Parallel Time: Oh, Cruel Fortuna

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Oh, Cruel Fortuna

POOF!

Where am I? …. For the love of all that the Crows hold sacred, let this be the South Pole of Parallel Time. If that is my location, I would be in the proximity of the Great White Crow. … Oh my!

Bramwell?

A talking dinosaur? This is unexpected. ... And it seems to know my name.

It’s me. Scrapple. … From the elevator.

Ah. The creature foisted upon us by Jesus?

One in the same.

You are quite a bit larger than I remembered.

Well I was just a baby then.

And of course, you can speak now, unless I am hallucinating. ... Oh cruel Fortuna, please tell me I am not hallucinating as I struggle for my last breath, my life blood draining into a crimson crescent on the frozen wasteland of the North Pole in the Realm of the Really Big Crows, which is adjacent to the Parallel South Pole on this interphasic shish kebob.

I was trapped for some time in an interphasic bubble, at which time I became self-aware, with the ability to reason and to speak. Did you say shish kebob?

You would not understand the shish kebob theory, I'm afraid. Your brain is absurdly small. ... You see, I was attacked by Santa Claus just as my transpolar destabilizer transferred me here to the Parallel South Pole. If I am indeed at the Parallel South Pole.

Don’t worry. That’s exactly where we are. … Gorgon told me so.

Gorgon? My faithful second-in-command? Where is he? I must speak to him at once!

I’m afraid that a tiny hat and scarf are all that’s left of him.

No! Alas, poor Gorgon. I knew him well, Scrapple. ... Was he slain by Santa Claus as he poofed away into Parallel Time?

Not exactly. … I, um, ate him.

You ate Gorgon? What have you done? Gorgon was crow royalty – a direct descendant of the sea crows savagely killed by Cuchulainn himself.

Mmm. ... Not big on Irish folklore.

You shall pay for this with your worthless life!

Funny. He said something very similar to that just before I ate him.

You should count yourself fortunate that I must make haste to find the Great White Crow and I do not have the time to strike you down. … You haven’t seen him have you? Really big crow? ... White?

No I haven’t. But there is a problem. … My absurdly small brain is telling me I'm still hungry.

Put me down at once, beast!

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While the demon Marge presides over the stick-by-stick destruction of non-Parallel Allentown, things are really nice over here in Parallel Allentown. Parallel Allentown has a monorail, two space ports, a hockey arena that is home to the Jersey Devils, an entire minor league baseball league, the world headquarters of several Fortune 100 corporations (including Tofu Turkeys and the world’s largest horse-processing plant, the Glue Works), dozens of theme and amusement parks, including the Whoo-Hoo Works, a string of glittering riverfront resorts, the world's largest department store (Hess's Dammit), 18 Irish Brew Works and several Tommie Tomorrow's Mexican eateries. The town is also famous for the milk it produces at its state-of-the-art dairy facility, the Moo Works. Allentown is also known for having the realm’s largest concentration of TV chefs per square acre. The city is home to Parallel Time's most prominent blogger, Parallel Atown-Liker, and his team of intrepid diarists. Allentown's first Irish mayor, Barry O'Bama, once walked across Lake Muhlenberg, but lately he’s been up to his knees in goose shit. The city’s previous mayor, whose name may only be spoken on sanctified ground, has been beatified after being carried to heaven by angels during a ground-breaking ceremony. He has been credited with legalizing prostitution in Parallel Time and establishing Allentown's first legal brothel, the Screw Works. Now that Ronan and the Irish Tenor have left the realm, the crime rate here is 0. ... However, not all is well. Incursions from Non-parallel Time have shaken this once-tranquil Camelot. Deceased non-Parallel actor Paul Newman has declared himself Lord of Parallel Time, taking over the Twin Tofu Turkey Towers and converting them to The Pew Works, a church dedicated to worshipping himself. He canceled half-price wings in Parallel Heaven and initiated the Celestial Lockdown Protocols, barring all travel between the realms. His dog, Ponzi, has stolen more than $50 billion from President Madoff and has barely escaped several attempts by the TV chefs to eat him. Though the Celestial Lockdown Protocols have insulated Lord Newman from any attempts by non-Parallel Heaven (which nominally rules Parallel Heaven) to remove him from power, it has also prevented the Crows from carrying out their somewhat vague but nefarious plans. Typically the Crows can fly through space and time, going from realm to realm as easily as they fly from tree to tree. The protocols have prevented the Crows from traveling between realms, prompting Bramwell, the Lord of the Crows, to befriend Mrs. Egram, the proto Marge who has emerged from an alternate timeline created by several clumsy attempts by a band of time travelers from non-Parallel time to kill her. Mrs. Egram had hoped to travel from alternate Parallel Time to non-alternate Parallel Time using a transphasic freight elevator hidden in the underground rest station (The Poo Works) that links Parallel and non-Parallel Time and is guarded, respectively, by Donovan and Old Donovan -- her theory being that all alternate timelines intersect with the one non-alternate timeline in the bathroom beneath center square, which is really more of a circle. Her goal is to confront Marge, who she believes has acted badly by destroying non-Parallel Allentown and has cast shame upon the good name of the Egram family, who are descended from proud caste of vampires and assorted demons and semidemons. Bramwell convinced Mrs. Egram to allow him to accompany her and her companions (part of the group who created her by botching two attempts to kill her in an earlier stage of her life) on a transphasic elevator ride that he had secretly re-routed. Bramwell double-crossed the group, exiting the elevator in the Realm of the Really Big Crows and leaving Mrs. Egram's group, including their pet dinosaur, Scrapple (a gift from Jesus during a stop in the prehistoric past), to be destroyed in a transphasic bubble that was about to burst. Meanwhile, sensing a threat from the Crows as well as the realization of apocalyptic prophesies, Parallel Pope Boneyface has moved Vatican operations to the South Pole, where the intense cold freezes the crows' little bodies before they can do much damage. They fall to the icy ground and are eaten by jackass penguins. As a result of the threat posed by the crows, Jesus has allowed part of a team led by Agent Bauer to bypass the protocols. Using transphasic toilet travel, Bauer was sent to the South Pole to help prepare for any incursions there by the Crows, learning in the process that Newman was secretly sent by Jesus to Parallel Time to keep tabs on the Crows and their ties to elements in Parallel and non-Parallel Hell. Atown Liker and the Player were sent to Parallel Allentown to bring Newman to the South Pole to join with Bauer and Pope Boneyface. However, three of their team members, Rudolph, Gen. Trexler and the angel Bubbles, were prevented from making the trip when they could not answer Old Donovan’s questions. Rudolf and Trexler were condemned to Hell, while Bubbles was condemned to the Macungies. All three were later rescued by extraction teams sent by Jesus in a blog entry that has mysteriously never been seen, even in flash-back form. Mrs. Egram’s group was saved from from oblivion when Scrapple was snatched from their elevator by a transphasic bubble, which set off an alarm that alerted St. Onslo to shut down the system, leaving the elevator to crash-land in the rest station in non-alternate Parallel Time. Tiring of Mrs. Egram’s demands to be sent to non-alternate non-Parallel time, Onslo sent the team via toilet to the only place that could still be accessed by the faulty system – the non-alternate Parallel South Pole. The TV chef Andrew, who was having lunch in one of the stalls, was also transported to the South Pole accidentally. Meanwhile, now in the Realm of the Really Big Crows, Bramwell traveled to the North Pole where he attempted to use a transpolar destabilizer to open a rift that would allow him to travel to the South Pole in Parallel Time (see Shish Kebob Theory). However, he and his No. 1 henchcrow came under fire from Santa Claus after Bramwell had subdued one of Santa’s polar bears. One of Santa’s bullets struck the destabilizer, opening a small rift that pulled the henchcrow into the same transphasic bubble occupied by Scrapple, who had become self-aware with the ability to reason and speak. That bubble then burst, leaving the two in the Parallel South Pole wilderness, where Scrapple promptly ate Bramwell’s second-in-command. Avoiding a drunken Santa’s bullets, Bramwell finally got the destabilizer to function and escaped to the Parallel South Pole. Narrowly surviving an encounter with Scrapple, Bramwell has accessed the Vatican basement through a crevice and seeks to free the Great White Crow, which was imprisoned under the ice after its epic battle with the Irish warrior Cuchulain, many eons ago.

Parallel Time

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Oh, Cruel Fortuna

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