I don’t read, it’s overrated. Ted does. Those other folks at Hero Watch, they do. My fantastic viewers who stop the website by to shove their sage advice down my throat from across the internet, they say they read.

The reason I’m talking about people who read, instead of sharing repetitive details regarding my my death grip on a huge leg, is because in this episode, Ted’s I-Know-It-all-because-I-Read disease will kick in. After this footage went up, he rambled at length in three different blog posts about this power imbalance between spouses. A subject he claims to know a lot about.

So, before I talk about what happened, I need to address Ted’s rants. Which can be done thusly and suchly by saying “Fuck you Ted”. He’s a self-centered asshole who kidnapped Alice, gave me an evil robot eye, and fought heroes just to break up his wife from her second husband. Thusly and suchly he has no right to talk to others about marital imbalances.

Back to the present, which is still me, both arms clenched around Vivian’s upper thigh, face pressed into her torn pants. It didn’t arouse me because she’d been flailing for the last minute and kicked me in the balls. Which I hadn’t wanted to talk about, and that’s why we veered into “Fuck you Ted” land.

Enough of a recap?

Onto the action.

“You’ve got her son!” my dad shouted.

My ears rang. Everyone’s voice hit decibels my brain couldn’t register. Vivian’s animalistic outrage echoed inside my skull. Both eyes watered. Snot dribbled down my nose. I ignored all that and tightened my arms in hopes that her leg might pop off.

She flopped like a fish. I held on and tried not to pee but may have failed. Both my legs were bunched tightly and her land splashes beat my head against her rear. The poor boxed ear rang.

“Drag her over!” dad suggested.

“Not,” she flipped us over, smushing my face into the floor. “Happening!”

Her elbow bent back and smashed at where my body would have been were I twice my height. I squinted then rubbed my nose into her backside to clear my face. It backfired, smearing around dribbles.

“Get off,” I tried to say.

To which she responded, “Let go, you panty waste!” and spun us around again, going for one my legs.

She pulled. I kept my death grip and tried to understand what a panty waste might be.

“Fucking, needle-dicked,” she let go and huffed for air. I continued to hang on, afraid of this being a trap.

“Quick,” dad shouted. A minion squeaked and leapt at us. Three more dogpiled. Vivian flailed weakly. They pulled at her arms, leaving scratches all down the exposed skin. Another pulled at my hair, trying to pry me loose.

Lady Alexandria backhanded that one. It went flying, taking part of my scalp with it. Her foot kicked another one. It glowed a brief green then self-destructed. Her kick had sent it flying too fast to do any real damage.

“You little shits,” Vivian said then growled. Her anger died quickly and Vivian’s head fell to the floor.

I held my breath but the woman had stopped moving. Vivian had utterly passed out. The last minion pulled once more then stared at Lady Alexandria. The barbarian woman put meaty fists upon her hips and glared down at the armored mouse. It looked at her, then back to the unconscious Vivian, and let go. Its paws went up in surrender.

Lady Alexandria’s glare shifted to me. I kept my death grip on Vivian’s upper thigh and still couldn’t figure out what panty waste meant.

My eyes blinked in an uneven pattern. The mountain of muscle above me said, “Young Millard. Desist.”

One of my ears still rang.

“Come again?” I stuttered.

“We should cage her while her spirit has fled,” Lady Alexandria said.

My head tilted and arms slowly loosened. They ached madly and both shoulders popped. Before I could fully process my limbs status, Lady Alexandria yanked Vivian off the ground and slung her over a shoulder.

Lady Alexandria marched with the unconscious Vivian over to their glass tube device thingy that wasn’t a teleporter. I rubbed the spot on my head where I’d had more hair. It bled slightly but that bothered me less than the idea of going bald. Alice didn’t like bald guys.

My eyelids dropped and I debated taking a nap. It would be glorious to sleep without having Vivian’s cries waking me up every thirty minutes. I glanced around.

Hans and my dad were bent over some mechanism. They were pointing at buttons and nodding as if they knew how to operate the weird machine. Flux hovered near Hans, recording the entire situation.

Vivian was slung into the glass container. She bounced off the back of the glorified jar and slid to the ground. Her eyes fluttered as the jolt woke her. Up she came, a giant doll on strings with utterly trashed clothes. Vivian stood, trapped inside the glass tube technology nightmare. Her fists weakly banged but the material didn’t even rattle.

I stood up and my knees popped.

A horde of mice marched into the room. They fanned out and surrounded everyone. My dad and Hans kept commenting about the buttons in front of them. They pointed to a big blue one. I suspected it did nothing useful. Flux chirped and Hans nodded then jerked. He slid away from Flux’s hovering form.

More minions filed in. They stood silently, forming deep ranks. I stared at them and wondered what sort of impending doom we were facing. Maybe they were too stupid to attack without Vivian ordering them. Maybe the mice people were about to rebel. Or they’d go feral and kill everyone in here.

Dad the robot still hadn’t said anything to me since Vivian was put in her glass jar, but I didn’t want to see him devoured by a horde of angry mice men. They were probably wire chewers. Rodents were probably robot men’s worst enemies.

My mind drifted off to a few other possible theories but none of them made much sense. A minute later, after the room had been stuffed to the gills, a minion wearing some red version of their armor, waltzed in. IN his hands he held up a small throne with Lord Purple resting on it calmly.

If you looked closely enough, you could see a belt strapping him to the throne. There were small puddles around the throne’s base that looked like they glued the chair to his hands. It would have been way more official if I hadn’t noticed the children’s craft supplies keeping him in place.

“Gentlemen,” Lord Purple said dryly. Lady Alexandria grunted from her position of guarding the tube with Vivian in it. “Pardon. And Lady. I see the plan was successful.”

My dad turned and nodded. “Oh, we did. Got her locked up and ready to go. We’re just trying to figure out which dial to use. So many buttons to chose from.”

Vivian shook her head then shouted weakly. “You’ve got nothing. You midget cock weasels couldn’t get on top of me with a ladder!”

In her defense, she was right. Lord Purple would need seventeen ladders to get on top of her. It also didn’t feel even slightly intimidating because she’d been trapped.

“That doesn’t make sense. Both midgets and weasels? Or is the cock a weasel?” Hans frowned. “Try again.”

She did. “You unmitigated donky-dick sleeve!”

“I like that one,” Hans said. He turned to Flux and nodded. “I really like that one.” His meaty hands started clapping while Flux beeped happily. “The mouth on her is crude, but nothing we can’t work with.”

Then he did a double take, stared at Flux, and backed away a few feet. The floating eyeball didn’t notice or didn’t care and continued hovering over the control board. Its gaze swung back and forth.

“One of the many things I look forward to, provided this insane hodgepodge gadget works, is that I can finally find a better use for that course mouth of my wife’s,” Lord Purple said.

“I’ll bet.” Hans chuckled.

Ted would probably admonish me through some company Email or snide editors remark on the Hero Watch website. He’d say I didn’t ask enough questions or get clarification. He’d be right. While they all bobbled around perusing their Machiavellian schemes, I kind of stared into the middle distance and took it all in. My brain hadn’t finished resetting after this whole mess and I needed time.

Or a nap.

Or to know that Alice would be alright.

I slowly walked over to the glass prison and stared at Vivian’s tall form. She looked right over me toward the two fiddling with their display board of buttons.

The lead minion stood in front of the prison. It presented Lord Purple throne, so that he might glare across the distance at his gigantic wife. Which I feel the need to point out due to my own confusion over this whole situation. A few minutes ago, it’d seemed like she ran the entire ship, army, and everything. Now that she’d been caged the minions were following Lord Purple around.

Maybe they were simply too stupid to do anything else.

Vivian started the classic captured villain rant. “You think this is going to stop me? I’ve been imprisoned before, and what’s this shit? Glass. You going to try to use a magnifying glass on me and melt my ass or something? Maybe you should use to find your microscopic peckers instead.”

Lord Purple simply smiled. If I had to guess, his grin implied such clever lines like “I’ll show you microscopic” and “You’ll be singing a different tune soon” or “I’ll shut your mouth up soon enough”. Maybe all of the above. Of course, he stunk of royal manners and couldn’t bring himself to say any of it.

I stared at Lord Purple. He raised a regal eyebrow and gave me a sidelong glance but said nothing. My fingers twitched but I resisted flipping him off. The man had been tortured in entirely different fashion of the last few days and I assumed his revenge would be forthcoming.

The wanna-be reporter in me asked, “What’s this do? Make marshmallows?”

I wanted a candy bar. Which isn’t really important to the situation, except to point out my mind had once again reverted to food as a method of deflection.

“Ah.” Lord Purple heaved a sighed then smiled brightly. Like, a tooth gleamed. “This container is specially designed to rectify my life’s greatest problem, or so I’m told. In peasant terms it will create an equilibrium between me and my wife. Such that she will no longer be the one in charge around here.”

“Fat chance!” she shouted.

Lord Purple’s smirk grew. “Indeed. Your unsightly proportions will soon be reduced to something far more manageable.”

It took me half a second to put it all together. “A shrinking chamber? You have one that will shrink her to your size?”

Lord Purple nodded regally. Which was far better than any sage nods I’d attempted in my life. I wanted lessons for the assholes in my life that needed to looked down on.

I debated my prior attempt to teleport to Wonderland. It should have worked, but the wrist device had instead brought me into this mess. They might be connected. I dared ask the general assembly, “Does anyone know what this nonsense has to do with Alice?”

Hans stared at me. Flux beeped. My dad opened his mouth and said, “I don’t know about Alice, but”

I cut him off. “Then I don’t care.”

“You should,” dad said. “This is all”- And I cut him off again while shaking my head.

“I really, don’t care. My concern is Alice. Vivian’s trapped. You’re going to do something to her with all this crap. It’ll,” I waved hands at Lord Purple. His red armored minion snarled at me and pulled the throne closer to his chest. As if I intended to knock the toy doll off his seat with my flailing hands. “It’ll whatever him and her. They’ll still be married because crazy over here is fucked up in the head.”

“Damn skippy,” Vivian smiled and tilted her head a bit too far. The kind of too far that someone did to prove they were insane.

“And I wish you luck with that, because I doubt she’ll get nicer, or saner, after this. You’ll have a tiny terror instead of a giant one. Neither of those facts help me figure out what’s going on with Alice. Or why I’m having dreams about her.”

My dad and Hans shared a glance. Ever seen an android lift and eyebrow in puzzlement? It’s kind of funny how the plastic hair makes him look just a shade wrong. Just a bit off.

Vivian laughed. “Oh, I know this one. Those are wet dreams. You need to get laid, you pathetic pencil penis pipsqueak.” Her lips pouted and she mocked me.

Hans snorted.

I blinked one eye, then the other and felt the need to say something. “Not even close.”

“Please. You still want this.” She gestured to herself.

“No. I have Alice.” That was me, naively assuming everything would work out. “She’s better than you could ever be.”

“Really?” Vivian acted excited then frowned and an eyebrow twitched. “I’m not better?”

That kind of question is a trap that women utter. There were no right answers, so I stuck to the facts.

“You’re married. You tried to kill me. You apparently tried to kill my parents.” I had no clue where my mom was in the middle of all this. Probably backing a cake. “You’re clearly hung up on the whole alien abduction thing. You’d probably try to splice my penis with a monkey’s given a chance.”

This qualified as flippancy gone stupid.

Vivian nodded fervently. “Oh, I totally would. And feed you strange things while you slept. You’d shit cheese coated marble spiders for a month.”

My head shook slowly. She’d been angry while chasing me. She’d also been downright demur then snide back at Wilhelm’s school. Before that she’d been utterly surprised at my existence during the brief moment we met, all those months ago.

In short, I couldn’t wrap my brain around Vivian.

Which brought me back to attend number two to get an answer from anyone. “What does all this have to do with Alice?” My chest heaved in a sigh. There were other concerns too, I suppose. Maybe cutting my dad off had been wrong. “And what’s on that stupid mole planet that’s calling those girls? Why would the Purples really want to work with mole people, when their goals are to crash the moon into the Earth so they have more underground real estate?”

Vivian whistled. “I don’t know,” she said with a bright smile.

I turned to Lord Purple and felt the need to be snide. Which isn’t totally my fault, that was the exhaustion talking. “You got a fucking clue, your royal shortness?”

“Excuse me?” He pulled himself up and stood at a regal eight inches tall.

My fingers bent. I resisted slapping the shit of the part-time dildo and his throne. Which is sad, because doing so would have been downright comical. It would have also hurt and probably shattered his spine in fifty spots.

Plus, he was on my parents’ side, somehow. And we were still surrounded by an army of exploding mouse minions.

Vivian banged on her glass cage. “Did you call my husband short? No one gets to do that but me! He’s my pocket husband. Do you know how much it costs to get him drunk? Nothing. A thimble of whiskey lasts all month!”

My brain reset. I stared at the board with all it’s buttons and debated pressing every single one. Worst case scenario, they’d backfire and turn Vivian into a monster on the scale of Ham-star. They’d duke it out for galactic supremacy.

I tried a third time. “All this is happening at the same time I’m getting dreams from Alice. That’s not a coincidence.”

Given my life, it could perfectly well be a coincidence but it might not be. There’s no way I could go from being what amounted to a field trip chaperon, to meeting my parents, to being embroiled in this war, and not have all this tied together.

“What about Alice? What about Alice? You know a girl doesn’t like it when all you do is talk about your new relationships. Like you’re so great.”

I waved my hands at her. “If you don’t know, shut up!”

I could be fairly sure that Vivian actually enjoyed this.

“Even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you, you crayon colored,” she smiled and looked up to her left. “Crap.” Vivian snapped her fingers at Hans. “What’s that thing where shit gets stuck on your asshairs?”

“Dingleberry,” Hans offered.

“Yeah. That. My dad had a good one about that. I can’t remember the exact words. Basically meant someone was a useless piece of smeared shit.”

“You’ve never spoken of your sire,” Lord Purple said with a note of wonder.

They were all fucking glossing right over my questions as if they didn’t matter. I couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t help me address my problems when clearly their own were on the way to resolution.

Like Vivian, she kept right on happily chatting with her husband.

“Oh, no. He’s dead. Kind of smushed him with a spaceship. I got the house. And his underaged girlfriend. And their fucking cats.” Vivian shuddered. “I hate cats so much. You know they got this alien species out here, looks like a cat. Isn’t. Mouth opens up at the middle and it eats people whole.” She gestured at her own face and made a parting motion. “I found these birds that hunt them. Best birds in the universe. They were on the ship somewhere until,” she would have rambled on for ages.

“I don’t care,” I repeated loudly. “All of it doesn’t mean shit. You know why? Because in the end you’ll be dead. Apparently, everyone here will die, and I’m the only one who’s going to be left. Alone. In space. With a fucking banana tree and flying shit-monkeys!”

“Fecal flingers!” Vivian helped.

“Alliterative insults can be good,” Hans said. He nodded rapidly to Flux again. The robotic eye beeped, again. It’d been beeping the whole time, like an annoying video recording metronome.

She piled on. “Quiet you overpaid whore!”

“And overworked!” he added then started laughing.

Vivian laughed too. That confused the unholy hell out of me.

Once again, they’d ignored me.

“Does no one believe the whole doomsday scenario? Does no give a shit about any of my problems?”

My dad stared at me and shrugged. “Son. Focus on one problem at a time. For now, we’ve got your ex trapped in a bottle. Which is surreal enough for me, because honestly I didn’t picture this when you two started dating.”

“Strange. This is exactly how I pictured out prom ending,” I said dryly.

I hadn’t. Vivian devolved into mad laughter again.

“As for the monkeys, seers have claimed to see the future for ages. No one knows how it will end, and what they see changes constantly. Not just for the human race, but all the others. Why stress about it? That brings me back to the first point, one thing at a time. That’s how we Millard’s roll.”

“That’s your sage advice. This place is literally on fire. There’s countless dead monsters and holes in the ship. Those holes go into the vacuum of space!” My head tilted to one side like the room was full of idiots. Which it was, because those mice probably had zero brain cells. “Alice is sending me dreams where she’s going away for good. Wilhelm, the fucking, Walker, said I end up on an island in space with shit monkeys!”

“Flying fecal flingers!” my ex-girlfriend shouted.

I slammed two buttons on the console in hopes that Vivian would melt into a six-inch version of herself. Nothing happened. My arms shook with rage and I eyed the next few levers.

Vivian launched.

My dad frowned. “Your wife is cavalier about this.”

Lord Purple took up the chore of responding. “Ah.” Dealing with peons is so difficult. “Because she’s crazier than a loon. Haven’t you noticed? Whatever initial splices she was given seem to have left deep fractures in her mind. As such, my dear Lady Purple is not one for forethought. Or hindsight. She is an impulsive creature of the now. Which makes her occasionally delightful and often trying.”

For those of you playing the home game, that put her somewhere between Alice and Id Alice in terms of temperament. Which should confuse you at the least, but it worries me. Like, clearly I’m the problem here.

I snorted, much like Hans had. “Sounds like she’s changed a lot since high school.” Vivian hadn’t changed at all.

Lord Purple gestured to his minion. The red armored creature turned his throne in my direction. “What is this high school? Do you have to imbibe narcotics to attend learning?”

That’s the question they addressed. Not the important ones. They wanted to know about high school. The room was full of assholes and extremely useful. I began eying my surroundings for an exit strategy.

Lady Alexandria grunted then fled her arms. The muscles that bulged were thicker than my waist. “On my world, we had to battle our way to our institutes of learning. There we would be educated until we were covered in bruises and returned to the road home. Then we would battle gloriously with anything that had survived our venture to school.”

I could throw myself on the dashboard of buttons. Maybe we’d all explode. Maybe one mouse minion would go off and the rest would pop in order. The resulting chaos would make them take me seriously.

“There. Figured out the order of buttons that should get Lady Purple in order,” my dad declared. “It should be a combination of these levers here, then these buttons in sequence.”

Hans snorted. “Knew it.”

“No you didn’t. Despite having a hand in repurposing this Hac’Shanai device, it never had a user’s manual. It took all my processing power just to translate the markings on the dash.”

I wouldn’t be ignored, not when we were talking about one of my favorite subjects. “Hans hates users manuals.” I thumbed at the floating eyeball. “And his aren’t in English either.”

Flux printed out a dozen useless papers, all of them with him in overly penciled detail. The rest of them had joined me in crayon coloring. Even Vivian, who’s stick legs were thicker than the rest of us. Hans stopped and stared at the marking son the paper, then back to the Hac’Shanai whatever-vice.

That started a whole new round of conversation as he grabbed the user’s manual and started placing them in order, in front of my dad.

I’m going to pause their back and forth talking here. Really, it all boiled down to the same stuff as normal. “You’ll never stop me” and “We’ll stop you for sure!” and “What does this button do?” and “Look, these are the same markings”. Plus, my mind started glossing over the back and forth conversation where they all remarked on Flux’s artwork because none of it helped me figure out what was going on with Alice.

They simply didn’t know. Which made sense I guess, because my mom and dad hadn’t really know anything about Alice to begin with. It’d only been a few days since they met, or a few weeks, and no one really had time to get on the internet and go to www.whatisthedealwithalice.fork and learn everything they needed.

None of it stopped me from feeling dizzy and hearing my own heartbeat thrum in both ears. I’d been engaging in this entire get away spree to find a way to Alice before something bad happened. Something bad would happen anyway and I knew it, with freakish certainty.

It didn’t matter how much I struggled; I’d never be in time.

While my mind put that nightmare realization on a loop, Hans and dad pressed their buttons. I watched as Vivian cackled madly and gas billowed around in her little glass prison. An entire city’s worth of smog floated in the tube, got sucked out into some sort of canister, and compressed away.

That process took maybe four minutes. Smoke flooded out until the residue clung to the side of her cage. Thick enough that we could barely see inside. Vivian’s laugher grew weaker, and weaker. Or less intense.

Lord Purple stood upon his hand throne and smiled down. His feet were precariously close to the edge of his platform. “After all of those nasty gases have been expelled, you’ll be much more manageable. It was worth having one of your doctors reconfigure the chamber and letting Mister Hans’s attachments do the rest.”

There were a dozen canisters off to the side, neatly stacked by the device spitting them out into a pile like bowling pins. I scratched one arm and realized Vivian had lied about the percentage of gas inside her.

I stared blankly and waited for some sign of movement inside the now disgusting glass jar. Lord Purple sniffed then waved at my dad. Dad pressed the blue button. Water streamed down the side in a trickle, then a high powered spray, cleaning the edges of gunk.

That sent Vivian into an absolute screaming fit. That’s me putting it kindly. She shouted barely audible curses that were drowned out by the water. Along with her torn wreck of clothes, the remaining pieces of armor that she’d been wearing, and whatever other filth lay inside.

The water continued to pour down, never staying inside the tube long enough to get up to her waist. Her now three-inch-high waist.

“Hey, who’s the cheap drunk now?” I asked dryly.

I’m going to continue to gloss over the remaining details, because Vivian actually looked happy at the idea of being a cheap drunk. Or simply so tiny and confused that maybe she liked everything. The red armored mouse walked in, carefully plucked her up, and turned away from us. Two other mice came in and they fiddled around then turned to face us, revealing a literally dressed Vivian. Complete with a black choker and a leash that Lord Purple held the reigns of.

The mouse carrying them, said nothing.

Lord Purple lifted his hand and eyed the long leash that went to Vivian’s choker. “Now, my dear Lady, we’ll see who has a needle dick.”

Her eyes darted around and she smiled. “Honey? Maybe we should get an annulment.”

“No. I’m afraid that won’t do. I put a ring on it. Remember?”

“Yes dear,” Vivian said. She smiled shyly.

My brain tried to barf on itself. I’d thought Lord Purple was a victim but maybe he’d snapped and given in to insanity. Either way, I was sure Vivian would survive whatever came next.

They were all busy doing their gloating dance. The one where one person goes “I have you now” and the other goes “Mercy!”. It’s a boring back and forth speech and I doubted Vivian would wear that collar a second longer than she wanted to.

I’d found the pieces to my escape plan. One of those canisters of Vivian’s sat nearby. Plus I still had the teleportation bracers. They should put me somewhere away from this nightmare. I glanced around then looked up to see the red armored minion, a few feet away. He held up the happily couple.

“This could have been all yours,” she said while smacking her tiny ass.

“Now, now dear.” He pressed a button and electric arched down the leash into her collar. Vivian buckled and fell to her knees. The pretty dress splayed around her in an artful circle.

“Oh f-f-fuck.” Her eyes fluttered and she moaned.

Lord Purple opened his mouth.

I stepped back, toward the canister of Vivian’s gas, and put up my hands. “No thanks needed. Doing my part. Take care of her. Keep her away from Earth. No return to senders.” With each comment I stepped closer, and brushed close to dad.

Lord Purple stared at his wife then sent another jolt down. Vivian bucked.

My dad leaned over there and whispered, “I think you dodged a bullet there son.”

“You think?” I asked. A whole host of thoughts ran through my brain and were promptly dumped when Lord Purple shocked her a third time.

She fell, convulsed, and didn’t look at all in pain. Her eyes were glassy and a Vivian chuckled weakly.

I blinked slowly, pretended that Vivian hadn’t proven her mental instability while a few feet from her husband and wearing a collar. Or that he hadn’t zapped her. Or that she hadn’t apparently gotten off on it.

And in case anyone out there is crying foul at me for relating events that happened, let’s be serious for a moment. This wasn’t bondage or sadism or whatever. People in those communities tend to have rules, respect, and a whole host of borderline ritualist behavior to keep everything compartmentalized. Because in the morning you’ve got to split a bagel with civility.

Vivian’s just crazy. A crazy, miniature, pirate princess. And that’s my fault.

My eyebrows shot up. “Well. I think that’s it for me. You guys good? No more pillaging? Leaving the space hamsters to their own devices? Anyone else noticing a theme here?” I looked down at my wrist device. The bright lights were still visible. “Mole people. Giant space hamster. Exploding mice. It’s a whole theme.”

It was time to escape. I fiddled with the wrist and set the numbers to anywhere but here. The canisters of compressed gas would probably work to get me to Wonderland. It shouldn’t kill me anyway, though it might put boils on the insides of my eyelids though.

“Son?” My dad tilted his head and looked toward my destination. His robotic eyes went wide.

“Because I think I’ve had enough of my crazy ex-girlfriend. Gotta go see the current crazy girlfriend. Remember her? Remember how no one hand answers about her? I’ll bet you’ll wish you did. I’ll bet it’s important.”

“Son!” dad shouted. He dove my direction.

I already had my hand on the canister. A second later gas shot out. Lord Purple and his delirious wife were hustled out by the red armored mouse man before the gas could reach them.

“I have to tell you,” he said. The words grew muffled as Vivian’s extracts washed over us. Thick clouds that muffled everything.

It was too late to stop my grand plan and I didn’t want to hear what he’d say anyway. There were places to go. While the room still spun, I slammed the random destination button. My other fingers curled to flip off Vivian’s departing carriage. I also kind of aimed at everyone else in the room. My dad stopped and his plastic jaw dropped.

Then the device tore my body from their shithole of a space dock and flung me to the next stop.

Oddity Study Highlights

Name: Memories Are Full of Plot Holes

Translated from Technobabble by Captain Longhall, the sucker currently in charge of Area 51

There’s seventeen different articles on the subject of “memories” – and since they’re written by people with fancy titiles and degrees, they’re crammed with big words uselessly strung together to sound important but ultimately mean nothing.

We’ve got time travel. Alternate dimensions. Mind control. Space Aliens. Every single one screws with your Average Joe’s brain. These studies say Average Joe hasn’t self-destructed because memory is subjective, often wrong, and “being edited”. Which is great because when we have world shaking disasters and if people didn’t have the ability to get over them, humanity would crumble into a ball.

It’s bad because events are being rewritten. It’s not by the governments. We’ve got the technology, sure, but not the manpower or sanity. The last time we tried to set up an agency to keep superpowers under wraps, the leadership went sideways. There’s not enough Scotch in the world to explain how sideways it went.

What’s really FUBAR, is that these memories are edited in near real time. Two people can have a conversation and one will simply fuzz out. They won’t understand the reference. Or won’t hear the question.

Here’s the nightmare fuel, because neither of us need sleep. If a conglomeration of governments with all sorts of fancy tech can’t manage it, who is? What if they’ve even adjusted my memories, and I’m still a train wreck with the stuff remaining? Or because of the stuff remaining?

If that won’t make you drink, nothing will.