Kinktober 27: Big Bang

This was my masterpiece. My magnum opus. Every theoretical physicist’s wet dream. Somewhere amongst the rows upon rows of obscenely complex equations and diagrams displayed on the diagram before me, the Theory of Everything was hiding. And that night I was going to find it, no matter what.

All the pieces were in place. It was just a matter of figuring out how they fit together. Once that was done, this would change the way we view the universe. It would change the way we view our place in it. With this theory, we would be able to make sense of everything we know about the universe that hasn’t made sense up until now, from the elusive nature of quantum gravity, to the mystery of dark matter and dark energy.

Really, it was so close I could taste it.

Even so, it just had to wait. Before any of that could happen, I had to find something far more valuable, rare and incredible than a theory of everything. I had to find a moment of peace and quiet.

My name is LeBron James. Doctor LeBron James. And no, it’s not that basketball guy from your universe, who starred in a silly movie about toons. Forget that guy! There’s like, one universe out there where I became a basketball star, and… Yeah, cool for him, but why does that mean no one in your universe can take me seriously now? I’m a theoretical physicist for Christ’s sake! My job is unraveling the secrets of the fabrics of time and space. I would think that would earn me an iota of respect.

You wanna get hung up on versions of ourselves from alternate universes? Why don’t we talk about the universe where you ended up as that world’s Kim Kardashian?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

So I’m a theoretical physicist. Deal with it. And a pretty good one too, if I say so myself. Sure, I don’t always get the results I want, but hey, often that’s not even my fault. I need peace and quiet to work, just like how a mill needs wind to work. If you don’t have wind, it won’t matter what a top notch mill you have; it won’t turn an inch without a decent gust. It’s the same for me. I can’t concentrate on my theory unless I’ve got my own space where I can work without being bothered, you know?

Which is why I couldn’t stay at my own place when working on my breakthrough. My wife Michelle? I love her. She’s the greatest girl in the history of history. But after the fourth time bursting into my lab, when I explicitly told her I do not want to be disturbed, under any circumstance… All I could think about was when the fifth time would happen.

Normally my office in the university would be a great refuge, but this was during campus baseball season. Everything you need to raise campus spirit was present. Loud parties. Loud concerts. Loud hijinks. Good for camp spirit, maybe. Bad for my need to have a moment of quiet.

But there was one last hope. My old buddy Randy from graduate school lent me his parent’s cottage, arms deep in the forests of Fairfield County, Ohio.

Not a living soul was around for miles!

Or that’s what I thought, but the moment the sun hid its face behind the horizon, guess who was proven wrong? That damn cricket song is nauseating! You’d think there’s only so much noise something as small as a cricket could make, but I guess they all have megaphones built into them.

And it was never just that one. Hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands were there at the same time!

That’s when I had it. Enough was enough. There was only so much I could take before I could take no more Clearly the universe had no intention of stepping into the spotlight, and was dead set on turning the life of anyone who would make it into a living hell.

How about just sending a memo next time?

Working was out of the question. Not possible. Not with noise like that coming in every which way.

Sleeping was out of the question for the same reason. So what was a guy to do in such a situation? You gotta do something, right? I couldn’t just sit down and wait for the cricket songs to drive me insane. That ship sailed long ago.

So the question was, what’s there to do in an old cottage in the middle of the woods in Ohio? Quite a few things, it turns out. All the old tapes that Randy and his folks hid away? They were holed up in the attic. Many no doubt embarrassing family videos were in the gigantic cardboard box, but so were all the best classics of the 90s and early 2000s.

This treasure trove contained everything from cinematic masterpieces, like the Goofy Movie, The Peacemaker and Titanic, to that special flavour of terribleness unique to films from the 1990s and early 2000s that, through their defiance of genuine quality and thoughtful filmmaking, achieves something so wondrous you can’t help but appreciate it. You know, like the original Ninja Turtles movie, or Pluto Nash.

The titles of the movies were scribbled with blue or black ink on the generic labels of the once empty cassettes. The labels had been authored either by Randy or his mom, and while both their handwriting were terrible, they were terrible in different ways. When Randy wrote, it looked like the pen was eager to leave the paper as soon as possible, like the pen thought the paper had contracted leprosy or something, and the various lines had been tossed against each other to resemble an approximation of the intended text. When Randy’s mom wrote, she took more care of her text at least, but it looked like she never once could decide on the size and shape of the letters, sometimes even as she penned them. Each letter looked as if it had been distorted in a different funhouse mirror, and as such her handwriting was actually less readable than Randy’s even if it looked prettier; though not by much.

Guess what movie was hidden at the bottom of this miracle chest? Cause that was gonna define that evening for me.

Die Hard.

The movie that came to define action movies for my generation, right there in the palm of my hand. Oh, sure, it was right in the middle of October, so it was hardly the season for a Christmas movie, but… It was really close, you know? In some cities, Christmas season begins in September. Besides, that was an emergency, and **** times require **** measures.

If there was any time for the joy of Bruce Willis kicking Alan Rickman’s ass, it was that moment.

So I set up the VHS player in the cottage, and while the tape rewinded back to the start, I leaned back on the middle of the sofa with my bag of homemade trail mix. Once the whirring noise from the cassette player stopped, I clicked the play button on the remote, and got my socks ready for one hundred and thirty minutes of getting themselves knocked off.

I was greeted with a black screen.

Honestly, I don’t know why I expected Randy to actually rewind the tape before recording, but the film should already be in there, right? The tape should have more than two hours inside there, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

My thumb hovered over the forward button on the remote, when I noticed something on the screen.

Nothing.

And if you think there’s nothing special about nothing, then you clearly haven’t paid attention. No, what I had been looking for was right before me: an eternal empty void where nothing could bother me, because guess what? Nothing else exists!

That’s right, I thought. I had moved to a universe where the boundary between the real world and the virtual world was very thin, so I could study more closely the relationship between conceptual and perceptual reality.

That meant it was perfectly all right to slip into a video tape to do some good, old-fashioned research.

And don’t try that line about video tapes not working with free will. I know that free will is bullshit. You should know that free will is bullshit. Guess what? That means reality is compatible with video tapes, and it works perfectly fine to just slip yourself inside.

Got that settled? Great.

By the time it took me to explain all of that, I’d already have whipped up a holographic converter to the VCR, and let me tell you, the sound of those crickets couldn’t go away fast enough. I must have checked if I brought the remote with me six times, cause without it I’d pretty much be stuck there with no way out.

When you’re playing around with the stuff underlying existence itself, it’s better to check one time too many than one time to few.

For the last time in a while I took in the infernal racket from the bugs outside, just to keep in mind what I was not gonna miss.

Then I pressed play.

Nothing. No sound, no sight. Nothing but nothing in every direction. I could still see myself, and hear my own breathing, but beyond that I was completely alone. The only thing in existence in the universe of Tape Space.

Nothing could compare to the peace and quiet of being alone in an eternal universe. All right, so many people have their special spot that only they know about and that is just for them. They might think they feel like they’re alone in the universe and the center of the universe. Listen, those guys know nothing. They haven’t actually been the only thing in the universe, or the center of the universe. It’s nothing like that.

Nothing is to the left of you. Nothing is to the right of you. You’re the biggest thing in the universe, and the smallest. The reason anything exists is because of you, because you’re the only thing that does exist.

Just try not letting it get into your head.

Finally I had found my recluse. The one place in existence where I wouldn’t be disturbed. To think that all I had to do was step out of reality itself.

There I was, suspended in the middle of empty space. Surrounded in all directions by black eternity. The perfect place to begin my research.

All of that I thought, before a granular bright light flashed in front of my vision. Before I knew what was going on, I stood smack in the middle of a football stadium. The obnoxiously catchy extended orchestral rock cover of Baby Elephant Walk merged with the fervent applause and cheers of the hundreds of thousands of people of all races, genders and levels of sobriety that filled up the lectars surrounding the inside of the stadium.

Any ideas that could conceivably have approximated a theory of everything disappeared from my head as suddenly as this night terror had appeared before my eyes, replaced only with the shock, confusion and terror of having the featureless void of nothingness snatched before your eyes, only to be replaced by something particularly striking. Man, that must be what the Big Bang was like.

I looked fervently around me. “What…? How…? Why…?”

The sky beyond the blindingly bright floodlights was pitch black, rendering the audience visible only as a mass of silhouettes. I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell they were people at all, hadn’t it been for the outburst of applause, cheers, chanting and laughter coming from the lectars.

The first thought that crossed my mind was that it was nothing short of a miracle that I didn’t have a heart attack right then and there. You think I would’ve been used to bullshit like this showing up from time to time?

No! I’m a normal guy with a normal job, that just so happens to involve assembling a mirror made from the stuff of creation to see the reflection of the face of God. I have a wife with whom I’m happily married, I work nine to five and have the leftovers from yesterday’s beef stew for lunch.

If something weird happens, it’s cause it found me. Because someone wants something from me and brings weird shit with them. It never just goes from zero to upside down circus fire in nothing seconds!

My second thought was that the film must’ve started now. Didn’t I change it into an empty cassette? I knew there was something I forgot!

Only I’ve seen Die Hard a thousand times, and I couldn’t remember any football game in it. Randy must’ve taped over it without knowing or caring what he taped over. Damnit, Randy! This is why you always have empty cassettes ready for when you need to record something. You don’t just grab the first best tape cause Superbowl is starting in two minutes!

A football soared through the air, and right into my hands. I dunno why I caught it. I suppose it’s a habit left over from when I played football in high school. Looking in the way it was thrown, I saw a pig dressed in a green and white football gear, running past me. Gotta say seeing a pig man playing football caught me a little off guard, but it made a little bit of sense when I looked at the scoreboard and saw that one of the teams was called the Boston Boars. Their emblem was of a big, hairy badass boar looking like it’s about to kill you off, which is a bit disjointing considering the guy who passed to me was a cute little frightened thing, his height reaching barely up to my chest, with a slim build covered in a slight pudginess. Don’t know if I’m the right guy to criticize though.I don’t look anything like a boar myself.

What worried me was that the other team was called the Wyomming Wolves, and the flock of hungry wolf-women nearly a foot and a half taller than me in purple and black combat gear stampeding towards me certainly made their badass wolf emblem justice.

For Christ’s sake, Randy! What kind of weird cartoons is he into?

His inevitable doom at my hands would have to wait however. At that moment all I was concerned with was running for my life as the flock of gigantic wolf girl was on my heels. Their expressions, warped with lust, ensured me that once tackled to the ground, any pretense of autonomy of mine would be immediately forfeit. And as a happily married man that is a complete no-go.

Their panting became louder as their presence became increasingly imminent. Their shadows falling on me told me that they were ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.

So I just passed the ball to an unsuspecting pig boy, and just a moment later he was tackled down into the bottom of a dogpile of overly excited wolf women, who had no doubt waited all evening for an opportunity like that.

Poor guy. Although honestly, he was just suffering the very same fate he was trying to pawn on me when I just arrived. Why should I feel guilty when they were trying to get me pounded into the dirt by a team of furries?

I didn’t need to stick around for long though. Sure I didn’t get the moment of peace and quiet I needed to work on my theory, but at that point I was just happy to get back to the cottage unmolested.

That’s when I realized I had dropped the remote when I caught the ball.

Getting stuck in this universe of anthro women longing to dominate my person at shortest possible notice was not an option. I got on to my hands and knees and crawled on the finely cut grass, doing my best to trace my steps back. I was gonna find that remote if I so had to sweep the entire field.

As luck would have it though, that wasn’t necessary. I sighed in relief as I spotted the remote not too far away from where I was, and crawled straight towards it with a smile of pure gratitude.

Before I could get my hands on it though, another flash appeared, and the stadium was gone, prison bars were between me and the remote, and I was at the black-furred paws of what turned out to be, when I looked up, a tall, dark-skinned woman with dog features. Even if I hadn’t been on my knees I’d probably be looking up at her, from how tall she was. And every centimeter of her height was curving; inwards at her waist and outwards by her hips. An orange jumpsuit hugged said curves all the way to the knees where they stopped, and her canine legs took over. Her hands were similar to her dog-legs, but her digits were shaped more like those of human hands, though still covered in the same short, fine black fur as the other canine parts of her body, which included her long, pointy ears under her very short, swept back hair.

She was looking down at me smirking, and I immediately knew the meaning of that smirk. I was so not all about that.

So I reached my arm out through the bars, but the dog girl swiftly snapped the remote control before I could take it.

I sighed as I stood up and looked at the shit-eating grin of the dog woman. She was only about an inch taller than me, but I was so used to looking down on people that this extra inch proved ever so more striking.

Looking around, I found myself exactly where I thought I was: a prison. A maximum security prison, no less. Everything about the corridor, which as narrow as it may have been was not narrow enough that you’d have to walk in nabbing distance to the prisoners, was made to be as secure as possible and as little stimulating as possible. Nothing but gray and white in either direction, apart from the orange prison uniforms of the inmates, but still the light in the room was so dim I could hardly tell it was orange to begin with.

Behind the dog girl were two of her cell buddies, also dog girls. The one leaning against the wall with arms crossed was shorter than the one in front of me, but bustier and with a heavier frame. Her long, thick black hair with white highlights appeared to cover both her eyes, yet that didn’t seem to keep her from looking straight in my direction.

The other one was an even shorter, petite dog girl with curly long rusty brown hair and white highlights, resting her head on her arms as she lay lazily on the bottom bunk bed with a line of drool running from the corner of her mouth. Her tail struck against the mattress as a single eye with a tired expression opened and looked at me.

For Christ’s sake, Randy! How many weird films did you record on one cassette alone?

I held out my open palm towards the tall dog woman.

“Would miss be so kind as to hand that over to me? I am oh so in need of it.” My teeth bared in the most pleasant smile I could muster… Given the circumstances anyhow.

The grin she responded with was full of brilliantly white, pointy teeth, “Can’t say no to a cutey such as yourself, right girls?”

“Nuh-huh.” The petite dog girl said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it! Uhuhuhuhu!” The chunky dog girl said.

“Yeah, us kobolds are not so bad, you see?” The tall dark dog girl said, “So here you go.”

Now I must say for a moment I felt bad for thinking these ladies were some kind of scum, just cause they looked rough and were behind bars. But that stopped when I tried to take the remote, and she tossed it over my head and towards the cell on the opposite side of the corridor, where it was caught by a skinny, pale woman with scary eyes, who I honestly couldn’t tell whether she was supposed to be part dog or part rat.

“Hey!” I said, now too tired to hide my frustration, “Come on, ladies!”

“If you want, then come and get it!” The tiny little devil said. As I approached it she tossed it back to the other cell, which inhabitants had gathered by the bars so they could properly torment the stranger.

They kept on toying with me like that, laughing at my predicament as they tossed the remote between themselves.

Now you might think if I was the LeBron from your world, I would have no problem with this nonsense. See, you probably say, I always said that basketball skills are essential in everyday situations; as if these kinds of predicaments turn up all the time.

Well, as a matter of fact, I never said I couldn’t play ball. In fact I was quite the star back in high school. Just that I never really made a big deal out of it, that’s all. So I knew exactly what to do in a situation like this.

When the tall kobold tried to fling the remote over my head, I nimbly pushed myself off the floor and intercepted the remote’s arc, and tapping it out of its course. Like a pro.

The remote flew away from the cells and bounced along the floor, until it slid to a stop at the feet of a wrinkly old man in a gray prison uniform, who swiped it up and adjusted his round glasses as he beheld it with squinting eyes.

“Sorry there, mister.” I walked over to him with a chuckle, “I made quite a mess for you haven’t I? If you could just please hand that thing over, and I’d be on my way. It’s just that…”

“Ahh,” The guard shook his head, “Thought you could run out of your cell, did you young lady? But I’m sorry, no one escapes the Kennel.”

“Young lady? Aha… I think there must be some misunderstanding here. See…”

And that’s when the old man pulled a gun on me.

“Why don't you be a good girl now and go back to your cell?” The old man said with an eerie calm.

My arms rose towards the ceiling “Look, old man! If you would just listen to me..:”

CLICK!”

The guard cocked the hammer on the revolver, shutting me up instantly.”

“I was really hoping not to have any trouble tonight… Okay?”

“...Okay.” I hissed through clenched teeth, taking a deep breath.

The elderly prison guard opened the door to the cell with the tall dark kobold, and shut the door the moment I put my foot inside.

I found myself locked on the bad side of the bars with three thuggish kobolds who glared at me like a piece of meat, and all I could do was watch as the prison guard walked away, whistling and whirling the keyring around his finger.

“Hey! Help me!” I cried out to him, “Do something! Don’t leave me like this!” But I fell on deaf ears.

I backed into a corner as the kobolds got closer and closer, “Heel…”

That command did nothing. They bared their pointy teeth in a grin of lust and wickedness as they held out their paws, ready to pounce.

I was completely surrounded. Completely helpless, and at the mercy of the perverted whims of these dog girls.

A flash appeared before my eyes, and they were gone.

I looked around, finding no trace of the horny, thuggish dog women.

By some divine luck, the worst part I could possibly imagine was recorded over. Finally this bizarre world worked in my favour.

But that also meant I had less grasp on the situation than ever before. At that point I found myself in a vast cave. Torches attached to the glass walls illuminating the enormous pile of gold in the center. And what rested on the top of this mountain of treasure? A twenty foot tall lizard wrapped in its wings like a pair of blankets; armoured from the tip of its tail to the brink of its nose in black scutes, puffs of black smoke escaping its nostrils with each snoring breath.

So here’s the thing about dragons; they’re freaking terrifying. Everything that’s inherently terrifying for humans have been mashed into a single monstrous creature. This might be a bit of a hot take, but dragons? They’ve gotten kind of bad publicity. I mean, think about it. Throughout the centuries we’ve gotten used to thinking about dragons being slain by heroic knights saving princesses, to the point that we’ve forgotten what kind of horror-story monsters they really are.

I mean, honestly, if someone today came up with the idea of putting a building-sized cold blooded predator that is also a flying raptor and can create wildfires just by opening its mouth, into a fairy tale for kids, they’d lock that guy up and throw away the key!

I swear to God, if you were to stand in front of a monster like that, even a sleeping one, you’d instantly pee your pants. I don’t care who you are.

Not that that’s what happened to me.

I swear.

So magnificent was this beast that I could hardly peel my eyes off it long enough to admire the Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth on which it was lying, but I did manage to spot one bit of treasure stuck inside the pile of gold coins that I had to have.

The remote was there.

The way I looked at it I had a choice to make, and there were two options. Either I could climb the pile of gold to get the remote, and risk waking the dragon up… Or I could wait and see what’s next on this video tape from horny hell… And also risk having the dragon wake up on its own.

When you thought about it that way, there really was only one sensible option… I just wished it was the less scary of the two.

I set about climbing the mountain of treasure, moving as sneakily as I could. Of course, I could only be so sneaky moving through coins, but there’s always room for improvement. Even so, the dragon did not wake up, so I guessed I was doing something right at least. That was until my foot slipped, and I inadvertently kicked a single coin that bounced down the incline of cash.

On each bounce it made a loud clanking sound, and on each clanking sound I winced, thinking that would be the instance I was screwed. But the dragon remained asleep, even as the coin neared the bottom.

Finally it landed on the lid of a gilded box… And silence pervades over the cave, while the dragon remains asleep.

Damn that was close! That was about to become my last mistake… Which as far as this undertaking was concerned, it was anyway.

…That’d be what I’d say anyway, except what it landed on was no normal box. It was a box that opened when you pushed the lid down… And start playing a melody.

A music box! For real!?

With a deep, guttural gruff that shot out black smoke from its nostrils, the long neck of the dragon lifted itself, as its eyelids opened to reveal the glowing, fiery amber of its sclera split by a crimson slit that scanned the cave. The unfolding wings reached to the ceiling as it stood up on top of the pile of gold.

I had no intention of being spotted though. I dove into the pile and hid myself in the gold, in the vain hope that it would assume it was a rat that woke it up. I suppose from its point of view it wasn’t even that far from the truth.

I waited in silence under the gold for the dragon to be done searching. I heard a snap, and the music box stopped playing. It became quiet.

Too quiet.

I snuck a peek from between the coins to see if the dragon had by chance left, and what do you know? There was no dragon to be seen. Instead I saw a young woman standing at the bottom of the treasure trove. One with lithe yet athletic build, and long white hair cascading down her back. Something told me she was related to the dragon in some way. Particularly, it was the huge claws the size of daggers that replaced her hands and legs, covered to the biceps and knees respectively by the same black scales that speckled the pearly white skin of her slender, toned torso and covered her nipples and the area between her legs. It was also the pair of frilly black wings protruding from her back; folded behind her like a cape, as well as the snake-like tail animated behind her as if refusing to be dragged on the floor, and of course the pair of horns growing out of her temples like those of a bull. When she looked back and opened her eyes, that settled it though. It was the same terrifying slits of amber as the gargantuan beast.

She wasn’t just related to the dragon.

She was the dragon.

At that point I just felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier. Of course it’d be something with monster girls. By that time I really should have been familiar enough with Randy’s tastes to know not to expect anything truly badass.

As my eyes glanced away from her gaze, they caught a glimpse of the remote just above me. New plan came to my mind; get the remote behind her back, and escape Tape World before she could catch me. My hand reached out to the remote… And a hand of black claws swiped it before me. I found myself looking up the intimidating yet alluring figure of the dragon girl. For someone with such a stoic, unimpressed expression, her glare sure was burning through me with infernal ferocity.

Never before had I been so terrified by a woman just over half my size, and all I could think about was how gorgeous she looked.

Back into the pile of gold I slunk, but she dug her hand in after me and pulled me out by the scruff of my neck. All I could offer her when she glared at me menacingly was a nervous smile.

“Before you meet your demise, I need to know what possessed you to think stealing from me was in any way a good idea?”

I gulped, but looked her straight in her eyes, “Yeah, sorry for the intrusion… But really, I am no thief. Just that… The thing you are holding? Yeah, that was accidentally misplaced in your treasure trove, so… You know… Can I have it back? Please?”

“Whether you tell the truth or not, the fact that your trinket is found in my treasure trove is sufficient proof of ownership. If you knew how I had acquired the rest of my wealth, you would almost certainly think it less legitimate than how this device came into my possession. Do you not think so?”

“Well, of course… I mean, of course not… I mean… Uh, look. The truth is, and I know this is gonna sound crazy, but I am not…”

“...From this world?” The dragon girl snarled, “I am quite aware.”

“You… You are?”

The dragon laughed heartily, “I am 8000 years old. I have seen civilizations rise and fall, and rise once more. How do you imagine even a fraction of that would fit on a two hour long tape?”

I blinked. “...Oh. So you know then?”

With a satisfied smirk the dragon nodded, “Yes. Though I know nothing about what lies outside, I have come to realize this cannot be all there is.”

Let this be a lesson to you all. You never know if your video tapes will become self aware, so maybe think twice before you start recording porn.

“In that case, you must understand that I need that box. Or else I’ll be trapped in this world.”

“I too am trapped in this world. Do you feel any remorse for me?”

“Oh. Uhm… I guess I was kind of hoping you’d be okay… You know, where you belong?”

A huff of smoke accompanied a deep growl, as it escaped the dragon’s mouth when her jaws opened. Reflexively I tried to scramble away, but found myself stuck in her grasp.

“The memories I have beyond the beginning of the universe are memories of events that never transpired,” She said with an intimidatingly cool calm, putting emphasis on each word, “Every day I wake up wondering if this was the day my life will end, just because the tape has reached its end. Tell me one good reason I should be satisfied with that.”

I opened my mouth to answer, but found I had nothing to say. I mean, what would you have done if you found out your entire life was inscribed in a tape? Heck, as far as I was concerned I really was on a tape and just haven’t noticed. And… Now I’ve gotta worry about that all night every night.

“Yeah… In retrospect, maybe I should not have just started strutting about Meinong’s Jungle as if I had any idea what I was doing… But really I just wanted some peace and quiet.”

I fell down on the floor as the wings protruding from her back unfurled, reaching a third to the ceiling despite her humanoid body’s diminutive size, “Then rejoice, human. Once I have left this cave you, you shall know only peace and quiet for the rest of your days.”

Her wings flapped, ejecting her petite form high above the ground, where she remained suspended and looking down on me, holding out the remote with her thumb hovering over the eject button.

I know it goes without saying, but that situation was really bad. The exact opposite of what I wanted in fact… Yes, even considering I would technically be achieving my goal. On one hand, I’d never again see my beloved wife, or the life that I’ve known. On the other hand, a friggin 'dragon would be released into my world, and who knows what kind of havoc she would be causing if she got the chance?

‘

“Wait!” I yelled looking up, as I ran to directly under her, “What about your precious gold? You know you can’t take it with you right?”

“I cannot take it with me either way when the universe ends. At least I can save myself, and start anew with a treasure trove in another world.”

Yup. It looked like I couldn’t reason with her at all. She moved her thumb to push the button. I closed my eyes to brace myself…

Beyond the skin of my eyelids I could see the outlines of statics filling my vision, and soon I could hear the soothing brush of the waves around me. When I opened my eyes, I found myself needing to squint as I looked up at the sun suspended high in a clear blue sky.

“Oh, a drop of Nelson’s blood wouldn’t do us any harm~!” A jovial bass-baritone voice sang out right behind me, making me jolt in surprise.

“Oh, a drop of Nelson’s blood wouldn’t do us any harm!!” The choir of sailors replied as they scrubbed the deck in unison. They were all lean, apart from their arms which were thicker than their own necks, and they all wore the same striped white and navy blue shirt clinging to their forms.

So I was on a sailing ship, possibly from the 18th or 19th century, with some really enthusiastic buddies. Quite a bit tacky for my tastes, sure, but compared with the other nonsense I’ve been through I almost felt like giving Randy a pass on this one. Almost.

A hand pulled on my shoulder from behind, and turning around I found myself eye to eye with a bald, hunchbacked old man in a marine coat with a moustacheless beard hugging his angular jaws, shooting me a twisted smirk reflecting a frightening cruelty.

“Ah, well what have we here? If it ain’t a stowaway that crawled out of his little corner.”

The singing was laid to rest as all the sailors looked in my direction.

“No! You got it all wrong!” I cried.

“You know what we do to stowaways ‘round these parts? Tell em, boys!”

“Shave his belly with a rusty razor!” One of them yelled.

“Put ‘im in a row boat ‘til he’s sober!”

“Sober?” I asked, “Wait, I’m not…”

“Put him in bed with the captain’s daughter!”

“All right, Kenny.” The captain said in an annoyed tone, “I think we’ve heard quite enough from you.”

“Hey! A young sailor by the railing peering through a spyglass said, calling the attention of the crew away from me and towards him, “Ship ho! And… They’re raising their Jolly Roger!”

Everyone booked it towards the railing, including myself. The smaller, leaner vessel soared on the waves like an eagle does through the air, far different from the slow, bulky box made to carry as much cargo as possible as far away as possible.

“Arm yourselves, men!” The captain yelled, “We will be defending our cargo to its last man!”

All the sailors swarmed the deck like stung cattle, so that by the time the pirate ship was in range to be locked up to their vessel, they stood prepared with swords and spears and muskets.

The pirate captain was the first to set her boot on deck. The little green pirate was merely three feet tall, but stood before the crew as if looking down on them; with legs apart, puffed chest, hands on hips and and a big, toothy, grin beaming with confidence adorning her freckled face. The long red hair under her oversized black tricorn hat adorned with a skull and crossbone emblem was tied in a ponytail behind her back, and she was dressed in a strapless black dress with short pleated skirt that swayed in the wind around her wide hips and thick legs.

“Yarr!” The goblin captain raised her cutlass towards the sky, “What fine bounty we have ‘ere!” She looked the sailors up and down with a lewd smirk, “Let’s pack ‘em in as our loot, girl!”

More tiny goblin girls, most of them dressed in tanktops and bandanas charged the vessel with daggers and swords in hands, roaring and giggling as they ran to overtake the vessel.

The sailor immediately dropped their weapons and jumped overboard, until I was the only one left, finding myself surrounded on all sides by the hoard of excitable goblins admiring me like a piece of meat while pointing their cutlasses threateningly at me.

My back against the mast, they approached me with rope and manacles in their hands, some of them licking their lips.

“Ladies, please…” I pleaded, “I am a married man.”

“We don’t mind sharing ye with yer wife! Now hands up and follow us!” The captain said, followed by giggling among the crowd.

With nowhere to run or hide, it looked like my journey was finally over, when I dug my hand into my pocket, only to find it immersed in cold and metallic tablets.

You remember when I told the dragon that she couldn’t take her gold with her? Yeah, I just thought it sounded good at the time. Didn’t really think about it too much. Turns out I was wrong at that point. No reason to make a big deal out of it. Sometimes even a theoretical physicist can make a mistake, all right?

So I pulled my hands out of my pocket with a wide swinging action, flinging the fistful of coins that had slipped into my pocket while swimming in gold in the dragon’s den. As the coins rained down over the goblins, they scrambled to collect every single shiny piece they could find.

I wasted no time waiting for them to finish collecting the gold, but made my way up the mast. When the video started on a new recording, the dragon was flying in the air, so the remote should have been in the air when I arrived on the ship. Since I didn’t hear a splash, and since I couldn’t find it on deck, it must be in the crow’s nest. Either that or somewhere I can see it from the crow’s nest.

All I could know for sure was that I had to get as far away as possible from those horny goblin girls.

It sure was a long way up. Somehow it felt like the crow’s nest got further away the more I climbed. I looked down to see how far I had gotten. Turns out I was pretty far high up. You think someone like me shouldn’t be scared of heights? Heck no! I’m as high up as I need to be already. I absolutely get light headed when I look down from heights.

Especially when I saw that the goblin girls were climbing after me. My climbing speed increased. Was I climbing too fast to do it safely? At that point I didn’t care. Who knew what perverse things the goblin girls would do to my body if they caught me?

From the crow’s nest I could hear noise, which told me there was someone there. The fact the noise was snoring told me this man could sleep through the end of the world.

“HEY!” I yelled at the top of my lungs at the lookout, who groaned in protest, “HEY! WAKEY WAKEY, BLOCKHEAD! PIRATES ARE ATTACKING! AND THEY’RE COMING FOR US!” ‘

The tall lanky man with light, cropped hair, who acted as lookout yawned and stretched. As he looked down the railing, his groggy expression turned into one of terror as he saw me climbing up the mast, the wild goblin girls in tow.

“Over ‘ere, lad!” He yelled as he reached out his hand towards me, “Dunno who you are, but come up ‘ere quickly!”

After traveling between all sorts of crazy worlds where everything can happen and nothing is as it seems, where your wildest dreams are commonplace, I finally found the most astonishing thing in all of cosmos. Something I couldn’t even dream of finding, but which is right before me;

Someone who is both helpful and clever.

I grabbed his hand, and he pulled me up towards the crow’s nest. In doing so I glanced back and down, and could make out that the goblins on deck were up to something. Specifically they had stuffed one of their own into a cannon instead of a cannon ball and lit the fuse…

And I could already tell that this was something I was going to hate.

“Hurry it up! Now! Or they are going to…”

I was interrupted with a bang, as the goblin was sent soaring through the air towards the mast, just over my head and smashed into the poor lookout. She wrapped her arms around him and dragged him off the crow’s nest, splashing into the water where bubbles shaped like hearts popped up.

Fortunately when the tall and lanky lost his grip on my hand, I managed to grip the ledge of the crow’s nest with my other hand where I was hanging. The goblin girls were still on my tail, and what should be within spitting distance of me but the remote? When I tried reaching it, I found that it was just a little too far away. With my greatest efforts, I tried pulling myself up and stretching my hand, but it was always just one teeny tiny stretch away.

It must have been one hell of a huge wave that hit the ship at that moment, because all of a sudden it was shaking like an earthquake. I slipped back and once again just hung from the ledge, but the remote slipped down as the crow’s nest angled down, and fell down the mast…

But I took it. I grabbed it. It was mine once again.

I felt tiny hands from below grab onto my legs and pull me down. All the while my last and only option was in my hand, and I pressed the eject button.

A round portal surrounded by crackling white energy opened up in the air next to me, and I jumped, grabbing hold of the tarkett floor of Randy’s living room. With all my efforts I tried crawling back in, but the little horny monsters pulled me back. Their collective weight was far too much for me, and no matter how much I kicked they would not let go. I felt my hands slipping. That was it, fellas. Game over.

Well, it should have been Game Over, but someone grabbed hold of my hand, pulled me back in and stomped the goblins back into the video world with a powerful kick. The portal closed… and I was safe.

Unless this helpful figure was not as helpful as I first thought.

Who do you think it was? Randy? Don’t make me laugh. If it was Randy he’d have found some way to make it worse. No, this was the same dragon girl from the tape who stood over me looking down, the light from the portal reflecting on her dimming as it closed.

She gave me a melancholic smile as she extended her clawed hand.

“Uh… Thank you.” I grabbed the hand, so she could help me up, “So… We’re friends now?”

“Friends?” A puff of smoke escaped her nostrils and she scoffed, “Hardly. I simply did not wish for this world to be worse the moment I set foot in it.”

I chuckled and scratched the back of my head, “Heh. Hey! You’re pretty all right! But… Uh, people here are not really ready for dragons to be running around yet, so…”

The dragon glared at me with folded arms.

“So… Do you think you could lie low for a while? You know, just so no one will freak out and give you any trouble.”

“Thank you for the advice. And… I suppose lying dormant for another century or three would be trivial to the likes of me. And I recall you saying that you wished for a moment of peace and quiet, did you not? If you were to ask me to bring you to a tall mountaintop, then I… Would not necessarily be against it.”

I laughed heartily, “Yeah… About that. I think I’ve had enough of pondering the nature of existence for one night. Maybe I’ll recoup my losses and… Just enjoy the moment,”