A Future We'd Like To See 1.35 - The Spaminator By Twoflower (Copyright 1994) The parking lot of the truck stop was unusually quiet. There was good reason, however... most of the local cargo haulers were off watching 'Truckasaurus Rex' beat the tar out of some mecha in a mud pit at the local stadium. There were a few trucks here, abandoned temporarily while their drivers went off and tried to pump themselves high enough on pure caffeine to survive the night hauls. One of the trucks was quite surprised to get a report from its damage computer that 12% of it just vanished. It wasn't ripped off, blown up, or even cut off... just vanished. The 12% in question was part of a sphere. An odd sphere, a sphere of purple light and a blast of warm air, which quickly faded out, leaving only a man, and the sliced-away truck acting very surprised, honking like mad so its owner would come calm it down. The man walked around to the front of the truck, and calmly smashed in the door. One second after that, before the computer could scream in terror, the man ripped the computer out. The CD2 player started up, PLAY knob being bumped. It started belting out annoying synthesized country music until the man decided to rip that out too. The man walked on, around the now-silent truck, focusing his meaty eyes on the sign : SID'S ALL-NIGHT COFFEE TILL YOU CROAK. * "Order up! Sloppy joes!" the waitress yelled, dinging the little electronic bell when the man came in. He looked like your average tall man, pinkish as if from sunburn. Except that unlike the other truckers, he wasn't wearing any clothing. The truckers, jacked on No-Doz, regarded the naked, expressionless man with interest. Then they passed him off as one of those night-run mirages and resumed eating. "Ahem," the man coughed, as if he was dislodging a bit of phlegm the size of Tibet. They continued ignoring him. "I said, AHEM," the man continued, placing a meaty grip on the nearest trucker's shoulder. The trucker turned around, and stared with sleepy eyes directly into the man's pupils. "I need your clothes, your boots, and your truck," the nude man asked, in a polite, yet I'll Rip Your Arm Off If You Don't Watch It sort of tone. "Sorry, I need 'em," the trucker woozily said. "Gotta 56 hour run to do, shippin' slinkies to HappiWerld. Here's my card, call me up if you need shipping done later." The nude man crumpled up the card and threw it away. "I need your clothes, your--" "Hey, Bouncer?" the trucker called. A large man, quite larger than the nude guy, loped up. "Yeah?" he said, in a voice similar to a rock tumbler. "This guy is bugging me," the trucker said. "Alright. Come with me, sir," the Bouncer suggested. The man simply punched the Bouncer. Ordinarily, it would take a twenty ton weight to even faze the Bouncer. This particular punch, however, knocked him across the restaurant and through three plate glass windows. Various truckers applauded, mistaking this for some kind of dinner theater. One of the waitresses had managed to get the one belt-fed shotgun they normally only used to kill meat that hadn't arrived dead yet, and calmly pumped fifteen rounds of shot into the pink idiot who wasn't wearing any clothes. He fell down with a massive THUMP. The truckers applauded again, and promptly stopped when the man got back up, without a scratch on him. "From the top," the man repeated, "I need your clothes, your boots, and your truck." "Uhhh..." the trucker started, unable to cope with the situation any more. He looked to his friends for help. "Nord, the guy just took fifteen blasts with a shotgun and maimed Bouncer," his friends said. "Give the guy your fucking clothes already." * If life had a soundtrack, odds are it would be blaring away with the guitars right now. The man walked out of the truck stop, standing proudly in his new boots and leather duds, seemingly happy with himself. The soundtrack's guitar would have stopped right about now, however, when a stray shotgun shell killed the guitarist. The waitress stood at the door, shotgun pointed and still smoking. "That was a warning shot. Now, fair's fair, mister, but I can't let you take the man's truck. He's got cargo there. Put your hands up." The man turned around, very, very slowly, examining the small girl with the big gun and the stained apron in curiosity. "Good. Now let's have those keys, please," she suggested, as the man promptly yanked the gun out of her hands. "Umm," she said, weaponless and confused. "Errrr," she added. The man smirked, and reached out for her. She began to yelp, as he planted a firm grip around her apron and pulled it off. The waitress, sans apron but still with uniform, ran back inside. The man put on the apron, not sure what to do with it. He was hoping for some sort of solar prevention, but this would have to do. He hopped in the truck, turned on the jets, and roared off into the sky. * Another purple blast of light and air popped up that night, about fifty miles away. Unfortunately, it was twenty feet up in the air. "Oh, shi--" the boy managed, before local physics took over and he plunged to the pavement below, with a sickening CRUNCH and the sound of plastic cracking. The boy groaned, assessing damage. Head : intact. Bruises : few. Bones : unbroken. Pride : damaged. He shook his head to clear out of the purple spots, and looked underneath him. NOW he cursed. There wasn't much left of it. Crushed plastic, a broken screen, flickering various error messages. The battery was already leaking jelly, it wouldn't last more than a few seconds. Even the "100% indestructible, Inspected by #6" label had been ripped. For the first time, he was really, really scared. * The boy hit the door full tilt, carrying the broken computer under an arm. "Welcome to Holo Shack," the robotic clerk cheerily chirped. (The live clerk had been replaced after the chain of stores realized two things. One, most robberies occur at night. Two, humans aren't bullet-proof.) "You don't look like a local to this place," the boy commented. He paused, looking over the robot. "Whatever. Quick man, I need two OO jellicide batteries, one MiniCoil, and a five inch standard FCD screen." "I'm sorry, but we don't carry those things here," the robot chirped. "Great. Just my luck, tech level is too low. You got... never mind, I'll look around for it myself." The boy ran around the store, madly ransacking the shelves, grabbing this plasticwrapped gizmo, that cardboard package of bits and bolts. He took a few tools, and started working. "I assume you will be paying for those now?" the robot grinned madly. "I am fully armed." Assorted clanks, snaps, and curses echoed from the back of the store. The robot watched with interest, wondering if it would get to try out its new flame thrower on the potentially dangerous human. "Cripes," the boy said, walking back towards the robot, carrying the bits of the computer in a plastic bag. "I can't do anything with this stone age crud. I think I'll be needing weapons instead... plenty of 'em. Do you carry those here?" "We carry a few items for self defense, yes," the robot said. "In fact, I currently am using a Holo Shack Flamethrower model--" "Great, I'll need that," the boy said, wrenching the hand flamer from the robot's appendage. The robot blinked. "What else do you have? Any plasma discharge units? Tacnuke grenades? Personal force shield units with ECM? How about a Wand of Earthquake +2?" "I'm afraid we don't carry any of that. Please give me back my flamethrower." "Trust me, pal, I need this more than you. How about a gun?" "We don't carry guns, sir." "I thought you said this place had weapons!" "We do. I have these nice personal 'Zapper' taser handhelds you can use--" "Yeah, right, like that'll help. Okay, I'll just take this flamethrower." "That'll be 520 credits, please." "Here," the boy said, fishing various gold coins, copper pieces, paper bills, and small rubber exchange units out of his pocket and tossing them behind the counter. "I've got no idea what currency you use. Sort out the conversions yourself, I've got stuff to do." The boy slipped out while the robot was busy analyzing the chemical compounds in the rubber coin. * "C'atel Police, how may I help you?" the smiling girl on the holoscreen said. "Oh, Hank. It's you. What do you need?" "Hiya. I need some personnel information. Can you go look up a 'Myki' for me?" "Huh? Any reason?" "Well, there's been a shooting down here, and we found a shipment of plasma units here with a check made out to someone named Myki. We just want to follow up on her for questioning." "What's a plasma unit? You know we don't do investigations, Hank, we're just a local--" "Just check, willya? Come on, this is really urgent stuff." "Alright, alright... let's see... Which Myki?" "There's more than one?" "It's a pretty common Saren name, Hank. I've got listings here for a Myki Kukki, a Ruki Myki, and Eroki Myki. I'll x-fer the three addresses to your computer." "Is Myki a female name?" "I think so. Why?" "Thanks, you've been a big help." "By the way, Hank, what's with the ap--" The holoscreen went dead. The man adjusted his apron, made sure that Officer Hank Wilkens was genuinely dead, and set the vehicle for self-destruct. Hopping out, he reentered his truck, and flew away, ignoring the explosion. * "Hi there," a green jumpsuited boy said to the factory worker. The worker gave him a quick once over. "You want Dairy Processing," the said. "They're the guys in green. We're in red, Dairy Cartoning." "Eh? Oh, no, I don't work here. I work for... oh, wait, rule six... sorry, forget I said that. Here, can you put this picture on your cartons?" "Come again?" "And write under it, 'Have you seen me? If so, please call...' Here, I've got the number written down here." "Look, we don't handle carton designs. I just put the milk in 'em. Why are you looking for someone here?" The boy seemed confused. "I thought missing persons were normally found by pictures on milk cartons. That's what I was told, anyway, about this realm." "Go file a missing person's report at the police station, okay?" the man said. "We're just the milk guys. Hey, wait a second." "What?" "I know this chick. Yeah... she had me ship a whole truckload of empties to her place in the middle of C'atel City. Something about an art project. Kids today." "Do you have an address for that girl?" the boy asked. "Yeah, I think I've got it around here somewhere." "Great. Umm. Can I have a, what do you call it, one of those things that floats along the ground, you ride in it... carts?" "Land rovers?" "Yeah, one of those. Can I have one of those too?" "Go talk to Crazy Eddie," the worker suggested. "He sells 'em used and cheap." * The night air in the Peasluvdope, C'atel's foremost nightclub (and loudest) was choked thick with no smoke. (There had been a recent government ban on smoking in clubs.) "Another napkin?" Benson suggested, offering the flimsy paper liquid-absorber to his sobbing Saren companion. She sniffed, and accepted it, saturating it within seconds. "Jeez. Fluki better get back here soon, I don't think C'atel's sewer system can take much more of this," Benson joked. "He's, like, never been GONE this long," Eroki sniffled, wiping her nose on her overworn green vest. "I mean, he said he'd be back from his family reunion a week ago, and now he says he caught some sort of flu and can't return to C'atel until it fades. How can I, like, LIVE without him." "Come on, it's only a day," Benson reasoned. "Not THAT long. I thought you were doing some kind of milk-sculpture to keep your mind off of it." "Well, yeah, I was, but I sorta lost that spark. It just was too dairylike and not artsy enough." "Here, lemme find some cartoons. That always helps cheer you up," Benson suggested, pulling his handheld HoloVision out of his grey backpack. "Always takes a second to tune this damn thing... I've got to upgrade soon... whoops, wrong channel..." "In the news today," squeaked the pocket Holo, picture fuzzing in and out randomly, "C'atel has a new member in its proud line of Unusual Serial Killers... a crazed man in an apron has been running around town killing Sarens with the word 'Myki' in their name. The police advise all Mykis to leave. Now. Anybody seeing a tall pink man in apron with a shotgun are advised to do the same. In political news, President Doofman was caught sneaking over the wall again--" "Haha, such wacky news," Benson tried to grin, finger repeatedly stabbing the off button. "I say, tabloidism is really running... umm..." "Did... did they say what I think they just said?" Eroki Myki said, quietly (compared to the blasting dance music already in the club). "Come on, you know the newscasters like to make that sort of stuff up. Really. I have proof. Look, I've got to go to the bathroom and MAYBE call 911. You stay here, okay?" Eroki nodded, squeezing farther back into her chair, as Benson pushed his way rapidly through the crowd. Eroki carefully scrutinized the next sixteen club furnishings she could lay her eyes on, denial plowing around her mind in a bulldozer. Her concentration was broken shortly by a call on the PA system. "Will Eroki Myki please report to the front bar," the PA blared over the music. Eroki remained still. "We mean it," the PA continued. Eroki stayed put. "Look, okay, I'll be frank. Your friend Benson is over here and wants to talk. Now you've made me interrupt the music. Hope you're happy," the PA grumped. Eroki broke her statuesque pose, and rushed through the booing crowd, which was gleefully tossing peanuts and napkins at her for pausing the song. She ran into the bar, skidding to a stop. "Alright," Benson said, to her right, making her jump about 2.4 inches in the air. "I called the police. They'll be here right away. Umm." "Yeah?" "Your full name IS Eroki Myki, isn't it?" "Of course, Benson. Why are you wearing an apron?" "DUCK!" shouted a voice from near the door, as searing flames shot through the air, igniting a few drinks casually left on the bartop. Dancers dived for cover like frightened dancers. Eroki jumped backwards, knocking over a table. Benson just stood there, bathed in flames. There was an odd, smoky scent in the air... not really charred human flesh... but more like... baked ham? "Ha-ha! Got ya!" the boy with the flamer laughed. Benson, charred and still partially on fire, slowly turned to face the green-suited boy who had so impolitely flamed him. Benson pulled out a shotgun. "Yikes!" the boy yelled, diving for cover as shotgun pellets broke every mirror along the wall where he was standing. The crowd didn't need much encouragement to find an exit and utilize it very, very quickly. There was pushing, shoving, and general mayhem... Eroki noticed a misplaced pizza cutter, which must have clattered off the bar in the confusion. Gathering her wits, she grabbed the knife and rolled it deep into Benson's shoulder. Benson's arm fell off with a wet SPLAT. The boy took the moment of confusion to lunge forward, and grab Eroki firmly. "Come with me if you want to die," the boy said. A look of terror passed over Eroki's face. "LIVE!" the boy corrected, slapping himself on the forehead. "Live. Sorry, my mistake." With that, they ran out of the club, leaving a bisected, aproned creature that clearly wasn't Benson to look for its arm. * They ran for several blocks before pausing. They paused. "Wait... got to... catch... breath..." Eroki throated, out of air. "Me, ack... too," the boy said. "Jeez. This is NOT what I had expected when I signed up with the company." "What company?" Eroki asked, leaning against a grimy wall. "Who are you? What was that THING? WHERE'S BENSON?!" "Errr..." the boy started. "I'm not really supposed to explain where I'm from, that's rule six--" "Explain," she said, waving the pizza cutter emphatically. "I'm an agent of Reality Incorporated," the boy said, VERY quickly. "I was sent here to keep that thing from killing you, only I broke my editing deck and now I gotta kill it manually and I have no weapon experience and we're all gonna die and it's all my fault--" "Slower." "Slower. Okay. Look, do I have to explain everything?" Eroki lightly ran the pizza cutter up and down the kid's arm. "Okay! Okay. You're not supposed to know this, but sometime in the future, one of your kids is gonna invent cross- realm travel." "I'm gonna have kids?" "Yeah. And don't expect me to say how many, 'cuz I don't know. All I know is that one of them finds out how to transverse Reality. But see, he only manages to find a way into one realm, one made of and inhabited by living meat." "Weird." "You're tellin' me. Anyway, a bunch of merchants start using your kid's formula, and go carve up bits of that meat and sell it as a delicacy to rich people." "Gross." "Well, the meat isn't very happy about this. They just hijacked one of your merchant's realmhopper gear, shot back in time to now, and now one of them is going to try and kill you so they can live in peace and quiet. I was supposed to edit out the problem and stop him." "Why?" "'Cuz it's my job!" the boy said, pointing to his name tag. "Kenny Reek, Junior Editor, Reality, Inc. Editor #4637334. I do that for a living, I patch up little errors in Everything. It's a living. Only I was supposed to show up, fiddle with my deck..." The boy pointed to the white plastic bag of electronics. "And fix it that way. Only I broke it." "Why not fix it? My friend Benson knows a lot about ele... uh... what happened to Benson?!" "Don't worry, he's okay. He's got a bad wound where the meat thing smacked him, but I called in your local authorities. And no, FYI, I can't fix it. I tried. You primitives have never heard of the Everything Coil, have you?" "Is that anything like one of those springs that you can walk down stairs?" "Whatsits? Maybe, I dunno. Point is, I can't fix it. So I've got to resort to conventional weaponry. Umm. I kinda slept through the class on Self Defense in Primitive Cultures, so I'm going on common sense and luck right now. Sorry if I'm not much help." "It's, like, not your fault. Don't get all negative over it," Eroki soothed, patting the boy on the back. "Now. What should we do?" "My instincts are to run, and hide. For a long, long time. I can't contact my boss, and odds are nobody else will come until I report back... I don't think this lighter I found will really hurt it. I'm really lucky you left a 'Gone to the Peasluvdope, be back at 3' sign on your door, or you would have been dead by now." "I don't know about that. Looked like you toasted it pretty well." "Can't hurt it. I at least did a bit of research before going on this assignment. The luncheon meat things can't be burnt, and if you cut 'em up or shoot them, they can remold. Heck, they can even imitate people. That's how he almost got you." "How do you kill living spam?" Eroki asked. "I have no idea. That's why I suggested running and hiding, you see." "Look, I have like NO intentions on hiding out all my life with some junior trainee at a weird corporation from beyond space and time. Don't you have any machine guns or anything you could use? Grenades? Other non-fun military stuff?" "Well, I have a pocket knife," he said. "My dad gave it to me for Scouts..." * Kenny had accidentally crashed his used land rover into a holphone pole, so the two hijacked a land rover, with the aid of Kenny's knife and a bit of wire, and floated onward towards the C'atel City border. "Where are we going?" Kenny asked. "I mean, I gotta know these things. I'm supposed to be maintaining a low profile, so the natives don't start worshipping me as a god." "I doubt they would," Eroki said, shifting the rover into third. "One of my old college buddies has a pad just outside of town. He's a real war nut, collects guns and other awful not- nice things. Maybe he could load you down with some weapons." "Me?" the boy asked. "I can't shoot straight." "Well, I'm sort of a pacifist, so you don't have much of a choice," Eroki said. "Hey, Kenny?" "Yeah?" "Talk to me here. Tell me about what it's like, where you're from." "What, the company?" Kenny asked. "It's okay. We handle it all... making sure nothing goes wrong in the universe. A lot of stuff goes wrong, believe me... we also keep people from messing with other cultures before they're ready, and stuff. I'm pretty sure we have some kind of dark, underlying motive, but I'm just a junior tech, I don't have access to the classified stuff." "So if you keep things from falling apart, who pays you?" "Eh? Oh, we don't get paid fees as it were. We just take up collections with the governments we're in contact with for protection. The only time we're allowed to edit in non- constructive ways is if we don't get our insurance payments." "Sounds like extortion." "What's extortion?" he asked, confused. "What're you going to do if you are trapped here?" "I hadn't thought about it. Why are you asking me all these questions, anyway?" "Trying to distract you from looking in the rear view mirror." "Why?" "I think that truck has been following us for the last twenty minutes." "Really?" Kenny asked, leaning out a window to have a good look. Eroki groaned and pulled him back in. "Hey, I think it's the meat critter," Kenny said, as Eroki slammed the rover into third. "I saw the apron." "Good thing you didn't do something silly like let him have a good hard look at you, to check if it's really us," Eroki laughed sarcastically. "But I did," the boy said, puzzled. "Oh. Sarcasm. I forgot that was still in practice here. Say, he's gaining rather fa--" With a jolt, the truck slammed into the back of the land rover, sending it spinning off across the highway. With a massive CRASH!, it slammed top-first through a brick wall. Moments before impact, the driver's side airbag, passenger airbag, left and right door airbags, trunk airbag, floor airbag, and ceiling airbags spontaneously inflated. Kenny had to stab a few with his pocket knife to avoid suffication. "End of the road," Kenny noted. "Come on, I think we ought to implement my plan of running and hiding now." "Hey, I know this place," Eroki said, crawling out from under the wreckage. "It's the C'atel Zoo. I did the sculpture in the front garden we just sailed through." She examined the debris of milk cartons. "Hmm. Maybe they'll pay me to rebuild it." The truck rattled to a stop just outside the main gate, after precisely the amount of time it takes for a truck to spin one-eighty and haul ass back to a point it passed. "Geez... THIS WAY!" Kenny yelled, grabbing Eroki by the arm and yanking her in a random direction. He kicked open a metal door, or at least tried. "OWWWW!" he cursed, hopping around, clutching his foot. "I broke my damn foot! FUCK!" "You really curse too much, you know that?" Eroki said, grabbing an arm. "Come on, hobble along with me." Eroki twisted the door handle (which was unlocked, if Kenny had bothered to check) and stepped inside, pushing aside various dead carcasses. "Eww," she commented. "Meat locker... guess they need to keep the animal food somewhere..." "Brrr," Kenny shivered in agreement. "D-d-did you j-j-j- just hear a clunk sound behind us?" Eroki paused, and turned around. "Oh, get a load of this," she laughed. The meat-thing was there, a man-shaped blob of Spam, frozen solid in mid-walk, greasy apron flapping in the air conditioned breeze. The shotgun lie useless on the ground. "Well, that was easy," Kenny commented, bending over to grab the shotgun. "We just shoot the guy and end it here." "Wait--" "Kiss the cook, baby," Kenny sneered, firing a single shot. The meat-thing shattered, sending little frozen chunks of animal flesh everywhere. Kenny blew the smoke off the shotgun barrel, smiling from ear to ear. "Not a bad shot, if I do say so myself. Umm. Why is it getting warmer in here?" "BECAUSE," Eroki said, "Like I was, like, TRYING to say, it was standing next to the thermostat control... which you like blew away too." The little globs started to melt back into their dogfoodesque density. "Run?" Kenny suggested. "AND hide," Eroki confirmed, as the two hobbled out of the meat locker, little puddles of Spam reforming themselves... * The zoo wasn't exactly loaded with good hiding places. It was mostly open air, and Eroki refused to hide in the Monkey House, mostly because it smelled like monkeys. "If we lure it into the Penguin Exhibit, we might be able to freeze it again," Kenny suggested, limping along on his good leg. "Wouldn't work," Eroki said, looking around for small, dark, covered places that could fit two people. "We'd have to, like, break the glass on it or something to get in, then it wouldn't be as cold. Why is this shotgun so HEAVY?" "It's probably fully loaded," Kenny said. "I've seen the model in a museum back at the company. Holds 10 of those... umm..." "Shells?" "Yeah, shells, at once. I thought you hated guns." "I do, but Fluki keeps one in the back in case of robbers. I say spread the wealth, but he says we really don't have enough to spread very well--" "Eroki?" a voice called, rapidly approaching from the other side of the zoo. Eroki fumbled the gun in a panic, pointing it the wrong way. "Eroki!" Fluki yelled, sneakers squeaking along the ground as he jogged up. "THERE you are. I came as soon as I heard the police reports... you okay, dudette?" "FLUKI!" Eroki squealed, dumping Kenny off her shoulder and reaching out for a big 'ol huggy wuggy snuggle poo. "I'm so glad to see you, we've been chased around by some overgrown sausage and shot at and everything--" "Whoa, slow down. Let's take this one step at a time... hey, why'd you take my shotgun?" "Oh, this one's not yours. I, like got it from the critter that's been following us." "Well, I think you'd better give it back to me, before you hurt someone with it. It would be the most prudent course of actions." Eroki picked the gun up off the ground, and pumped three shots into her lover. Fluki went down like a sack of potatoes. "WHAT?!" Kenny yelled, from his painful little pile on the ground. "Come on, he could have been helpful!" "That's not Fluki," Eroki said. "Fluki doesn't know what the word 'prudent' means." "Not bad. Now you mind if you pick me up? The thing is getting on its feet, and I don't want to be around wh--" Eroki pulled Kenny up to standing, and they three legged raced off to the far side of the zoo, as the meat beast molded and reformed, loping off after them... * "Whoa. Pause. I've got an idea," Kenny said, as the two slowed to a stop. "Pass me the pocket knife." "Huh? Why?" "Just a spark of intuition," Kenny grinned, picking the lock of the nearest cage. It swung open with an ominous CRREeeEEEeaAAAkkk. "You're free!" he shouted inside. "Go attack the thing following us! Good boy." "Kenny, you just opened up the LION cage." "So? Aren't lions man's best friend?" "No, Kenny, that's like, dogs." "Oh. Umm. What's a lion, then?" Kenny's hair was whipped around in a blast of air as jaws the size of Francis Ford Coppola opened up three inches from his face, letting out a massive 'ROAR'. "THAT'S a lion," Eroki confirmed. "Ahem," called a voice from behind them. Eroki spun around, face to face with the meat creature. "Hold still so I can kill you," it politely requested. Eroki backed off, terror stricken. "SHOOT the thing already!" Kenny demanded, pushing the shotgun at her. "I told you, I don't like guns!" "You shot it back there!" "Yeah, well, that was, like, a spur of the moment thing. It doesn't count." Three things happened at once. One, the meat-monster lunged forward. Two, Eroki fell backwards. Three, the lion smelled dinner. A bloodthirsty ROAR blasted out of the cage. The ground round demon peered inside, curious, and had his head bitten off. Before the monster could act appropriately worried about the loss of its head, two of the lions jumped out, and began to devour the monster. After a few seconds, there wasn't much of it left other than a small, quivering, quickly-vanishing pile of glop. "I think we're in trouble," Eroki said, climbing back to her feet. "The sign back there read DON'T FEED THE ANIMALS." "Very funny," Kenny said, in a non sarcastical way. "Man, am I glad that's over with. I think those lions are going to get a nasty case of indigestion, though." "They seem happy enough right now, let's not spoil the meal for them. In fact, let's, like, back off very slowly in case they want something purple and something green for dessert, 'kay?" "Eroki?" A voice from across the zoo called, rapidly approaching. Kenny panicked momentarily. "Don't worry, this one is the real McCoy," Eroki laughed. "FLUKI!" "Don't forget me," Benson said. "You wouldn't believe what it took to find you two here. Had to follow various rumors of a truck being driven by a pile of steak." "Hey, who's the guy in the green jumpsuit?" Fluki asked, peering over his sunglasses. "Oh. Sorry. Kenny, this is Fluki. Fluki, this is Kenny. Kenny here edits reality." "Used to," Kenny said, using his free arm to shake Fluki's hand. "I kinda broke my lifeline back to the company, so I'm stuck here for the rest of my life." "Bummer," Fluki said. "Well, don't worry, anybody who saved my gal from certain death at the hands of a slathering, disfigured side of beef from beyond space and time can stay at our pad for a few days. I'll help ya get a job sweeping up tables or something." "I have a degree in advanced reality manipulation, if anybody here needs a good editor." "Umm, Kenny?" Eroki poked. "That stuff hasn't been invented yet." "Oh. Darn." "Trust me, work from the bottom up," Fluki laughed. "It's the most prudent course." Eroki blinked. Twice. "Fluki, you know what the word prudent means?" "Of course I do. Come on, I gotta good grade on the verbal in the SAT, remember? Why is your jaw sagging like that?" "Let's just go home, okay?" Benson suggested. "It's been a long night." "Alright, come on, everybody... Eroki, why are you staring at me like that?..." With that, the trio plus one left, leaving behind two lions with really bad cases of heartburn. There was a mighty BEEELLLCCHHHH, then silence.