out of its socket.
The green guy was hit in the chest and died violently. Then greenenergy trickled out of his hands and maneuvered its way into his gapingchest-wound. The wound did the impossible: It healed. The green guy wasstill too dead, though, so he didn't get up.
"I could get used t' this thing," Kris said appreciatively, snapping her arm back into place.
"As could I!" Jones said from somewhere.
Smith looked up and, astonishingly enough, saw Jones flying around with his propeller hat. He then saw H'ver constructing a massive tower out of scraps of metal with just his mind. Smith wondered what he could do in this world. He felt his belly percolating and knew he couldn't hold it in. Smith farted and felt a hot flame rip out his bottom. He subsequently went flying forwards. "Excuse me!" he shouted,feeling crude but, at the same time, loving the speed at which he was moving.
Kris laughed, shouting out: "Yer excuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-"
16
"-UUUSED!"
Back in the DecoPunk wasteland sprawl. Buildings saying, "Screw the sky, we're reaching for the sun!"
"Hey, where the hell're our biosuits?" Kris asked, taking a deep breath. She tested it, in and out. Safe. "Looks like we don't need 'em."
"Anyone getting rather tired of this particular Sci-Fi Loop?" Jones asked. "I'm dreadfully bored of going backwards through the various worlds we've visited previously."
"You and me both, Jonesy," Smith agreed. "I could use a spot of tea and a buttered crumpet. Maybe listen to the Queen serenade us with her royalty."
"I've never been here before," H'ver said, making donuts in the dust.
Kris scanned the horizon for the chick with a mouth made for bad language. It'd been a while since they'd had their first encounter, a good many issues since then. She was keen to use her new shotgun-arm-speaking of that, she looked down at her arm and saw the shotgun was no longer sutured to her flesh. Damn. It was, however, still a gun with some pretty kickass mods, so she was still cool with it.
"Hey, motherfucker, where the hell did you three shit-eating rebels go!? I've been waiting here for a long motherfucking time, you know! And what the hell is that motherfucking robot doing away from the motherfucking diner's kitchen!"
There she was. The biosuited biatch. Kris pumped her full of lead, and a couple missiles for good measure.
"Ah! Fuck that smarts! You've just chewed through my motherfucking air supply! I needed that to breathe, bitch! You see, I was born without motherfucking functioning lungs! Now I'm gonna die out-"
17
Kris relaxed when the black light had transported them back to their Space Opera spaceship. "Thank the fuckin' Matrix. Thought I'd have t' listen t' her bitch 'til she choked t' death." She collapsed in the captain's chair of the ship.
Smith and Jones watched her remove the powercube from her cleavage and insert it into a slot on spaceship's dashboard. It seemed to fit perfectly in place.
"Care to enlighten us, madam?" Smith asked.
"Seein' if I can boost the subspace communications device from here," she told him. Her fingers rattled the keyboard, flying from key to key. Jones couldn't begin to imagine being able to type that fast. "Well, I'll be a Callujian King's favourite fuckin' whore. I'm locked out 'n' my password ain't workin'." She let her hair down and swung it to and fro. "Gotta couple more tricks up my sleeve..."
There was an explosion from the ship's cargo hold. Kris levelled her shotgun at the doorway. Watching, waiting. And sure enough, one of those ugly m'Vemjsunp aliens poked its freakish head into the cockpit. She didn't wait for its tentacles to have its way with her-or with Smith and Jones; she knew the aliens preferred men-she simply shot it full of holes. It collapsed to the floor and bled greenly.
"This isn't very comic," Jones noted, wiping the sick off his mouth with a sleeve.
"Yer momma," Kris said, feeling annoyed as she picked up the powercube. It seemed like this Sci-Fi Loop adventure would never end, that she'd never get back home, that whoever was responsible for these insane situations would just keep building on them, never seeming to exhaust their probably unlimited supply of ridiculous encounters. She was tempted to toss the powercube and just give up, but decided that that wouldn't be very smart of her. Or fair to the other people of the galaxy. Especially not to Smith and Jones. They never asked to be a part of this.
Lights on.
18
THE SteamPunk world nearly choked them with how over-the-top it all was. Some guy with Harry Potter-glasses and one of those annoying waxed moustaches drove his steam-powered gondola bike through the sky. One woman with an annoying waxed moustache blew cotton candy into dirty shapes and passed them out to snickering teenaged boys who all had annoying waxed moustaches. A dog ran by, chasing after a cat-both had annoying waxed moustaches, too.
"My tol'rance fer SteamPunk is dwindlin', ya'll," Kris said, watching a guy (with an AWM, of course) on a steambike turn around for another pass down the street. She grabbed a long metal rod that just happened to be lying on the sidewalk and waited.
"Kris," H'ver said, "assuming I'm reading your intentions correctly, are you aware of the ramifications-"
She flapped her hand at him, nonverbally telling him to pipe the fuck down.
As the guy picked up speed and was about to pass them again, she tossed the metal rod into the spokes of his bike. She smiled as he went flying like Superman and crashed into the cotton candy woman. "Think I'm startin' t' like this place some more."
Unfortunately for her, the world changed again.
19
SMITH examined the surrounding hostile wasteland. The sky seemed to have a weird greenish hue to it. The air tasted like rotten eggs. And broken-down cars lined the cracked streets for miles. A guy in a boring blue maintenance-worker outfit walked across the plains over yonder, a mangy mutt following, hoping for radioactive scraps. "Amusing isn't it, that I don't quite recall this part of the Loop."
"I believe, Mr. Smith, that we hadn't yet been invented."
"Hmm? Pray tell, what do you mean by that, Mr. Jones?"
Jones gave his head a shake, a couple little slaps to the cheeks. "I'm sorry to say, Mr. Smith, that I can't... quite... remember."
"It seems quite simple to me: You were being possessed by the author," H'ver offered. "That's simply the only logical way of looking at it."
"Looks like Apoc'lypse t' me," Kris said. "Strange we never did this in the Loop before."
"You reckon this is it?" Jones asked. The black light came on again. "Oh. Guess not."
20
THEY were in a cornfield now. A disc-shaped spaceship touched down. The hatch opened and one alien came strolling out towards them. It had hooves and six nipples.
"Greetings, humans. We are aliens, and we come in peace. We look forward to learning more about your species, telling you about our own, teaching one another better ways of living in harmony with your remarkable planet, and sharing with you our vast collection of chemical agents which you will no-doubt find to be powerfully psychoactive. Now-" The alien raised a hoof, and a large, long, rusty, serrated blade materialized. "-bend over for probing, please."
Kris didn't think, she just acted.
A roundhouse kick broke the alien's neck. It snapped it back into place and picked itself up from the grass. "But this is how we learn more about your species. If you would please-"
Unleashing a flurry of blows, Kris pummelled the alien until it was unconscious. Then she pummelled it some more. After a few minutes of this, Smith and Jones both looked at one another and shrugged. They joined Kris in the intergalactic beatdown. H'ver periodically gave them refreshments and towels to wipe their sweaty faces with.
Some of the other aliens had been watching from the safety of their spaceship. Around four minutes into the violent, brutal, first-hand look into these horrible creatures called humans, they decided to fly off in their ship, in search of a more peaceful, enlightened species. They waved before leaving, but the humans were too distracted by their murderous tendencies to notice.
Kris pushed the red hair out of her face. It was soaking with sweat. She looked down at the mushy mess that resembled an alien as much as it did a car stereo. "Last dirtbag who tried t' probe me got worse. Consider yerself lucky, ya alien bastard."
The black light came on, and for the last time.
21
OFF. Back in that snow globe. Only now it seemed to be resting precariously on the edge of the drunken man's left asscheek. He was partially turned-over, and if, in his state of drunken unconsciousness, he decided to turn any more, the snow globe would fall, hit the floor of the universe and shatter-AND WHO KNOWS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO THE GANG NEXT!!!
"So what the hell were we doin' before," Kris said to the others. "I can hardly remember."
Smith looked around and saw the glowing green thing trying-and failing-to hide under a rock. "I believe I was hot on the trail of that." He pointed.
"That," H'ver said, "is a Bingleboo. Hailing from the planet Nefertiti, Bingleboos glow green when they've gone without sunlight for too long. Sunlight is crucial to the survival of these creatures, as it is how they make their own food. It appears this one is very hungry indeed."
"Poor guy," Kris said, slowly moving towards the Bingleboo. "Hey, little guy. We ain't gonna hurt ya. Was ya the one who was creatin' that Mini-Loop?"
"Sooo hungry... Go away! I'll kill you! Neeeed fooooood... Traaaaapped in here... Die!"
Kris picked up the rock and saw the Bingleboo. It was green, glowing, and looked like a hairless cat. "Hey there. We come in peace. What's yer name?"
"Boogaloo... Do you have any food...? Prepare to die! Help me... Staaaarving... Hate, maim, death!"
Smith wiped a tear from his eye. "H'ver, do you happen to know of anything this poor animal can eat?"
"Why's it threatening us and asking for assistance?" Jones asked.
"Jones, I'll answer you first," H'ver said. "When a Bingleboo goes without sunlight for too long, they begin to develop irreversible psychotic tendencies. Smith, you're asking 'the Housewife's Delight' model robot if he is capable of feeding a Bingleboo?" H'ver emitted a series of bloops and bleeps that could only be laughter. "Coming right up."
When Boogaloo heard the ding! of H'ver's oven and smelled the freshly prepared food, he knew he was saved. He ravenously ate the crushed beetle soufflé, burped and asked for more. After a minute or two, his colour began to turn a vibrant, glowing red.
"Thanks, you guys," Boogaloo said. "Thought I was a goner. Somehow I got myself stuck in this Sci-Fi Loop and thought I was gonna be here forever! Die, you bastards, die! Anyway, then you guys came along and-kill kill kill-I got afraid, so I guess I sorta put you guys through the Mini-Loop. Anyway, I'm sorry. Murder, blood, guts! Can you guys ever forgive me? Die!"
They didn't have time to give Boogaloo their forgiveness. The familiar-and, by this point, relieving-bright white light filled their eyes. And Boogaloo was taken away from the Comic part of the Sci-Fi Loop alongside them.
"Finally!" he shouted. "I'm going home! Diiiiiiiiiiiiii..."