Ahem, I beg of you all, a moment of your time. This is a very unusual occurance, but I have been sent to your school to study in your time-travel and dimensional-travel departments. My name is Ricardo, and I am 34 years old, and a Leftenant in the British Time Commission for the Founding Out and Squelching of 19th Century Contemporary Journalists for the Purpose of Modern and Future Economics (acronym is BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE). You'll recognize me by my distinctly British mustache (a duster, we servants of the Queen call it), and by my uniform and name badge, which because of the acronym, is the length of my chest and contains thrity-two safety pins, which must be subsequently inserted into my uniform, in order, one at a time. BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE enjoys the record for length taken to put on a military uniform: 37 minutes!! Charming blokes, those Guinness people.

It worries me greatly that the flux portal generators of the time and dimension departments are located within inches of each other, and that some clever youngster has jammed an aluminum wad in between the circuits of the flux capacitor of the time portal, with a note below it that says "See you in hell, time nerds. Love, the dimensional travel cool kids!!!" It is very upsetting that the dimensional travel upstarts think they are clever, when actually they are probably going to destroy space-time as we know it when someone fires up the time portal. I've seen it happen once, and believe you me, it was rather uncouth of the bloody wanker to pull such a trick.

My, I'm getting a bit flustered, aren't I? Just a flashback to *my* psychic high school days at the Dublin branch, as a young swot with the innate ability to see people in terms of their timeline, if you follow. For example, say I see a young lad playing Lacrosse or some other charming child's play. I also happen to see what he was, and what he will become. I notice his one untied shoe, and see that it is actually a clown's boot, and there is a worn hole in it. His face is sad, like a clown's, but also scarred from his wife's future canings. His lacrosse apparati become baloons (which make carousels, and his casket) and his fetal arms clutch close to his odd little womb-body as his beard is shaved when he gets off of the streets and starts work in a sporting goods store, selling Lacrosse equipment to himself as a boy, with the one untied shoe.

It's all very confusing, and it's no suprise that I was first called a fool by my schoolyard chums, until one of them had his hand bitten off by a robotic shark, the whipped cream from his last victim (a milkshake) mixing with the boy's strange blue-ish blood - all as I had prophesized as he rammed my face into an anthill.
 

2002-2-23   Lt. Ricardo Rembrandt

Ah, I'm glad that BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE assigned me to your campus, after late yesterday when I had the opportunity to save many of your dimension hopping children when they crossed over to an alternate reality not unlike the American television program "Land of the Lost"(1991 version). Little did the Porters realise that their innocent trip to visit their exquisite wife and mother would turn to disaster when their family station wagon was trapped in a vortex that led to a strange world populated by giant clay stop motion dinosaurs. However, unlike the children and responsible father of the TV serial, they did not build a big tree house and befriend some friendly denizens. No, the students thought it would be best to try to enslave the dinosaurs, to make them carry them to an imagined utopia - sugarcandy mountain, which the friendly naked jungle girl, Christa, would lead them to. This was, of course, a side effect of the wad of gum that had been stuck under the 'mental damage prevent' button on the dimension control panel (which prevented the important button from being fully depressed), with a note under it that said "See you in the past, where you aren't dead (unlike the present), dimension whores. [heart] the time adventurers."

When I noticed the time students snickering in the way that someone does when they've pulled a prank that will likely kill several people, I knew something was up.

(extra note: I saw that one of the time students will have his entire upper body amputated as a result of activating the time portal with the aluminum wad in the flux capacitor. He apparently could see this, too, and had tried to hide it by wearing a brassiere of some kind under his time tunic - an effective trick for most, but I could also see him putting it on, carefully moving over the stitches from his future wife's beatings with a candlestick holder, his aluminum ribcage crunching like a coke can against someone's forehead as he tightened the brassiere...)

So I grabbed my BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE uniform, and forty minutes later, I had the name badge attached and was ready to go. I almost forgot to remove the gum from the button, which was a good thing, as I would have gone quite mad otherwise and joined the students in their search for the mythical sugarcandy mountain, where women flow like rain and beer is plentiful, and kept in five-gallon jugs (wooden jugs, because beer does not taste good from plastic jugs...especially is the jugs had been filled with petrol previously).

The dinosaurs and Sleestacks were little match for my BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE issue assault cannon (which I have named 'Mindy', after another lass I knew with six rotating barrels of doom...he he he) and I quickly found the children wading through a leech infested swamp, muttering about how slimy sugar candy mountain was. I pulled them out promptly, swished my mustache to get the bugs away from my eyes, and made my way to the portal.

It was then that Tasha was upon us. The irritating dino girl was angered at having her friends taken back to their world and bit me in the ribs, just below the armored BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE nametag. I kicked the child-sized dinosaur into a lava pool, and kept running, humming 'God Save the Queen' to keep myself going when a snake or T-rex would begin following me, licking their stop-motion dino lips in a very obvious represntation of hunger.

Finally, I arrived at the portal and dashed through, just dodging a big dinosaur's sharp teeth. I turned and fired Mindy into his gaping maw, splattering gore over the time portal controls, until it pulled its head back into its ill fated, pathetic remake dimension.

It was over.

The dimension students are recovering nicely in the infirmary, as am I for my various injuries. Part of my mustache was somehow lost during the fight, which was very upsetting. Most 19th century blokes know the value of a mustache, and generally left it alone. These dinos apparently do not. As I lay here reading an American newspaper, I am enjoying the sights around me, especially the autographed poster on the wall of a dark haired, grey eyed boy with two gauntlets, who is smiling, depsite the fact that he is also in a great deal of pain on the other side of the world, and bickering with his arms for some reason.

But now, I am worried. I remember a chunk of the T-rex's brain had landed in a gap between the dimemsion realitor and caused a great deal of sparks. It was at that point that the time machine turned on and...and...

smiled at me.

 

2002-2-25   Lt. Ricardo Rembrandt

Ah, it's been a hard day's night.

What I mean to say is I spent most of yesterday deep under the sea, in an iceberg in the past, with that kid that makes things cease to exist if he forgets about them. I think his name is Xavier. He's the one that 'hangs out' with the time kids, and sits in that chair with spider legs that makes that disturbing hissing noise when he gets angry. The time kids leave him lists of things that he has to remember, and you can always tell when one of them forgets something like his TK homework or eyes or right arm because he makes his list extra long the next day and makes sure to put himself at the top.

I'm not sure any of them have actually disappeared, but then again, would we remember?

I remember the first time I met the strange boy. I was enjoying a nice stroll, with Mindy slung over my shoulder and my BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE name badge partially unhooked, just perfect for an evening constitutional.

It was at this time that I came across a worrying sight, up ahead there was a little fat boy on some kind of spider chair, scuttling as fast as he oculd away from a pack of tiny woodland animals. They screeched and nipped at the spider chair's backside and the boy seemed to be panicking. I heard a scream from across the campus, but I was worried about this lad and decided to help him instead. (I learned later that the scream was because Xavier had forgotten about the boy's legs and he had been walking down some stairs.) I unslung Mindy and, as per BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE procedure, I began firing warning shots into the mammals' legs.

This was obviously a mistake on my part because a .50 caliber frangible cannon round tends to disentigrate small animals. But either way the lad was safe. I introduced myself and he shook my hand like a true Englishman (hand-to-elbow, to minimize spread of the black death). We went to a pub for a drink, and I didn't remember he was 14 until he had drank the pub dry. So, tipsy as he was, reality started to bend a little around us. People began to forget their past, and that made my job easier as I then only had to deal with how people looked in the future. Does everyone have robot antennae in the future?

Anyways, a dispatch from headquarters cut my conversation with young Xavier short: It was imperative that the top BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE agent (me) had to rush to the bottom of the sea in Antarctica to rescue multimillionaire rela-estate king George Quick, who had been trapped after a major land deal with the Russians had gone astray! Xavier began purring like some kind of cat, so I consented to his request to join me. We boarded a plane in Minneapolis and were over the South Pole in our air-deployed submerisible in just under an hour (it was a rocket jet). My crew gave the signal, and we free fell the four miles to the surface, severely damaging the superstructure of the submersible and killing most of the crew (quite messily, since they were in the spike-walled room). It seems one little fat boy had forgotten our parasail. I scolded him until he began to coo like a newborn babe, and we fired up the prop and went in search of Mr. Quick.

Several hours later we found him, in the fetal position, in a stasis bubble, surrounded by at least a dozen giant monster fish. We loaded him onboard, and while Xavier piloted us to safety, I worked at getting us back to our own time. (Did I not mention we were 1,000 years in the future? Damned Xavier must have forgotten the entire time period.) Pursued by superintelligent, cold resistent mackerel, our doom seemed secure. Even Mindy's sister, Sandy(named after another fine girl I once knew that fired sonic torpedoes designed to disintegrate organic targets...boy she was hot...) failed to kill all but three or four of them before being whipped off by one of the many mackerel's deadly tentacle arms. We were almost to the time portal, and the were in the time portal and safe, and then Xavier forgot Mr. Quick, and he vanished and returned to where he had been, a thousand years in the future, in a bubble under the sea.

I knocked Xavier unconscious for the remainder of the mission. Now we are enemies. Mr. Quick did eventually get rescued, but by one of his subordinates, who used a cleverly designed surfboard to "surf" through time and rescue him. I, and BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE are both disgraced, all due to that young upstart.

Hey- what the hell happened to my fingers?
 

2002-2-27   Lt. Ricardo Rembrandt

I am rethinking my policy of visiting the pleasure dimension and calling it work.

The is mostly because of the three thousand pound bill I now have on my hands because my BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE captain, one Jameson Miguel Monet caught me in the pleasure dimension (in my skivvies, no less) two days ago. He brought me aside and gave me quite the going-over. I wondered why he was wearing only a bathrobe and smelled of pleasure juice, but he simply belted me with his pleasure beret, like some American 'sitcom[1]' character. I gave up and went home to my dorm in the freshman hall at the Psychic High School. The youngsters were playing a game of "pass the mystical psychic weapon" with the legendary Mid Gard mecha halberd, Warentim. I entertained myself watching their game, mostly because every time one of them took hold of the weapon, he became the one destined to use it to destroy the great dragon Samsonite, who rests in a cave deep under the Earth, and the only passages to it lead from the women's bathroom in electronic retail stores (Circuit City, Futuretronics and the like).

The rest, of course, would, upon relinquishing the sword, begin to have arms and heads fall off and get burned (by the dragon, apparently), and one poor bastard was always gutted and left to die over the course of weeks in fearsome Samsonite's dragon stomach.

One of the boys also had been playing with pencils with his TK powers when he was little and gotten one stuck in his ear. I'm not sure how the solved that, but for some reason he kept muttering to himself (even after he got married and was recovering from his wife's torchings[2]) that he 'had to keep his unmentionables clean.'

I sat down at my desk, my pith helmet atop my computer monitor, and thought a long time about what I had done in the pleasure dimension. But instead of being punishment, like Cpt. Monet had shouted it would be, it was more like pleasure. Just revisited. So I just sat there, my red uniform and armored namebadge getting stuffier and stuffier. I thought nervously about what Cpt. Monet would do with me when I would go to report back to him in the pleasure dimension, where he said he would wait for me those six long hours, out of (as he put it) , "A need to make sure you don't come back to this wretched place...uh, yes! That's it...of course! Now go think about what you've done, LEFTENANT!! Now go away!"

He would probably act in much the same uncomfortable, nervous, shouty way, with his mustache and bushy eyebrows unusually forrowed, as if some pleasure lass had trussled them up herself, his face as red as if said lass had whispered a few 'naughties' in his ear, his neck covered with love bites, as if...now wait a bloody minute...

[1]sitcom: some kind of humour show that Americans enjoy. It is apprently like the Monty Python that showed on the telly, but more boring and structured.

[2]torching: a beating with a lit torch causing burns and some minor scratches
 

2002-3-4   Lt. Ricardo Rembrandt

There are many dimensions, and many times that are worth visiting. There are many dimensions and many times not worth visiting. There are some dimensions and some times that need to be destroyed. That is what my former unit, the British Special Commission for the Destruction or Annihilation of Unliked or Inane Cultures in Various Times and Dimensions (BSCDAUICVTD).

Basically, I served as team leader. Our job was to go into places and times deemed 'unliked' by the Queen, and blow the bloody hell out of them. We were armoured with the latest in futuristic weaponry, things like auto-targeting pith helmets, plasteel khaki adventurer outfits, and advanced rapid-fire auto elephant guns, and some old timey revolvers for posterity.

Sometimes we were sent to dangerous locales, such as the giant insect people of the year 15,780, who wanted to use their power of flight to fly around and destroy mankind, who by that time had evolved into harmless goldfish-like crustaceans, who called themselves the "zoozy."

Mostly, though, we just had to blow up stupid people, like the Bradley tribe of dimension 109,874 (yes, the exploding clouds dimension). Those stupid bastards would cause all kinds of trouble in time-space by writhing against the magical psy-robot Gargamel, making fingernail on chalkboard noises for everyone in the known universe. We were sent in and cleansed ol’ Gargy of their tainted bodies – with their own blood! My good friend and compatriot Lars ran three straight through with his mecha bayonet, as I smashed two of the blokes’ skulls against my armored titanium jungle boots. The whole job (working for BSCDAUICVTD, I mean) was a great deal of fun, and very rewarding.

But there was trouble in paradise, as the great Charles Dickens said…

Actually, he didn’t say that. I said that. Really I said tha-eeerrgghhh!

[NOTE] The leftenant has been forcibly picked out of his dormitory by our time traveling grapple and has an urgent mission! He is currently en route to the year –9 to help out an old friend! Do come back later and I’m sure, provided he survives, that he’ll finish his story. And for the record, I do not smell of pleasure juice, and I’ve never gone to the Sleepover House in the pleasure dimension, whatever that is, and I never even set eyes upon the Catholic girl’s school there…ahem…now let’s see something decent, and military! Some precision drilling! And I do not pretend to know what a “Spinning Love Jab” is, nor am I notorious for them in this alleged pleasure dimension. Silly, hah! Heh... –Captain Jameson Miguel Monet, BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE

 

2002-3-6   Lt. Ricardo Rembrandt

EUREKA!! What in heaven's name prompted the use of the time and space grapple? That cantankerous contraption is notorious for rendering its targets dead! I suppose this is no surprise, considering that the device attaches itself to the target's spine and then accelerates to two-thirds of the speed of light, but I still think that's uncouth.

My rescue mission was slightly bothersome, considering the week's preparation I had to undergo to prepare myself for a negative year. Four days in the cocoa vats, two in the Andes Mountains, and one painful day floating in space, all naked, all without breathing. I had to undergo incredible training to hold my breath for four days, not to mention handling my eyes exploding in vacuum, and getting my blood sugar back down after the cocoa vats. Most men die inside of four minutes of the first day of preparation. But not I, for it seems that I am actually a robot clone of myself, made sometime in the past six months, my mind state recorded as I slept. This was somewhat shocking (especially the ontological problems it created), but the pop-out gatling guns in my wrists kept me occupied, and when I tired of those, there was the fact that my fingers split apart, then split again, so I could type on keyboards for robot hands (robot hands have thirty-two fingers).

This would have been useless in space, but thankfully my right leg contained a fully functioning robot qwerty style keyboard, which I used to hack out twenty pages of tripe about a boy named Epilogue Fulroy who wanted to be a ninja. He had many problems, especially in the areas of discipline and respect for authority, but in the end, he died fighting a battle against an unbeatable evil, just like he always wanted. I love happy endings, and I'm glad I wrote out the love interest, because that way he is much happier when he accepts his fate after he is crushed by an old cargo freighter, then thrown into the sun.

Anyways, I was released and went on my mission to rescue Lars (remember him? The old bloke was part of my previous story), which was largely uneventful. I wondered what was with BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE making a robot clone of me against my permission, particularly since the mission was so uneventful (mostly a light jog and some paperwork). And I also wondered about the real me, and what we would do when we met up again. I mean, how do you treat an exact clone of yourself? I’d have to fight the real me to the death. Or he would kill me. It would be too difficult to live with an exact copy...or the original or something...

Anyway, I guess fate took control because I was betrayed and killed by Lars, two hundred meters from the time portal. He stuck his accursed mecha bayonet deep into my android body, and as I registered serious internal hemorrhaging, he fired his gun into my left eye, severing any chance I had of taking his picture with the eye’s 3.0 megapixel digital camera. I don’t think he knew that, though, and since my robot body operated under simulated human parameters, the red glood[1] must have convinced him I was real, even though I muttered an almost indistinguishable “body operative capacity at 53% and dropping, internal glood loss detected...recommend electric shock attack” as I collapsed to the ground.

He stood over me gloatingly, poking a stick in my destroyed eye, through my robot cranium, mocking me as I twitched, trying to move it. “I have you now, ‘old friend!’” he gloated. “With your death, I will assume my rightful place as heir to the BSCDAUICVTD’s vault, and all the secrets that destroyed our old organization so long ago! MWAHAHAHAHA!”

He went on for a while, every once in awhile kicking me or poking me, all the while my robot systems were slowly failing. He spoke of the riches we aquired...the infinity tablet...the key to immortality and the way through which man achieved his higher state. In short, a large whitish, sour tasting calcium tablet that turned a mortal man into a sort of demigod. We locked these tablets in the special vault in BSCDAUICVTD’s darkest corner of the universe, and set a powerful contingent of guards to watch on it. Lars had apparently been bought...

It was at this point that I realized why I had been created (the clone me). The real Leftenant Ricardo stepped through the time portal and, with a few hundred rounds from Mindy, silenced the maddening man. I walked over to my robot corpse and said, “Sorry about that, old sport, but, you know, we had to catch the wanker before he did something rash.”

I said I understood and kindly asked if he was going to kill me. He said yes, but first he would take my thoughts and combine them with his own using a trick he learned at our temporary home, Psychic High School North America. We would, in essence, be rejoined. So he did, and it was then that I noticed that Lars’ body was emitting a high pitched modem sound, like when one connects his personal computer to AOL[2]. Lars was a robot!

This was quite a twist indeed. But now I mostly have to put in some extra hours to cover the last of the three-thousand pound bill I have to repay. Captain Monet met me as he stepped out of the dimensional portal, his hair slicked back and an Alleyco. Issue shady trench coat over his arm, his eyes set to shift suspiciously back and forth. I noticed that he had been spending his time in the underworld deals dimension, according to the control panel, which he flatly denied with a high pitched screech.

Aw...I left my story saved on the dead robot clone. What a dark day...

[1]glood: glucose carrying blood. The robot technology we use is currently not at the level needed to make psuedo-muscles utilize oxygen like ours do.

[2]AOL: some American internet company that owns half of America, due to some sneaky politics.

 

2002-3-11   Lt. Ricardo Rembrandt

Today, seeing as the entire student populous is on Reading Week (the Americans call it Spring Break), I had the lay of the school to myself, and, considering it my proud duty as a BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE operative, I decided to wonder around the dimensional vortex, sightseeing. I slung Mindy’s sister Marie over my shoulder (a rocket powered grenade launcher with under slung laser cannon), laboriously attached my namebadge, and stepped through the dimensional portal…only to wind up in…

PURGATORY?!? Damn those little time-travel bastards and their feud! They must have set the dimensional travel machine to “Religion,” in hopes of getting some Dimensional Travelers stuck in Hell. Clever trick. It was made even more clever when the portal closed suddenly behind me. I was stuck forever! After some light weeping (all British men weep a little when they have lost all hope), I knew what had to be done. I promptly grabbed the nearest desk attendant (purgatory looks like a doctor’s office waiting room, except it has a playground and is several square kilometers) and commanded them to allow me access to the purgatory armoury. Despite the fact that Marie probably would not have injured said attendant, they were happy to grant me access, citing that a similar uniformed gentlemen had asked the same thing...he had dark brown hair and a mustache that curled at the ends...Monet! I should have known. Especially after I had to save him from being shot because he was a Sooner.

The purgatory armoury, however, was very poorly stocked. It seems heaven and hell are the only places that get dimensional sliders. Purgatory just had battle mecha with broadswords and names like “Salvation” and “Jesus Mk. II.” I took a nearby microwave cannon and named it Sarah, after another young lady I knew that could make your heart explode as it was melted to your lungs and ribcage.

As I stepped out, moping because I would be stuck in purgatory until judgment day, I was very fortunate to run into my old friend Marcos Michelangelo! He was a former BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE operative with the innate ability to create dimensional portals by snapping his fingers and doing one of 2,000,000,008 dance moves. To make sure he was doing the right dance, he kept a book that listed every combination. This book, however, because of the billions of combinations, is the size of a Panzer tank and weighed roughly fifty tons. He used to strap it to his back.

Looks like the book finally got the best of Marcos.

Either way, I told my friend of my plight, and he kindly offered to create a portal to transport me back to my own dimension. He did a little Irish jig, snapped his fingers forty-three times, and sure enough, the familiar pink and green energy field spread before us, twisting in on itself like some electric space smoothie. I thanked him and asked if he would come with me, but he declined, saying he had picked up a Heaven pass from a friendly scalper outside, and wanted to go live in the casino there. I wished him good judgment, and stepped through the portal, where I was spit out in…

WHAT THE HELL?!? I uttered many decidedly English swears as I cascaded head over heels into a red wire frame world made up of flowers, spaceships, and some tennis players. The lifelike visuals jumped out at me as I attempted to find my way (which became exceedingly difficult, as there is no indication of gravity in a wire frame world...just wire frames), and I finally stopped when I came to a snake-like creature with three heads that wanted to eat me!! I took out Marie and promptly did battle with the giant beast, making sure to time my RPGs so they would hit when the beast’s eyes were open, and then decapitating the heads with my laser cannon.

Finally, the giant beast was slain, and I was granted my prize – a free carwash at some ungodly place in Neo-Utah in the slime dimension, and a strange monkey creature that speaks in telepathic gibberish named Zanzibar, or some other tripe. The little fellow is quite friendly, if a little overzealous, and promptly nearly killed me with Marie. Thankfully, he also dropped a dimensional slider when I slapped him, so we used that to get back to our own time.

When I walked through the portal, the time kids were snickering eagerly. But when they saw me, they realized their error and began groveling in fear. They knew about my unique power, so I told them each something horrible that would happen to them (you will lose your legs in a grappling contest with your one true love, you will be naked for a year but not in the good way, you will become a renowned phone psychic, etc.). Even though most prophecies were made up, they were very frightened. The little monkey also wanted to say something, so he tattooed it into the blonde kid’s lower back with Marie. I’m just going to let him keep the gun. He’s a much better shot with her anyways.

Anyways, little Zanzibar now lives in my dorm, and last night we had our first true laugh as friends when he set my pith helmet atop his head and made it spin around like a beanie. But I fear he whimpers in his sleep for his one true friend…the one he says looks like “The guy from Red Dawn…you know…Matt.” I swear I will help young Zanzibar, across time and space, to find this curious ally.

I say, one of the most challenging things about my special ability is not laughing when someone is naked for part of their life due to being enslaved. Hee hee!

 

2002-3-21   Lt. Ricardo Rembrandt

I was strolling past a corner store the other day and was shocked to see my old drinking friend, Louis Quick. Younger brother, and, through some complications, uncle to George Quick, the multimillionaire real estate king, Louis had proven many times his fast car, faster temper, and even faster hands as we drank our way from bar to bar, pausing every once in awhile to get burrs out of my mustache, tripping over homeless people that tried to take our wallets, and generally singing old English sailor songs entirely too loud. The last time I had seen young Quick was at the bottom of a tiger pit, where genetically enhanced Zulu warriors had thrown him, after our tipsy fun had led us into the future and a major war between the Zulu cyber warriors and the religious zealots of Kurg, who opened a coffee shop in Zulu territory, against the will of their Zulu god, one Glen Faraday Sr. He wasn’t really a god, just a misguided optometrist who had wondered into the coffee shop as the Zulus speared the beatniks that had taken up residence inside. He bore a striking resemblance to Buddy Holly, so they made him their king and god. The genome Zulus weren’t what you’d call intelligent in their society-altering changes, but they were decisive.

Anyways, Louis and I caught up on recent events…my troubles with Capt. Monet, the latest rides and attractions in the pleasure dimension, my acquisition of the strange alien telepathic monkey, Zanzibar, the failed rescue of his brother/nephew George from the future, etc. Louis told me of his travels over the Earth, the strange foods and women he had sampled, the fantastic mountains he had climbed, the cold realization that his brother and nephew George was actually an alien freedom fighter, and so forth.

As we finished our scotch and whiskeys (a rather atrocious, but effective drink), Louis suggested that we traipse through the nearest time portal to head to the 1920s to acquire booze the way it should be: that is, illegally. Once he explained the American prohibition (and I got over my giggling), we set off for the Psychic High School Time and Space labs. After removing the small brick of C4 from underneath the ‘activate’ button on the time panel (and winking to Louis as I removed the note from the Dimensional kids, which was a line of Tolstoy lovingly scripted followed by the words “FUCK YOU, TIME BITCHES”), we stepped into the portal…

…and out onto the streets of 1923 Chicago, Illinois. We promptly hopped into a cab, hopped out of the cab, got into a knife fight in an alley, and waltzed our way into a ritzy nightclub, complete with beautiful blonde woman singer in a red dress. She cooed at us until Louis turned red like her dress, and she invited us back to her room. But when I got there it turned out she had only invited Louis, and I stormed off to find my OWN girl to have crazy 1920s sex with.

I will finish this later. Monet called me on his mobile and he is stuck under his car for some reason.

 

2002-3-31   Lt. Ricardo Rembrandt

Monet had managed to use his atrophied space powers to turn his car into a giant bird shaped car, which struggled in the air for a half a second until its engine stalled and it turned back to normal, pinning the Captain by his shoulder to the concrete. He called me on his mobile, screaming like a choir boy, demanding I “drop whatever I was doing, and jet right over to remove this blundering bucket of bolts from on top of [him].” After the swearing subsided, and the Captain lapsed into a lovingly timed coma, I turned off my own BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE phone (which rings by playing a bar from “God Save the Queen”), and made haste.

To make a long story extremely brief (as I have another story to finish), the Captain had to be rushed to a floating emergency room fortress, died for two minutes, grabbed a nurse during surgery (while drugged, as if by instinct), got hit over the head by the EKG the nurse was holding, died for four more minutes, and finally came back to life long enough to fire a few subordinates before lapsing back into his coma, where he is now.

Now, back to my story about Louis Quick and the 1920s girl.

Louis and the girl were still in the room sixteen hours later after I came back from two speakeasies, a girl on each arm. My accent had charmed them, they claimed, but I knew it was the special BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE issue pheromone dispenser they issue all male BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE agents at the BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE academy. According to the tiny bottle I had used in it, I smelled like a “6 foot Latino man with sharp, dark eyes, and a winning smile.” I felt like a thirty-inch tall albino waitress, but what the men see and what the women see are different things, and it seemed to be working nicely.

Nonetheless, Louis was taking his sweet damned time wooing this ancient girl, who would be dead or wrinkly in our time anyways. So, releasing my arms from my own girls, I rapped sharply twenty five times on the door to their room, just like the government organization BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE contracted to deliver coffee, Omega-6, did (sometimes they would just come in through the windows, black armor and weapons ready, hot espresso stored in their canteens, coffee mugs slung over their shoulders like grenades).

But, as the strength of my raps increased, and the door shattered (as it often did with Omega-6), I was surprised to find the room empty, and Louis nowhere to be seen. I did find a note on the desk, however, which read:

“Dear Ricardo, my old friend, Delilah here is just about the most wonderful girl I’ve ever met. She’s dapper, suave, keen, swell, groovy, awesome, tubular, fine, and faithworthy. I’ve gone to meet her father to ask for her hand in marriage! Wish me luck, Ricardo. I’ll just catch the next time bus back to the future! Delightfully yours, Louis Quick”

Of all the damned foolish things to do! Quick probably only liked the girl because she was some kind of pushy Asian. Her father was likely going to ram a radioactive cooling rod right through stupid Quick’s breast! And on top of that, despite what he claims, there is no damned ‘time bus.’ He would essentially be stuck in this horrid time forever!

After quickly losing my own girls (pushed them forcibly into alleys), I called on my time traveling companion Susanne, which was named after another lovely young woman I once had known that flew through space and was equipped with a long range mining laser and three micro missile launchers, each containing four dozen SRMs, capable of being launched simultaneously. Zanzibar joined me in the cockpit. We set course for the waypoint most likely to be the home of Delilah’s father’s house, which happened to be a remote location in Alaska, in the middle of a military stronghold. I happily zoomed in and used my swarm missiles and 21st century know-how (plus some know-how I picked up from the 32nd and 45th centuries) to overrun their tommy guns and trench warfare. I burst into the building, Zanzibar the space monkey on my shoulder, and made my way to Delilah’s father’s home…

Well, I was quite disappointed to find out that her father wasn’t in the military base; just some steam powered walking tanks. I did a more accurate search and it turned out he lived in Chicago, where we had just come from. I rearmed at a nearby space fortress and set course back to Chicago, where I readied myself for the fight of a lifetime. I kicked in the door to his home, where I found him…sitting in his living room, his daughter at his side and young Quick standing near them…I did a quick check with Mindy’s targeting system…no weapons in the building…no robots or monsters…no time traveling enemies whatsoever…and everyone was staring at me as if I were the crown prince in a floral arrangement. I quickly disarmed Mindy and muttered an “oh, terribly sorry.”

Quick explained that I should probably leave, and that he would call me later. I was so surprised by the lack of violence and danger that I nodded in agreement and marched out. It wasn’t until I had traveled back to my own time that I realized Quick had no way of calling me and that, without a time beacon, he was quite stuck, as I was worried he would be. I am quite afraid of what George Quick will have to say. An assistant of his contacted me this morning to “wish me a happy Easter” and then recommended I become religious, as elder Quick wished to meet with me.

Eep.

 

2002-4-8   Lt. Ricardo Rembrandt

I settled a bet about breasts most excellently yesterday.

It all began as we (Monet and I…more on that later) were watching “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” with our dates (who happened to be twins named Franka and Denise, and both could accelerate a tiny piece of depleted uranium to ungodly speeds, making a weapon capable of piercing the strongest armor…if they had the notion). The Captain botched an attempt to get into Denise’s kimono, and she left in a huff, dragging a very reluctant Franka behind her. While I was upset at my lost opportunity for a bit of a taste (seeing as how Monet wouldn’t let me go to the pleasure dimension anymore, and he was on to my “traveling” to 1960s USA for days at a time), I was more than thrilled at an opportunity to humiliate Monet at his game.

Our bet revolved around the lovely Audrey Hepburn and the garish Tiffany Amber Theissen. Which had the more wonderful breasts? Foolish Monet was set on Theissen’s rack, while I waxed romantic on how wonderful the classic actress’ assets were. Neither of us had seen said breasts “in the flesh,” as Roger Waters would say, so we each placed a hundred pounds [1] on the table and fired up our time sliders to travel to the years 1960 and 1992, respectively, to attempt our best to see the necessary breasts, take a picture, and come back. My task was simple enough, as Tiffany Amber Thiessen apparently had had a bit too much ‘controlled substance’ the night before and was marching down the street topless shrieking about frogs. Oh, using my powers, I discovered that indeed her breasts were artificially enhanced; she had had a “boob job” as you disgusting Americans call it…and I took my picture of her well-sized but curiously unrealistically shaped yabbos and made my way back to my time.

Monet was waiting for me in the office, tears streaming down his face. I assumed it was because he found that his time slider’s console battery was dead (not that I did anything, but it was shrieking warning all the way to the apartment; Denise asked if that was good and Monet slapped her with a glove), and he hadn’t been able to go back in time. After all, it isn’t unusual for Monet to cry, but the fact that his right eye shot lasers tipped me off to foul play. I leapt behind a coat hanger and drew my sidearm, a German issue MP40 from the War, and fired a warning burst in Monet’s general direction. I caught him mid thigh with three more across his chest, and he laughed as he plucked the bullets from their bloody nests and flung them back at me. I was really worried until he collapsed in a heap from loss of blood. I shot him thrice more to make sure he wasn’t a zombie or robot (I emptied the magazine, really), and dragged him to the accursed space fortress hospital to see if perhaps he could be saved.

Unfortunately, it turned out the five bullets in Monet’s head prevented him from effectively living, and we had to let him die. My initial reaction was the American one – exultant joy at the death (murder, mostly) of one’s boss! Hooray! Jolly Good!

Then, I started to think about it…possibilities. Was that bloody mess on the table really my captain? Or was it a robot? Was he brainwashed? What if there was a bomb in his head? Or chest cavity? And how would I ever track down the Lacrosse equipment I loaned him? That stuff could be all over the EU! And what about when BTCFOS19thCCJPMFE came to investigate? Boss murder is seriously frowned upon, defense against lasers or no!

I decided I was seriously in trouble, and did the only thing that made sense: I threw Monet’s body into his time slider, turned the clock to the year 10,000,876 and pressed the red time button. Now many of you non-time-traveling types may not know this, but a well known time scientist, who shall remain nameless… stated that humans would all be dead by the year 10,000,875 and most time machine builders took this to heart. Thus, no time clock is able to go past the year 10,000,875 and Monet’s ship would explode in a fiery blaze in the middle of the time plane and his murdered carcass would never be discovered! Never! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

So you can imagine my surprise when his time machine showed up two days later, Monet good as new, bloody happy to see ol’ Ricardo. At first I was taken to muttering prayers in multiple languages, even Esperanto, until Monet squealed and I shut up. It turns out I had forgotten – Monet’s battery was dead on his time slider console! That meant that any entered date would, much like old Apple Macintosh systems, reset to the date of the creator’s birth as an in-joke to nerds everywhere! Hence, the time machine had reset to April 5, 1961, and taken the slider back, dead body in tow, to that time, where Monet found it right after his time slider was stolen by his identical cyborg twin, who wanted me dead due to some gambling debts acquired in the 1870s. Another story, to be sure, as it apparently was caused by some future self, as I don’t remember any cyborgs I crushed at baccarat.

Oh, and then Monet handed me the two hundred pounds with a magical picture of a topless Audrey Hepburn, which, upon another viewing, made Monet weep like a nun. Blubberboat.

[1]pounds: like American dollars, but much, much more valuable; this is similar to the American dollar’s relation to its Canadian counterpart. Monet and I are betting a good deal of our life savings…about $12,000 apiece.