Three figures hurry down the white stone steps, splattered with muffins, granules of sky, and fizzled out fireworks. One of them is me, and for the first time in this story I think I probably know exactly who I am. I am Alfonso Kolinksy. Or at least a clone of little Alfonso. Maybe you’re wondering what happened to the other thirteen me’s. Some were scattered throughout the Unimerse and ended up working in little Australian indie record shops. Most of them turned into ghouls the first time Midas tried to sail a Unimerse Machine. Perhaps one of them got away and is out there somewhere, tapping away at a typewriter some story like this that nobody will ever read. With The End (Again) so close that you can just about reach out the tip of your tongue and taste it… I doubt we will ever find out.

Nor will we ever know why they chose me in the first place. I appear to have just been a little kid sailing a plasticine boat through a puddle. I never wanted to be me. So instead I was Smally. Instead I was Willoughby. It sort of makes sense that the ship split me in two. And still neither of them were me. You know, I saw a psychiatrist once… a little bald Spaniard, whose name I forget. He wiped out Willoughby for twenty three years; that’s why I had no memory from the age of 10 until the night that Smally called me up and I paddled out to the Mardi while squid chunks flew across the face of an artificial moon.

And now, as the Unimerses become one in their final hour, all the people I have been, and all the people I have never really been, they become one as well, here in this fragile dream-body. In a little while I won’t be able to remember any of this. I’ll be just like you, going quietly about my business, in and out of days, and down through the years. Maybe I’ll settle down somewhere, get married, have kids, and live in a little matchbox down by the brilliant sea. Somehow I tend to doubt it. You can wipe out everything I’ve ever seen, everything I’ve ever felt, everyone I’ve ever known and in The End (Again) I will still be me. A calamity magnet.

Beside me is Rasmussen Murphy, the time-travelling blind balloonist, THEE inventor of time-travel no less, an esteemed break-dancer, founder of the First Court of the Solar Corona, and a brilliant friend. And yet… he is not who he says he is either. He is actually a future projection of Dr. Simon Piler, magically zigzagging between the science of poetry and the poetry of science, leader of the Atom Band, Quartermaster of the Mardi, heavily responsible for all the weirdest twists in this tale, and an equally brilliant friend. And now he is the Unimerse Machine. Our epically minute and seriously silly lives are literally cupped in his hands in the shape of a bubble. THEE Bubble. Which looks like an eyeball.

On the other side of me is the Black Angel. I don’t really know who the fuck she is, but she wears a fake moustache and super-sunglasses, and has these black webbed insect wings attached to her back. While she is still around I feel like we’re in with a fighting chance of getting things done. Also at this precarious stage, it’s useful to know people who can fly when you have a tendency like I do to fall from great heights.

Buckley’s re-imagined Mardi sits gleaming in front of the football stadium as dawn suns explode beyond the horizon and suddenly I know exactly what Hemhockle meant when he said Oh, she is fast, she is beautiful! She is the finest ship in all the galaxies! The flames make her go ever so much faster and put glare into the eyes of space pirates… I think I have tears in my eyes as we climb the rope ladder onto the main deck for the very last time, even though I know that pretty soon we won’t remember, and won’t miss her at all.

Waiting for us are two women, one young, olive-skinned, hair tied back in a pony-tail. ‘Datura!’ grins Rasmussen landing in her arms. She laughs nervously and I notice that she too has tears filling up in her eyes.

The other woman is old and Nepalese, dressed in strange red robes covered in white circles enclosing the same weird symbols I saw floating around Rasmussen’s brain just after Thing killed Aia’s severed fox-head. Perched on her skull is a white chef’s hat with a bright red crescent moon on it. ‘Zheng Tharkey?’ asks the blind balloonist.

The old woman smiles and shakes her head. ‘I am Lottie’ she says, ‘Zheng’s daughter.’ The last time I saw this woman she was 3 years old and trying to steal my soup.

‘Didn’t your dad work for Aia?’ asks the Black Angel.

‘My father worked for many people’ she replies, ‘he was a great man and an icosikaihenagon agent. He knew more about the Unimerse than 679 Lumereti Hemhockle’s put together.’

‘Tharkey? Sherpa Tharkey?’ asks Rasmussen, still clinging to the mortal Madame Datura like he is afraid to let her go in case she turns into a puff of green smoke.

‘Actually his birth name was Fernando Murphy. Like Willoughby here, he was blessed with more than one personality and learned to exist as several of these at the same time’ she says.

‘The Cuban’ I tell Rasmussen.

The blind balloonist shakes his head grimly ‘Why does everybody have to be somebody else? It’s so confusing!’

‘You started it with that Porf nonsense’ I tell him.

‘That was your idea!’ he protests.

‘It was not’ I tell him. ‘Was it?’

‘I think so’ he says. ‘I don’t know about the rest of you, but this might take some digesting. You know, I have some biscuits downstairs in Cabin 5, and I’m going to assume that Buckley re-imagined our wonderful spigot system, so I’ll pour us all a strong black coffee -’

‘You’ve got what in your cabin?’ I ask him.

‘Biscuits’ he says.

‘You’ve got biscuits in your cabin?’

‘That’s right’ he says.

‘For how long?’ I ask him.

He shrugs. ‘From the beginning. An emergency supply stashed down the back of my bed.’

‘So when the rest of us were rooting around on our hands and knees for mouldy ship-shapes in Antarctica… you had a fucking packet of biscuits the whole time?’

‘Woah, steady there Chaplin!’ he says. ‘I was rooting around on my hands and knees for mouldy ship-shapes too you know! Also it’s not a packet… it’s a plate of biscuits. And remember, I couldn’t even give them away when I tried.’

We stare at each other and burst out laughing.

‘You know, I loved it when we went to the moon’ I tell him quietly. ‘Remember when I broke the toilet handle… and the Jazz Monk was felt-tip penning Nate Lowman’s face?’

Lottie coughs. ‘That was my father’s face’ she says.

‘Hee-hee’ laughs Rasmussen. ‘Also there was that time you were high on drugs and you threw the paper aeroplane map sketch out of the Pepperpot Palace window. I was flying past with the David Bowie’s and it landed up my nose!’

‘Those android David Bowie’s in flying cars were genius’ I tell him.

‘Why thankee sir.’

‘Dude, what are you still doing here? Go get the biscuits.’

‘Gentlemen, there is no time for biscuits’ says Lottie, ‘we must find Lumereti Hemhockle.’

‘Ah, Lumereti!’ says Rasmussen, pointing at his round-rimmed shades. ‘Well, that could be a problem considering he turned out to be a star. And an exploding star at that.’

‘In your Unimerse perhaps’ replies Lottie and she claps her hands. A ghostly shrub appears on the main deck and grabs the wheel. ‘Full speed ahead Mr Zoolander!’ she croaks.

‘Aye aye Miss Murphy!’ says the ghostly shrub and the Mardi takes off, zzzzzzzuuuubing towards Iliaus.

‘Wait a minute’ I whisper to Rasmussen, ‘if Fernando was Buttercup’s son… and Buttercup was Chase’s daughter… then that makes you Lottie’s… great… uh, great… great – ?’

‘Newsflash Willoughby’ says Datura. ‘Buttercup is as much Chase’s daughter as you are the captain of this ship.’

‘Noooooo!’ I say, completely flabbergasted. I just didn’t see that one coming.

‘By the way’ whispers Rasmussen, ‘uh, what exactly are we doing right now?’

‘Go get the biscuits and I’ll tell you’ I whisper back, ‘just make sure crazy moon hat lady doesn’t see you.’

But Lottie was right, there is no time for biscuits. The Mardi immediately lands with a thump at the heart of the City of the Sewer Saints, knocking us down like skittles.

‘Tichawwaaa!’ shouts Rasmussen snatching at the Bubble Eyeball as it bounces around between his palms.

‘Sorry about that guys’ says the shrub, ‘but it’s not so easy to steer with holographic hands. Uh… anything else you need me to do? Before… you know. Maybe I could call for some pizza – I have Hank’s number right here in my holographic pocket. Or -’

‘That will be all Mr Zoolander’ says Lottie, picking herself up and dusting her bright red robes down.

‘Right’ says the shrub. ‘I mean, it wouldn’t be any trouble. It could be like a Last Supper for the Flower Company or something.’

‘Mr Zoolander, please don’t drag this out any longer than is necessary’ says Lottie. ‘We discussed it at great length previously and we agreed that this was the only way forward. Now make your way downstairs, switch off SAM, and uninstall yourself. Don’t piss me off again.’

‘SAM?’ asks Rasmussen, his antennae pricking up.

‘Rasmussen, you got… uh… antennae… growing out of your head’ I tell him.

‘Can we say goodbye?’ he asks Lottie. ‘We go back a long way you know. Were it not for SAM I would never have unravelled the mystery of Keroucian Hieroglyphics.’

Lottie closes her eyes and juts out her bottom jaw impatiently. ‘If you must, but make it quick.’

‘Goodbye SAM!’ shouts Rasmussen. ‘Thanks for everything!’

‘Yeah, goodbye SAM. Thanks for not going all NIKO on us! I’m sorry I smashed you up and threw you out of the window that time!’ I shout.

++GOODBYE SIMUSSEN MORFLER. GOODBYE ALFILLOUGHBY SMALLINSKY++ shouts SAM from below.

‘What about me?’ asks the holographic shrub, pausing at the rear-hatch. ‘Isn’t anyone going to say goodbye to me?’

‘So what now?’ asks the Black Angel.

Lottie points down at a big pile of rubble where once upon a time there was a 17-storey hospital. I stare at what’s left of the familiar concrete steps, cracked and stained with rainbow-rain-blood, a weird assortment of the Chief’s hybrid plants growing out of the ground. ‘Now we find Lumereti Hemhockle…’ says the old woman.

‘I’m over here!’ croaks Lumereti, crushed beneath a big block of fallen masonry, only his head visible at one end, and his dirty grey toes wriggling at the other. Presumably the rest of him has been flattened out of existence.

‘Lumereti!’ gasps Rasmussen, jumping over the side of the ship, narrowly missing a tiny trampoline, much to the annoyance of Mme Datura who still has him wrapped around her neck and bears the brunt of the landing. Rasmussen scrabbles down to his knees at old Hemhockle’s toes and asks ‘Are you still alive?’

‘Yes… and no’ replies Hemhockle, gazing up at the re-imagined Mardi, his nose shivering with excitement.

‘Mr Hemhockle’ says Lottie, bowing deeply ‘it is time for the final transmission.’

He nods his eyebrows. ‘May I just have one more minute to feast my eyes upon the wonder of this magical ship? This infinite ship? This ship of magnitude, ill-defined and misunderstood? The last stitch in the fabric of the Unimerse? With such bold flames painted on her flanks? Ooh, she is lovely! She is the swiftest and truest of them all! She makes the sailors cum in their pan -’

GONG!

A faraway gong gongs and Lottie says, ‘That’s your minute up.’

‘Ahhh’ sighs Lumereti, ‘very well then. Commencing transmission.’

He closes his eyes and his teeth begin to chatter violently. A strange cold wind picks up, blowing the torn pages of a familiar paperback book up and down the street. Lottie Murphy draws two circles, side by side in the sky with her hands, and the glyphs on her robes burst into brilliant white smoke-light. Before our very eyes she becomes a flock of red sparrows, f-f-fluttering up in a feathery ring of fire.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ shouts Datura over the howling wind, clinging to Rasmussen’s left leg so that she doesn’t blow away.

Now the fire birds make a humming sound.

Hmmmmmmmmmm

‘I know that sound!’ shouts Rasmussen.

And as he does, the ring of birds explode and a solitary red flower petal floats to the earth, rocking on the suddenly wind-less sky, right down until it lands with a

BONG!

on Rasmussen Murphy’s forehead.

‘YoweeeeeeeEEEEEEE!’ he yells, falling over, exhaling a plume of bright red smoke from his nostrils.

‘What the fuck just happened?’ asks an old blue-rinsed rat wearing reading glasses who was scurrying past and saw the whole thing.

‘Doreen!’ I say. ‘Is that really you?’

She shrugs and lights a cigarette, coughing hard.

‘Well… uh… it seems like Hemhockle is dead. Lottie sort of turned into this flock of birds. Well, not sort of… I mean, she DID turn into a flock of birds. And Rasmussen…’

‘EUREKA!’ shouts Rasmussen, sitting up with a smile on his face and tears pouring down his cheeks. ‘I can safely say that this time because I know exactly what I need to do!’

‘Buckley’s dead’ I tell her.

She shrugs and makes a meh-face. ‘We’ve all got to die sometime’ she says. ‘Also I’ve got me a new husband. Younger model. The strong, silent type. Old school, you know. He’s Canadian. Say, have you got any cheese?’

I shake my head. ‘He’s got biscuits in his cabin’ I tell her, pointing at a now weeping Rasmussen who is thumping his fists on his chest like King Kong silently mouthing ‘WHHHYYYYY?’

‘I think I’ll give it a miss’ says Doreen, about-turning and scurrying away.

‘What’s wrong my darling?’ Datura asks Rasmussen, holding his face in her hands.

‘I can’t do it!’ he sobs.

‘Do what?’ she asks him.

‘Leave you’ he says.

‘Maybe we should go and get those biscuits’ I whisper to the Black Angel and she kicks me in the shin.

Rasmussen holds up the Bubble Eyeball in the palm of his hand. The sun reflected in the iris, suddenly looks like a blue moon with a hazy corona of solarized tears forming around it. ‘In sixty years time, the Unimerse will be no more’ he says, wiping his eyes. ‘Everything will be sucked into Nowhere through the hole on the Seventh Isle…’

‘Yeah, we got that part already’ I tell him and the Black Angel kicks me on the other shin. ‘Hey! Would you quit doing that! It fucking hurts!’

‘It is my job’ says Rasmussen, ‘to enter this bubble, re-imagining the Unimerse back to a state of equilibrium. Lumereti Hemhockle, whose knowledge of our cosmos is unsurpassed, just transmitted to me the names of everyone who shall be saved.’ At this he glances nervously at the three of us.

‘Maybe my translator chip is fucked’ I tell them, ‘but I’m not understanding any of this. The names of everyone who shall be saved? What’s that supposed to mean? I thought you just had to transplant us all into this… eyeball… bubble… thingy.’

‘It’s basic mathematics’ he says.

‘Nope, still fucked’ I tell him.

‘I am supposed to imagine a Unimerse where none of this is possible, safe from ice-cream nebulas and flying whales, one where Earthlings still stare up at the stars and wonder if there is life out there. One where time travel and Unimerse Machines are but fig mints (of your imagination)’ – he pauses and bites his lip, ‘…one where celestial beings don’t assume human forms out of love and carry around paper hearts in their pocket.’

Datura reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a crumpled paper heart that she kisses.

Rasmussen blinks and continues, his voice hoarse with emotion. ‘The worst thing is… we are supposed to forget that any of this ever happened, so that it can never happen again’ he says, hanging his head. ‘I always wanted a happy ending. This is not a happy ending.’

‘Don’t look at me!’ I tell them. ‘It wasn’t my idea to have another adventure, it was…’

W!

I scramble over the rubble and start digging.

‘Willoughby? What are you doing?’ calls the Black Angel.

‘He’s in here somewhere!’ I shout back.

‘Who is?’ she asks. Behind her, Datura places her head against Rasmussen’s chest and closes her eyes.

I find a foot. And then another foot. Neither are connected to a leg, so I keep digging.

GONG!

‘Who keeps gonging that gong? It’s seriously irritating’ I shout, throwing bricks and bits of dismembered gods over my shoulder.

GONG!

‘I have until the tenth gong’ says Rasmussen quietly, contemplative, ‘or the bubble will burst.’

GONG!

‘Who makes up these fucking rules!’ I yell. ‘That’s just ridiculous!’

GONG!

‘How many gongs is that?’

‘Four or five I think’ says the Black Angel.

GONG!

‘What should I do?’ Rasmussen asks Datura. ‘Perhaps it would be better for us to die here together? Perhaps there is another way? We have -’

GONG!

‘ – sixty years to figure it out…’

Datura smiles and gently places some duct tape over his mouth. ‘There is no other way’ she says with a wink.

‘I FOUND HIM!’ I yell, heaving the chalky body in a strait-jacket out from under an upturned metal bed.

GONG!

The Black Angel flies over and looks down at W’s lifeless body as I unbuckle the straps. ‘Has he been smoking that tundra again?’ she asks.

I reach into my itchy blue sock and pull out the CD that Zoolander gave me.

‘I thought you were barefoot’ says the Black Angel.

‘I’m not wearing the sock’ I tell her, ‘the sock was in my pock- ’

GONG!

‘ – Shit! I can hardly hear myself think with all that gonging going on’ I tell her, looking at the disc and looking at W. Then back at the disc again. ‘Where the fuck does this go?’

Datura lets go of Rasmussen and looks away as the corona around the Bubble Eyeball begins to pulse and the pupil starts dilating.

GONG!

The Black Angel rolls W over onto his belly with her foot.

‘Eww… no way!’ I say, stepping back.

She sighs and rolls up her sleeves, plucks the disc from between my fingers and inserts it into W.

GONG!

W wakes up with a mechanical whir and splutters out a small cloud of dust, his eyes rebooting, his fingers flexing, his grin appearing as he sits up and sees us. ‘Fucking hell Willoughby, what took you so long?’ he croaks.

‘Well… we had to defeat this Aia dude. He was like the ultimate end level bad guy. Even worse than NIKO. Though perhaps not as freaky as O’Flanahoonamanaman’ I say.

‘Seriously?’ he asks. ‘What else did I miss?’

‘We lost the Unimerse Cup.’

‘Bummer.’

‘Coyote still got to collect it though… as a thank you from the Xoni for freeing them.’

‘The Xoni won the cup? Awesome. Did you warn Coyote about the Grey’s zoo?’

‘I tried’ I tell him.

He yawns and adjusts his hat. ‘Got any tundra?’

‘Shitcomb Whitcomb took over the Organisation. They’ve gone to Phase X?’

‘Fuck! No way! Shit-who Whit-what?’

‘Papa Bear’s dead.’

‘Oh jeez.’

‘Fried by lightning. Fupkin too. Nail-clippers in the jugular.’

‘Hey!’ he says, his eyes lighting up as he gets slowly to his feet. ‘Is that the Mardi? Dude, that’s fucking outrageous!’

‘Buckley’s dead too.’

‘Again? Fuck. I’ve got some serious catching up to do. Where’s everyone else? Becky?’

‘Still lost’ I say.

‘Simon?’

‘Oh, Rasmussen’s right over…’ I turn around and point at Datura. ‘Hey… where did he go? He didn’t… ? FUCK!’

Mme Datura smiles for the last time and walks away, carefully folding and returning the paper heart to her back pocket.

‘Wait a minute…’ I say. ‘Why are we still here? I thought Rasmussen was supposed to re-imagine us all into this fancy new not so imaginative Unimerse of his?’

‘Look’ says W, ‘there’s old Hemhockle squashed under that rock. You know that shit for brains foiled every escape plan I hatched in the asylum.’

‘He’s dead too’ I tell him.

‘Funny looking dead’ says W, ‘with his eyes open and still breathing.’

I look again. Sure enough, Lumereti Hemhockle is still alive. But only just. ‘He’s trying to whisper something’ says the Black Angel.

I sit down beside him. ‘What is it Lumereti?’

He whispers something in my ear and then dies.

‘Tell him if he wasn’t squashed under a rock that I’d squash him under a rock’ says W.

‘I can’t, he’s dead’ I say.

‘Dead like last time, or actually dead dead?’ asks W.

‘Actually dead dead.’

‘What did he want Willoughby?’ asks the Black Angel.

‘I’ll tell you later’ I say, and head back to the ship.

‘Where are we going?’ she asks as I get behind the wheel.

‘To say goodbye’ I tell her and the Mardi begins to crawl sluggishly up into the sky.

‘I don’t get it’ says W, watching the white towers of Iliaus slowly recede below us, ‘you souped her up, but she’s slower than fucking Wanamaker with his big swollen balls.’

Something’s wrong. ‘Take the wheel’ I tell the Black Angel and hurry to the Communications Room where SAM’s big friendly pumpkin face grins back at me from the monitor. ‘SAM? I thought Zoolander was supposed to shut you down? Why are we going so slow?’

++Zoolander? What are you talking about? I’ve not seen him for ages. The last person I saw was a shrub about ten gongs ago stealing the seed from the ship’s engine and jumping overboard++

‘Fuck!’ I yell, my head in my hands.

++I tried to warn you++ says SAM. ++I set off my alarm and everything++

‘Your alarm? What alarm? I didn’t hear an alarm? I don’t even know what your alarm sounds like?’ I tell him.

++GONG!++ he says.

I sit there staring into space, thinking about Hemhockle’s last words.

‘The Not-Captain goes down with the ship’ I whisper glumly.

‘What’s that buddy?’ asks W, sitting down on a pasting table behind me with a freshly lit cone blazing between his lips.

++He said the Not-Captain goes down with the ship++ says SAM chirpily.

‘Thanks Sam’ I say, throwing an itchy blue sock at him.

++What can I say?++ says SAM. ++I’m a super-computer with super-hearing++

‘Dude, remember those bales of tundra we got from the Hezel Plantation? They’re still sitting in the War Room unsmoked. We should get to work on that ASAP’ says W.

++Ask him what he means by the Not-Captain goes down with the ship++ says SAM.

‘Shit, yeah’ says W, exhaling, ‘sorry… I got distracted thinking about that tundra stash. What did you mean by that cryptic Not-Captain stuff?’

I sigh and take the cone from him, inhale deeply and blow out every last care in my brain. ‘We’re all going to die’ I tell him. ‘Seriously. In sixty years time, the Unimerse will be no more.’ A wave of paranoia washes over me. ‘Wait a minute… you are W, right? I didn’t even hear you come into the room. You’re not like… Aia… or some other evil fucker reincarnated via some cosmic loophole.’

He smiles and motions for me to hand him back the tundra. ‘Dude, I’m W. If you can’t trust me, then who can you trust?’

‘You sure you haven’t received Organisation orders to assassinate me?’

He laughs and waves his hand. ‘As of today, I’m officially retired from all that Organisation crap. It’s time for a new generation to shine and if I’ve only got sixty years left to live then I plan on living them out in style. Personally I’m thinking about heading back to the Hezel plantation. Those dwarfs fucking crack me up. You should come too.’

‘I can’t’ I tell him. ‘Hemhockle told me that the only way to save those of us left behind… is to fly the Mardi into a hole on the Seventh Isle.’

‘Hemhockle told you that?’ he asks and shakes his head. ‘Hemhockle’s full of shit. You’re seriously going to believe that old clown?’

‘It makes sense’ I tell him. ‘It’s what’s been going on all along. Imagine the Mardi out of existence… and the Unimerse will live on.’

He thinks about this for some time, sucking hard on the tundra cone and brushing the ash off his brown-sauce stained white t-shirt. ‘And the Not-Captain goes down with the ship’ he says finally.

‘It’s how it was meant to be’ I tell him.

‘Hmmmm’ he says.

‘How long until we reach the Ilhelo moon, SAM?’ I ask the computer.

++Without the seed? 3 hours++ says SAM.

‘Fuck. We’re going to miss the post-cup party, aren’t we?’ says W.

‘And how long from Ilhelo to the Seventh Isle… without the seed?’ I ask.

++Sixty years++ says SAM.

Apparently it’s going to go to the wire again.

…

The Ilhelo Stadium is empty, but for a small group of sleeping figures in the middle of the pitch. Death is there, curled up hugging a pair of inflatable garden shears. Zeus is butt-naked, but thankfully lying face down on the edge of a small crater filled with flecks of broken sky. Sadie and Martha sleep either side of Buttercup, the three of them holding hands. W walks over to them and stares at Buttercup’s beard before scratching his own. ‘It’s nothing like mine’ he says.

Finally, just sort of sitting there, is Wanamaker. He is holding a bottle of grog in his one good THSE sweet metal hand. His other arm is missing and someone has tied one of his duct tape legs to his shoulder, whether deliberately or by drunken accident, I guess we’ll never know. One of his infected balls has exploded and his torso is covered in puss. Thankfully his iron lung has developed a taste for it and has crawled out of his chest cavity and is lapping it up. His other swollen ball is so big that it has been tucked round behind his back and he’s using it like a bean bag. Finally, his floating rugby ball shaped head of shit has been decorated with silver tinsel so that it looks like he’s got hair. ‘Ah Wanamaker, there you are’ says W. ‘Kid, you look like shit. I go offline for a couple of months and this is what happens to you? Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for all your hard work and to say that… hey! Are you even listening to me? He’s not even listening to me!’

‘Who said that?’ croaks The Z, rolling over. His private parts have luckily been pixelated.

‘Where is everyone?’ I ask him, looking round at the empty stadium.

He rubs his bloodshot eyes and says ‘They ran for their lives when Ubergrim morphed into Death.’

At the sound of his name, Death wakes up and holds his skeletal head in his hands before spewing up a gutload of muffins into the crater behind him. ‘You okay?’ I ask him, and he weakly waves the inflatable garden shears as if to say, ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘What about the others?’ I ask The Z.

‘The others? Well, now that was curious. They just vanished into thin air. Alexander, Jon, Moppy, Ritchie, Mal, Jim, Uberpaul, The Atom Band. Poof! Just like that.’

It hits me like a scrench in the head. ‘Fuck’ I say.

‘What is it?’ asks the Black Angel.

‘I always thought he would be able to transplant us all into the bubble eyeball…’ I tell her. ‘I should have seen it coming when he realised he couldn’t take Datura. Who imagined this shit? It’s so fucking complicated.’

‘Life… is complicated’ says The Z.

‘No it isn’t’ says W, rolling a fresh cone. You know, those cones of his seem to get bigger and bigger. The one he places in his grinning mouth just now might as well be a bubble trumpet.

At this point a naked woman, built like a brick shithouse, carrying a scythe, and covered in dust,  comes staggering up the stadium tunnel. ‘Mrs Zeus!’ cries The Z and we watch, slightly disturbed by the pixelated swinging of body parts as they run in slow motion towards each other, before falling into one another’s arms. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asks.

‘I thought you were dead!’ she cries, tears of happiness streaming down her face.

‘Who’s that?’ I ask.

‘That’s Zeus’ wife’ says the Black Angel.

‘Why’s she hugging The Z?’

She looks at me and blinks. ‘Zeus IS The Z’ she says. ‘Honestly Willoughby, don’t you pay attention to ANYTHING?’

Mrs Z proceeds to explain everything. I’ll leave this bit out if you don’t mind because you’ve no doubt already read it. To be honest, I’m so busy thinking about my own imminent extinction that I hear her little naked dust-covered cameo as ‘Came down from the heavens… bla-di-bla… woke up He Who Must Not Be Named… bla-di-bla… farted and destroyed the tiny theatre in Simon Piler’s chest… bla-di-bla… went looking for Lumereti Hemhockle… bla-di-bla… big fist-fight… bla-di-bla… wasn’t pretty… bla-di-bla… buried under rubble and I dug myself out with this scythe… bla-di-fucking-bla-bla.’

She pitches the scythe to old silent Death and he catches it, seems to think twice about abandoning the inflatable garden shears, before handing them to Wanamaker, bowing, and then walking away.

‘Hey Death!’ I shout after him. ‘You should lose the orange t-shirt and yellow shorts! Go get another black cloak or something.’ He stops and looks around with a bony old grin on his bony old face, and raises a skeletal hand in the superhero pose. ‘Where I’m going, I won’t be seeing him again’ I say quietly to myself.

‘Why? Where are you going?’ asks the Black Angel.

‘Nowhere’ I tell her.

‘He’s going to sail the Mardi into a hole on the Seventh Isle’ says W, removing Wanamaker’s arm-leg and wrapping it around the intern’s neck like a scarf. ‘There’ he says, ‘much better.’

‘What’s that going to achieve?’ asks the Black Angel.

‘Well, it’ll keep him warm in the winter’ says W, standing back and admiring his handiwork. ‘Oh, you mean Willoughby sailing the Mardi into the hole on the Seventh Isle? Well, from what he told me… and I’ve got to say that I was incredibly stoned at the time… it would seem that old Hemhockle – the fuckwit that he was – told Willoughby, that wiping the Mardi out of existence is the only way for those of us who weren’t invited to Rasmussen’s funky new cosmos to survive, and that for reasons I don’t think either of them can comprehend themselves, let alone those of us who got innocently caught up in all of this, somehow it is the ship that is causing the Unimerse to collapse.’

‘Is this true?’ she asks me.

‘I dunno’ I tell her. ‘Yes… I suppose.’

She peers long and hard into my eye as if checking to see if I’m lying.

‘Aherm’ coughs The Z. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt… but if this is true, that Willoughby will be sacrificing himself so that the rest of us can live… then my job here is done, and we’ll be going. Back upstairs.’ He holds out a mighty hand to the Black Angel. ‘I think I understand now why you helped these… weirdos. All is forgiven. Plus we could do with some help rebuilding.’

She looks down at his hand and then back at me, before shrugging her wings. ‘I guess this is it then’ she says.

‘You’re going?’ I ask her.

‘I don’t belong here Willoughby’ she says, ‘we’ve both always known that.’

‘I suppose’ I say, and she takes The Z’s hand. I don’t know why I’m still calling him The Z. I mean, it’s not like he’s ever actually been an intergalactic drug dealer. Though he made an excellent one while he was.

The three of them begin to shimmer.

‘Hey!’ I say to the Black Angel, just before they disappear. ‘I never got a chance to say thanks…’

But they are already gone.

All that is left of the Flower Company is me, W, the three sleeping Murphy’s, and what’s left of Wanamaker. ‘Do you think I should wake them? Say goodbye?’ I ask W.

He shakes his head furiously and says ‘Fuck that.’

‘Apparently Chase isn’t Buttercup’s father’ I tell him.

‘So they say’ he says.

‘I wonder who her real father is…’ I say. ‘That beard of hers looks awful fami-’

‘Okay then’ he says, slinging Wanamaker over his shoulder, ‘well… that’s me. Goodbye Willoughby. It’s been… it’s been a trip.’

‘You’re leaving?’ I ask him. ‘You’re not…? I mean… never mind. Where will you go?’

‘I told you already’ he says, ‘I’m going to jump in the first taxi I can find and head back to the Hezel Colony. Figured I’d take responsibility for this hopeless lump while I’m at it. He’d be fucked without me. It’s not too late for you to change your mind you know.’

‘No… I better -’

‘Well, alright then’ he says, and winks at me.

We about turn and walk back down the tunnel. The Mardi sits resplendant at the foot of the stadium steps where the Black Angel parked her. We stop on the bottom step and W looks both ways up the deserted street, the two Ilians suns hammering down upon us. ‘Looks like I might be waiting a while for that taxi’ he says.

‘Yeah’ I say.

‘You gonna smoke all that tundra in the War Room?’ he asks me.

‘Maybe’ I say, ‘I guess. I’ll give it a go.’

He takes a deep breath and places Wanamaker gently inside a garbage can, before hauling himself up the rope ladder to the main deck of the ship. ‘Well come on’ he says, ‘you heard what SAM said. We’re going to have to get a move on if we’re supposed to be back on Earth before that sixty years deadline.’

I climb up beside him. ‘What about the Hezel Colony?’ I ask him.

‘Meh’ he says, ‘you’d never make it back alive if you tried smoking all that shit yourself.’

The Black Angel smiles and turns the wheel, lifting the Mardi off the ground. ‘Hey… weren’t you…?’ I ask her.

‘I never got a chance to say you’re welcome’ she says, and away we fly.

…

According to Legend, Simon Piler was born from a dewdrop.

But Legend doesn’t always get it right. In fact, half of the stuff he picks up, he hears second, sometimes even third hand, from Mrs Z when she’s hanging up her washing.

In actual fact, Simon Piler woke up in the long, long grass, when a dewdrop slipped from the tip of a late and lush green summer blade, landing on his left eyelid. ‘Wha-?!’ he cried happily, opening his eyes to the morning, and a dragonfly buzzed forward, right under his nose.

He stretches out his stiff limbs, noticing a peculiar tuft of hair on the end of his elbow. He tugs at it once or twice to see if it would come off, but no. ‘Hmmmmm’ he says, and climbs slowly to his feet. The grass on the hill-side has grown up past his chest and he wonders how long he has been sleeping for. ‘Most peculiar’ he mutters, bending down and picking up the old brown satchel that he has been using for a pillow.

He unbuckles it and looks inside. Contents of the satchel are as follows:

plastic bottle of pungent black liquid in a bottle marked “Irn Bru”
scrench
faithful battered plastic recorder that makes him smile, and he can’t help but lift it to his lips and pipe ‘toot-toot!’
a conch shell
a small hardback book called ‘The Exquisite Encyclopedia of Things’ (every page is blank)
1 large egg

‘This is an exceptionally large egg’ he says, puzzled how it managed to find its way into his bag in the first place. He lifts it to his ear and gives it a gentle shake. ‘Ostrich maybe?’ he asks himself, before returning it to his satchel.

‘Woof!’ says his dog, a smokey-coloured mongrel called Laika, and he kneels down, clapping her around the ears, while she wags her tail merrily.

‘Look at you!’ he says. ‘I bet you’re ravenous! I’M ravenous… I feel as if I haven’t eaten in… years!’

He wades through the grass, up Cha Cha Skull Hill, watching a flock of pelicans glide overhead in formation. At the top of the hill, at the edge of a jingle-jungle (actually just a simple forest, but in Simon’s head it is jungular… and jingular) where red birds and jazz monkey haggle over territory, sits a solitary wigwam. ‘Home’ he says to himself, pausing in the doorway.

He felt like you do when you wake from an incredible dream. One that just goes on and on and on and you never want it to end.

The Universe looked like a universe should. Calm and constant, but brimming with possibility, exactly like our own in every way with the exception of the flock of pelicans which now recede on the horizon.

He tips his raven hat to to the sun and exeunts.

…

60 years later…

I open my eyes, feel the warm soft sand beneath my toes, hear the crystal clear sea lapping against the shore. A solitary white cloud drifts by overhead. Today it looks like a tigermouse. I look to my left where the Black Angel lies belly-down, her wings shading herself from the sun’s rays, working her way through the inflatable journal. ‘What do you think?’ I ask her.

‘I don’t get it’ she says.

‘It’s a journal’ I tell her. ‘It’s inflatable. What’s not to get?’

‘It’s not the journal’ she says, ‘it’s…’

‘Spit it out.’

‘Well, apart from the fact it ends so suddenly… why DID W steal that goat?’

We burst out laughing. ‘I dunno. Why don’t you ask him?’ I say and she gives me The Look. I’ve been on the receiving end of The Look many, many times since we set sail from Iliaus six decades ago. ‘What?’ I say.

‘When was the last time he spoke to us?’ she asks me.

I shrug. ‘Sometime before the Mardi put us into suspended animation. When did we run out of tundra?’

‘2016’ she says.

‘He just needs some time to dry out’ I tell her and I reach for my smokes. ‘Shit, is this our last cigarette?’ I ask, crumpling the packet and tossing it into the sea. A bright orange shark leaps up and snaffles it in his jaws.

‘Willoughby, we’ve not even seen him for three years. He’s been locked away in that bunkroom of his doing Zeus knows what’ she says.

We take alternative puffs of the last cigarette, sitting there quietly.

++ATTENTION ALL CREW. THIS IS SAM SPEAKING. IN A MOMENT, WE WILL BE RE-ENTERING THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE. THE MARDI REQUESTS THAT YOU ALL REMAIN BELOW DECK UNTIL YOU HEAR THE SIGNAL++

‘What’s the signal SAM?’ I ask.

++GONG… OBVIOUSLY++

The Black Angel extinguishes the cigarette in the sand and we exit the Sales Office/Solarium, closing the door behind us in case the shark escapes again. We head downstairs and stop outside the door of Bunkroom 3. The Black Angel gives me The Look, and I take a deep breath before knocking. ‘W?’ I ask. ‘We’re here.’

No reply.

‘We were thinking that you might want to… you know, come up with us and see The End?’ says the Black Angel, placing her ear to the door.

Still no reply.

‘Dude, remember that joint I hid in 2014? The night I accidentally set fire to the Bridge. And you threw that rum bottle at my head but it missed and smashed a window in the Art Gallery and all of Simon’s paintings got sucked out into space? ’ I tell him through the door. ‘Well, I’ve remembered where I hid it.’

We listen closely. A bed creaks inside and footsteps pad across the floor. The lock clicks and the door handle turns. W’s face appears, heavily bearded, gaunt, his woolly hat falling apart on his head, eyes sunk like pearls at the bottom of oysters. ‘Where is it?’ he snaps.

‘It’s here’ I tell him, ‘in my back pocket.’

I reach in and produce the fifty seven year old spliff, before holding it out to him.

For a moment I think he’s going to murrrderrr me, then he snatches it out of my hand, and slams it in his mouth, muttering something that sounds eerily like ‘my precioussss’.

The Black Angel strikes a match and lights it for him. ‘It’s good to see you’ she says.

‘Hmmmmf’ he grunts and inhales, his eyes glazing over, mouth drooping into a smile, and then he sinks to the floor deliriously.

She gives me The Look. ‘You can carry him’ she says.

++GONG!++

Up on the main deck we hang on the rail while the Mardi floats closer and closer to the Earth, the expansive blue of the Pacific Ocean looming large in front of us. ‘So’ I say, ‘this is it. Again.’

The Mardi crash-lands into the sea and we get tossed up into the air like puppets, before thumping to the floor. W pulls himself back up on the remains of a wooden catapult, the joint smouldering away in his mouth. ‘And there we are’ he says grimly. The Black Angel helps me up and we stare at a blazing tropical island that doesn’t appear on any map. There is a small inflatable ark being paddled away from it, W pounding the surf with a heart-shaped guitar, Simon sitting on the roof singing ‘Second Garden’, Becky and Smally in fire-fighter’s uniforms, faces pressed obliviously to the port-hole window. ‘Good times’ says W.

The Mardi is caught in some sort of magnetic pull, dragging her on towards the white sandy shore. All around us, objects emerge from the sea and the sky, sucked in by the same strange magnetism emanating from the hole at the centre of the Seventh Isle. There is a cow with a man’s head. Dead. A field of white crows, all feathers and soil. A hatful of eggs. Amber and blue musical notes. Waste paper baskets filled with nostril hair. A backwards cowboy hat. Bell-adorned shoes. Big foam gloves in purple and green. A black matador cape. A blood-stained, badly burned baseball bat. A bogey the size of a tennis ball. Loads of white cassettes, their spools a-billowin. Cloudy cakes and complicated nutshells. Cousin Evick yelling ‘Crazy Bruce Willis-esque mission to save the Ear-’

We crash through the flaming trees, with even more things flying past our faces, getting snagged on magnetized branches. Crazy trinkets and damn ukuleles. Towers of seaweed collapsing into exploding confetti. A flying piano with freaky silver eyeballs. Frozen tears and funny sandwiches. Mannequins in golden hard-hats. Green bubbles and hiccuping hearts. Jammed shredders. Ininap’s blimp, stuttering, punctured, flopping between the trees. Kidney beans and lemon cactus. Magical wellies and lost white training shoes. Missing eyes and mutated rats. Orange plastic sunglasses and overgrown eyebrows torn free from a face. A paper hat made of napkins. A pathetic green plastic leaf pirouetting overhead. 8-balls and absinthe. Wanamaker’s actual eyeball. Real waffles and red flashcards. Ship Shapes and shurakins. Sombreros and space leaches. Sparkling twigs and sumptuous muffins. Bacon rolls and the ghost of Jack Kerouac hanging from the back of a fire engine.

‘FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU -’ yells W, but he is drowned out by the sound of the Unimerse finally collapsing. Stars exploding. Trees somersaulting like twirling batons torn free from the ground. Thirteen cloud coffins, splintering into whistling orbs of white light. Two-headed space chickens gawping as the great hole swallows everything alive…

I can barely hear myself think when the Mardi goes under, headfirst through the hole in the heart of the Seventh Isle, sailing out of existence so as the Unimerse can float on, a fucked-up bubble in a big bright void somewhere, sometime. The hole immediately closes behind us with an almighty flash of neon light and the last thing I see is the Black Angel shielding herself with her wings, W puffing furiously on his joint, and a Jazz Monk figurine flying past my head.

And that, as they say, is that.

project pawn the utica flower
nettleink
space ship sound track
about bill murray throwing a bottle that accidentally broke a guy’s nose
poop lung
bantl
what are the documentation of the company
“hate eric clapton”
tribe genital
dissected swamp monster
journal entry of psych intern
flower little bullets
what does the word utica mean
moppy spré
master vessel tenky
ectosonic
bill white utica
sam durkin sucks
gassius clay picture
potholing ology
nianarok
flower documentation
lip reading
plaster medical cast
“stoned cloud” trance
tribal boat
ghooni speech after win the cup 2011

seahorse flu
hot tub clip art
black pink windmill
plane+paper
fuck you i’m a flower
cabin filmprojektor
cartoon foraminifer
clinometer android
i hate eric clapton
weird squirrel pictures
cold sleeping bag braw
what is bon jovi incident
matchbox is thrown forwarded to the point where the cart starts what is the distance
plastic diplomat suitcases with 3-digits lock
sea dog lifebelts ship shape
misterious reality images
what does an elephant teapot mean
abandoned semi trucks
i hear loud booms at night in utica
westbank bc band break the silence brendan filbrant, hertz
lacky people in pictures
“a small paragraph introduce about flower company”
hello, it’s over the telephone
moon mission transcript
a novel about telepathic twins switching seats for mission to the moon
toucan and fig tree
circadian lock
audiocassette tattoo
0000000
the shadow’ looming over fox?
“big samonan” with little dog
“the goodies” telescope eye
a flower company with a logo of a sandal with wings
threshold explosion
a man, standing before a fountain, watching the falling water and tilting his head from side to side…rapidly
“gagged in the passenger”
old toastie maker
what should i name my flower company
planet veth

As I get to my feet I scan the all-too-familiar faces seated around the table beside W’s one-time Black Ops guru. Immediately to his left sits Sadie Murphy, her hair tied back in a ponytail. Long gone is the frilly polka-dot dress and love of cupcakes, now she is shoe-horned into a tight black leather catsuit, with mirrored shades pushed back against her eyes. To Papa Bear’s right sits Martha Murphy, Sadie’s twin sister in identical dress, her fingernails drumming impatiently on the table. You just wouldn’t believe that these two had spawned twenty-three alien offspring. ‘Hey twins’ I say, meekly raising a hand and they nod silently, synchronised.

To Martha’s left sits a middle-aged fat guy in broken glasses and a crew-cut, sweat clinging to his blotchy skin, shifty little eyes darting one way then another to a point where it looks like he’s got two marbles rattling around inside his skull-bowl. ‘Buft Fupkin… I almost forgot about you’ I say. ‘I suppose you’re pleased that W is dead.’

‘It was for the good of the Organisation’ he replies, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. ‘W was a liability ever since he went soft on Nianarok.’

‘Debatable’ spits Sadie Murphy across the table.

‘Now, now ladies…’ says Papa Bear, holding up a flaking fake THSE sweet metal hand.

‘And just for the record Toad, I let you win at RISK’ huffs Fupkin.

To the left of the Answer Man sits a red guy with a bone through his nose. ‘Shitcomb?’ I ask.

‘Whitcomb’ he says, nodding politely.

‘Shitcomb Whitcomb’ I say, ‘yes, I remember now.’

After Shitcomb Whitcomb sits another fat guy in glasses that I don’t recognise. He is fiddling with a circuit board, doesn’t even look up as I flop down in the empty seat beside him. Thankfully he is wearing a name badge that says he is ‘HARE’. HARE has possibly the worst case of dandruff I have ever seen on a human being, the flakes literally falling like snow every time he moves his head.

In the seat to my left sits Jebus. ‘Mal? What the fuck are you doing here?’

He shrugs.

And to Mal’s left sits… holy shit, it’s my second wife Winona Ryder!

‘Hi Willoughby’ she says, her hands wrapped around a suddenly menacing looking hole-punch.

‘Uh…’

‘Oh, don’t worry’ she says with a smile, placing the hole-punch on the table, ‘that stuff back on Iliaus was just Organisation business and I needed a cover-story. Your hairy friend Wesus here, really outdid himself helping on that one. He’s my Number 2 you know.’

‘I am?’ asks Mal, blowing out a strand of hair that has fallen into his mouth.

She turns to him and nods. ‘Unfortunately Wesus, we had to remove 95% of your brain, that’s why you don’t remember anything about it. Regrettably you saw too much. It was either the 95% or Fupkin here was going to have to assassinate you.’

‘Oh’ says Mal. ‘Well… thanks, I guess.’

‘You’re welcome’ says Winona.

‘So, we’re not married?’ I ask her, feeling a certain amount of relief warmly swimming through my brain.

She holds up a finger with a thumping big Vimmoquan rock on it. ‘Not married?’ she laughs. ‘Well of course we’re fucking married!’

The relief springboards in the wrong direction and splats on the tiles at the side of the pool. ‘Listen, uh… shit I’m sorry’ I say, ‘but I can’t really… uh… remember your actual name?’

‘You can call me Betty’ she says, with a wink. ‘Remember?’

‘Um…’

‘You sang it to me at the karaoke… the night they arrested W?’

‘Betty you can call me, you can call meeee Al’ she sings badly.

‘Oh, I fucking love that song’ says a really small person sitting beside her, their feathered green felt cap barely visible above the top of the table.

‘Karaoke? Um, I don’t think…’ I say.

‘Oh I remember that bit’ says Mal, ‘it was terrible.’

‘Betty Toad’ says Shitcomb Whitcomb, ‘it’s got a certain ring to it.’

‘It does. Doesn’t it?’ says Winona happily, gazing at her gleaming ring.

‘The truth is though… I mean, I dunno if you know this already, but I’m already married’ I tell her.

‘Not anymore’ she says, reaching below the table and tossing me a severed blue tentacle crawling with maggots and space flies that lands with a shlump in front of me.

I stare in silence at Pelanob Bolareb’s hacked-off limb until a cloaked figure sitting between a bearded Buttercup Murphy and her mother Sadie coughs. ‘I appreciate you both have a lot to talk about, but now is not the time or place. Papa Bear, shall we begin?’

Papa Bear nods solemnly. ‘Thank you Wanda and welcome everyone. I think I’m correct in saying that we all know each other, so we can skip the introductions and get down to business.’

‘Wait a minute’ I say, ‘Wanda?’

The cloaked figure turns in my direction.

‘Becky N1000?’ I ask her.

She sighs beneath her hood and an ancient looking balloon fish with barbed teeth floats up on a piece of string behind her back.

‘As I’m sure you’re all aware, we, my friends, are all that is left of the Organisation. The Heads are dead, as are Peaches and W, God bless their cotton android socks -’

‘Hail W!’ mutters Sadie, making a W-shape by touching her thumbs together.

‘Oh cut out the sanctimonious bullshit’ spits Martha on the other side of Papa Bear. ‘W was a great foot soldier, perhaps the best… but Peaches… Peaches was a visionary, a true leader… and he could fuck all night like a Duracell bunny.’

‘Ewww’ moans Buttercup, screwing up her little nose.

‘Hey Buttercup’ I ask, peeking over the edge of the table, ‘what’s with the beard?’

‘I stopped shaving’ she says quietly, ‘in memory of my father.’

Sadie glares at her across the cloaked crone. ‘That’s enough of that young lady! We’ve told you more times than I can count on my fingers and toes… your father was Chase Murphy!’

‘Then how come I don’t have a monster twin?’ she asks. ‘All my brothers and sisters have a monster twin. What’s so different about me?’

‘Honey, you’re not different… you’re special’ says Martha softly across the table.

‘Special?’ asks Buttercup. ‘Mom, look! I can grow a fucking beard! I’ve been shaving since I was six! Doesn’t this beard remind you of anyone?’ She looks enquiringly from Martha to Sadie and back again, but neither of them flinch. ‘It’s W’s beard Mom!’

The twins look gobsmacked and shake their heads, horrified.

‘It does look very like W’s beard’ I tell them.

‘Thanks Willoughby’ says Buttercup defiantly and Sadie Murphy throws a water-pistol across the table at me. I duck and it clatters into my forehead.

‘Ouch.’

Wanda coughs again. ‘Papa Bear, you were saying?’

‘Uh…? Saying? Yes, right’ says the burly old man, stopping himself from gawping at Buttercup’s beard. ‘Well, as I was saying my friends, we… are all that is left of the Organisation, so the responsibility of dragging it back onto its feet lies with us. Some of you might be daunted by the magnitude of the task ahead, but fear not, I’ve seen the Organisation on its knees at least seventeen times in my lifetime and each time we rise up stronger and slightly more crooked. Isn’t that right Fupkin?’

Fupkin looks up from picking his nose and shrugs.

‘So’ continues Papa Bear, ‘to proceedings. First we need to discuss the proposed promotion of Intern Wanamaker to the position of full Operative. Any thoughts?’

‘We’re seriously fucked on the numbers front’ says Hare, ‘I’m thinking of voting aye.’

Sadie Murphy shakes her head vigorously. ‘Intern Wanamaker was charged with protecting Operative W. I can’t see how we can possibly promote him in light of recent events.’

‘Oh come on’ says Hare, ‘Fupkin’s mission was to assassinate W and Wanamaker’s mission was to protect W. Would we really have gotten rid of Fupkin if W was still alive today?’

Papa Bear glances at the Answer Man and says ‘Probably…’

‘Thanks buddy’ smiles Fupkin sourly. ‘Listen, you all know my feelings about the kid – he’s a trier like his father Wuyi, but he lacks the balls to cut the mustard on the front line. I mean, he’s still alive isn’t he? Personally I’m reading that as a serious sign that he’s a chickenshit.’ There are nods of agreement around the table.

‘He might be alive’ I tell them, ‘but his legs are made of rolled up duct tape, he’s got two THSE sweet metal hands, one of which doesn’t work properly, he’s got a bionic lung that needs to be topped up with shit every hour, in fact his floating head is a ball of tramp shit and brains with a malfunctioning eyeball crudely jammed into it. Oh, and his infected balls are swollen up like watermelons. You should cut the guy some slack.’

‘All in favour of a promotion for Intern Wanamaker?’ asks Papa Bear.

I put my hand up.

‘All against?’

Everyone else puts their hand up.

‘The kid knows too much now. Buttercup, you should take him out soon as an opportunity presents itself’ says Fupkin.

‘Right-o’ says Buttercup, scratching her beard.

‘Alright’ says Papa Bear. ‘Now to business. Does anybody want to put themselves forward as Chief Head?’

Everyone looks at each other and eventually Shitcomb Whitcomb puts his painted red hand up.

‘Whitcrumb? Really?’ asks Papa Bear.

‘Why not?’ asks Shitcomb Whitcomb.

‘Well, it’s just… I mean… you… uh… well… I just never even considered that you might want the position’ says Papa Bear.

‘I think I might be good at it’ says Shitcomb Whitcomb earnestly and someone titters.

‘Right’ says Papa Bear. ‘Anyone else?’

Nobody puts their hand up.

‘Are you sure?’ asks Papa Bear again.

Still only Shitcomb Whitcomb’s got his hand in the air.

‘Okay. Well then I guess as there are no alternatives… the job is yours’ says Papa Bear unconvincingly.

‘Yesssss’ says Chief Head Shitcomb Whitcomb punching the air in the victory pose. Suddenly he senses everyone’s eyes on him. ‘Uh… um… what now?’ he asks nervously.

‘You declare the next phase’ yawns Fupkin stretching backwards in his chair.

‘Of course’ says Chief Head Shitcomb Whitcomb, ‘well then, I declare that the Organisation is now entering… PHASE X!’

There is a muted ripple of applause and all of the banners around the room magically change from W’s into X’s.

‘So does this mean I get to pick my name first?’ asks Chief Head Shitcomb Whitcomb.

‘You’re the Chief Head’ says Papa Bear, ‘you decide if you get to pick your name first or not.’

‘Oh, right. Well in that case I’m definitely picking my name first’ he grins. ‘Let’s see… something beginning with X… um… um… wow it’s so difficult… all I can think of is X-Ray.’

‘We had a similar problem with Phase Q’ says Papa Bear, ‘and ended up with five Operative Queen’s. It was a logistical nightmare.’

‘What’s wrong with X-Ray?’ asks Buttercup. ‘I like it.’

‘You do?’ asks Chief Head Shitcomb Whitcomb.

‘Yeah’ says Buttercup,’it’s pretty cool.’

‘I like your beard’ says Shitcomb Whitcomb, ‘it’s pretty cool too’ – and for a second their eyes just about meet across the table and somewhere far away a heart-shaped smoke-ring gets punctured by a golden bullet.

‘Then Chief Head X-Ray it is!’ beams Chief Head X-Ray. ‘Uh… right, so… do I like pick names for you all or do you guys pick for yourself?’

Papa Bear beats his own head against the table in front of him. ‘You’re Chief Head’ he says, ‘it’s your call.’

‘Okay’ says X-Ray, ‘it’s just I thought there might be some kind of tradition I had to follow…’

‘It’s your call’ says Hare.

‘… and I didn’t want to step on any toes in my first minute in the job.’

‘It’s your call’ says the twins together.

‘Great. Well then I’ll just let you all decide’ says X-Ray, sitting back in his chair and plucking the bone from his nose with a sigh of relief. ‘Ooh… ooh!’ he says suddenly, sitting up again. ‘Can I like, get a green jumpsuit with a codpiece? For the training videos?’

‘You can get a cap in your ass if you keep talking shit’ says Martha Murphy and her sister Sadie snorts with laughter.

‘Also, what’s the chances of somebody making me two prototype androids? Ideally killing machines but with real personality? Not all robotic like the terminator.’

‘We’ll have our people contact some people’ says Hare.

‘I thought we didn’t have any people left?’ asks Chief Head X-Ray.

‘Once we’ve got some people… I’ll have those people contact some people’ says Hare, deadpan.

‘No, scrub that’ says X-Ray. ‘Why don’t you miss out our people and go straight to these people you’re talking about. We’ll make them our people. Is that possible?’

‘I dunno’ says Hare.

X-Ray sits back in his chair looking pleased with himself and holds out his hands. ‘Carry on’ he says.

‘Anyone got a name beginning with X that they want?’ asks Papa Bear.

‘I’d like to be Operative X’ says Buttercup.

‘That name’s already taken’ snips Fupkin opposite her.

‘By who?’ asks Buttercup, standing up, her cross little bearded face and feather cap appearing above the table.

‘By me’ says Fupkin smugly, ‘I called it first.’

‘No you didn’t!’ protests Buttercup.

‘I did’ says Fupkin tapping his temple, ‘in my mind.’

Buttercup scowls and for a moment she looks exactly like W did that time he found out that we wouldn’t be living out the rest of our days on 0.5132. Suddenly I feel a pang of sadness for ever leaving the Hezel Colony. We could have stayed there. Our lives wouldn’t have lasted very long when the wrong guy got his hands on the Unimerse Machine and turned everything to shit, but for however long it might have lasted, it would have been fun.

Suddenly Buttercup lets out a high pitch scream and hurls a pair of nail-clippers across the table, piercing the Answer Man’s jugular. Jets of bright red blood start spurting from his fat neck all over Chief Head X-Ray and within a matter of seconds Buft Fupkin lies wheezing out his final breaths on the floor. ‘Amazing throw’ says Sadie, proudly to her daughter.

‘Thanks Mom’ says Buttercup sitting back down and blushing.

‘We’re so proud of you honey’ agrees Martha from the other side of Papa Bear.

‘Can somebody get me a towel please?’ asks Chief Head X-Ray, covered in Fupkin’s blood.

‘I think we found our Operative X’ says Papa Bear with a wink in Buttercup’s direction.

Buft Fupkin farts and lets out a little death rattle on the floor.

‘I think I’m going to go for Operative Xavier’ says Hare.

‘Ah shit’ says Papa Bear, ‘that’s what I was going to say too.’ He pretends to throw a set of nail clippers across the room and Hare pretends to get hit in the jugular, sinks to the floor making a pretend farting noise with his lips, and lets out a exaggerated pretend death rattle. Everyone laughs.

‘I’d like to be Operative Xylophone’ says Mal, flicking his mass of hair nervously.

‘Oooh’ says Papa Bear, ‘good one!’

‘HEY!’ yells Chief Head X-Ray. ‘I said I want a fucking towel goddammit! I’m covered in blood here!’

‘Could I be Operative Excalibar with an X?’ asks Sadie. ‘Like X-calibar?’

‘That might be confusing’ says Papa Bear, ‘I’m pretty sure there was an Operative Excalibar during Phase E, though I also heard he was a complete douche.’

‘Right’ says Sadie and we sit there thinking quietly of names that begin with X but not Ex.

…

Rassmussen Murphy, here.  Greetings!
I wish to preface the following statement by saying that it is not a story about CYBERTRONIC ZOOMCATS FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION, nor about faceless massively-proliferating aliens, nor Supersauruses.  Though, honestly, it could be.

It’s about lots and lots of gritty toothpaste.  I’m utterly fond of toothpaste, you see, but not for my teeth.  Towards the azimuth of the future my dental appendages will rot out of my head in a slow and steadfast fashion and I will replace them again with small pieces of polished meteorites.  It’s very difficult to find meteorites of the correct size for this, but then again, it’s easy to find tubes of toothpaste.  So I feel that both sides of the equation are balanced rather nicely, don’t you?

Did you know that toothpaste is quasi-luminous?  Well it is!  My laboratory will eventually focus on measuring the qualities of toothpaste, but that will not be one of them.  The research will be painstaking and unfunded, but also relatively fruitful.  In fact, if you’re from the future, you’ve  likely heard of most of the major inventions created during that time.  Right?

(shuffling through many little scraps of paper stapled together haphazardly)

For instance, take
B-184 ‘Nineteen Tune-Reciting Mechanical Flutists Heavily Garnished In Ivy’
or
B-540 ‘Lyre of the Celestial Penis’  Both to be very important in Dionysian Theory.  Or so I am told.

Oh, yes, and of course there’s,
B-681 ‘Nifty Radar Antennae, Except For Toasters’

B-702 ‘Explosion Bean’  Which needs some tuning I might add…

B-495 ‘Giant Torpid Squid Call’  Also needs work, actually.

Uh, but there’s always,
B-993 ‘Balloon Array Index’

Oh, actually, that’s a very poorly written ‘H’, sorry.  Finished that one just before we left Jacksonville.  Hmmm….

B-007 ‘Lightswitch Abductor With Fingerprint Recognition Facilitation’  Hmmm, again.

B-256 ‘Grotesque Hilbert Space and Parameters for Aqueous Suspensions of Several Important Toothpaste Fractions’

And of course!  How could I forget B-679?

B-679 ‘Result of What Happens When You Plug Sam Supercomputer Into Rainbow City Remember To Buy Peanut Butter’  Oh, maybe that last part isn’t part of the title, I guess.  But there you have it!  I’m sure you’re very familiar with these few modest bumpkins of electrical engineering.  Aren’t you?  Future people?

*

You can move very quickly in the chuckling green air of the future.  It’s sort of because there is a different amount of oxygen in it, but either way, I think that you had ought to know that on a dozy Saturday afternoon in October I will make a rather unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your outlook) mistake when I finally decide to try plugging our friend Sam into the Rainbow City supercomputing array.

His screen instantaneously went black.  Then, while I was frantically trying to figure out what had happened, it refreshed again, except where Sam’s pumpkin face had previously been was a sequence of rapidly shifting symbols.  I believe they are what might be called ‘Kerouacian Hieroglyphs’ in the literature.  Some people call them ‘smokewords’, too, as you may or may not be familiar.  Chapstick hedgehogs alive!  Anyway, the form of these hieroglyphs were anything but discrete.  They continuously morphed into new versions and variants I had never seen.  Of course I was curious –  there seemed to be endless manipulations on their forms, twisting and rotating into a limitless stream of information.  And a limitless stream of information seems a direct analogy to time.  Like looking at a language of space.

‘Aha!’ I leapt up and screamed, ‘I forgot to buy peanut butter!’

So I drove up to Fairbanks and bought a can.  And on the way back to the warehouse I made a series of rather remarkable realizations.  The first was that I still had the Giant Saw Record Time Approximator (R-106) from the Mardi sitting partially dismantled in the shed.  That was an exciting premise – to run the saw with the hieroglyphs as input data!  What would happen?  Ticklish charlie rashpaste!

I left the butter on the counter and the keys on the shelf, then wandered out to the barn shed behind the place.  Opening the door I was surprised to see Ptolemy sitting on a pile of lumber and picking his teeth.

“I’m not really an evil guy, you know,” he says, “I just make a lot of mistakes in judgement.”
“How long have you been here?!”
“Don’t be daft.  We drove up from Detroit last month.  Did you bring me that can of Peanut Butter like I asked?”
“Waaait… that was for you?  I picked some up, but I thought it was because all I had left to eat was powdered hummus.”
“Yeah, it was for me.  I appreciate it.”

Anyway, he sits on the lumber pile and eats with a spoon while I go shuffling about dusting off the saw.  Incidentally it’s still got a good connection to the motor, but it needs a power supply.  ”You’d do well to get a smaller saw, man,” says Ptolemy, “what the hell are you cutting, anyway, giant redwoods?”
“Lay off, Ptolemy,” I mutter.  But he’s pretty much right.  ”Phooey, you taxidermist of happiness!”
“Look, I think they sell replacement blades at the Auto Parts place down the block.”

In my own stubborn way I cut the Giant Saw Record Time Approximator down with a hacksaw until it’s ornate patterned disk was only 8 centimeters in diameter.  Twenty-three-and-a-half days with a hacksaw.  The violet green swallows buzz in and out of the barn and stir the green oxygen out with their wings.  It rains on my power supply and during some moments I cry laments on the crumbling facades of society dusty drifting out brainskates, the murky misty steam of orange-gray heavy on the stoop.  Ptolemy goes over to his girlfriend’s dumpy place on the hill and the both of them come wandering over in the afternoons and distract me from the work.  We play The Painted Shuts on the boombox and the two of them call me a ‘Moonpigologist’ and laugh.

With a half bottle of awful honey-flavored trashcan whiskey, Ptolemy is there to see me connect the saw, Sam, and the Rainbow City for the first time.  It is a shower of sparks and I’m screaming and scrambling about to disconnect everything without frying the circuits apart or melting them.  ”Great nonogons of Utter Spoilage!  Bark beetle shine on the Paths!” I scream.

Afterwards we imagine that we are in some kind of fancy old European restaurant with chandeliers.  ”Wow, they’ve even got a piano player,” says Ptolemy’s girlfriend, brushing the hair out of her eyes.  ”This is like that movie Casablanca. With wahts-his-name from The Maltese Falcon.”  Since I don’t watch movies I sort of ignore her and say, “Ptolemy you better give me my Unit-Potential Sphere Module back, because it was really unkind of you to take it in the first place and just disappear like that I had no idea where you went and that was a pretty time-intensive piece of equipment to make.  Besides, the backup flimsy version of it got lost when the Fishbus crashed into the snow and exploded.”
Ptolemy was busy rearranging the silverware into minimum-area triangles, so I poked him on the shoulder hard.  ”Listen, Ptolemy, I know you have my Unit Potential Sphere Module.  I unwrap you and your mind.  Please give it back.”
“Eh?” He looks up.  ”Oh this stupid piece of junk?”  He digs the sphere module out of his toga pocket and holds it up, then hurls it out the window.  I go diving after it, down out the third story window and everybody in the restaurant is jumping up out of their seats and rushing over to the window where I go soaring down like some kind of impossible Birdman and grab hold effortlessly of my balloons.  Now I go storming away and plunk the computers and the saw together, give one monster blast of the heater, rise significantly upwards and hunker back down to the modification.
Ptolemy explodes from the roof of the restaurant scattering bricks in 1001 infinitely energetic trajectories tracing neon lemon tracks through the strawberry orange sky,
“THAT WAS TOO EASY!’ he yells, “PERHAPS A BIT OF FORESHADOWING IS IN STORE FOR YOU, IDIOT MURPHY!”
“Actually this is occurring in the future, you know, although I can understand your point in terms of narrative structure.  Also why are you chasing me?   You lost it fair and square you meatchimp!  One man’s junk is another man’s treasure!”
“NOW YOU LAY OFF, YOU IMPOTENT SQUARISH POOL!   I LIKE THAT UNIT-POTENTIAL SPHERE MODULE AND IT IS REALLY COOL SO I WANT IT BACK, PLEASE!”

The sky buckles into purple bubbling partridge tessellations and I am swung from the baskets hanging on by a feather.

“Why why why Ptolemy are you so mean?  All I want to do is figure this out and use a screwdriver to put the Potential B-B-Bean into Sam’s B-B-Brain and see if it can project a different space-time onto it.”
“OH, IN THAT CASE COOL, I’LL SEE YOU NEXT WEEKEND IF YOU’RE AROUND,” says Ptolemy, rapidly decreasing in size with the blue billowy tempestuous clouds sucking like a vortex back down into the restaurant piano.  I witness several blinding flashes of yellow light permeate the scene.  “What A Waste,” I mutter, hauling back into the balloon.

*

Once I molt and the bean is in place, I plug the power again.  Strums of sound whirl off the machine like the best fiddler you ever heard.  Great magic fans of harmony!  Sam is happily creating a mystery of impossible proportions and it gives me a grin to think of his little mind jumping and shifting precipitously through the Patchwork Heart of time.  His happiness is chaotic and perfect.  Witness, witness!  Here I am spraypainting a little blue moon on the outer case.

*

The next morning when I wake there’s a disruption in the yard.  Ptolemy is breaking the barn with a big hammer.  Or, at least, he’s trying to.  He’s obviously drunk and is missing more often than he connects.  I open the window and stare at the one-leg man.

Stepping out the front door hard, I slam it behind.  ”Ptolemy, gimme that hammer.  Get out of here.  You’re runk!”
“Where is that computer!  I’ll break it into fifty pieces!”
“You’re going to break yourself into forty pieces in the process if you keep going on like this,” I say firmly as he loses his balance and crashes through a broken hanging board of the wall.  I quick pull the hammer away and throw it out into the street.
“Gahhhh!  You are taking all my property away!” bellows Ptolemy, writhing like an upturned beetle.
“Listen, Ptolemy, I know what you are.”  He stops struggling and sits up onto his elbows.
“What am I?”
“Ptolemy, you’re just an idea.  And kind of a bad one at that.”
In a flash of lucidity, he replies, “You know that I tried, though, don’t you?  I’m not evil.”  Then he disappears.  The Earth starts to revolve around the sun, changing the entire structure of the Solar System.  Alpha Centauri is exploding into a supernova, but I can’t see it for the brightness of the chuckling walnut branches swinging through the breeze.

I walk over to the barn and pick up the compact casing I’ve devised for my tranquil machine.  Looks a bit like something a person might toast a sock with.  Programming the dials is the most important step in using the device, I’ve found,  but the initial conditions of it’s use also make it essential to approach with a certain mad happiness and quark boot dance.  Together we’ll whisk away into the Thin Smoke of the Unimerse!

Good morning New Orleans 1937.
Good morning in The Hague, 1575.
Good whatever it is really, Floating Asteroid Settlement, 5703.
Good evening Utica, 1916.
Good evening Sao Paulo, 1997.
Good afternoon and toast in Aio Ping Prime, light year XI-12.06712,
and Greetings To You All By Nouveau Coronal Near-Field Transmission!

Howdy
Howdy
Howdy
Howdy
Hurdy
Gurdy Time Travelling Toastie Maker
Means The Grass Is Greener On Both Sides
Of The Fence, Making Hay Whilst The
Suns Unwind, Murky Grayish Forms of Evolution
Twinkling Early Moments of Galaxy Collision,
Hello Have You Seen The Volcano Erupting?
King Narcissus Is Peaceable On His Stoop, Yo Too

…

‘Wake up Willoughby’ says the voice above me, and I lift my head from the desk, part-glued with sleep drool. I feel like that crazy Rasmussen has been babbling Rongovian in my brain for three days straight, and I don’t have a clue what he was babbling about.

All of the torches look long extinguished and I shiver in the cold and gloom seeing that the cave is empty apart from the hooded crone and the balloon fish standing over me, Fupkin’s fat dead body still lying on the floor saturated in blood. ‘Where did everyone go?’ I ask.

‘I dunno’ she says, ‘but I don’t suppose it matters now.’

‘Shit. How long have I been sleeping?’

‘Three days’ she says.

Three days!

‘But the Unimerse Cup final is today!’ I say, jumping up from my chair and rushing for the door on the far side of the table.

‘Goodbye Willoughby’ she says, lifting a hand.

‘Goodbye? What do you mean goodbye? Aren’t you coming with me’ I tell her.

She shakes her hooded head and I’m sure I see her smile beneath the folds of the cloak. ‘You need to accept that I’m lost’ she tells me.

‘We’ll find you again, I promise. Soon as I save the Unimerse and sort all this shit out…’

‘To be honest Willoughby… I think I like being lost’ she says before stepping back into the shadows and vanishing with the balloon fish trailing in her wake.

I feel like I should maybe cry or something at this point, but there isn’t any time left for tears. If I don’t get my act together in the next couple of hours then all the things we’ve done will have been done for nothing.

I hold up a hand to the shadows and mouth ‘goodbye’ before turning and ducking down a dark tunnel, following it towards the light. Eventually it leads me out into the open, the sun beating down overhead, clouds crawling round in circles in the sky. I’m on the outskirts of some strange village, with low stone buildings carved into the rocky earth. A grubby little ginger albino kid in rags shuffles past me, gnawing on a bone and I turn around, see the big wheels for the first time.

They stretch two hundred feet into the air, five of them rotating with a horrible wooden moaning, tiny figures huddled together inside of them trudging forward, making them turn with their staggered steps. Even from this far back I can see that the humanoids who walk the wheels are in a pitiful state, their clothes falling apart around malnourished bodies, their black eyes deep and glimmering with exhaustion. Most of them are Xoni, dark-skinned and heavily tattooed, but like ghosts compared to their savage and free brothers and sisters back on Nianarok. There must be a couple of hundred on each wheel.

A shout shakes me from staring. ‘Ho! You there! What are you doing?’ I turn around and see a blond Ilian in military uniform with a vapo-raygun slung over his shoulder.

I about turn and start running as fast as I can in the opposite direction while he opens fire, vapourising the bone that the ginger albino kid was gnawing.

I duck inside the first house that I come to and come face to face with an old one-legged Xoni man with the number 88 branded onto his good arm. He is sitting in the darkness of the empty building picking at scraps of flesh from a decomposing human corpse and I immediately throw up into my hands while a siren sounds outside and another blast of the vapo-raygun destroys a solitary black flower sitting on the glassless window sill. ‘Help me!’ I say to the man, wiping the vomit on the back of my sleeve, and he points towards a door at the back of the room.

I stagger through it into an alleyway littered with human skeletons and barrels of dirty water. Filthy rags hang on string lines between the buildings on either side of the alley. Behind me the guard bursts into the house and vapourises the old man in a flash of light.

I run, the rags flapping in my face, crashing into a barrel that spills down the rocky uneven road winding between the houses. I’m starting to wonder if it was really a good idea to step through the magic mirror all those years ago as another blast from the vapo-raygun ricochets off a wall above my head and evaporates a scrawny space chicken that just ambled into view. It turns to dust with a surprised squawk. At the foot of the alley another guard appears and lets rip with a raygun, demolishing a line of rags above my head in a fizzling shower. I kick through a crude wooden door in front of me where two bony blind humans lie naked and entwined upon a low dirty bed. Neither of them look up as I race through their room and hop out of a back window into an enclosed courtyard, wondering if they are dead, my eyes frantically searching for somewhere to hide.

My heart sinks.

Lined up in front of me are seven Ilian guards all armed with vapo-rayguns, smiling at me.

‘This one’s mine’ says a voice to my right and I turn and see a familiar looking guy in a sleeveless green Flower Company t-shirt carrying a chainsaw. On his upper left arm is burned a number 1.

‘Why he’s not on the fucking wheel Number 1?’ asks one of the guards who is built like a brick shithouse with a pencil-thin moustache.

‘Fresh meat’ says Jim, walking up to me and he slugs me with a sudden right hook sending me crashing to the ground, ‘we’ll take care of it.’

‘See you do’ sniffs pencil-thin moustache, slinging his raygun over his shoulder, ‘we don’t want the freaks getting any ideas, do we?’

Jim stands over me, silhouetted against a strange stuttering sun and he winks while he pulls me to my feet. Before I know what’s happening, he has revved up his chainsaw and is slicing his way through the Ilian guards who turned their backs on him, limbs and fair heads splattered with blood flying left, right, and centre. In a matter of seconds all seven Ilians lie chopped into bloody pieces in the courtyard. ‘About fucking time Willoughby’ says an out of breath Jim, ‘what took you so long?’

‘I fink you jist broke ma jaw’ I tell him.

‘Sorry about that’ he smiles, ‘just needed to distract them. So what’s the plan?’

‘Plan?’

‘Escape plan’ he says. ‘You’re breaking me out… right?’

‘Well…not exactly…’

‘Where are the others?’

‘At this exact moment they should be heading to the Ilhelo Stadium for the cup final’ I tell him, rubbing my jaw.

He falls down on the floor, cradling his chainsaw. ‘There’s no escape plan…’ he mumbles, slipping into a panic-stricken trance, staring blankly at the hacked up bodies around his feet. ‘Jesus! They’ll fucking put our heads on sticks…’

‘Listen, I need your help. I’m looking for the Black Angel.’

He looks up at me with tears in his eyes. ‘… on the sun’ he says.

For a second I’m tempted to punch him in the face to snap him out of his funk, but think better of it while he’s still clutching that chainsaw. ‘I need you to pull yourself together. Our heads on sticks is nothing in comparison to what will happen if I don’t find her’ I tell him.

‘She’s on the sun’ he says again, pointing at the sky.

I look up at the flickering sun and rotating clouds. ‘This isn’t time to be having a meltdown’ I tell him. ‘There’s a way out… a tunnel back there that leads to a cave…’

‘I know that tunnel and cave’ he says quietly.

‘Great’ I tell him, ‘one of the walls is made of paper and will lead you to the changing room in the Ilhelo Stadium.’

‘How can that even be possible?’ he asks me. ‘We’re on Iliaus… right?’

‘Jim, the entire Unimerse is falling apart, being sucked out of a hole on the Seventh Isle… ANYTHING is possible. Now think – where is the Black Angel?’

‘I told you already’ he says, ‘she’s on the sun. Go through this house here and take the first left, follow the road for as far as it goes and eventually you’ll reach an elevator in the cave wall. Go up as far as you can.’ He hands me a vapo-raygun. ‘Here, you might need this.’

I sling it over my shoulder. ‘How do I look?’ I ask him. ‘Like Rambo?’

‘Fucking weird’ he says.

We shake hands and head off quickly in opposite directions. I follow his instructions, thankfully not running into any guards on my way, but I do see several skeletal numbered Xoni slaves, all staring at me with gaunt faces completely bereft of happiness. Sure enough I find the elevator he was talking about and step inside, catching a look at my reflection in the mirrored walls. ‘Fucking weird’ is the understatement of the century.

I scan the buttons and press ‘AS FAR AS YOU CAN GO’. The elevator doors slide shut and up it goes. I keep expecting it to lurch to a standstill and the doors to ping open, but after four minutes I realise that I might be here for some time. I sit down on the floor, the vapo-raygun resting on my lap and think about the Black Angel.

The Black Angel’s Story

She was originally one of many nymphs that the gods created as playthings during the Times of Plenty. Her original name is now unfortunately long forgotten by everyone, including herself, but from the very beginning all the gods knew that she was different. Unlike her promiscuous sisters, she carried around with her a certain sadness most unfitting of a nymph. Inexplicably her wings were not of the typical feathered colourful variety, but were black and webbed like an insect. Many of the gods shunned her, but her fire and thoughtfulness caught the attention of Zeus, the King of All the Gods and she quickly became his favourite.

Now round about this time, the heavens were toiling with a grave problem concerning lost souls. It wasn’t unknown for the departed to go AWOL between this life and the next, but a series of bar charts and graphs had been produced for auditing purposes and it was identified that the growing volume of lost souls was becoming a major concern. A pilot scheme involving angels was tested for a couple of centuries, but the angels were vain creatures, and couldn’t bear the sweat and grime of hard work, so the gods decided to look elsewhere. And so the Black Angel was born. She hung around in limbo, guiding the missing to wherever it was they were supposed to be going. And she enjoyed it too. For the first time she began to smile.

Things had gone well for several millennium until a bet with Death over 679 hearts had gone horribly wrong. Set up by a one-legged Ptolemy, she committed the cardinal sin of meddling with mortals and before she could comprehend what had actually happened, Zeus himself tore the wings from her back and banished her from the heavens, throwing her to Earth in human form.

This is where we came in. Plucked her shivering from the middle of the Atlantic ocean, right before the Mardi sailed off the edge of the world, never to be seen again. I think from the beginning, she and I felt the same thing – a sense of not belonging – so while the others escaped on the inflatable Ark back to their old lives, she was there in the OOM at my side. Of course it quickly transpired that Buckley had stowed away in my back pocket, so two became three and together we floated through space for several weeks, scavenging for ship-shapes, killing time playing gravity-free ping-pong and reading the two books that were left in the ship’s library.

You’re probably wondering how we survived in space, right? Well, at this point I was all that was left of the Unimerse Machine, so I simply imagined a giant oxygen bubble around the Mardi to keep us alive. The plan I suppose was that we would drift off into nothingness, thus protecting the Unimerse from those who would use the powers of the Machine for evil. You may have already heard Buckley broadcasting this TO THE WHOLE FUCKING SHIP sometime last year, but none of us could have imagined what would happen next. Except for Aia I guess, seeing as he apparently “planned the whole thing.”

What happened next was we got picked up by some space pirates led by some guy called Midas who looked eerily like Dennis Hopper. He took us to his base on the Black Moon and had the Mardi kitted out like a rocketship. In return, using my Machine powers I helped him rob a High Council freighter carrying 12 ‘seeds’ – highly sought after creatures that can generate enough energy to pilot ships at high speed across vast distances of space for long periods of time. Unfortunately for Midas his crew mutinied and (supposedly) killed him, but the three of us escaped with the seeds, one of which we used to power the Mardi. Oh, and I got married to a now deceased Wuzel jazz singer and got a fake eye on the Black Moon… but then neither of those things have much to do with the Black Angel’s story, so I don’t even know why I told you that.

A couple of weeks hiding out in space later I had the ingenious idea to sell the seeds to the buyer that Midas originally stole them for, an infamous Rah, formerly king of his home planet, but now the owner of a franchise of gas stations sprinkled throughout space. His name in case you hadn’t figured it out, was Rabarkus Rahhh. Rabarkus was a Grade A shit. Instead of being grateful for the eleven seeds we’d stolen for him, he was pissed about the missing one. When he found out that I was responsible for helping Midas steal the seeds in the first place though, he was impressed and we made a deal. I would fly to his home planet and steal him the symbolic Staff of Rah from his younger brother Moxxx, thus giving him power over his people again. In return he would let us go with the missing seed. So I agreed to steal the Staff for him, except on the way while we drunkenly watched old Unimerse Cup matches on video, that dipshit Buckley spilled the story of the Unimerse Machine. Upon returning to Rabarkus’ ship with the Staff, it turned out he was holding the Black Angel hostage and his price for releasing her? A bet. If I won, she would go free. If he won, I would give him the Unimerse Machine powers.

Now you’re probably wondering why at this stage I didn’t just turn him into a woodlouse for double-crossing us, but as anyone who has ever had Unimerse Machine powers can tell you – unfortunately just doesn’t work like that. The Black Angel begged me not to make the bet, but there I was back on the Black Moon with everything riding on a Colonic Dragon called ‘Rocinante’. The poor creature was missing three eyes, had a leg in plaster, and only a stump for a tail, but with a name like that I just knew she would pull through. Of course the nag had a heart attack and died halfway down the home straight, so I gave Rabarkus the first thing I pulled from my backpocket – a solitary sandal. Did he really believe I’d placed all the powers of the Unimerse Machine inside it? Probably not. Either way, he flew off with it as well as the Black Angel and flung me in a cell to rot.

At which point Buckley redeemed himself by breaking me out and we ran out onto a gas station forecourt, hijacked the first ship we found fuelling there – unbelievably the Earthling football squad of soldiers on their way to compete in the Unimerse Cup. The rest you sort of know.

Ping!

I exit the elevator pointing the vapo-raygun at a small freckly girl with curly blond hair falling down around her shoulders, sitting on a high stool behind some sort of control panel, pulling on large mechanical levers that rotate huge paper clouds. On her upper left arm is branded the number 666. ‘Alright Goldilocks, where’s the Black Angel?’ I ask her, jabbing the vapo-raygun in her direction so that she understands I mean business.

She doesn’t flinch and points at a huge horizontal wooden disc behind her, suspended from the roof of the cave. ‘It’s twilight. She’s putting out the sun’ she says, like this makes any sense to me at all.

‘Show me. And no funny business either. I think I know how to use one of these things’ I say, holding up the raygun and staring down the barrel.

The little girl hops down from the stool and tiptoes out across the wooden disc. ‘Come on’ she says, ‘it’s safe Willoughby.’

‘I’m scared of heights’ I tell her, looking down at the village far below us. I don’t have a great track record with being so high up… it usually ends with me falling. ‘Anyway, how do you know my name?’

She gets down on her belly at the edge of the disc and shouts down ‘Hey B.A! Willoughby Toad’s here to see you!’ She turns around and beckons me forward with a little finger. ‘You can go down’ she says.

‘Down? Down how?’

‘You just climb over the edge and hold on’ she says with a smile, and standing up. ‘Here, I’ll hold your gun for you.’

I hand her the vapo-raygun and get down on my belly, inch towards the edge of the disc and look over.

‘You smell of sick’ says the little girl.

‘Nobody’s perfect’ I tell her, the blood rushing to my head as I see the underbelly of the disc, a huge mirrored surface reflecting literally thousands of candles shining in black lanterns that hang down on wires. And there she is – the Black Angel herself, standing precariously astride two of the lanterns, bending down to blow out a flame, one hand holding onto a vertical wire, the other waving to me.

‘You’re sure this is safe?’ I ask the little girl who is lifting the raygun up and pretending to shoot, making a ‘zzzaaaappp’ sound under her breath. ‘It doesn’t look very safe’ I tell her.

‘It’s safe as long as you don’t fall off’ she says. ‘Mr Sunshine fell off before. So did Mr Clouds… but somebody pushed him. Probably.’

‘Where are they now?’ I ask her.

‘Oh… they dead’ she says.

‘Right’ I say, kicking off my shoes and slithering backwards over the edge, feeling for a lantern with my wriggling toes.

‘You okay?’ asks the little girl, sitting down beside me, her little grubby feet dangling into thin air.

‘Not yet’ I tell her.

‘Is Buckley in your back pocket?’ she asks me as I find a second lantern with my other foot.

‘Buckley? No’ I say, my fingers trembling, gripping tight to the top of the sun.

‘What’s he doing? I would so ever have liked to stroke him’ she says.

‘Stroke him? Buckley? He would have bitten your finger off.’

‘Does he have rabies?’ she asks.

‘Probably’ I tell her, letting go and snatching at the wires that hold up the lanterns. For a second or two I look like someone learning to ski for the first time, bandy-legged and holding my breath.

‘I would have liked to have stroked him anyway’ says the little girl on her belly again, her freckled face and curls appearing over the edge of the sun above me, ‘even if he’s probably got rabies.’

I make my way slowly from lantern to lantern, swinging on the wires out towards the Black Angel, still moving between them blowing out the candles one by one.

‘Why don’t you just use a giant hairdryer to blow them all out?’ I shout to her, slipping and grabbing hold of a wire above me for dear life.

She laughs. ‘It’s good to see you Willoughby… but what are you doing here?’

‘Nice fake moustache’ I tell her, stepping closer, ‘and the super-sunglasses really suit you.’

‘Thanks’ she says, standing up and smiling, ‘but I think I know you well enough to know when you’re avoiding answering a question. What’s going on?’

‘Let’s go up and I’ll tell you.’

‘You’re going to get me fired’ she says, ‘again.’

And we step, side by side across the lanterns, our reflections mirrored in the crescent darkness of the sun above us.

She helps me up and I notice that the little girl has vanished, the control booth outside the elevator empty, the paper clouds floating perfectly still beneath us. ‘Fuck’ I say, realising that the vapo-raygun has gone too.

‘This better be good’ says the Black Angel.

‘We need to get out of here’ I tell her, ‘there’s a way out, a tunnel down by the village that leads -’

She presses a finger over my lips. ‘I already know there’s a way out’ she says, and she nods to a manhole cover on the roof of the cave just above our heads.

‘Shit! Well come on, let’s go!’ I tell her, grabbing her hand, but she doesn’t budge.

I tug on it another couple of times before realising that she isn’t going anywhere. ‘It’s not that easy’ she says. ‘What will they do without me?’

‘I’m sure they can find another suicidal maniac to light the candles’ I tell her, and tug at her hand again, once just for good measure.

‘The Ilians trust me Willoughby and every day I smuggle as many children as I can up through this manhole.’

‘We’ll free them all later!’ I tell her. ‘Please! I’ll explain it all when we’re safe, but we’re not safe here!’

She shakes her head and laughs. ‘You’re not going to fall’ she says.

‘It’s not that’ I tell her and lean in close, ‘it’s about the Unimerse Machine.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Rabarkus finally worked out how to use the sandal?’

‘The sandal? Shit, no, the sandal’s not the Unimerse Machine. I just told him that. Actually I imagined all the powers of the Machine somewhere else…’

‘The Unimerse Cup rumours I keep hearing are true then?’ she asks, letting go of my hand and walking over to the edge, gazing down at the big wheels and the village below. ‘The Xoni seem to think that they’re going to win it and make everything right, that it has magical powers.’

‘The Unimerse Machine isn’t the Cup either’ I tell her, ‘that’s just what I told everyone else. I forget why.’

‘Well that doesn’t sound like you’ she says.

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘I was being sarcastic Willoughby.’

‘Yeah’ I say and walk up beside her. ‘The thing is…’

‘Don’t say it’ she says.

‘It’s you’ I tell her, ‘you’re the Unimerse Machine. It felt like the safest place to hide it would be right under Rabarkus’ nose -’

‘Or lack of nose’ she says.

‘ – yeah. Someone that I know wouldn’t fuck it up.’

‘You know, I wondered where that manhole cover came from…’ she says with a grin. ‘But why didn’t you tell me this at the karaoke that night they arrested me and W during the bar brawl?’

‘I wasn’t at the karaoke’ I tell her.

‘You can call meeeee Al’ she sings. ‘You were there with your new wife.’

‘I can’t remember any of that stuff’ I tell her.

We stand there in silence gazing down and it is like we are back on the ship in the eye of the storm, staring out of the window of the OOM at a world so very far away beneath us that it no longer seems real.

‘What do I need to do?’ she asks me. ‘How does it work?’

‘To be honest, even after all this time I still don’t know. The Machine powers are… temperamental … at best. But there’s a bubble’ I tell her, ‘I made it. It exists both within and outwith the Unimerse. It’s only small but contains the potential to recreate not just this Unimerse, but all of the others as well. The thing is, we need the raw power of the Machine; those of us who still have traces inside us can’t trigger it, we’re not strong enough. You’ll have to do it.’

‘Why don’t I transfer its powers back to you?’ she asks me.

‘It’s not that easy’ I tell her, ‘it took me months of messing around with it to master that.’

‘There must be another way’ she says.

‘The only other way is with brute force’ I tell her ‘for me to kill you and then create the new Unimerse myself. I could never do that.’

‘But I can’ says a voice behind me and there is a rush of white that crashes into her at full speed, sending them both toppling over the edge of the sun.

I watch helplessly as Aia and the Black Angel tumble in slow motion through the air towards the ground below. It feels like my heart is breaking apart as they fall, until there is an explosion of light like someone just dropped a nuclear bomb, both in my chest, and on the ground below.

…

Bob Dylan gets home from his game of whackbat. He is wearing a 1980s white tracksuit, sweatbands, and shades. He reluctantly presses play on his blinking answering machine and pads over to the fridge, where he lifts out some orange juice and drinks straight from the bottle. For the third day in a row he has been inundated with calls from “Rongovian scientists”, wanting to know if he can help with some rainbow coloured blood that is raining from the sky. As usual the messages are garbled, like misplaced transmissions from another universe. ‘I’m going to have to change my number again’ he scowls, padding back across the room.

He is about to rip the cord from the wall socket when the machine bleeps and an all-too-familiar voice sputters into earshot. ‘Hey Bob Dylan, it’s me’ says the voice.

‘Shit’ says Bob Dylan, ‘not this guy again.’

‘This time I really need your help’ says the voice, ‘not like last time when I didn’t REALLY need your help.’

Bob Dylan backs away from the answering machine and slumps into his favourite armchair.

‘The thing is, the Unimerse as we know it is about to end. When I say about to end I don’t mean tomorrow or anything… in fact it’ll probably take sixty years before it’s over completely. But it’s already happening, all around you. You might have noticed strange happenings like… I dunno, telephone calls from Rongovian scientists wanting your opinion on rainbow rain-blood?’

Bob Dylan sits forward at the sound of this and pulls his shades down onto the end of his nose. ‘You gotta be shitting me…’ he mutters.

‘… anyway, right now I’m jumping through time with this shadow called Aia. He’s the most dangerous individual anyone has ever known and he is planning on wiping all of us out, and starting again. I mean, I love your songs… and the idea that my children’s children might grow up never hearing Mr. Tambourine Man, or Happiness Runs… it just… well it just isn’t right Bob Dylan.’

‘Happiness Runs?’ says Bob Dylan, spitting on his carpet.

‘I really need your help Bob Dylan, so listen carefully. There’s a tiny door at the back of your brain that leads from your world to mine. Right now, this Aia dude is using his Fung-Ku powers to stop us from using it, but the way I see it, if anyone’s going to find a loophole, then it’s you Bob Dylan. Once you’ve worked that bit out, head straight for Plum Island in the South Pacific – don’t bother searching for it on any map, because you won’t find it, just… well, just get there as quick as you can. There’s a landing strip by the beach and hidden in the bushes beside it is a pump-jet ™. Fly the pump-jet ™ to the planet Cylog and retrieve a rat called Buckley from a filing cabinet in the control room at the planet’s core. He’ll take it from there.’

‘Hello, Bob Dylan? Are you still there?’

Bob Dylan is still there, but he has his fingers in his ears and feels a migraine coming on.

…

From the flash of light a figure rises and my broken heart sinks at the sight of it. Aia, kitted out in Wader’s bullet-hole white knight costume, with his visor lifted and fox face grinning, is now one hundred feet tall and free-floating up towards the sun. When he speaks, the whole Unimerse shakes, his voice booming with distortion. ‘MWAHAHAHA! FUCK YOU WILLOUGHBY TOAD! YOUR LITTLE WINGLESS FRIEND IS DEAD! THE WORLD IS FALLING APART! THERE’S FUCK ALL YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT! AND I.. I AM

THE UNIMERSE MACHINE!

YOU LOSE! AIA WINS! GAME OVER! THE END!’

He reaches into his suit and pulls out The Bubble that sits like a shining pearl of colour in the palm of his mighty hand.

‘AND NOW FOR MY FINAL TRICK’ he booms, ‘TO INVENT A NEW UNIMERSE! MY UNIMERSE! ONE THAT IS FREE OF FATE! A BLANK CANVAS FOR ME TO PAINT MY MASTERPIECE!’

His whole body begins to emit white light and suddenly The Bubble is a swirling sphere of kaleidoscopic colour.

I yawn and sit down on the edge of the sun.

And things stay like that for almost a whole minute until eventually I say ‘Hey Aia, you having problems there?’

Another minute passes while I light a cigarette, my heart slowly solidifying, eyes narrowing.

‘I DON’T GET IT! WHY ISN’T IT WORKING?!’ he spits, furiously shaking The Bubble like a snow globe.

‘Ooh, I dunno’ I tell him, wiping a glob of his furious spit from my face. ‘Perhaps it’s just that you always thought that I didn’t know what you were up to. But perhaps I did all along. Perhaps I knew exactly what you were up to and substituted The Bubble for an unlucky fucking rainbow gem.’

‘YOU DIDN’T!’ he wails.

‘Perhaps not’ I tell him and flick the cigarette out into space, watch it flicker like a firefly, spiralling down through the Unimerse, ‘but it would certainly explain why your plan isn’t working.’

I stand up while he hurls the rainbow gem at me, ripping through the air, trailing technicolour flames. It lands firmly in my chest and I crash backwards, winded, scorched, and laughing my ass off.

He lands on the sun, the wires holding it up dropping dust from the cave roof. ‘NO! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!’ he screams. ‘TELL ME… WHERE IS THE BUBBLE?’

‘I hid it’ I tell him, propping myself up on my elbow, watching the manhole cover above us.

‘IN RON BURGUNDY’S OTHER NOSTRIL?’

‘Nope. Somewhere you’ll never think to look.’

‘HOGWARTS?’

‘HA! Nice try, but no.’

‘INSIDE THE RAINBOW GEM?’

‘Oh that would have been a cool idea… but no. You’ll never guess, so there’s not even any point trying.’

He snorts. ‘BELIEVE ME WILLOUGHBY, I’LL FIND IT. YOU FORGET THAT I HAVE THE POWER OF THE UNIMERSE MACHINE… I’LL JUST IMAGINE THAT I’LL FIND IT!’

‘It doesn’t work like that’ I tell him, with a grin.

He paces up and down the sun disc, his big shadowy fox brain thinking. Finally he stops and smiles. ‘I THINK IT’S TIME’ he says.

‘I’m not scared of dying’ I tell him defiantly.

‘WE’LL SEE’ he says and he points a mighty white finger at me.

I suspect he’s about to zzzzzaaaaaap me into oblivion when the little cloud girl charges out from behind a paper alto-stratus shouting ‘BANZAI!’

She fires the raygun and he bats the shot away with a lazy flick of his free hand. Then he turns his finger on her and zzzzzaaaaaaps her into oblivion with a ‘MWAHAHAHA!’

‘NOW IT’S YOUR TURN, YOU LITTLE PISS-SHIT’ he smiles, and with another flick of his hand, he tips the sun up and I go sliding down the back of it, grabbing hold of of a wispy paper cirrus cloud and hanging there hopelessly.

Up above me, Aia snaps his fingers and all the sun-candles illuminate. He is sitting in a giant floating deckchair, with the Black Angel’s super-sunglasses perched upon his fox face, reading a giant edition of ‘Moon Crumb’, and basking in the warm glow of the artificial rays. He snaps his fingers again and a flock of little bald white Plum Island pygmies appear in a ring around his face. ‘MINIONS!’ he barks, pointing at me. ‘THIS FUCKWIT HAS HIDDEN MY BUBBLE. I WANT YOU TO FIND IT FOR ME!’

The pygmies twirl their blow-pipes, chattering and hopping around in thin air before vanishing into the folds of space. ‘I COULD GET QUITE USED TO THIS’ drawls Aia. ‘TELL ME ALFONSO… DIDN’T IT EVER CROSS YOUR TINY MIND THAT PERHAPS I KNEW THAT YOU KNEW ALL ALONG?’

‘Of course it did’ I shout up, ‘but didn’t it cross yours that perhaps I knew that you knew that I knew?’

‘BORING’ he yawns, turning the page of the magazine. ‘OOH, AN INTERVIEW WITH THE EDGE…’

Something hits him in the face and he blinks. It hits him again. A small dark object zzubing around his head. He rolls up the magazine and takes a swipe at it, but misses, and it lands on the tip of his nose. ‘You’re wearing my super-sunglasses motherfucker’ says the Black Angel, whipping them off and kicking him in the eyeball.

He wails in pain, and she turns, surfing through the air on the toy plastic shades, her webbed wings fluttering at her back. In one acrobatic manoeuvre she leaps onto the raised edge of the sun and rights it, before swooping across to me and lifting me into the air. ‘I thought you were dead’ I tell her, adjusting her lopsided moustache.

‘I am’ she says, ‘but you’re not the only one who liked to dabble with home-brewed clones on the Mardi.’

‘Dabble? But you’re perfect. You’ve even got the wings and everything’ I tell her, ‘… you’ve not even got a moustache on your elbow. That’s not fai-’

She ducks as Aia hurls an imaginary molten fireball towards us, and it crashes into the cave wall raining rubble down around our heads. He kicks his giant deckchair to one side and with a seriously bloodshot eye, says ‘NICE TRY, BUT YOUR LITTLE CLONED FRIEND HERE DOESN’T HAVE THE SAME POWERS AS HER ORIGINAL.’

‘True’ I agree, as we land on the sun, ‘but I still do.’

‘MWAHAHAHA! YOU THINK YOU’VE GOT ENOUGH JUICE TO COMBAT ME? NOW YOU’RE JUST BEING RIDICULOUS.’

The elevator door pings behind us and a bunch of weirdos in bright orange t-shirts, yellow shorts, and itchy blue socks spill out onto the sun. ‘He might not have enough juice on his own’ sings Rasmussen Murphy, ‘but as a Quixodelic collective…’

Moppy grins and does a superhero pose in his little white cape and mask. The Atom Band attempt to form a pyramid but quickly conclude that Scarytoes should not be trying to hold up Def Mute and collapse in a heap. Jon of the Atom mouths silently ‘You’re fucked’ at Aia, inserting the index finger of his right hand into a hole he’s made with the thumb and forefinger of his left. James Redmond has only just begin to sober up from his trip to Nianarok, and resembles an old tramp, armed with a ukulele. Jim has lost his chainsaw coming up in the elevator and looks utterly devastated. Thing growls, his elbow hairs standing to attention. The twins make ‘bring it’ gestures with their hands. Their daughter, Operative X, adjusts her feathered cap and looks like she means business. The Amalfi Glow taps his whackbat like a club in his palm. Papa Bear is sort of skulking around at the back, peeking up at the giant Aia and wondering if this was really such a good idea. Ubergrim’s bony knees are knocking together and he lifts the Bubble Trumpet to his lips. The Z swings free and proud with his hands on his waist. Mankiller doesn’t know where to look. I notice that she looks particularly tall and has an Adam’s apple. Alexander Tokeleaf rolls up his socks and sleeves and takes a shot of halothene. Don Coyote in his pants takes a swig from a bottle of Dreambrew and spits it out pulling a ‘what-is-this-fucking-shit?’ face. Mal is considering praying for the first time in his life. Wanamaker just stands there with his shitty floating head and eyeball, staring into space.

‘Shit! You brought Wanamaker?’ I whisper to Rasmussen urgently.

‘He wanted to help’ says Rasmussen.

‘How can you know that? He’s not even got a mouth? Just an eyeball -’

‘MWAHAHAHA!’ laughs Aia. ‘IS THIS THE BEST YOU CAN DO? THIS BUNCH OF NO-HOPERS?’ He claps his hands together forming an enormous roaring ball of neon electricity that he can barely hold himself and hurls it at us.

‘Quick!’ I tell them. ‘Everyone use their imaginations to create a giant force-field around us!’

‘Can we get a go-word first?’ asks Jon as the roaring ball roars towards us at a ferocious speed.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask him.

‘Like a go-word, so as we know to imagine the force-field at the same time’ he says.

‘It would be good for team morale to have a go-word’ agrees Don Coyote.

‘There’s not time! If we don’t imagine that force-field NOW, we’re all going to get fried by that roaring ball!’ I yell at them, gesturing wildly at it.

‘I think a go-word is a great idea’ says Mankiller with a suspiciously gruff voice.

I sigh and close my eyes, waiting for the roaring ball to hit.

‘How about GO-QUIXO-HO?’ suggests Agent X.

‘Ooh, I like that’ coos Rasmussen.

‘Or POWER-UP-FLOWER-COMPANY-HO?’ suggests Agent X.

‘Hmmmmmmm’ says Rasmussen, ‘I don’t think it’s got the same rhythmic ring to it as the first one.’

‘I like it’ says Don Coyote, completely sozzled, sitting down cross-legged and emptying the last of the bottle of Dreambrew into his mouth.

‘Which one?’ asks Alexander.

‘Either’ says the Don, ‘the first one. What was the first one?’

‘GO-QUIXO-HO!’ says Agent X.

‘I don’t think I like the HO part’ says Jon.

‘Thing’ says Thing.

‘Ooh… how about instead of HO, we use HOO’ says Rasmussen, ‘in memory of the Jazz Monk.’

‘GO-QUIXO-HOO?’ says Jon. ‘No, I’m not feeling it.’

‘I don’t like it either’ agrees Alexander. ‘We should just drop the HO part altogether.’

‘GO-QUIXO?’ asks Jim.

‘Can we make up a little dance routine to go with it?’ asks Moppy.

‘What sort of dance routine?’ asks Jon.

‘I dunno’ says Moppy and he does a little dance.

‘Haha, that’s fucking ace’ says The Amalfi Glow, and he does the little dance too. Pretty soon everyone is laughing and doing the little dance.

‘So are we going with GO-QUIXO?’ asks Jim.

‘Why don’t we drop the QUIXO part?’ suggests Jon. ‘Just go with GO?’

‘GO…’ says Rasmussen Murphy, ‘ooh, I like that. It’s simple… but conveys exactly what we mean.’

‘It’s easy to remember as well’ says Don Coyote, tossing the empty bottle over the edge of the sun.

‘What is?’ asks Moppy.

‘Okay Willoughby’ says Jon, ‘can we make the go-word GO please?’

They turn around and I’m holding up a giant force-field on my own while Aia rains a chain of roaring balls down upon us, every bone in my body breaking, every muscle straining, and my imagination stretched to breaking point. ‘GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’ I tell them through gritted teeth.

Everyone starts imagining the giant force-field with me.

And The Z grows boobs.

‘I’ve grown boobs!’ yells The Z.

‘Right’ says Don Coyote, ‘who imagined boobs on The Z?’

‘Shit, that was me’ says Jon of the Atom, ‘sorry about that.’

‘Concentrate!’ I yell.

‘You forgot to say GO’ says Jon.

Five minutes later…

Aia stops and we collapse on the sun, gasping for breath, the giant force-field evaporating.

‘PITIFUL FOOLS!’ booms Aia. ‘I COULD GO ON IMAGINING LIKE THIS FOREVER! YOUR POWERS ARE PUNY IN COMPARISON TO MINE!’

‘He’s got a point’ wheezes Rasmussen, his sunflower sunglasses steamed up, and quirky little beard spattered with dribble.

‘No he doesn’t!’ shouts Buckley, standing on a shoebox wrapped in tinfoil, with his paws on his hips. ‘Perhaps he has powers greater than the collective, but he seems to have overlooked something…’

‘Buckley’ I grin, ‘where did you come from?’

He points at the open manhole cover above us and says ‘Bob Dylan kindly gave me a lift on his pump-jet.’

‘What… THE FUCK… is going on here?’ asks Bob Dylan, pulling down his shades, staring up at the one hundred foot Aia, then at us, then back at Aia again.

‘Ah! The six million billion dollar question!’ says Rasmussen. ‘Like music to my ears!’

‘Hey, you’re Bob Dylan’ says Moppy, shaking his hand. ‘I’m a massive fan.’

‘Who the fuck are you?’ asks Bob Dylan, gawping at the tall skinny guy in the ill-fitting superhero costume.

‘I’m Moppy’ says Moppy. ‘I’m a massive fan.’

‘You told me that already’ says Bob Dylan.

‘I know’ says Moppy, ‘I just wanted to tell you again. In case you missed it the first time.’

‘Well I didn’t’ says Bob Dylan, ‘jeez…’

‘ENOUGH!’ booms Aia, pointing at Buckley. ‘YOU! LITTLE TALKING RODENT FUCKHEAD! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO FUCKING KILL YOU?’ From the tip of his finger shoots a fizzing laser beam and he yells ‘DIE! DIE! DIE!’

Buckley opens his mouth and swallows the laser beam before burping up a small floating speck of bellybutton fluff. ‘You didn’t let me tell you what you overlooked’ he says. ‘Remember how the Mardi sailed off the edge of the earth back at the end of Book 1? The point being that Willoughby here was supposed to be the last surviving crew member with Unimerse Machine powers…’

‘This is fucking insane’ says Bob Dylan.

‘I know’ I tell him. ‘That’s why I keep phoning you.’

‘… well he wasn’t the ONLY crew member with Unimerse Machine powers that went over the edge… was he?’ says Buckley with a wink.

‘What the fuck is this Unimerse Machine?’ asks Bob Dylan.

‘Because I was there too’ grins Buckley.

Aia’s eyes narrow. ‘You little -’

Buckley holds up a tiny paw-finger. ‘Hold that thought’ he says, and we all disappear.

…

Three years previous…

Aia had heard the name before somewhere – Lil Bill. Now he was on Ko-Qic, slinking between the shadows of pyramids, away from the obliterating rays of seven blazing suns, and he was staring at a poster pinned to a wall, fluttering in the breeze.

THE BESPIBAHANIAN TRAVELLIN’ CIRCUS
Featuring for one night only: Thee King of Imagination and Master of the Mind…
***LIL BILL***
Watch him defy the laws of physics, making the unreal real.

He creeps inside the red and white tent, where ham-fisted Bespibahanian’s in drag form a chorus line up on the stage, falling over each other and fist-fighting. Jugglers juggle. Tight-rope walkers cling to the tight-rope with their teeth until someone gets them down with a step-ladder. Ringmaster Story Hylo makes a dramatic entrance, fired counter-clockwise out of plastic cannon that catches on fire and gets doused by the most depressed looking clowns you have ever seen. He then proceeds to put his scrawny blue neck in the mouth of an Elonic Dragon which (somewhat predictably) bites it off. The tiny Ko-Qiclings lap it up, hooting and hollering from the benches in front of the stage, drinking tiny bottles of a foul alcoholic nectar called FART, smashing the empty bottles over each other’s heads. ‘It’s all just a fucking illusion!’ shouts a tipsy little Raisa-Gumbb in the front row as the clowns drag Story Hylo’s headless body away through the curtains at the rear of the stage.

‘And now’ says a baritone tape recorded message, ‘introducing… all the way from far, far, far, away and beyond…  Thee King of Imagination and Master of the Mind, making the unreal real before your very eyes…. eeeeeetttttt’s LIL BILL!’

The Ko-Qiclings applaud and wolf-whistle, stomping their tiny feet on the floor, kicking up clouds of sand. The curtains draw, the lights go down, and standing before them beneath a spotlight at the centre of the stage is a little white guy not much bigger than a gingerbread man. He holds up his little hands and immediately the audience fall silent. Aia’s first thought is ‘This kid looks like a fucking rag doll’ such are Lil Bill’s glassy marble eyes and ribby little body.

‘Ladies and gentlefriends’ squeaks Lil Bill and he holds up a solitary match, ‘behold… with the power of imagination alone, I will make this match burst into flames!’

The crowd falls deathly silent.

Lil Bill screws up his eyes in concentration.

And nothing happens.

At first. There is a  tiny cry of ‘Get on with it!’ from the second row and the Ko-Qiclings shift uncomfortably in their seats while Lil Bill continues to stand there, staring at the match.

And just as Aia is about to slink away, the strangest thing happens. The match… bursts into flame.

Lil Bill holds it up to the crowd – a single flame of possibility shining in the darkness of the tent, his glassy black smile reflecting the flickering light.

He blows it out. The lights come up. He gives a little bow.

And then the boos begin.

‘Is that it?’ cries Raisa-Gumbb.

‘We paid good money to come and see this shit’ howls an indignant female Ko-Qicling near the back of the tent.

‘King of the Imagination?’ laughs an old Ko-Qicling standing up on his seat in front of Aia. ‘King of my ass, more like!’

Several rotten tomatoes get hurled at Lil Bill (no mean feat considering it takes ten strong Ko-Qiclings to lift and load a rotten tomato onto miniature catapults), and the little white alien walks backward, quickly between the curtains, the tomatoes sloshing around his feet and the boos ringing in his ears.

While the Bespibahanian clowns throw saucers at each other’s mouths, cracking numerous teeth, Aia braves the sandstorm that now rages around the circus and approaches the wagon where Lil Bill sits sobbing in front of an ornate mirror. ‘They hate it!’ he wails to the shadow, standing behind him. ‘Everybody hates it! I make a match burn with my mind and what do I get? Fucking rotten tomaytoes thrown at me!’

‘I liked it’ replies Aia, his eyes burning with possibility  ‘I liked it immensely. Tell me, how did you discover you could do that? Light a match with your imagination?’

‘It’s a long story’ sniffs Lil Bill.

‘Yesss’ says Aia, ‘I imagine it must be.’ And then he wraps his shadowy hands around Lil Bill’s throat and doesn’t let go until the creature lies dead on the floor. Aia lifts the burnt match from Lil Bill’s hands and holds it up in front of his face. He screws up his eyes, but nothing happens. He tilts his head to one side and screws up his eyes even tighter, but still nothing happens. ‘Fuck!’ he says, throwing the match away in disgust, realising that he cannot take the power by force until the imaginer imagines it.

He produces a syringe and kneels down, plunges it into Lil Bill’s arm, filling it up with bright red blood.

Several weeks later he arrives on the Black Moon and heads out of the strip, slinks his way to a small private space port. In a hangar sits an old fashioned Ebaxxonite warship gathering dust. He runs his shadowy hand along the hull of the vessel. ‘Perfect’ he whispers, seeing her name on the side – ‘Mardi’.

He finds the captain on the Bridge, slumped over a green safe, surrounded by trinkets, with empty beer bottles and cigarette ends littering the floor. ‘What do you want?’ growls the man, who looks very like Dennis Hopper, only with seriously bloodshot eyes.

‘Everything’ says Aia, sitting down on a pasting table in the corner, thumbing through sheets of cartoon animal stickers, ‘but I’ll start with your ship.’

‘Ha!’ laughs the man. ‘You can have her, but I’d like to see you sail her without a crew.’

‘I’ll make you a crew’ says Aia patiently, and he holds up the syringe to the shadeless bare light bulb that hangs from the ceiling.

‘What’s that?’ growls the man, drunkenly squinting.

Aia plunges the needle into the wall of the Mardi and injects her with Lil Bill’s blood. ‘Destiny’ replies the shadow, smiling.

…

We reappear on the main deck of the Mardi, rocketing through space at a remarkable rate of knots. Although she doesn’t look anything like her old battered self, I know it is her from the familiar feel of her wooden boards beneath my bare toes. Where once she looked like she was imminently going to fall apart, now she flies true and proud, with fine silk sails bearing the Quixodelic light-mill logo. Her hull is smooth, scrubbed of dirt, flapping invisible wallpaper, globules of squid cadaver and flaking go faster flames. She has four fine cannons, two on the port side, two on the starboard side, each with a basket of cannonballs lying ready beside them.  Regrettably there is no sign of the toadstool treehouse, but it is a minor grumble. And still no compass, but I guess that’s probably to be expected.  Curiously I feel like I have seen the Mardi like this somewhere before… perhaps in another lifetime, or maybe in a dream. ‘You imagined this?’ I ask Buckley.

He scampers across the deck and hops up onto a big wooden wheel, starts spinning it with his rear paws. ‘You like?’ he asks with an impudent grin.

‘Like…? I fucking love it!’

Behind me, Def Mute ties a rope around Brendon Hertz’s waist and he feeds him out into the rushing emptiness of star-studded space. Brendon takes a polaroid photograph of the Mardi and it f-f-flutters from his hands with a ‘Fuck…’

‘Where are we going?’ asks Scarytoes, helping Def Mute haul a disappointed looking Brendon back in.

‘As far away from him as possible’ says Buckley, nodding over his shoulder.

We look with flowering eyeballs at a one hundred foot Aia in hot pursuit. He is rowing an enormous inflatable Ark with a heart-shaped guitar through the cosmos, his fox-teeth gritted, his white armour gleaming, and he’s closing in on us. ‘Shit’ says Don Coyote, ‘this guy just doesn’t know when to give up, does he?’

‘MAN THE CANNONS!’ howls Buckley.

‘You have to say the go-word first’ says Jon, with his arms folded across his chest.

‘What’s the go-word?’ asks Buckley, wheeling us to starboard.

‘Quick! He’s gaining on us!’ shouts Winona, suddenly at my side, pointing at the furiously paddling shadowy knight-fox thingamy that is Aia.

‘Hey! Where did you come from?’ I ask her.

‘I’m always with you Al’ she says.

Thing leans in and whispers something into Buckley’s pricked ear.

‘THING!’ shouts Buckley at the top of his little lungs, pointing at the cannons.

‘Thing?’ asks Jon. ‘That’s not the go-word…’

‘Well, he said it was’ says Buckley, nodding to Thing.

‘HURRY!’ yells Winona, pointing at an ever-closing Aia, and sticking her tongue in my ear.

‘G-aaahhhhhhh! What did you do THAT for?’ I ask her, but she just smiles.

‘WHAT’S THE FUCKING GO-WORD?’ screams Buckley.

‘GO!’ yells everyone.

Except Ubergrim. And Def Mute. And Thing. He says ‘Thing’ again.

‘GO!’ yells Buckley back to them and Jon of the Atom, Moppy, The Amalfi Glow, and James Redmond all jump behind the cannons.

‘Fire at will’ growls Buckley and for a moment the Unimerse falls silent then

BOOM! B-OOM! B-B-B-BOOOOOOM! KABOOM! BOOOOOOOMMM-AH! B-BOOOOO! PIAOW! BOOOOM-SHA-LA-KA-LA-KA-BOOOOOOM!

The cannon balls whistle through space, all eyes turned upward, except for Buttercup Murphy, who steps from the shadows of a mast with a spear in her hand. *side-thought: Shit! It’s not fair… how come she gets a spear?

Jon’s cannonball explodes well above Aia’s head.

Buttercup raises her spear.

Jay’s cannonball overshoots Aia by a considerable distance and it destroys a small blue moon that also appears to have been chasing us.

Rasmussen Murphy falls to his knees and says ‘Ah crap.’

I follow the tip of Buttercup’s spear across the main deck as she launches it. It’s heading straight towards -

The Amalfi Glow’s cannon backfires and Mal looks up with a cartoon black face, stunned white eyes, hair splayed back in a frazzled mane.

- WANAMAKER!

‘Noooooooooooooo!’ I yell, holding out my hand towards the spinning spear.

Moppy’s cannonball drops out of the sky and lands right on top of Aia in a neon epiphany, exploding the Ark into approximately six million billion tiny pieces.

‘Yaaaaay!’ shouts everyone, oblivious to the flight of the spear which, any second now, is about to puncture Wanamaker’s shitty floating oblivious head, until

Winona gets there first.

She must have heard me shout ‘Nooooooooooo!’ and put two and two together. Stupidly dives across the main deck to get in the way. The spear punctures her heart and skewers her to the floor, where she deflates like a blow-up doll.

‘Betty!’ cries Don Coyote.

I cradle her in my arms, watch her slowly morphing from a deflated Winona Ryder into this sort of sack covered in small rainbow sucker cups rapidly draining of colour. ‘You shouldn’t have done that’ I tell her and weirdly I feel like I’m crying, even though at the same time I’m somewhat repulsed by the saggy grey speared sack that I’m holding.

‘Fuck. I’m sorry Willoughby’ says Buttercup, putting her little hand on my shoulder. ‘I was trying to assassinate Wanamaker.’

‘Why?’ I ask her.

‘The Organisation asked me to’ she says with a shrug.

‘That’s not a fucking good reason!’ I yell at her.

‘Willoughby, take it easy’ says Mal.

‘NO I WON’T FUCKING TAKE IT EASY!’ I sob, surprising even myself.

‘Dude, she was just trying to bump off Wanamaker’ says Alexander. ‘I mean, look at him. He’s barely alive. What’s the big deal?’

‘Yesss’ says a voice behind us, ‘what IS the big deal?’

We spin and see a human-sized Aia sitting on a deck-chair behind us with a copy of ‘Moon Crumb’ fanned out in one hand and Buckley squeezed tight in the other.

‘Minions!’ barks Aia. ‘Bring me that shitty head…’

The pygmies materialise in the air behind us and snatch up Wanamaker’s head like a loose football.

‘Why you -’ says Jim stepping forward with an invisible chainsaw.

‘Ahem’ says Aia, holding up Buckley who is being squeezed so hard that his head and feet have inflated to within a millimetre of popping, ‘one wrong move and I’ll squeeze the talking rodent just that little bit harder.’

The pygmies pass through us, chattering excitedly and smash Wanamaker’s head like a watermelon at Aia’s feet. Sure enough, up floats a small gleaming bubble from the centre of his head and Aia reaches out a white gloved hand to pluck it out of the sky.

Only he’s so transfixed by The Bubble that he doesn’t see me going into my sock, producing The Bubble Wand. With a flick of my wrist 679 million billion bubbles of varying size begin to stream from the tip of the wand, swirling and twirling, popping and colliding across the main deck of the Mardi. Aia snatches frantically in front of his face, but where once there was a single gleaming bubble, now there are at least a hundred; bubbles within bubbles within bubbles, flopping and flowing, blowing up and out into space. ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’ he screams, snatching at them as they explode all around him. ‘ALFONSO! WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?’

‘Who’s Alfonso?’ asks Bob Dylan.

Moppy shrugs.

Soon there are no bubbles. They trail from the Mardi, twinkling between the stars, exploding into emptiness. I hurl The Bubble Wand out over the side of the ship and a pelican appears out of nowhere, swallows it whole and flies off.

Aia looks up. He doesn’t look so smug anymore. He looks shell-shocked, like a man who has been tapping at a book for two and a half years only to discover halfway through the penultimate chapter that it is an unreadable, unrevisable mess of a million words.

‘I hope you’ve got a Plan B’ I tell him.

He laughs, but it sounds like it hurts, standing up straight and eyeballing us all. I notice that Mankiller has quietly tiptoed around behind him and is leaning against the wheel in her ninja costume. ‘Plan B?’ asks Aia. ‘Oh, I’ll tell you about Plan B you fucking ass-wipe.’

‘What’s this guy’s problem?’ asks Bob Dylan.

‘He’s pissed because he was wanting to start his own Unimerse’ says Don Coyote.

‘Hey’ says Bob Dylan. ‘Don’t I know you? You’re that actor, right?’

Don Coyote turns and looks at him. ‘No, I’m not him’ he says eventually.

‘May I continue?’ sneers Aia in their direction.

‘Please do’ says Don Coyote.

‘Plan B is I execute every last motherfucking one of you and -’

‘You stole that line from Pulp Fiction’ says Jon.

‘ – excuse me?’ says Aia.

‘I said you stole that line from Pulp Fiction’ says Jon. ‘The every last motherfucking one of you line.’

‘And the point you’re making is?’ asks Aia.

‘Just that for an ultimate evil dude well, you’re not very original’ says Jon with a shrug.

‘Original? ORIGINAL!?’ yells Aia, his spit flying all over the place. ‘YOU WANNA SEE ORIGINAL?’

‘Yeah’ says Jon.

‘REALLY? YOU REALLY WANT TO SEE ORIGINAL?’

Jon shrugs again.

‘WELL TRY THIS FOR FUCKING ORIGINAL!’ roars Aia, generating another giant ball of technicolour electricity in his hands, and he hurls it towards us.

But all the while this has been going on, Buckley has rolled over, gasping for breath having been dropped during the 670 million bubbles incident and he looks at me, and I look at him, and he’s got this mad look in his little rat eyes that I’ve never seen before, like he no longer feels like a rat, but like a tiger, some fierce jungle creature prowling around the outskirts of reality, and before I can say anything to him, he raises himself up onto his hind legs, some ten feet tall and ferocious with stripes on his flanks, taking the full force of Aia’s electric ball and turning to stone.

‘Holy shit, would you look at that?’ says Don Coyote. ‘It’s a tigermouse.’

Aia stares up at the stone statue, trembling, like he can see something the rest of us cannot – a glimpse of the present in the future, or the future in the past, either one of those, I can’t really decide which. He reaches into his suit of armour and produces a battered toastie maker, starts fumbling with the buttons.

‘Oh, you’re wasting your time with that old thing’ laughs Rasmussen heartily. ‘Don’t you know that the Unimerses are one? Well, almost one…’ he points straight upwards at the stars and there is an almost imperceptible flash of white light. ‘There’ he says, with a grin, taking a finger and drawing two circles in the air that fade together into one imaginary ring – ‘it is complete.’

I don’t think I can explain what I feel when I see Rasmussen’s drawing. The only way I can describe it is that it is as if lots of pieces of myself that I have misplaced along the way have returned. And I suddenly remember that once upon a time,  my name was Alfonso Kolinsky.

Perhaps Aia feels it too. He stands there, staring at the space where Rasmussen’s circle still invisibly glistens -

Swooooooossshhhhhhhhhhhh!

Mankiller slices off his head with a shard of mirror and it rolls across the deck.

‘Jesus, that’s disgusting!’ says Bob Dylan, turning away.

‘I know’ says Mal, blinking sooty black eyelids.

Mankiller unravels her Xuron ninja costume, ignoring Aia’s headless body and pads across the main deck with shrunken heads clunking together at her skinny white waist. She picks up Aia’s head and begins to -

‘Ewwww!’ yells Buttercup. ‘He’s… he’s… what the fuck is he doing?’

‘Well hello there chaps’ says Skullfucker, ramming the base of Aia’s severed head into his crotch. ‘Bet you’re all glad to see the back of this Aio character, eh? Seems to me like he was some kind of power-crazy lunatic.’

I look up at the big white alien. Fuck knows how long he’s been masquerading as Mankiller.  ‘His name was Aia’ I tell him. ‘A – I – A.’

Skullfucker stops mid-thrust. ‘A – I – A?’ he asks. ‘Not A – I – O?’

I nod. ‘Ah shit’ he says, slapping his own forehead. ‘Wrong guy. Again. I’m terribly sorry if I’ve caused any inconvenience.’
And at this, he drops Aia’s fox head onto the floor with a thump and shuffles over to the side of the ship, waving a gangling white arm before leaping over the balustrade.

‘Now THAT… was original’ says Jon of the Atom.

Ubergrim does a little dance that involves gesturing wildly at the floor.

‘Grimster, this is no time to be doing the go-dance’ says The Amalfi Glow.

But Ubergrim won’t stop, he is hopping from foot to foot and pointing urgently at my feet.

I look down. Aia’s head has rolled over to me and his eyes are looking up into mine, pleading. ‘Willoughby… I… am your father…’ he rasps.

‘Dude, you grew me in a fucking petri dish…’

‘Yessss, the anger is STRONG in you… let it flow through your soul…’ he leers, coughing up black shadowy blood onto the deck.

‘Original. Again…’ says Jon with a snort.

I sigh. His fox-face looks so pitiful. ‘It’s over’ I tell him.

‘You motherfucker’ he rasps, ‘it ain’t over until -’

Thing lurches across and looks down at him, then at me. ‘This guy is really starting to piss me off’ he says

‘You can talk?’ I ask him.

‘Thing’ says Thing, raising a boot and stomping on Aia’s horrified face. There is a blast of wild light, Machine energy surging from the decapitated head, blinding everyone on the deck. When I open my eyes again, Rasmussen is sitting on the floor with little red birds and glyphs rotating around his dizzy head.

Thing is nowhere to be seen. But the blind balloonist has mysteriously grown a small beard on his left elbow. ‘That’s funny’ he says, stroking the tuft, ‘I could have sworn I shaved this morning.’

Meanwhile, Molly looks up from behind her bar at Moses and Lulu playing RISK on one of the sunlit tables. Lulu is chewing on a stick of celery, waiting for the big Samoan to point out where Rongovia is on the map. He seems to be struggling and looks back over his shoulder towards his wife with a look of panic. Molly laughs and begins to sing like a tenor.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask Rasmussen, pulling him to his feet. ‘You look a little… weird… especially with those cartoon birds and funny symbols going round your head.’

Behind us Don Coyote boots Aia’s lifeless head over the side of the ship.

‘I wanted to do that’ scowls Jon.

I walk over to the tigermouse and place my hand against his stone flank. It still feels warm.

‘What are we going to do with this lot?’ asks Papa Bear, pointing at the confused looking pygmies. They are milling around the headless suit of white armour and scratching their little bald scalps as if they don’t know what to do.

Rasmussen claps his hands together decisively and says ‘Minions! I have a job for you…’ They shuffle over shiftily. ‘Take this tigermouse and place it somewhere safe, would you? Maybe over a secret passageway or something. And guard it with your lives. Buckley was a fine fellow. He deserves to have a little tribe of space-hopping goblins worship him like a deity.’ He salutes and they salute clumsily back, before placing their little hands on the statue and clapping their way back through time. ‘Any other loose ends need tying up?’ asks Rasmussen, looking particularly pleased with himself.

‘Who are you people?’ asks Bob Dylan.

‘Ah… now that is a LONG story’ says Rasmussen.

‘We’ve got all the time in the Unimerse’ says Papa Bear, opening a rum barrel and discovering it is full of a thick black liquid. It is debatable at this stage whether the liquid in question is coffee or Dreambrew.

‘Technically we’ve only got sixty years before all of this is gone’ I tell them, with a sweep of my arm.

‘Sixty years! All the time in the Unimerse!’ shouts Don Coyote. ‘Have you people forgotten what we were doing here in the first place?’ He dips a ladle into the barrel of black liquid and takes a sip while he waits for us to respond, then blows it out into space. ‘GOD DAMMIT, WHAT IS THIS STUFF? IT’S VILE!’

‘To tell you the truth Don, I can’t speak for the others, but I just came for a game of whackbat’ says The Amalfi Glow, pulling on a pair of marigolds and refashioning Wanamaker’s head into something that resembles a very small rugby ball of shit. ‘By the way, anybody seen Wanamaker’s eyeball?’ he asks.

I reach into my back pocket and pull it out, hold it up to the light. ‘You know that game with the three cups?’ I ask them. ‘Where the magician shuffles them around and you have to guess which one The Bubble is under?’

‘That’s… Thee Bubble?’ asks Rasmussen, smiling.

‘It is indeed. The bubble I planted inside his head was a fake.’

Wanamaker’s eyeball sparkles there, magically pulsing, this time with genuine possibility and not just the wishy-washy abstract artificial possibility of the rainbow gem. Which, in case anyone was wondering, is now safely tucked back in my sock..

‘So what happened to Wanamaker’s actual eyeball then?’ asks Ritchie.

‘Wanamaker’s eyeb- ? That…?  Man, I think I just threw it in a bin’ I tell him. ‘I can’t remember everything you know.’

‘You… threw it… IN A BIN?’ asks The Z, and I suddenly sense a shift of atmosphere amongst the shrubs.

‘Wait a minute… since when were we all dressed like shrubs?’ I ask them.

Rasmussen pulls an ‘Oops’ face.

‘Stop trying to deflect the question’ says a shrub so shrub-like that it can only be Don Coyote.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake’ I say, patting the back of my head and knocking my own fake eye into my palm. I throw it to Ritchie and he whackbats it out into space. ‘Fuck… what are you doing? I was giving Wanamaker my eye!’

Bob Dylan takes the ladle from Coyote, takes a sip, spits it out, and says ‘I’ve seen some weird shit in my time…’

‘Okay’ says the Coyote shrub, ‘now all that bubble mumbo-jumbo is sorted, we can get down to business.’ An arm emerges from the shrub with a wrist-watch, quite clearly the giant clock… only much smaller. ‘If we leave now, we can be back at the Ilhelo Stadium in time for kick-off!’

There are groans throughout the Company.

‘This chapter’s enormous already’ says a Liverpudlian shrub with the head of a uke poking out of it.

‘Chapter?’ I ask.

‘Hey! Hang on a minute!’ says Coyote, his camouflaged face appearing between the leaves. ‘We didn’t do everything we did before just to give up at The End, did we? We beat the Robots! We beat the Rah! And the Ilians! Everybody died… I think. But now we’re not dead. There doesn’t seem to be a credible explanation for it, and frankly I think that’s missing the point. The point is… well… it’s what Thing would’ve wanted.’

‘Thing didn’t even like soccer’ says Alexander, ‘he told me so. At least I think that’s what he was telling me. He wasn’t the most articulate of fellows…’

‘Well not just Thing then… let’s do it for Buckley. Let’s do it for Willoughby’s crazy changeling wife. Let’s do it for Neomi and the Secret Seven -’

‘Mystic Six’ I say.

‘Whatever. Let’s do it for the folk we lost along the way. For the illegal robots, whirry-zap and clunk-fist… or whatever their names were… I forget. For Goddam Zoolander -’

A shrub coughs. ‘Actually I’m still here’ it pouts.

‘For that zombie dude’ says Coyote.

‘Zoolander? Is that you?’

‘For all the Murphys that died at the Battle of the Black Crater’ says Coyote, ‘God rest their scary alien souls.’

‘Yeah, it’s me’ says the shrub, extending a ghostly holographic hand holding a CD out to me. ‘Here, take this.’

‘What is it?’ I ask him.

‘For Sam Tharkey, who got eaten by some sort of unidentified swamp monster in Missouri that may or may not have been an Oolonic Dragon… or an Elonic Dragon, I forget which is which…’ says Coyote.

‘W gave me it’ whispers the Zoolander shrub, ‘he said I was to give it to you if anything happened to him.’

I turn the disc over in my hand, the fake leaves and twigs of my shrub outfit getting in the way. On it is written in black biro ‘WARD 679’.

‘For Gassius Clay and poor Bill White. For the PRIKS and the impressionable fucktards who got caught up in Aia’s crazy plan to destroy the Unimerse and start it over. For the Jazz Monkey. And for the children. Especially for the children…’ says Don Coyote. ‘Let’s go back and win that Unimerse Cup! Huh? What do you all say? Are you with me?’

There are mumbles. Some sound like ‘I suppose so’, others are quite audibly ‘no.’

‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU!’ yells Don Coyote. ‘I SAID, ARE YOU WITH ME?’

‘Do we even have any choice?’ asks Bob Dylan.

…

5 Minutes Later…

Trumpets of the non-sun-destroying variety blow. Three quarters of the Ilhelo Stadium are packed to the rafters with somewhat disappointed Ilians, representatives of the Intergalactic High Council who haven’t been killed off during the preceding paragraphs, and little officials bustling officiously about. We stand in the tunnel in our shrub outfits, Coyote’s pep-talk still ringing in our ears (he insisted on shouting it through the Space Bugle – personally I couldn’t make out a word he was saying, but I’m pretty sure I broke a toe listening.) Crown Prince Cnaithiel is there, flanked by the three smiling Grintakh Zorls. ‘So’ he says, looking down his nose at me.

‘So’ I reply.

‘It would appear that your opponents have not shown up’ he says smugly.

‘It would appear not’ I agree.

‘What a shame’ he says.

A whistle blows and we run out onto the pitch to a cavalcade of laughter. I hear a high-pitched voice somewhere high above me shouting ‘I don’t believe it! The Earthlings have come to the final dressed… as shrubs!’

‘Earth Song’ plays as we take our positions on the left hand side of the pitch. Having invoked Clause 679 again, our starting line up is:

SHRUB 1 – MAL (GK)

SHRUB 2 – BRENDON HERTZ (RB)
SHRUB 3 – RASMUSSEN MURPHY (LB)
SHRUB 4 – THE AMALFI GLOW (SW)
SHRUB 5 – JIM (CB)

SHRUB 6 – WILLOUGHBY TOAD (DM) Not-Captain
SHRUB 7 – EMERSON BETCHKAL (RM)
SHRUB 8 – JAMES REDMOND (AM)
SHRUB 11 – UBERGRIM (LM)

SHRUB 9 – MOPPY (CF)
SHRUB 10 – JON OF THE ATOM (CF)

Substitutes
SHRUB 12 – SCARYTOES
SHRUB 13 – WANAMAKER
SHRUB 14 – BUTTERCUP MURPHY
SHRUB 15 – DEF MUTE
SHRUB 16 – THE Z
SHRUB 17 – A BEWILDERED BOB DYLAN

HEAD SHRUB – DONALD COYOTE

I shuffle to the centre circle, where a bemused looking Grey is standing with a whistle in his mouth. ‘So’ he says in my head.

‘So’ I say.

‘It would appear that the Xoni have not turned up’ he says in my head.

‘So it would appear’ I say.

‘No point in me flipping a coin then’ says the Grey in my head.

I motion for Jon and Moppy to kick off and the Grey blows the whistle. Moppy taps the ball to Jon, and Jon thumps it from the halfway line into the empty Xoni goal. The scoreboard reads

EARTH 1 NIANAROK 0

The crowd go so berserk that all of the leaves of our shrub outfits fall off. Jon wheels away with his orange shirt over his head and does one of those knee-sliding celebrations for about thirty metres across the artificial turf, his face contorted in skint-knee pain. A little Ilian ball-boy with hair the colour of the moon, digs the ball out of the net and thumps it back up the pitch to us. ‘You know’ says the Grey referee, ‘we can award you a 10-0 win if you like, seeing as your opponents didn’t turn up.’

I glance up at the royal box of the main stand. Cnaithiel is laughing with a bunch of bureaucrats, the Unimerse Cup sitting resplendent in its box just a few feet away from him. ‘It’s not so easy to turn up when you’ve been jailed though, is it?’ I ask the little Grey and he looks sheepishly at the ground. ‘Why don’t you do something about it? Everyone knows that there are thousands of Xoni trapped underground, running on big wheels to power the Ilian cities.’

The referee shrugs and blows for a free kick because no Xoni are there to restart the match. ‘Ooh!’ says Moppy. ‘My turn to score!’

‘Let me get a hat-trick first’ says Jon, snatching up the ball.

‘I thought we agreed to take turn about?’ says Moppy, trying to wrestle the ball off him, and the two of them fall to the ground.

‘I didn’t agree shit!’ says Jon.

And then it hits me.

I leave them grappling on the ground, Emerson and Jay standing over them wondering whether there is any point in getting involved. Behind me, Mal does the little go-dance in his goalmouth and some smarty pants holds up a giant banner that reads ‘JEBUS SAVES!’

‘Hey Coach’ I say to a beaming Coyote, and snatch the Space Bugle from his hand.

‘Where’s he going with that?’ asks the Don. ‘Shit. Willoughby!’

Back in the centre circle I toe the ball out from under Jon’s body and dribble it back towards our own goal. Then I belt it from the edge of the box. Mal’s face changes from an expression of go-dancing happiness to blind hairy panic and he flaps at it like a man getting chased by a swarm of bees. The ball nestles into the net.

EARTH 1 NIANAROK 1

The ‘JEBUS SAVES’ banner is set alight with disappointment, and as I pick up the ball and run back to the halfway line, boos begin to ring out from the terraces. I place the ball down and look up at the royal enclosure again. Cnaithiel and the bureaucrats are no longer laughing, but instead stare ashen faced down at us, brows crumpled. I tell the Grey to blow his whistle.

‘But…’ he says.

‘Just blow the fucking whistle’ I snap, and when he does, I dribble the ball back towards our goal again, the boos now reaching levels of Space Bugle-esque proportions. I slam the ball past a flailing Mal into the net.

EARTH 1 NIANAROK 2

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ asks The Amalfi Glow as I pick the ball up and walk back towards the centre circle again.

‘It’s just a game of football Ritchie’ I tell him. ‘It’s not important.’

As I place the ball back on the centre spot, I catch sight of Don Coyote on the touchline, motioning for Buttercup to get warmed up. Clearly I’m about to be substituted. I turn to the referee and shout over the jeers ‘There’s something you should know. In sixty years the Unimerse will be no more. Actually, not just this Unimerse, but all the Unimerses. We… well, I don’t know what exactly we did, but whatever it was… it wasn’t good. We broke it… perhaps with an ice-cream nebula…’

Bang on cue, the night sky above us tears in two raining lightning bolts down upon us. One of the floodlights gets destroyed, several craters appear on the grass as green as nowhere, and Papa Bear gets toasted alive.

The Grey looks up at me and gulps. Then together with the other thirty three little green telepathic aliens who have been officiating the tournament, they pinch their noses and evaporate into thin air.

‘Hey, where did the ref go?’ asks Moppy, looking all around him, even under his boots.

‘E.T went home’ I tell him, and I lift Waynaldam Song’s Space Bugle to my lips.

The crowd, already kinda freaking out about the cracked open sky above them, clap their hands across their ears at the first squall of feedback from the horn. ‘Shit, sorry about that folks’ I say, fumbling with the volume control. ‘There, that’s better. Listen… there’s something I need to tell you. For centuries, your government have been kidnapping Xoni from Nianarok and bringing them here. I bet you’re wondering where they are, aren’t you? Well I’ll tell you – ‘

‘The sky is falling down!’ shouts a voice in the crowd.

And sure enough it is. Half of the sky at least. Thankfully it lands a couple of miles to the right of the stadium, but even so, for a moment it was hearts in mouth time.

‘What’s happening?’ screams a woman.

‘Well, if you’ll let me finish I’ll get to that’ I tell them. ‘The truth is that -’

‘Guards! Arrest this man!’ shouts Cnaithiel from the royal box.

A dozen Ilian guards identical to the ones I saw below the ground, come streaming onto the field with their vapo-rayguns raised.

‘Wait!’ I yell. ‘Just give me a minute!’

‘Yeah, but it’s never a minute with you Willoughby, is it?’ says Jon of the Atom, sitting down on the ball. ‘It always goes on and on and on and on and -’

‘The truth is that they’re imprisoned… under the ground… running on huge… hamster wheels… to power your planet’ I blurt out. ‘There, I’ve said it.’

Those in the crowd who aren’t looking up at the intact half of the sky, wondering if it’s going to fall too, stare at each other and shrug their shoulders.

‘This man is as mad as my father!’ shouts Cnaithiel, his knuckles whitening on the rail in front of him, a single bead of sweat trickling down from his foppish blond fringe.

‘It’s true!’ I yell, backing away from the guards. ‘That’s why the Xoni aren’t here to play the final. They’ve been arrested and are probably running on those wheels right now. They make them eat the dead -’

‘Gross!’ shouts someone in the crowd.

‘And the truth about your father Cnaithiel… is that he’s not mad. Well, not anymore. He’s dead. I killed him…’

There is a collective gasp from the terraces and someone throws a single sandal that hits me in the face. ‘That’s not true!’ wails the prince. ‘My father is in a private hospital being treated for exhaustion!’

‘Actually that’s his assistant, Krill. With face paint…’ I say, ‘sorry.’

‘What about the sky?’ yells someone.

‘Look, I’ve told you already… I’ll get to that part, just… stop interrupting me will you?’

‘Okay’ they shout back.

‘It doesn’t need to be like this’ I tell them, another squall ripping from the Bugle and taking out several GLEEM advertising boards and a muffin stand. ‘There is another way.’

‘MY FATHER IS DEAD!’ wails Cnaithiel.

‘Shut him up someone’ shouts one of the guards, pointing up at the royal box, ‘this dude here with the eye missing is about to tell us about the other way.’ A Grintakh Zorl reaches its rocky arms across and places some duct tape across the prince’s mouth. The guard motions for me to carry on.

‘See, I told you this would take longer than a minute’ says Jon.

‘You can live together’ I tell them. ‘Let them go. Set them free.’

‘How do we know you’re telling the truth?’ shouts someone.

‘Just think about it. Where do you think all your electricity comes from? You have no natural resources.’

‘Ooh, I never thought about that before’ shouts another voice, ‘where DO we get all our electricity from?’

‘I already told you’ I tell them, ‘from the big wheels, under the ground. So what do you say? You are the people. You decide. Not some bunch of crooked politicians, or ridiculous kings. Today is the first day in the rest of your lives and -’

‘Stop!’ shouts someone, visibly sobbing. ‘Just stop! You had us at shit sorry about that folks…’

And with that, they begin to clap. Slowly at first, before building to tumultuous applause. Which is kinda weird and makes me feel decidedly uncomfortable just standing there, being me.

‘Let them play!’ I shout.

And they shout it back.

‘Let them play! Let them play! Let them play! Let them -’

‘Pfft! What the fuck’s going on?’ shouts an old man in the top tier. ‘I fell asleep just after kick off. Let who play?’

The guards put down their weapons. The bureaucrats slink into the shadows. Cnaithiel suicidally throws himself from the royal box and Don Coyote catches him to a roar of approval. The stamping and chanting reverberates down through the ground, shaking the artificial sun from side to side, and the prisoners know. They just know. They step from the big wheel and the guards stand aside, and then they begin to pour through the paper wall of the changing room, blinking into the light of the stadium (even though it is perhaps just as dark with only three floodlights working). The Xoni team march onto the pitch with numbers branded onto their arms and freedom in their tattooed eyes, smiling, shaking hands with us. Those who are not playing start funnelling into the stands and the Ilians budge up in their seats. Pretty much everybody has a smile on their face, except perhaps Don Coyote who is staring at the Xoni team and crying. Even Cnaithiel seems relieved that his suicide attempt failed and is remembering that his father, King Vaw was a treacherous old git.

The final was… well, it was befitting of a final. I’d like to say that it was a closely fought battle, but then I’d be lying. It was certainly played with great spirit, even without a referee. At half-time we sat around in the middle of the pitch and shared bottles of Dreambrew, spitting it out over our shoulders. The full-time score was:

EARTH 1 NIANAROK 22

Coach Coyote was inconsolable at the end, even though the crowd were streaming onto the pitch and falling into craters and hoisting us up onto their shoulders.

In all the excitement I forgot to tell them why the sky had cracked in half.

‘Willoughby!’ grins Kizedi above the ground and we shake hands. His grip is so strong that I feel like I might need a THSE sweet metal hand in the morning. ‘We can’t thank you enough! It doesn’t even matter that you impregnated my daughter… we… we want you to lift the Unimerse Cup for us as a symbol… a symbol that today, good triumphed over evil. Speaking of which, where the fuck is that crazy W dude?’

‘W’s dead’ I say.

‘Fuck. I’m sorry to hear that’ he says.

‘It’s okay’ I tell him, ‘I’m working on it.’

Bang!

There is a sudden rush of sound and colour and I’m falling.

People are screaming.

I look down and there’s a bullet-hole in my chest, pissing blood. Everything sounds tinny like it does in the movies when someone is about to die.

I look up and see a man with a fox’s face looking down at me, Rasmussen jumping down from someone’s shoulders and whispering in the fox’s ear. The fox’s eyes open and his hand goes over his mouth in shock. He is crying.

And now I’m looking up at an old man painted half red and half tartan with a bone through his nose, and I recognise him as Kandaicozi Senior, the medicine man from the Vulva tribe, and he waves his bony hands across my chest and I watch in amazement as a golden bullet rises from inside me and my hearing goes clear. Rasmussen and the fox-man pull me to my feet and old Kandaicozi hands me the golden bullet. ‘Willoughby’ says Rasmussen, ‘I’d like to introduce you to Doshanam Mishanin. Betty’s brother.’

‘Willoughby! My brother!’ cries Mishanin throwing his arms around me.

‘I explained everything’ says Rasmussen with a wink.

Mishanin is sobbing and clutching so tight to me that I can barely move. ‘Thanks’ I say to the old man.

‘Not a problem’ he croaks, ‘you’ll live, but you’re going to have a really big hole in your chest.’

‘Oh’ says Rasmussen, pulling up his shirt. ‘You could install a theatre like mine – hey! What happened to the tiny theatre?’

I look across and see that it is in ruins as if some enormous God farted and demolished the whole thing before climbing back up to his cloud coffin to go back to sleep.

‘Willoughby… the Unimerse Cup?’ asks Kizedi, pointing up into the stands.

‘If you don’t mind’ I tell him, ‘there’s someone else I know that probably deserves to lift it more… no, not you Jon.’

‘Asshole’ says Jon.

I point at a figure, sitting in his pants on the sideline, draining the dregs of the half-time Dreambrew bottles, gagging with every mouthful. Kizedi nods and walks over to him.

And then we watch. Don Coyote doing a little ‘Who… me?’ gesture before bursting into tears again, though this time tears of happiness. He picks himself up and dusts himself down, embraces the big Xoni chief and slowly ascends the steps of the main stand, savouring every clap and cheer of his walk. I’m half-expecting one of those unexpected lightning bolts to fry him on the top step, but no, he reaches the royal box and the Grintakh Zorl step back, bowing in tandem, and the box that holds the cup falls away revealing the glittering golden trophy.

‘Enlightenment beckons’ smiles old Kandaicozi, turning his face to the stars and breathing in deeply through his nose.

The Z wipes a tear from his eye.

‘I heard that actually when you vanish, that you reappear in a zoo on the Grey’s planet’ I tell him.

‘Who says that is not Enlightenment?’ grins the old man.

And Don Coyote steps forward with a smile on his face. It is the sort of smile you maybe only see once or twice in a lifetime. A smile beyond simply a display of raw emotion, but a sign that says that anything is possible.

He lifts the Unimerse Cup.

Everyone cheers.

And then he disappears.

The cup falls back into its box and the glass walls close.

I prise Doshanam Mishanin off from around my neck and glance around at the sea of happy faces. Mal throwing his hair around like he’s in a shampoo commercial. Moppy high-fiving The Amalfi Glow. A delighted looking Jim who has just found his chainsaw. Alexander Tokeleaf with Buttercup on his shoulders. Wanamaker getting trampled under everyone’s feet. The Atom Band all hugging each other for reasons I cannot explain. And Bob Dylan picking up a charred-looking muffin and sniffing it. ‘Let’s fucking party!’ yells James Redmond.

I grab Rasmussen (still fiddling around inside his chest) by the elbow beard and start to lead him away down the tunnel. ‘Where are you two going?’ asks the Black Angel, leaning against the tunnel wall with a grin.

‘Yes… where are we going?’ asks Rasmussen, hopping along.

‘To the last chapter’ I tell them.

‘I’ve heard it before’ grins the Black Angel, tagging along beside us.

‘Ooh, I do hope it’s not going to be as long as this one Chaplin’ says Rasmussen.

‘You and me both old friend’ I smile, slinging my arms around their shoulders,’you and me both.’

On the way Charlie talks at 200 miles per hour about her favourite conspiracy theories. ‘I mean, I saw the fucking news’ she says. ‘The soldiers… they like… they literally didn’t have faces… I mean, how can that be possible for people to not have faces? Did they have faces before, and if they did… then what did they do with them?’

The Acid Man drifts away in the passenger seat. Soon he will be back at work in the Rongovian Drugs Testing Bureau, where he has been dropping acid Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 for the last sixty-seven years (*taking so much acid has unquestionably ravaged his mind, but physically it is kicking the ass out of every anti-ageing cream you’ll find in the shops). Charlie pulls up outside an Abeltown slum and she continues to rant with dirty fingernails while they wait for Hash Guy, who is unsurprisingly running late again. ‘It’s Groundhog Day’ whispers the Acid Man, remembering his wife throwing him out onto the dusty Plum Island street many moons ago, his chubby son bawling at the court-room window, the other prospectors laughing him all the way to an inflatable dinghy that he clumsily rowed away from the island. He didn’t even remember to take the blunderbuss with him when he left.

Hash Dude doesn’t give a fuck. He sits in the back seat propping up a dribbling Heroin Guy, who wears pink plastic sunglasses and has an unlit cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. The Acid Man has worked with him most of his life, but he can’t remember Heroin Guy’s name. He thinks it might be Stinky. Or Pinky. Or maybe just Bob. Charlie crashes the pool car into a duck pond and they have to walk the rest of the way. Hash Dude stops for a second breakfast before they’ve cleared the next block.

They pause on a bench outside a burning flower shop where firefighters spray soaring jets of water to drown out the flames. The Acid Man waits patiently until the fire is out and then he walks towards the building. ‘Hey’ says a fireman, ‘you can’t go in there. It’s not safe.’

The Acid Man waits for the fireman to turn his back and goes in anyway.

He emerges from the decimated building minutes later, spluttering soot and clutching a scorched toastie maker to his chest. While the fire brigade pick through the shell of a grand piano, he shuffles back to the bench, thinking about Julia Judge.

She was simply too good to be true. A blond-haired, blue-eyed vision of loveliness who loved to dance slowly with her eyes closed. His love for her was as  boundless as her appetite for love-making and her only obvious flaw was that she smelled a bit funny. Were it not for the Acid Man living in a permanent state of exhaustion then perhaps he would have followed that peculiar odour and discovered that his wife was an alien much sooner than six years after they were married, five years after their son was born, on an island in the South Pacific that doesn’t appear on any map. ‘I don’t understand how this changes anything’ she’d said, morphing with her son into a horrific mutant black creature with terrifying dripping jaws before him.

‘We’re going to be late again’ says Hash Dude, his eyelids flagging on the bench.

‘Work can wait. We’ve got work to do’ says the Acid Man, striding off.

‘Ooh, now this sounds like FUN!’ grins Charlie, clapping Heroin Guy around the shoulder and causing him to fall off the bench, flat onto his face.

The four of them had worked at the R. D. T. B for as long as Acid Man could remember. Sometimes this was not much further back than last Tuesday when he’d dropped a Dreambrew blotter and it had turned his brain into a bunch of paper flowers. When drugs were legalised in the mid-60s, the government were suddenly faced with the problem of ‘testing’ everything that came onto the market to ensure it was safe. Acid Man, Hash Dude, Heroin Guy, Charlie, and their colleagues were the answer.

Acid Man enters the costume shop and a little brass bell rings above the door. As if by magic, the shopkeeper appears. ‘Oh’ he says, obviously disappointed, ‘I was expecting someone else…’

Charlie dumps Heroin Guy in a basket of togas and Hash Dude pulls on a Homer Simpson mask, lighting up a recreational joint. ‘I’m looking for something… spacey’ says Acid Man, thumbing through a rack of red and yellow jumpsuits with codpieces.

‘Hmmmmmmmmm’ replies the shopkeeper, stroking a curious little beard on the end of his elbow, ‘I do have something actually.’ He sizes the Acid Man up and down and nods his head before disappearing through a red curtain behind the desk.

‘This place STINKS of dead people’ says Charlie rather loudly, sticking the now flavourless gum behind the ear of a full-size fox costume that hangs eerily upon a mannequin. As if by magic the shopkeeper appears again and this time he is carrying a small cardboard box that he dumps on the counter.

‘Aw maaaan it’s going to be a severed head and flies’ whispers Charlie.

‘This…’ says the shopkeeper, pulling out a white suit of armour and blowing off the dust. ‘It was supposed to be black like that chap from Star Wars, but a fuck-up at the factory meant that this particular suit is all white.’

The Acid Man falls in love at first sight. ‘It’s perfect’ he says.

‘I thought you might say that’ replies the shopkeeper with a wink behind his round-rimmed shades. ‘Now then’ he says, opening a ledger and plucking a small red feather from behind his ear, ‘name please?’

‘Norman’ says the Acid Man, ‘Norman Wader.’

‘Hmmmmmmmm’ says the shopkeeper, ‘Norman? No… no, that’s not it at all. It sounds… positively unheroic, especially for someone planning on wearing a costume like this. I think instead I’ll call you Dark. Dark Wader. Yes… that’s it…’ and he proceeds to dip the feather in a pot of black ink and etch the Acid Man’s new name in the book.

They move quickly across the country, Wader’s white costume flashing in the sun like some space-age ghost rider of the apocalypse. All three of them pedal bicycles pinched from behind Hank’s Pizza Store, out into the suburbs past giant worn billboards advertising a film called ‘Hmmmmmmmmmm’ about these weirdos stuck on an inflatable Ark. ‘I saw that film’ says Charlie, ‘walked out after ten minutes.’

‘What… h-happened?’ gasps Hash Dude.

‘Can’t really remember’ she says.

They arrive at a cottage in the woods on the far side of an unnamed mountain and Dark Wader dismounts, pressing his face to the dirty glass windows full of cobwebs. ‘Nobody home’ he says, and proceeds to kick the door down, spewing up a cloud of dust.

‘This place REALLY stinks of dead people’ says Charlie, wading into the room full of photographs.

A half-eaten mouldy and severely ossified muffin lies abandoned on a coffee table.

‘There hasn’t been anyone here in a long, long, long, long… long, long, long, LONG time’ says Hash Dude sniffing the muffin and studying a picture of a guy in a white superhero mask and tiny cape running through a jungle pursued by bats.

Dark Wader brushes his thumb across an old machine lying in the corner of the room, lifting an inch of thick dust. ‘What is it?’ asks Charlie.

‘I believe they call mechanical beast… a moviola’ says Wader, and he about turns, opening a hatch in the middle of the floor that leads to the basement.

The light switch on the wall doesn’t work, so the steps leading down plunge into complete darkness. ‘Something’s rotten down there’ says Charlie, pinching her nose, ‘smells too fleshy to be more muffins. Maaaan I would kill for a decent muffin right now…’

‘Nuffin like a muffin’ drawls Hash Dude, flopping down into a dusty armchair and picking up more photographs – a guy in 80s tennis gear peeking through a letterbox, a tap-dancing coconut under a spotlight, a jar of red gum smashed on a vinyl floor. ‘Fuckin weird shit’ says Hash Dude to himself and he fishes around in his pocket for another smoke. As he lights up, he glances around the room and slaps his own forehead. ‘Ah crap… we forgot Heroin Guy again…’

Wader marches back across the room and in the kitchen lights a blood-stained baseball bat on a gas stove before shining it down the steps that lead to the cellar. ‘Hello?’ he asks, but gets no answer.

‘I don’t like this’ says Charlie, gnawing nervously on the cold bone muffin, her unbrushed teeth cracking against it.

Wader shrugs and begins to walk down the steps, his feet clattering against more bones that rattle and drop into the darkness of the room beneath him. ‘Hello?’ he calls again, lifting the flaming bat above his head. Charlie was right – the place stinks of death.

He reaches the bottom and moves further into the shadows at the back of the room, driven on by a Dreambrew-inspired vision that took place several weeks ago at the bottom of his mind. He was sitting on the toilet in his appartment, reading a paperback book of Julia’s. It was called ‘The Utica Flower Company’ and it was quite possibly the worst thing he had ever read in his life. Clearly the book had some mileage, its pages stained with coffee and seawater, corners cracked and turned up by sunshine, sections underlined with illegible pencil annotations in the margins, like someone had set out to revise it but had abandoned it halfway through. It was about some musicians on a ship, trying to sail around the world, only an ice-cream nebula had broken out in their freezer and after that nothing really made sense. His eyes drift to the postcard his wife had used as a bookmark, a picture of some place apparently called The Black Moon. On the back, addressed to a ‘Doreen & the kids’ at his address it read:

Hey, it’s me.

Things are going well up here in space. Willoughby visited a plastic surgeon on the black market and got his eye fixed. The Black Angel and me had a look round the local market for some sticky rock for the kids, but couldn’t find any. This really nice guy called Midas is helping us fix up the Mardi like a rocketship! How cool is that? I may even get to fly it! Hopefully I’ll be back in a couple of months, but in the meantime please know that I love you very much and miss you all like mad. I’m taking loads of photographs!

Yours
Buckley

Wader snaps back into the moment and is face to face with four coffins at the back of the basement, eerie in the flickering torchlight. He crouches down and examines them, sees that they are painted pale blue, and covered with pictures of white fluffy clouds.

He takes a deep breath and opens one.

Upstairs Hash Dude stubs out his joint on the floor and sighs. ‘I’m fucking bored’ he says, pulling down his Homer Simpson mask again.

Something thumps below them, and Charlie, who is kneeling at the hatch, jumps nervously. ‘What the fuck was that?’ she whispers.

‘Probably just the Acid Man bumping around in the dark’ says Hash Dude. He reluctantly gets up and shuffles over. ‘Hey! Dark Wader?’ he calls down into the basement, but there is no reply. ‘I can’t see the torch’ he says, ‘you’re going to have to go down there and get him.’

‘Me?’ asks Charlie. ‘Why me?’

‘I’m way too paranoid to be going down there’ he tells her, handing her his lighter.

She hands him it back. ‘I’m too scared’ she says.

He places the lighter back in her hands and closes her grimy fingers around it. ‘Charlie… I don’t even know what the fuck we’re doing here. One minute we’re driving into work, then you’re crashing us into that duck pond again, then we’re sitting on a bench watching a flower shop on fire, I’m eating a really delicious breakfast roll, the Acid Man’s dragging us to a costume shop, we’re pinching push-bikes, and now we’re here. What the fuck is going on?’

‘We’ll both go’ she says.

‘Okay’ he says, and they link arms, begin to clumsily descend the steps leading down to the basement, Charlie holding the tiny flame of the lighter out in front of them.

‘I can’t see shit’ she whispers. ‘What’s all that on the ground?’

‘Bones’ I think, he squeaks.

They reach the cellar and the stench of death hits them, Hash Dude retching in the dark. The decomposing arm of a dead Alaskan police officer sticking out of a wall brushes across Charlie’s neck and she screams without even realising what it is. ‘Wader! Where the fuck are you?’ asks Hash Dude urgently, but there is still no answer.

At the back of the cellar they find the four cloud coffins, the baseball lying extinguished on the sawdust strewn floor. ‘This is seriously freaking me the fuck out’ says Charlie, starting to hyperventilate.

Hash Dude begins to open the first coffin. ‘What are you doing?’ screeches Charlie.

‘Checking’ he says, flipping back the lid. ‘In case he climbed in and got stuck.’

There is nothing inside.

He opens the second coffin.

Nothing in that one either.

He opens the third.

Empty.

They shuffle to the fourth and final coffin and glance at each other over the lighter before Hash Dude opens it.

Charlie screams.

‘Why are you screaming?’ asks Hash Dude, equally freaked out. ‘There’s nothing in this one either…’

‘Where the fuck did he go?’ she wails.

…

I close my eyes and wait for the cannon blasts.

And wait.

And wait.

And open one eye.

The robots are lying immobile on the floor.

In the corner of the room is a guy in a ridiculous white knight costume with a bullet hole in his chest standing with a plug in his hands that he just ripped from the wall. ‘You again?’ I ask him, and he nods his head. ‘What did you do?’

He looks down at the cord in his gloved hands and says ‘Well… I disconnected the power supply to the motherboard.’

‘And wiped out these robots’ I say, pointing at the lifeless guards strewn around us, ‘smart thinking. Thanks again, I guess.’

‘Actually it didn’t just wipe out these robots… it wiped out EVERY robot in the Unimerse. At least the ones that were built by robots. Anyway, we best get moving’ he says, ‘we’ve got a lot to do before The End.’ At this he unstraps a battered and badly burned toaster from his back and holds out his hand to me.

‘Dark Wader… can I just ask you… who the fuck are you? Really?’

He shrugs his shoulders and we fly elasticated through time.

‘Where are we going?’ I yell as the blurry colour of worlds hurtle past our heads.

‘The Unimerse is collapsing’ he yells back, ‘no time to talk now.’

I put the brakes on, hang there mid-frame with the blur all around us. ‘No, I’m sorry, but I’m not moving until you tell me what the fuck is going on.’

He hangs there beside me, seemingly weighing things up. ‘How are you doing this?’ he asks.

‘What?’

‘This… this… hanging thing’ he says, staring at the space beneath his feet, combing the colours with an outstretched white hand.

‘Oh… I dunno. I just am. Are you ready to talk now?’

He nods quietly. ‘Let me show you’ he says.

…

Dr Sanchez waddles frantically up and down the laboratory as the thirteen cloud coffins tremble furiously behind the glass screen. ‘Crank it up another level!’ he yells to the nurse, a red-headed woman called Maggie McLymont. ‘We’re nearly there!’

Maggie is sitting behind a desk with a moviola on it, spewing out reels of pictures of ghostly apparitions at a remarkable speed and the reels coil and hop across the laboratory floor. Her carefully manicured hands reach out to the machine and she turns the dial to ANOTHER LEVEL. The cloud coffins now go into overload, some of them smoking, all of them thrashing around. Sanchez is mad with adrenaline, dancing to and fro with a wild look in his eye. ‘IT IS HAPPENING!’ he cries.

Suddenly the moviola explodes with a puff of pink smoke and the cloud coffins fall still, reverberations left hanging in the air.

And then slowly, one by one, thirteen six year old Willoughby Toads push open the lids and sit up bewildered in the light.

A drunk man who looks eerily like Dennis Hopper steps into the light, clapping. ‘Bravo Sanchez, bravo… Aia will be pleased.’

The fat little Spaniard flushes with pride and lifts a cigar to his lips, watching the confused little Willoughbys with his mad black eyes. ‘I did it’ he whispers to himself.

‘You certainly did’ says Midas, walking up beside him and shooting him once in the head.

Maggie screams and tries to escape, but her foot gets caught in a reel of pictures and she falls down. Midas smirks and patiently reloads his gun before shooting her once between the shoulder-blades. Some of the Willoughbys are crying, others back away behind their cloud coffins as the gunman approaches the glass partition, swigging from a bottle of rum. He unlocks a door and beckons them forward with a finger. ‘How would you little shit-heads like to become space pirates?’ he asks.

…

We materialise in a modest apartment, sparsely decorated. ‘This is where it all began for me’ says Wader, pointing at a wall. ‘At this very moment I am sitting in my toilet, taking a crap and reading some ridiculously bad book called The Utica Flower Company. But in a matter of seconds…’ – he holds up three fingers and counts them down. There is a blood-curdling scream from next door.

‘What the fuck was that?’ I ask him.

‘That was Aia entering me via my ass’ he says.

I blink.

‘Ready to move on?’ he asks me.

‘Wait’ I say, and blink again. Out of the corner of my eye I see a photograph sitting on a shelf, a black and white picture of a family of three on a tropical beach. A geeky looking man in glasses, hair plastered in a side-parting, with a big nervous grin on his face and a blunderbuss strapped across his shoulder, has one hand on the shoulder of a pudgy little boy with freckles wearing a bow-tie, the other is wrapped around the shoulders of a pretty young blond woman. ‘Hey, isn’t that one of the twins?’ I ask him.

‘Actually that’s Julia, their grandmother’ he tells me.

‘So the kid is…?’

‘The Judge’ he nods and we leap through time again.

I feel the familiar wooden planks beneath my bare toes and smile involuntarily. ‘The Mardi’ I say, ‘wow, I missed this place.’

Wader opens the hatch on the main deck and says ‘Follow me and don’t do anything stupid.’

A battle rages on the top corridor. It would appear that in our absence The Mardi has been taken over by an army of rabid naked blue Jon of the Atoms. At the heart of it all are numerous Dark Waders, swinging diamond sabres, slicing off heads and limbs with graceful precision. ‘Ignore them’ says Wader, kicking his way through a huddle of Jons and heading down to the bottom corridor.

‘What… are they?’

‘Worker Bees from another dimension’ he says, ‘that little goon Hezel invited them and now they’re trying to take over the Unimerse. It wouldn’t be the first.’ He reaches the door of Cabin 1 and pushes inside.

‘But why do they all look like Jon?’

Wader makes a hole with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and inserts a finger of his right hand. ‘That’s what the Bees do. They send a Queen to mate with the locals and then start replicating themselves. A Queen Bee can drop about fifteen little worker Bees every week and in a couple of months you’ve got the beginnings of an army.’ He opens my wardrobe and climbs down to that room of mine where I grew all those clones and locked myself in a cage for several weeks.

‘But this’ says Wader, and he plucks that bubble of mine out of the air, cupping it in his hands, ‘is the culmination of my work. Every string I pulled, every bus I dived in front of to save your sorry ass, was for this…’

‘It’s a bubble’ I tell him.

‘No Willoughby, it’s not a bubble. It is THE bubble. A secret Unimerse that only you and I know about. They said it couldn’t be done, but I proved them all wrong! Me! I am the architect of a new dimension! The systems that have held our worlds together since the dawn of time are crumbling! First I used the Shubunkins to help me bring down the twin powers.The High Council is in disarray! The Organisation smashed! What do you do if you spoil a painting Willoughby Toad? You rip it up and start again! YOU have seen the power and possibilities of THE Bubble, haven’t you?’

‘To be honest, I’m not liking the way your voice has taken on that sinister megalomanic tone in the last minute or so. What’s this got to do with Aia?’

‘FOOL! I AM AIA!’ he shouts, tearing off his mask and revealing the face of the fox.

‘Ah…’ I say, ‘I thought when you said Aia went up your ass that you were alluding to… uh, never mind.’

‘Sixty years from now the Unimerse will be no more. Your little friend Dr. Piler surprised even me when he pulled the Nowhere Plug creating a parallel hole on the Seventh Isle. Again this is something you’ve seen with your own eyes.’

I nod. ‘But I’m still totally confused’ I tell him.

He shakes his head wearily and there are shouts of ‘HUZZAH!’ from above as a half dozen Waders engage in a sword-fight with a half dozen naked blue Jon’s. ‘Who do you think built The Mardi?’ he asks me.

‘Gordon Motram’ I tell him.

‘Wrong’ he says, ‘I did. The mighty Aia fashioned a Unimerse Machine with his own shadowy hands -’

‘I like how you slipped the mighty part in there’ I tell him.

‘ – but could he utilise its powers?’

‘And now you’re speaking in the third person. Classic.’

‘No he couldn’t, for reasons beyond even Aia’s boundless intellect, the machine would only respond to beings from your universe. Did you know that you weren’t the first to sail the Mardi? We tried Midas with some kids from Jacksonville… but regrettably they turned into ghouls.’

He drifts off and I yawn. ‘You’re saying this was all your idea?’ I ask him finally.

‘Everything’ he replies, ‘your pathetic moon mission to prepare you for this journey, the placement of a Grintakh Zorl’s heart on a “magical island” in the middle of the South Pacific, I mean, in the early days I did all the speaking for NIKO. Even that Utica Flower Company 2.0 was my idea. All of it was designed to push you further, orchestrated to a point where you would accidentally destroy everything and create… this.’ He holds up the Bubble again and it blinks like a rainbow-coloured jewel in the light.

I look around the room, at the dusty tanks where once upon a time I home-brewed my own ship-mates, wooden crates of Pocket-Guides lying unopened and unread, wondering if I will ever see them again. ‘It’s a bit… far-fetched’ I tell him.

‘Perhaps’ he nods, his fox’s eyeball up close to the Bubble, reflecting the myriad possibilities that pulse and glimmer within it.

‘So what now?’ I ask him.

‘Well you tell me Willoughby Toad’ he says, and suddenly I sense a menacing shift. ‘Something isn’t right, is it? I saw it coming when you formed a symbiotic relationship with the ship and took her machine powers, the residual aftershock of which still resounds within you to this day. But your powers are weak in comparison to the raw force of the Machine. I know exactly what you’re thinking… you want a spear, don’t you? Haha, I’m so funny sometimes! A spear!’

‘To tell you the truth I was hatching an escape plan. Shit. I shouldn’t have told you that.’

He snorts with laughter, whiskers bristling. ‘I don’t think escape has ever been a viable option’ he says. ‘Your fate was decided long before you even existed. However, just to be on the safe side I blocked Ron Burgundy’s head just like I bricked up your stupid little underground, and your Fung-Ku before that. There is no way out Willoughby Toad’ he says, placing the Bubble carefully into a pocket of his gleaming white suit, ‘one way or another, this is The End for you, whether you gift me the powers of the machine… or I take them by force.’

‘I’ve heard the whole this is The End thing before’ I tell him, ‘several times.’

‘Of course you have. I have watched you shuffle from calamity to calamity and now there is but one fundamental question left for you to answer – what did you REALLY do with the Unimerse Machine?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Here, let me refresh your memory’ he says, and grabs my arm, sending us hurtling forward through time.

…

Very Vikloed looks up from the same copy of Moon Crumb that she’s been reading for nearly a year and her heavily made-up eyes open wide at the sight of the strange characters tramping through the foyer. At first she thinks that it might be Halloween, but as the rabble of Gods cram themselves into the lift at the far end of the grand marble hallway, she finally blinks and realises this might actually be happening.

They make their way up to the 17th floor and kick down the door of Dr Pancho Sanchez’ laboratory. Inside, thirteen cloud coffins lie open behind a glass screen and the bodies of Sanchez and his assistant nurse Maggie McLymont lie dead on the floor. ‘Shit’ says a rabbit in a bright yellow jumpsuit called Herman Melville, ‘I knew we shouldn’t have taken that toilet break on the way!’

‘I was going to pee my pants!’ protests Lord Chaos of Omicron indignantly.

‘Enough prattle! To Ward 679!’ cries the Robot’s Binary God in ones and zeros.

‘I don’t even know what you’re still doing here’ says Moonlight, ‘there are no Robots left to believe in you.’

‘That’s a fair point’ agrees Galaxiom Rubanet, and they watch the Binary God vanish into thin air before them before exiting the lab and stomping off down the corridor.

356 doors later an out-of-puff Gffrikirik gasps ‘Jesus, how long is this fucking corridor?’

Right at the end of the corridor is Ward 679, and a red-faced Mad Suspect smashes the door down with a big black boot.

‘I wish you would stop doing that’ says Hynrus Uemi Hynric Boerha Laimhug Cryach Gon, jangling a bunch of celestial skeleton keys.

Mad Suspect just snarls back at him and bursts into the room yelling ‘KING VAW!’

No answer, as the other gods shuffle inside and look around. ‘There’s nobody here’ says Gffrikirik, ‘just that short-circuited robot lying on the bed over there.’ He points at a android shell strapped to the middle of three beds on the right of the ward.

‘I beg to differ’ growls Pig-Pog, sniffing the air and thrashing around with a cane, ‘something stinks.’

Mrs Zeus throws back the bedsheets of the middle bed on the left of the room revealing a cowering Lumereti Hemhockle. Upon being discovered he immediately beams as big a smile as he can and leaps up into the middle of the room, starts performing an improvised tap-dance routine in his bare feet. From a distance he looks vaguely like a rabid coconut.

‘I say’ says German Greaves, the famous Lost Prophet of Onian City on New Tei, ‘I think this clown fellow is attempting to communicate something through the medium of dance!’

‘That’s no clown’ snaps Izon, a stripey Xuron Godess with ten arms who has to stoop so that her head doesn’t knock against the ceiling, ‘that’s a king.’

While the gods begin to quarrel, Hemhockle attempts to tapdance backwards out of the room, that big beaming smile of terror locked firmly on his wrinkled face. ‘He’s trying to escape!’ shouts Kunk, the Grongling patron saint of hobnailed weapons, and he thrashes Hemhockle once around the chops sending him spinning like a rag doll in pyjamas across the floor.

‘Great’ says Hynrus Uemi Hynric Boerha Laimhug Cryach Gon, ‘you fucking killed him.’

They sit down on the beds and ground looking utterly dejected, many of them contemplating their own immortality for the very first time. Some are painfully reaching the conclusion that they are not as immortal as they once assumed they were, in fact, that they may not be immortal at all.

Eventually Benny Reaper and the Minotaur show up. The young man breezes into the room with his black ragged cloak billowing behind him. The Minotaur is eating a goat’s leg. ‘Well, well, well… what do we have here… a gaggle of gods on the shop floor mixing with the peasants? Something must be seriously fucked up’ says the young man in an Australian accent. He stops and peers down at the dead Hemhockle and makes a little oooooh face. ‘Wow, you’ve managed to kill the only person who has any chance of figuring out what’s going on. Way to go guys.’

‘I liked the old grim better’ whispers Hynrus Uemi Hynric Boerha Laimhug Cryach Gon to anyone who will listen, ‘you knew what you were getting with him – quick swish of his scythe and off to the next departing soul. Whatever happened to him anyway?’

The Minotaur tosses the goat’s leg bone to one side and hoists the lifeless Hemhockle up onto his muscular shoulders, while Benny Reaper leans against a bed post and picks at his teeth with his giant blade. Without a word the gods pounce on him, devouring him in a matter of seconds. The Minotaur stops in the doorway.

‘You’re free to go’ says Mondan Veth, a wispy Vethurak with a sultry voice that floats on icicles.

The half-man, half-bull bows and deposits Hemhockle on the bed by the door, where Rasmussen’s wheelchair lies empty.

‘What now?’ asks Pig-Pog, wiping the reaper’s blood from around his mouth.

‘Here guys, look what I’ve found’ says Booloo, a Kraillian minor deity whose disciples are famed the Unimerse over for their inability to understand sarcasm, and their love of incredibly mature cheese. He holds up a book called ‘The Utica Flower Company’ that he has lifted from Hemhockle’s bedside table with his pudgy bright pink fingers. ‘Perhaps the answer is in here…’

The gods nod and return to their positions on the beds and ground, while Booloo clears his throat and begins to read:

‘Acquiring and buying a ship was relatively easy. The hard part was organising a crew to get out of bed, take a year out of their lives and set sail upon the somewhat unpredictable sea of possibility. In early 2009 this idea lit up my head and I don’t know where it came from, but let’s just say that once I get an idea, the only way I can shake it off is to see if it is possible…’

679 minutes later…

‘So that’s what happened to the Bubble Wand’ says German Greaves, as Booloo searches for a final section that appears to have been torn out of the paperback doorstopper. ‘The little wizard guy stole it from the heavens by building it with magic, then this Toad character just… flung it into the theatre and out of existence. Incredible.’

‘I don’t get it’ says Pig-Pog.

‘Which part?’ asks Mondan Veth.

‘All of it’ says Pig-Pog.

‘Would you like me to read it again?’ asks Booloo.

‘Okay’ says Pig-Pog.

679 minutes later…

‘I still don’t get it’ says Pig-Pog as Booloo searches again for the missing pages at the end.

‘What specifically don’t you get?’ asks Hynrus Uemi Hynric Boerha Laimhug Cryach Gon.

‘Well, for a start there’s this Smally character. I’m supposed to believe that he’s just a fig mint of Willoughby’s imagination?’

‘I thought Smally and Willoughby were two sides of Alfonso Kolinsky’s personality, but neither of them were real’ says Galaxiom Rubanet, ‘unless I’m missing something. Oh by the way Gffrikirik, I loved that part at the end of Book 1 when you and Zeus were at the battle and when he ripped off the Black Angel’s wings… I was literally crying during that bit.’

Mrs Zeus dabs at her eyes with a scented handkerchief and pats her heart with her fist.

‘Okay’ grunts Pig-Pog, ‘well what about this Unimerse Machine business. What’s all that about? First it was the ship, then it was the crew, then it was the cup, but no, it’s still the crew again. I don’t like it. It sounds like someone was making it up as they went along, as opposed to setting out with a clear storyline in mind. It’s cobbled together. Badly.’

‘It was a bit too violent for me’ admits Mad Suspect.

‘I liked it’ says Lumereti Hemhockle, ‘admittedly the ending was…’

‘Disappointing’ says Lord Chaos of Omicron.

‘N-no, I think the word I was looking for was… sudden’ says Hemhockle.

Kunk flicks a bogey the size of a tennis ball across the room and says ‘This is that bit in the book where everyone thinks someone is dead, and then they start speaking, and nobody notices for a couple of paragraphs, and then everyone does and they’re like… Lumereti Hemhockle, you’re alive!’ – and the Grongling gos does a little mock dance of celebration.

‘Am I?’ asks Hemhockle. ‘Alive, I mean? I’ve got an egg on my head the size of a small planet and I feel… weirdly woozy.’

‘LUMERETI HEMHOCKLE! YOU’RE ALIVE!’ cry the gods in unison.

‘Phew’ smiles Hemhockle mopping his brow.

Mad Suspect grabs the old man around the throat and lifts him off the ground so that his feet are wriggling in the air. ‘What happened to the Bubble Wand?’ barks the little god whose arms now seem to be unfeasibly long.

‘Willoughby… threw… it… into…’

‘Bullshit!’ snaps Pig-Pog.

Mad Suspect tosses the old man’s body across the room like a rag doll again. ‘I’m telling the truth’ protests the old man who suddenly looks ten thousand years old in the harsh light of Ward 679. ‘I’ve read that cursed book from cover to cover so many times that it can’t be considered in any way sane!’

‘I think he might be telling the truth’ says Gffrikirik, unconsciously scratching beneath one of his furry blue socks.

‘Then we don’t have any need for this guy?’ asks Pig-Pog, tucking a napkin into his tunic with anticipation.

‘WAIT!’ cries Hemhockle. ‘I’VE GOT IT!’

‘Oh, now he’s got it’ snarls Mad Suspect.

‘No, seriously!’ pants the old man, crawling across the floor on his hands and knees and snatching the book from Booloo. ‘Where is it? Where IS IT?’ he shouts, beads of sweat falling from his brow, ripping through the pages. ‘I KNOW IT’S IN HERE SOMEWHERE!’

‘Well I still can’t believe that W turned out to be a robot!’ trills German Greaves.

‘And Peaches’ says Mad Suspect, ‘man that dude was frickin awesome!’

‘Damn it!’ cries Hemhockle. ‘Why didn’t I see it before?!’

‘He’s mad’ says Mad Suspect.

‘Just like in the story’ says a really tiny god whose name I can’t even pronounce because it is made up entirely of symbols.

‘Right here!’ gasps the old man, holding the book up to the light and tapping the words with an ancient grey finger. ‘At the Hezel Hooternanny, Willoughby says:

I squat down and pick up Eulience’s wand. This wand is curiously identical to the bubble wand that is currently tucked into my sock.

You see?’

‘See what exactly?’ asks Mad Suspect, sharpening some plastic cutlery.

‘THERE ARE TWO BUBBLE WANDS!’ whoops Lumereti Hemhockle. ‘Willoughby threw it into the theatre and it washed up on the Seventh Isle, where Moppy found it. Willoughby took it from him and put it in his sock!’

The gods stare at the old man blankly.

‘HE HAD TWO BUBBLE WANDS IN HIS SOCKS!’ howls Hemhockle so loud that on the other side of the Unimerse a tree filled with red sparrows looks like it has burst into flames, the birds pouring endlessly up into the twilight sky.

A long time passes and eventually Mad Suspect says, ‘I’m calling a buttock.’

‘You had a buttock on the last one’ pouts Mondan Veth.

‘What do you care?’ snaps the little god. ‘You can’t even eat anything. You’re made out of wisps… and shit.’

‘That’s not the point and you know it!’ blushes the floating Vethurak.

At this point it is unclear what happens. A punch definitely got thrown, but it all happens so fast that it is impossible to tell who was punching whom, or more importantly whom the who was trying to punch, because the fist quite clearly landed in the face of someone completely different, triggering a full-on god-brawl.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a full on god-brawl, but it isn’t pretty. For a start the roof of the building blew clean off in something that appeared to be a badly executed firework display. And the noise… the noise was unimaginably bad as well, as deities hurled insults and fists that had brewed for eternities.

The people of Rongovia stopped what they were doing and watched in silence as the gods tore each other apart in the sky. It rained blood all the colours of the rainbow for nearly a week after, and every scientist in the world was utterly stumped.

Someone phoned Bob Dylan to find out what he thought, but he wouldn’t return their call.

And He Who Must Not Be Named? Well, soon as nobody was looking, he’d crawled back up to sleep in that big fat cloud coffin of his, missing the whole sorry mess. Which is a shame, because I think in a really perverse way, he might have liked it.

…

So here we go again, elastically pinging through space and time. ‘Here, Wader… do you mind if I make a quick phone call?’ I ask him. ‘It’s important.’

‘It’s the end of the Unimerse Willoughby. We’re not stopping so you can make a fucking phone call’ he sneers.

‘Don’t worry about stopping ’ I tell him, dialling a shiny red telephone, and tucking the receiver under my chin. ‘It’s ringing…’ I tell him.

‘Who… how… where did you get that?’ he spits.

‘In my sock’ I tell him. The number I dialled goes to answering machine and I leave a message.

‘I’m deaf!’ shouts Wader. ‘What have you done?’

‘Hmmmmmmmmm?’

‘Wait, I heard that. What are you up to Willoughby Toad? Who were you pho-’

Thump.

We land in the cheap seats, top tier of the Ilhelo Stadium. On the artificial green grass of the pitch far below us, illuminated by a band of floodlights, a lone figure all in white places the ball on the penalty spot and takes three steps back. The one hundred thousand strong crowd take a sharp intake of breath. ‘What’s this?’ I ask. ‘Is that…?’

‘Wanamaker in goals…’ says Wader, hauling himself up from the floor and dizzily pulling his white helmet on over his fox face, ‘yes it is.’

‘But he died when the Fishbus was shot out of the sky!’ I whisper.

‘Evidently not’ replies Wader, and I’m certain that he’s grinning behind the mask.

I look up at the plasma scoreboard and see:

UNIMERSE CUP SEMI-FINAL
ILIAUS 4  EARTH 4
Earth lead 5-4 on penalties

I squint at the two teams huddled together on either side of the centre circle, the blonde-haired Ilians, young and athletic, all in white on side, and on the other in orange shirts, with yellow shorts and blue socks…

‘Hey! That’s us! There’s Def Mute! And Emerson! Is that… is that The Z? It is and shit, he’s still naked! And look, there’s Mankiller! No, wait, Mankiller was The Cuban in disguise, what the fuck am I talking about? Thing! Look! Thing’s there too! And Rasmussen! Brendon Hertz! Emerson, Moppy, Jon, Jay, Jesus, Ritchie, Alexander… uh… Buttercup! She’s alive too! And… holy fuck, there’s Don Coyote!’ I am so excited that I could kiss Wader’s shiny plastic face.

‘Shhhh’ he says, ‘Crown prince Cnaithiel needs to score this or else the Earthlings are into the final…’

The young prince runs forward and strikes the ball so hard that it flies in flames towards the top left hand corner of the goal. Wanamaker (who looks barely human with his cobbled together legs and hands, hole in his chest, swollen gonads, and head of shit with a solitary random eyeball) is diving the wrong way. Or at least his body is…

‘Wait a minute, where’s Simon?’

‘You fucking idiot’ spits Wader, ‘Rasmussen IS Simon.’

‘Piss off.’

Rasmussen is Simon?

Wow. That’s almost as staggering as W is a Robot. I just… I never saw that coming. ‘Wait a minute… where’s W?’

Wader looks at me as if I’m insane. ‘Are you even paying attention? What do you think happened to all the robots in the Unimerse when I pulled the cord on the motherboard?’

‘They… died?’ I ask.

‘So what do you think happened to W?’

No.

‘You’re lying’ I tell him.

‘Yes, I’m lying’ he laughs. ‘You really think it would be that easy to wipe out Operative W? You don’t think that he might have… ooh, already foreseen this possibility and built another copy of himself which is hidden in a secret location? That he perhaps left instructions with holographic Zoolander back on the Mardi to direct you there?’

‘Did he?’ I ask.

‘No! You fucking idiot! I’m being sarcastic! Of course W is dead!’

Fuck…

I think I am crying. ‘What about me?’ I ask him, pointing to the pitch. ‘Where am I?’

‘You’re here’ he says coldly, ‘aren’t you?’

Down on the pitch, Wanamaker’s shitty head detaches itself from the orbit of his mangled shoulders and travels in the opposite direction, knocking the blazing ball over the bar, leaving a singed sticky mess in the middle of his face. The Utica Flower Company stream forward, Don Coyote doing poorly executed drunken cartwheels in his pants. The Ilian crowd don’t seem to understand what just happened either, staring blankly into space, finally beginning to clap really slowly. The young Ilian players look distraught, their egos exploding under the floodlights, while the Earthlings dance and sing their way around the stadium, and surely the applause begins to escalate, until like in some Rocky film where the Russians are won over by the never-say-die attitude of the ham-fisted actor and start chanting ‘RO-CKY! RO-CKY! RO-CKY!’ the Ilians begin to chant ‘E-ARTH! E-ARTH! E-ARTH!’ It doesn’t quite sound the same, but the intentions are there.

‘Congratulations’ says Wader, ‘you made the final.’

‘How can this be happening?’ I ask him.

‘Simple’ he says, ‘tell me, have you ever seen two Unimerses collide? No? Can you imagine what happens?’

I shrug. ‘They explode?’

Wader looks up at the heavens and a huge rumble of thunder tears a massive hole in the sky above our heads and it begins to rain. Hard. One hundred thousand Ilians put up white umbrellas in unison, and the south stand of the stadium collapses, rubble and people and white umbrellas falling through the night.

‘Sometimes they explode’ he says, ‘but more often they assimilate one another.’

‘Jesus, there are twenty five thousand people trapped under there!’ I tell him, watching the officials and ambulance men, firefighters, and police all rushing across the pitch to help.

‘Oh don’t worry about that. Nobody gets hurt’ he says.

‘How can that even be possible?’ I ask, watching the survivors crawling out from underneath the rubble.

‘Now imagine multiple Unimerses colliding at the same time’ he says, glancing nervously at the sky again. ‘Only… don’t imagine it too hard… one solitary bubble expanding with impossible contradictions, magnetised by some unknowable force -’

‘Midichlorians?’ I ask.

‘Midi-what?’

‘Nothing’ I say.

‘Come on’ he says, and grabs my arm again, but this time we don’t jump anywhere. ‘Just remember Willoughby Toad, I’ll be watching you…’ he whispers violently as we cut through the crowd, down towards the pitch, and I’m pushed forward over an advertisement board, just a string of the most delicious looking muffins imaginable. I sit there under the floodlights and before you know it there is a team of beaming faces all running in my direction, crashing into me, Don Coyote grabbing my face and grinning.

‘You’re alive!’ he yells. ‘We thought you died on Cylog!’

‘The plan worked to perfection’ says Alexander, lifting me to my feet. ‘The Robots stopped working with a minute to go and the Greys awarded us the game!’

‘The Ilians were pissed’ says Jay.

‘They threw us out of our hotel’ motions Ubergrim.

‘They were running scared!’ says Moppy, punching a fist into the palm of an open hand.

‘We hid in the mountains’ gushes Buttercup.

‘Pirogue sweatlimb’ says Rasmussen Murphy, his face turned to the stars as if he is receiving some transmission from another planet.

‘The mountain men and women were quite accommodating considering we just turned up like that’ squeaks Scarytoes.

‘Thing’ agrees Thing.

‘There was this cyclops dude and a woman with three arms, a kid with antennae growing out of his ears, a monkey with a fake moustache and super sunglasses. All sorts of weird shit’ says Jon.

‘The Ilians deliberately shrunk our strips’ says Alexander grimly, ‘luckily I found these old things’ – he motions to the bright orange t-shirts.

‘We beat the Ilians Willoughby! We beat them fair and square!’ says Coyote, the grin glued to his face. ‘Wanamaker was… incredible!’ He grabs the last intern around the shitty head and it falls off his shoulders again. ‘Shit, sorry about that kid.’

‘We’re in the final’ whispers Moppy as if he can’t quite believe it himself.

‘So if you didn’t die on Cylog… then where have you been?’ asks the Amalfi Glow. ‘And where’s Buckley?’

Buckley.

Shit.

‘I don’t… I can’t remember’ I tell them.

‘Jesus! His memory’s been wiped!’ says Brendon Hertz.

Def Mute nods.

‘No… it’s not that… it’s just…’ – I don’t know where to begin. ‘It’s complicated’ I tell them.

‘It’s a lot to take in, huh?’ asks a naked Zeus, putting his hands on my shoulders and swinging free.

I take a step back and run towards the changing room.

‘Where the fuck is he going?’ asks Mankiller with a really deep voice.

Everyone shrugs.

Down the tunnel I go, past snotty-faced Ilians who can’t comprehend how this has happened, into the visitor’s dressing room and charge at the patched-up wall, bursting clean through it and falling out into a dark cave on the other side.

I need to find her now, fast.

pirogue sweatlimb
mass consumption calculator
coercion sensor equilibrated towards triple sword
laika ironsong

scissor lizard
opening basket containing verbs
foreverpuke volcano scribe
light me fire yo cigarette

fast beer and limbo
‘pulpbark manipulators!’ scream Tecrussian lawmen
motorluna and her baby fleas
chaps: pants for chainsaw cutting

early life of 4000 stars
sinusoid clappling leaden salt
first spark off the wheel of doubt
and a lipstick kleenex hung on a pointed fork

liege soft hat
motorpool and her wash red pickles
corruptions of the lemniscate aeration
beyond all scraping talus, this carefulness

acropetal cheesewheel in blindness
manipulation belly and socks
obey the basket containing frequency smoke
muttered coincidentally on the flagpole

seers backwards-washing vivacious arcs
lobule of the crumbly peanut
screen ear
sandals strapped to the scaly toe and claw

maphic brownie stools
the scree of seven-hundred buckling cracks
round and round eyes without repetition
dimension replenished into soda cat

laser dominion of early births
chrysanthemum in a cold steel pug
ticklish horsetails making wash-house jokes
low low low velocity

here is the triumph of all things
built of light and the shortnessing of rings
clipped pulpy and in reams
from the liquid alloyed fond

beardtongue reaps the benefit
when the sun has settled into dusty sharps
this poxy breath in sworls
breaks trees, bats, barndoors or asparagus

football wreaths garnish jello
after solo sheep will scry
notlong after knowingly lapping sauce like cats
and blistering green cheesewheeled oxalate

myriad potentials can ignite
shuttled purple lapse-blasts
easy cry and startle of wide jealous miner’s son
who collapses on the path

stop thy jane and thy worries
crumpet ice
boules of liquid armor
rice paddy adagio
some diuretic mouseshit
basketball tornado
horsehoof wheatberry
dynamo potato

synthesis umbrella
pterodactyl misanthropy
cordlette of the weeping slivers
tenacity growing in concrete
subatomic finger-counting
chapstick principles towards betting
St. George the Apocalypto Lightning Bolt-Shooting
cattail clack the radio fields or dust

‘dog food hello’, says the man of the plan
a nexus of crazy green summer bonnets
woven oakum charms
ye lazy humbug bellies full of gruel

forsooth, in it’s entirety
looped overlain with wheels
frozen trumpets to the lips
round and round the scripts are so recycled

the screen refreshes and releases
flickering images of heaped peat
lowering cranes of crones onto the tarmac
eerie pulsars spasming twenty deeps

furloughs, furlongs, fabricators
weeping silver tears onto their looms
grown-up girls in Louisville Slugger tees
popcorn babies eclipsed by memory

nobility effortless rings
produces such as it’s own self to live
self-referencing folk build their merry platforms
severely splitting each trajectory in sums

mark well our final sputtering ink
leap chiggers, ticks, lordly parasites to drum
shock to seldom the humidity earth
in the quavering key of Gb horns

bald squeaky cud
soda principles of science
lemurs basking lately
concatenation of the basest strings

spaghetti lunar earwig capitol
rivers spark and eat their shivering grass
pebble split pebble forwards branching
tonewheels mysterious evaporate coarse ghosts

all these prophesies of your pen
might I know of subtle algal soot, of pink
and remit into their final form
one creased shimmer and irradiation spoke:

Lumereti Hemhockle reaches up,
turns the handle to the door
opens it to the pattering rain on the rocky stoop
and the spruce dripping pitch down their moistened trunks
orange gray light in the cool sweet air
and the bundles of grass laying there;
he lights up his pipe and exudes curling fumes
into the unlit interior of the portal
here is the back door to his own brain
he is leaving wide open
a fizzing in the distance
as the leaves move back and forth
reminds him of bubbles popping
down a mountain stream.

I wish to acknowledge this fine and subtle dream
and act as witness to it’s wonders.
May the precedent be set.

– Blue Moon on a String, a messenger 

Back on Nianarok, we follow Buckley’s snuffling nose and he leads us across jungle terrain to the northern Vulva province and a sprawling settlement of mud huts and wigwams.  As the morning sun stretches his arms out pouring thought-obliterating rays down, the little rat sloops away in his cape and crash helmet to ‘find a nice spot to curl up and die.’

It’s like we showed up in the aftermath of some kind of music festival. Bodies lie scattered, snoring over fallen tree trunks or propped up in piss-stained canvas loin-cloths against each other, bottles of moonshine still cradled in their hands. I find Slight unconscious in the shade of the big black pot (full of bones), sitting at the centre of the village on the last smokey hours of a bonfire. More bodies are spread stoned and scattered by the fireside, dribbling in their sleep, face down in the dirt, loose little green Monopoly houses melted at their feet. A young Xoni woman looks up at me, patchwork blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her lips wrapped around a joint. She stands up as I approach and the blanket falls  away revealing her naked body underneath. I try to say something, but suddenly she has tiptoed across the ground, flicks the remains of the joint away and presses her lips to mine.

Before I know what is happening, we are fucking at the fireside. Fucking in the long grass. Fucking down on the riverbank. Fucking in a wigwam. Fucking awkwardly in a sleeping bag, in a lake beneath a waterfall. Fucking in the tree-tops, on the floor, in a kitchen, on a hard wooden bed, in the shower. Fucking in all sorts of positions I didn’t even think possible.

Finally we sit, side by side beneath the patchwork blanket sharing a bottle of Xoni lemonade and a cone of tundra, watching the last electric sparks of the fire pop and dance. ‘Wow, I really needed that. What’s your name?’ I ask her.

‘I’m pregnant’ she says, ‘I think the child is yours.’

‘I have psychological issues’ she says, ‘I’m not happy. Nothing makes me happy.’

‘My father is the Clan Chief. He will probably chop your balls off and feed them to you if he catches us like this’ she says.

‘Right’ I tell her, standing up and looking around for my clothes.

‘Where are you going?’ she asks me.

‘Well…’ I tell her, spotting my tattered jeans draped across a drum, ‘I’ve got to go and save the Unimerse again.’

‘That’s what they all say’ she says. ‘Do you think I have pretty eyes?’

‘Very’ I tell her, finding one of my shoes (minus a lace) inside an old green safe, lying open behind one of the wigwams.

‘Will you write to me?’ she asks me. ‘I’d like to write to you, but I probably won’t bother. I didn’t even catch your name.’

‘It’s… uh…’

‘I don’t really want to know’ she says.

And then she blows a whistle.

The men come running, shaking off hangovers, armed with spears and machetes. For a long, long moment I think they are about to skewer, and eat me like a Sunday morning fry-up, but thankfully I recognise several of the spear-waving hungover and crudely painted lunatics. ‘Jay! Moppy! W! What are you doing here?’ I ask them.

‘We… are everywhere’ grins Jay, so high on whatever the Xoni have been feeding him, that he looks like he’s fallen over the edge of reason into some sort of religious epiphany.

‘I scored twenty goals against the Rah’ says Moppy. ‘Apparently it’s some sort of record.’

I recognise one of the heavily-tattooed Vulvan natives as Kizedi, the Xoni’s captain, and arguably the greatest goalkeeper in Unimerse football today. He looks like the sort of guy who enjoys snapping a man in half like a twig. ‘We can’t eat this one?’ he asks W, pointing at me with a tomahawk.

‘Willoughby?’ asks W. ‘No, you can’t eat him either. He’s one of us.’

‘Us’ agrees Jay, keeling over in the grass.

Kizedi turns to the patchwork blanket girl. ‘How many times have I told you? You only blow the whistle when the Ilians raid us.’ At this point I notice that all of the Xoni wear whistles around their necks.

‘Yes father’ she says unconvincingly, staring off into the fire.

W explains that they are blowing off steam after mauling the Rah 43-0. Immediately after the game, Ubergrim (reluctantly) handed over the Staff of Rah to Krussh Mutzull, and the skeletal miscreants (with the exception of Rabarkus of course) went skipping off hand in bony hand, Krussh scattering trails of rainbow flowers from the tip of the staff in the sky behind them.

The story of the Xoni deserves a chapter of its own, but unfortunately I have neither the time, nor the patience to tell it. Instead I will give you a paragraph or four.

Once upon a time there were two planets, spinning side by side – Iliaus and Nianarock. The two could not have been more different. One was predominantly made of harsh Vimmoquan diamond, the other of lush vegetation. Where the Ilians had to fight for resources and were governed by a single fascist empire, the Xoni were blessed with everything a humanoid could need, splitting themselves into nine separate tribes. From the day the Ilians learned how to fly spaceships they began to raid their ‘savage’ neighbours, kidnapping huge numbers to supplement their own energy programme.

The High Council turned a blind eye to the raids, following a non-interventionist policy. Nobody said anything during the terrible cleansing of Iliaus under the Vaws nearly 100 years ago, nor did anyone ever try and stop the attacks on Nianarok. The closest anyone ever came to changing the status quo, was an attempt by a criminal organisation called The Organisation at the turn of the millennium to occupy and agitate the various Xoni tribes into action (with a view to destabilising The High Council). And yet, rather than chaos, the involvement of The Organisation, and one agent in particular, resulted in the unification of the Xoni tribes and a love of board games.

The Ilians continued to kidnap Xoni, but now the savages were fighting back.

They wore whistles.

They dig out a small black boy called Solomon and sit him in front of me. He tells me about ‘a world beneath Ilhelo, where a sun shines for exactly twelve hours a day, and the prisoners are numbered.’

‘Hey, aren’t you…?’ asks Buckley.

‘No’ says the boy. ‘I look exactly like him, but I’m not him.’

‘A world beneath Ilhelo… that sounds vaguely familiar’ says W, glancing at the 679 branded on his upper arm and puffing on the biggest spliff I have ever seen.

‘They run on big wheels until they die’ says the boy. ‘To make the electricity.’

‘Solomon escaped’ explains Kizedi pointing at the number 7 on his forearm. He then tells a tall and rather frightening young man with long black hair tied up in a knot called Kandaicozi to go and fetch his father, the witch doctor. While we wait for Kandaicozi Snr, Kizedi tells me how the Ilians framed them with the attack on the Fishbus and are preventing them from turning up to play their quarter-final against The Veth with a space blockade.

‘Don’t worry about that, we’ve got an invisible taxi’ I tell him.

The witch doctor – an ancient man of 103 years, painted half-black and half-tartan with an overly long bone through his nose, and freaky silver eyeballs – starts wailing at the sight of me. ‘I can’t understand anything he’s saying’ I tell Kizedi, scratching at the translator chip in my neck to make sure it is working.

‘He is speaking in the ancient tongue of Vulva’ says Kizedi. ‘He says you are the Chosen One. That you will bring balance to the Force.’

‘The Force?’

‘Yes’ says Kizedi, punching my chest. ‘Inside you are billions of tiny living organisms called -’

‘Midichlorians’ I gasp.

Kizedi seems surprised. ‘Yes, you have heard of the Midichlorians?’

‘Regrettably, yes’ I tell him.

‘Personally, I think it’s a load of bullshit’ says Kizedi, staring into the fire. And then he punches me again. This time hard in the face.

‘What was that for?’ I say, my nose pissing blood.

‘That was for fucking my daughter’ he says with a grin.

She pulls the patchwork blanket tight around her shoulders and blows smoke rings shaped like hearts into the sky.

…

While the Flower Company and the Xoni return to Iliaus in the back of Tzinitzin’s invisible taxi-cab, Buckley and I journey to Xuron on the southern-most perimeter of the Unimerse. The Serotonin Sheik lifts his tea cup to his feminine lips and sips, before placing it coyly down on the table between us. ‘So… let me get this right’ he says, glancing at the little rat in the stars and stripes crash helmet and lightning bolt cape, and then at the guy with cotton wool balls stuffed up his nose and seriously black eyes behind cracked spectacles, ‘you’re telling me you left Nianarok two hours ago and travelled across billions of light years of space… to ask me… to withdraw our Xuron team from their semi-final?’

In the background, a football match takes place on a television. The Xoni (all in black) have just equalised against The Veth in the last minute of the game (much to the displeasure of the Ilian ‘neutrals’ in the crowd), taking the match to extra-time. Some smiling giant of a kid called Man Kenerak volleyed the equalising goal in from close range. ‘That’s exactly what we’re telling you’ says Buckley, lifting a miniature tea cup to his lips and nearly choking on it. ‘Fuck. What is this shit?’

‘Shit?’ exclaims the Serotonin Sheik with stoned, cartoon eyes. ‘That SHIT is the finest fong tea in the Unimerse, you ungrateful little weasel!’

‘I understand you collect viruses’ I tell him, dumping a fifth spoonful of sugar into my cup.

The Sheik flinches. ‘You like a bit of tea with your sugar?’ he asks me, regaining his composure.

Buckley tips his tea into a plant-pot and the plant instantly wilts, leaves turning brown and crispy. ‘You’ve heard of the Gorilla Gorilla virus?’ asks the little rat.

‘Buckley, I said let me do the talking’ I tell him.

‘Hmmmmmmmm? Oh… right. Shit. Sorry Willoughby.’

‘I also said try and not use our real names.’

‘Ahhh’ he says. ‘Sorry… uh, Kef. I completely forgot.’

‘That’s okay Buttley.’

‘Buttley! Ha!’ he laughs. ‘I still like that.’

Suddenly The Serotonin Sheik kicks back his chair and hurls his cup of tea across the room. The smash makes Buttley jump so high that his face gets wedged inside the crash helmet. Meanwhile Kandaicozi flies through the air on the television and heads the Xoni into a semi-final against the Xuron. ‘Enough!’ shrieks The Sheik. ‘The Gorilla Gorilla virus does not exist! It is a myth! Dreamt up by drug-addled dwarfs!’

‘Mmmmmmmfffff’ says Buttley, thrashing around with the helmet.

‘I think what my colleague is trying to say is that the virus is very real’ I tell him. ‘Here, let me show you…’ I pull the match from my pocket and make it burst into flame with my imagination.

At the sight of the flaming match, The Serotonin Sheik’s starts crying and falls to his knees. ‘But… we would have won the tournament! Landeanne Hani Sheann will have me castrated for this! I… I… will sit at the head of the High Council!’

I blow out the match. ‘Fine’ I tell him. ‘Come on Buttley, let’s go.’

Buttley has fallen off his chair and is thrashing around on the ground.

‘Wait!’ cries The Sheik. ‘I need to see it!’

‘Make the call’ I tell him.

A bead of sweat races down around his nose, and he picks up the ivory telephone. ‘Macadoo’ he whispers, ‘Withdraw our team from the Unimerse Cup… Yes, you fucking heard me right you imbecile! Do it!’ He slams the phone down and I throw him the test tube of bright blue liquid.

‘This… this is it?’ he asks, holding it up to the sunlight that pours in through the palace windows. His hands are trembling so badly I’m convinced he’s going to drop it. I pick Buttley up and pull his helmet off like I’m uncorking a wine bottle.

The Serotonin Sheik lifts the test tube to his mouth.

We back away towards the door.

The blue liquid enters his mouth.

The empty test tube shatters on the palace floor.

And the Serotonin Sheik screams once, all his hair standing on end, before he runs, and jumps straight through the turret window with an almighty crash, a swooning wheeeeeee, and then a sudden splat as he disintegrates on the courtyard flagstones in a bloody puddle.

‘So what’s in the envelope Kef?’ asks Buttley as we slip inside the elevator and press zero.

‘Instructions from Champio how to defeat the Robots’ I tell him.

‘Ah’ he says, ‘this is going to be dangerous isn’t it?’

‘Probably’ I tell him.

The elevator pings open and we walk across the marble hallway, smiling at the receptionist as she thumbs through a magazine called ‘Moon Crumb’ on our way out.

‘Anyway, I thought you were slooping off to find a nice spot to die back on Nianarok…’ I say to him as we walk down the palace steps.

‘I sort of changed my mind’ he says.

‘Sort of changed your mind?’

‘Sort of’ he says and we vanish into thin air.

…

The two sides line up in the tunnel. Eleven frantic heart-beats on the right. Eleven robotic pulse-signals bouncing back off the motherboard on the left.

Not-captaining the Earthlings in the absence of Willoughby Toad – some dude called W. Takes a shot from a bottle of bourbon. Stubs a joint out beneath his studs. Grins like a maniac.

Opposite him, captaining the Robots – some other dude called Peaches. Top Gun shades. Leather jacket that he flings to one side and it lands cruelly around the face of some poor Ilian waterboy. Gleaming synthetic teeth gritted.

For some, this is just another throwaway football match. The invincible defending champions  (Robots), versus the unpredictably popular tournament outsiders (Earth). But for others, this is the moment of truth. The two rival candidates in line for Chief Head of the Organization. Peaches or W. W or Peaches.

The Grey referee flips a coin at the centre of the pitch and W calls ‘Heads.’

It is heads. Peaches growls, every mechanical sinew in his body primed and explosive, like he was designed specifically for the next 90 minutes. W extends a hand and Peaches spits on it. A hush falls over the Ilho Stadium, and the Grey lifts his whistle to his lips…

…

Hurtling through space in a toilet tube rocket, Buckley looks worried and skim-reads Champio’s Last Will & Testament for the seventeenth time. ‘It says here that no living being has ever set foot on the core of Cylog’ he says. ‘That’s not good.’

‘Don’t worry about it’ I tell him. ‘For a start we’ve got the element of surprise on our side. But more importantly we’ve got these…’

I hand him the rat-sized cardboard robot costume, and pull on my own cardboard robo-suit. ‘Where did they come from?’ he asks me suspiciously.

‘Mine was Little Niko. I retrieved it from the Plum Island volcano. Yours I made myself with some glue, tinfoil, and a shoe box.’

He looks at the shiny silver box with two round eye holes cut out the front and says ‘I fucking love it.’

…

Crunch.

Another appalling tackle from the Robots, this time on Jon of the Atom and he writhes around in agony on the floor. You might wonder if the machines are out to win the game, or break the humanoids.

Still 0-0.

…

All of the Gods have assembled to discuss the latest ‘twist’ in the tale. There is much hubbub in the upper circles as the young man in the black cloak with the big fuck off scythe nods to the Minotaur, who steps up and pulls back a white sheet over a trolley revealing the dead naked body of Zeus. There is such a collective intake of breath from the various deities that for a moment there is absolutely no wind in the Unimerse. ‘He’s hung like a bloody bull’ bellows Legend.

‘And he’s dead’ says Benny Reaper.

There is such a collective intake of breath from the various deities, that for the second time in less than a minute there is absolutely no wind in the Unimerse. Something picked up on by several small red sparrows in Rongovia who look at each other bemused.

‘Dead?’ says Galaxiom Rubanet, choking with shock. ‘How can he be dead? He’s Zeus for fuck’s sake!’

Benny Reaper shrugs. ‘Shit happens’ he says. ‘Deal with it.’ At this he nods to the Minotaur, who throws the sheet back over the dead naked Zeus, and the two of them exeunt like cloak-flapping, foot-stomping characters in a Shakespearean tragedy.

‘Wh-what are we going to do?’ asks Moonlight.

‘I suggest that we start panicking’ says Yarar.

‘There is an alternative’ shouts a rabbit called Herman Melville wearing a yellow and black jumpsuit, ‘there is the Bubble Wand!’

The Gods fidget uneasily in their seats  and their murmuring resounds like the rumbles of faraway thunder down in the Unimerse.

‘Fuck that!’ growls Pig-Pog, but deep in his fiery heart he knows, just like they all know, that the rabbit is right.

‘Does anyone have any better suggestions?’ asks Herman Melville. ‘No? Didn’t think so. I’ll fetch the Bubble Wand then, shall I?’

Nobody says a word.

A small black box magically  appears in the rabbit’s paws.

‘Uh… what does the Bubble Wand do again?’ whispers a sheepish Mad Suspect.

Hynrus Uemi Hynric Boerha Laimhug Cryach Gon leans forward with his hand cupped across his mouth and says solemnly, ‘The Bubble Wand is the creator and destroyer of worlds and realities. I believe that our furry friend is suggesting that we pop the Unimerse… and start again.’

‘Oh… right’ says Mad Suspect.

‘It’s kind of a big deal’ says Hynrus Uemi Hynric Boerha Laimhug Cryach Gon. ‘Billions of lives will be lost in the blink of an eye.’

An orchestra of angels play sad epic music on strings in the wings as Herman Melville opens the box. Many of the Gods are crying. Some cannot bear to look. Others are spellbound, unable to take their eyes off the rabbit’s paws.

The sun begins to set beyond the clouds and the skies turn orange. All of the animals sense that something is about to happen. They prick their ears and turn their faces towards the heavens.

‘Shit’ says Herman Melville, staring up from the empty box. ‘Somebody’s stolen the wand…’

…

The ball crashes into the back of the net. Having kept the Robots out for the best part of half an hour, the battered, exhausted Earthlings are beginning to leak goals. As The Maillot Jaune scoops the ball out of his goal and boots it upfield, he makes it 5-0 in his head. Peaches has scored four of them, and runs past W making a ‘you can’t see me’ gesture, waving his hand in front of his smug face.

…

Cylog is a complicated place. A machine-made planet twenty times the size of Earth, surrounded by six synthetic satellite planets. I’m half-expecting our toilet-tube rocketship to be blown out of the sky as we approach the core, but nothing happens. ‘Of course’ I say to Buckley, ‘they’ve all stopped to watch the quarter final! This is better than I could have ever imagined!’

He gives me a funny look through the shoe-box cut-out eyes. ‘Let’s just get in and out again. Have you memorised the access code that Champio got us?’

‘Yeah, it’s a binary string – 0010011101000100001… uh 001010001 and eh… 111100110111… no, I mean 01101111001100001. I think.’

‘Impressive’ he says, and our ship crumples into a docking bay.

We scuttle down the first corridor we find.

Then another.

And another.

And more.

Endless drab metallic corridors.

‘This is worse than W’s brain’ I tell him and he trundles along inside the shiny tissue box at my cardboard feet.

‘Ah, here we are’ I whisper, pointing at the two plasma televisions either side of a single door. Two security drones sit with their feet up watching the Robots thrash the Earth 7-0, the Maillot Jaune leaping across the screen to palm away another Peaches shot.

The drones look up lazily and point their laser guns at us. ‘What do you want?’ asks the one on the left.

‘We’re maintenance droids’ I tell him, holding up my scrench. ‘Apparently the shredder in the control room is jammed.’

‘Bleep bleep’ says Buckley.

‘Funny looking droids’ says the drone on the right twitchily.

‘We’re still at the Beta stage’ I tell them, wriggling around inside my cardboard Niko costume in an attempt to look credibly robotic.

‘What’s your clearance code?’ asks the drone on the left.

I clear my throat. ‘0010011101000100001… uh 001010001 and eh… 111100110111… no, I mean 01101111001100000… uh, 1.’ I tell them.

‘HAHAHA!’ laughs the drone on the right. ‘0010011101000100001001010001011011110011000001 was YESTERDAY’S -’ Fzzzzzzzzzzzzzz–ping! he goes as Buckley creeps up his back and bites through his skull cord in a shower of sparkles and smoke.

‘HEY!’ shouts drone left, jumping up from his chair. ‘WHAT ARE YOU -’

But it is too late. The scrench is already twirling through the air between us, and smashes into his face with a small explosion. On the plasma televisions behind us, Simon Piler hacks the ball off the line . 8 minutes to go.

I kick down the door, setting off blaring alarms and flashing red lights on the ceiling, and we burst into the deserted circular control room. ‘Wow’ shouts Buckley, gazing up at the banks of monitors flashing images all around us, ‘this place is exactly like the OO-’

‘No time to talk tinfoil tissue box’ I tell him, rushing to the control panel. ‘Now all we need to do is figure out how to control the Robot football team in the next… uh… 7 minutes? And we’ll be into the semi-finals!’ My eyes scan the various buttons and levers, and I dig deep, trying to remember how to operate the machine.

‘Ooh’ shouts Buckley over the wailing alarms, tugging on the handle of an iron filing cabinet in the corner of the room, the drawer rolling open.

‘Buckley! What are you doing?’

‘Scouting for hiding places’ he says, throwing files out over his shimmering shoulder. Several of them land on the floor at my feet as I crank on the levers and spin the screens into positions. It is all flooding back to me. This button once. That button twice. Left a bit. Right a bit further. My cardboard Niko fingers hang over the EXECUTE button… one flick and I’ll shut down the entire Robot team.

And then I see them.

Smiling up at me in the red light, side by side, sticking out of a file entitled ‘PROJECT: Summer Fruits’.

Buckley pulls the drawer closed behind him as a team of Robot assault troops clatter down the corridor towards the control room.

I grab the file and trembling flip it open, the words and photographs rocketing up at me so fast that everything goes a bit fuzzy, and eerie strangulated bagpipe music plays…

It is New Year 2000. All of the key Robots have gathered in a theatre in front of an empty stage. Red curtains are drawn back revealing a small dwarf in wizard’s robes, looking at his feet. Behind him, to his left and right are two glass tanks big enough to hold a human, draped in silver sheets. The dwarf lifts his face and we see that it is EULIENCE HEZEL. His eyes are bloodshot, and he has a really manic grin as he stands on his tiptoes and coughs into a microphone.

EULIENCE: Esteemed colleagues, may I present to you the culmination of Project Summer Fruits… the Rogue Series I androids…

At this he wheels away, his cape billowing behind him and he rips the silver sheets from the tanks revealing two unconscious men in suspended animation. The one on the right looks vaguely like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, only somehow smarmier behind mirrored shades. The one on the left is W.

EULIENCE: … I call them PEACHES… and WATERMELON!

There is a smatter of mechanical applause from the congregation of robots. Encephalon 2 fidgets uneasily in his seat, as the dwarf wizard marches to a control box on the far right of the stage and hovers a pudgy finger above a button labelled GO.

EULIENCE: (Quietly) And now the moment of truth.

He presses the button and immediately Peaches and W burst into life, their eyes filling up with soul, their lungs gasping down oxygen for the very first time, while the tanks float upwards like transparent bells. The two of them stand there, looking at each other, then beyond the bright stage lights into the audience, then at the minute wizard bounding back to the microphone.

EULIENCE: Six years ago I was employed to create the ultimate robotic killing machines. These prototype Rogue androids are quite unlike anything the machine world has ever known. Their synthetic bodies are able to regenerate and repair themselves at will. Their minds, while still connected to the motherboard, are entirely capable of free will. Both are philosophically tuned to transcend moral weights that bind us mere mortals to the floor. They are neither man, nor machine, but the very best and very worst of both worlds, and they -

ENCEPHALON 2: How are they powered? Solar?

EULIENCE: No sir. As we all know, solar power requires enormous storage capacity for deep space travel, and I’m sure that most of you will have experienced a battery malfunction at the most inopportune time. Instead we use an organic compound, specifically a plant that grows in abundance the Unimerse over… Fong.

ENCEPHALON 2: Tundra?

EULIENCE: Yes sir. We find that -

Suddenly without warning, W bolts, fleeing stage left with crashing and screaming behind the scenes. Eulience looks around in shock.

ENCEPHALON 2: Was that… supposed to happen?

EULIENCE: Uh… not exactly.

PEACHES: Want me to hunt him down? I’d love to saw off his head and sew it onto a moon bee.

ENCEPHALON 2: Do what you’ve got to do Peaches. As for you Eulience…

EULIENCE: S-sir?

ENCEPHALON: You’ve got 679 seconds to get your midget ass off Cylog or Peaches here will have his wicked way with you.

EULIENCE sprints from the stage, followed by a laughing Peaches. The lights go down and several seconds pass. We are aware of shadows scuttling to and fro. When the lights come up again the backdrop is now one of clouds and constellations. In the middle of the stage is a cigar-smoking rabbit in a yellow and black jumpsuit holding an empty wooden box.

‘Who could have stolen it?’ shouts Pig-Pog from the stalls. ‘And why?’

The rabbit looks terrified. He closes the box and opens it again, just to make sure that he is not dreaming.

There are a load of Xoni Gods squeezed into the seats near the back of the hall (the Xoni have Gods for just about everything), and one young god with huge bucked teeth (Opi the God of False Limbs) puts his hand up. ‘I don’t get it’ he says. ‘What’s the big deal with this wand anyway? Why don’t we just let the Unimerse implode?’

‘Foolish boy’ replies Hynrus Uemi Hynric Boerha Laimhug Cryach Gon. ‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you about the Interconnectedness-of-all-Realities?’

‘Uh… no’ says Opi.

‘Imagine a bubble’ says Hynrus Uemi Hynric Boerha Laimhug Cryach Gon, ‘we’ll call that the Heavens. Within the Heavens are contained the original Unimerses, created with a single wave of the bubble wand – you’ve got the Unimerse itself, its polar opposite the Universe, then of course there’s the Omniverse, and the Antiverse, Unimerse 2.0, Unimerse -1, I can’t remember the others, and to be honest that’s not really the point. The point is, if we allow the Unimerse to implode of its own accord, then potentially it could take out several other realities with it. The Bubble Wand is the only way we can intentionally explode… or pop… a solitary bubble. You see?’

The young god thinks about this for several seconds and shakes his head.

‘Fuck it’ says Hynrus Uemi Hynric Boerha Laimhug Cryach Gon with a wave of his hand.

‘The most important thing’ says the rabbit, ‘is that we find the Bubble Wand. Pronto.’

At this, the theatre of Gods get down on their hands and knees and tentacles and begin to search beneath their seats.

Thirty minutes later the Bubble Wand has still not been found.

‘This is hopeless’ grunts Pig-Pog.

A woman all in black shuffles onto the stage and everyone stops. She approaches the microphone and taps it with her finger. She is Widow Zeus and she is seriously pissed-off. ‘My husband was a good god’ she says. ‘He was hung like a donkey and had a beard that took three hours to perm to perfection every morning. He sacrificed himself for us all and if he could see you now…’ Her words trail away like smoke rings. ‘We need to waken He Who Must Not Be Named. He will know what to do.’

The gods take a collective breath of horror at the prospect.

‘Let’s keep looking for the Bubble Wand’ says Pig-Pog, cowering under a chair.

‘It’s been nearly 14 gigayears since… He Who Must Not Be Named was woken’ points out a small god called Dandruff from an obscure reality called the Unimesh.

A young woman walks out onto the stage leading a floating fish with razor sharp teeth on a lead. ‘I’m lost’ she says.

The rabbit stares at her. ‘Can’t you see we’re in the middle of something enormous here?!’

The young woman rolls her eyes and shuffles on, disappearing stage left with the fish.

‘Pass me the Batphone’ says Widow Zeus.

A bright red telephone is lowered from the roof on the end of a rope. She unhooks it and dials 679.

Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-

‘No answer’ says the rabbit hopefully.

ring. Ring-ring. Ring-

‘HELLO’ booms a voice.

‘Hello’ says Widow Zeus. ‘Sorry to wake you, but we’re in a bit of a pickle.’

‘WHAT TIME IS IT?’ booms the voice. ‘HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN SLEEPING?’

‘I dunno’ she says. ‘A long time I suppose.’

‘OH. RIGHT. WELL, WHAT DO YOU WANT?’

‘The Unimerse is imploding’ she says.

There is a silence for what feels like an eternity.

‘AND?’ says the voice.

‘And we’ve lost the Bubble Wand’ she says.

‘AH’ says the voice. ‘THAT CERTAINLY IS A PICKLE. I’LL BE RIGHT DOWN.’

At this, half the theatre sprint for the exit and the other half pee their celestial pants in fear. The roof of the theatre rips off revealing bright white light, so painful that anyone who isn’t wearing sunglasses immediately goes blind.

‘I’m blind!’ wails Pig-Pog.

A giant foot with hairy toes crashes into the theatre, splintering chairs and squashing gods like blueberries beneath it. Then comes a second giant foot with equally hairy toes, bare giant legs, a giant bare hairy bottom, and so and so on. Anyone who knew Zeus would immediately think that this enormous brute was a magnified version of him, but in fact it was actually He Who Must Not Be Named, who when creating Zeus, fashioned him in own image and gave him a really big cock.

The giant naked god yawns and lets rip a fart that demolishes the stage.

Widow Zeus sticks his head out from the rubble and splutters. ‘What should we do?’ she asks him.

He shrugs his enormous shoulders. ‘Nothing’ he says. ‘Everything ends eventually. Especially bubbles.’

‘But…’ says the rabbit, crawling out from under a toppled fish tank.

‘But what, Herman?’ asks He Who Must Not Be Named.

‘Surely there must be a way?’

‘Oh, there’s always a way!’ booms the giant, yawning again. ‘Wow, I’m so fucking tired. Flicking the Bubble Wand all those aeons ago… it really took it out of me you know.’

‘Can you help us?’ asks the rabbit, his paws forming a prayer-shape.

‘Depends’ says He Who Must Not Be Named, ‘what’s in it for me?’

‘What’s… in it for you?’

‘Yeah. What’s in it for me?’

‘Uh…’

‘I want… let me see now. How about… The rib bone of Willoughby Toad. A time-travelling donkey called Elvis. The elephant teapot. The hypnotist phone. A ham sandwich. A magical conch shell. A money tree. Geshi-La’s golden boots. Simon Piler’s heart. The jade statuettes. The red football. A golden bullet. The Plum Necklace. The Oracle. A bed of clouds. The book of crime and punishment. Laika the ghost dog. The lost solitary sandal. A strand cut from the evil bard warlock’s hair. A jar of backwards dragonflies. Oh, and a cannibal.’

The fuzz lifts, the bagpipe stops blaring, and I’m staring down the barrel of an OOM-full of robot cannons.

The Summer Fruits file falls to the ground as I put my hands above my head.

‘Time to die’ drones one of the robot guards, his cannon heating up.

But I’m not really paying attention. I’m still trying to get my head around the idea that W is a robot.

Things just went to the level beyond really-fucked-up.

GONG!

for Don Coyote in his underpants. We saved him and in return, he sort of saved us back.

GONG!

for Papa Bear. Once upon a time he taught W everything he needed to know, and then realised that there was probably more things that he needed to know, but he didn’t know them, so instead he hid in the swamps of Missouri and clubbed any gator that crossed his path.

GONG!

for Buttercup Murphy. Also known as Windy Hezel. Sadie and Martha (her mothers) are in attendance, sobbing in one another’s arms, all in black. Somebody says that Buttercup wore a funny little hat with a feather in it.

GONG!

for The Z. Nobody really knew who he was. Big fella, fuzzy white beard, bigger **** than Tiger Woods. He will be sadly missed somewhere I suppose.

GONG!

for Shitcomb. That poor, poor dude.

GONG!

for the Jazz Monk. Okay, so porcelain Jazz Monk figurines are a dime a dozen, but that’s not the point now, is it?

GONG!

for The Cuban. No, really. This time he is actually dead.

GONG!

for Wanamaker. W cuts a wretched sight, slugging from a bottle of bourbon and talking in tongues to anyone who will listen about how ‘that fuckin kid wash the besht fuckin (hic) friend I ever had… he had… a head that kinda… floated around on hishoulders (hic) get your hands off me! I’m not runk! Thish ish dishgrasheful… fuck, sorry, I’ve just been sick in your wife’s hat.’

GONG!

for Bobby Rogan who vanished up in space. May he cook up a storm in whatever kitchen he crash lands in.

I leave the Ilian church with the gong ringing in my ears, behind me a congregation of aliens all in black, a miniature Bespibahanian Michael Jackson impersonator belting out ‘Earth Song’ in front of them. I stand beneath a grey sky, light a cigarette, take a draw and grimace. We’re due to play the Rah in less than 3 hours, and if I disappear, that will leave only Moppy, Ritchie, Jay, Jon, Brendon, Mal and W behind to play.

But the big clock is ticking.

679 years later

Krill opens his eyes at the top of his tree. The book has long disintegrated in his hands, systematically ravaged by the seasons. Below him on the jungle floor, two blurry figures scamper between the roots and trunks, pursued at high speed by nimble red figures carrying a big black cooking pot. Seconds tick by and they pass out of earshot. A solitary red sparrow lands on the branch beside him and stares at him quizzically as if to say you’re the weirdest looking big dumb bird I ever saw. ‘Shoo!’ he grimaces with a wave of his bony hands, but the little bird is going nowhere.

Finally he climbs down, his ancient bones groaning painfully into gear. At the edge of the trees he follows a grassy slope to its summit and surveys the island, sees nothing but bright blue sea on every horizon. He drops to his knees while the wind ruffles his silvery hair and it looks like his skull is smoking, fingers plunge into the earth and he begins to dig. ‘I could do with a mechanical spider’ he thinks to himself, ‘and a really big bell.’

A primary school, somewhere in the United Kingdom:

‘What’s the prognosis Professor?’ asks the teacher, looking back through the classroom window at the six-year olds, little heads down, paint splashing, pencils stuttering, putting together a giant collage of an alternate universe for their class project. Some bright spark with a speech impediment had suggested they call it a ‘Unimerse’.

The teacher focuses on one small boy in particular, a silent short-sighted kid sitting away from the main group, sailing a toilet-tube rocket between tinfoil stars that hang from the ceiling on strings.

‘Well’ says the balding Spaniard, standing on tiptoes, barely big enough to see into the room, ‘we’d like to do more tests, but at this early stage I’m fairly confident that we’re looking at a split personality.’

The teacher raises his eyebrows. ‘Really? You think Alfonso has two personalities? Is that common for six year olds?’

‘Common? No, not at all’ replies the Spaniard, preening his own moustache, ‘it is usually much later in life that cases are diagnosed. However, as you’ve seen yourself, there is something clearly wrong with the boy and if we don’t act quickly…’

‘I guess’ replies the teacher, as the boy parks the toilet-tube rocket at a tissue-box gas station, close to a lump of moon-shaped cheddar cheese, ‘but what can we do?’

‘He has two distinct personalities. On the one hand we have the daydreamer, conservative by nature, consumed by ideas and completely incapable of action. On the other we have the do-er, almost sociopathic in his treatment of others, and a compulsive risk-taker who turns everything he touches into shit. These two personalities have become so powerful within his psyche that the true identity and birth name – Alfonso Kolinsky – has ceased to mean anything to him.’

‘You know, the kid doesn’t even answer when I call the class register…’

‘It is too late to save Alfonso, so I believe that our best course of action would be to encourage the conservative side of his brain and bury this sociopathic character so deep that it never resurfaces.’

The teacher shakes the Spaniard by the hand. ‘Thank you for your time Professor Sanchez. I’ll speak to the boy’s parents and the principle, and we’ll take it from there.’

…

Through a gap in the doors of the unimersal store cupboard, I watch Pancho Sanchez stride up the school corridor. Here I am on a mission to put together the team that appear on the postcard that is presently stuffed in my back pocket, and he turns up again. I’m starting to wonder how random that time I shoved him off a cloud above Edinburgh really was. ‘Psst! Benny!’ I whisper.

The teacher stops in the doorway to the classroom and turns around. It has been a long, long time since anyone called him Benny. ‘Who said that?’ he asks, with a soft, west-coast of Scotland accent.

‘Over here’ I tell him and he cautiously approaches the store-room door.

Closer.

A little bit closer.

Benny C (not to be confused with our Benny M) was Tin Pan’s hairy flat-mate while I was having a nervous breakdown in my early twenties. They’d met hurling burgers at one another across a greasy kitchen and staggered out of the same nightclubs at dawn. I liked him a lot and considered him an honorary member of the Fifeclub. Most importantly, he could kick a football and would be the ideal holding midfielder in our line-up.

Closer still and -

Thwack!

A standard-issue scrench in the head sends him crumpling to the floor and I drag him foot-first into the darkness of the cupboard.

…

A state-of-the-art office block in downtown Tokyo:

I realise something as I clack from the swing doors across the marble hallway – everyone we meet, dies.

Hang on, let me expand on that: everyone we meet in the Unimerse, dies suspiciously quickly. The only ones who seem to make it are the people we knew from our lives before. This I believe… is the real message of the postcard.

‘Delivery for Mr J Koradji’ I mumble behind the black motorcycle helmet to the young woman at the reception desk, thumbing through a magazine called ‘Moon Crumb’. When she looks up, I almost take a step back in shock – remembering this very receptionist from my nuthouse dream.

She blows bubblegum and nods towards the lift at the far end of the hall. ‘Penthouse suite – seventeenth floor’ she says. I clock her name badge – MARY McLOED.

‘Thanks… uh… Mary’ I tell her, and clack onward to the lift carrying the crate in my hands.

The seventeenth floor is deserted and I stumble through a maze of lushly carpeted corridors, until I find the executive office of one J. Koradji, a guy I have known since the age of twelve, who made his millions in the dot-com boom, who paid for the Mardi, perversely selling it to us at exactly the same time. I push open the door and step inside. He is sitting at his table in a gorilla mask.

I duck as a metal disc shoots through the air and embeds itself into the wall above my head. He throws another with a lackadaisical flick of the wrist, and I rolly-polly out of the way while it completely demolishes an antique vase on a plinth. ‘J! It’s me!’ I yell, popping up the visor.

‘I know!’ he barks back, throwing a third serrated disc, this one clattering back off my helmet. ‘Shit. That’s me out of shurakins…’ he says, thumping the table frustratedly with his fist. ‘Before you say anything Willoughby, no, I don’t want to help you, I won’t travel back to the Unimerse with you, and I can’t fund anymore ludicrously unprofitable ventures. I’m retired from those First Court of the Solar Corona shenanigans and I haven’t heard from Murphy or Sanchez ever since we got air-lifted to safety at the end of book one -’

‘Book one?’

‘Also I’m still pissed at you for losing my two finest henchmen. I read here that they were last seen in Rongovia riding naked into the sunset on the back of a polar bear?’

‘Vothurak actually’ I tell him, sitting down in the seat opposite.

‘Don’t tell me’ he says. ‘Jesus, what happened to your face? No, wait, don’t tell me that either. I don’t want to know.’

I flop the crate down onto the floor, and lift the lid. ‘For the record, we’re already in the Unimerse’ I tell him.

‘Fuck! Fong-Ku?’

‘I’ll explain everything when we get to Iliaus’ I say, climbing inside. When he doesn’t follow, I stick my head back out. ‘J… come on, we’ve not got much time’ I tell him.

He sighs and shuffles across the room. ‘Okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ll just get my shurakins’ he says wearily.

…

Lafayette University, USA:

The caveman rocks back in his chair with a screwdriver tucked behind his ear, and closes his eyes. A quadruple-decker meat-sandwich sits half-eaten on the desk in front of him, greasy crumbs coating some doodles of spacecraft. To his left, in the middle of the floor, sits a battered satellite that he has been commissioned to repair. He secretly dreams that he is flying to the moon.

‘Kent…’ whispers a voice with a crisp English accent.

‘Who said that?’ spits the caveman (and we hear that he is Northern Irish), sitting suddenly forward in his seat. His whole body has gone rigid with fear; it has been a LONG time since he heard that voice.

Flashback: The caveman is strapped to a chair, holding a pot of magical jam. Wires have been sellotaped to his temples and he grins maniacally, while the same voice whispers somewhere behind him ‘Okay Slight, when you’re ready, switch that invisibility generator on…’

‘Who do you think said it?’ asks the man with a fox’s head, stepping out from behind the broken satellite.

The caveman shrieks like a little girl and dives beneath his desk. ‘Stay away from me foul beast!’ he yells, fumbling around with his hand on the desk above and arming himself with a stapler.

‘It’s me’ says the fox head, crouching down with a gentle smile.

The caveman lurches forward and staples the fox-man just above his left eye.

‘Faaaaaaccckkkkkkkkk-ing hell!’ yells the fox-man, spinning away. ‘What are you doing, you maniac?’

‘S-sorry’ says the caveman. ‘Am I… dreaming?’

‘No Kent, you’re not dreaming!’ snaps the fox-man, prising the staple out of his head with a gasp. ‘I’m here to ask you if you want to go into space…’

The caveman mulls it over for 0.1532 seconds and asks ‘Can I finish my sandwich first?’

…

Edinburgh, West Preston Street, Late September 1994

Nobody knows it, but this is where The Utica Flower Company really begins. While Smally is busy having the mother of all nervous breakdowns in the bathroom, Tin Pan is trying to sleep in the caveman’s bed, The White Album blasting out from Slight’s stereo system. The skinny young man, hair glued to his forehead with fear, paler than pale, has curled up in the foetal position and stubbed out his third cigarette on the carpet. As the drugs course through his body, he has convinced himself that he is going to die.

He hears a commotion coming from the walk-in closet in the corner of the room, someone (or some-thing) is crashing through the month-old bags of rubbish that have been piling up in there leaking foul substances. ‘Wh-who is it?’ he asks feebly. He bites down hard on his own imagination to prevent it from going ballistic.

The handle of the cupboard door turns slowly and Tin Pan ducks under the unwashed covers, gagging at the stench.

He hears footsteps over ‘Yer Blues’ padding across the floor.

The covers are thrown back and he blinks up at this… this… creature, glittering eyeballs, and quite inhuman. He tries to scream, but his voice is stuck in his mouth.

The creature smiles. ‘Wow. You look like you’re about to die’ it says.

Tin Pan nods, tears welling up in his eyes.

‘I’m here to take you into space. I need you to play in a football tournament’ it says.

Tin Pan pauses, and nods for a second time, before the creature helps him up. He tries to scream again, but his mouth is like concrete. It looks around the room. ‘I remember when we thought this was the inside of a washing machine’ it says.

Tin Pan, looks at him quizzically, and adjusts his navy blue hat on his head. ‘D-do I know you?’ he asks.

‘Sort of’ says the creature. ‘I borrowed your video camera fifteen years from now and forgot to give you it back.’

…

Some desert, somewhere:

Slight sleepily pours the last of a second bottle of red wine into a glass and proceeds to drain it in one go, rocking back in his corduroy jacket. Outside, giant laser cannons penetrate the ground with a deafening sound and young Arab men shout instructions at each other. As the tent door unzips, he closes his heavily lidded eyes and begins to snore gently.

‘Wake up’ says Willoughby, shaking him by the shoulders.

Slight opens one bloodshot eye and in no uncertain terms, tells Willoughby to ‘Fuck off’.

‘I need your help’ says the fox-man, rocking the deckchair and tipping the scientist out onto the floor.

‘Leave me alone’ groans Slight, face down in the sand.

‘Don’t you know who I am?’ asks Willoughby, kneeling beside his blond immobile head.

‘Course I know who you are.’

‘Well then, get up.’

‘Grrnnmmm’ says Slight.

‘Huh?’

‘I said… let me sleep a minute.’

A minute passes.

‘Okay, now get up’ says Willoughby.

‘One more minute’ mumbles Slight.

‘Fuck.’

Another minute passes.

‘What do you want from me?’ croaks Slight with his eyes closed.

‘We’re playing a football tournament in space’ says Willoughby, shoving the postcard under his friend’s nose. ‘To save the Unimerse.’

‘I don’t give a fuck about the Unimerse’ says Slight. ‘Anyway, my team need me here.’

‘Your team that just stole your laser cannon?’ asks Willoughby.

Slight opens his eyes and listens. The desert sounds suddenly silent.

‘Shit’ he says.

…

The Sewage Works Beach, Dalgety Bay

Jose Martin Franco Gillandrez sits beneath a sombrero, bouncing a golf ball off a rock back into his hands. The waves of the Forth lap at his feet, and a sudden gust of wind overpowers him with the smell of raw shit. The sun emerges from behind a cloud and he becomes aware of a shadowy figure standing over him. ‘I’ve been expecting you’ says Gillandrez, and beneath the rim of the sombrero we see he is chewing a blade of straw.

‘You have?’ asks the shadow, turning his fox-like face away from the stench.

‘I have’ replies Gillandrez and he tosses the shadow the ball.

‘Uh… you… think I’m here… to play beach golf?’ asks the shadow.

Jose Martin Franco Gillandrez pauses, and then lifts up the brim of his hat. ‘Well, yeah. Aren’t you?’

‘No’ says the shadow.

‘Really?’ asks Gillandrez. ‘Wow… I… well what are you here for?’

…

A forest in New Zealand:

For the record, the Maillot Jaune is mad. He is mad in the worst possible way because he actually believes he is sane in spite of all the evidence that suggests otherwise.

We march through the jungle, slashing our way through the foliage, occasionally calling his name. ‘I’m thirsty’ says Slight.

‘So… when do we get to go into space?’ asks Kent, leaning against a tree and catching his breath.

‘Why do you all look so old?’ asks a still pasty Tin Pan, pulling his woolly hat off and dabbing at his brow.

‘I can’t spend another night in this fucking jungle’ I tell them. ‘He must be around here somewhere…’

‘Hey, there’s a bottle of red wine in this clearing’ says Benny C, and sure enough there is. Just sitting there, shining in shafts of sunlight that penetrate the leafy heavens.

Slight shuffles sprightly across.

‘Wait!’ I shout. ‘It might be a -’

Shhhhhhwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaap!

‘ – trap’ I say, the six of us crushed together in a swinging net, suspended above the ground.

‘Can somebody reach my shurakins?’ asks Koradji. ‘They’re in my back pocket.’

‘Does anyone have a bottle opener?’ asks Slight.

The Maillot Jaune hops down from a tree, and dances between the shadows, before finally, cautiously stepping out into the light. He has a thick beard and crazy eyes that burn like two suns. ‘Well, well, well… what do we have here?’ he grins, looking up and taking a bite of a banana.

‘Just… let us down will you?’ I ask him.

He sits down on a fallen tree and lights a roll-up. ‘What are you lot doing here?’

‘We need your help’ I tell him.

‘Have you got a fucking bottle opener or not?’ asks Slight.

‘Oh’ he says, ‘I see.’

‘I’ll take that as a no’ says Slight.

‘Someone’s hand just touched my balls!’ shrieks Kent.

‘There’s a football tournament… in space. Look…’ I tell him, dropping the postcard and watching it flutter to the jungle floor.

He picks it up and turns it over in his hands. ‘Nice photo-shop. Who did it? Tin Pan?’

‘Where am I?’ whines Tin Pan, somewhere behind me.

‘Okay’ says The Maillot Jaune. ‘I’d love to help. I really would. It’s just… I’m pretty busy.’

‘Doing what?’ asks Koradji.

He reaches into the pocket of his camouflage storm-jacket and produces a golden  badge with ‘S.P.S’ emblazoned across it. ‘Sasquatch Preservation Society’ he says, without a hint of a smile. ‘We’ve got a bigfoot running about these woods and two dozen members of the amateur rifle association chasing around after it. My job is to neutralise those fuckers and ensure the safe passage for our friendly visitor.’

‘Sasquatch!’ laughs Koradji.

‘Actually, there is such a thing’ I tell them, ‘there’s a whole planet of them called Trakkhaw, not so very far from here.’

Kent titters, but when nobody else laughs he says ‘Oh… you’re actually… being serious?’

The Maillot Jaune screws up his eyes and stubs out the rollie underfoot. ‘You’d better not be lying about this’ he says and, cuts the cord, sending the net crashing to the ground with a load of expletives.

We pick ourselves up and I pull the crate from off my back. ‘Just one more to find’ I tell them.

‘I thought you said we were The Mangificent Seven?’ says Koradji.

‘No, when did I ever say that?’

‘That’s the title of the chapter’ he tells me.

‘Chapter? What fucking chapter? What are you on about?’

Slight, smashes the wine bottle on a rock and proceeds to glug it down.

‘Where next?’ asks Jose, adjusting his sombrero.

‘Utica’ I tell them, ‘1916.’

…

The Time Traveller’s Convention, Utica 1916

‘Are you sure this is entirely necessary?’ asks Koradji, clumsily applying lipstick to a terrified-looking Tin Pan.

‘Absolutely’ I tell them, peering out from behind a low wall across the lamp-lit cobbled road at twilight.

‘Hey, there’s Smally…’ says Slight, balancing precariously in a pair of high heels, with blond extensions clipped to his own hair, and balloons jammed inside his top.

There I am with Becky N1000, carrying a pot of Crandley, scuttling from a moon-mission across the street. For reasons that escape me it seemed to be a simpler time… the future brimmed with possibility and I starry-eyed waded into the thick of it, never really wondering where it would go next, and how it would go wrong when it did.

Our goal was simple: Sail around the world.

I turn and look at the guys dressed awkwardly as women.

What the fuck is our goal now?

I used to think it involved us winning the Unimerse Cup, protecting the Unimerse Machine, hopefully saving the Black Angel along the way. But now… now I just think it’s about making it to The End.

‘That’s not Smally’ I tell them, ‘that’s me.’

Alfonso Kolinksy…

The name explodes in my brain and fizzes like popping candy.

‘Come on’ I tell them, and we skulk across the road.

By the wrought black iron fence at the rear of the flower shop I wish them luck. ‘Eh? Where are you going?’ asks Koradji.

‘To the railway tracks’ I tell them.

‘What are we supposed to do?’ asks Benny, not for the first time in his life dressed in a pink tutu.

‘Dance’ I tell them, ‘just dance…’

As they file down the stone steps that lead to the vestibule and a burly Samoan with a little girl’s voice, I shuffle across to the donkey tethered to the railing. ‘Hey Elvis’ I smile, ‘long time no -’

‘WOOF!’ he barks at me and paws at the ground, before rearing up onto his hind legs, massive donkey teeth bared.

‘Well fuck you’ I tell him. ‘I saved your life, remember?’

He stops and shrugs.

We stand there in the shadows, staring at each other for several seconds. ‘Kind of pointless this without the magical conch shell, isn’t it?’ I ask him, and he nods.

‘Well… take care of yourself’ I say, and he raises an eyebrow.

Down at the railway track I disguise myself as a shrub. Don Coyote would have been proud. Now all I have to do is wait…

(30 minutes of waiting later, in which time I meticulously map out our destiny in my ragged head)

Timing is everything in a comedy, or a tragedy, and the scales tip one way, then the other. The little bubble revolves on the wheel and nobody knows where it will land… red or black… red or black… red or… the coin spins in the air, catching the sun, the black swan flies across our heads, and the moon quietly packs her bags in the night and is gone, forever by sunrise.

By and by here comes Dr. Tarantula, the doomed Arachnid clutching the battered toaster to his chest. He stops, his pincers jawing furiously, antennae twirling in the air. Any second now, the blind balloonist Rasmussen Murphy is going to come rolling down that bank on the far side of the track, his farewells said, and his last waltz waltzed. Tarantula looks around and spies a juicy looking shrub to hide behind.

Right on cue, Rasmussen cries ‘Wups!’ and tumbles head-first over the embankment, landing with a thump and a hat-full of weeds beside the humming iron tracks. In the distance we hear a steam train huffing and puffing from A to B. Rasmussen gets wearily to his feet and spreads his arms out like an eagle. ‘I know you’re there old friend!’ he shouts, thrusting his chest out. ‘Let’s make this as quick and painless as possible, eh?’

Tarantula advances on six spindly black legs, two barbed limbs raised in the air, primed to plunge into the old man’s waiting heart, blissfully unaware of the shrub that is silently following him across the tracks.

‘Oh dear’ whispers Rasmussen, suddenly sensing a dramatic shift in the pan-dimensional swing of things.

For a second, time appears to accelerate, the steam engine rounding the bend, the arachnid pausing, the shrub leaping out of the way, and then -

Toooooot! Tooooooot!

Tarantula is no more. Smashed into a billion specks of spider-coloured dust motes by the travellin train.

The dust subsides with gusts of wispy vapour trails and Rasmussen Murphy stares ashen-faced at the shrub. ‘What the devil do you think you are doing? You can’t fuck around with fate!’

‘Oh, but you can’ the shrub tells him.

‘You are a most peculiar shrub’ Rasmussen says, snatching up the seriously dented (but remarkably intact) toaster from beside the tracks.

‘I’m not a shrub’ I tell him, ‘I’m Willoughby Toad… disguised as a shrub.’

‘I should have guessed’ he says, shoulders sagging. ‘You realise that by saving me, you’ve completely fucked up the space-time continuum?’

I hand him the postcard and his eyes open wide at the sight of himself in a bright orange t-shirt, squatting in the front row of a football team. ‘As you can see, the space-time continuum is already completely fucked.’

‘Clearly’ he agrees, turning it over and seeing his own spidery handwriting across the back. ‘What does this mean? WATCH OUT FOR THE SPARR-’

But he doesn’t finish the sentence. From slightly to the left of nowhere, a small red bird swoops through the air and lands with a ‘plop!’ in his open mouth. Rasmussen jerks and kicks his legs out in front of him, his face the colour of mouldy beetroot and I slap him hard between the shoulder-blades. He hiccups up a solitary red sparrow feather. ‘Thanks… uh… shrubby… man’ he smiles dozily, looking down at the toaster and postcard in his hands. ‘What am I?’ he asks.

‘You’re a scientific time-travellin’ song-ramblin’ break-dancin’ blind balloonist’ I tell him, ‘now come on, we need to get a move on.’

‘Where are we?’ he mutters, as I help him back up the embankment.

‘Nowhere’ I tell him.

‘It’s very ungreen’ he says.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s curious’ he says, stopping at the top of the slope and looking up at the moonless sky.

‘What is?’

‘I’ve got a sudden urge to toast my own socks…’

…

The nine of us squeeze into the back of Tzinitzin’s taxi-cab. ‘Invisible-mode enabled’ grins the young Ebaxxonite, pressing his foot to the floor and we blast off from the Ilian parking satellite into the shiny black folds of space.

The earthlings goggle at the sight of the albino alien with his bulbous red eyes and mad mechanical hat that grows from his skull. ‘What are our chances of getting through the Ilian blockade without being detected?’ I ask him.

‘I guess it depends on how invisible this invisible wallpaper of yours actually is’ he says.

‘Is that…?’ whispers Kent.

‘An alien? Yes Kent, yes it is.’

Kent tears his eyes away from the back of Tzinitzin’s head and presses his nose to the glass of the window beside him, marvelling at the stars as we whizz towards Nianarok. With the exception of the Maillot Jaune (whose nose has been pretty much permanently buried in ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’) I’d say that everybody’s brains are suitably blown. It was weird enough being born into the Unimerse through Ron Burgundy’s screw-top brain on the Mardi, but now this whole ‘flying through space’ thing…

‘There better be a pub on this Bananarock, or I’m going home’ huffs Slight.

I smack the plasma screen in the back of the cab with my fist and it flickers into life, another ‘Astro World’ re-run, the two goofy looking Bespibahanians trying to catch a cold. ‘What time is it Tzinitzin?’

‘Ten minutes to go’ he says.

‘Fuck! Where’s Mo-Tenky TV?’ I ask, hurriedly scrolling through the channels in search of the football.

‘Mo-Tenky? Oh, they went bust. Apparently the CEO went cuckoo. Happens all the time when you mix Bespibahanian’s and money, it’s like the old saying goes -’

‘Can we get it anywhere else?’ I ask him anxiously.

‘Try the 600s… you might pick up some Knesian satellite stations… don’t expect any insightful commentary though, those little critters -’

I punch 679 and while Tzinitzin continues to ramble on, a football match springs to life on the screen, a familiar looking face wheeling away with a grin as he heads the ball into an empty net to the gobbledygook of Knesian jabbering. ‘That’s Moppy’ says Slight.

On screen the score flashes up:

EARTH 37  RAH 0

65 minutes gone.

The plan worked!

Cameras cut to Rabarkus Rahhh, on his skeletal knees in the artificial grass, weeping uncontrollably.

In the minutes before I’d left, I’d handed Ubergrim a letter for Krussh Mutzull of the Rah, offering him the Staff of Rah (and with it the kingship of Sh-Ackulll). The staff would be delivered to Mutzull at the end of the game – in return he would persuade his team to let us win. The Rah are a peculiar species… unlike many of the Unimerse’s more tyrannical species, they are far from dumb and know a good thing when it’s going. It was the end of the line for poor Rabarkus – even his own brother Moxxx, seemed happy to roll the ball directly into the path of a 91 year-old Alexander Tokeleaf, who span majestically and drilled the ball some thirty metres past a yawning Rah goalkeeper, half-asleep against his post.

All we had to do was invoke Clause 679 and  field the surviving members of the Flower Company space crash with black arm-bands on their sleeves.

We were into the last 8 of the tournament and I was on my way with reinforcements. Okay, so we’re drawn against the Robots, who have been invincible for the last three tournaments, are lead by Peaches, and according to the experts are only getting better… but the trick has always been to take one step at a time.

Having successfully flown through the Ilian blockade (a response to supposed Xoni pirates destroying our Fishbus in Ilian aerospace), Tzinitzin’s invisible taxi-cab lands on an open green field on Nianarok. ‘Just give us ten minutes’ I tell him and he nods, while the rest of us spill out into the day.

‘What are we doing here?’ asks Slight.

I look blankly back at him.

‘Willoughby?’ asks Koradji.

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Why are we here?’

Suddenly it dawns on me…

‘I dunno’ I tell them.

The Maillots Jaune raises his eyebrows.

‘Sounds like a narrative incongruity’ sings Rasmussen Murphy, clicking his boot heels together and marvelling at the sound they make.

‘What now?’ asks Jose.

‘Run’ I whisper.

‘Hmmmmmmmm?’ asks Rasmussen, cupping his hand around his ear.

‘Run!’ I tell them.

‘Now… we run? What’s that supposed to mean?’ asks Benny, still suspiciously wearing his tutu.

I point at the two hundred red painted people who have emerged from the jungle on the other side of the field and are charging towards us with pitchforks, spears, blunt clubs, and a really big black pot hoisted up on their shoulders. ‘RUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNN!’

And so… we RUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNN!

Across the field, kicking off high-heels, the grass swishing around our waists, the whooping in our ears, crashing through a river slipping on stones and screaming, arrows whistling through the air around our heads, up a sandy bank where a panting Rasmussen Murphy gasps ‘I think I’ve been here before… yes… I’ve definitely… been here before… where are we?’

‘Keep moving’ I tell him, constellations flashing before my eyes, rolling over in a dream.

Up ahead The Maillot Jaune leaps between the tree-tops with the nimbleness of some aerial cat, and the rest of us separate, I’m stumbling over roots, bursting through vegetation with the blind balloonist beside me, until we fall out in a clearing, frightening up a flock of tiny red birds who were perched on the bones of a twenty-five foot effigy gathering mould in the shadows of towering trees…

W.

Behind us the whooping grows louder, bare feet crunching on branches, machetes swinging and chopping through the leaves.

‘Rasmussen! The toaster!’ I tell him, pointing at the battered time machine, hung around his neck.

He looks down at it in his hands. ‘Who’s Rasmussen?’ he asks.

‘Just press the button! Any fucking button!’ I yell, grabbing hold of his shirt sleeve.

Everything slows and the only sound I hear is like something being squeezed through a rubber tube. I feel a pulling on my insides like I am being inverted. I try to close my eyes, but I’m not even sure I have eyes anymore. It feels like everything is wrong and my body is being twisted and transposed into particles, or liquid, or… things I couldn’t explain.

The sound comes rushing back to my ears, and the world grows in front of me. We are standing at the counter of what appears to be an electrical store with shelves of randomly stacked toasters, washing machines, fridges and freezers, transistor radios, and… I see the blue Commander vacuum-cleaner, perched up high, immaculately scratchless.

A young olive-skinned woman looks up from the counter and blinks. ‘Oh fuck…’ she whispers.

Rasmussen sniffs the air and chuckles to himself for no apparent reason.

‘HONEY, YOU MIGHT WANT TO COME AND SEE THIS!’ shouts the young woman, rolling her chair back, eyes wide with fear. She is not looking right at the old man beside me, licking his finger and holding it aloft as if he is checking to see how fast the wind is blowing.

There is a shuffling sound from the back office and a fat, bald man wearing sunflower sunglasses and a big yellow beard tied to his ears with string, smoking the fattest cigar you ever saw, appears in the doorway. His jaw drops at the sight of us. ‘Chaplin? Is that really you?’ he asks. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘S-Simon?’

He huffs and puffs around the counter with a grin on his face. ‘Madame Datura’ he says to the young woman, ‘I think we should shut up shop until we figure out what the fuck is going.’

She nods and sticks her fingers in her mouth, gives a shrill whistle. Immediately two young men wearing ‘FCSC Electricals’ t-shirts appear and I instantly recognise them as Harry and Bary. They stop and stare at the sight of us. ‘Woah’ says Harry, ‘this isn’t mormal.’

‘It certainly isn’t’ agrees Bary, lifting the battered toaster out of Rasmussen’s hands. ‘Looks like someone must have flicked the factory reset switch.’

XXL Simon Piler swipes at them with a fly-swatter. ‘Enough of your blabbering! Get to work!’ he booms. ‘I want this toaster scrubbed up and shipped out to April 2009, see if you idiots can sneak it into Becky N’s rucksack… without getting caught.’

‘Aye aye!’ pipes Harry, standing to attention and saluting.

Bary punches some buttons on the toaster and they vanish into thin air with a twang.

‘So’ says XXL Simon Piler chugging out great fat clouds of cigar smoke from the side of his mouth and walking up to Rasmussen Murphy, ‘this is my destiny.’

‘A thousand apologies’ says Rasmussen, ‘but do I know you?’

‘Hmmmmmmm’ says XXL Simon, completely ignoring his future self, ‘I like what I did with the sunflower sunglasses.’ At this, he reaches up and begins snapping off the yellow plastic petals of his own novelty specs until finally both he and Murphy are wearing identical round-rimmed shades.

‘Simon…’ I say, ‘how did you get so… well, fat?’

He laughs heartily and sucks the cigar. ‘It’s great to see you haven’t changed at all Chaplin. How long has it been? Feels like a thousand years since that sunny day on Iliaus when we were dressed up like Wuzels and split up to search for W.’

‘Love’ says Madame Datura surly, ‘love makes you fat.’

‘Well then baby I must be mad for you!’ grins XXL Simon, patting his large gut contentedly.

‘But… but… but that was only a week ago…’ I tell him.

XXL Simon guffaws so hard at this that his face goes crimson and he has to grab the front counter to keep himself from falling over with laughter. ‘You know what we should all do?’ he asks. ‘We should head up in my hot air balloon for old time’s sake and grab ourselves some delicious cloudy cakes! I can tell you how I invented time travel by solving the riddle of the glyphs and -’

‘Rasmussen’, says Datura sternly, ‘Doctor Sanchez told you to cut down on the cloud cakes -’

‘Rasmussen?’ I ask.

‘Rasmussen?’ asks a fidgeting Rasmussen. ‘Would someone kindly explain who this Rasmussen fellow is?’

‘Well of course I had to change my name’ says XXL Simon. ‘I mean, after they raided the warehouse and we all went on the run…’

‘Warehouse?’

‘Krill escaped with the cloud coffins’ says Datura, lifting the cigar from XXL Simon’s mouth and taking a draw herself.

‘I don’t think he remembers’ says XXL Simon, ‘although it’s hard to read his expression while he’s still wearing that stupid fox mask.’

‘But it’s not a mask’ I tell him.

He slaps me hard on the back. ‘You’re a funny guy Willoughby Toad. A really funny – oh FUCK!’

He stops, mouth open, and there is movement in the corner of my eye. I turn in slow motion to see an old Buddhist monk leaping from an upright spin-drier, armed with a vacuum cleaner. ‘Geshe-La!’ says Madame Datura, backing up against the battery stand behind her, her face going pale, cigar hanging limply between her lips.

‘That’s right Datura darling! Geshe-Fucking-La!’ spits the crazy old monk, switching on the machine and pointing it at XXL Simon, whose eyes grow wide behind his round-rimmed shades.

‘Think carefully about what you’re going to do old man’ says XXL Simon.

‘HA!’ laughs the monk and suddenly Simon is being sucked across the floor of the shop, his foot defying physics and disappearing inside the the nozzle of the hose. ‘It took me aeon’s to perfect the anti-matter nowhere plug! Aeon’s of thinking! I do this for you, Datura my dear!’

‘NOOOOOOOOOOO!’ screams Datura as AAA’s rain around her pretty head, and XXL Simon’s legs vanish into Geshe-La’s mad vacuum-cleaner.

There is a thump behind me and I turn around, horrified to see Rasmussen Murphy lying on the ground. ‘Where did my legs go?’ he asks me.

‘HAHAHAHAHAHA!’ chatters the monks, quite insane, and the anti-matter machine roars as a thrashing Simon’s ample waist, squeezed and pulled, disappears right into the tiny pipe up to his chest, arms flailing around wildly.

‘I don’t know what to do!’ screams Datura.

‘Can’t you mutate into that weird giant banshee thing again?’ I ask her.

She shakes her head, tears streaming down her face. ‘I already chose my final form’ she says, ‘now I am as mortal as the rest of you, made of flesh and bone and -’

‘Uh, a little help here please’ grimaces Rasmussen, who is now just a head on the floor, lolling from side to side.

‘Everybody stop panicking’ shouts XXL Simon over the din of the revving machine, he too is just a head sticking out of the end of the hose, ‘I have time-travelled for a thousand years and have never… EVER… seen anyone change fate. If future me exists’ he says, nodding over at Rasmussen, ‘then somehow… you must bring me back.’

‘What about when Becky N1000 stopped the Fishrocket from crashing?’ I ask him.

‘Hmmmmmmmmm?’ he asks, clearly in pain as his beard pings off his ears and gets sucked into the hose. His brow crumples and I’m pretty sure I hear him say ‘Oh shit’ before he and Rasmussen vanish with a

POP!

Geshe-La switches off the machine and catches his breath, demented, eyes ablaze in their sockets. A dangerous combination of love and psychosis.

‘You motherfucker’ growls Datura, spitting across the counter into his face and he licks the droplet as it falls from his nose with a grin. He grabs her wrist and pulls her towards him.

I cough to get their attention.

‘I think it’s safe to say that you can stop now’ I tell them.

‘Do you really think so?’ asks Datura, a blank-eyed Geshe-La still holding her by the wrist. ‘How do you think I did? I didn’t overdo it, did I?’

‘You tried your best’ I tell her, and she smiles. Geshe-La’s scalp begins to revolve and pops open, falling to the shop floor. ‘Okay Simon, you can come out now!’ I call.

The door of a microwave pings open behind us and Simon Piler falls out sputtering electric motes, his shoes smoking, little pointy beard entangled with twigs. In his hand he clutches a sealed brown envelope marked ‘The Last Will and Testament of Sir Matthew the Mighty, Champion of Science’. ‘Yowee! That was an epic journey!’ he grins, blushing at the sight of Datura blushing back at him from across the counter.

I unzip my fox mask and place it on the counter, while Buckley emerges from Geshe-La’s hollowed-out head wearing a pair of aviator shades, a white cape with a bolt of lightning on it, and a miniature stars and stripes crash helmet. He throws a superhero pose in my direction. ‘Nice work Buckley’ I tell him with a wink and turn to the ceiling. ‘JAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCKKKKKK!’

‘Right here’ says the ghostly Kerouac, tapping my shoulder.

I jump with goosebumps,  turn around and see him leaning against a sinister-looking dishwasher, the ghost of Eulience Hezel lying bound and gagged at his feet.

‘What do you think Buckley?’ asks Datura. ‘I thought I was believable.’

‘Oh… I thought you were… epic’ says Buckely with a grin.

Simon ambles over and I flick a fat black caterpillar from the lobe of his left ear. ‘Did he see all that?’ I ask Jack’s ghost.

‘Let’s put it this way – he saw enough’ says Jack, ripping the gag off the midget wizard, who squeals as half of his wizard beard/moustache-combo tears away.

I’m half-expecting a barrage of expletives, but instead he just seethes in silence.

‘You like how we dealt with your inflatable fake Simon Piler?’ I ask him. ‘Bet you thought little Buckley here was dead, didn’t you?’

‘Well, technically I was…’ says Buckley and he nods for the flashback to begin.

There is a long silence and eventually we all look at the guy with the harp in the corner of the room. ‘Fuck this’ says harp-guy, spitting on the ground and he leaves the shop, a little brass bell ringing above the door.

‘You can explain about how Twirrg brought you back to life later’ I tell Buckley, and he sulks in the bowl of Geshe-La’s screw-top skull, motioning to his previously charred rump, where a great big Twirrg bite remains to this day. ‘We’ve more important things to discuss now, haven’t we Eulience?’

He rolls his eyes at me.

‘Did you… did he just… roll his eyes at me?’

‘I believe he did’ says Simon.

‘He’s a piece of work this one, for sure’ says Kerouac, prodding him with his boot.

‘All right!’ snaps Eulience. ‘Whatever you want to know, it’s fucking useless. I already released the Gorilla Gorilla virus and believe me, there’s no cure.’

‘He’s lying’ says Buckley, ‘I smell a rat. Oh wait, that’s me. Sorry… carry on.’ He waves his little paws at us.

‘What about the Unimerse Machine?’ I ask.

Eulience sneers. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Everyone shakes their heads and he sighs. ‘Any chance we could get the harpist back?’

‘He’s long gone’ says Buckley, pointing at the little brass bell above the door. ‘I don’t blame him either. If my own future wasn’t so heavily invested in the outcome of this story, then I’d be long gone too.’

Eulience Hezel sighs. ‘Well then, I’ll begin at the beginning, shall I? The Hezel clan left Iliaus nearly two centuries ago, cleansed with anyone else who didn’t fit into the Ilian stereotype being pushed on us by the Kings of Hemhockle. While some of us my kind hid in the hostile Vimmoquan mountains, others journeyed across space and tried to make a go of it on their own. My own ancestors found themselves an uninhabited moon and planted their own fong crops – as you’ve seen for yourself.’

‘And smoked’ says Buckley.

‘But I always dreamed of greater things. Perhaps it was the constant supply of fong, but even when I was a very small boy, I knew the power that burned within me. I  felt it was well within my capabilities to one day rule the Unimerse, so I designed myself a wizard costume, experimented on our family’s space chickens, and schooled myself in the ancient ways of the I’Metri. Soon as I was old enough to hitch my way off the plantation, I did, landing a job on Cylog, where I worked as a volunteer lab rat in the android division -’

‘Lab rat?’ spits Buckley. ‘Well that’s just taking the piss…’

‘Of course, the Robots quickly saw my brilliance, and I was placed in charge of a top secret operation called Project Summer Fruit, designing and manufacturing the prototype Rogue series cyborgs… who were regrettably decommissioned due to their psychotic disregard for other lifeforms. Anyway, by this point the machines had given me what I needed – the money, the tools, and the resources to build an all-powerful device, one that could translate raw thought into physical reality -’

‘You… built the Unimerse Machine?’ I ask him.

‘I didn’t say that’ he snaps. ‘I created the conditions where such a machine could be possible. Forget your Zombie Gordon Motram, and your First Court of the Solar Corona – were it not for my bubble wand, then none of this would be possible. The bubble wand holds EVERYTHING together. If it hadn’t been for you meddling kids and your dumb rat -’

‘Hey!’ yelps Buckley.

‘ – I would have gathered together the twenty four secrets of the Unimerse and built me a Unimerse Machine of my own! And I would have ruled over ALL BEINGS in ALL NINE CORNERS of the Cosmos!’

‘A nonahedronic bubble… how curious’ whispers Simon PIler.

Hezel seems to have calmed down (thanks in part to old Jack skelping him around the ear with the back of his hand). ‘Anyway, it’s all for nothing now. I’m dead and the Gorilla Gorilla virus is in full-swing.’

‘This virus…’ asks Datura, ‘what are the symptoms?’

The little wizard shrugs. ‘It was something I perfected on the space chickens – a mass hallucinogen that causes its carrier to believe that their daydreams… and nightmares are real. Imagine a room full of hallucinating space chickens, unaware that everything they think, everything they feel, everyone they know… none of it is real. Now imagine a whole unimerse, trapped inside a bubble, with nowhere to go.’ He stops and smiles, his sudden fangs glinting in the sunlight that pours through the window. ‘You want to know what happened to those chickens? They ate each other. Until there was one left. A big fat fucking chicken. And I ate that one.’

‘Woops’ says Simon, glancing up at the enormous round clock on the wall, ‘If you’ll excuse me,  I’m supposed to be break-dancing down in the basement…’ He tips his hat, pulls up a hatch in the middle of the shop floor and vanishes into it.

‘I should probably get going as well’ says Kerouac.

‘Thanks Jack’ I tell him. ‘Any luck finding Coyote?’

He shakes his head. ‘You’ve got to have unfinished business for me to find you.’

‘He does…’

‘Well then, maybe he just doesn’t want to be found’ says the ghost, and with a clap of his hands, both he and Eulience Hezel evaporate into thin-air.

‘What now?’ asks Buckley.

‘Why does everyone always ask me that?’

He shrugs, and adjusts his crash helmet.

‘You’re coming with me to Nianarok and Xuron -’

‘Xuron!?’

(At this point Simon Piler has miraculously appeared again. The author offers no explanation why he is back so soon.)

‘Simon… you and Datura head back to Iliaus.’ Simon nods and we swap manilla envelopes. Mine contains various tactical formations that I scribbled on the backs of beer mats. ‘Are you sure Matthew is sure about this?’

‘Honestly Chaplin… I’d say he was about six per cent sure’ says Simon, configuring the microwave.

‘That’s good enough for me’ I tell him, walking over to the grand piano with a rusty periscope at the back of the shop.

Did you know, that once upon a time this electrical store was a flower shop? That it has a secret basement where, at this very moment, a team of super-reluctant dancing transvestites are finishing their routine, and spilling sweaty-faced with running make-up out into the unimerse? This is The Utica Flower Company. It transcends space and time, birth and death. It is both a dream and reality, and in a couple of seconds it will burn to the ground.

I finish pouring the can of daydreamer gasoline into the body of the piano-sub, hold up a match, watch it burst into flame of its own accord, and flick it in.

The fire burns quick and bright, the voices of the machines, imprints of unfathomable futures echoing back through the centuries, fill the air around our heads as one by one we cram inside the whirring microwave. I pause to look back over my shoulder one last time. ‘What a waste’ I murmur to myself, watching the flames lick around the ceiling, turning everything into cinders. And then it is gone.

What just happened? Where the fuck am I?

I look around and see I am sitting in a snow-field. My seat from the Fishbus lies in tatters on its side some distance away from me. Occasionally the whiteness is punctured by dark shapes that lie perfectly still in the void.

Behind me an engine starts, and I turn around groggily, my eyes blinking blood that spills bright red onto the ground in spatters. A hunched figure in his underpants, skin blue with cold is wading away from me through the snow, heading in the direction of a pick-up that keeps disappearing in the flurries. With considerable effort I get to my feet and shout ‘Don! Don Coyote!’

He stops and looks back with tears frozen upon his bearded cheeks. For a moment I wonder if he can see me, but then he raises a fist in the superhero pose, turns and continues to walk away. I stagger after him, falling down beside a black smoking shard of mechanical debris. ‘Don! Where are you going? What just happened?’ I yell against the wind, but he doesn’t look back and the snow swallows him whole.

I carry on in the direction of the pick-up, completely disorientated, and something explodes in a great mushroom cloud somewhere far behind me. As I near the truck, I see Coyote being helped up into the back by the shadowy hands of a small group huddled together there. And then I see her. A solitary figure in a white furry snow-coat, super sunglasses and a fake moustache perched comically beneath her nose. She jumps down from the driver’s side and strides over to me as I fall to my knees again. ‘Go back Alfonso’ she says, smiling.

‘Back?’ I ask her. ‘Back where? I don’t even know where I am.’

‘You have to finish the story’ she says.

‘The story? What are you talking about?’

‘Go back Alfonso. The others need you.’

And with that she turns and walks back to the pick-up, slams the driver’s door behind her and they speed away inside a cloud of white.

Fuck.

I am too exhausted to wonder what now?

I get up and look around, memories resurfacing explosive behind the eyes. I am at the press conference. I am in an asylum. I am falling through space. I wake up glued with drool to the pasting table back at the press conference. It would seem I have bored even myself to sleep.

The Flower Company fall out of the changing room in a fog of tundra smoke, goof up the corridor accompanied by ylfrettubs, arm in arm, still singing the ‘Earth Song’. Outside the Dark Side stadium rabid fan brigade scream like we’re time-travelling Beatles, cameras flash, journos bawl, and autograph books are thrust under noses. Coach Coyote is crying with happiness, posing for pictures in his underpants, with clumps of hair missing, and two bottles of space grog fizzing in his hands.

One by one they climb onto the Fishbus and then the words of The Cuban come back to me –  ‘Make sure The Atom Band don’t get on the bus…’

There is a scuffle. Def Mute looks utterly pissed. So does Scarytoes, waving a tiny fist from Def Mute’s shirt pocket. Emerson Betchkal just shrugs his shoulders and slings a canvas bag across his back. The last I see of them, they are trudging towards a taxi rank, silhouetted by a billion camera-flashes. I do not notice it at the time, but Brendon Hertz is already on the bus writing poems in a pocket-notebook nobody knows he keeps.

I fall asleep against the window, always against the window, shuddering into a dream as Alexander puts his foot down. I think I dream about a hospital ward.

679.

I wake up. My face still pressed to the window, fireworks flashing between the stars outside.

‘Willoughby!’

It is Brendon Hertz’s voice, terrified in my ear.

‘Willoughby!’

‘What?’ I murmur groggily.

‘We’re under attack! The Fishbus is on fire! We’re going down!’

Down…..

down….

down…

down..

down.

The Fishbus explodes and then everything goes white.

And now here I am. Lost in the snow. Too exhausted to wonder what now?

Two big hands grab me under the arm-pits and lift me to my feet. ‘Is he okay?’ asks a midget with a limp, shining a torch into my eyes.

‘He’ll live’ says the cyclops holding me up, dragging me backwards like an Ylfnogard, weaving between the obliterated remains of Fishbus.

I see a row of bodies, brushed with snow in the whiteness, guarded by a young man dressed in a hooded black fur coat, carrying a scythe.

‘Funny looking fucker, isn’t he?’ says the midget, nodding at me, and shaking out an empty sack that he’s pulled from under a mangled sheet of metal. The cyclops grunts.

They drag me to a dark cave on the mountainside. Inside a woman with three arms nurses the survivors. My heart sinks at the sight of them, but it is not the survivors – it is the faces of those who are missing that make it so.

W lies propped up against the cave wall, an unlit joint in his mouth.

To his right sits Brendon Hertz, pen frozen in his hands.

The Amalfi Glow stands further to the back with his head swathed in bandages.

Moppy smiles ruefully from the floor at the back of the cave.

Mal is asleep. Hair-illy unaware of what happened, what is happening.

Jon of the Atom and Alexander Tokeleaf pass a bottle of space grog between them.

James Redmond sits with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

Finally to my left, Ubergrim sits quietly, the Staff of Rah hanging down splintered in his hands. Even the solitary pathetic green plastic leaf on the end has wilted.

‘That’s the last of them’ says the midget, and the three-armed woman starts patting at my face with a magic sponge.

‘What happened?’ I ask them.

‘What the fuck do you think happened?’ asks Jon. ‘We got blown up.’

‘Where are the others?’

Nobody answers.

‘I saw the Don out there’ I tell them. ‘There was a pick-up and…’

‘The Don is dead’ says W.

‘He can’t be.’

‘It’s true’ says Ritchie.

‘What about the Jazz Monk? Wanamaker? Buttercup? The Z? Mankiller? -’

‘Turns out that Mankiller was The Cuban all along’ says Moppy. ‘Who would have thunk it?’

‘What about Bobby?’

‘Gone’ says Alexander, swigging from his bottle.

‘Gone? Gone where?’

He shrugs his shoulders.

‘We’ve searched the crash site’ says the cyclops, ‘believe me, there’s nobody else out there. We were lucky to find you. Another couple of minutes and you’d have been ice-cream.’

‘I need to see the bodies.’

‘They’re gone’ says the midget. ‘It is the Vimmoquan way. We let the snow take them.’

Suddenly there is a flurry of activity in the mouth of the cave. A little black boy wearing enormous goggles is screaming ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’

The three-armed woman, the limping midget, and the cyclops jump up and wordlessly go.

I sense suddenly that everyone is looking at me.

But I don’t know what to say anymore.

The Ilian soldiers arrive. They air-lift us to safety, silently in big white ambulances. The press are there, pens scratching, cameras flashing, but nobody says a word. (Actually, this isn’t strictly true… Jon of the Atom belches and it sounds vaguely like he is saying ‘purple’)

On board the ambulances Crown Prince Cnaithiel informs us that we were ambushed by Xoni pirates. I ask him how his father is and he tells me that he is being treated for exhaustion at a private clinic. I think about poor Krill in his clown make-up.

I ask him about the people on the mountain who helped us and he shifts uneasily in his seat. ‘Mountain rats’ he says. ‘You were lucky we came when we did, otherwise they might have eaten you.’ There is something about this kid that makes my skin crawl. All the Gods help the Ilians when they finally realise the king is dead, and he takes the wheel.

Back at the hotel we ghost away to our rooms. Moppy sits on the edge of his bed and wiggles his toes through near-disintegrated socks. ‘So’ he says.

I look up from my bed. ‘So?’

‘So… I take it, that’s that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean… I’ve seen a lot of weird shit this year. I think it’s time we went home.’

‘Give up?’

‘No… not give up… just…’ he stares out of the window. A little red bird alights on the window ledge and taps randomly against the glass.

I take a deep breath. ‘I have to finish the story’ I tell him, swinging my legs out over the edge of the bed and standing up.

I hand him the photograph from my back pocket and he stares at the picture of the football team on the front. ‘What does this mean?’ he asks, turning it over and reading the back – ‘Possom-Ku is impossible’.

‘Huh?’ I snatch it back from him and sure enough, where once it said ‘Hi’, now it reads ‘Possom-Ku is impossible’ in the same spidery handwriting.

‘Slight can’t play football’ says Moppy, somewhat indignantly.

‘I know’ I tell him, heading for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ he asks me.

‘I’m going to finish the story’ I say. ‘Tell Ritchie to contact the Greys and let them know that we’re invoking Clause 679. If I’m not back before our game against the Rah, then you can all go home.’

‘But…’ he says.

And I close the door behind me.

The ghost of Jack Kerouac is waiting outside for me. ‘Hey Jack’ I say.

‘Hey kid’ he says, swigging from a bottle wrapped in a transparent brown paper bag, his astral eyes examining the space-age ceiling lights on the corridor. In his other hand is a birthday cake with two candles on it. ‘Better late than never’ he says.

‘I need a favour’ I tell him.

‘Sure’ he grins.

I have a plan.

It is not a very good plan, but it is a plan.

It involves a costume shop.

Ron Burgundy’s head.

The Staff of Rah.

And the ghost of Don Coyote.

I blow out the candles and make a wish.

Not that I believe in that sort of thing. But you never know.