• Published 22nd Apr 2019
  • 1,038 Views, 101 Comments

Enchorus - GMBlackjack



Stories set in the Songs of the Spheres multiverse written by a variety of authors.

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Speed Demon Round Robin (Various)

Author's Note:

To celebrate the ending of SotS, a round robin was held. The rules? Write a story, but everyone only gets five minutes before handing off whatever they wrote to the next person. It was intended to be a delightful mess, and that's exactly what it was.

This atrocity is brought to you by the following people:
Ponygood, VoidTemplar, FanofMostEverything, Amusementist, GMBlackjack, UselessCommon, BlasterMaster, Cosmic Breeze, Guldringr, Pink Man, Grand, Lemhas, Mad Engineer Stark.

I indicate when the author changes by a slight color shift, but I'm not going to be identifying who wrote what. So have fun guessing!

Somewhere in the multiverse… I waved at the camera. “Hi! We’re gonna start this off with ponies in case GM wants to put this on FIMFiction.”

A moment passed. “Just to be clear, I’m that pony. I’m an alternate version of Twilight Sparkle.”

I shrugged. “Not much more I can say. Enjoy the show.”

“In the distant paaaaast…” said Mr. Staircase, the shabby-robed ghost.

I sighed and facehoofed. “It’s going to be one of those ones…”

~~~

“Halt!” the spunky hero that is too unimportant to describe shouted. “Your evil days end here, Evil Villain!”

The object of his attention turned around. It was an abnormally tall man, covered in evil-colored, spiky armor, his eye slits glowing a sinister red. “Oh?” he spoke in a sinister voice. “And what makes you think you can stop me?”

“Because I have the power of my friends with me!” the hero declared.

“Friends?” Evil Villain laughed evilly. “Don’t be so foolish! The voices in your head can never be true friends!”

“No,” the hero agreed. He drew his sword, which began to glow with niceness. “But the voices in my sword can!”

“Ah, the Sword of MacGuffiny.” Evil Villain chuckled. “I’m afraid you overestimate the usefulness of your sword, foolish hero. The only voices I can see in it are a brainless love interest and a token comedian!”

“Zappers!” the sword said.

“Enough!” The hero leapt into the air, raising his sword above his head. “It’s time to finish this once and for all! Yaaaa!”

He came down on Evil Villain, pouring all his might into this one, climactic blow… but Evil Villain simply raised his hand to meet it, catching the sword with ease.

The hero hovered in mid-strike. “What? No! How can this be!? I thought the Sword of MacGuffiny could annihilate any enemy known to Man!”

Evil Villain chuckled as he ripped the sword from the Hero’s hand. “Ah, but you see. I am no ordinary man. I am no Man at all. I am the last of a long line of creatures in the disguise of Man. I am a beast.” The hero screamed. His weapon, his quest, everything. Shattered. Evil Villain grabbed the sword. “And as you will now get to know. You are but a Man. And Man is vulnerable to Sword. Live by the Sword, die by the Sword.”

Evil Villain got a grip around the shaft of the Sword. Twirling it around, he struck at the hero. It struck true. Waves of pain coursed through the hero’s body, leaving him unable to respond as…

~~~

“Well that was a nice little story, wasn’t it?” I said, closing my book. “Everything might end suddenly, just as this Author’s time might in a few minutes.”

I flew over to a bookshelf, taking out another book. “But you, dear reader, are in for quite a time too. Like, read this…”

~~~

Twilight Sparkle entered the Castle of Friendship “Spike! I got a letter from Princess Celestia! She wants me to send her your recipe for banana bread you made at the last diplomatic summit.”

“Really? Huh. I thought it would be about the brownie waffles.”

“We do not speak of the brownie waffles. Not where the moon may hear us.” Twilight looked out through the walls of the castle, where the satellite peered at them with eyes beyond their reckoning.

Spike followed her gaze. “Yeah, shouldn’t we do something about that?”

“I mean, I talked to Luna, and she said it was part of ‘a daring new marketing strategy to redeem the public image of the night.’ ”

Spike raised an eyeridge. “I can see it from the bathrooms. All of them. Even the one in the dungeon.”

“I’m pretty sure the Diamond Dogs have started worshipping it. We’re just going to have to adapt.”

“Uh… huh. So, anything else in that letter?”

Twilight double-checked. Celestia had a way of slipping in the fate of the world that made it sound like she needed Twilight to pick up her groceries, and vice versa. “Oh, just a brewing war between the dragons and the kirin and why is that a postscript!?

“Hey! I’ve got a box of MacGuffins somepony needs to sign for!” called Ditzy Doo from outside the castle. “We’ve got Egg MacGuffins, hay sausage, and at least one with actual Caneighdian bacon.”

“Those should prove invaluable!” Twilight scrawled her signature in the general direction of the clipboard, but suddenly glanced at the letter once more as a sound began to emit from it. Arcane runes and incomprehensible shapes burned themselves into the parchment, as the very fabric of reality was rewritten. Now, there wasn't a war between the Kirin and Dragons. Now there was a meteor the size of Canterlot mountain flying towards the world. “Well, I guess we will have to use these MacGuffins for something else now,” Twilight said, before turning the box into scraps of useless paper and organic food matter.

Then a goose appeared.

“Hjönk.” It said, before removing Twilight's horn with a comical popping noise.

“W-wha? MY HORN!” The purple book horse began to chase the goose around the castle, while it attempted to escape the crystalline confines of the construction with Twilight's magical implement in its beak.

She attempted to catch it, only for the creature to leap through an open window and vanish into the outdoors. Twilight tried to fit through the open gap in the crystal, only to get herself stuck, watching the goose leave with its prize.

“No! No no no, I can’t lose it now! That’s… that’s...” Twilight glanced up at the meteor that was still falling closer and closer to the planet. It didn’t matter where it hit, that thing was going to crack Equis like an egg. Actually, it’d be worse than an egg, the ratio of an eggshell to its volume is more than Equis’ crust to its volume. It’d be like popping a bubble! A scientifically accurate bubble! Panic!

“Panic!” Twilight shouted.

“Hjönk,” the goose said, back and somehow walking on the ceiling.

“I think Pinkie’s messing with us,” Spike observed.

“THE END TIMES ARE NIGH!” Pinkie shouted from the street below. “REPENT, PONIES, FOR THE TIME OF NO MORE PARTIES IS AT HAND! FEAR THE-”

“Oh do shut up,” Evil Villain said, dropping off of the meteor. “Your noise is messing with my apocalypse.”

“You’re not supposed to be here!” Pinkie shouted. “You’re from that other story! Go back, shoo!”

“What in the deviled eggs blazing are you even talking about, cotton candy twister?”

“Oooh, I am a cotton candy twister…”

“Pinkie!” Twilight shouted. “Stop fraternizing with the enemy!”

“I don’t think you know what fraternize means,” Pinkie and Evil Villain said in unison.

“Hjönk,” the goose added.

Spike sighed. “You all keep arguing, I’ll go be the hero or something.”

“Yes, yes, good assistant,” Twilight said dismissively. “Hey! Evil Guy!”

“What!?” the newly-dubbed Evil Guy responded indignantly, throwing his arms wide like they were two wings from some half-dead bat. “I c--”

“Wow, your arms look unrealistically metaphorical,” Pinkie interrupted.

“This is ridiculous,” Evil Guy grunted. “I want to go back to the talking Sword already.”

“I have a talking party cannon!” Pinkie said, pulling it out and shoving it in Evil Guy’s face. “Say hi!”

“HI.” Though it sounded a lot more like KABLOOEY, to be fair.

Evil Guy went flying, making another hole in the wall. Twilight noticed that the goose could now be reached, now that a suitably large hole existed between the inside and outside of the castle. Her horn might have been gone, but that did not mean she was out of ways to know what was in the goose’s head. After all, Zecora had access to a few potions.

“Get over here, you goose!” Twilight gave chase, the goose utterly confused as to why it was getting chased. Didn’t it usually have to do more tasks before the simpletons it met took more proactive measures against its activities? It tried to run, but the new Pegasus was persistent, even if her wings might have been out of practice.

~~~

It was at this point when the control over the story fell out of the hooves of the bronies and to a completely random person.

As such, there was time to remind the viewers that worlds without ponies do exist in the SotS multiverse. There exists a world made entirely of doughnuts. There exists a world where a copy of me indistinguishable from myself thinks that he’s not a part of the Multiverse. There exists a world where a billion billion people one day became inexplicably happy - and they have to thank this prophet for it.

There exists a world where a man
Woke up
Fell out of bed,
Dragged a comb across his head,
Found his way downstairs and drank a cup,
Looked up and noticed he was late!
Found his coat and grabbed his hat,
Made the bus in 10 seconds flat!
Found his way upstairs and had a smoke,
And somebody spoke and he went into a dream...
A fire of unknown origin took my baby away!
Prometheus, they say, brought God’s fire down to man,
Soulja Boy up in this ho...

~~~

Meanwhile, on a meteor…

The asteroid continued its path towards Equis. Unseen to the ponies below, a set of enormous engines continued its flight path, accelerating it straight towards the planet. There would be no saving Equis unless these engines were to turn off.

And that’s when a rip in the Void appeared, and a series of landing craft arrived.

Stopping at a structure embedded in the rock, one team deployed, suits of armor? Humans? Both? Hard to tell. They flipped out of their ships, landing in front of the structure, weapons out.

And opened fire.

The battle raged on, villains against … mercs? while another team snuck in the back. This team, composed of mechanical? Living? Ponies? Armored ponies? Jumped, flipped, flew, and mantled over railings, through vents, and into a control center, destroying everything in their way. At the core, they unleashed their weapons at the reactor, knocking out the antimagic field protecting the asteroid. Now the asteroid careened out of control.

~~~

Meanwhile, in another realm of insanity…

“Colonel,” Snake spoke into his mic. “There’s this really crazy thing going on,”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, but it’s chasing me and throwing burgers,”

“Chasing you… and throwing burgers?”

“Yes. It keeps eluding my explosives.”

“... I think you’re making that up, Snake.”

“BURGER!” Another voice piped up on the same voice feed.

“What the hell?! How did someone else get on this secure feed!?”

“This thing keeps doing the impossible, Colonel,” Snake grunted, before throwing a smoke bomb right toward the ground. With an explosive poof of smoke, Snake pulled out a box, kneeled down, and hid in it. “I think I can hide from it,”

“Burger,”

“No!”

The audio cut off.

“Snake? … Snake? … SNAAAAKE!”

“... Well, that was weird,” A voice said.

Then, everything exploded.

~~~

I dropped the book in surprise as it was consumed by bright green flames, a high-pitched laughter emitting from between its pages. “You all certainly like destroying each other's universes.” I said, before removing another book from the massive shelf before me. “Perhaps, let's try this one.”

~~~

“WAAAAAAAAGHHH”

A deep throated roar echoed across the flame scorched battlefield. On one side, millions of green skinned Orkz wearing slapdash armor attacked and fired upon the other side of the battle. Which were ponies, wearing elaborate power armor. Commissar Twilight placed two high speed bolter rounds into an Ork that got too close, before turning to the guard ponies behind her. “HEAR ME MY BATTLE SISTERS! WE SHALL PURGE THIS XENO THREAT FROM THE FACE OF THIS ROCK BEFORE THE DAY IS OUT! FOR THE QUEENS!” At her vox boosted speech, the equally numerous guards ponies railled with her to launch a fresh barrage of dakka. Bullets and shells filled the air and the bombs bursting in the air, gave indication through the darkness that the flag was still there.

Twilight and her fellow Battle Sisters stormed out of their positions, keeping up the fire every step of the way. One by one, the Xenos fell. One to a slug, one to a bullet. One even to a heavy rocket. No-one was spared the Empress’ Wrath.

“TODAY, WE WILL DINE UPON THE CORPSES OF THE XENOS” Twilight shouted out. Another wave of Xenos came into sight, being met with the telltale rain of bullets, quickly becoming more lead and tungsten than biological material. Twilight looked around. Corpses already lay strewn around her, piled leg-high. She fed magic into her horn, knocking back the corpses, sending them flying around the battlefield.

She began to draw magic from the surrounding areas. Lightning, in balls and in strikes broke out as raw mana flooded into her. Her very essence being saturated with magic, she let it out all at once. It shredded the baseline of the Xenos’ essence, it shredded the reality of their existence.

The magical attack came to a sudden stop, then reversed at twice the power. The dust cleared to reveal a blond haired boy.

The boy looked around in clear confusion. This wasn’t a ninja village. This wasn’t a ninja village at all.

Then Inquisitor Headsmash decided he’d had enough of the drama and performed Exterminatus.

Ahem.

And certain alicorns could relax about destroying yet another universe. Where did you think the meteor/asteroid/orkship had come from earlier? That reality warp did a lot more than plop a gratuitous Uzumaki on a 40k world.

Oh. Carry on.

But yes, the time shenanigans don’t stop from getting taller. After the orbital boarding action disabled the anti-magic shield—really a Gellar Field generator, but hey, same difference—the ship fell under Luna’s purview. And by the same token, so did…

The M O O N.

She had just finished installing the spaces, and the M O O N was not happy to share its orbit with such an ostentatious, self-important little mass destruction event of an asteroid. It zipped about and punted the rock into a stable orbit, leaving everyone on it deeply confused and more than a little nauseated.

By all rights, the G forces involved should’ve turned them to soup, but then they couldn’t behold the majesty that was the M O O N.

It should be noted that the princesses’ personalities had a tendency to imprint themselves on their charges, and Nightmare Moon had been sealed in the thing for a millennium.

“Well,” said Pinkie. “That all happened.”

“Burger,” said the girl next to her, adjusting her new headband.

Twilight just gaped vacantly at the shenanigans.

The world was a mess. A war torn battlefield, two orbital bodies, and a S U N that really did not like transdimensional jumps. Warps, rifts, what have you. But that didn’t matter. Now it was time-

To PARTY!

Pinkie fired off her party cannons, massive artillery units that could send megaton warheads into low orbit. Only this time, the payload was the largest package of party paraphernalia ever procured, launching into the sky and returning to the ground, landing in perfect orientation, every table set, and so on. The war was finally over!

Out of another portal, a short man arrived, in a red luchador mask, boxing gloves, and boots, accompanied by a small, spotted yellow creature.

“Woah, it’s a multiverse party, The Cheat! Let’s get down!”

A white unicorn with an electric blue mane put a record on the turnstyle, and the electronic beats started, ponies, humans, and … other creatures … getting down with it on the dance.

Meanwhile, Twilight was having an existential crisis from all the shenanigans. She was starting to think about all the rampant anomalies and portals and plain weird-ass stuff that was happening left and right in this universe. She started to wonder about her place in the order of all things.

What even was that order? How could she be sure that her world was the only one? Less so, the real one? She was starting to ponder the biggest question in existence - the question of Scale.

Was every blade of grass containing a universe in itself? Was the universe contained within a blade of grass? Every universe?

What could encompass all of it? What could imagine all of it? Influence?
Could there be a pillar upon which all of it rests?

Yes.

In fact there was such a pillar.
[Censored]. Also, The Dark Tower.

~~~

“So… are we just… sitting in this desert, watching these two scream at each other?”

“Yyyep,”

“... And this was your idea for fun, Alushy?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll get very frickin’ good,”

“Okay…”

The two spiky haired men continued to scream, their auras vibrant and distending the very ground beneath their feet.

“... Any minute now…”

One of the men exploded with a red aura, and charged right into the other shorter one. The punch impacted with a thunderous boom, and the shorter man was launched, turning about, head-over-heels.

Unfortunately, he was heading straight for the two spectators. Mainly, the sharply dressed one with the spanking red fedora.

With an explosive impact, Alushy was pushed right back into a rocky pillar with sheer force, dropping her blood sandwich. Once she had her bearings, she looked down to see it… all ruined.

“... Oh,” The vampony smirked maliciously. “You’re in for it now…” The invisibility ward turned off. “IT’S TIME TO PARTY HARDY!” She turned into an amorphous darkness, and the two men were now in deep, deep trouble.

“WE MUST PARTY HARDY?” The words had suddenly summoned a Pinkie. “Sweet! Let’s get you back to where you need to go. Now, uh…” She paused. “Where are you supposed to go?”

“I was just watching everything go to fudgemothering hell,” Alushy said, reforming and raising an eyebrow. “You?”

“I heard the word party. And hardy. The two in combination are like an eldritch chant and-” the combattants hit each other and exploded behind them. Alushy and Pinkie ignored them. “-and, well, I was here!”

“Do you have any idea where here is?

“Not in the slightest! Mind telling me?”

Alushy considered this, scratching her chin. “Hmmmm… no, I don’t think I will.”

Pinkie let out a big NOOOOOO that even the M O O N heard. It hated this noise so much it shuddered.

This shuddering jostled a chunk of the meteor it had smashed away not that long ago. For, as we remember (of course) the meteor was not a meteor, but a ship disguised as a meteor! And as it was smashed away, this chunk remained - with the pilot, and mastermind of all this chaos!

He crawled out of the chunk and rubbed his head. “Mama mia…” He groomed his stache and looked around at the moon rocks. “Gotta hand it to this moon, it knows how to be completely average.”

The M O O N attempted to earthquake. The problem is, earthquakes do not happen on the moon. That’d need to be a moonquake and the M O O N lacked the intelligence to figure this out. It was just a dumb space rock after all.

A dumb space rock that’s watching you.

Hello.

Anyway, this M O O N frustration called Luna to her celestial sphere to assault the evil man. “What hast thou done to my moon?”

“I insulted it, lady!”

“And who art thou!?”

“The one, the only, the legendary, the amazing… MISTER L!” He performed a complex corkscrew and struck a pose.

Luna teleported him all the way to Twilight’s castle with only a thought. Twilight was still panicking and she did the unthinkable.

Or at least tried to, but a sudden surprise stopped her. “ENOUGH!” a sinister voice echoed. Evil Guy appeared in the air before her.

“...what? How are you still alive?” Twilight asked, more confused than anything else.

“Yeah, didn’t you get pummeled into oblivion offscreen?” Pinkie added, popping in.

“NO!” Evil Guy shouted angrily. “My power is greater than everything you could do, and I am growing tired of being ignored!”

“And what is that power?” Pinkie asked with surprising eagerness.

“Why, it is the power of Skillshare, this story’s sponsor!”

Twilight frowned. “I’ve seen that in the human world, isn’t that-”

“For Skillshare allows me to access extensive online learning communities, plus thousands of online classes in writing, technology, productivity, and more that require only a premium membership to unlock!”

Twilight facehoofed, not knowing what to say.

“I have already redeemed two free months of Skillshare by going to skl.sh/totallyrealaddress, and have learned everything there is to know about recreational knitting!”

“And how is that going to help you here?” Twilight asked.

Evil Guy pulled a colorful knitted Sword from behind his back. It burst into black flames.

“...oh.”

~~~

“...in an alternate universe…”

Evil Guy was summoning his legions of Pinkie Pie copies. “You can’t face me, you know that?” Twilight Sparkle, wearied from her constant use of time travel, appeared similar to a piece of bedrags that are very dirty but are too comfortable to throw out.

At once, a mass group of Pinkie Pies leaped onto Discord. “Curses! I should’ve figured you wanted to usurp-” Downed by the army, several pinkie pies leaped into view empowered by Discord’s magic.

Evil Guy laughed. “You can never stop m-”

Suddenly, he was shot in the back by another Pinkie Pie, who, for some reason, had a horn and three pairs of black wings. She was also tinted red and black. “As the BEST bad OC here, I will take my rightful place as the villain of this story!” She stepped on his head, and it detached, growing little legs and running away.

Pinkie turned her attention to Twilight, busily razing an entire area of Pinkie Pies. “I’m going to have a lot of fun with you..” She pulled a mask out of her mane, completely filled with eldritch energy. Suddenly, a gigantic moon appeared over the battlefield, tied into an evil grin.

~~~

Suddenly, the previous scene cut out and showed a room full of computers all showing memes of different kinds. But you didn't come here for that. So we go back to the main event...but first a word from our sponsor….

We already did that joke.

Oh….well, then. Back to the main event.

~~~

Sigh.

Another day on the job. George thought that $1500 a day was a great deal to fly sponsorship planes. But it was turning out to be quite boring.

Seriously, I mean, the pay is great, but I don’t know how much longer I can take this.

Then suddenly, George noticed something. Out in the distance, he saw what appeared to be the pink glow of the sunrise.

But the sun is already up…

He stared a little harder at the horizon. It was almost like it was...moving
WHAT IN TH-

The plane was suddenly splattered by an innumerable amount of pink ponies. One hit the windshield, it’s tongue spreading saliva across George's vision.

AGH, I can’t control it in this storm! What the HELL is going onnnnnnn-

Nothing was responding in the mechanisms, they were jammed with gored-out ponies.
This is… the end of me.

The plane plummeted down to the earth like a great pink meteorite.

The plane crashed right in front of the terribly red and black Pinkie Pie OC, who was currently standing over the corpse of Evil Guy, using her free hoof to slap back Mr. L. “Get out of here! I’m the villain!”

“I orchestrated this, missy!” Mr. L Shouted. “This is my conquest! My time! My sh-”

The OC Pinkie slapped him into the plane, waking up the injured (but still alive) George. George wondered why an italian buffoon was messing with him in his crashed sponsorship plane, but that was inconsequential in the end. For in front of them, confusing everyone, Burgerbelle and the Everykid appeared, laying food out on all the tables in extravagant colors and flavors and smells.

“I’m the best burger cooker!” Everykid said, using more words in a single sentence than she ever had.

“Burger!” Burgerbelle said, embarrassing the Everykid.

“Stop this!” The Pinkie OC shouted. “Stop all of this right now, you’re not part of this story, you’re random! Get out of here!” Two burgers hit her in the eyes, but she disintegrated them. “Stop it!”

An Ork fell on her. She turned it into confetti. “AMUSEMENTIST!”

“Who? What? Why?” George asked. “I don’t even…”

“HJÖNK.”

George saw a goose. It had a horn in its… mouth? What was it even doing with that? None of this made any sense, and he just wanted to fly his plane out of here. Unfortunately, it was broken. Hard to fly a broken plane.

“Hey,” a voice said.

“What?” George asked, afraid.

“My name’s Twilight, I’m using the M O O N to talk to you. Do you see a goose in front of you?”

“Uh… yes.”

“Okay then. Throw it at the terribly colored Pinkie Pie.”

“Why?”

“Because we can’t deal with her, so we need its otherworldly help. We’ll deal with Mr. L L-ater. Okay?”

“I don’t even…”

“THROW THE GOOSE, BY THE POWER OF THE M O O N! I NEED MY HORN BACK!”

He picked up the goose and threw it.

“HJÖNK!”

The goose flew through the air with the least amount of grace and beauty that any goose ever had. “Chariots of Fire” played as it turned every which way, hjönking indignantly and flapping desperately in slow motion.

Then I personally dove in and slapped Burgerbelle and the Everykid, and time resumed its usual flow.

The goose smacked into the Pinkie OC, and the other Twilight used the M O O N linkup to proxy her horn’s Lemonwire script through a VPN that didn’t sponsor us, thanks a lot, guys, but after more hackerspeak, she empowered Mr. L to drain all the anti-green from the Pinkie, revealing her as…

“MARBLE!?”

“... Mm-hm.” Pinkie’s twin blushed under all the attention.

“I… have no words.” Pinkie Pie considered the dictionary in her hooves.

“Burger,” it said.

“Okay, so I have a lot of words, but none of them really apply here. Wow, guys. Wow.

George just looked around at the horses and the flat people and the giant green hulking thing that smelled like rotten mushrooms. “Please tell me someone is a mechanic.”

And then M O O N made out with the one from Termina.

Burgerbelle snapped a pic for their wedding album.

~~~

“Decaaades in the future, in an entirely different plaaaaaaace...” said Mr. Staircase, the shabby-robed ghost.

“I thought I got rid of you, get out of here!”

~~~

An old, bespectacled man stood watching the horizon, thinking dark thoughts. For he had had an awfully specific premonition about a bunch of really strange, difficult to parse multiversal stuff.

“...this has gone on long enough,” he decided. “I should find a hero to end this madness at its core… and I shall have to be their mentor-”

A long, impossibly sharp Sword pierced through his chest. He looked down at it, a mix of emotions flashing across his face. “...oh, crackers.”

The muscular man with a sick hairstyle smirked, pulling the Sword out and letting the old man slump over, dead.

“Oh my god, he killed Dumbledore!” a nearby child with a blue cap said.

“You bastard!” a green-hooded child added.

The man smirked at them. “Yes, I did. Now, I will be biggity-bizouncing out of here.” He thrust his arms out in a T-pose and zipped away, whooping.

“...great, who’s going to be the mentor now?” the hooded child asked. “For that matter, who’s the hero?”

“...bleep it, I’ll be the hero,” the other child decided.

He walked through a door that suddenly appeared, inside of which was a dark room occupied only by two monitors and a man in front of them. In one, a bunch of colorful words were appearing at a fast pace. In the other, those same words were being copied down by the man as fast as they appeared.

The child pulled out a gun and sho-

~~~

“And that’s the end of it,” I said. “Good. This was confusing.”

“Tune in next tiiiiime!” said Mr. Staircase, the shabby-robed ghost.