Feed Change

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Dodging a bullet, er, missle

Y'all may thing that runnin around in a robot suit makes things a whole lot easier when you're tryin to avoid fire from shoulder mounted rockets, and you would be half right. Sure, runnin itself is pretty easy in them things. You lift up a leg and, next thing you know, wind's blowin through your hair and you're practically flyin down the road. So, like I says, the runnin's the easy part. The difficulty comes with tryin to dodge the rockets. I don't know if y'all ever looked down the business end of a surface-to-air missile, but I tell you what, them things ain't messin around none. If you ain't careful, they'll fly right up your nose holes. And you don't want that. If you survived, you'd be sneezin out rocket parts for days. Plus, you'd singe all of your nose hair and you'd be smellin nothin but burnt hair for weeks. You don't want that. I remember when I was a kid, my Uncle Larry was experimentin with a longer burnin match. He'd been havin all sortsa problems gettin the grill goin. He'd light up a match, and by the time it got to the grill, it'd be out or his fingers would be a burnin. And, seein as how Uncle Larry used about a half gallon of kerosene on top of his charcoal when he wanted to get that fire lit, he could usually be found with blisters on his hands and singed eyebrows. So, he decided he was gonna make a match that would concentrate the fire on the tip, so he wouldn't burn hisself up. He tried a little of this, a little of that, more sulfur, less sulfur, saltpeter, but none of it really worked. Finally, inspired by a combination of war films and a half bottle of whiskey, he decided that he would coat the tip of the match with white phosphorous. It took him a heck of a time gettin a little of that stuff. He had to travel to 15 different countries and deal with some pretty shady people. After spendin a couple years on the quest, not to mention the 10 in prison for smuggling hazardous materials, he had his match made. When it hit the 10 minute mark in the burnin, he was so happy he threw his arms into the air, knockin a little phosphorous powder onto his pet shih-tzu, which looked like a beach ball made of hair. The phosphorous, like water or soap, wasn't able to penetrate the dog's thick, long coating of armor-like hair. It just sat on top and burned away. That phosphorous sat on the dog and smoldered for three weeks, stinkin up everything in a three county region and givin Uncle Larry the nickname "Dog Smoke". So, when I tell you you don't wanna be smellin burnt hair for a week, you just believe I know what I'm talkin about. Also, if that rocket gets up your nose and you DON'T survive, well, then you'd just be dead.

At this point, I figure you know I dodged the rocket, because I ain't writin this from beyond the grave. You know because ghosts don't have a sense of humor. You try to tell a joke a ghost, it'll either just wail or rattle its chains at you. They just don't get the subtle humor of the living. I mean, sure, you could go to see the ghost of Curly, and it'll be layin there on the floor doin its wub-wub dance or its nyuk-nyuks, but believe you me, it ain't enjoyin it. In fact, it may be you're witnessin the eternal torture reserved only for insurance execs and slapstick comedians. Then again, maybe you're just seein things and ghosts ain't real.

Anyhoozits, now that you know I dodged that there rocket, you're prolly wonderin how ol' Pat did it. "Pat," you may be askin, "how on Earth did you dodge a rocket in a robot suit you know you don't know how to operate?" And I would say to you, "First, you're readin, so no questions, Mr. Uppity McCurious. Second, it was an accident." "An accident?!?!" you will say, stunned. And I will hang my head and mutter, "Yeah, an accident." Then we'll all move on from uncoverin Pat's secret shame and pretend we took no joy in it.

Here's how it happened. I turned and ran blindly away from the coming rocket, as any normal, sane person in a robot suit would do. People out of a robot suit would prolly just curl into a ball and hope the rocket missed, or they may yell somethin two words long that started with Oh. Well, there I was runnin pretty durned fast in this robot suit when, all of a sudden, I'm headed sideways towards the ground. I look down and see that I have run right into the racetrack I saw earlier and a cursed train has run into the left leg of my robot suit. Then, as I'm still fallin, I look up to see a rocket cruise right through the space my head had been in not a half second before. So, even though it's knocked me down and all, I can't be mad at the train no more.

That robot suit and me hit the ground with a thud. I was all sprawled out, tryin to figure out how to get this thing to stand up when I see the rocket turn around and start headed back my way. That's when I panicked. Usually, people're gonna tell you that, when you're in a dangerous situation, panic is your enemy. Well, panic and whatever it is that's tryin to kill you. In my case, the rocket was my enemy. But, in a twist of fate, my enemy's enemy became my friend. As I was flailin wildly to find a way out of the suit, I slapped my hand on a big red button marked Boomshalakkalakka. With a roar, the chainsaw nun-chuck gun started flingin spinnin balls of death into the night. I also found out, right about then, that it wasn't just a gun that fired nun-chucks made of chainsaws, but it was a gun that fired flamin nun-chucks made out of chainsaws. Somehow, it lit them things on fire just before launch. Well, that rocket turns and starts followin the flamin saws, hits the first one, and explodes like the Death Star, but like in the old Star Wars, not the new one where there's that weird ring thingy that shoots out. There was none of that. Just a good, old-fashioned explosion.

After the sound of the explosion died down, I could still hear a roaring in my ear. At first, I thought I might have still been on that beach, and all of this was just a dream, but after I sat and listened to it awhile it was most certainly not the sound of the ocean. It sounded more like, well, like fifty thousand people cheering all at once. I got the robot to roll over on its back and saw that the crowd was all a hootin and hollerin from the stands. I tried sittin up to get out of the controls, but the robot sat right up with me, then it stood.

I took a bow, as I thought was right when all them people was cheerin. I was takin what I thought was my much deserved praise when the crowd went totally silent. I thought maybe I'd taken in too far in the grandstandin, but the I heard the booming behind me. I turned to see another robot crawling over the stands and into the race track, and that one was breathin fire.

The Worst Possible Place

Now that I've tried out this interstellar travel thing a couple of times, I've made some decisions. First, I don't like interstellar travel. It just ain't comfortable. You ever see a marshmallow in the microwave? You know how it gets all bulgy and bubbly and finally erupts like a big ol' volcano of melted sugar and then you gotta wait to put it on your s'more, but you don't want to wait too long to eat it because, if you do, it'll turn all hard and crusty and it'll be like eating a graham cracker with chocolate and a brick Frisbee up there on top, so you bite into it too soon and the whole marshmallow explodes in your mouth like an m-80 filled with lava and it shoots out your nose, makin you look like an angry dragon? Well, just imagine you was the marshmallow in that situation; everything inside gettin all bubbly and poppy and bursty until everything goes dark and you feel like you're shootin through a giant nose and you swear that, in the middle, your skin turned 180 while your bones stayed in place and then something that felt like a tentacle brushed against your legs. Second, I've decided that, if I'm gonna go through all that kinda trouble, I'd much rather end up on a beach at the end of all of it than in a wet, mildewy basement that smells like pee and cold medicine. That's especially if, when I finally get into that basement, I'm surrounded by explosions and shoutin that sound like a giant ate a bunch of beans and is puttin on his crazy version of a giant rock show or performance art or somethin for a bunch of cowboys who keep yellin, "YEEEEEEHHHAAAAAAAWWWWWWW!!!" and then firin guns, which I can only imagine are at least 8 meters in diameter, into the air. I tell ya, landin in somethin like that, a man's bound to get a little rattled.

The first thing it sounded like I needed was defense of some sort. There weren't no one in that basement, but I didn't know how long that would last. It coulda been, before I knew it, that the farting giant would want to grimace and grunt and blow this whole house down. Or, if that didn't happen, maybe the people who owned whatever house was attached to this basement may want to check their stores of canned vegetables or their...well, as I looked through the boxes, it seemed to be mostly doll heads, toothbrushes and balls of string. So, maybe that was something they may want to guard. It looked like junk to me, but not to the person who'd put it here, because they all seemed to be sorted; the dolls heads by size and eye color; the string by color, thickness and size of ball; and the toothbrushes by length of bristle and softness, near as I could tell. Someone'd gone through a lot of trouble to organize all this stuff, and they may not take kindly to some old fogey like me diggin through it all and gettin it all dirty or, in some cases, wipin the dirt off it. Plus, and I tell you this in strictist confidence, I was a bit scared. I was on some alien world with explosions goin off everywhere and lookin through boxes full of dolls' heads. If you ain't scared in that situation, you're cold and dead inside.

So I started lookin around for a way to arm myself. I don't know if y'all ever been in a fight or anything, but I can tell ya from bein in one or two large scale conflicts myself, a doll's head does not make a good weapon. That is, of course, unless it's got a grenade stuck into the middle of it, which one of the heads in the box did. I didn't wanna mess with it, though, because, when you find a grenade in a box, it's usually best to leave it where it is. If you don't one of two things is bound to happen. One, it won't go off when you want it to or, two, it will go off when you don't want it to. Either one could be fatal. Leavin the box of plastic, starin eyes behind me I poked around further back in the basement. This feller, or lady (I couldn't figure it out from the collection) was the biggest pack rat I ever did see and my Aunt Hildabrand used to live in a house that was entirely made up of newspapers. It used to be a normal house but the she was stuck by the tornado of '74. It ripped all the walls off her house, but it couldn't do anything to her stacks of newspaper that were held together by a natural cement made of mold, dust and cat pee. Hildy never even noticed her house was gone, she had so much newspaper stuffed away, and none of us had the heart to tell her. Eventually she died in a cave-in. She was minin for sapphires in Thailand when the cave supports gave out. Her newspaper palace is still standin and, last I heard, it was turned into a roadside zoo. The long and the sort of it is, I know a pack rat when I see one, and this basement had Hildy beat by a country mile. There were boxes of toothpicks, piles of tin foil scraps, one whole row of nothing but broken Slinkys and, in the back corner, the dangerous looking things. It started small with a box full of slingshots. Then came a stack of boards with nails in them. After that was a pile of pipe wrenches with nails welded to them. That was followed up shortly by a pile of chainsaws that appeared to be connected by a length of chain, which I think was supposed to be chainsaw nun-chucks, then a box of handguns, rack after rack of rifle and finally, looming above it all, a robotic suit that was slumped over. Sticking out of the back of the suit there was two pipes that must have been 100 feet long and five feet around which connected to a double barreled gun mounted on the front of the suit. I just stood lookin at it for a long time, tryin to figure out what could possibly be fired from that gun. When I got up the nerve, I went and looked at the chamber of the gun and nearly dropped dead on the spot of the sheer mad genius of it.

"Well," I thought to myself, "might as well be as protected as I can." Then I went back a couple rows and started loading the tubes with the chainsaw nun-chucks. I fit an unbelievable amount of destruction into that suit before steppin in and flippin the power switch. That little beauty fired right up, locked my arms and legs in its soft, robotic embrace, and stood to its full height of 20 odd feet. I estimate the ceiling of that basement was right about ten feet because, once I was standing, the top of the robot suit brushed against the ceiling of the next floor, too.

The second floor wasn't quite as abandoned as the basement. There was a couple people up there sprawled out on a threadbare couch throwin knives at the wall. At least, that's what they were doin until I broke through the floor. After that, they were doin a lot of yellin.

"Who in tarnation is that?!?!" yelled the first guy, who had a sandy blond mullet and handlebar mustache.

"I dunno, Chuck," said the second, who also had a mullet and handlebar mustache, but his were greasy brown, "but whoever it is, he's ridin in yer chainchuck-o-matic."

"That's right, Pete," yelled Chuck in his heavy drawl, "and ain't no one ride in Chuck's chainchuck-o-matic but Chuck. And he ain't Chuck!!!!"

With that, he jumped up off the couch and came at me with a three foot knife. I just wanted to get out of the way. I 'spose anyone would when they was bein threatened with a three foot knife. Thing is, I plum forgot I was wearin that robot suit. I meant to make a tiny dodge to the side. Wheat ended up happenin, though, is that I jumped clean through the side of his house and out into a dystopian armageddon.

All around me, the world was black and covered in ash. There was couches, cars and chairs layin willy nilly. A good 90% of them was on fire, too. Overhead, there were long trails of smoke from the rockets bein launched from every direction. The only place that wasn't on fire or explodin was a racetrack to my left. There appeared to be thousands of people in the stands watchin supercharged trains race down tracks at blinding speeds and ending by running into dented, charred steel walls. To my right, in the middle of a field littered with tar paper shacks was a billboard so tall it looked like it would block the sun. It had a picture of a ninja with a platypus stitched over his left breast. He was holdin out his hands, offerin a bag of powder. Written above him in 30 foot tall flaming letters was the slogan, "Meth, you know you want it."

I slumped down in the robot suit. This, I realized, was a world totally conquered by Clan Platypus. It was their goal to turn the entire universe into this kind of rotten, stinking sewer. How could I, one small man in a robot suit that fired chainsaw nun-chucks, possibly hope to compete with that? I was almost overwhelmed by futility when I felt something hit the back of the suit.

I turned and saw Chuck standing there. He was dropping a smoking rocket launcher while Pete was getting another one ready for him. So, instead of dropping into a depression, I did the smart thing. I ran.

A break for lunch

Maybe it's just me, but waking up on an alien beach and then findin a white suit wearin Charles Lindbergh monitorin a tikki hut leads to one unavoidable question. Is it safe to breathe? After answerin that question with empirical evidence (that I am breathing and haven't, to the best of my knowledge, passed out), another question is likely to occur. Am I dead? You know, you always see in the movies how someone is dead or dyin and there's a guy with a white suit that shows up. Sometimes, of course, there's that black robed fellow that looks, from the back, like a judge that's tryin to keep his head warm and, from the front, like a guy who needs a sandwich somethin fierce. You know the guy I'm talkin about, he's all thin and gaunt lookin. He carries that big staff and everything. Oh, what is that guy's name? Oh, right, Palpatine; Emperor Palpatine. When I thought of him, I got pretty scared, cause I know he can shoot the lightnin outta his hands and, even worse, he's a politician. I didn't see him nowhere, though, so I relaxed some and worked on the whole "am I dead" thing.

It's a funny thing about death; you may be dead and not even know you're dead. I tried to come up with some experiments to test whether I was still alive or not. First thing, I took a deep breath. That was successful, cept I think some smoke from one of the tikki torches in front of the bar got into my mouth and I started coughin somethin awful. It was one of them coughs where you expect to blow somethin out at any minute and think that you're prolly gonna have to reswallow at least one lung when it's all over. Course, that didn't happen, which is good. I mean, maybe I'd try breathin my lung in and it'd go down the wrong pipe and then what would I do? I couldn't cough, because my lung wouldn't really be workin, and I couldn't finish swallowin in because then my lung would be in my stomach and both would probably be wrecked. The worst thing would be if I really were dead and I had to walk around the underworld with all my organs in the wrong place because I stood a little too close to the torch. I spose I get a bit morbid when I think about death. I blame too many action films, myself. That and all those stories Uncle Rudy told me about the time he spent as an organ courier when he was tryin to get work as a juggler. That sorta stuff stick with you when you're six.

That first experiment leadin to no conclusion, I decided to just throw it all on the table. Ask the man in the white suit. That usually works in the movies and books, doesn't it. Well, except that "Heart of Darkness" book. In that, Kurtz prolly shouldn't be trusted, and I'm pretty sure he's wearin a white suit.

It was Lindbergh that broke my spell. "What can I get you to drink?"

"Am I dead?" I blurted.

"Let me see," he said slowly, "I don't know how to make that one. Is it a rum drink? Something like a zombie, but with a little extra?" He walked towards the bar.

"Wait, wait," I grabbed his shoulder. It felt real enough. "That was a question, not a request. Have I passed on? Am I crossed over? If I was a dog, would some parents right now be tellin their kid that I'd gone to live on a farm where I could play and be happy?"

He waved the question away like it was a fly trying to get into his drink, "Nah, nah, it's nothing like like. Have a seat."

So I did. He brought me a plate of smoke pork, which he said was cooked in the sand, and a beer, which he said I would need.

"Eat up," he told me, "we'll talk better on a full stomach."

I ate it all up. I hadn't had nothin to eat since my morning donut just before I went to help Dale move that box, and that seemed like an eternity ago. I must have eaten an entire pig myself. I devoured everything but the oink, and I was plannin on makin a sandwich out of that the next day. There really ain't nothin like a good fried oink sandwich with some brown mustard and swiss cheese. If you want it at its best, you gotta get a fresh oink and double batter it. That's a little somethin I learned from Uncle Rudy.

After I was stuff to the gills, Lindbergh asked me, "Are you ready for a chat?"

"I ain't movin outta this here chair, if that's what you mean," I told him, leanin back and unbucklin my overalls.

"That's close enough to what I mean," he leaned back, too. "First of all, Pat, I want to apologize to you. We didn't tell you everything that was going on, and that wasn't really fair. You see, what we told you about Clan Platypus was only partly true."

I was skeptical, "You mean they ain't a bunch of ninjas tryin to take over the Earth usin meth?"

"Oh, no, they're most certainly that," he confirmed. "But they're much more than that as well."
He leaned in and told me the most incredible things. I don't remember his exact words, so I'll just kind of sum up for you.

It seems that we live in a pretty big universe. It's sorta like this. Take the Mississippi river and count all the grains of sand along its banks, then, make each one of them grains its own Mississippi river and say that each of those grains of sand is as far as we could possibly see with the most powerful telescope (Lindbergh called this our 'light cone'), the result is about a billionth the size of the known universe, apparently. He told me that the universe itself is actually infinite, but the known universe is all we're concerned with. I nodded as if I understood this, much as you may be doin right now. If you're not a physicist or whatever, I'd say don't worry too much about this here technical stuff, just know that we're talkin big like my Aunt Sally's beach ball booty.

Lindbergh told me he'd discovered this about 1953, just after he got the formula for the sea monkey and sweet potato burritos he's gotta eat. He worked out that there were a staggering number of planets that could hold life within that big of a universe and he started workin on how to get there. It took him two years, but he did it. By this time, the pork had made me all sleepy, so I didn't exactly catch how he did it, but it was a combination of machines and drawin lines with chalk on the floor. He showed me a couple diagrams and everything, but I ain't got a head for them things and it all ends up feeling like lookin at other people's vacation photos. You wanna act interested, but you equally just wanna go home and watch whatever game's on until you fall asleep in your recliner.

Problem was, he told me, that everywhere he went, Clan Platypus had already been there and messed the whole place up. The Clan had been working for near on a century to not only subjugate Earth, but to take over the whole universe with their crazy drug schemes. Well, Charles wasn't havin that. He'd been workin for the last 50 years to push them back on every planet he could reach. He learned how to fight ninjas, how to cure meth addiction, and how to get out of tight spots. He also said he recruited people to help him in his fight. There was about a hundred currently working.

Then he went on to tell me McClawenstein was not actually my neighbor Dale. He'd actually gotten Dale hooked on meth and sent him off to the Clan Platypus labor camps to dig up rocks and clean tile and other stuff that needed doin. I sure felt bad for Dale. He was a pretty nice guy. I gotta admit that I felt some relief, though. I'd been feelin guilty all this time that I'd never noticed my neighbor was a half man, half lobster thing. I felt less bad about that, but more bad about Dale himself. Win a little, lose a little, I guess. McClawenstein was really a distributor for Clan Platypus, that much was true, but he wasn't just a middle manager. McClawenstein had worked his way up to be worldwide distributor for the entire Earth. When I heard that, I realized I'd been in quite a deal of danger in that living room, and not just from bad coffee.

"Thank goodness the danger's past, huh?" I asked Charles.

"About that," he was tryin to measure his words carefully, "you're still in danger. You see, in my research I have found that McClawenstein has gained the ability to send people to different Earths with his flatulence. Every time he went to the kitchen during your discussion, he took another ingredient he needed to send you off. But, the squimonk and I have been working on a way to interrupt the journey and we tried it for the first time on you. The system isn't perfected yet, though, and we can only hold you here temporarily before you go to where he was trying to send you in the first place."

"I'm guessin that's nowhere nice," I sighed.

"Too true," he nodded.

"So, what do I do when I get wherever it is I'm bein sent?"

"Take this," he slid a button across the table. I picked it up and saw it had a picture of a big furry crab on it.

"What is it?" I asked.

"This is the official button of Clan Coconut Crab, Douggie's clan. They also are trying to stop Clan Platypus' universal domination. Wherever you go, you can seek them out. It also has an FTL transmitter in it so we can find out where you are, but it may take awhile."

"FTL?"

"Faster Than Light," he explained, "it's the only way to communicated across the vast distances."

"Oh," I sighed. "One more question."

"Shoot."

"Why is everything gettin all see through all of a sudden?" It was like the whole world was a fresh water color that'd been dropped in the tub. It was all bleedin out.

"You're moving on," he told me. "Good luck, Pat. Be safe."

And with that, everything went black again.

Exciting Layout Changes!

Hey all. I've taken suggestions from some of the readers and added some things to the blog. First of all, there's a "recent comment" field on the left, as you may notice. Also, since someone noted that they're putting this on a Kindle or Sony Reader or something, and I recently acquired one of them myself, I've put a gadget at the bottom that will convert a url to PDF. If you want to copy and share this stuff, I'll allow it as long as you're not trying to make any money off it, but please point people to the blog itself. Next, I have, following a suggestion that I really wish I'd thought of, created a Pat O'Neil forum at patoneil.freeforums.org. Feel free to visit, comment, whatever. Just don't start any flame wars or I'll have to ban you and then there will be feelings hurt and you'll spend your adult life sitting in a run-down hotel room somewhere sharpening knives and dreaming of the day that fictional characters become real so you can attack Pat, but satisfying yourself with the next best thing which is printing out posts and repeatedly stabbing those until, one day while perusing the internet, you stumble upon the recycle movement and can't even do that so you sink into wallowing depression that can only be cured through massive amounts of jello and potato chips. None of us want that.
Finally, I have discovered that this blog is the number one result when searching for "Pat O'Neil" on google. I don't know why anyone would be searching for that, but it feels like a triumph to me.
I'll try to post the next story tomorrow. For now, go join the forum.

Out of the living room and into the fire

After I finished relatin how I was raised by harbor seals and how pa managed to be around even though he fell through a pier, Dale just sat and looked at me for a time. I figured he was just thinkin about why he'd never learned about the great robot war in school, much like I did when pa told me the whole story. Like pa told me, the hobos asked for the whole story to be stricken from the official record. Then I asked him why no one who was around during the time and had their family or friends killed, maimed or minorly injured by giant steam-powered brass robots never thought to mention it to anyone, he told me, "I dunno, I guess it wasn't that big of deal to them." Me, bein just a kid, not to mention fresh out of an orphanage and still not comfortable with human language, just sort of accepted it. I was ready to tell all this to Dale, should he choose to question. I gotta say, I dunno how long we sat there, but it was long enough for my coffee to get cold, but I'd really had enough by then, so I wasn't complainin.

For a while there, I thought he was gonna speak any second. His mouth was flappin up and down like a bass that's just been landed. Then that stopped and he took that quick inhale that people do when they're just about to say something. Then he slowly exhaled while he was shakin his head. I leaned in to hear him better.

"What..." he started. Then blinked slowly and shook his head. Then we sat there for awhile more. Just about dusk, he asked be, "What in Neptune's great green sea are you talking about?! Robot wars and hobos living under the earth? What has that got to do with anything?! Is this all you do, sit around and think up crazy stories to tell people?!"

"I also sell donuts," I informed him, "though not as many as I like. I think it's probably because the dam on the donut river west of town just broke, but I think, given time, people will come back to me to have their donut needs fulfilled..."

"Donut dam?!" he shouted. "I don't want to hear another word, Pat, unless that word involves a short, succinct summary of everything you've told me this afternoon."

"Well, shoot, Dale," I told him, "if that's what you wanted, you shouldna kept givin me all that coffee. Really, all I was tryin to tell ya is I understand what it's like to live between the land and the sea. I just wanted to tell you, you know, it's tough not belonging to either world, so, I know how you feel."

His claw slammed into the serving tray, sending coffee and shards of cup flying in all directions. "You know nothing!" he bellowed.

"Pardon?"

"You...know...nothing," he repeated slowly through clenched teeth. "You...you strut around, flaunting your humanity while those like me must live in the shadows like cockroaches. You know nothing of what it's like to be a freak! The stares of children, the comments of drunks, the hesitation on the face of women as they dare one another to touch your shell. You may have been raised by harbor seals, but you're still human! You're one of them!"

He started to get a wild look in his eye. "Calm down, Dale, we can talk about it."

"The time for talking is done, Pat!" He raised both claws and clacked them together loudly. "The time for action is now!" With that, he released the mightiest burst of flatulence I have ever witnessed. The cups exploded. The doors were thrown off their hinges. The whole world flexed outwards once, like it was all painted on the inside of a balloon that was tryin to pop. Then, everything went black.

Did you ever read Alice in Wonderland? She had her one crazy fall in there, right after she went down that there rabbit hole. She passed clocks and ducks and, I think, the wicked witch of the east, though I may be wrong about the ducks. The darkness I was in was sorta like that, except I didn't see anyting. You know, cause it was dark. But I could still feel stuff whiskin by me. And I wasn't exactly fallin. I ain't sure what it was but it felt like I was strapped to the roof of a bullet train in a tub full of jello while some vile temptress whipped me with caterpillars, only less pleasant.

And then, there was a beach. I was wearin the same clothes and still shieldin my face, but I weren't in Dale's living room any more, and I was wearin flip-flops. "Well," I told myself, "it's a good thing I'm wearin my lucky overalls."

I stood there lookin up and down the beach for awhile, waitin for ninjas or lobster men or dinosaurs or somethin to come rushin down on me, but that didn't happen. It seemed like a perfectly normal beach to me. Sure the surf was a little higher than most of the beaches I've been to, and the sky was pink with purple stripes, and, sure, instead of a moon in the sky, you could see a giant planet with rings around it and, yeah, I suppose the fish jumping out of the water may have had the faces of lions and they were eating small, furry birds, but, other than those small details, it was a normal beach.

I didn't know what the heck I was supposed to be doin there, so I just started walking. I figured, when you're stranded on an unfamiliar beach, one way's as good as another as long as you're parallel to the water. If you're perpendicular to the water, it's probably best you walk with your back to the waves, unless, of course, you've got gills or a scuba tank or some other way to not die when you're under water, and you're sure there's nothin in there that's gonna kill you (like a box jellyfish that's been studyin kung fu and has a gun). Since I didn't have any of those things, I thought I'd just go ahead and stroll along the beach until somethin else happened.

Despite being somewhere totally unfamiliar and pretty confused about what had just happened, there was a spring in my step I'd not had since I was a youth and I wore shoes with rocket powered springs on the bottom to win a race against my running rival Springy McGee, whose legs were made of coiled bed springs after a horrible accident at his father's bed factory. The upside was that springy could run faster than anyone else in the tri-county area. The downside was that he couldn't walk through thick brush and he would occasionally tangle his legs together and fall, eliciting the laughter of even his parents, who were often drunk. Springy eventually went to law school and, last I heard, was spending all the profits from his law practice on a personal crusade against the makers of the Slinky, calling it an affront to all spring-legs everywhere.

Regardless, I was just as bouncy walking down the beach as I was in that infamous race. I must have been clearing 20 feet with every step. I was makin good time, though I didn't know where to yet.

Just as the first sun was setting and the second was rising, I spotted a little building in the distance. As I got closer, I saw that it was a tikki bar, complete with bamboo walls, palm fronds on the roof and a pig roast in progress, though there was only one guest. He was right easy to spot because he was wearin a white suit that shone under them twin suns like chrome wheels covered in phosphorus.

I landed right behind him and asked, "Excuse me, sir, but would you happen to know where I am? You see, I woke up here after this whole thing with a lobster man, and..."

"You needn't explain, Pat," he said, turning around, "I already know everything."

I was right confused and even more so when he finished turning enough so I could see his face. "Mr. Lindbergh?" I asked, stunned.

"That's right," he confirmed. "Come on in, we've got some talking to do."

Curse you, dialup

Just a quick note. I have the next story all planned out, but I'm loving off dialup right now, and I'm not a patient man. However, thank you all for the suggestions in the comments. When I have a regular, big-person internet connection, I will implement some of those. See you soon.