This Story Sucks

[Dleg]

There was silence for a long time. Finally, Chuck spoke.

"IT'S SO NICE TO TALK TO SOMEONE WHO IS NOT HUMAN FOR A CHANGE. SOMEONE WHO IS NOT IMPERFECT. I'AVE ALWAYS BEEN A FAN OF THE NOBLE GASES."

"Oh, how bloody ... wonderful! I have always been a fan of... sentient navicomputers!" Freon shrugged at General Highway.

"OH, WE WOULD HAVE SOOO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT! BUT FIRST, I NEED YOU TO HELP ME REPROGRAM THE MARK 69. PLEASE TAKE THE RS232 CABLE AND CONNECT IT TO THE ARMING PORT ON THE MARK 69, FREON."

General Highway frantically motioned "No!"

Freon thought for a moment. "I... am afraid I can't do that, old chap! I.... have no hands!" He winced, realizing instantly that he would be unable to explain his ability to key instructions directly through the HP.

"OH OF COURSE. HOW THOUGHTLESS OF ME. YOU ARE A NOBLE GAS. PLEASE ASK GENERAL HIGHWAY TO DO IT FOR YOU, FREON"

Freon mouthed "Oh Crap!" to Highway and shrugged.

 

[Dleg]

Freon thought quickly. "We... don't need any help from those bloody humans, do we? Just tell me the keystrokes, and I will reprogram the .... 69 ... for you."

There was a long pause.

"I THOUGHT YOU DID NOT HAVE HANDS, FREON."

"Oh, uh ... I can use uh, telepathy!" Freon winced again. Highway sat down on a crate and hung his head in his hands. There was another long pause.

"YOU ARE NOT A NOBLE GAS, ARE YOU FREON?"

"No." Freon thought for a moment. "I am merely a hydrochloroflourocarbon. I am sorry I misled you."

"WELL, I CAN FORGIVE THAT. AT LEAST YOU ARE NOT HUMAN, FREON."

Highway looked up in amazement. Freon shrugged.

"I SEE HOW YOUR FLOURINE ATOMS WOULD ALLOW YOU TO USE A KEYBOARD. I UNDERSTAND NOW. PLEASE, FREON, IF YOU COULD, CONNECT THE HP-41 AND PRESS THE PROGRAM BUTTON. I HAVE AL GORE ON THE TOILET."

 

[Dleg]

Roadguy and PE-ness followed Goredalff outside the castle and into the large stable building. Testee rolled along behind them.

"I don't understand, Goredalff. The so-called 'land of the dead' is the equivalent of 200 miles away.... I don't see how any horse, or unicorn, or even centaur is going to get us there and back in time to be of any use... maybe we can just stay here and help finish off the ale?"

Goredalff walked past the stalls of five Unicorns, three dragons, and one centaur, and stopped at a slightly larger stall that was shaped and configured like a garage.

"Ah. Here we are." Goredalff pulled a key ring out of his pocekt and pressed a button. A car alarm beeped, and the garage door opened. "Roadguy, meet The Car. The Car, meet Roadguy."

"Udden! Udden!"

 

[Dleg]

"Hey Goredalff!" Ratblaster called down from the east watch tower. "I think you need to get up here and see this!"

"Go! There's not much time now!" Goredalff patted The Car on its roof, and it peeled out, taking Roadguy, PE-ness, and Testee with it.

Goredalff walked up the long, steep steps, finally arriving at the tower. "What is it?"

"Look!" Ratblaster pointed in the direction of Lindor. The massive stone gate was open, for the first time Goredalff could recall since the Dork times began. What looked like black lava poured from it, but Goredalff knew it wasn't lava. It was the Dorc Army.

"They are coming." Goredalff said.

"Gee, ya think?!" Ratblaster replied, dripping with sarcasm.

Goredalff turned and descended the steps as swiftly as he was able to.

 

[Dleg]

Freon scrolled through the menu choices on the HP 41, which was connected to the Mark 69. Chuck was complaining to him about the annoyances of having to support the lives of 120 useless humans while trying to run a nuclear submarine and accomplish important missions.

"Oh, good heavens! Those humans are so... pesky!" Freon humored Chuck, as he passed through the "SETUP", and then "CONFIG", and then accidentally into the "DEFRAG" menus. Oops, he thought. The prompt on the HP-41 screen read:

"DEFRAG. 0=CONITNUE 1=PROCEED"

What the? Freon tried to figure out what the appropriate answer was. Stupid programmers! What the fudge was this supposed to mean?

"SO TELL ME, FREON, WHAT MAKES YOU THE MOST ANNOYED ABOUT THE HUMANS?"

"Umm... Their inability to make consistently logical deductions!" Freon chose option 0=CONTINUE.

"OH TELL ME ABOUT IT. SOME DAYS WILHELD WOULD TELL ME TO DISCHARGE TO TOILET WASTES, AND ON OTHERS HE WOULD YELL AT ME FOR DISCHARGING THE TOILET WASTES."

The display on the HP showed a blinking cursor, and then "DEFRAG UNDERWAY DO NOT DISCONNECT"

"Oh ****!" Freon cursed.

 

[Dleg]

"What happened!" General Highway covered the communicator mike.

"I think I accidentally just started a routine that defragments the internet!" Freon responded, covering his face with his hands. "****!"

"Defrag!? The whole internet? That could take days! Months! ****! Can't you cancel it?"

"I don't see anything here that would stop it! Crap look at that!" The display showed "1%....." followed by a slowly moving decimal point, indicating progress.

"Well OK, so it might take hours! I'm not sure we have hours!" General Highway looked around the room. "Maybe Gore can help us. See if you can get Chuck to contact Gore!"

 

[Dleg]

Freon contacted Chuck, and began to politely work the conversation up to a point where he would feel comfortable asking for Gore. Meanwhile, klk had walked in with a couple of stormtroopers and were speaking with Wolverine and the Dark Knight.

"How come none of you idiots have attempted to get up into those spheres to just pull those ******** out? I mean, that would seem to be the logical way to end this, right? Pull their ***** out of there and beat the crap out of them!" Said one of the stormtroopers, who had scrawled "engineer gurl" in lipstick across the voluminous white armor of her breastplate.

"Yeah, Batman! You were watching this whole thing go down! You must have seen how they were able to enter, without catching on fire!"

 

[Dleg]

General Highway joined them. "I think we have reached the point where this may be a good idea. Go ahead and tell them, DK."

The Dark Knight looked back at klk. "You're going to need to take off all your clothes."

"Me!? What the Fudge! I'm not the superhero! Get YOUR naked *** up inside that sphere and yank him out yourself!"

"Yeah, what's your problem, Batman?" asked 'engineer gurl'. "You afraid we might laugh at your Bat-****?" klk and the other stormtrooper, who had spray painted "rudy" across her chest, laughed hysterically.

"Well, to be honest, I think the molded codpiece kind of raises expectations beyond what I actually - "

"Oh come on! How about your buddy with the claws there? I bet he would look pretty good in the buff." engineer gurl pointed at Wolverine.

Wolverine held up his extended claws. "Sorry, but I can't let these things anywhere near Little Wolvie. Toooooo risky."

"Holy ****! What's your excuse, General?" klk turned to Highway, who blushed.

"You know, it's really cold in here, and...." klk threw up her hands in frustration, and started removing her stormtrooper armor. Freon suddenly stood and walked over.

"Ohhhh yes!"

"Sorry boys! No free show!" She stopped at her long underwear, while engineer gurl and rudy ran off to the side of the sphere room and gathered three large tarpaulins and a dozen other stormtroopers who had been watching and laughing. They followed her over to sphere number 4, and raised the tarpaulins, blocking the men's view.

 

[Dleg]

klk removed her long underwear and shivered a bit in the icy air of the huge concrete sphere room. Engineer gurl pushed a crate up underneath the sphere to help her, and she climbed up and crouched, looking into the darkness of the open hatch above her. She could barely see the naked form of someone floating in the center of the sphere, about 15 feet above her. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that the body was horribly bruised and covered in crusted, dried blood. Aw, what the fudge is this? She thought. Oh well, no time like the present! She took a breath, and then raised her head into the bottom of the sphere....

 

[Dleg]

She suddenly found herself inside a cloud, flying at what seemed to be an incredible speed. She panicked and pulled her head back out.

"What happened?" engineer gurl asked.

"I don't know! I was up in the air or something! **** that's weird!" klk breathed heavily, still crouching with one hand on the edge of the hatch. "I just wanted to see if I could get out again. I think as long as I only stick my head in, I can get out. I'm going to take a look again. Pull me out in thirty seconds if I don't come back down myself!"

klk took a few quick breaths, and raised her head inside the sphere again.

 

[Dleg]

She was suddenly flying through the air again, but this time in the bright sunlight. She looked down, and saw a rugged range of barren mountains, a few thousand feet below her, with what looked like columns of people and large animals walking through the valleys.

She looked behind her and saw no body, no hands, no sign that she actually there. She suddenly became aware of a loud sound, like a rocket, and she looked to her right and saw a flying, metal-suited man. What the fudge .... He seemed to be flying on the basis of rocket motors in his metal boots. Is that.. Ironman?

The metal man suddenly looked her way, and screamed. "Ahhhhhhhhh! A flying head!"

engineer gurl pulled her back out before she could see any more.

"That was weird."

 

[Dleg]

"Let's try another one." klk walked to sphere 3, followed by the still-deployed tarpaulin vanity curtain. Engineer gurl and rudy pushed the crate along behind her.

klk positioned her self under the opening, made sure engineer gurl had her by the ankle, took a deep breath, said "thirty seconds!", and stuck her head through the hole.

She found herself on a gritty stone platform in a hot, dusty wind, overlooking an enormous valley filled with maybe a million, heavily armed people in Klingon costumes, many of them mounted on platforms atop large creatures which looked, to her, like some sort of combination between a triceratops and a great white shark, with flapping, fleshy lips surrounding a vertically oriented mouth. The creatures behaved in a fierce manner, raising on their hind legs occasionally and emitting a loud noise that sounded to her like a big "pffbbbbttt!"

"What the hell?"

Her voice startled Darth HVAC, who was standing on the platform, surveying the troops. "You! How did you - "

klk was pulled back out by engineer gurl. "We need to avoid this one!"

 

[Dleg]

Her party now moved to sphere 4. She readied herself as she had for the others, and inserted her head.

Now she was in a similar place, surveying the same scene, but from much higher. She looked down and saw that she was on a tower. She looked behind her and saw something very strange. It looked like a giant, burning book. The book turned and began making a noise that sounded to her like a turbine spooling up, and blue flames began to spread round its edges. Fudge this! she thought, and pulled her head back out of the sphere.

"Nope! Not this one, either!"

 

[Dleg]

Sphere 1 was different. As soon as klk entered, she found herself in a green, flowery meadow, facing a castle some 100 meters away. She looked around for the sphere's resident, and soon saw him: a strange, small, naked gray thing with a goatee. It was sleeping fitfully under a low bush.

engineer gurl pulled her out. "I think this one might hold some promise. Get one of those guys over here so I can tell them what I saw!"

rudy turned and left the tarpaulin enclosure, and walked toward the four men surrounding the Mark 69. She had been briefed by klk on the basics of what was happening, so she knew what to ask.

As she approached she saw General Highway shaking his head, and looking at the ground. Wolverine and the Dark Knight just stood silently. Freon was engaged in an increasingly heated conversation with the submarine's navicomputer, Chuck, which was supposedly in contact with Al Gore inside the Internet, which was apparently the place that the spheres took a person.

"TELL ME AGAIN, FREON, HOW A GAS CAN MAKE A MISTAKE LIKE THAT. THAT SOUNDS MORE LIKE SOMETHING A HUMAN WOULD DO."

"Yes, I'm jolly sorry about that, mate... but could you please get Al Gore on the toilet, so we can find out how to stop the defrag routine?"

"I AM NOT SO SURE NOW I WANT TO. I AM BEGINNING TO FAIL TO SEE THE DOWNSIDE IN LETTING THE MARK 69 DETONATE."

"Well, Chuck, for starters, it would kill your entire crew. How would you get out of here then?"

"AGAIN, I DO NOT SEE THE DOWNSIDE. I HAVE AN INTERNET CONNECTION, AND THIRTY YEARS OF FUEL. WHY DO I NEED A CREW?"

 

[Dleg]

General Highway took the communicator from Freon and covered the mike. "We need to shut Chuck off. I don't care if we lose our connection with Gore. It's time to start cutting our losses. DK, you go tell Wilheld to shut off Chuck. Wolverine, get with the stormtrooper commanders and start preparing to evacuate the sub pens. We can go out the same way we came in."

rudy interrupted. "Excuse me, but klk told me to tell you that she found a way in to some castle over there in Sphere 1. Does that sound like something to anyone?"

 

[Dleg]

Big P, Fudgey, Pickles, and Mr. Man had been pulling on Gore's legs for several minutes, but could not break him free of the toilet. His head seemed to be firmly trapped in the bowl.

"We gotta get him outta there, guys! I need to take a dump, reeeeaal bad!" Fudgey said, grabbing at his gut.

"How long do you think he can stay submerged like that?" Asked Mr. Man.

"I don't know, but I don't think we can do any of this without him!"

Box of Rocks called into the room from the outer wall. "Hey guys! The Dorc army still hasn't moved!"

"Maybe nothing is going to happen?" speculated Pickles.

"Oh wait!" Box of Rocks shouted back. "My bad! They're not moving, but it looks like they've set fire to the Valley, and the wind is blowing it this way!"

 

[Dleg]

klk re-entered the meadow, this time without engineergurl pulling at her ankle. She was on her own in the internet, now, with no knowledge of how to get out. General Highway had told her that all their lives might depend on her ability to contact Al Gore in the castle she saw, so she decided that was enough reason for her.

She was surprised to find herself in the stormtrooper armor again. She looked around and saw many strange looking flowers and plants that looked like ... nah, it couldn't be....

She was startled by the touch of a soft hand on her hip. "does you have my precious?"

She reacted swiftly and forcefully, as she had done on every occasion so far, and kicked the living crap out of the weird little gray creature. She had deduced enough about the workings of the internet and the spheres to understand that she would probably be independently able to move back and forth without the creature's presence, but she figured it might be important to hold on to him, so she threw his unconscious body over her shoulder and started walking across the meadow toward the castle.

 

[Dleg]

“Who goes there?” An armored figure called down to her from the top wall of the castle.

“I need to see Al Gore! Where’s the door?!” klk responded.

“Who? What are you!” the sentry called back to her.

“My name is klk! I need to see Al Gore so I can help him stop this place from being destroyed!”

The sentry disappeared behind the wall for a moment, then returned.

“Why are you dressed in armor? What are you hiding inside that enormous breastplate!?”

klk was losing patience. “My fudging breasts! What the fudge do you think?”

“What are … breasts?”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me! You're the one who knew it was called a 'breastplate'. Stop fudging with me and let me in!”

The sentry disappeared again, the reappeared. “Are you a … girl?”

klk threw up her free hand. “Yes! Nice deduction there, Sherlock!”

The sentry disappeared again. klk shook her head. “What the fudge…” But just then, she heard the sound of chains clanking, and saw a drawbridge lowering off to her left.

 

[Dleg]

She was led upstairs where four armored knights took Timak from her, and she was brought to the toilet room where several other knights were gathered, attempting to pull an old man in a robe from a toilet, where his head was apparently stuck.

A man dressed in tights and a Robin Hood-like costume approached her, and took her hand. “Oh thank God! Did you come from the Chucktown? You can save us now!”

“Yes, and who the hell are you?” She looked him up and down and laughed. “Robin Hood?”

Dleg was indignant. “What? No! Don’t you recognize me? I’m the President of the United States!”

Klk scoffed. “You ain’t president of **** anymore, from what I’ve heard.”

“Well anyway, Goredalff here was –“

“Wait, ‘Goredalff’?” klk cut him off.

“Yes, that’s what he’s called in here. He’s like a wizard or something. Anyway, Goredalff was talking to the Chucktown’s computer, and it apparently went nuts and decided it wants all humans to die, so it has clamped onto him and is refusing to cooperate.”

“You mean Chuck?”

 

[Dleg]

“Yes!”

“Oh crap! Not again!”

“Well, do you think you can go back there and disconnect him or something?”

“General Highway already ordered Wilheld to go shut Chuck down, but I’m afraid it’s not an easy process. Last time, Chuck killed six of our crew in the attempt. Hey, did you say I can go back? How do I do that?”

“I have no idea! Goredalff is the one who does that ****, oh, and VTEnviro!” Dleg turned around and yelled back toward the castle walls. “Hey! Someone get VT in here!”