This day shaped up to be a lot of things. It was awkward. It was hopeful. It a nightmare that functioned as a prelude to a larger nightmare that made the first look like a child’s teddy bear that asked for hugs, the good kind. Not the “my teeth are razor blades and fingers look like some horror show dildo rejects and there’s six spleens sewed into my chest” kind. I saw one of those once. The spleens were functional. It also asked for hugs.

As usual, my derailment is clearly a mask for my real feelings. Which were twisted in a way I’ll try to explain. Maybe by sharing a few small facts. I love, loved, or still love I guess, my sister. But I hadn’t seen or heard from her in years. In a bad way. Not like an “oh we just got caught up with life and hey, how have you been let’s get coffee, say hi to the kids, have you met Ted?” sort of thing. It was more of a “you fuckers abandoned me during the shittiest part of my life” sort of way.

Anyway, there I sat, straddled on the back of her pink horse as we galloped through the whatever above the moon’s surface. It was the color that kept throwing me off. Bright psycho doll pink. She should have had a purple and black motif which would fit sullen girl who liked too wearing layers of mascara. I couldn’t see perfectly from this angle, but I was sure she’d wore zero makeup at all. Not like Cindy, who galloped next to us. Cindy had makeup for days to cover up the pale zombie like complexion she’d been left with since dying. Cindy was purple and black. My sister didn’t look like my sister.

And what was with all these girls anyway? I felt absolutely confused by being around so many at once, and only two wanted to kill me. It was a record of some sort in a few different ways.

My sister jabbered like a record stuck on a bad mix of eighty’s television and acted like I had no clue what was going on. I didn’t, but she shouldn’t have acted like it. I was the older sibling!

Anyway, in case you lost it during this madness, she was explaining the following; Mole people were trying to crash the moon into the Earth. They were being helped by aliens who lived in shadows or some shit. They were out to steal a crystalline mothership core to do nonsense science with and make their plan work. Vivian was a pirate here to cash in and cared little for the outcome of the planet. Mom and dad were alive.

If that final fact seems divergent, a fancy way of saying off track, I’ll be replaying that part of the scene. Everything else is pointless to talk about anyway. Who cares if mole people wanted to crash the moon into the Earth? Not this guy. I’d survive, on an island in space, with bananas and flying monkeys.

“Mom and dad are looking forward to seeing you,” Brittney said with too much pep for me to handle. It didn’t help that I was on an obnoxiously pink horse flying over the moon. We were going slow because I didn’t have a helmet. Because the moon had a speed limit.

Brittney did have a fancy helmet. It was a weird faceplate that let her hair out in a ponytail, covered her face with a, you guessed it, pink shimmering field that probably did something with oxygen, and matched the rest of her metal also pink suit. There was a theme here and it made me feel like I’d wandered into the wrong aisle of a toy store. Fuck pink.

“I can’t see how,” I responded slowly.

“They are. They’ve been trying to send you letters for years but nothing gets through. Deep space interference. That’s where we’ve all been. Lightyears away. For years, but we’re home! I can even see our house.” She clapped and rocked her head.

“Yeah I’ve been in deep space,” I muttered. “Once or twice. I just leave the cell phone at home for my trips. Those interplanetary rates,” I abruptly stopped my babbling before it got out of hand. I’d been reunited with her for all of two minutes and already devolved into sarcasm.

“I should have copied the van,” I said abruptly. The idea occurred to me way too late. A powered fighting savant I wasn’t.

The change in topic caused my sister’s body to tense. I pretended not to notice that my sister was a woman, or in light power armor. Both were almost as bad as the pink.

“What?” she asked.

“I could have,” my words drifted as I lost my train of thought. How did I explain Flux? The robotic eyeball jet pack butchery bobbed along after us. Every now and then the head sized machine spun in a lazy circle. It seemed to be showing off for the robotic horse.

“I’m stuck with the glory hound over there. He. She. It.” I didn’t know Flux’s gender. I still don’t. It might have two upload port and a three USB drives, if you catch my drift. “Flux copies stuff. I could probably get a second horse like this one. A helmet. Another ship. Maybe a belt of power. Does Lady-” I drifted off and reigned in my madness.

Brittney didn’t even notice. “Can you copy her? You’d need a suit too, to pilot it. She comes with missiles. And lots of lasers. And radar. And,” my sister started listing all the awesome fantastic blah-blahs her pink space robot came with.

I waited for a mile then answered. “Probably. But it’d be pink, and Flux can only copy so many objects at once. Though the thing doesn’t care about size. Flux copied the Purple Prose once. Half of it anyway. Crashed it on the other half.”

My sister turned to peer at me over her shoulder then maybe smirked. I couldn’t tell passed all the god-damned pink. “That was you?”

It was my turn to tense up. She knew about the ships crashing into each other, which meant she probably knew about the rest of the situation. ShowStopper and her two children had abducted me from another hero battle and taken me to international waters. That had been recent and shouldn’t have reached deep space. Though I suppose they could have gotten a quick notes version upon returning to earth.

“So, not to change the subject away from Flux but totally to change the subject.” I glanced around. We were getting close to the thumbs up building already. It felt like we could have made it there faster but Brittney didn’t want to speed up. “Mom and dad are there? At the, watch, tower, place.”

I didn’t know what the heroes called their base. Someone told me. I’d tuned it out by dreaming about a nearly naked and overly eager Alice. As a reminder, Cindy had interrupted our first time together, leaving me with confusion and a cloud of horniness then Cindy forced me to go to the Crystalline mothership. We’ve talked about this, and that first adventure doesn’t matter. I only bring it up now to explain why I hadn’t paid attention to whatever clever name this collective of heroes called their moon-cave.

“Uh uh. Back up. Explain this copying thing. And what’s a Flux?”

“That,” I pointed to the camera. It continued to spin around in circles while playing music that we only heard parts of. It sounded like a techno version of Flight of The Valkyries. “That’s Flux.”

“I know that’s Flux. I saw him on the website you run, but you don’t really explain him. He copies stuff? How versatile is it?”

“It copies all sorts of things. And does fantastic art. Flux! User’s manual.”

The robot copied the manual. It missed us and fluttered across the landscape. It had apparently skipped staples. My fumbled grasp managed to get one page while I held up for inspection.

“That. I’m in there. Flux draws me in crayon. I think it’s me.”

Flux beeped. I rolled my eyes.

Brittaney continued, “You can copy an entire ship with him?”

I shrugged. It wasn’t really my power. “I have. Mostly. Flux seems to follow commends. I’ve been with it for six months and still barely understand Flux most days. Honestly, it seems to like screwing with me more than anything else.”

Flux beeped again.

“See? Good old stalker.” I smiled and shook my head.

My sister didn’t care. She’d gotten stuck on the whole reproducing items topic. “We can use that, maybe. What happens to the copies?”

“They exist until they don’t,” I said. I used to think he could only copy two items at a time. That was still mostly true, but Flux seemed to have a few more rules than that. It was like, those objects only existed until Flux stopped paying attention. Sometimes the robot zipped to another place for footage and the objects vanished when he did. Some stuck around. He’d left me a speedo for three weeks that Alice insisted I wear.

I did, but only because she bribed me. Like everything else in my life, I tried to roll with it. It was like Brittney’s voice in the helmet. A bit tinny. A bit too peppy. Happy, like her legs were functional. They weren’t. They were firmly bolted into the horse’s sides trough some high-tech saddle. I’d bet her toes, which I couldn’t see, weren’t wiggly anymore.

“Can he copy the crystalline mothership’s core for us?”

I blinked.

“You awake Adam?”

I blinked again. Those three words threw me off. A dozen memories of high school surfaced. My sister had been an early riser and always threw stuff in my room if I didn’t get up in time for the bus. My throat tightened and a sudden cough, very manly I assure you, erupted.

“You okay?”

An excuse automatically flowed out. “Space dust. Hell, on the lungs. Not as bad as Mars or Uranus. Need a mask. Or one of those-”

My sister bounced a bit then slapped the horse’s mane. Her robotic pal ignored the gesture and kept on space thruster galloping toward headquarters. “Speaking of Uranus! My god. What happened to Ham Star? I mean seriously? He’s bigger than our house.”

“Cosmic rays?”

I shook my head. Where exactly had they been this entire time? I mean, even Lord Purple, may his reign over stupidity last forever, knew about Ham Star.

“Really? I’ve never seen cosmic rays do that. I saw them melt a guy once. I mean, cosmic rays. Though it’s kind of a misnomer, since there’s a lot of unfiltered rays going on out here in space. More like, a weird radiation?” She paused.

There were small numbers flashing on her visor that might have been text. The symbols didn’t line up with anything sane. Maybe they were backwards and in Greek. That made as much sense as anything else.

“I don’t know what that is,” Brittney’s hands waved. My mouth opened and she put up a finger. “No. We haven’t gotten to those courses yet. You said-“ she stopped again. “Well we’ve been in a war! I don’t even have time for a boyfriend.”

“Who are you-“ I started to ask.

“You? What?” She sputtered. “Fine. I’ll get the homework when I have a chance. Like college is an option after this,” Brittney said. Her eyes rolled and the horse dipped. I looked around for clarity but only noted Cindy staring ahead like a zombie on a drunken unicorn. Yeah, imagine that for a moment. Then add “In space”.

“You okay?”

“Doing great,” she said. “Life couldn’t be better. Stuck in space for a million years, nothing but aliens everywhere I go, and not a decent man in sight. And the shots and crap they make me take for medical purposes.”

What else could I say but, “Yeah that happens sometimes. Sort of. Not recently. I mean the uhhhh,” then my thoughts skittered a bit. My sister was sarcastic. Well, shit. She laughed while I got all mixed up inside.

I needed a grumpy horse. It would chew weed and frown all the time with slightly red eyes. I could call him Ed. He would headbutt Flux like a beach ball. Since that pretty much covered the important parts of our confusing conversation, I’ll skip ahead to our arrival at the headquarters to just-us whomever land.

The building was huge. Fifteen stories of pristine white shininess with two indoor pools and a hot tub filled with Liquid Bliss™. Which, I had on good authority, I didn’t want to know the chemical process to put it together. There were lots of other interesting facts about the tower, but only the hot tub matters.

If it sounds like I’m doing that thing, where I talk about stuff I find interesting instead of handling my real-life problems, then you’d be right. Someone once told me this was “avoidance”. I preferred to think of it as the “healthy actions of a perfectly stable person”.

“You awake?” my sister asked.

“Just pretending you didn’t complain about not getting laid around me. Since you’re like, thirteen still.” Maybe she’d been almost fourteen. That had been years ago. I barely remembered how old I was in the grand scheme of things.

“Eighteen, and perfectly aware of how bodies work.”

I started thinking about kittens. No real reason. Then my brain took that wrong and I switched to dogs. Then that went sideways and I wondered what color my grumpy horse would be. Probably a rundown brown. The image made me giggle quietly.

“But seriously, mom and dad are going to freak out when they see you. And mom’s going to ask what you’ve been eating. You weigh less than I do!”

“You sound like mom alright,” I said.

“Oh hells no. I’m nothing like, oh my god. Wait until you see what. You’re.” She sputtered a few clumsier sentences out. My stomach sank. It twisted and turned as a dozen different worries about my own parents hit me. Or it might have been the sudden spiral downward.

Either way, arrival at the headquarters. We flew into a space hanger. They’re metal, dull, and dirty on the outside. Moving on.

My body felt cold and toes kept curling into tight little balls. The new shoes I’d been provided back at Willhelm’s school weren’t space proof and it was cold, despite our satellite’s mumble mumble science. My arms worked to reduce the chill. That failed.

“In,” Brittney waved me toward a doorway on the hanger’s far end.

Then I realized she was walking. Though the legs were bulkier than they should have been and encased in something that might have been a mechanical exoskeleton or perhaps fancy cowboy chaps.

I’d like to say I took note of every single detail of the base. For posterity. Flux took video and even he seemed bored. He mostly seemed interesting in setting his red eyed face on my sister’s rear. I doubted the robot cared about her ass, but the fans might if that wouldn’t fly. I covered him with my hands and wished there’d been spare shirts somewhere to ball Flux up with. Is it weird that Flux could theoretically kill people by teleporting around, but ignored my attempts at treating him like a coatrack?

Some doors opened. Others didn’t. Lights turned on and off automatically as we moved. I ignored all that because the same thing happened in every high-end hero base. There’s a couple facts about hero bases, they’re needlessly complex and every single inch is designed to be used. Even if that use is “shield this area against explosions”. Floors and doors are often automatic and only work for people that some robot overlord in the building has deemed acceptable. That meant some machine watched visitors like myself.

Anyway, at some point we were in a room that looked big but could barely fix seven people. There were only three and a half of us here. Me, my sister, my mother, and what might have been a computer from the eighties. I say might because mad scientists are weird so some items qualified as computers but weren’t user friendly.

“You’re so tall!” the woman who might be mom said.

I couldn’t process that. Mostly because the women who said she was my mom, didn’t look like mom. Betty, my mother, certainly didn’t wear French maid outfits or have glowing blue eyes. And no, those aren’t magical glowing eyes. They were cybernetic eyes that might have fit better on a robot.

“Mom?” I questioned.

“You said that already.”

“But,” words failed me. Which means my brain failed me. Which also meant that nothing was new with my world.

“Mom,” I stammered. And if seems like I’m doing this a lot, it’s because I was out of my fucking depth by so many levels of sanity that my mind blanked out routinely every few seconds.

Flux chirped.

“That’s mean,” the computer box from a bygone era said with my dad’s voice.

See, here’s where I had issues. Not only was my sister riding a pink space robot unicorn, my parents were no longer sane normal people.

Here’s where I started. “Why are you in a maids outfit?”

“You father likes it,” my mom responded. A hiccup in her voice told me that her vocal cords were probably partially robotic as well.

Followed by this. “Why is dad a computer?” I asked my sister.

“Cosmic rays,” Brittney answered. I stared at her. She stared back. It took fifteen seconds for her to bust up laughing.

I tried a third time to make sense of the world by turning to my stalker and hoping he could provide me mental relief. “Flux?”

It chirped.

“Oh man, the mouth on that thing,” dad’s box said then laughed. In hindsight, I realize that my dad could understand Flux.

“The good stuff!” I demanded.

Flux printed me a copy of page fifteen of his mechanics monthly magazine. I’d hoped for something a bit harder and more effective. Preferably with a “seriously mind altering” tagline. No such luck.

Mom clearly understood the reference. “Drugs? You’re doing drugs now Adam?” the French maid android that looked and sounded vaguely like my mom asked.

One eye blinked, then the other caught up. Mom had asked me a question, and while I’d been on my own for a few years, the habits of childhood were still vaguely ingrained. Even in the face of a woman holding a feather duster like a baton. Did I mention the frills? She wore a dress with frills, and the face that had once had crow’s feet and signs of age looked, I don’t want to say young because that’s creepy, but certainly not matronly.

So, I said something sane like, “I’ve been on a nonstop rollercoaster of fun and excitement for three years, and just now found out my parents aren’t even human anymore. You’re wearing something I’d rather block from my memory and my dad’s a glorified calculator. My sister rides a robotic pink pony and that’s not an innuendo. So, yeah, drugs.”

I scanned page fifteen. It did nothing for me, even in light of my family’s new status as half robotic. Or fully. Or what the fuck ever.

“This isn’t right Flux!” I shook the page at him.

It beeped. Dad’s laughed poured out of the machine facing away from me. Mom glanced down and sort of blushed. It would have been a blush but her cheeks were still pale white, probably because she had no blood to whatever. God, even looking back at this, it clearly insane.

The door to our sort-of-private conference room slid open. “I have some drugs,” a female visitor said from behind me.

I turned to find Cindy standing there. Behind her was the black unicorn. Unicorns shouldn’t be able to fit into a room this size. It tried anyway, pushing passed Cindy and stick it’s head into the already tiny room.

“We need your help son,” the computer said.

“Can I get some time to process this?”

“You’ve been in here for an hour,” Cindy said. Something about her slow drawn out voice made it sound like she had nothing but downers for medication. I needed uppers, or a vacation.

“Can I get more time?” I wanted a fucking eternity or two. This whole mess was probably Walker’s fault. He’d set me up somehow.

“Where’s Alice?” mom asked.

My head shook rapidly. “No,” I said. Then I shook my head again. “Nope. No. None doing. Negative. I can’t introduce her you!” Both hands went out gesturing to my parents.

“Ashamed of us?”

My mouth hung open as I tried to process any response. Alice, was Alice. She’d see mom in a French maid outfit and either have absolutely no problem, or lose her god damned mind. Something about that though sobered me and I abruptly knew what to do. Pretend everything was normal.

“You know what. This is par for the course. His mom. I’m not hugging you. Dad, don’t let Flux near you. He might stick something in a port and upload toaster porn. I’m going to go take seven showers and scrub all of this from my mind. Especially,” I waved at the outfit again. It fell under the category of wrong.

My mom, which I still had trouble aligning in my head, was a robotic sex doll maid thing. Dad was a computer. My sister walked with cybernetic legs and rode a pink horse. If feels like I’m repeating this a lot, it’s because I almost lost my damn mind over it. And if you’re like “Well you weren’t too stable to begin with, so losing your mind isn’t a stretch,” well fuck you too.

They said other things. I know they did. What, was beyond me. I’d been so utterly overloaded that it didn’t register. You remember those old cartoons where the kids are sitting in school and the adult starts talking, but it’s just a trombone noise that makes no sense? That’s what happened. My parents, “the adults”, were talking and it made no goddamn sense.

I pushed out the door, away from Cindy and my family, passed the horses asses, and down a hall that probably went to living quarters. It didn’t. I got lost three turns and four floors later. I ended up in some glass biodome with birds chirping annoyingly under an artificial light that might be the sun.

From here I could see the Earth. The sight didn’t do much to make my pulse race or feel small. I felt, I guess the best word is exhausted. Deep down tired that went to whatever was deeper than my bones. From there, I tried to reason my way out of this madness.

The android maid and robot computer might not be my parents. They might be part of some super villain plot to give me ulcers. Assuming I could get ulcers to begin with. They might have been normal devices brainwashed to think they were my parents. They could have come from the future to stop a war that would never happen.

Above the world spun unfairly. I say unfairly because there were millions of people living down there that might never have to give a shit about a single powered problem. Sure, they’d watch the news and follow those super heroes that had high profile names. Some may move out of big cities because it was too chaotic, but none of them would fly to the moon in a van with a bunch of college kids on a field trip then find out their parents were machines.

That said nothing of the floating wreckage out there from dozens of blown up space ships. No really, we’re saying nothing about it. At all.

A prickling sensation crawled up my spine. Some distant muted part of my brain that still believed in danger screamed in warning. That passed and I put out a hand slowly. Thin fingers slid over mine.

“Hey,” Alice said. She’d made it up here. If such a thing mattered to her.

“Hi,” I responded.

If you wonder about pet names, we didn’t have any. We didn’t have a lot to begin with. I reflected on our strange relationship for a breath or two then pushed deeper thoughts of my mind. My life didn’t lend itself well to being ponderous. Only insanity, annoyance, and whatever bullshit came next.

“We’re on the moon?” she asked.

We’d been here before. Not regular blonde Alice, but black haired nightmare Alice.

“It’s not a sunset at the beach.” I winced as her fingers tightened over mine then trembled.

“It’s so strange,” she said. Alice stood up and pulled me over to the edge of the dome. There, we stared through thick segments of see-through material toward the Earth. A tiny marble against a backdrop of bright stars.

“Is it?”

“I know I’ve been here before. Or a place like here. Or,” her head shook as golden locks fluttered in front of her fair face. She pushed them back and continued, “I’ve been so many places in my dreams. Somehow, I thought none of it was real. Or I was going insane. Then something like this, but I’m seeing it as me. Me. Not her.”

Alice smiled at me.

I tried to smile back. The effort hurt. There was this part of me that had simply shut down. Being here, with Alice, it almost felt like it happened to someone else. I could wax on about how it felt, clammy fingers, a dull thudding, the inability to string two real thoughts together, but it all boils down to the same concept. I was in shock. Me. Jaded traveler of the superhero world.

“You’re her. She’s you,” I said then regretted opening my dumb mouth.

“I’m not, we’re not,” Alice started to stutter something and I shook my head.

“Split personalities are common with powers. I’ve seen it so many times. In normal people, it’s pretty rare, I’m told. But not for people like you. Sometimes it’s too strong. Sometimes people don’t like what’s happening.”

I’ll pause here and explain something else. Or a feeling. An experience that others besides me have to have experienced. I call it the “I should shut up now, but can’t” effect. It’s like it sounds. My stomach dropped and tongue felt numb. Panic signals, the same ones that alerted me to Alice’s impending presence were set off. I should have shut up right there, but couldn’t. I’d like to defend myself and say I was worn down. It’d be true, but my actions were still like ripping off a band aid made of super glue and duct tape from someone’s eyeball.

“Every time I see it, there’s two sides. Sometimes three. Sometimes four. Women often are more broken than guys. Fragmented, I guess they call it.” I’d done research. I’d compiled notes from my years of insanity. Because Alice was in my life and I needed to understand what she was going through. “Guys get their normal self. Then some hulking version that’s perfect. Or a charismatic hypnotist version like RazzleDazzle.”

“Razzle is a rapist,” Alice said.

My eyebrows went up. He was, but his power made it hard to prove in court. Luckily there were a few powered people that did not care one whit about court and had castrated RazzleDazzle three months ago. It even stuck for a while.

On I went. “He got away with it for years because his power transformed him. It’s like, camouflage. A built-in costume.” Alice was glaring at me and I winced. Arguing over a dirt bag detracted from the point but I charged ahead like an idiot. No, like a fearless moron bent on self destruction. “The Alice has killed people but you haven’t. That’s got to be screwing up your perception.”

She shrugged.

“Then there’s the possibility of a third you. Another personality that’s connected somehow.”

Alice didn’t shrug this time. She stared at the Earth with unblinking eyes. I waited and watched her hair. Strands flickered between raven black and cheerleader blond, then back again. I might have imagined it, but one strand went bright red for a split second.

“So, what if there is?” she asked.

I licked my lips briefly and glanced around for Flux. There were things I didn’t want on camera. Thankfully the recorder was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m saying it doesn’t matter. I’m no Saint. I’m no paragon of what’s just or sane. If anyone could understand, just a little, what you’re going through then it’s me. I know whatever’s going on with you, it’s complicated. It’s messy. It’s probably world threatening knowing my luck.” I chuckled weakly, and alone.

What’s weird is that she barely reacted. A normal person would have been angry or shook with suppressed rage. I think they would have. Alice smiled like I did. Broken. Barely functional. Sad. We were, and I mean were, a hell of a pair. But we’re talking about our day in the moon base right now. Not what comes next.

“I don’t know how to help.” I swallowed again. My initial rush to utter stupidity while weak had faded. “I can’t even promise to be there for you. Or say the right things. Or even have a date go right.”

Alice nodded slowly and tried to smile again. “Like yesterday. Our trip to the aquarium.”

“Not the first disaster we’ve had.”

She didn’t laugh at my attempted humor. After a pause, I sighed.

“I’m just,” stupid and at a loss for words, “I like having you around. Either of you. Maybe even the other you. You,” I almost said she needed me. I almost said the utterly wrong thing to say to a woman.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s lots of wrong words to say to a woman. Or a man if you need to promote some gender equality agenda. But admitting I liked the Alices because they needed me? That qualified as a wrong thing. That was like saying “I only want to be with you because you’re desperate enough to be with me.” Or some other weakness implying one sided feeling.

“You appreciate me despite my insane life. Both your personalities. You believed me when I said you weren’t insane. The Alice has chased me through whatever nightmare of wonderland we were in.”

“She tried to stab you,” Alice said.

“You tried to, because you thought I wasn’t real. She’s you. You’re you. If there’s another personality, or a dozen, it’s all you.”

“Unless I’m her,” Alice said.

I felt like she’d somehow made a jump in logic that didn’t connect upstairs. My lips tightened with a brief frown. Alice knew. That was the only conclusion I could think of from that statement. She’d known all along what I suspected. I wanted to badger her with questions but it seemed easier to stand there in silence for another minute.

A long awkward minute during which I could hear the sound of my own loud ass breathing.

“If you need help, I’ll do whatever I can. If you get yourself together and decide I’m too much, I’d understand.”

Is it weird that I worried more about her leaving me? Considering dealing with Vivian and Tina and Alice’s general possessive insanity, I still felt a ting of fear. Because I needed to be needed. Even if I accounted for my family’s recent arrival, they didn’t seem to need me. My sister had been more intent upon Flux’s ability to copy devices and their endless war.

“I’m not leaving you,” she said.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that everyone leaves me eventually. Or I left them. Through no fault of my own. That was life as a walking disaster. She’d be gone one day, and according to Willems statement, I’d be left along on a rock floating in space with only flying monkeys for company.

So, there were stood, staring at the Earth. Brooding in silence.

Then Alice slid a hand over my ass and squeezed.

“Really?” I questioned her.

“Sorry. Impulse control problems,” Alice said.

“Well, you’ve giving me pulse control problems. So, stop.”

Alice smiled and did this half a lip lick that got my attention. Her eyebrow lowered and eyes tightened. “You sure? We’re on the moon. It’s got to be on your bucket list.”

Alice, either of her, had no inhibitions regarding the when or where. I suspected that was tied to deeper issues of control and freedom to express herself. Or maybe it was tied to the Id Alice bleeding through. Either way, I wasn’t exactly in the mood.

I’d been briefly reunited with my family and run, vaguely terrified and overwhelmed, out of the room.

“The only thing on my bucket list is hoping all this, stops someday. Then I can settle down and be normal.”

Alice glanced down and twisted her feet back and forth. “That sounds great,” she said.

Then more silence. I’d to say we shared a deep kiss and a quickie in the moon’s biodome while overlooking the wreckage of my mortal enemies, the mole people, but we didn’t.

“Did you meet your family?” Alice said, breaking the silence.

I nodded.

“Thoughts?” she asked.

“I hate pink,” I answered.

“Me too.”

And for a moment, that short moment, we both had real smiles on.

Time Travel’s Impossible (But so is everything else)

A possibly satirical piece from The Potato

Time Travel is one of the most speculative things in existence next to vitamins. There’s lots of proof that vitamins can cause changes upon people, but it’s inconsistent between samples. It’s the same for Time Travel. People claim to have traveled to alternate futures, but it’s equally possible that these are brief ether creations that pop into nothing as soon as the main subject leaves this created world.

It’s more likely that someone has heavily dosed a subject and made them believe that everything is from the past. It’s easier to gaslight a life than it is to travel in time. To travel in time, one also has to travel in space - a great deal, with accuracy that no one could possible understand. Why? Because gravity doesn’t affect time in any measurable statistic. Gravity barely affects light due to the speed. Go on, ask a scientist.

If we were to compare particle effects, a butterfly flapping it’s wings on the other side of the planet, or even the moon, is literally (not figuratively) more impacting than gravity is on time.

For the simpleton, this means if a normal human popped back even a day - the earth would be half a light year away from where they plopped to.

Therefore, it’s our conclusion that time travel is impossible. But so are half the other super powers out there, so what’s a little thing like physics to stop nonsense from happening?