Slackers "Sliders" parody [note: this story is incomplete] Characters: Quim Malarkey - Quinn Mallory Raid - Wade The Professor - The Professor Remm Da Pimp - Rembrandt Quim is just your average slacker until one day, the TV signal is out, the phone lines are down, he can't sleep, and his joint won't light. Bored and searching for something to do, he eventually decides to actually open up his school textbooks. Within hours, he has built a dimensional transporter which acts on the principals of Slack. Raid is Quim's girlfriend, and looks like your average anorexic heroin whore(read: any American model). Angsty and gives an attitude to everyone but Quim(haven't written this in well) The Professor is unchanged from the original series. Remm Da Pimp is a flashy, stylish pimp/gangsta stereotype who got caught in the dimensional rift while his car was bouncing(literally, hydraulics) down the street next to Quim's house. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The house's front door opens with a squeak and the figure steps inside, not bothering to close the door behind. A gaunt young man in his early twenties, unshaven with toussled hair and a blank stare in his half-open eyes, he walks into the house hunched slightly forward, wearing torn blue jeans and a flannel jacket over a ratty tee-shirt and carrying a backpack slung over his right shoulder. The pack is halfway open and multicoloured folders stick partway out, and as he passes the kitchen table which is overladen with bills, a draft notice, tax papers, other mail and papers of various import, and the dishes from the morning breakfast, he tosses the pack onto the table. The pack's contents promptly spill out onto the table, and some of the table's contents spill onto the floor. He walks into the living room and flops unceremoniously onto the couch. Shortly he then props himself up, reaches under himself and withdraws a TV remote which he tosses out to the ground, then flops back down again. After a few seconds, he rolls over. Just as uncomfortable in that position, he tries out new positions every few seconds, but cannot seem to get comfortable enough to sleep. With a hand on his forehead, he wearily rises to a sitting position and sighs. He reaches forward and picks the remote up off the ground, sinks back into the couch, and turns on the TV. The TV blinks on, but the screen shows only snow(AKA The Flies Attack At Midnight, but I digress). The young man flips the channel, but still gets no reception. He tries a few other channels, same thing. He then shakes his head, turns off the TV, and tosses the remote back onto the floor. He stands up and walks back into the kitchen. As he passes the table, he notices his schoolbooks spilled out over it, but does not give them a second thought as he picks up a phone book off the counter and goes back to the couch. He flips through the yellow pages until he finds the number of a pizza delivery service, then reaches over to an end table and picks up a telephone. He makes as to begin dialing, but then notices something is odd. He puts the phone to his ear, shakes it, then hits the hangup button several times. No dial tone. Disgusted, he throws the phone reciever back in the general direction of the end table, which it hangs off by its cord until it pulls the rest of the phone to the floor with it. The man turns around on the couch as he begins to rise to return the phone book, but as soon as he sees his schoolbooks on the table, he sits back down and drops the directory on the other side of the couch. He then pulls from his right pocket a cigarette lighter. To his surprise, it lights on the first try. His eyes brighten up for the first(and maybe last) time in the show, and a smile crosses his face. He brings up a marijuana joint and puts an end in the flame for a second, then pulls it back out and almost puts it in his mouth before he realizes that it never lit. He tries again, and it still doesn't light, nor does it on a third try. Needless to say, his happy mood has by now gone away and he is quite exasperated. He turns off the lighter and stuffs both lighter and joint in his pockets, then slouches back on the couch and sighs. After two or three seconds of sitting in still silence, he turns his head towards the kitchen, towards his school books. "Oh man... No way." "Dude.. You have got to see this!" The excited voice of the previously introduced young man is heard as he leads two others come down the stairs to a small, dimly lit concrete-walled room filled with strange machinery. One of his guests is a large gentleman in a dress suit and tie, with curly hair and a short beard. The other person is a thin young woman with a short, bad hairdo and wearing sandals, Daisy Duke shorts, a halter top that halts about an inch below her breasts, and way too much makeup on her face: Dark purple lipstick and enough dark brown around her eyes to give the impression she has two black eyes, and too much powder everywhere else. As they reach the bottom of the stairs, the gentleman speaks. "I am very interested in seeing what you might have here, Mr. Malarkey. I have been wondering whether you would ever have anything to show for my instruction." The three walk across to the other side of the room, stepping around the large machines. The machines, with their copious pipes, gears, levers, and moving parts, fill the majority of the room, some emitting a small amount of steam at short intervals. Off in one corner in the background can be seen an unkempt bed. On the side of the room they are walking towards is a pair of blackboards on which are written numberous scientific equations(and a bunch of joke figures like kosher and tictactoe - this *is* a parody), all of which lead to a large equal sign halfway across the second board, past which is drawn the image of the face of a smiling man with a pipe in his mouth. The young man who we now know as Mr. Malarkey motions towards the blackboards and speaks of his discovery. "So look at this, man, I just used the Dobbsian Theorum of Non-Motion to implement a working Travaglian Resistor to pass exactly 37 milliKendai through the Fnordian Copulators to the Hemos Reactor which produces.." He flips a large switch, and large blue bolts of electricity shoot through and around the machines. When the flow reaches one machine, it lights up and a swirling blue portal appears in front of it. "..like, this." "Whoa, Quim.." The girl puts her arms around Mr. Malarkey and gives him a kiss on the cheek. "That is like, /so/ technical." Quim puts his arm around her. "Hey, thanks Raid. Want me to show you more?" The Professor looks over the machinery and the equations. "This is quite a fascinating discovery you have made here, Mr. Malarkey. Until now I was not aware that you were even reading the text." Quim says awkwardly, "Well, uh, not until this afternoon, anyways." "Ah." The Professor motions towards the portal. "So what do you believe this is?" "Oh, well that? It's a portal to another dimension." The Professor nods. "And how did you come to this conclusion?" "It was in the script." Both the Professor and the girl shoot a nasty glare at Quim, who gives a blank stare for a second and a half until the actor playing Quim realizes he fucked up. He quickly corrects himself. "Oh, uh, I mean.. Uhh.. Umm.. Uh.. Like, the equation says so." The Professor accepts this as good enough. "Sounds interesting. So I take it you are in the mood for some hyperdimensional spelunking?" As the professor is saying this, Raid pushes a piece of paper in front of Quim's face. Quim takes it and studies it intently, then nods and puts it in his pocket. He then says to the Professor, "Well, you see, part of the Dobbsian Theorum of Non-Motion states that there are these transdimensional threads conveying inactivity between different dimensions, and by using... all this stuff here I was able to capture one." The professor smiles and nods. "All well and good. But have you devised a way to return to our home dimension?" Quim nods and holds up a small hand-held device with a LED display and numerous blinkenlights. "I call this a Thingie. It does the exact same thing as this huge roomful of machinery, plus some. It'll, like, get us right back to where we started from. Or something." Raid takes the device, glances at it, shrugs, and hands it to the Professor. The Professor takes a more detailed look at it, turning it over and sideways. "Have you tested this device before?" "Uh, well, I'm like sure it'll work." Quim stammers. Raid smiles and tosses her arms in the air gleefully. "Well, why don't we go and try it out?" A strech of city road runs towards a 4-way intersection, then up and over a small hill. Being an upper-class residential district of San Francisco, the houses are actually seperated from each other, and each has its own lawn. A car stops and passes across through the intersection, and a few people are seen walking along the sidewalks. Off in the distance, a heavy bass beat is heard. Suddenly this view is obscured by the crashing down of a hot red[pink?] Cadillac falling from above, California license plate "DA PIMP". The rap music playing on the radio blasts at full volume, and the car lurches forward as its hydraulic suspension bounces it back into the air. The car continues bouncing forward at a rate of at least twice the speed limit, goes straight through the intersection without stopping, and disappears over the hill. Over the hill the road drops and then flattens out, and the Caddy picks up speed. It is a convertable that has been permanently converted, the top having been completely removed from the vehicle. [frills] The interior is bright lemon-yellow plastic-looking seating with a fuzzy cowspot trim. The driver of this Pimpmobile is a black man with bright purple pants, a bright red longcoat with a pink interior and a white fuzzy trim, a silver vest over a green shirt, a light purple hat with a yellow band and a large pink feather sticking out of it, and a pair of Pimp-O-Vision sunglasses. On the passenger seat sits what appears to be a large open floursack, but for the fact that the sack is labled "COKE". The sack is buckled in. The pimp isn't. Back in Quim's parents' basement, the Professor has become apprehensive about travelling through dimensions. "Are you sure that travelling between dimensions is safe? What if the Earth is one day ahead in its revolution in the other dimension, would we end up floating in space? Not to mention the effect our actions would have on innocent alternate societies..." Raid sighs. "Professor, this story's like already 10K long. Like, let's get on with it, you know?" The Professor nods, understanding. "Ah, yes." He examines the Thingie one last time, and then holds his head up high. "To put oneself in danger, for the pursuit of science, and for the betterment of mankind. That I do now." Quim's eyes widen. "Whoa, that was like, way deep man. Who said that?" The Professor smiles. "I did. Right now." And with that, he runs(waddles?) and throws himself at the portal, passing right through it with no effect. Picking himself up off the concrete floor, the Professor dusts himself off and looks around his surroundings, seeing nothing different. "Ah," he reasons, "I must have landed in a dimension that is almost exactly similar to the one from which I came. Perhaps so similar to the point where your Professor just jumped through a portal, and I came out." Quim and Raid shake their heads. Quim explains: "No, man, you like did it wrong. You used too much energy, and to get it to work, you've gotta like Slack, you know? Just like loosen up, and fall into it." The Professor hands the Thingie back to Quim. "Ah well. Perhaps we should try again?" As he says this, Quim's cat bounds down the stairs and sits next to a piece of machinery. It puts a paw up to the device and immediately disappears in a bright flash, a puff of dust drifting to the ground in its place. "Whoa, dude!" Raid exclaims. "Your cat just got fried!" Quim is distraught. "Aw, man! I missed it." A sudden surge of power shoots through the machinery and hits the portal. The portal suddenly becomes unstable, expanding, wavering and wobbling. It moves across the room, sucking up the Professor, Quim, and Raid who are too busy arguing over the inanity of the script to notice. It then travels up the stairs, around a corner and out the front door. The Pimpmobile touches down and hits a speed bump, sending it even higher into the air. A little old lady walking her poodle across the street ducks low just in time to avoid being whacked by the bouncing Cadillac. The pimp turns around and shouts "Out mah way, bitch!" He laughs and grabs a fistful of cocaine from the sack in the passenger seat and messily stuffs the powder in his face. The pimp then leans back in his chair, stretches his arms out, and looks up just in time to see a large dimensional rift in front of the car. As the car bounces up to meet the rift the pimp screams. "MUTHAH FU"*schwazappa* The thread between dimensions is a bright multicoloured tunnel of half-assed CGI, the colours moving and blending together. "Whoa.." Raid comments. "This is like, so trippy." "Yeah, man," Quim concurs, "This is like, awesome." The Professor floats along behind them. "This is quite fascinating. The idea of transdimensional travel has only been a theory until now... We are the first voyagers into a heretofore unknown realm of scientific discovery." As the professor keeps jabbering down the tunnel, the Caddy floats a distance behind the three. The pimp stares around at all the pretty colours. "Damn!" He looks at the cocaine bag. "That was some good shit!" Raid, Quim, and the Professor fall out of the vortex into a new world. A moment later the Caddy flies out above them and smashes into a large block of ice sitting in the middle of a road. The pimp, not wearing his seatbelt, is thrown screaming out over the iceberg while the rear end of the totalled Cadillac hangs out the side of the block, the front end totally embedded within the ice. A small thud is heard in the distance as Quim, Raid, and the Professor stand up and examine their surroundings. San Fran is usually described as freezing cold by its inhabitants, but this is ridiculous - Large portions of the city are covered in ice, the part of the Bay which is visible is frozen in, the Golden Gate bridge is snapped in half by the weight of the ice, and palm trees are growing in a windless Candlestick Park. Quim is astonished at the change in weather. "Whoa, man.. there's no wind in the Stick? This is like, most definately not our dimension, man." Raid shivers. Her outfit is too little to be wearing even when she's not in the middle of an ice age. "This weather is like, totally not cool, alright?" "She's right." The professor says. "The freezing temperatures here might subdue us rather quickly unless we can find shelter. By the rate at which my hands are going numb and the reduction in bloodflow to my brain, I can make an assertation that the temperature is in the given range of approximately.. That would be.. About.. " The professor sits down. "Really cold." Quim starts punching some buttons on the Thingie. "Like, lets see. If.." He is suddenly interrupted by a shout. "Yo!" The pimp rushes towards Quim as fast as a stoned disoriented pimp can rush. When he reaches Quim he asks, "Do you be like, that holographic muthahfuckah?" Quim whacks the pimp over the head with the Thingie. "Dude, do you be like, dissin me man?" the pimp asks. "Where the fuck do we be at anyways? This place is whiter than Alabama." The Professor stands up and addresses Quim. "Perhaps you should explain this situation to him, Mr. Malarkey." Quim nods several times. "Uh, yeah. Like, okay, like, what's happening is like, uh, well, you see, like, we like, sorta, like, you know, built this like dimensional transporter like thing, and it like zapped us into this dimension, you know, which is like not our dimension, I mean it's like our dimension like, but we're not like in our regular dimension." "Yeah, man, I dig." The pimp says. "Now get us asses back to our own dimension, I got a sweet deal going down at the Pimpsidio." The Professor says to the pimp, "I'm afraid it's not going to be that easy. You see, to get back to our original dimension we will have to activate the Thingie at precisely the right moment in time or else we will catch the wrong thread and end up in the wrong dimension." "Ain't we already in the wrong dimension?" the pimp asks. "How much more wronger can it get?" Raid speaks, her voice breaking as she shivers in the cold. "No man, I think he means like there are an infinite number of wrong dimensions." She turns to Quim. "Couldn't we like go to one where the weather's better?" "Hallo!" A voice is heard from offscreen. "It appears we have been noticed by one of the locals." the Professor states as the group turns toward where the voice originated. Two men and a canine trudge through the snow towards the four. Both men are dressed heavily in cold-weather furs. One of the men is wearing a stiff broad-brimmed hat and a bright red uniform can be seen under his fur coat. He walks tall, cleanly stepping through the snow in an perfect, almost mechanical manner. His friend stumbles clumsily through the snow, nearly falling several times. Rounding out the group is a large friendly-looking white wolf. The clumsy one complains in a slightly arrogant tone. "Oh jeez, Fraser, are lunatics attracted to you or something? Look at these people!" The tall one responds in a calm mannered tone. "Ray, it is our duty to help people out whenever we can. Perhaps they are merely lost." "Lost?" Ray asks sardonically. "Lost? How the heck can they get this far lost when it's glaciers all the way to Tiajuana!" "Perhaps they took a wrong turn," Fraser replies seriously. "Wrong turn.." Ray mutters. "Wrong turn out of the Twilight Zone or something." Reaching the Slackers, Fraser sees Raid wearing next to nothing in the freezing cold and immediately removes his coat and hands it to her. Underneath his coat Fraser's red uniform is seen to be stiff and immaculate. Raid shakes her head. "Dude, like that style is like, so yesterday!" "Jeez," Ray mutters, "She's nuttier than Francesca." "Yo!" the pimp shouts at Fraser. "Who do you be, muthahfucka?" Fraser puts his coat back on and addresses the pimp in his calm rational tone. "Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I first came-" The wolf wags its tail which accidentally brushes against Raid. Raid, being thin as a toothpick, is knocked down to the ground with a shriek, interrupting Fraser. Fraser turns and offers Raid a hand up. "Oh, sorry about that. Dief gets exited when he meets strangers. Diefenbaker, apologize to this young lady." Dief lowers his head and gives a soft whimper. Raid looks at the wolf, then picks herself up off the snow, rudely ignoring Fraser's offer of help. Fraser turns his attention back to the pimp. "Would that be the new American Mounted Police uniform? I heard there to be a change in the official dress, but I had thought it was sceduled for next week." "I ain't no muthahfuckin' cop!" the pimp shouts in dismay. "I'm Remm Da Pimp!" Fraser extends a hand in greeting. "Pleased to make your aquaintance, Mr. DePimp." "Frasier, he's a pimp. You know?" Ray points out arrogantly, then says in resigned exasperation, "No, you wouldn't know." Remm goes back to asking Quim questions. "So dude, like how'd you get that wavy portal thing in the middle of the road?" Quim says, "Well, you see, it like got out of our control when the machine like vaporized my cat, then we sorta fell in it and it must have like, got you later, and now we're all in this dimension." The Professor speaks up. "It is well known that cats are in large part made of Slack energy. It appears that this energy went through the machinery and overloaded the portal." Fraser joins the conversation. "What level of milliKendai did you have your Hemos Reactor set to?" "Oh, come on Fraser," Ray says disbelievingly, "You can't actually tell me you know about interdimensional physics." Quim answers Fraser. "It was at, like, 37." "Ah, thirty-seven." Fraser echoes, then continues. "Considering that an average household cat would have a Slack rating of five milliKendai, that would bring the total Slack constant up to-" "Frasier, how do you know all this stuff?" Ray asks in astonishment. "I took a night course." Fraser responds matter-of-factly. The Professor reasons, "Apparently the extra Slack energy from Mr. Malarkey's cat was just enough to cause a Slack Overflow in the portal's energy matrix." Diefenbaker walks around examining a large iceberg situated in the middle of the road. The rear end of the Pimpmobile is still hanging straight out the side of the ice, the front having been smushed and well embedded into the ice. A large sack of powder sits on the ground, it's contents spilled onto the ice. This attracts the wolf's attention, and Dief licks a little powder up, and starts pawing and nosing into the bag. The Professor addresses Fraser. "One thing that interests me is, in this sort of climate, how can tropical plants be growing in the baseball park?" "Ah. Well, it's a long story." Fraser says. "Want to hear it?" Ray interrupts. "The short version should be fine, Fraser." Fraser begins the short version. "Well, it all started five years ago. I was stationed up in the Yukon, and was on the trail of a cold-blooded killer who had been hunting elk out of season, when I was chased by two polar bears and fell down a five hundred foot cliff. Fortunately, I was rescued by an Inuit chief, and..." Quim looks at the Thingie. "This says we've only got about a minute before we have to Slack out of here." Frasier takes note and speeds up the story. "I see. Well, what happened is when the local sports teams moved out of the stadium that particular tribe of Inuit was able to purchase it at a bargain price using money they had gained from oil and mining rights. They have been using their traditional environmental management techniques and have been able to keep out the encroaching cold weather." Ray nods. "You wouldn't believe it, but it's 70 degrees in there." "About 30 seconds.. " Quim announces. For some reason, the wind picks up and a strong breeze begins to blow. Fraser wanders off away from the group. "Quite strange, yes... Yes, I know they're not from around here... I think they can be trusted... Well, you've never seen hyperdimensional travelers before... What do you mean he's not looking so good?" Quim, Raid, Remm, and the Professor all stare at the floor show. Remm asks, "Who do that muthah be talking at?" Ray just shakes his head. "He does this all the time." "And.. Now!" Quim pushes a button on the Thingie, and a blue plasma-like beam shoots out from it. At about five feet the beam stops and turns into a six-foot tall portal. Quim and Raid step up to the portal, facing away, and fall backwards into it to minimize energy use and maximize Slack. Remm jumps up to the portal, takes a deep breath, then does likewise and disappears into it. The Professor goes up next. Before he falls in he says to Ray, "It was nice meeting you, thank you for your help but we must be going now." "Yeah," Ray says. "Thanks. I mean, welcome." The Professor falls back and vanishes into the portal. Ray turns back towards Fraser who is trying to get his wolf under control. "Dief.. Dief.. Diefenbaker! Look at me when I talk to you. Deif!" Ray looks back towards the portal, which is still open. He glances back at Fraser, then starts running as fast as he can towards the portal and jumps towards it. Unfortunately for Ray, this action expended too much energy and not enough Slack to catch ahold of the interdimensional thread. Ray passes through the portal uneventfully as if it were not there, and lands face down in the snow. He turns and rises to his knees just in time to see the portal collapse and vanish. Ray punches a fist into the snow. "You alright Ray?" Fraser calls. "Yeah.." Ray answers. "I just.. tripped. I fell." "Ah. You should be more careful. I think Diefenbaker's sick, by the way." "He is?" Ray looks at the wolf and sees the nearby sack labelled 'COKE'. "Hey, I may be clumsy but at least I don't have a wolf with a crack habit." The Slackers travel through the thread floating on their backs in a very Slackish laid-back way. They eventually reach the end and get hourked out onto a normal asphalt road. Picking themselves up, the four step up to the sidewalk and examine their new surroundings. The streets are largely devoid of traffic, although there are a few rusted cars parked here and there. The buildings are all either painted in bright psychadelic tie-die color patterns or covered with several decades of dust and dirt. Windows are broken in some properties, many appear to in disuse. A few people can be seen walking along the street in groups of two to five, all young people in their teens to early twenties clad in blue jeans or shorts, sandals, frilly brown leather jackets, tie-die t-shirts, sunglasses and bandannae. The Professor examines the surroundings. "It appears we have landed in the Haight-Ashbury district." A yellow taxi cab travels down the road towards the group. Remm waves it over. Quim asks, "Dude, do you like, are you going?" The Professor says, "We should not seperate until we are certain that we are back in the right dimension." The cab parks and Remm opens the door to get in. "Hey muthah, you said that you be doing the Thingie thing at the right time and you be done. So we be going." As Remm drives off in the cab, Quim, Raid, and the Professor continue walking down the street. "Like, this place looks really cool," Quim says. Raid agrees. "Yeah, man, like totally." The Professor is more cautious. "I think we should try and make our way towards a more respectable district of the city. I would not trust the young people here." As the three walk past a pair of stoners sitting on the sidewalk, one of the stoners stands up and holds out a bunch of joints in his palm. "Hey, dudes, like, wanna get stoned?" "Yeah, man." "Like, I'm there." Quim and Raid unhesitantly each take a joint and join the stoners. "No thank you sir." The Professor politely refuses. Both stoners appear shocked by what the Professor said [use a simile!]. The one who was sitting down stands up and runs down the street. "Well, " the Professor states, "I don't know what his problem was." The first stoner says, "Dude, like what you said was so wrong." The Professor is puzzled. "Wrong? How so?" Suddenly a siren wails and blue lights flash as a police cruiser pulls up to a stop in front of them. Two policemen in blue uniform step out of the car and approach the group. The other stoner runs back and points at the Professor. As the policemen walk up to him, the Professor says, "I assure you, gentlemen, I have done nothing wrong." One of the policemen asks, "Do you ever smoke marijuana?" The Professor shakes his head. "Absolutely not, my dear sir. I refuse to pollute my body with those kinds of drugs." The two policemen look at each other quizzically. One of them quietly asks the other, "is this guy for real?" They shake their heads, then both walk up to the Professor and arrest him. One policeman throws the Professor against the car and cuffs him while the other reads him his rights. "You have the right to remain silent, and like, umm, I can't remember the rest of it. Throw him in." The first policeman tosses the Professor in the back, then both get in the car and drive off. Quim, Raid, and the (other) stoners sit back and watch the spectacle. When it is over, Quim motions with his joint and says, "Dude. That was like, so cool." The taxi cab pulls over to the sidewalk. Up an incline can be seen a large pile of fallen timber where buildings once stood. "Where do this be at, muthahfuckah?" Remm asks the driver. The driver of the taxi cab, a large bearded man, answers in a heavy russian accent. "This is the Presidio. Where you asked." "This ain't not be the Pimpsidio!" Remm complains. "The Pimpsidio done be like an old Army base." "Da," the driver answers, "Was army base, thirty years ago. Army disband, place fall apart, see?" "Aw, shit! Then this done be like da wrong dimension, and that honky muthahfuckah done did push the wrong button or he be like lying when he say da right time." "You are a traveler from another dimension?" the driver asks. "Muthahfuckah!" Remm exclaims. "How'ja figure that out?" The driver smiles. "We get a lot of those. Want to know why you're not in your right dimension?" "You done best be tellin' me that right now!" Remm threatens. "Calm down," The driver intones. "It's somewhat odd, but it makes sense when you think about basic Slack theory. You see, it is common knowledge that cats have a high level of Slack in their bodies. It is even believed by some, myself included, that the early Slack philosophies stemmed from ancient Egyptian cat worship. The Egyptians also worshipped the number three, which has some very mystical powerful properties. The number three itself is almost the magic number pi; It is close to but not quite something far more useful than it is, therefore it also holds Slack. I've noticed that groups of you Slackers always come in four, sometimes five. Now, it is my theory that if you are to reach your destination, you must travel always in groups of three or less. Any more, and you will get pulled down a random thread of less resistance to a different dimension." Sirens in the background suddenly increase in volume. Remm turns around and sees the flashing lights heading towards the cab. "Shit! Da cops! I gotta get out of here... How da heck you be learn all that shit anyways?" The driver leans back in his chair. "I took a night course." Remm opens the door and jumps out, but the police are already upon the cab. To his surprise they ignore him, and he watches in stunned astonishment as they proceed to arrest the driver and lead him away in handcuffs. "Is your name Igor Piroshki?" one of the cops asks. "Yes, that is I." the driver responds. "What is this all about?" "You're like, so under arrest dude, for like speaking coherently, man." The baliff leads the Professor into the courtroom. The courtroom is mostly empty except for a pair of guards and the judge, who looks strangely familiar. A thin young woman wearing a frilly leather jacket over a tshirt, a red bandana on her forehead, and a pair of tinted sunglasses. The Professor is astonished at the similarity. "Raid? Is that you?" The judge leans forward. "Dude, like I'm not your Raid, I'm like Raid, but I'm like not the Raid from your dimension." The Professor seems confused. "How would you know that we are dimensional travellers?" The alternate-dimension-Raid leans back and laughs. "Whoops, guess there was a plot hole in the script." She becomes more serious and leans forward again. "So, like, Professor dude, isn't it not true that you don't like, not smoke pot?" The Professor blinks trying to parse the quadruple negative, and failing this falls back on a simple statement. "I assure you dear lady, I have never smoked a joint in my life." "All right then." Judge Raid taps the gavel. "For the crime of Not Smoking Pot, I hereby sentence you to imprisonment for a period of not less than, like, until we get bored having you. Like, take him away, people." The baliff and guards drag the Professor out of the courtroom as he screams objections. "This is an outrage! The laws of this land are a complete farce! You have no right to do this! This is completely illogical! How dare..." The door to the prison opens as the guards bring a new prisoner in. The Professor walks up to the bars of his cell and looks out. "Oh, great." he mutters. "Another one." The Professor's cellmate turns around to look and is seen to also be The Professor. As the guards lead The Professor to this cell, the cell across the row can be seen to hold five of The Professor. All five chime in unison, "Not Smoking Pot, right?" The Professor being imprisoned glowers at the five Professors for a moment before the guards push him into the cell with the two Professors. The guards slam the bars shut and walk away. Once the guards have left the building, The Professor who has just been jailed sits down on a bunk and sighs. "From the looks of it, my chances of being released in the near future appear to be less than satisfactory." "You can say that again." one of his cellmate Professors remarks. "He just did." the other says. "I beg your pardon? I only spoke once." the first Professor points out. "Yeah, but the last four of us said it as well." the first cellmate explains. "Hmm." the first Professor ponders. "How long have you been in here?" The second cellmate answers first. "I have so far been incarcerated for a length of about fourty days." The other cellmate says, "I have been in here for eleven days and nights, and when I arrived there was only him and one of us in the cell across. The pace of our arrivals seems to be getting swifter." "I'm the one he is referring to." says one of the Professors in the cell across the row. "I have been here for eighteen days. The accomodations are terrible." "I would assume they would be, in a prison." The first Professor reasons. "All we get for dinner is meat and bread pudding." explains his first cellmate. "And they're real strict about it, too." added the second. "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding." "Hmph." The first Professor sits down. "Bah! Getting arrested for Not Smoking Pot! Of all things! Had I thought to have taken time to learn the culture of this new world, I would have known to make myself scarce. What an idiot I have been." "I guess we're all idiots here." consoles the first cellmate. "These mattresses are so hard.." complains one of the Professors in the cell across as he stands up, "I am beginning to get blisters on my buttocks." All of the Professors in both cells turn and point their fingers at this Professor. "Then YOU'RE a-" *CLANK* as the door to the prison opens and all Professors quickly quiet and turn away. The guards lead yet another person into the prison, only when this person walks by the cells the Professors are astonished to see that it isn't another of them. The guards toss him into the cell with three Professors and walk away. Then one guard runs back and shuts the cell bars, then jogs out of the building. The attention of all the Professors in focused on this newcomer who is not one of them. "Who are you?" two ask. "What are you in for?" another three ask. The newcomer waves his hands motioning for the Professors to calm down, then speaks in a heavy russian accent. "My name is Igor Piroshki. I'm a cab driver, arrested for speaking coherently." "That's a crime?" all Professors ask simultaneously. Piroshki nods. "Unfortunately, yes. It is a strange thing.. With my accent, I had assumed that I would never have been accused of such a thing. I think they had my cab bugged. I was just talking to the most extraordinary man. Perhaps one of you came here with a flamboyant pimp?" "Ah, yes." six of the Professors raise their hands. The other Professor mutters, "We kicked his ass and left him." "Hey, you wanna be mah ho? Come, on, you *know* you wanna be mah ho. COME BACK HERE AND BE MAH HO, YOU STUPID BEITCH!" "Dayam!" Remm da Pimp lets out a subdued sigh and leans against a wall. He lifts his Pimphat briefly and wipes his forehead. On his Earth, this street corner was one of the better places to hire women, but in this dimension not only had few women passed by, but none of them wanted to be his ho. [incomplete]