Patton Lee Beaugus | December 22, 2010 4:45pm
It was a damn whiteout with lightning flashes. Maybe Mother Nature didn’t like it when somebody started messing with her reality.
In the backyard unreality, the Partymob welcomed me like a guy with the beer and pizza who was so late they got it for free. Molly even gave me a big hug, which for the moment, at least, make me think I'd made a good decision.
Louie handed me a snifter of Courosier, reinforcing the wisdom of my choice. “Molly said you’d be back.”
“Everything she said would happen, has happened,” said HiTone.
“Unreal,” I replied.
“Exactly,” said D'Oliya.
Their stage had now transformed into a faux half of a rooftop. It was only six feet off the ground, and didn't look at all real, except maybe from a thousand feet directly above it. The shingled roof overlapped the living room set so they shared the fireplace. In front the new enlarged set, they had a number of what looked like some kind of sci-fi electron guns covering all the angles. I hoped they were video cameras.
"Santa's landing strip," said D'Oliya pointing to the rooftop. In her S&M Santa's helper outfit with her little whip, she could make "landing strip" sound like something a lap dancer would do on you if you put an extra hundred in her... well, I'm not sure where you'd put it, never having a hundred to use that way. I mean, think about it, a hundred bucks would be like 30 pints of Rudy's Red, and that would include the tips!
It was snowing even harder now outside the dome, a real storm of a storm — a damn whiteout with lightning flashes shinning through in the distance. Maybe Mother Nature didn’t like it when somebody started messing with her reality.
But it was all warm and cozy insize the big-ass snow globe that encased the Christmas set.
I turned to Molly. "I came back," I said with a big dumb grin on my big dumb face.
She smiled at me.
"I wasn't going to. But I did."
"I know. I'm glad."
"They said you expected it."
"I did."
"It was totally unexpected for me."
"Totally out of character, I know. It had to be that way for us to be here and now. When you came through the door, we all made the last transition."
"Please tell me what's going on?" but what I really wanted to know was, "and why me?"
"To manipulate the string reality, besides all the songs and unlikely stuff we did, we need a whole bunch of polar opposites to coexist. Highest tech in the lowest dive. A guy who doesn't believe in anything to believe in us. We need that guy who never joins anybody to join us. We need to have that selfish guy to make a sacrifice. We need a cowardly guy
to be brave."
"And
that's me?"
"That's you. You're The Guy."
"And that's all."
"We need to use something that didn't exist in our string that was part of The Guy to fill a gap that otherwise wouldn't be filled. Like your powerbook taken into a reality where Macs don't exist and Kim Jong-il rules the world."
"Oh," I said, wondering if Kim Jong-il ruling the world would affect my personal reality of sitting at Rudy's everyday. If Macs didn't exist, could I still get free WiFi and browse the free porno, uh, news sites?
“Could you set up your computer again, Paddy?” asked Molly coming up very close to me.
How could I say no?
Okay, I’m a sucker who Molly sucked into this mess, but I’d still rather have been here with the loony BuddaBings PartyMob than sitting alone at my old reality's Rudy's or the Holland Bar sucking on an ice cube, and trying to chat up the old hookers so Lady CaCa would buy me another drink that I'd promise to pay them back for, but never would.
Molly stood at the keyboard punching madly. She made GPS and ETA announcements to the group. In between she gave me more info on string theory, and how we there were 11 dimensions and 26 alternative dimensions and 16 realities, and we had broken thru to the one where Santa existed and that could only be transitioned to when Dandy
86d us to the backyard.
And then Louie added, "And the final, most unlikely event that took us over the edge of improbability and brought all the dimension together was you coming back with your old computer."
Vinnie continued for Louis, "When you are the most self-centered, amoral, people-using, tip-stealing, bull-shitter on every string."
Every reality?
HiTone joined in. "And you haven't believed in anything or anyone for half a century."
I must have looked like I spilled my last beer.
Molly added,
“No, it's good. You’re the last link. Your decision to come back made it possible. But it was a decision you had to make. A very unlikely decision.”
"Yeah," I mumbled, "considering I'm the most self-centered, amoral, people-using, tip-stealing, bull-shitter in every reality."
"Right," she said.
"Every one?"
"Pretty much. Well, there is a Sarah Palin in most of them," said HiTone.
"She was a great choice," Molly admitted. "I'm sure she'd have been glad to take out Rudolph for us if someone showed her how to point the gun, and which was to point it. But you're the one who hangs out at Rudy's, which is even more unreal than FoxNews, the TeaParty or your missile defense shield."
"Besides Sarah wanted too much money,"
added D'Oliya.
"And she wouldn't do a menage with me and Michelle Backman." whined HTone.
"We got you for a few crummy drinks," added that nasty little Vinnie who wanted to be Lord of the Elves.
"She wanted to be Santa Sarah!" said Louie, "as if being able to see the North Pole from her back porch made her qualified."
"She even wanted to add an "h" to Santa, so it'd be Santah Sarah, so she'd remember how to spell it.
They went on to say that when they took care of Santa here, Santa would be gone in all of the string realities. “Then we can all go back to a universal re-strung reality, taking only Clydie with us. And you, too, Paddy, if you want."
"We all need to cross back over together, or we're stuck with that reality in there where we met you," Louie said, pointing at Rudy's back door.
"My reality," I asked.
"Almost," said Molly.
"When weve taken down Santa, we've got it made,” said D'Oliya.
"The PartyMob what owns Christmas," said Vinnie.
"Mega-stars in every reality,
"Louis Claus!"
"Clydie the red-nosed Clydesdeer!"
"Lord Of the Elves!"
"The Nobel Prize for physics!"
"World Dominatrix!"
"Ménage à Jessica Rabbit and the Little Mermaid!"
Molly hit the enter key on my Mac and yelled, "Releasing the dome." And we were back in the fury of the wind and snow.
Rudy's bar manager, Dandy, stuck his head out of the back door. The snow was blowing so hard, he apparently couldn't see the forest glade or the the Christmas set.
He screamed over the sound of the wind and snow, “You need to get out of the blizzard, and come back in — as long as you don’t sing.”
Molly said, "He could screw us all up."
Good old Dandy. Maybe he could stop this.
HiTone pulled his weedwacker and... Louie knocked his arm down.
Maybe Dandy'd 86 us from the backyard and force us back into the original string!
“Just a couple more songs and we’ll be right in.” shouted Louie.
“You really shouldn’t...I can’t allow…”
“We need to do it from here,” Molly soto-voiced to Louie. "We need to do it, now!"
Louie shouted loudly, “Vinnie, please go in and pick up another bottle or two of Courvoisier to keep our throats warm. And tip the bartender another hundred.”
I almost mentioned that it wouldn't get him a 'landing strip', but my mouth was busy sipping brandy.
Dandy looked down at little Vinnie, holding out a stack of c-notes.
"Don't do it," I prayed. I don't know who I prayed to, but I prayed.
"No," he said.
"Way to go, Dandy. Save us and I'll never run a tab and forget to pay it, again," I thought, I mean, if they ever let me run a tab again.
"You'll never make it through the crowds. I'll get the drinks for you." and he went back in.
"Ahhhhhhhhh!" I thought, "they're actually going to do it. They are going to take down Santa, and steal Christmas."
I made my choice. I couldn't let it happen. I had do something drastic. I chugged the brandy like it was a cheap shot. And then, I mustered all my strength, dug deep into the well of my soul, began mentally chanting "I think I can. I think I can." And then I... well, that's all I did. I didn't do squat. Nada. Nothing. The one man party of "no." I felt so ashamed I refilled the snifter.
HiTone grabbed an edge of the Cinzano umbrella they were using as some kind of radar dish to keep it from blowing away.
A lightning bolt hit explosivelywithin ten yards of us. Another hit HiTone’s bass. Like artillery strikes homing in closer and closer.
"We're gonna die. I knew it," screamed Vinnie.
Molly said, “It’s our old Reality trying to snap us back."
"Mother Nature is a bitch," HiTone screamed over the roaring wind, "but I'd do her."
Another lightning bolt hit nearer to HiTone.
"I think the lady said no," I mumbled.
"Red Suit ETA two minutes!" yelled Molly.
"Clydie, you’re on.” yelled Louie.
Clydie went into a cumbersome Clydesdale gallop, then took off into the air. “The Legend Begins!” she yelled. “Rudolf, here I come.” That big clunky horse could really fly. Hell, in some stringy reality, she could probably use her hooves to play piano.
Molly's controls mush have included the new x-box 360, because she was guiding Clydie by waving her arms.
“Damn,” she said when her little skirt was blown up and she reacted reflexively by pushing it down. Those moves on the Wii controller must have had unintended consequences.
She was panicked. Clydie was off course. She spent about 60 seconds of waving, and undulating madly and in what looked like positions of the Karma Sutra Twister. But her eyes never the left Clydie's screen on screen. "Clydie is going the wrong way! Way the wrong way.”
She tried spinning around to get Clydie on the right track, but it didn't work. She had more moves than Dancing With The Crackheads , but none of the moves seemed to work to get Clydie back on the right path.
We’d find out later that Clydie mistook a red light on a third floor whore house on 11th Avenue for Rudolph’s nose. The Clydesdeer crashed right thru the window, catching Rudy Giuliani getting it on with two hookers, a Shetland pony, Ann Coulter wearing a strap-on, and a cageful of gerbils —which goes to show just how close
our undifferent realities actually are.
"We've lost her." yelled Molly.
What would happen now that their plan hadn't worked?
"We're gonna take it in the ass." Vinnie was not a believer, or else he liked it that way.
"I’ve planned for Reality fighting back. Go to Contingency Plan B."
