Alright, so I didn't exactly climb the highest mountain, but I rode an elevator through one of the strangest ones. I guess that means that the second adventure should involve swimming the deepest sea. That will take every bit of bravery I can muster or perhaps every bit of distraction I can give my brain.
As much as I have the rather common fear of heights, I also have a great fear of the ocean. The depths terrify me. No matter how rational my foggy brain tries to be, deep below the surface of every great body of water lies a thick cold soup of tentacles and teeth.
First there is the layer of pretty fish and gentle whales. Then sharks and eels and sea snakes wriggle their way up to gobble up all that pretty and gentle...and below that? Shoulder to shoulder teeth and gelatinous monsters.
I stated before that I'm not really afraid of the dark. I should clarify that I feel this way on land, where I can hear and openly breathe without an apparatus. Underwater dark is a new level of dark. It's a new level of fear. It's not just "lights out" like in the caves; it's walls-closing-in-until-there-is-no-room-for-light.
Yet I see little other recourse. This ridiculous journey must continue, and I find myself standing on the edge of a cliff, looking over the nightmare sea. If I believed in Hell, I'd think I was hovering above it now.
It's nighttime because it might as well be. It's raining because my brain tells me it is.
Rain and waves are the only sound as most of the screaming seagulls have already gone beddy-bye, though my imagination tells me I can hear a low bubbling growl from below the freezing cold ebb and flow. I'm not sure I've ever been filled with this kind of dread. I am a lucky fella for that.
I picture emotionless eyes staring just below the surface, looking up at me as if I were a piece of popcorn. I picture super wide mouths. I picture huge hungry bellies and slithery parts. Worse, I will have to do this alone. I can't take Dewdrop with me. Tuna is the chicken of the sea, not dodo. He can travel on a boat, but not dive into the terrifying abyss.
I'm not going to jump in right now. I need to think this through. I need to figure out where to start. How I'm going to breathe underwater. How I'm going to stay warm. Perhaps I need a ship or a submarine. I have heard tell of many shipwrecks and subwrecks in this area, which is why I picked it. Hopefully the ship or sub I board won't wreck as well.
From behind me in the dark and fog I hear a voice addressing me. Perhaps it's the tone, but Dewdrop seems unphased. Neither of us are startled. It is a gentle and friendly voice.
"Have you seen where I parked the ship?"
A very pale man steps out of the shadows. I wouldn't describe him as albino; I'm not sure that's it. It seems as though he is a different species than I, a species where pale is the norm. You wouldn't call a polar bear, a snowy owl or the white bits of a zebra albino, in the same way calling this man albino seems inappropriate. He looks far too young for the white hair sticking straight up from his head, and he is wearing odd aviator-style goggles. He smiles at Dewdrop.
"Wow! What is that?" he asks, astounded, excitedly pointing his index finger at Dewdrop.
"It's a dodo. His name is Dewdrop."
"I love it. I love that Doughy-drop. Is he a vicious murderer or can I pet him?"
"You can --" Dewdrop shuffles behind me, perhaps a little wary. Not scared, just wary. In the same way that an old dog is often weary of poking children.
The man gets distracted by his surroundings before he can feel insulted by this reaction. He looks around in a panic. He looks over the cliff side into the water, and then back at the rocks and shrubs behind me. He checks his pockets. He lifts his goggles for a clearer look. When he turns to me I almost jump out of my shoes. His eyes, pupil, sclera and iris are all such a deep navy they may as well be black. They give him a certain cartoon baby animal look.
"Have you seen the ship?" he finally repeats.
"Ship? Er...in the ocean? Did it float away?" I answer, attempting to be helpful.
"Ocean? Oh I certainly hope not," he exclaims running back to the edge and looking into the deep. "I think it would be okay, but I wouldn't know how to get to it without getting my shoes wet."
I am perplexed by this whole situation.
"I swear I left it right here. I just popped out for a moment while Aye ran into the mall."
At this we simply stand there and stare at each other. I have no idea what to say, and he seems to have forgotten he can talk. By the look on his hapless mug, I'd say he's struggling to remember how.
After what only feels like an hour, I break the silence. "So. You sailed your ship out here and can't find it. Do you have a phone on you? Would you like to borrow mine?"
"Sail?"
"You didn't sail?"
"Like a boat?"
"Er...yeah. Like your ship."
"Aaaaaaah! Now I get it. Not that kind of ship. You want the model? Will that help you help me find it? I better find it before Aye gets back."
"Before you get back from where?"
"No, not me, chum. I'm right here, remember? Look in front of you. Do you need to touch my face or something? Would you like to? I think that would be nice."
"What? No. You said you went into a mall."
"No, I said Aye went into a mall."
At this we simply stand there and stare at each other. I have no idea what to say, and he seems to have forgotten he can talk. Again. Dewdrop winces. The strange man coos at this.
"Ok. Fine. I'll bite. What model of ship do you have."
"Oh! It's lovely. I mean, it's a bit older and has been banged up quite a bit. But it's a Shiv. Not sure what year. Actually a Shiv 360 Turbo Airship. Rust coloured. Y'know, so if it rusts you can't tell. Pretty smart, right? We didn't even need to paint it that colour, it just sort of happened when it got wet."
I step back. How could I have not recognized him? Goosebumps cover me.
"When you said 'Aye went into the mall' you meant Aye spelled A-Y-E, didn't you. As in an Aye Aye." My eyes begin to well up.
"Right!"
"And you...you...you're Potto?"
Oh! My babies!
Over a decade ago I created a TV pilot. It was meant to be a vehicle for my comedy partner Matthew Reid and myself and our comedy duo "Reid Along With Browning". It was a comedic space opera. Yes, an hour long show like Star Trek, but weirder and funnier like The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy. It was about two idiots on the run from an intergalactic tyrant called The Node. I was to play Potto, Matt to play Aye. The show would start with The Node hiring every bounty hunter in the known universe to find them, and chronicle how these two losers end up saving the universe. In fact the tagline was "The universe is a strange place. It will take even stranger heroes to save it." I spent maybe 15 years working on "The Adventures of Infamous Potto & Aye" on-and-off, pitching it to networks (networks that didn't know what to do with it: "Is it an hour long sci-fi drama or a sitcom set in space?" Ahem! It was an hour-long sci-fi comedy drama, heavy on the absurdest comedy) then tweaking it, adding more to their universe, falling more and more in love with something that was becoming more and more (and heart breakingly) clear would never see the light of day.
But here he is. Flesh and blood in front of me.
"Yeah, that's me! Wow! Have we met?" he chirps.
"No. But I'm overwhelmed and flabbergasted we finally get to." It wasn't until now that I noticed that despite the hue of his skin, the hair and eyes, he looks similar to a younger me.
"Maybe you can see into brains. I knew someone like that once. Couldn't see into mine though. Said there wasn't enough to read." He smiles, but not a smile recognizing this as an insult. "So...I just noticed this doesn't look anything like a parking lot. Are you sure you don't want to touch my face?"
In my future the entire earth will become one big shopping centre - Earth: the mall planet.
Now things were making sense, except of course why he is here in our time line. Oh, and very much real. "You are in the right place, however not the right time," I inform.
"Okay. I'll wait."
"The mall won't be here for over a thousand years."
"Oh. I wish I had remembered my danish."
Sometimes it is difficult to notice storm clouds sneak silently in when the sky is already so dark; not until they rumble. It is this rumble that draws my attention to it. Seconds later comes the downpour. Potto quickly rushes to my side and opens a large umbrella he mysteriously unsheathes from his person and shelters me and my shaking Dewdrop.
"It was raining like this when I got out of the Shiv to chase off the zombies," he says as we all huddle together.
"Zombies?"
"Parking lot zombies. They were scratching up the, uh, paint."
I can't help but notice a large glowing button on the side of the umbrella.
"What does this button do?" I ask.
"I dunno. I only noticed it earlier. When I pressed it the parking lot became these shrubs and rocks. Maybe it makes things into shrubs and rocks." He replies, absentmindedly pressing it again.
Immediately a purple glow starts to emanate from the underside of the umbrella. It covers us in light. I can feel the light painlessly dissolving me like an Alka-Seltzer.
"I think that this is supposed to happen." Potto offers, and soon he, I and Dewdrop are gone, taking the umbrella with us. I still have consciousness and blurred sight. It is like I am simply a cartoon thought bubble, an idea of myself.
All is dark for a brief moment and then I can then see the umbrella forming, and a hand holding it, which grows an arm and a pale body as the whole process reverses. Dewdrop is slowly appearing as well, and just like that I am standing there with a body again, next to them. It has stopped raining. In fact it has stopped shrubbing and rocking too. It has started parking lotting and zombie-ing.
Potto closes the umbrella quickly and starts swinging it at two zombies. They look like they were once humanoid aliens of some sort. I really don't have much of a chance to gaze upon their oddity before Potto grabs my arm and Dewdrop's beak and pulls us toward the steps of a rust-coloured (yep...actually rust) spaceship. We run up the stairs as they disappear behind us, being drawn back to a hidden slot below the main hatch to the ship.
As I catch my breath I marvel at my surroundings. I am on a spaceship. With an alien I may have created. And an extinct bird that might be a figment of my imagination. Strange days indeed.
"Who the hell is that, shit-steak?" says a dark figure approaching. It is Aye. He is shorter, with shaggy long black hair and small horns jetting from his widow's peak giving him a distinct devilish look. His insult seems to bounce off of Potto as if he had just taken off headphones.
"I dunno. Some guy I met. Definitely not a zombie." Potto returns.
"Well, he will be soon. No stragglers."
"But he has this lovely dewdo-birdo-thingy. Maybe we could keep them both as pets."
"Fiiiiine. But you're taking them for walkies." Aye sighs as he disappears down a nearby corridor. I don't feel great about being something's pet, but it is better than mall zombies.
The ship starts to rock a wee bit.
"We should probably take off. They're getting thick out there." Potto starts to follow Aye's path beckoning us to follow.
"What's with all the zombies?" I ask.
"It's a really big parking lot. Sometimes folk park, and then spend the rest of their lives looking for their ship. They form gangs to survive. They soon become zombies. Gangs of zombies. Parking lot zombies. That's why you should always write down your parking spot number. Ours is thirty million four hundred and twelve. Two rows over from the sign with the giraffe on it," he adds as I contemplate how funny I think "twelve" is as a random number. And giraffes.
We are soon on the bridge and Potto sits in the pilot seat. Aye is looking through a shopping bag at his mall purchases.
"Have a seat and buckle up!" Potto instructs. I sit in a large upholstered seat, lift lovely Dewdrop onto my lap, and buckle the ordinary-looking-car-seat seat belt around us with a struggle. Potto starts the ship up as a computer voice can be heard from the corridor instructing anyone else on the ship to sit and buckle as well.
There is a rumble, and the view of a huge lot filled with spaceships starts to disappear under us as we ascend. For a second I am sure I see a shuttle bus overtaken by the same gang of zombies that had just attacked us.
Once above all the other ships, I get a quick view of the mall in question, or at least a small section of it. As we get higher I get an idea of the scale of the the thing, and by the time we are in space, I see something quite sad. The earth.
It is no longer a planet of blues and greens. The whole planet, land and ocean is the inoffensive beige of a mall, with large grey patches of concrete parking lot. There will be no "overview effect". I feel cheated and swear for a second I can hear the entire planet screaming in agony.
Grey and beige are poison compared to blue and green. What was funny, satirical and cautionary in my script, is painfully heart-wrenching in reality.
My overview is empty and lost, hollow and sickening. For a moment I don't want to live.
"It fits!" Aye exclaims, breaking me from the dread. He is wearing a sheer sparkling black lace top which is clearly too small for him.
"Nice!" offers Potto.
"Shut up," Aye snaps.
"Yes!" Potto agrees. "Sequins!"
Aye has either taken off his seat belt, or has ignored the warning and hasn't put it on to begin with, so I take mine off. It is a tight fit with Dewdrop buckled in with me. In my script the Shiv had a few others tagging along. I wonder if they are here.
"I've always wondered what it was like to be on a spaceship." I thought out loud.
"You've never been on a spaceship?" Aye asks with a snide grin. "Loooooser," he sing-songs like a bully.
The weird thing about meeting characters you feel you may have created is that you immediately feel as if you know everything about them. You know how they will react to things. You've made them react these ways many times before.
On the flip-side, though, they don't know you at all, which gives you the upper hand. If you had never met the abrasive Aye before, you might be intimidated by his insults and demeanor. However, I feel as if I do know him. I know that he is a coward. I know how insecure he is. I know how weak. So I have no problem throwing it back at him. "Going as a Squambogian Elder for Hallowe'en?" I say sneering at his ridiculous shirt.
I didn't want to be mean. I never want to be mean, but I feel I should establish myself as someone who will not put up with his bullshit. It seems to have worked. With the look of near tears in his eyes, I know he won't retaliate. I am shaking with remorse though.
I sit quietly for the next quarter hour or so, taking it all in. Can it be that fiction that I made up came to life? Or perhaps I predicted a possible outcome for the future with a Potto & Aye prophecy. I look at Potto, then to Aye. Potto smiles at me, Aye looks away sulking, mumbling something about not knowing what a Hallowe'en is. They even have the same names...names I based on lemurs (I often find the "lesser" of the primates more fascinating).
In this silence I also remember my goal. This adventure took a turn I wasn't expecting, and I am hoping I find the Time Dingus here. It would mean that I don't have to go near the spooky ocean. In these thoughts I also realize that I have ignored the obvious.
"Soooooo, that umbrella. That some kinda time-traveling apparatus?"
Both look at me like I have just asked them who won the Academy Award for best sound engineering in 1978.
"You remember Potto? The umbrella that took you to the seaside, and then brought us all back to the mall parking lot?"
"Oh. That. I dunno. I just grabbed it from the bin at the back hatch. Looked like rain."
"You don't know where it came from? How it works?"
"I don't know where it came from, but an umbrella generally works thusly: you push up the spoke-things and the other flappy part opens to keep the rain off of you."
"Yes yes yes, but they usually don't have you travel in time. Can I see it?"
Without waiting for an answer I get up and make my way back down the corridor and try to remember my way back to that back hatch. Only Dewdrop follows.
I must have taken a wrong turn. I walk past a door with "Engine Room" written in red pen on a post-it note. The low moan of a man in pain lures me inside; Dewdrop hangs back for the same reason. Sitting on a throne of a chair, and completely restrained by wires and parts of the ship's engine, is a terrifying yet sad looking man. His eyes are closed and a line of drool hangs from his bottom lip. His bloodshot eyes open slightly and meet with mine.
"Heeeeelllllp meeee," he moans without moving his lips.
"Nope!" I reply cheerfully and take my exit.
I make my way back down corridors, wondering if I will run into any more of the strange characters I may have created. If they are here, I do not find them. I do find the umbrella though, in a bin marked 'Shit I Stole' in what can only be Aye's messy scrawl. I open it and examine it. I am careful not to press the button. I don't want to end up back in my own time while I am in space. There is also some odd writing on it in some odder (no doubt) alien language. I smile at Dewdrop. He scratches under his stubby wing with his nothing-stubby-about-it beak.
When I enter the bridge again Aye is glue-gunning more sequins to his shirt and Potto starts playing with Dewdrop on the floor like he is a puppy. Dewdrop is genuinely happy with this, but is sure to give me a loving little goosey 'honk' in recognition.
"Find the pinwheel?" Potto asks.
"Umbrella," Aye corrects without looking up.
"Umbrella?" Potto corrects himself without missing a beat.
"Yeah. There's some writing on it I can't read," I answer.
"Maybe you need reading lessons," Potto beams, no doubt feeling helpful.
"It's not in a language I understand," I add, showing it to Potto.
"Nope. No idea," he beams again. I show it to Aye.
"No idea. Wing-dings?" he grunts, not looking at it at all and still a little sulky with me.
"Is there anyone else on board that could help? I mean besides Weird Jimmy in the engine room?"
"Nope. The others are at Euphoria trying to find something. Can't remember what," Potto reported.
"And I don't care what," snorts Aye.
"Knutt might know," Potto adds.
Right! Knutt is the name of the ship's computer. It can download itself into a tiny portable robot if it needs to join them off ship. While I'm at it I'll explain Weird Jimmy, Euphoria and the "anyone else on board" so that we may continue without too much confusion:
Aye first found Potto when he crashes the stolen prisoner-transport Shiv on a prisoner-of-war moon. In the crash the pilot is killed and Aye finds prisoner Potto (unaware of what crime he committed) to fly the ship. The ship's power source is also destroyed in the crash, and the back-up relies on brainwaves. They wire an unconscious prisoner to the ship, a psychopathic killer known as "Weird Jimmy", making him a captive of the Shiv. They end up saving a ruthless dominatrix-like bounty hunter named Teeg and her bizarre alien henchwomen Gekko and Clory, who join them. They also save a young 'pantheistic priestess' named Clover. "Euphoria" is a sex circus/brothel/space station, and a common place to find awful people and aliens as well as many black market items. So there you are, up to speed...two morons being chased through space by every bounty hunter, for reasons they are unaware of, with women they are afraid of in a ship powered by the erratic brainwaves of a psychopath.
Now back to the story...
Potto grabs the umbrella from me and takes it over to a device that simply looks like an old flatbed scanner wired into an old food processor and a souped-up desk fan. He lifts the lid and sticks the umbrella under it with the writing facing down. He presses a few buttons.
"Knutt? Can you translate this?" he asks to no one in particular.
The voice programmed into the ship for Knutt to communicate sounds like a nervous, but over-excited 6-year-old boy.
"It..it...it says 'Property of Mel-Aye' in Towerscappian." Aye perks up. He races over and snatches the umbrella from under the lid of the scanner.
"Ugh! Yeah, it does." He sneers with discomfort. Aye is from Towerscape. Mel was his late father, a father that had passed his consciousness down to a robot assassin called Mel Million Max. On Towerscape, it was a rite of passage/manhood to fight your father to the death, but Aye's father had died before this could happen.
As a mad inventor with a doctorate in mad robotics, he had created this killing machine to hunt down and finish his son off. Family wasn't a real big thing on Towerscape. Grumpy old man in a killing machine. Lovely.
This, of course, is all speculative; assuming all of this craziness is exactly as it is my show bible. By the actions and body language of Aye, I'd say it was right on. I also knew he wouldn't like my next request. Not one bit.
"I am looking for a device called the Time Dingus," I start.
"Good name," Potto interrupts.
"Thanks, I came up with it in the introduction. It has the ability to stop time."
"Why would you want to stop time? If you stopped time you'd never get birthday presents," Potto interrupts again.
"When was the last time you got a birthday present?" Aye interrupts the interruption.
"I can't remember. I mustn't be very old then," Potto says, lost in thought.
"Yeah, well, I need to find it and if Mel Million Max knows about time-travel, perhaps he is the one to ask," I say.
"No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no..." says Aye.
I can't leave this idea. When am I ever going to be in this situation again? I can't exactly go off on my own or I'll never get back to my time and my family. Plus I don't know how, or my way around. For that matter how I will cope with a murderous robot if do in fact I find him? However, I am not sure I really want to put everyone's (especially Aye's) life in danger. What to do, what to do...
"We are heading back to Euphoria to pick up the...uh...ladies," Potto informs.
"After we spend some time there with some other ladies. Or fellas. Or something else entirely," Aye sleezes.
Euphoria makes me nervous. If it is anything like the one I created, the aliens there can be quite aggressive and always on the sexy sales pitch. I don't even like to answer the phone, so this may be awkward to say the least.
We arrive after several hours, most of which I spend looking around the ship and listening to Potto go on and on about some kind of giant sand flea from that prisoner-of-war moon he was trapped on. Aye eats several candy bars and falls asleep.
I am also nervous to meet Teeg and her cohorts Gekko and Clory. Teeg is an assassin and highly dangerous, and as for Gekko and Clory, well...so far Potto, Aye, Weird Jimmy in the engine room and even the parking lot zombies are all fairly human-like. Seeing a real very different looking alien, I imagine, will be fairly jarring. Especially a reptilian that can breathe fire and a walking clump of thorny vines. Potto discussing his irritable bowel syndrome and bathroom habits is keeping my mind off of them for now.
From space, Euphoria looks like a floating Las Vegas casino that has received a steam-punk makeover. Crazy fluorescent lights cover the stained exterior like glowing graffiti, most of which represent several different alien alphabets and languages. I can easily make out "Euphoria Sex Circus" and various sultry promises. There is apparently a valet service, but Aye doesn't trust them. I wouldn't either; the employees there look like criminals, quite filthy and vaguely vulture-like from a distance. And they apparently smell like cat pee. Instead we pull up to a small dock where a droid tethers us to a pole like we are a giant row boat.
Everything in this future I may or may not have created would have one believe the entire future is made up of spare parts and re-wired hardware of our era. Old video game joysticks, tube televisions, first wave cell phones and laptops, radios, calculators, children's electronic memory games, VCR's, microwave ovens, and other kitchen appliances are all the norm of any ship's deck.
We make our way to the back hatch. The huge door opens and a small walking ramp comes down from the ship where there were stairs before. The droid clips the ramp to the dock and we exit. There seems to be some kind of invisible bubble around us, allowing us to breathe and not float off into the abyss of space, though it feels as if we could still, and it's quite unnerving. For a moment, and only for a moment, I can't wait to get inside this dive.
Though a rough and somewhat disgusting place, Euphoria is somewhat voyeuristically stimulating as well. This is where people and creatures come together to experiment with their sexuality, consume drinks banned all over the universe and do drugs that may or may not (but probably may) be the last thing they ever do. Places like this were generally overlooked by The Node and his army and seen as being in "international waters", and a distraction for idol hands.
The "Main Event" room is large and crowded with those who want to drink, dance, watch the many naked trapeze artists overhead, or have sex in public. There are corridors all over leading to smaller rooms, private quarters, "show rooms" and various themed cafeterias.
I feel that it is important to discuss now what it is like to see an alien for the first time...
When a film or television character first comes across an alien, they either run screaming if it is a gross, ooze-dripping killer, or they offer it candy and refuge if it is adorable and friendly. If the person meeting them is military, there is no emotional response at all, just a need to destroy and dissect the creature. In reality the first reaction is the most real despite what the alien looks like or what its intent or demeanor is. The best way, or perhaps just the easiest way to compare the feeling is that of walking in the woods and coming across a bear. Your brain does a quick double take. In a millisecond it asks and answers, "What is that? A bear. Hey, it's a bear. What the? Oh my god! It's a fucking bear!!" This feeling goes through you so quickly that upon the mental discovery "It's a bear" a surge of what feels like electricity zaps through your body. The hair on your neck stands up (if not shaved), goosebumps may instantly appear, and then the feeling that your whole body is instantly frozen hits you like a bus. You stand stunned, not sure what to do. You stare, your body starts to quake, and if you try to scream, nothing comes out. It's like you forgot how to make any noise. All in a few seconds. That is what seeing an alien for the first time is like. Good or bad or cute or ferocious. The only difference is that if the alien is being introduced to you, you then have to quickly transform that shock into looking like you are 'cool with it' to be polite.
"This is Gekko," says Potto cheerfully.
Electric, frozen, stunned I try to say, "Happy to meet you" but nothing comes out but a gasping choke. Gekko is an oddly attractive reptilian (that appears more amphibian) woman with a bald head, big saucer eyes with crescent moon pupils and smooth bluish skin. She stares at me and I back at her. I'd shake her hand but I'm sure she would feel my hand quake like a chihuahua in a snow bank. Her head turns in swift motions, cocking to the side like a parakeet.
She greets me by "smelling" me with a tickly forked tongue. I stand as still as I can. I simultaneously want to climb a tree to fruitlessly try to escape her and follow her around like a (terrified) puppy because she looks so cool.
Potto pulls her aside and starts talking to her. I can't hear over the music, but she points up to a caged balcony where I see Teeg sitting on a large man's lap, dry humping with a knife to his throat. I decide I don't want to know.
Wishing I was sporting horse blinders, my body starts getting used to the jarring feeling of seeing monsters as I follow Potto, Aye and Gekko past all sorts of odd creatures, doing unspeakable (and somewhat confusing) things to each other. The sex all around seems to be oddly calming. Perhaps because if they seem preoccupied by that, they won't focus on me, as I very badly want to be back in the Shiv, or be invisible.
"You okay?" Potto finally asks.
"No," I say way too loudly, trying to say "Yes."
"Here. This'll help." Aye smirks, handing me a strange looking bottle of an even stranger looking liquid. "Drink up." Which I foolishly do.
He was right. The drink, which tastes like sambuca filtered through a bag of chocolate cake and pig entrails, takes the edge off. It then replaces it with a much sharper edge.
"Seems Teeg, Gekko, and Clory all split up looking for the Swish. Hey I remembered! A Swish!" Potto explains. "They've been here for a few days. Seems they have lost Clover. She's probably off being all philosophical with someone who is ignoring her."
"What's a Swish?" I slur, trying to hold on to sobriety but failing like a champ.
"Oh, it's a cloaking device for the Shiv. The only kind that works on Node Army ships. They are highly illegal, and really hard to find."
The commotion of Teeg's knife-to-throat incident is causing some trouble. As soon as this happens Gekko is gone to be by her side as she slashes the throat of the large man. Black oily blood explodes from the wound and splatters all over all others in the vicinity. Suddenly, as if the whole place was waiting for a cue, fights start breaking out until there is a full brawl going down. I don't last very long in it. One punch in the stomach from a creature half my size that looks like a cross between a plush toy and an anteater, and I'm down. I know this alien, too. He's another bounty hunter, and he's adorably vicious; an extremely dangerous yet darling nightmare.
I lie on the floor trying to catch my breath and avoid the stomping boots, wheels and talons when something grabs my ankle and drags me to the safety of under the bar. It's Clover, looking as lost and sad as I had always imagined her. She stares at me with deep dark semi-circles under her eyes, like she hasn't slept in weeks.
"It's you!" She smiles. "We have to get out of here. Do you know where the Shiv is parked?"
Thanks to the horribleness I have swallowed, I can't even remember my name.
"Nope. I am hiding from bears. Grizzlies, polars, browns, circus, teddies..." I manage, and she pulls me by the arm out of the Main Event and down a corridor.
I trip over the body of a headless man. A droid is mopping up blood as another droid shoots a laser at the body that dissolves it to a powder. It quickly vacuums the dust up with an attachment on its arm. The detached head still lays there staring at me, inches from my face. The face looks content. I'm sure mine does not.
"Preferred method of suicide of men between nineteen and one hundred and eighty-five, women between forty and seventy-six, and those other-gendered between fifty and sixty-seven. Sex with a mantis woman of Squambog," Clover explains, kicking the head over to the vacuum droid.
It is occurring to my intoxicated mind that there are aspects of this future that I have not created, that have taken on a life of their own. Gekko was from Squambog, as was the humongous reptilian bounty hunter with the voice of a three year-old girl, Jorge Jorge Jorge...however, I don't remember creating any sexually competent mantis people that decapitated their lovers at the exact moment of climax. Perhaps I would have to remember that for later.
Before I know it, Clover pushes and pulls me into a small closet with four chairs. She sits me in one and buckles a seat belt, and does the same to herself. She pulls a lever and the room shakes. Through a small window I can see space moving - we are moving. This is an escape pod, and what adventure in space would be complete without one? I realize now I should have peed before we left.
"Ok. I've turned the beacon signal on. The Shiv should find us without any difficulties," she assures me. I feel ill. I look ill. She turns into a polar bear. I try not to mention it.
We float in silence.
"You look ill. Do you feel ill?" she finally asks.
"Are you going to play with me before you eat me?" I return. Barely.
She lets out a big sigh and reaches into a satchel I hadn't noticed on her polar bear hip. She pulls out a few pills with her fuzzy paws.
"Chew these," she instructs. When a polar bear tells you to do something, you damned well do it. Within seconds I sober up a bit and, though I still don't feel well, she becomes human-ish again, and I remind myself that I should not even be in the same room with anything Aye offers me in the future. My brain clears enough to ask questions.
"What did you mean 'It's you'?" I finally inquire.
"I know who you are and what we all are to you here. I also know what you are looking for. You won't find it, and that is good," she answers.
"Did I create all of you?" I risk sounding egomaniacal and the thought is so overwhelming, tears erupt from my eyes.
"Ha! No. You didn't travel in time either. This isn't your future. This is a parallel dimension. There are millions of them. You didn't create us, it only seems that way. We let ourselves be known to you subconsciously and you wrote it down. Other dimensions have written about you in the same way."
"I am confused," I say wiping my eyes.
"It's quite simple. All the worlds you read about, or watch for entertainment in your dimension all actually exist in others. There are those out there that break the barriers and pass their stories on to various people in their dreams from their dreams, never knowing they are even doing it. We trade so much information between dimensions when we sleep. Sleeping is goooood."
"So you are saying that creativity doesn't exist? That every fictional idea ever has come from a series of real events in another universe that we have merely borrowed?"
"No, not quite. To be alive is to be creative. These stories often just start out with basic ideas or characters and you are expected, as the recipient of these ideas, to use your creativity to fill in the blanks; to word it in such a way that it makes people laugh or cry. Each storyteller is subconsciously chosen for a reason. Unbelievable stories find ridiculous storytellers."
"I'm not sure I believe you," I slur bluntly as I remember I don't know how to juggle and that I've never met a man named Leon before.
"Did you look around the bar while you were in Euphoria? There were thousands in there. Do you think, somehow, you created a back story for everyone of those patrons? All the background characters? They all have their own stories you know. They didn't just start existing when you laid eyes upon them. They all had childhoods, or at least larval stages. There must have been alien species you didn't recognize?"
I feel humbled by all of this. And frankly, quite embarrassed.
"Yes. In no way was I insinuating..." How could I have thought I was some kind of creator of all this. I suppose I didn't ever really feel like a God, but more like a magician; that I had somehow conjured up something I had written into the physical world. Then again, there is a pretty great chance none of this is real anyway. I try to change the subject.
"So. You are Clover." I smile through my nauseated tum and blushing dizziness.
"Yes. But you already knew that." She winks. "So...how does it end?"
"What? How does it end?" I am taken back by this. Of course if I was whispered all this as a tale from another dimensional bedfellow, I would have an ending. And I do...to Potto and Aye's story anyhow. I even know how their lives will one day end. I didn't realize how heavy this was until now. A part of me wanted to ditch the idea altogether and not know how any of this would go down. I answer honestly, but cautiously.
"I thought I knew, but as you said, I don't know all that I thought I did about this place and this story. A perfect example of that is the fact that I'm here at all. That is something I hadn't considered writing into the script. This conversation didn't exist in The Adventures of Infamous Potto and Aye."
"Maybe not the script. But aren't you writing it right this second? On your laptop? In a coffee shop? In your little dodo story-slash-therapy session?"
I sit a while trying to wrap my head around this. She seems to know, or at least rightly guess that she, and this conversation is in fact coming to me in a coffee shop in front of my laptop with the header "Chapter Two" at the top of it. I don't know what to say and the silence is horrible. She then starts to laugh loudly.
"Did you say 'The Adventures of Potto and Aye'?" she manages between guffaws.
"Infamous. Yes." I answer.
"This is their story? I guess that makes sense. I knew there was more to them than just idiocy."
"Yes. There is."
"I'll have to make a note of that. Take them more seriously."
"Well I didn't say that."
"I guess I just naturally assumed it was my story. I guess anyone would; it's natural. But that means it's probably Potto's subconscious whispering his story to you. I wonder if that means he is the you of this dimension," She starts laughing again while giving me a look of pity.
I stare for a moment. How cryptic this all is.
"Where is your bird?" she asks.
"Dewdrop? On the Shiv still," I answer, lost in the onion-like layers of what is happening. Stupid, stinky onion.
Before this conversation can go on, however, the pod shakes, and starts to hum and vibrate. Clover looks at the control board.
"Ugh. We're being rescued. And it's not The Shiv. And neither of us knows what is going to happen next, do we?"
Looking at my hands, I notice how badly they are shaking. I have written in many undesirable characters. We are being pulled in by one of them. Through the small window I can see we are being swallowed up by a huge ship.
The door is pulled off of the pod by a machine, and several robots stand facing us, holding weapons, which I find odd. A machine holding a machine. It seems to me that if a robot is made to be something that needs a gun, perhaps the gun should have just been built in to avoid any dropping of the weapon. Perhaps though this thought only comes to me to take my mind off of being in front of a robot with a gun.
A horrible mechanical voice insists we are apparently now the "property of Mel Million Max." Two shots are fired. The first one hits Clover and she falls. The second hits me and everything goes dark.
With eyes closed, I dream I am one of the naked trapeze artists dangling from the high ceilings of Euphoria. Everyone is watching. Humans, aliens, robots and polar bears. All watch me silently. I feel sexy. I have an erection. Suddenly the walls start to shake and crumble. Fires break out everywhere and I can only watch from above, unable to get down. Everyone panics and runs around screaming, headed for escape pods, but the pod doors won't open, everyone is trapped. The ropes start to fray and they snap. As I fall I notice that the fire I am falling into spells out "Nobody cares about your stupid sci-fi show" and that I have lost my erection.
When my eyes open, everything is blurry. I am strapped to what seems like an uncomfortable dentist's chair. I say uncomfortable because I happen to find dentist chairs extremely comfortable and nap-worthy. I have fallen asleep during root canals, which is odd considering I don't sleep well at night in my own comfy bed, mouth empty of drills and needles and acquaintance's hands .
"Is he awake?" says a voice that sounds like a human man through a somewhat malfunctioning electric bullhorn.
"Yes, sir. A bit dizzy perhaps, but I suspect by the look of him that that is normal," says a second that sounds vaguely familiar and one hundred percent human.
"Good," crackles the first. As my eyes focus, there stands Mel Million Max. He is a seven-foot-tall imposing robot, with hands that look like metal spiders, and a boxy body with one small tank tread as a "foot'. The head is missing. Instead there is the bluish transparency of a man's head in hologram form projecting at the top; the face of Aye's sarcastically grouchy father.
Two smaller hooded beings stand at his side, one rocking slightly as though he is nervous.
"You were seen with my son. My wee Aye-Aye." says Max. "And you're gonna to tell me where he is now, or you're going to hurt. A lot."
If I have learned anything about torture from watching television and movies, it's that the words "I don't know" are the same as "Hurt me now, please."
"I don't know." I say, too terrified to remember what I had learned about torture from watching television and movies.
He nods to one of his henchmen, who inserts a long metal rod through my wrist and up through my arm to the elbow. A transparent tube connects one end of the rod to a huge machine. The pain is worse than anything I have ever felt before and I may pass out. Best I remember not to answer that way again.
"I really miss him. He is my only son y'know. You got kids?" he smiles, dripping with insincerity.
"Three," I wince in a breathy falsetto. The searing throb in my entire arm makes me feel nauseated.
"Three? Woah. You really diminish your chances of survival there, Hot Pants," he chuckles. "I'm gonna guess that hurt, so I'll ask again. It's okay if you say you don't know a few more times. You seem like a nice guy; I like hanging out with you and, well, hurting you. Like old buds. Gets so lonely out here with only these guys."
Just as I go to say something intelligent, a surge of arm pain hits me and all that comes out is, "I don't know" again. I am immediately so angry with myself, and instantly punished for it with the same treatment to my other arm. I scream and probably pass out again for a second.
"Aw, thanks! See? You are a nice guy. Just you wait, I bet your kids will have you murdered in no time. Well, y'know, if you survive this."
I could just say, "Euphoria" with the confidence that Mel wouldn't kill Aye anyway, as I know how Aye dies, and it's not at the hand of his maniac robo-dad. Finally a benefit to knowing when someone is going to get it. I could say Euphoria, but he's not letting me. Besides there is good chance Aye is not there anymore and a better chance that Mel knows this and that I might as well just say "I don't know" again. I decide to do something that I hadn't seen before in television and movies. What if I were to simply change the subject?
"You invented that time umbrella, didn't you?" I wince and spit.
"Time umbrella? Doesn't ring a bell," he answers, somewhat intrigued. Success in changing the subject! For the moment.
"It was on The Shiv. Had your name on it. It's how I got here." I wince again and spit some more.
"Oh! My patented Trans-dimensional Rain-away! Yeah. Nothing to do with time travel, Babycakes."
Oh right. Damn it, Clover had mentioned that. Clover! Where is Clover?
"Where is Clover?" I gasp.
"She was stolen. Another bounty hunter was stowing away on my ship here. Nabbed her from me and took off. The nerve!" he barks. "Just you an' me, a bunch of droids, and these two idiots . They were stowaways too. Too stupid to kill so I get them to do shit for me." The two henchmen in their hooded robes wave moronically.
"So...you know nothing about time? I'm looking for a device called the Time Dingus," I stutter.
"Never heard of it. What's it do?"
"Stops time. Keeps one from growing old." I give him the short answer. No war cry. Arms hurt too much.
"I don't know about any Time Thingus. No more than you know where Aye is."
"So you believe me when I say I don't know??"
"Yeah. I just really like torturing folk. Besides, you deserve it for those 'I don't know' answers. Haven't you ever seen a movie? Cripes, just make some shit up, bro!"
"So you are torturing me for not being creative enough under duress?"
"Yeeeeeah. Pretty much. I don't know about the Time Thingy, but I know how to slow down time so it almost stops."
"You do? I want to learn."
"You will. The process has already started." His mechanical hand points a thin talon to my arm.
"What are you doing to me?" I'm starting to panic. It's one thing to be tortured, it's a another to be tortured as some sort of "process".
"I'm making you into a machine. Like me."
"No!"
"Yes!"
"Noooo!"
"Yeeeeesssss!!"
"Noooooooooo!!"
"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssss!!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
"YEEEEEESSSSSIIIIRRRRREEEEE-BOB!!!
He smiles at me. I am terrified.
"N--"
He pulls a lever and both tubes connected to the rods in my arms fill up with a silver metallic liquid. I feel it push through the ends and into my arms. The pain now is something unimaginable and he wheels close to me, his hologram face appearing inches from mine, smiling.
"One of us! One of us!" he laughs. He starts to pull away and his face goes with him. I can't even scream. "This is gonna take a while. I'm going to go for a nap. Oh, by the way - I programmed myself with emotions, and I regret it. I spared you that hassle. Y'know, 'cuz I like ya so much, Butt Munch."
He exits the room. I promptly throw up on myself. Right before I pass out I notice my vomit has silver in it and tastes like pencils.
I wake up to the two cloaked figures removing the straps. I feel no pain anymore. I feel no breath inflate my lungs. I feel no frightened thud of erratic heartbeats in my chest. I feel nothing. No fear, no curiosity, no love, no anger. One of the henchmen lowers his hood. Dried up wax drippings and a goofy smile are uncovered.
"Candle Lid." I state.
"Yup! You remembered! How fond you must be of me!" he cheers.
"Quiet down. We have to get him outta here. Are you in pain?" asks scruffy Failsafe from behind.
"No, Failsafe. I feel no pain. I feel nothing," I answer dryly.
"He remembers you too! Lucky us!" Candle Lid chimes in.
"Oh. That's not good. That means we were too late." Failsafe frowns. "But we got to you before he got back. Bet you're wondering how we got here."
"No. I am not wondering anything," I say without thinking.
"Harrumph!" says Candle Lid with a wee short-lived sulk. They help me up, and pull me towards the door. "You look different. Did you get a haircut?" Candle Lid smiles.
I catch my reflection in the chrome surface of the door before it opens. It is undeniably me, but not me. My eyes are like those of the sea creatures I once feared; dead and cold. My flesh hasn't changed, though my veins shine with silver and cover me like spider webs.
We pass down a couple of hallways and to a set of hatch doors. Failsafe punches some code numbers into a control panel and it opens. "Clover is really off this ship?" I ask. Candle Lid nods. "One moment then," I continue as I walk over to a panel on the wall. Without thinking about it, I pull wires and reconnect them. I flip switches. I pull others out completely, and I type into a small keypad numbers and symbols without knowing what they mean, just knowing that they're right. We then enter another small patchwork spaceship attached to the hull of Mel's, the hatch closes and we depart.
After a few minutes and some distance is between us and Mel's huge ship, Failsafe asks, "Should I even ask what that was all about?"
"Before we escaped, I rationed two things. One: there is only one way to get Mel to stop chasing Aye, and two: I had never written when and how Mel Million Max dies. So it could be any way and at any time. That time is now."
Through the window of this small vessel we see Mel's ship explode into fire and debris. I feel no joy. I feel no relief. Worse, I feel no remorse.
Candle Lid and Failsafe say nothing. I can read their faces. This is shock.
"I did not see that coming," Candle Lid finally whispers, looking at one of my eyes close up, then the other. "Have we lost him, Failsafe?"
"For now," says Failsafe.
Their little tugboat of a spaceship lands. It is on a meteor. "You'll have to get out here. We can't be with you right now. Don't worry about the vacuum. It looks as though, as a robot, you'll be fine. Unfortunately. Think about being a beacon and you'll send an S.O.S. and be rescued," says Failsafe sadly. The hatch opens. Though I don't feel fear or question why, a part of me just simply knows that I am responsible for making these two question my worth. No healing hug can rescue me from this level of apathy.
"But it's our fault!" Candle Lid says, now through tears. "We didn't disconnect him in time."
"It doesn't matter now," sniffles Failsafe.
No, it doesn't. Nothing matters. I get out. I hear Candle Lid singing ABC's "All of My Heart". The hatch closes. Silence. They fly away. The end.
I do as instructed and think about being rescued. A light on my hand goes off, continuously blinking an S.O.S. signal to the nothingness of space.
I stand there. I am not tired, I am not hungry. I do not need air. I do not need food. I try to think about my children. I try to think about how much I love them. I try to think about Kim. I try to think about anything that will trigger a feeling. Nothing. And when I try to picture their faces, I can't. They, in my memories, just appear as numbers and profiles, like vague acquaintances on social media. I do not miss them, I do not care about the Time Dingus anymore, as I do not recognize the illusion of time.
The beacon works, and soon The Shiv is over me. A ladder lowers and I climb into the airlock. Soon I am on the bridge. Potto, Aye, Teeg, and Clover stand there staring at me.
"What happened to you?" Clover gasps. I am aware that my new appearance may be jarring.
"I was captured by Aye's father. He decided that I should be a machine," I answer matter-of-fact.
"Damn him," mutters Aye.
"Yes, Aye. I did. You will not be bothered by him anymore."
Aye looked a bit taken aback. "Wha? You...you...really? I'm free?"
"Yes."
"Today I am finally a man!" he smiles and starts to dance around.
"You were rescued?" I say to Clover.
"Yes. It would seem I have a guardian angel," she says.
"I could tell you who that is if you like," I offer, knowing from my script.
"No, thank you," she says sadly. "Scan him Knutt," she whispers to the ship's computer. "Can he be made human again?"
"Not without killing him," says the ship. Clover walks away sadly and pulls a notebook from her satchel.
Potto then walks up to me sadly. In a logical computing mind I realized now that Potto is me, the me in my twenties and thirties. He is often unaware that his actions might have any consequence on others' feelings because he either doesn't think he is important enough to mean anything to anyone, or that he has any great part to play in the scheme of things. Potto doesn't know he can save certain universes because he doesn't think he has any real power and doesn't realize that some universes need him. He just has hope. Hope that one day his head will clear up and he'll understand. Anything. Anything at all.
He hands me a small glass vial of dust.
"What is this?" I ask.
"This is your chicken."
This was my dodo. Without emotion, Dewdrop had turned to dust. I recognized this as sad. I recognized this as devastating. And I recognized that if I could hate, I would hate not feeling hate. I would hate not crying. I would hate not falling on the floor in fetal position bawling my eyes out. I would hate me for not tearing apart the universe to bring him back. As it was, the dodo was once more extinct, and as hard as I wanted to care, I couldn't.
"Where is the umbrella?" I ask. "I should go home. I didn't find the Time Dingus here, but I found a substitute, I guess."
Potto gives me a big hug and Aye nods. Teeg continues to monitor the controls, not knowing who I am anyway, and announces that we are landing in the parking lot of the mall planet, Earth. And just like that, with no feeling at all, I leave what I falsely thought I had created.
Clover walks me to the back hatch of the ship, grabbing the umbrella. Soon we are in the parking lot, and thankfully there are no zombies around.
I put the vial of dust in my pocket as Clover hands me her notebook.
"In the Euphoria escape pod...I asked where Dewdrop was. Did you not wonder how I knew about your bird? I had just met you."
"I suppose I did momentarily, but it passed with the many distractions around us," I answer.
"I found out there and then that, in your world, I am not the lead character in the grand story whispered to you from here."
"No." I second her findings.
"I know a lot about you as well. It's why I wasn't worried about you. Why I am not still. Over the last few years, this has been whispered to me..."
She hands me the notebook. On the cover is the title "The Adventures of LiLi Browning".
I am not the lead in my life's story either.