Independence Day in All Dimensions
Chapter 18 -Life Among the Three Dimensionals
Editor's Pre-Script to Chapter 18 and Disclaimer of Authenticity
Remember me?
Of course you don't! I am the Editor of this book, the journal of Ugoñaschßtenätraξo's Life Among the Three Dimensionals. He wrote his book while posing as the Earthling 'Hugo Nash,' the true version of whom was, ahem, "temporarily" allowed to chill in the mezzanine between parallel universes.
Of course, you read my introduction eighteen chapters ago... or, rather, you skipped that part, didn't you? Students seem to be the same in every part of the Multiverse, aren't you. Perhaps you have to start reading again from the beginning, hmm?
Ever since our infinitely wise and benevolent authorities re-opened... and then re-closed... the Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University in the central Looo Nebula, all of you students in training for Earth-side substitution have been studying and preparing for your exams on-line.
It's not a very good way to learn anything, we know we know; but that's what the reconstituted and vastly wise Pioneer Central Administration and Gassy Committee for Public Safety decided was absolutely necessary. And because the Authorities, ahem ahem, decided it was absolutely necessary, it was, ipso facto, the right decision. Period. End of discussion.
In order to curb unruly and unsanctioned protests by university students wearing masks and demonstrating against the five dimensional government's colonial policies and violent imperial behavior toward non-gaseous life forms (as though anyone ought to care about any, ahem, life forms less dimensional than intelligent gas bags!), the campuses were closed and everyone was sent home to continue their studies remotely. Because that was what the Authorities decided, it was ipso facto the right thing to do! Period. Discussion over.
But we are not naive, my dear students, no we are not! We know that in the comfort of your own homes, you have been skipping chapters of your reading assignments, skimming here and there and basically reading just enough to get by. Yes, indeed. We know the tricks and subterfuges because, ahem ahem, students do seem to be the same in every part of the Multiverse.
But 'getting by' won't cut it; no, it simply will not cut it. By reading this textbook, you were all supposed to have been learning the language skills necessary to continue the five dimensional subterfuge, the gradual deconstruction and reconstruction of this puny planet Earth. You have all been in training to further our 5D program of terra-forming the Earth into a plasmoidic paradise; id est, a radioactive and chemically contaminated five dimensional paradise for us, rather than for the quasi-intelligent three dimensional dominant species of that little planet.
Academic studies are critically important, dear students. This has been proven by those who, over the years, previously have been inserted and substituted for many of Earth's ruling class without anyone noticing. These prior successful substitutions show just how important it is to master the linguistic subtleties and mannerisms of human speech in order to accomplish our transformative project.
However...
... even in the cases of some of Earth's preeminent political, military and business leaders who we successfully replaced long ago, some of their, ahem, 'educational deficiencies' - due to sloppy study habits, no doubt - are jeopardizing the noble 5D project that you, too, have been training to continue.
So, as with the current and immediate past Presidents of the United States, France, the EU, and Ukraine; the Prime Ministers of Israel, Great Britain, and Canada; the Bundeskanzler of Germany and the leader of his not-so-Green Party ally; and the heads of several trivial states in Scandinavia and in the Baltics... notwithstanding all of these previously substituted five dimensional gas bags holding their respective high offices, the citizens have begun to notice strange ticks and odd behaviors that practically give the game away!
Some - but gratefully, so far, only some - of the quasi-intelligent three dimensional citizens have started to catch on through mere observation - in spite of the, ahem, 'guidance' of the western media (that is, conveniently, also controlled by five dimensional editors and publishers) - that these apparent leaders of the, ahem ahem, so-called "free world" (as our own five dimensional leadership have cleverly defined them!) are, at the least, just a tiny bit peculiar.
So far, these gas bag world leaders' stumbling use of human languages, their incomprehensible policies, their incoherent narratives and nonsensical behavior have led to the growing suspicion that all of these presidents and prime ministers are either hallucinating artificially intelligent manikins OR that they are truly inhuman.
Soon, the citizens might start to also realize that these so-called 'world leaders' are neither hallucinating AI robots nor inhuman, but in fact non-humans... which is what they really are: five dimensional poseurs engaged in an other-worldly project of global deconstruction and reconstruction.
Yes, indeed! Soon, because of inadequate education and the lazy study habits of your five dimensional university alumni, the cat may soon be out of the bag (as the local quasi-intelligents are wont to say): that most of the quasi-intelligent world leaders of Planet Earth are five dimensional gas bags gently pushing and pulling the 3Ds to their own destruction... and, ahem, our own plasmoidic heaven on Earth (in a manner of speaking, ahem ahem).
The curiously incomprehensible syntax and childlike a-historical narratives of these inadequately schooled five dimensional substitute world leaders - recent American presidents and Canadian prime ministers are but prime examples of such gas bag incompetence - have placed at risk our grand project of terra-forming Planet Earth with expanding war, radioactivity and pollution more to our five dimensional liking than to the liking of the 3D locals.
This increased risk, dear students, is due simply to poor scholarship and academic sloth such as all of YOU, my dear students, have exhibited. Yes, yes. Indeed. Ahem.
So while the so-called secondary 'plum' positions have already been substituted with intelligent gas bags - such as the governorships of New York, California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Texas and Florida, and the judges of all of these states’ courts - there are still many important positions yet to be filled: college professorships, public school teachers, mayors, business leaders, actors, movie producers, lawyers, engineers, software programmers, directors on the boards of major technology companies, bankers and financiers, in America and around the world. Yes, indeed, there is still room for all of you in the unfinished five dimensional business of terra-forming Planet Earth... IF you have mastered the language well enough to credibly pass yourselves off as genuine three dimensionals!
… Unlike, of course, our hapless 'Hugo Nash' who, as you dear students will appreciate, was a complete NINCOMPOOP!
Clearly, Chapter 17 of his journal, Life Among the Three Dimensionals, was intended to be Hugo Nash's last entry, although whether it was or was not is still a matter of some academic dispute... but just a trivial dispute in my humble and august position as a university professor, ahem ahem, wherefore you should not question my opinion!
Nevertheless, the bumbling Mr. Nash clearly had a seventh sense about his impending dissolution.
Certainly, 'Hugo Nash' came to understand that, due to fundamental changes in our own five dimensional universe... changes for the better, I hasten to add... that he was literally 'stuck' forever and ever to live the rest of his useless and stultifying life among the primitive dominant species of this three dimensional world. Having come to this logical conclusion, 'Hugo Nash,' just like any gaseous intelligent being, must have determined that his Complete Immersion, Disintegration and Recycling à la auto-da-fé was the logical course of action. So, even in the absence of facts, the authorities have concluded that this is what happened, therefore it must have happened. That is what we reported in our own five dimensional media, wherefore it must be true!
Unfortunately, there are naysayers and Conspiratorial Dissenters who deny the "official" story of Hugo Nash's self-immolation. To their shame, the Conspiratorial Dissenters claim that the official story is a cover-up, blatant propaganda and similar such tin-hat blather. The criticism is wholly unfounded, of course, and deleterious to the inertia of gaseous society.
No such criticism can be tolerated when it is untrue. Because it is intolerable, it is ipso facto untrue. Despite gaseous notions of free speech, we absolutely cannot tolerate speech that we have determined is false. Our wise authorities have so decreed, so it must be. If you disagree, you will be deflated!
Nevertheless, certain Conspiratorial Dissenters have proposed a different ending to the story altogether. The Conspiratorial Dissenters have repeatedly claimed that the "final chapter" of Hugo Nash's Life Among the 3Ds was purportedly authored by the 4D intelligent vegetable "Szofia," and that this chapter is the definitive and true account of what happened.
This is utterly preposterous - even if it is true - and, because the notion is preposterous, it simply cannot be true! That is so because no 78,238 intelligent and carnivorous vegetable posing as a twelve-year-old 3D intelligent -- and a self-pollinating female vegetable to boot!!! -- could possibly have undertaken to send a zippledisk on a five dimensional Tandytripper, let alone to have dictated it in such rude and crude vernacular such as this fictitious individual has used!
Furthermore, the notion is utterly ridiculous that an intelligent five dimensional plasmoidic would rather not return to Gas Land and choose, instead, to consort with a lesser dimensional life form. No, no gaseous intelligent, not even such a degenerate as Hugo Nash, could have deigned, rather than to immolate himself, instead to "go native" by remaining among the three dimensionals... let alone socialize with a carnivorous four dimensional vegetable! The mere suggestion is completely, disgustingly and profoundly insulting as it is inconceivably preposterous! Wherefore, because it is inconceivable, ipso facto, it did not happen.
End of discussion.
Full stop.
So, you Conspiratorial Dissenters, just shut up already before we send you off to be flattened!
But alas...
In a gesture to the Conspiratorial Dissenters, the publishers of this textbook (over the informed objections of this learned editor, I might add), solely for the shameful and meretricious purpose of "selling books," have elected to include herewith as though it were legitimate, the completely unauthenticated and obviously bogus final chapter of Hugo Nash's journal which, unfortunately, the unruly and unwashed entropic gaseous masses contend is the true conclusion of Hugo Nash's journal, Life Among the 3Ds. Naturally, it was not composed in Original Field Impulse 2.2., and there is some question whether this final chapter, written as it were by this fictional 'Szofia' creature, is even written in proper formal English!
Thus, in this Editor's humble opinion, the following chapter is purely a marketing gimmick, a curiosity, a sop to the uninformed and molecularly disorganized gaseous population.
The authorities have said so, wherefore, ipso facto, it is a mere silly conspiracy theory. Therefore, unless the reader has time to waste with such tomfoolery, one absolutely ought not waste the time to read this last chapter.
Harrumph!
* * *
Hey!
Test. Test. Test. Hey, you out there! This is Szofia! Hey, this zippeldisk shit is pretty bad-ass cool!
Hugh, are you sure this thing is working?
What?
You mean it's already recording?
….. And now a word from our sponsor, Mosker Wosker Wieners: Hot diggity Dog, the Mosker Wosker Wieners - the dogs that plump like a lump!
Hey Hugh! Are you sure this thing is on? What the eff does this knob do....? Fuck. Psssssssst. Wow wow wow wow wow. Jeez! Listen to that feedback!!
ZZzzzzzzzuuuuuunnnnnvvvvvvvvsldkklkkkkkkkkbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraazzzzzzzzzzbbbbbbbb......
Okay, okay. Okay, I've got it nooooow. Just turn this a leeetle beeet..... I think... Oh oh. Uhhh.... Got it! Okay - reset...
Hello.
Hello. Hello out there in the Cosmos!
Yo! This is Szofia and I am, like, an intelligent 4D vegetable. Hugo Nash, my 'bud' from 5 Land is convalescing right now, but he'll be just fine. So, meanwhile, I'm sending out this final chapter of his journal in a zipple-disk message for him, because he asked me to. So, if you happen to get this thing, that's what it is, okay?
So.
After his close encounter with the original Hugo Nash's ex and loser-spawn, Hupidoopy and me made a plan, a super duper plan. First, Huey and me split up. That was the plan, see? The Branchers would follow him because of his 4D life support butt bag and they would think that I was with Huey because I had been with Huey all that time. But I wasn't, of course.
He skated east and south and I went north by northwest. Then east. But mostly "up," as far as the maps go. Up and to the right. So I had the super-cool Lamborghini that I borrowed from someone or other and then I went in the uprightish direction of the map. Then upleftish, then just uppish and leftish. So the blockhead Branchers followed Hughbert skateboarding into the desert and I high-tailed it into the big city where, as you know, with green hair and green eyes, black hoodie and tattoos, I don't stand out from anybody else.
Oh, yeah, and I dumped the Lamborghini in a no-parking zone where the po-leeze would be able to pick it up and tow it back to the sender. Nice car. Verrrrrrry fast. Smooth transmission and, yowser, great acceleration. Zero to 100 in about half a second. I think I needed new tires every fifty miles or so. Too bad about the cigarette burns in the leather upholstery, but, you know, stuff happens.
So Huey did the decoy routine and I went shopping.
I like shopping for stuff. We needed to save his strength for the big kaplooey so Huey wasn't going to be able to belch or sneeze and get the cash machines to dump their loads like he used to do. No biggee, it just means little Szofie did her shopping the old fashioned way by using some bozo's borrowed credit cards and laptop to hack right through the so-called secure web sites and scorch a bunch of retail stores' finances. Wowzer, you wouldn't believe the dumb-ass passwords these quasi-intelligents use…
... Damn! …'Quasi-intelligents...' I'm beginning to talk like you do, Hugh!
So, like, once I get into one of those cloud servers, I can get into everybody's data. You cannot believe what kind of confidential junk these bozos put into their supposedly 'secure' containers!
And anyway, just like that, I'm nosing around in the Cloud, heh heh! Then I just tweak a few digits, move stuff around, try a little of this and that. You know, spoof a little high frequency trading on Wall Street, install a little rootkit here and there, initiate an eggplant-in-the-middle scam, launch a teeny weeny bot-net attack on some central banks, swipe a few identities from some hospital records...
And voila (that's Greek for 'eureka,' you know)... I've got a bullet-proof ID, a million instant bank accounts, secure on-line security passwords, about a thousand social security numbers and a perfect work history! I'm, like, simultaneously, a 40 year old nun, a 50 year old multi-billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur, a 70 year old bankster, a 20 year old pop music diva, a Harvard law professor emeritus, a five star Pentagon general, the head of NATO, the CIA Director, an eminent heart surgeon, the Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, the CEO of a start-up pharmaceutical company, the Pope, the head of the European Central Bank and the President of Ukraine. So, like, presto: I've got IMF and World Bank approval for a ten gazillion dollar line of credit! Like no problemo!
So first, no money down, I buy this Huge effin SUV - it's got a BIG 25 cylinder 6,000 horse power motor (or something close to that). And it's got a BIG sound system with woofers loud enough to pulverize the windshields of other cars and crack the pavement. Yeah, and 2,000 dB muffler cut-outs as noisy as hell! It's got every new high tech doodad ever invented; plus blinding chrome trim, fog lights, spot lights, bug lights, Christmas lights, and color-shifting LED running lights all over the place. It's got super dark tinted window glass and a sparkling two-tone tangerine and candy green mint metallic paint job with giant flame decals on the front fenders. This booger's got chop shop custom suspension that changes from high-rider to a jumping low-rider and at night it scrapes the pavement and makes multi-color sparks! And it's got BIG monster knobby off-road tires each one about as wide as an Abrams tank and twice as tall. And it's got tandem wheels and spinners! This truck's so freaking big I need a crane to hoist me up into the drivers seat! I can't even hardly see over the hood, it's so goddamn big!
Gets about half a quarter mile to the gallon, but, you know, whatever!
So I buy this monster truck and start loading up with everything Huey said we would need to buy. And then I start heading down according to the map, downleftish, then downrightish, then straight right, heading for where we are supposed to rendezvous.
Meanwhile, Huey's putzing along on his skate board dragging the Branchers along with him deeper into the desert.
Sooooo, this is the exciting part!
When Huey gets to where we said we would meet, he rolls off the road, jumps off the skate board and stops in Nowheresville somewhere around the Salton Sea. And then he just waits and waits and waits.
So then, after a few hours it's almost nightfall - well, I don't know that it was almost nightfall for sure, but it must have been because of how long it took. And later it was dark, so that's a fact.
Now I'm still heading that-away, but I'm not there yet because this truck is definitely not a Formula I Gran Prix racer and it won't go more than a hundred fifty miles an hour even though I'm hauling ass with the pedal to the metal driving on the shoulders and sidewalks to get past the traffic and all. But the pole-eece are out there with their radar guns going ZZZZZZAaaaappppPPPPP, so, you know, I gotta take it a little easy now and then.
And, anyway, it's dark out already and no one's around, just Huey sitting behind a rock in the desert waiting for the Branchers.
I am not making this up, you know, because I have it on first hand authority.
So theeeeen, here they come.
Dum de dum dum. Dum de dum dum dumbbbbbbb!
There must'a been about a zillion of them by then; well, okay, maybe a few hundred.
But being Branchers, they were enormous, real big, you know what I mean? I mean, you could barely see the sky because of all theirs arms and spiky vines and pruning saws and loppers these bad boys were swinging around out there. So they make a bee-line for Huey (because that's where the 4D backpack is, see?) and they find him alright, but there's no "me," to their everlasting surprise. So, then, according to plan... because, you know, we really did plan most of this out. Or, rather, Huey did, he's the Man. Huey did the heavy thinking here. I mean, sure, he's a doofus, but give the gas man credit where credit is due.
Soooo, just like we planned, Huey's sitting there minding his own business, not doing nothing, twiddling his inside out thumbs, and here's this mob of hundreds of gigantic Branchers, big honking monstrous vegetable bounty hunters looking for me and telling him what they're going to do with him if he doesn't tell them where I am. So he says, ok, she's over there; and he leads the whole effin forest of them out into one of these dried up arroyos and theeeeen...
Oh, I almost forgot...
Right. Then I get there around this time, coming up from behind on the road. But I can take this truck off the road 'cause the booger's got seven wheel drive with the tandem wheels in the back, and even the spare tire is a drive wheel! So Huey's leading the Branchers on down the dry wash and he sees me coming up from behind the Branchers and says to all of them, “Wait right here and I'll get Szofia for you!”
So they stop and that's when I start throwing the hundreds of cans of barbecue lighter fluid and the bags of charcoal briquettes I had in the back of the truck and all the cans bust open on the rocks and lighter fluid runs down the river bed toward the Branchers. Now at this point, the Branchers smell the lighter fluid rolling around their roots and they look back and see me and they go, like, totally apeshit!
Then Huey, with all the strength he has left, tries to burp or sneeze, like to ignite the cook-out, but NOTHING HAPPENS!! Because it's really hard to force yourself to burp or sneeze when you really don't have to and, besides, he was so worn out by everything he'd been through, so he was feeling, like, really, really deflated.
So the Branchers start coming after me, Dumb de dumb dumb, and Huey is besides himself trying to burp or sneeze to ignite the gas fumes, so it's up to me.
See, I'm smoking a joint while all this is happening, so I just flick the lit joint into the river bed where all the lighter fluid is, and kapoof, the fire starts and spreads and all the Branchers start getting themselves singed like the bags of charcoal briquettes that I had also thrown down there. But so far, it's just an ordinary barbecue fire so a couple of them Branchers can still make a lunge at me even though their branches are being toasted.
And that's when it happens!
Huey -- I mean I've never seen the gas man move so fast EVER! He sees them getting close to me and Huey whips off his kitchen gloves and practically runs into the whole grove of burning Branchers swinging my skateboard at 'em! And they're swatting at him with their burning branches and saws and loppers and its a bad-ass riot out there with burning lighter fluid and Branchers getting singed and Huey swinging his skateboard and Branchers swinging at him.
Oh, yeah. It was almost the Fourth of July.
So, you know, because it was almost the Fourth of July, I also had bought a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of high power fireworks, you know, the professional grade stuff: boffo pinwheels and high test skyrockets, Roman candles, bottle rockets, jumping jacks, cherry bombs and whatever. Hughie didn't know I would do that, but I did. So I also threw all the fireworks into the barbecue, too. Yowser! This is just like television now, except it's real! Fireworks and Branchers blowing up all over the place! Gosh it was so beautiful!
And then one of the Brancher's pine needles must have punched a hole in Huey's skin bag because all of a sudden - I smelled it - stinkarino! What kind of gas was that!!! Well it comes out of Huey, right out of the hole the Branchers made in his lower arm, and his volatile gases hit the burning lighter fluid and the fireworks and all. But Huey's arm is now like an effing flame thrower and he's roasting them all like marshmallows!
Zaaazzzzoooussssssssh!
This is like a bleeping Hollywood movie and if it wasn't me and Huey right in the middle of it, I'd be going, like, 'Yeah, fry them boogers!' But, like I said, we're there, so, I mean, really!
And theeeeeeen, the burning Branchers were coming back toward me, all on fire as they came, so I scrambled up the banks of the arroyo leaving the big honking seven-wheel drive truck behind, which was lucky because it also catches fire, and…
KABOOM!
…the truck also blows up! Yowser, it was just like in the movies! And the fire really starts to burn up the Branchers now!
This is so cool!
But there goes Huey now shooting up into the air again, just like I saw him do in California outside his ex's house when I siphoned back into 4D to grab him.
WHOOOOOOOSH!
ONLY THIS TIME he's jet propelled!
He's like a skyrocket himself 'cause his gases are combusting and its completely dark out now. It's really kind of beautiful, except that it is Huey.
I kept telling him that palm-reading lady on the board-walk totally screwed up. She read a short life-line in his right hand. But because his hands are all messed up, his right hand is his left hand. So she must have been reading the wrong future in the right hand because it was really left so he didn't really have a short life line.
But he was still bummed and I think, like, this is exactly what Huey planned to do, you know, take down all the Branchers along with himself!
Only, dude! He didn't tell me ALL the details, because I'm sure he meant to turn himself into a 5D blowtorch and take out all the Branchers all at once!
So maybe Huey didn't tell me everything in the plan... but I also didn't tell him everything either.
So I figured that Huey - he's literally less than a year old, remember? So I figured he might try to do something heroically STUPID like this because, you know, he really is kind of dumb in a nice sort of way. So in the 78,238 years I've been around on this stupid planet - remember, I'm a whole lot older than the 12 year old earth kid I look like while on the run from the Branch - well, in my 78,238 years of living I've learned a thing or two, mostly from doing stuff like Wild West bandito and cattle rustler and like that. And I was kind of expecting this, or something like it, so I brought along two extra things I'd bought that Huey didn't ask me to buy: a rope and a fire extinguisher.
So as Huey goes shooting past me about 45 feet high like a Patriot missile and I do like Szophia, cattle rustler supremo used to do back in the 1880s when I rode with Billy the Kid and Jesse James and then the Dalton Gang teaching those butt-heads how to be real outlaws instead of the chickenshit wusses they started out as knocking off bubblegum dispensing machines and penny-ante crap like that.
So I twirl this lasso just like I taught Billy the Kid to do with cattle, and I siphon into 4D... because, what the hey, the Branchers already know where I am... and I reach up and snag Huey flying past me and I pull him down.
Then, of course, he's still jet-propelled and spinning around me in a circle like a batshit pinwheel until I can stand on one end of the rope and spray him with the fire extinguisher. So that puts his fire out, but his body bag arm is now all melted into a blob, but at least that seals off the leaks and he doesn't need to wear a stupid kitchen mitten on that hand anymore.
Anyway, Huey's still OK, or his essential gases are, more or less; even though his human plastic bag is looking like a plucked chicken and a toasted marshmallow all in one. But that's a whole lot better than the Branchers who, by now, are just a pile of steaming, burnt up barbecue ash in the dry river bed.
Along with my truck, of course, which is just a blob of molten metal and rubber. But, doh! What the hell, I bought it with credit anyway, so the bank can just repossess it, for all I care!
So, anyway, you kind of get the picture, right? The newspapers reported it the next day, ho ho ho! In a little story on page 12 they said there had been a "forest wildfire!" Riiiiighhht, a FOREST FIRE in the middle of the desert! What are these journalists smoking! There are no forests in the desert! But whatever, they said there had been a freak wildfire and that was it. No more questions asked.
And, whoohooo! No More Branchers! At least not for now. Not right away, anyhow.
So that's it.
Huey's okay, more or less. I mean. It's just his stupid 3D body bag that got fried, but he's still the same Huey. He ended up half a foot shorter and one arm tied off at the shoulder and his face was a little wrinkled like a prune.
But it didn't matter 'cause all this human incognito crap didn't matter any more. So we ditched the fake bod and put the essential Hugo, his intelligent gases and whatever, into a scuba diving oxygen bottle where he is now until we can figure out a better container that we can pump him into. Or, maybe not. Scuba gear is cool. Or maybe even a basket ball - that would be chill! But I don't think Huey would like being bounced around or thrown through a hoop!
But there's nothing wrong with him that a bicycle pump, a CO2 cartridge, a little TLC and a few months of rest and recuperation won't heal.
Of course, Huey, being the Boy Scout that he is, Huey said that he has to figure out a way to bring the "real" Hugo Nash out of deep freeze in the mezzanine back into 3D reality.
I mean, I couldn't give a rat's ass one way or the other about that turkey, and damned if he's going to want to come back anyway as the world's former No. 1 terrorist... former, of course, because no one is even looking for Hugo Nash anymore now that his supposed bratty daughter said he flew off into space making brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr noises just like a Harley Davidson exhaust pipe! Ho ho! The truth was stranger than any of them could stand, so they just ginned up some other heinous terrorists to get people all excited about.
And just like that, Hugo Nash, Super Terrorist Criminal Numero Uno is just completely forgotten, like that other comic book bad guy they supposedly offed several years ago and buried at sea. Uh huh. So all the mad dog people continue to foam at the mouth, just like before, but hey, it's not Hugh they're getting their undies knotted up about. So, whatever.
But the main thing is that the Branch is temporarily off our butts. It's just temporary, we know, but temporary is better than not temporary. You get it.
So until Huey recovers and until he figures out how to extract the real Hugo Nash from the mezzanine and plop him back into the 3D cesspool, we're going to stick around for a while and just lie low.
And then... once those loose ends are tied up, we are history!
Literally history!
Huey's going to show me how to twizzle into another time zone, how to slive blitherwards across the unislices and how to body-surf the endless probability waves of parallel universes.
And I'm going to teach him the really important things in Life like how to hustle and dance and how to hang loose and how to kick blowhards and bullies in the butt and how to play the electric bagpipe. Well, okay, in Huey's case, the bagpipe might not be such a good idea. So maybe he can learn to play the kazoo.
He doesn't have any of his precious "buttons," but who cares? Nobody's gonna know where we are and we won't want them to know! The important thing is that we're going to have fun going backwards and forwards and sideways in time, and wherever we end up is where we're at.
Qué Sera Saran Wrap, or whatever (that's more Greek, you know).
We are definitely going to blow this joint, or maybe smoke one, and if we can't get back to where we started, well, who gives a fart?
No offense to Huey, of course.
But I promised Huey I'd send out this zippeldipple disk for him, sort of his last report to 5-Land. So here it is, cosmos - it's coming at you. I'm cranking that tandytripper to send it out, as I speak: Hugo Nash's Life Among the 3Ds... as if anybody really cares about three dimensional whatevers.
And then we're gone! Out of here! Finito! Or as they say in Italy, sayonara, baby! We're cutting off all communications.
It's like a message in a bottle. Who knows where it's gonna go! If you find it, read it and pass it on, dude!
There's no return address on the outside, brothers and sisters, so don't bother writing back to us. Oh, we'll be around for a while hanging out in the nooks and crannies of less than respectable so-ci-e-ty, but don't bother looking for us.
There'll be no more "homelands" for us, nowhere! No more "nations," no "states," no planets or even galaxies! Huey won't need that communication podule anymore because he won't be communicating no more no way - not that there's anyone worth communicating with. At least not in this solar system.
So, no more "reports" back to wherever. No more bullshit earthworm "studies" and no more living on the run from the Branch.
3Ds, 4Ds, 5Ds.... screw 'em all.
Did I say that already?
It's time for the us to create our own dimensions, our own universe, our own time zone.
I kind of like odd-numbered ones - maybe we'll try some place in eleven dimensions, maybe thirty-seven? Hughy says that it's mathematically possible to have negative dimensions, too! Now that would be cool! I could dig living in negative dimensions! But plain old three, four, five dimensions?
Bor-ing!
Ain't none of them big enough for the two of us! Who knows? Catch you sometime in the dodecahedron dimensionality!!
Maybe.
So for Szopia and Hugh, this is US signing off!
Don't leave the porch light on waiting up for us, 'cause
We...
Ain't...
Coming...
Home!!!
Ciao, y'all!
XOXOXO
So, Huey, how'd I do? Did it go out, huh? I cranked the sucker, like you said.
What?
It's still recording? No way!
What release button? I don't see no bleeping chartreuse button. Hughie, I don't even know what a chartreuse is! A color? What kind of color is chartreuse?
Green? Well, then why don't you just call it green? Chartreuse... gimme a break, Hugh!
Whaddya mean the button's in the 5th dimension! Hey, Einstein, how am I supposed to push anything in the 5th? I can't even see anything in the 5th! I only do 1, 2, 3 and 4, remember?
What? You want me to reach across the dimensional seam and press... where...? Here...? Like th
FINIS
Life Among the Three Dimensionals was a serialized sci-fi novel. All the chapters, from start to finish, are available here.