From the desk of the poor, decrepid Editor, who just made $8000 worth of sales this week and hence hasn't had much to do.

The editing is finished.

The first draft edit comes in at a cool 197k. It should take two or three days to read. Note that the first reading was from a file only 60k long, and that took awhile to read.

Anyway, I think it's a knock out, and perhaps an epilogue isn't such a bad idea... but it should be written here. Since I'm still auto-buffering this board, anyone who writes an epilogue (theoretically, everyone should write their own epilogue) will have it saved.

As a matter of fact, I think I'll start.

Masters relaxed in the penthouse suite he had rented in Rio. A scantly clad Spiderwoman lounged in a lawn chair beside the pool, sipping a daquiri now and again.

He was all smiles, that Masters fellow. He already was well under way on another world domination plan. But this time, this time he was going to include those nasty PIs in the entire plan. Yes, he was going to make them make him the world leader. What a plan, what a plan...

His feedback reports on the sudden withdrawl from France detailed how the PIs managed to get out of their difficult situation with the authorities.

That damn Skillprof had saved their asses. He had claimed the entire mass of Moronium X, the largest single mass of it in the world, had broken it up, and sold around half of it onto the world market, making a horrendous profit. Of course he'd made a profit, he didn't have to collect it, it was sitting in the energizing pods, refined to incredible purity.

He took the remaining half for experiments in power broadcasting, and split the profit of the sales amongst the PIs. The money they had made their lives livable. They paid their fines, replaced their supplies, paid off all their costs, allowed for a two week vacation in the Mediterraean, and air fare home. Then they were back to their old offices, dead broke.

The fact that they ran out of money in the end was the only good thing that happened in the whole withdrawl. Other than no one ever realized what Masters had been up to, except the PIs, who no one believed anyway.

It was kind of a shame about Death Bird, but violent smoke isn't good for much. He was probably finally put to rest by some ecologists.

Masters stopped his reverie for a moment, and realized a flaw in his plan. He really should focus his revenge on Skillprof. That guy screwed him bad. Yes, Skillprof had to suffer for his treason... suffer bad. Real bad.

The reversing transmitter was finished and worked very well. It needed a few days of constant energization tho to complete the tyaransformation back to multi-coloured jelly-beans, but at least it was working.

A number of other neat gadgets were under way in my newly created Lab (that moronium is really valuable stuff). the project I was most proud of, of course, was thg teleporter. I just wish I could get it to work properly on humans - no more stupid airplanes and sub- plots this time.

Ahh well. I was happy. I was content. So was Candy F., but we wont get into that.

Little did I know what Masters was up to.

Sammy the Cyborg smiled ruefully, as only a cyborg can. It was his first adventure with the PIs, and he had had a pretty good time, but now he was kind of glad it was over.

So, selling his right wrist, he raised enough cash to go in search of his one true lust, that quintessence of robotics: Sally the Cyborg. All he knew was that she had been cruelly taken from him by that nasty Masters fellow, but he would never stop searching for her. Never... >sigh<

But THAT is another story.

Oh, and what about that party? I'm sure someone mentioned a party.

As she lounged beside Masters, Spiderwoman drifted into a trance and pondered the events since they had arrived in Rio. After the Jellybean adventure, she had been tired of using her super powers to have her way with men, especially the PIs. They were an odd sort. Dik was the only special one of the bunch. She smiled as she remembered going to school with him all those years ago. Anyway, she had been tired of exploiting herself to help with Master's plots. In the end, they decided that the way she could help him best was to stay with him, and only him. They would create nasty plots together, and in the evening, they would cook dinner together, and then go for a swim before bed. It was decided: they could take the world, but it wouldn't mean anything unless they were together. Lying in a daze spiderwoman fingered the gold ring on her left hand. She had left her old name behind, and would continue as Master's companion, friend, co-conspiritor, and wife. Yes, she was now MRS. MASTERS!

"Hello!" someone cried in the vbackground. Everyone whirled to face the source of the greeting. Everyone did. It was a yellowish blob with some faciail fungus.

"Hello." everyone replied. Everyone did.

"Hmm, so, did you hear about what happened to the monkey that used to be on News with Zoo's. Charlie, that was his name. Well, did you?" Nobody replied.

"Well anyway," the blob continued "he drank four cans of Dr. Pepper and three packets of Pop Rocks, and a packet of yeast. Then he began jumping up and down on a trampoline in his backyard. Supposedly he exploded. It must've been really neat."

"I thought that was Mikey, from the Life cereal commercials." Someone said to the blob.

"No no, it was the monkey I tell you."

"Uh uh," someone else added "It was Danny on the Partrige Family."

"No no," the blob replied "Danny became a drug addict after an appearance on Chips."

"Oh." everyone said. Everyone did.

"Well, that's all I had to say." the blob said after a few moments of silence

More notes from the desk of the editor.

After studying the first draft, I re-edited the first part. It was a bit of a formatting mess, and was slightly contextually out of sync with the rest of the story... nothing major.

Oh, and I wrote up the credit list... ready for this?

By the way, please drop me a line if I neglected someone, or have incorrectly catagorized anyone.

*** Cutthroats and Trenchcoats ***

Cast <in order of appearance>:

The Good Guys

Bernard Q. Bear, part time PI Barney Beer

Jake Gerbil, The Imposter, PI Pedro McTavish, Psychic PI The Imposter

Dippy Bird, PI Dippy Bird

Dik Miller, PI The Grodd

Dave The Torch, ninja PI The Torch

Cat Scratch, PI Scratch

* * * * *

The Bad Guys <and girl>

Richard Masters, bad guy System Masterer

The Spiderwoman Charlotte

The Death Bird Dippy Bird

* * * * *

The Extras

Story introduction by Bicycle Repair Man

El Loco, Pedro's cyborg brother El Loco

Skillprof, scientist Skillman

Sammy the Cyborg Big Dave Diode

Story additions by Charlie Gibbs

* * * * *

Credits

Original story idea by: The Imposter Bicycle Repair Man System Masterer

Edited by: System Masterer

Dedicated to: Cordelion Mike Lyons

Sitting back in my office chair, for the first time in months, I began to relax. It had taken a bit of wrangling, and a lot of legal dollars, but I managed to 'inherit' everything Jake Gerbil owned. An office, a cheap secretary named Lila, four packs of chewing gum, and a gun named George. George the Gun. Aside from that, life was pretty bleak; I'd had to pay through the nose to get my sombrero fixed, my secretary wouldn't talk to me, my mom wouldn't talk to me, even my bank wouldn't talk to me. The only one I had to talk to was George. George the Gun. I did have one client though, seems an old fat man named Nicholas was looking to find out who was killing off all the elves. A nice guy Nick, a little wacko, but nice. My only real problem of course, was getting my old body back. That and finding out just what the word 'wetback' is supposed to mean.

Pedro McTavish, The Possessor - Psychic P.I. "Have mindpowers, will astral travel"

I took some time off from private eyeing to take a vaca - um, PI refresher course in Hawaii. Not much happened there. Not much that had any relevance to the story, anyway. I got some strange looks as I walked along the beach in a black trenchcoat, but, all in all, things were going well.

Finally, after some weeks of relaxa - er, hard work at PI refresher camp, I used the little money I had left over from staying in expensive hotels and buying drinks for beautiful women to purchase a plane ticket home. When I arrived at the airport I realized that I had no car; the shreds of my Hornet were still in a heap in Masters' former warehouse. I dug through my voluminous pockets to find sixty-five cents.

I waited at a bus stop. The bus arrived.

"D'ya have a GoCard?" asked the driver maliciously.

"Um...no."

"Full adult fare."

"But I only have 65 cents."

"Then geddoff."

I walked to my office.

Whoosh! A scantily clad young woman of statuesque proportions swept past in a great flurry of snow.. Summer skiing in Aspen was a durn good way to pick up chicks. I watched her gliding down the long steep slope for a moment and after ruminating for a few seconds, I decided to follow.

I put on my mauve Vuarnets, pulled on my yellow and green Beaver Lumber toque and took off in hot pursuit. Heading into a heavily wooded area, I only caught brief glimpses of her bright magenta 27 piece bikini during breaks in the dense bush. The heavily wooded area's dense bush, not...ummm, well let's not get into that until I catch her, eh what?

I rounded a corner at breakneck speed and was nearly upon her. My heart raced and my breath rattled through my chapped lips. I just knew I shoulda brought along that tube of Blistex. Darn. But at that moment, I was oblivious of anything else, other than my prey. Sweat drenched my Def Leppard concert T-shirt and Adidas shorts.

I recklessly threw one of my ski poles away and reached for her. I was still virtually oblivious to anything. Even to the enormous tree trunk that sort of appeared out of nowhere. As I fell backwards into the soft snow, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the half naked girl receding into the distance. And then..

...I woke up in my cot in my office. I always hated those dreams where every- thing is in colour and the sensations are so realistic. Damn.

I hauled my carcass up and staggered into the washroom to freshen up.

'So that was it?' I thought to myself. It had been fun, and I had lost and regained some body parts. Being a Tyrell was not easy. Well, if I have no client, why sit around? I have a chance to make it in this world. I am going to make the movies, if I have to cut the directors prize horse up or not. El found a bank somewhere with relatively low security and robbed it of $1547 and boarded a bus to Hollywood. "Finally, I am in the movie capital of the world, and maybe I can get a leading role, or a reasonable facsimile." El was determined. So determined, in fact, that he worked as a waiter in a upper class restaurant. All the while hoping that one day he would see the PI's again and they would bring him along on another adventure. Meanwhile, he was saving to get one of those new fangled torso implants that the Tyrell Replican Corp. had been advertising for thier Nexus Six models. El read his horoscope: 'You will play a part in a story soon. Sooner than you care to think.'

(I was an Extr

...on the lives and times of Cat Scratch, we've narrowed him down to his offic e in the Bronx, NY. Let's take a peek, probably working on his case file.....

Zzzzz.....Zzzzzzzz....Zzzzz...SNORK...ERK....mumblemumble....Errrr...Pffff... ...aahhh.....Zzzzz....Zzzzz...

Oh well, maybe some other time.

As the plane departed Paris for Japan, I pondered the recent events in my life. I was happy that I had managed to stay hidden in the rafters of the tower while the other PIs had been nabbed by the gendarmie. It would not bode well if the world in general (private too) discovered that there was a living Ninja Master. So I'd stayed hidden.

the plane arrived in Tokyo, and I departed. A casually placed taxi picked me up and after a few dodges to avoid trouble, we arrived at my old training grounds. I'd decided that Masters had been a little too quick on his feet, and it was time to improve my skills with some intense training.

"Mok So" cried my master. I prayed.

"Shomein, Ilei!" he cried. "Oss" I intoned.

It looked to be a good practice...

Is that. All epilogues filed.

I think.

Arr Billy, want a party?

So like, now what? An interim story for entertainment sake.

Somebody gonna make a start to something? I couldn't create if I answered all my fan mail.

Blech.

The adventures of the PI's at a PI party.

(See if anyone has Deja Vu)

...sounds like a fine idea. You never know who might show up or crash the plac e, not to mention lots of beautiful mindless women. Hey, someone might even ge t mysteriously murdered, just like every party that Hercule Peroit (sp) goes t o. So somebody should send out invites R.S.V.P. Scratch

probably not. My place is a little small for a murder. "Ye gods! Mr. Unbeliever has been murdered! In the kitchenette! With a cat!

Nope. Maybe next time. In the meantime, how 'bout....

Tales of Pedro Mctavish and his gun George (George the gun)

Part Juan <Oooh, the pun, the pun>

As the steamy mist began to rise from the char-covered coffee pot, I noticed a small cockroach creep out from a hole in the wall. A lone cockroach, fighting tremendous odds to survive and escape, its body infected with the pesticide I made out of some tequila and Seven-Eleven burritos. It struggled to raise to its feet, all six of them, and began the long journey to the door, to freedom, and escape. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. I walked over and stepped on the cockroach en route. Opening the door, I was greeted, or rather slapped in the face, by the appearence of a large fat man wearing a soiled red suit and carrying a sack on his back. He looked tired, dead tired. Weary, hurt, pained, drunk. Drunk as a skunk, or a cockroach, whichever you prefer. He stumbled in and sat on the chair in front of my desk. I walked back and sat down in front of him. "Mr. McTavish," he said quietly, "I need your help."

"Sorry amigo," I said, "I gave at the office and it's not Christmas." He looked like he expected something like that, which dissapointed me no end. "Please, this is no idle prank. My name is Nicholas, and I'm here to hire you." I didn't know what this guy's angle was, but I wasn't about to let that stop me cracking jokes. "Sorry, I don't know anything about making toys." Now he looked angry. "I'm here to have a murder...murders investigated damn it!" Now we were cooking. "Okay senor, who, what, when, where, how many, and most importantly, how much?" He looked somewhat relieved. "Elves, killed, for the past three months, in Vancouver, 5 so far, and lots." "What?" I asked, then realized what he meant. "Oh, yeah, okay. How much is lots?" He opened his bag and I looked in, my jaw scraping the floor as it dropped. It was filled to the brim with thousand dollar bills. "Awright Amigo! We take some of this, convert it into weed, get some bimbos..." "Hey! Elves, remember?" "Oh, yah, sure" Rats.

The rain was still coming down when we hit the streets. The deal was simple, I find the murderers, he pays me ten grand. No problems, no sweat, no leads. We cruised the back alleys a while and I was just about ready to give up for the day when I saw it. The corpse looked like it was once a child, with funny pointy ears and silver eyes. "Elf?" I asked. "Elf". Nick was taking it pretty hard, he had tears in his eyes and looked like he was ready to kill something.

I checked out the body before we turned it over to the police. It was clean, too clean. No prints, either on the body or on the fingers. Somehow someone had removed his fingerprints, retina prints, and american express card. The former meant that the murderer would have to be a biomechanical genius or a magician, and the latter that I'd run out of identifiable things to have missing from a body. There had been one clue though, one the police had missed. A large flat toenail.

Now I was really on a roll.

Well, if people like it, I'll post the rest.

I people don't like it, I'll write a sequel.

or better yet, teleport yourself to the 21st century and join The Clan.

This story is : Approved by the EiC.

>ego mode... run away<

Torch tossed Death Bird out the door of the bus... Pedro tossed the dead bus driver into the back seat, closed the doors and began driving.

Dik tried to wake Bernard up... Bernard had a rather nasty bump on his head from ramming into the seat in front of him.

Masters relaxed in his secret French retreat, watching as his plans began to form into something of a complete perfection. Spiderwoman relaxed with him, happy to watch her loved one happy in his work, making this world a soon-to-be awful place to be.

Pedro spoke to his collegues.

"Well boys, after all that Mexican Bus driving I did back home, this things a breeze... where to?"

Vaguely reminiscent of Dataline while Gerardo was acting as remote sysop. Flashbacks, man.. Scary stuff. LT

I rose slowly to my feet, a searing, pounding pain in my head. Not till I had made my way to my seat, did I notice that Dave the Super Ninja was using my head as a speedbag and was honing his martial arts techniques. Good thing I have a thick headbone.

I looked over to the seat across from me and noticed Dik still sitting quietly with a rictus of fear etched on his face. He hadn't moved since before Dippy the Death Bird had first attacked. Maybe he was dead. Big loss.

'Torch, will you cut that out! My head feels like it's going to explode.'

Torch, standing on one hand and balancing Dippy's hand on his upturned nose, replied in his best 'master of the mystic arts' voice,'Ah, I must first demonstrate the Swooping Crane technique, followed by the Slithering Lizard, the Bucktoothed Horse, then finally the Grovelling Gnu. Then I may rest.'

I was not impressed. That mumbo jumbo pansy foot-fighting was for wimps. All I needed was my trusty Ruger Super Redhawk .44 Magnum. Yeah.

The bus moved forward, Pedro behind the wheel the band of PI's in the back worrying about heir own troubles. it was a placid scene, excepting the hand dave was bouncing from nostril to nostril. Pedro was content that he was driving, he liked doing that, especially when the vecle used to belong to someone else, part of his up-brining.

Suddenly, the bus lurched to a stop, Barnard bounced into the seat ahead of him again and swore. The bus had just hit a tree.

"PEDRO!!!" came the echo from the back of the bus.

Suddenly, Elmer the Safety Elephant burst upon the scene.

And was promptly rolled over by the bus.

Just so you know.

My mind had been churning furiously for tha past few minutes, generating far too much heat and making thinking a more and more unpleasurable experience. Slowly drifting out of my concentrating trance, I realized what had happened.

"Masters!" I cried. "He has something awful planned." This dialogue sounded like Leave it to Beaver. Damn I hate making it up on short notice.

"Masters always has something awful planned. That's why he's the bad guy," commented Pedro.

"Anyway," said I. "What do we do now?"

There was a distinct pause, verging on pregnancy, during which nothing much happened that is interesting enough to record. Each of us breathed an average of ten times, and traffic on the road off of which Pedro had driven us passed without incident. I supposed that no one knew what we were going to do. For- tunately for the continuity of this story, someone else decided that they did.

An average-looking police car pulled up next to the bus.

Its lights were flashing.

"Damn," I thought. "This is a stolen bus, and the driver is dead. This should be fun."

It wasn't. A police officer moseyed up to the bus, which was halfway up the tree and a rather horrible mess. Pedro pulled his sombrero over his eyes and tried to hide himself in siesta. The officer approached the rear doors (the

only ones which were close enough to the ground to reach) and knocked. Torch opened them. Rather than entering, the officer thrust a blue piece of paper into Torch's hand, turned around, walked back to the cruiser, and drove off.

Torch read the paper. When he finished, his expression was somewhat like that of a tree sloth which has just been given a sharp bop across the nose - stun- ned but moving too slowly to do anything about it.

"What is it?" inquired Barn simply, as usual.

"It's a ticket," replied Torch simply, not as usual.

"For what?" I asked - totally out of character - simply.

"Unmitigated and needless damage to a primary forest producing organism."

"Meaning what?"

"He gave us a ticket for hitting that tree."

"Nothing about the bus?"

"Oh. Unmitigated and needless damage to a primary forest produced via impact action of a multiple-passenger public transportation device."

"You mean," I said, "he gave us a ticket for hitting a tree with a bus."

"Exactly. Section 3, chapter 5, page 66, paragraph 3. 'Unmitigated and need- less..."

"Okay, okay," said Pedro. "We get the point."

"There's a $25.00 fine."

"Fine, fine."

"Or seven days in jail."

"Never mind. We're leaving the country anyway."

"How?"

"That's what I was asking before we got into this stupid subplot," I added.

This is the last you'll hear of me. See boards ^ for more details.

I spun around in my seat and noticed a furtive figure nosing around the bus. He appeared to be draped with rags and had that dead quality about him. Could it be? Could it be him? Could it be him, The Death Bird?!?!?!

Probably not. Must have been my imagination.

I turned back to see Pedro, Dave the Super Ninjamaster and Dik pointing various weapons at each other, gesticulating wildly and arguing loudly.

'It's not my fault! A frigging cow was on the road!!', Pedro exclaimed.

'It was an imaginary cow, you fool!', Dik eretorted.

'No! It was a manifestation of Great Yama's Bull. I must celebrate this happy occasion with an interpretative dance. I will freely intermix a number of ninja techniques. The Bucking Wildebeest, followed by the Gyrating Possum, the Vomiting Earthworm and then the secret Ferocious Killer Squirrel technique!!'

'Shut up, Torch', we said in unison.

The PIs shuffled off the bus. There was no point to staying on it, it wasn't going anywhere, and they had to before something horrible happened.

Torch placed the ticket under what was left of a windshield wiper on the bus... let the Transit company pay for it, its their ticket.

Barnard had an idea.

"Hey guys, ummm... we could go to my paw's place. He's a nice guy, when he hasn't had too many beers. Maybe he could help us out. Besides that, he's got the nice 12-gauge that would look good pointed at Masters."

"How are we going to get there?" asked Dik.

"Well, we could hitch a ride..."

Torch walked to the edge of the road and stuck out his thumb. A few cars whizzed by, not giving him a second glace.

Pedro walked up in front of Torch, pulled out a joint, and stuck out his thumb. A large, partially primered, beatup Ford van slammed on its brakes beside him.

A thin man, with a scraggling beard leaned out of the driver's side window.

"Like wow man, hop in."

Dave was getting confused by all this action. The impact of the bus into the tree had jarred his brain a bit. He was wondering how he was going to get part of his brain out of those jars and back into his head. Feeling generous, he decided to donate the little bit of them in jars to charity.

Of course, he was getting annoyed with other people wanting him to do the writing disk drive techniqe, the screaming orgasm technique, and others. He was supposed to be in disquise. Sort of.

Suddenly, lunch called. A Ninja Master needs his protein he decided, and he decided (lots of decisions today) to go try and find his lunch. With that, he secretly and adroitly crept into the woods near the PIs. He saw them all get into the vehicle which had pulled over. He wondered about the sleazy implications of all the other PIs getting caught together like that. He was having problems seeing the vehicle too, probably line noise he decided. He started running through the woods. A wierd song followed him, like a movi

The joint wasn't bad, not bad at all. It brought back fond memories of home, of coca leaves drying over an open fire, the sweet scent of chocolate fudge brownies streaming from the kitchen where mother made dinner, and desert, and probably breakfast for the next ten years. I became wrapped up in content memories of my past until I realized I had never lived them. I turned to the driver and we began to discuss socio-political economics. "Yeah man, 12 bucks a friggin' gram! Sure the shit's good, but holy hypos, it really costs." The man was a university professor. "Say dude," he asked, "what's your name?" Not wanting to give away our identities, I evasively replied "Joe." His eyes opened wide with suprise. "Hey, I know you! Yeah, I met a 'Joe' at Woodstock! Isn't it amazing to meet again after all these years?" The man was a Simon Fraser University professor.

The Ford containing all the PI's (except Dave) and the teacher, sped towards a lone figure on a deserted highway towards the horizon. It was

"What are you doing, Ja- I mean Pedro?"

"I'm picking up my cousin, El Loco, from the roadside."

"He's not your cousin. He couldn't be. You only died a few days ago."

"Okay. He was this body's former cousin. Pick, pick, pick. I'm picking him up."

"Why?"

"Because he's my cousin, that's why."

"But this car is already too crowded. There's you, Barn, me, the driver, and - um - where's Torch?"

"Why should I care?"

"Because..." I was cut off in mid-exclamation.

Flying from the trees like a sex-crazed halibut, a lithe female form tackled

was a vegetable. I made quick grab for his assailant, being careful as to where I grabbed. She wore a mask, which, when I had subdued her with a swift Vulcan nerve pinch (another secret technique which I won in a lawsuit with Leonard Nimoy), I removed with one swift motion. Well, maybe two not so swift motions. There are some things that just resist removal: evil masks and bras being two of them. Ayway, the mask was off and the face revealed.

It was Julie, the floozie from the bar.

"Wait a minute!" said Pedro. "I dumped you dozens of messages ago!"

"Or so you thought," she replied seductively. She then looked at me.

This could be trouble.

She leapt at me.

This could definitely be trouble.

She kissed me passionately.

Trouble.

But hey, I wasn't complaining.

As the female was attacking another figure not known to El yet, El recovered himself from the ground and did a routine check on his memory banks. He was not human. He was not machine. He was both. A Cyborg. To be specific, he was a Tyrell Corp. Nexus 6 class replican. The routine check had come up positive, except for a few minor flaws in his Sex infested Id. He then said to his departed metaphysical cousin: 'Hey there cuz, hows it goin'? Not good from the looks of things. You look dead on your feet.' Pedro: 'what you don't know cousin.....' This was all very confusing to El, as he, at that moment, heard muffled cries from the glove compartment of the Ford truck. He waltzed over and released the catch. He removed the professor and unfolded him as best he could. After smoothing out the wrinkles, the professor said to Pedro: 'That's it. I've been folded one too many times.' All action stopped and focused on the professor who instantaneously....

The beatup van spit gravel at our intrepid PIs as it hurled back to the highway and down the black ribbon into infinity.

"Oh wow." El Loco muttered.

Meanwhile, Julie was performing an oral tonsilectomy on Dik.

"Jake meant nothing to me Dik... I just used him to get closer to you... I love you Dik. I want to have your children."

"Ummm..."

The professor was headed back to town... those bunch of idiots had really upset him, and he was gonna go heavy on some 'ludes and forget the whole scene. He saw what seemed to be another hitchhiker, only the man seemed to be missing the necessary component to be a hitchhiker, a thumb. As a matter of fact, he was missing a hand.

Death Bird stepped in front of the van, able to smell the PIs inside. He jumped through the windshield into the driver, breaking the professor's neck as the van drove onward. It suddenly dawned on Death Bird's dim and acid filled mind that there was no one else in the van. He turned to look out the windshield.

The van, driverless, hit a parked car. Death Bird was thrown out of the broken windshield, over the car, and into a picture window. On his way through the window, he broke the necks of several mannikens that had been showing off the latest spring fashion line of yellow, ugly clothes.

A tad disgruntled, Death Bir got up, killed two shoppers and a sales clerk with various bodyparts from the destroyed window display, and shambled down an alleyway, undaunted from his quest.

Meanwhile, back at the side of the highway, the PIs had put together what had happened.

"Damn anyway," said Barney, " why'd you go and fold that prof up? They always get irritable when you do that."

"How was I supposed to know?" countered Pedro.

"Boys, boys, let's settle down and think about this awhile..." Dik was enjoying himself.

Finally, Julie piped up.

"Why don't we all go back to my place boys? My car is hidden behind that clump of trees, and I can probably tell you some things that might be rather interesting."

This is your 5 minute warning. You've been on for ->0:24:25 Please finish up what you are doing.

"Besides that, I have a king sized waterbed..." she stroked Dik's chest. "With heat and massage too."

Dik felt this was an excellent idea. He sprinted for the trees.

Seing cousin Loco again was good. He was a nice enough guy, for a radioactive mutant cyborg from Hell. Old mama Petita used to say to me "Pedro, you's better a take a care of your cousin, he may be a radiowave potato simpleton from Honnalulu, but he's a nice boy." I was getting tired of these unreal flashbacks, so I slapped myself. I slapped myself back. Soon, a fight ensued, fortunately it stopped before either I or myself was injured. Dik stared at me. Barney stared at me. El Loco stared at me. Julie stared at Dik. I decided to read Julie's mind, what there was of it to read. "...this fool and make him love me, then I'll use him to kill off the other P.I.'s. Ha Ha. Ha Ha Ha. Haaaaaaaaa." It was Master's mind controling Julie's body! I walked over to Dik. "Dik," I whispered in his ear "this bimbo is no bimbo, it's Masters!" Dik just looked at me and raised one eye- brow. I wondered wether he'd won that from Nemoy too.

"Come now Pedro, I realize you're jealous at my newfound wench, but please, envy is so declasse." I realized this was going to be futile. Trying to convice Dik that his woman was Masters would be like trying to explain the SuperString theory of dimensions to Bernard. There was nothing I could do, except watch her every move...well, those that weren't rated X anyway.

We sped off towards Loco's home in his car, it was a big ugly Ford. It had air shocks. I had big fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. Suddenly, I had a plan.

A slightly battered Elmer the Safety Elephant rolled by on his turbo-tricycle, contributing nothing to the plot. Whatsoever.

Dave the Super Ninja watched the PIs closely from a vantage point in a large prickle bush.

'Hmmm' Dave thought.

Only Great Yama knew what Dave was thinking about.

Meanwhile, the other PIs all piled into Julie's small sports car which had miraculously transformed into El Loco's battered Ford. The faint aroma of raw coca leaves filled the car's interior.

Pedro, a menacing look on his dark swarthy face, glared at Dik who was receiving a tongue massage from Julie the floozie.

I looked on, enviously. I could use a good tongue massage, too.

A shot rang out. A hawk screamed. A jeep sped across the Central African Savannah. A stun grenade. A stun grenade? There was a loud 'Whumpfh' and a billow of smoke. It looked like it would be lights-out time again.

Truly, the PIs looked like they were in trouble. Dik had his sex farm woman, but she was actually a controlled being, a mindless bimbo. Almost all the other PIs wanted her body, and were ready to kill for it. No, they weren't going to kill her for her body, they were going to kill Dik for her. But they were in serious trouble from this stun-grenade. Fortunately, Pedro put down the blackjack and, along with El Loco, proceeded to open their nostrils wide and snort ALL the noxious gas into their bottomless lungs.

"Wicked shit, eh?" said El.

"Wow man" replied Pedro.

Unfortunately, that meant that most of the PIs were disabled. Pedro and El were off in Lala land, Dik was having various parts of his body explored with a tool generally used for assisting mastication. Dave was off trying to get a good plot boiling, but he had to settle for a soup boiling made of small little forest animals.

I foudn it difficult to believe that the person who was at the moment doing things to me which should not be described on a family BBS was actually Masters - or even controlled my Masters. But I had to consider it as a pos- sibility. My mind churned away, trying to find clues as to the real identity of this Julie.

My body was quite content with what it was doing.

My body wasn't quite so damn Happy!

here I was, with my engineering degree, getting paid pennies an hour by Masters, to build and control all of his silly toys! It wasn't right! It j}s\ wasn't! Justice had to be done! Masters' toys had to be 'accidentally' destroyed. This son-of-a-big-nosed-penguin had to pay. But how?

what prize cpossesion of his could I destroy first?

I had it. I'd start with his pink squeeky rubber Opus doll, and work my way up

No more breaking my back while Masters takes the credit.

No sir.

which was almost instantly forgotten.

when morning arose, the troupe was alseep. heck they didn't start waking up until 2 or 3 in the afternoon when dave superninja's stomach slapped him to conciousness demanding food. (it seemed dave sometimes lost control of his mind-body oneness when he was aleep) they had a quick meal of pine cones and acorns and assorted seeds and then they all scampered into the car and drove. "did he say scampered?" murmered dave. "yeah, it was the squirell food he fed us stupid" answered pedro smartly.

they were headed north in an illegaly packed small car without seats. "I hate fuzzy dice" exclaimed barnard as el made a quick left turn and everyone got real close to everyone else.

'Turn Here?' said El, sort of confused considering there was no road to turn on to, but he had been trained to listen to his instincts, and they screamed at him to turn left. 'What the hell are you doing?' said his cousin Pedro angrily. 'Following my instincts.' replied El. 'Oh, okay then, continue.' At that moment, the auto was jarred to a sudden stop. El hit a rock. But not just any old rock. This rock had a significant effect on all the members of the group. This rock was made up of one and only one element.

Plutonium.

The group in the automoble at first laughed at each other, because that is what you do when someone else is glowing greenish.

Glowing greenish. Or was that glowing greenishly? Or just glowing green? Or a green glow? Not that it mattered. I knew that the chance that we would just happen to drive off the road at that particular point and just happen to run into that particular rock which just happened to be made of plutionium was ex- tremely remote. Therefore, it was also extremely unlikely that the rock was made of plutonium. I somehow managed to extricate myself from Julie's arms (no mean feat, I assure you) and open the door of the Ford. Peering underneath the car at the eerily glowing stone, I noticed a small, heavy-duty 110 volt electrical cord descending from the rock into the ground. I took out my Dik Miller (tm) All-In-One Super Slicer/Dicer/Chopper/Grinder/Pureer/Liquefier cum Swiss army knife and cut the cable. The rock stopped glowing. It was not

Plutonium at all, but merely some excessively clever practical joke. I glanced around to see that this part of the roadside was covered with these oddly glowing stones. Either someone had a very sick mind or there was some other reason for those stones to be there. They all seemed to be lines up in even rows on either side of the highwey. I pondered. I thought. I speculated. I meditated. I hit myself for sounding like Death Bird.

"Alright," I said to El as I leaped into the car, only barely managing to keep Julie from preventing me from talking. "Let's go."

"Right," said El.

He turned the key. Nothing happened.

"Shit," he exclaimed. "The battery's died again."

"Where are we going to get a jump start out here, in the middle of nowhere?" asked Julie suggestively.

"We'll just have to wait for one to come," said Barn, obviously not realizing how his statement could be interpreted.

Several hours later, long after nightfall, no one had come. Not along the road anyway. I was still contemplating mentally how Julie could be in the control of Masters. My body ignored this possibility and went right on with what it was doing.

Suddenly I knew what the still-glowing stones were for.

A lone Beechcraft plane appeared high in the sky to the north. It came in low, feathering its engines, and touching down on the road. The rocks were landing markers, and these were smugglers - our perfect chance to get to France (hey, a poem), if only we could overcome those inside.

...I changed my mind. Hey, smugglers could get pretty nasty sometimes. I mean, they carried WEAPONS. So I wasn't goin' for that kind of gaff. I managed to run the cut cable from the psuedo-plutonium to the battery and jump start the car.

Then we all fucked off.

"Damnit" I screamed. "How am I supposed to build nuclear devices for that scheming idiot if I dont have any nucleuses??"

I pondered that for awhile. Where the hell had that chunk of plutonium gotten to? Radiation readings indicated that it was nowhere here in France (big chunk of Plutonium ok? gives off a lot of readings!)

My life as a scientist has just GOT to change soon! How long can a scientist go on building robots that could be solt on the market for millions, only to have them wandering around jerking off some Private Dik.

it just isn't fair.

The car was moving, the glow was fading, our minds were boggling, and Grodd was panting. It didn't bother me though, I had a plan. A good plan. A real good plan. I only needed one thing to make it work: a technical genius and a religious messiah. All in one. Okay, so it wasn't such a great plan. On the other hand, I'd figured out what was going on with Julie, the glowing effect had clinched it when it didn't work on her. She was a robot, a bimbo robot from France. Alluminum breasts and silicon bones. Something like that anyway. Dik didn't seem to mind though, and Masters obviously didn't mind, his thoughts were coming through clear as day. "...ha ha ha. Ah ha ha ha.." Suddenly, the car stopped again.

Well, yes, the car DID stop, but only for one brief instant. Then it went in reverse, and the car sped , no, - FLEW -, backward. The professor exclaimed: 'These people with spanish names are worthless drivers!' At that point Pedro was offended. He grabbed the professor and casually flung him out the window. The prof hit a flat part of the desert which was not very hard to do. He then promptly got up and looked toward the rapidly disappearing car going back- ward. 'wait a second' said Grodd...'Why ARE we going backward Locoo?' 'Because I saw...I saw...IT!' 'Umm...care to expand?' 'Not particularly.' 'Okay. Where now then?' 'Away from...IT!' 'Oh. Well, where is that?' 'Well, I was thinking the closest rest station considering I haven't relieved my bladder since I came into the picture.' Loco drove until he came to the highway and turned the car in the appropriate direction.

Onward they went until they reached a roadside toilet. El went and relieved himself. Upon his return to the car, he was abducted, accosted, and assulted by a thought in his mind. That thought? it was an abstract thought. It was not just your ordinary run-of-the-mill thought, but a strange new idea that could very well change the course of the group and thier journey. The thought raged and raged in Loco's cerebrum, turning and turning until it had matured into a full grown idea with parameters that would have blown the socks off Einstien's feet. It was the thought of possible conversion of the Ford into a ship capable of light speed. Or at least 99.997% that of. It was simple! All that had to be done was to channel some kind of fusion power into the gas receptacle of the truck. The fusion reactor could be carried in the bed of the truck. This would make stakeouts and getaways in the truck a cinch. But Time Dilation WAS a problem.....

Pedro, Barn, Julie, and I leaped out of the vehicle and ran towards the plane. Luckily I had retrieved my Ingram Mac-10 machine gun, so I drew it and pre- pared to use it on whoever might be in the plane. Barn had his Super Redhawk.

We approached the steps which led into the aircraft, and ran aboard.

"Freeze!" shouted Barn and I simultaneously.

"Don't shoot!" squealed two bespectacled old ladies in crocheted shawls, who had been preparing to unload some of the many brown cardboard boxes which covered the floor of the plane's storage compartment. I picked up one of the boxes and ripped it open.

I couldn't believe it. How could these sweet old ladies degrade themselves like this? I stared deep into the box.

Bill the Cat tote bags. Fake ones. Made in Taiwan and shipped across the Pac- ific on the infamous "bag boats." Shoddily made. Not conforming to safety standards. Not recommended for children under five.

"Ladies, I pity you. How could you stoop so low?"

"I don't know," whimpered one of them, sobbing into her embroidered hankie.

"It started with simple things. Just a few bags for the kids. Then we started selling them to relatives, then friends. Before we knew it, the demand was more than we could handle and we had to start importing en masse; hiding them away in our luggage just wasn't enough anymore." She began to sob. "Besides, the authorities were wondering why two old ladies went to Taiwan every three weeks." She cried openly.

Barn and I escorted the two ladies out of the plane and directed them towards El, who was still prone on the ground.

"Okay," I said once we were on board. "Let's get to France."

Somehow, Pedro got the plane started and trundled down the runway. He got up to speed and we took off. There was nothing to stop us now, unless we ran out of fuel.

I was watching as the two old ladies approached El's body on the ground when

I heard a faint banging noise. It was coming from the rear cargo door. Hesi- tantly, I armed my Ingram and walked back, then flung the door open, ready to shoot.

It was Dave.

"Hi," he said. "I managed to grab on just before you took off. Can I come in?"

"I guess so."

He stepped in and looked around. "We're going to France in THIS?"

"It's the best we could do," said Barn.

"Come here, Dik," said Julie.

Not again, I thought. Something about Julie bothered me. She seemed almost... unreal. Maybe it was the humming sound that came from her joints every time she moved. I don't know.

We flew on.

A muffled noise came from the rear of the aircraft. Thats right, a muffled noise. It sounded almost like a carrier tone wearing a thick wool scarf.

No one in particular opened the door with the sign on it condemning it to be the entrance to a lavatory for all eternity. And I stepped out. The five large pistols pointed at my chest did nothing to disturb my peace of mind, and I smiled bemusedly.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Why, the name is Sammy. Sammy the Cyborg."

My eyes glowed softly as I introduced myself. "Well, it was time you had another character introduced anyway."

The flying crate raced - no, FLEW - on through the night...

This was too much. Too many faces, too many changes, too many idiotic plot twists, too much reminder of death bird. Too many sentence fragments.. I casually and nonchalantly made my way up to the cockpit. Suddenly, I closed the door to the cockpit. Heh. This was something I'd always wanted to do. Being an announcer on the Grouse Mtn. Skyway wasn't enough.

"Attention folks, this is your Captain speaking. We are cruising at an altitude of 300 feet at this time. We are on course for sunny France to meet with our foe once and for all. It would be appreciated if this plane was not hijacked to Cuba or any other sundry location. Thank you for your co-operation."

God it felt great to do that. I was just hoping that there wasn't anybody else that grabbed ahold of the plane after I did. Nobody in particular of course. Ahead, we could see....

Heh..Masters was gonna get more than he bargained for from Sammy. This Robot was no ordinary robot - rigged with 2 completely opposite personality proms, all it took wass the toggle of a dip switch to convert him from bad to good.

I figured I'd sit back and relax for awhile.

I threw on my Realistic headphones, and listened to what was happening, thru Sammy's built in Microphones

"This should be fun" I snickered..

I didn't like the looks of Sammy the Cyborg. He had the same scent as Julie. Ever since I was raised by aardvarks in the wilderness of New Guinea, I've had an acute sense of smell.

I could smell gears, SAE 30 gear oil and a faint evil smell. I've never had the opportunity to smell an evil smell, but I was pretty sure that the smell that I smelled from them was pretty well an evil smell. A really evil smell. But then again it might have been the Polish garlic sausage and blue cheese sandwiches that quietly moldered in Pedro's pocket.

Anyways, I toyed with the thought of drawing my Ruger Super Redhawk and blowing a couple of craters in Julie and Sammy. 'That would be fun', I thought

Meanwhile, Pedro was having a gay old time flying the plane through trees, barns and all manner of other seemingly solid things. What a loon.

Sammy issued a few funny little beeping noises and sat down. Booting up a brainwave analyser program from the hard-drive in his chest, he scanned the people around him.

A brain here, a brain there, a mutant radioactive hypnotized slave cyborg CPU over there... It was Julie!!

Pausing a mere nanosecond, Sammy booted up a terminal program and autodialed Julies's number through the cellular phone embedded in what appeared to be his left tibia.

A couple of minutes of obscure control sequences, and Sammy was 'hacking' Julie's brain. He subtly altered her programming, deleting Master's remote access codes, and adding in some of his own.

Everyone in the plane stopped being airsick and stared at Julie. She had inexplicably shifted her affections to this newcomer, Sammy! Right about now, her tongue was halfway down Sammy's throat.

Sammy's eyes glowed a more intense shade of deep red, and he smiled softly to himself.

He shrugged, "Hey, I just wanna have fun!"

Even though there was no way that Master's Julie slave could harm them now, Dik frowned slightly.

The aircraft staggered - no, almost FLEW - onwards into the night, narrowly missing trees, people, large office complexes, and a mysterious bungalow in the country.

In the twisted hallways of El's mind, he thought to himself these thoughts. 'Boy...it's lonely in here. I wis h someone would figure out some kind of subplotpto get me out of this comatose state, and also maybe give me purpose. Boy oh boy, being a trenchcoat, (or was I a cut throat?) is harder than I thought....oh well...I'll just sit here and explore my mind considering it is the only thing I am capable of at the moment.'

The two old ladies kicked El

Things were getting confusing, so I decided to keep an eye on the newcommer. Only one eye though, I needed the other one to fly the plane with. I did a quick mindscan of this cyborg, and noticed the radio frequency transmitting back to a human mind. "This should be fun" I thought, and followed the radio waves with my mind back, back, back, all the way to France. Images began to flash through my mind, I had him now. I began to probe this strange man's thoughts, further and further, suddenly I realized, his brain was so strange that it was causing havok with my own mind! Complex theorem kept jumping to and fro, empirical data clashing with extrapolated hypothesees, big fat wildebeasts attacking great ugly....then nothing. I managed to break free just before my mind blew. Then it hit me.

Masters was in deep shit.

I was almost relieved that Julie had finally stopped fondling me constantly. It had been getting tiring, and relationships with robots never go far anyway. Still, I felt some remorse; she had a great body, even if it was made from the same material as the containers I kept leftover pea soup in inside my fridge back home. Now that she was obviously a cyborg, and was now actively attacking Sammy. I wondered how androids acquired sex drive; it wasn't as if they could reproduce. Not that way, anyhow.

Time for a nap, I thought suddenly. I leaned against a bulkhead and slept.

"Damned airplanes!" muttered Bernard's father. "They get lower all the time. About time I taught those bastards a lesson."

Rummaging around in his closet, he came up with his trusty shotgun and headed back towards the window.

"Dammit, they're already past us. Now where'd I keep that Sidewinder missile?"

I looked out the window in time to see my father's mysterious bungalow. I didn't even know my father had a mysterious bungalow out here but, Dad always was the ..... mysterious type of guy.

Then the smell of evil assailed my nostrils once again. The sound of grinding gears and the stench of burning gear oil filled the cramped cabin of the small aircraft. Sammy the intelligent Food Processor and Julie the Fembot were engaged in some kind of strange sex acts only those of the mechanical persuasion could do. I turned away in disgust as I caught sight of Sammy's Serial Cable reaching for Julie's RS-232 port.

Turning to face Dik, who was panting and wheezing, I asked in a low voice so as not to be overheard.

'Say Dik, how the hell are we supposed to fly all the way to France in this little flying crackerbox?'

'Got me, Barn.'

'Thanks, Dik. You've been a big help.'

El's warped and comatose mind again:

'Boy, this really is a predicament. I have the use of absolutely none of my senses, and am in a coma. I get the feeling that they aren't coming back for me, but I sure hope they do, because that Julie chick cyborgie thing has a small amount of amino acids running her awareness sensors that would reactivate my systems. I always have to remember that I am a Tyrell Corp. Nexus Six Class replican, and Tyrell himself told me that I can get out of anything....Well, all I need is Julie....'

The two 'Bill the Cat' Bag-ladies kicked El some more.

Julie went limp.

"I turned her off," explained Sammy.

Back in the Mysterious Bungalow, Big Jed rummaged around in the back of the rec room, and pulled out a very large weapons system.

Small Jed jr. wandered in. "Gee, dad, I didn't know we had a ground-based Phoenix missile system.."

"Yeup. Gimme a hand with this ol' pool table heah, suhn."

Minutes of grunting ensued. (Ensued? Ensued.)

Jed and Jed finally got the missile system fixed up on the pool table, and sat around chewing on long stalks of grass wedged between their teeth, wondering exactly how to turn it on.

"Yew got a match?"

A large explosion rocked the bungalow. Six missiles blew through the rec-room wall, and began converging on the poor excuse for an airplane containing our heroes.

Jed and Jed put on their straw hats and overalls, and went out to sit on the fence.

Meanwhile, El began working out how to astrally project himself...

Getting to France in a smuggler Beechcraft was going to be hard. No, it wasn't going to be hard, it was going to be impossible. Damn right. Unless...

I peered around the inside of the cabin in the same way I look for a washroom when I first enter a new establishment - just in case I need it.

"Um, guys," mumbled Pedro from the control cabin.

"Yeah, what?" barked Dave, deciding not to be witty for once.

"I think we have a problem."

"How's that?" Dave snapped again, managing to maintain his un-wittiness.

"There are six missiles heading straight for us."

"You're sure?" Dave asked. I was amazed. No off-colour humour yet.

"Very sure."

"Well, then we probably have about as much chance of surviving as we do of finishing this story coherently." There. I knew he's do it sooner or later.

"In that case, you have about twenty seconds to call the mighty Bwana," said Pedro. I hated the fact that he'd already been dead once. He sounded so smug, so knowledgeable, so... oh never mind.

I found what I was looking for, hidden behind the stack of Bill the Cat bags. I had suspected as much.

"Ten seconds, guys."

Barnard whimpered slightly. No. He whimpered a lot.

Dave looked morose.

Sammy and Julie looked like they needed recharging.

"Five."

I hunted calmly for the switch, then pressed. "Hold on," I said quietly.

There was a deafening screech, then the roar of a high-powered rocket engine. It wasn't from a missile, though. It was from the back of the Beechcraft. The old crones had installed a liquid hydrogen ramjet as a security measure to

elude any pursuing security forces while they were shipping their bags. I had guessed the existence of the ramjet when I noticed an unusual strap- on booster on the back of the plane when it first landed. I was glad I was right.

I was thinking all of this as I sailed across the cabin and slammed into the back wall, promptly to be followed by Dave and Barn. Sam and Julie had somehow clamped themselves magnetically to a bulkhead. What ensued was decidedly un- comfortable, but we managed to avoid the missiles, which promptly reversed course and annihilated Jed & Jed's abode.

I supposed that getting to France wasn't going to be that difficult after all.

"Dammit, Jed," said Jed as the house exploded, "I thought you said those things could fly straight."

"Yep," said Jed. "I think I'm going to go back to 3-Vets tomorrow and give them what for." His face suddenly sumk. "Shit," he said. "I just remembered I got that flamethrower there too. It probably wouldn't work either."

"Oh well," said Jed. "I guess we better figure out where we're going to sleep tonight. Wanna flip to see who gets the bed and who gets the outhouse?"

And AGAIN...El's mind:

'This is starting to get pathetic. About the only thing I am doing here is exploring the depths of my mind. Wing ding. It seems as though I have been put here by some force. I can't remember who, or what, or why, but I DO remember that sooner or later I am going to wake up from this sub-reality state. Until then I may as well develop another personality as it seems as tho I will be here a while. Now...what will my split be like? Male? Nah...female definately...'

Meanwhile the two old ladies walk off after recieving no response from kicking El. They walk off the runway into a minefield and are promptly blown into basic molecular stucture and loud sound waves. So much for the old lady sub-plot.

About that time, a large shambling, rotting corpse shambled over to where El Loco lay and shambled all over him. El Loco's feeble comatose mind reeled. It even unwound, spun around, got tangled and ground to a halt. He cowered and shrank in on himself, which is very hardpfor a person who is in a coma and totally paralyzed. The shambling corpse peered down at El Loco's frozen face. Loco, looking through eyes fixated with fear, gazed upon the ruined features of......The Death Bird!!!

Death Bird grimaced a few times, emitted a few shrill squeaks, shook about and walked into the minefield and was never heard from again.

Meanwhile, back in the Beechcraft with the ramjet, I was busy trying to peel myself from the wall. I looked forward and noticed Pedro looking particularily sick. In fact everyone looked a bit pallid and sick. Except of course for Sammy and Julie. Frigging walking toaster ovens seemed to be having a great time.

Things were going just great. We were un-armed, un-prepared, and had three robots in the plane. It was time to take control, but that was okay, I had a plan.

I stepped out of the flight cabin and said masterfully, "After careful examination of the clues, it has now come to my attention that one of YOU is the killer!" They looked impressed, they looked awed, they looked...confused. "Umm Pedro?" came Dik's voice, "Yes, what is it?" "Umm...shouldn't you be flying the plane?" I sneered at the upstart. "You fool, what a silly question, of course I should be flying the...plane. Shit." I ran back to the cabin and put the auto-pilot on. "Now, where was I, oh yes, one of YOU is the killer, the one who murdered the ambassador of Lower Slobovia in the library with the sub-atomic chainsaw." They shushed and waited for more. "Yes, unbeknownst to the rest of you, the ambassador was slain last week and my mindscan has revealed that someone aboard this plane is responsible."

Until next week kids

"Tha ambassador from Lower Slobovia?" I asked. "Where in hell's name is that?"

"Picture Europe."

"Yeah," I said in response to Pedro.

"Go East."

"Uh-huh."

"Think small. Real small."

"Mmmmm."

"That's Lower Slobovia."

"I see. And what does he have to do with us?"

"One of you killed him, you twit."

I was offended.

Barn piped up. "But we've been together on this case for more than a week any- way."

"But were we together the whole time?"

"Well," said Dave. "No. But we were never separated long enough to kill any- one. Besides, who would want to kill him if we've never even heard of him?"

"Would you shut up?" snapped Pedro. "You're ruining my neat new subplot."

"Wait a minute," I mused. "Blamsworth J. Wopplequimby."

"What?" asked Pedro, Dave, and Barn simultaneously. Sammy and Julie were too

busy to say anything intelligible.

"Blamsworth J. Wopplequimby. The dead man in the warehouse."

"What's the connection?" inquired Barn in his usual lunkish manner.

"I don't know. There has to be one. Otherwise, there would be just too many unresolved subplots in this damn story."

"True," said Pedro. "But the ambassador's name was Mikhail."

"An alias, perhaps?" I ventured.

"Doubtful."

I thought. Then I thought some more. All the while, another, totally unre- lated thought was swimming through my mind, occasionally giving me an uncom- fortable prod. What had happened to Masters and the Spiderwoman? We hadn't heard from them in ages. I continued to think.

I didn't get very far.

I decided to keep my mouth shut since everything I said, however brilliant, was irrevocably twisted by the others. I sat quietly and had an interesting conversation with myself, much like El Loco, wherever the hell he was.

'I'm telling you that one of YOU killed the Ambassador!' screamed Pedro, obviously on the edge of total mental collapse.

'But assuming that we....', Dik was cut off as he noticed the large handgun pointed at his head in the hand of Pedro, who was leering strangely. Maybe he was strangely leering. Who knows. Dik certainly didn't.

'It must have been you, Miller!' Pedro screeched unnecessarily, 'It had to be! You were at the scene of the crime when the SWAT team arrived. You even tried to escape and had your old beater blown into cooking utensils!'

'Hold on a minute, Pedro. Get ahold of yourself.', Dik said calmly.

'None of that! I knew there was something to this new sub-plot! Come on, just give me some kind of excuse to blow you away. Go ahead, make my day.'

Pedro was obviously trying to goad Dik into some drastic, desperate action.

'You're the disease, you scum. Not me. I'm the cure', Dik countered and with that drew his Ingram from his handy-dandy velcro-closure style vest pocket.

'You're terminated, fucker!', cried Pedro as he let loose a volley of hollow dum-dum teflon bullets. One of the bullets struck the single lightbulb, which popped with a resounding popping sound. 'Pop!' and plunged the cabin into darkness.

Somewhere down near the back of the plane, heedless of the flying shrapnel, bullet fragments and people, Dave the Super Ninja was having a nice chat with Sammy the Cyborg and Julie the Bionic Floozie.

'Fate, Kismet, Doom. All aspects of Fatality, Necessity. Do you understand?', Dave said in his calm and soothing Ninja Master voice.

I was having trouble sleeping what with the gunfire, the shouting and the incessant gibberish that Dave spouted.

'Alright!

'Alright! Take that you filth! There, how's that for a famous movie saying? That was from the 1954 remake of 'To Write a Novel' by...'.

I was rudely interrupted by a dum-dum bullet ripping a hole in my 'Tequila Sauza' baseball hat. Another bullet punctured my hiking boot near the steel toe. Good thing I wear thick socks.

I decided to get some sleep. I didn't know how long it would be till we got to France, but I'd better get some shuteye. Anyways, I doubted that a plane like this could reach France and I didn't want to be awake when we ditched in a cornfield somewhere in Iowa and died.

One more time with El's mind:

'So Bertha...What do you want to do now?' 'Oh, I don't know, playing chess or checkers is bori^g cause I know what you are thinking anyway.' 'Okay, then why don't we try Eye Spy.' 'Fine. I'll start...I spy with my little eye, something that is grey.' 'The top left half of the right hemisphere of my cerebral complex?' 'How'd you guess?' 'I can read your mind. So to speak.' 'I don't like you Loco...I am going to take over your mind. I don't care if it IS a genuine Tyrell.' 'Take over my mind? Forget it babe, you ain't got no...'

El's body (well, Bertha's now...) begins to violently convulse as the two personalities battle it out in El's/Bertha's body.

Pieces of old lady fall like rain on the runway...

Well, I mused, it probably wasn't Dik who killed the ambassador. Too bad, It would've made life real simple. When the emergency lights came back on I turned to Barney. "You! You're the one! You killed him, didn't you Bear! You might think you're tough, but frankly Bernard, I don't give a damn." Barney turned rather unsoliticiously, "Oh dry up." Wise words, I thought. Suddenly, it came to me. It didn't come to the others, who were staring at me strangely. "It's simple, Mind-zap over Montana, Cannon Pictures, 1952. George C. Scott and Marie Tyler Moore. Scott plays a psychic fooled into believing someone who works in his car factory is a murderer. The real killer uses a pseudo-mystical technologically advanced gene-splicing mind bender to trick him." They still looked at me strangely. Dik coughed, "Umm Pedro, what does that have to do with it?"

"Don't you watch T.V.?"

In chorus everyone answered "No"

"It must've been another of Master's tricks. We have no choice but to consult

"We have no choice but to consult THE GUIDE."

"What guide?" asked Dave

"

"Oh, THAT guide" sang the others in chorus.

Yes, THE guide. Even Dik had failed to rip the copyright off from that one. I pulled it out of my sombrero and flipped the pages until I found what I was looking for. "Here it is, Chapter 432, paragraph 13, section 33.2 'What To Do When You're The Victim Of A Mind-Zap Device'." A truly well written book.

"Well?" mumbled Barney impatiently.

"It says here 'Mind-Zaps take up a lot of room and are usually concealed within humanoid robots. Handle with care and blow the fuckers away.'" Truly one of today's better paperbacks. I turned to the three (count 'em three) robots and said "A-Ha, one of you is the Mind-Zap! Come on, out with it, you'll only make it worse by not telling."

Then the lights went out again...

"Three Robots?", I asked. Sometimes my ninja skills didn't help my hearing too much. I still couldn't get Julie & Sammie to understand a mature outlook on life, the universe, and rice-krispies. They kept thinking that the rice krispies were re-incarnations of the Apostles. I wondered how to tell them that it was impossible to be re-incarnated as a small glucogon package, but they seemed to think that it was as possible as being re-incarnated into a slug. or a snail. sigh.

Getting back to my previous conversation, "So you see, clearly, the extended sphere of void-space warps into a torus shaped figure of power that is represented in the current space-time locus by a shreddie," I declared.

"Bunk," said Sammie. "It's a rice-krispie".

"Well big boys, I thought it was an edible panty," said Julie seductively.

Sammy was getting pretty excited about the thought of shreddies in edible undergarments. The thought of the shreddies going to mush and.., well, he was getting excited.

A shot rang out!

The bullet, which had inadvertently been fired from Barn's Ruger Super Redhawk .44 Magnum, ricocheted off one of the bulkheads, glanced off Sammy's head, and embedded itself in a case of Bill the Cat bags. Sammy looked dazed. I took ad- vantage of the situation, and tapped Dave on the shoulder. He understood.

With one swift motion, we had the two surprisingly light cyborgs in our grasp. Before Sammy could recover from his blow or Julie could recover from seeing Sammy get hit, the rear cargo door was open and the two robots were quietly sailing their way towards what would probably be an unhappy meeting with the ground.

I closed the door and brushed my hands clean.

"Well, that about wraps it up for them," said Dave. "Another ridculous diver- sion to the plotline out of the way."

"That means," said Pedro, now fully de-mind-zapped, "that any time now another one should come along."

There was a loud buzzing sound from the control cabin.

"Why did you have to say that?" I asked plaintively. "Things were going so well."

Pedro ignored this and peered at the controls.

"We're out of fuel," he pronounced, moustache twitching.

"Where are we?" asked Barn with surprising intelligence.

"According to the navigation computer...not really anywhere. Above the Atlan- tic Ocean, in fact."

I supposed that that meant the robots weren't going to meet the ground. They would meet water. Of course, that didn't mean the encounter would be any more pleasant.

"Where's the nearest land?" inquired Dave.

"About three hundred miles away. In France."

"Well, lesse here, the atlantic ocean is only about 3000 miles at its narrowest so we can assume that we are in fact just off the coast of Quebec." A shudder ran through the others. "Oh come on, its not that bad."

"I'll take my chances with the ocean" said barney.

"Umm, one thing guys..." I said hesitantly.

"What is it now?" Snapped Dik.

"With the MindZap gone I just found out some rather unpleasent news."

"What is it now Pedro" came the others.

"Well, Masters was the one who killed the ambassador. He did this because it prevented him from seeking aid. You see, Masters has used his small army to take over Lower Slobovia."

"So what, I'm sure Masters deserved it." barked Barney.

"Now now, all things great and small have equal value in the universal sense of the word because..." began Dave.

"Shaddup all of you. The reason this is a problem is that Lower Slobovia has the worlds largest supply of...Moronium X!"

(Grodd, ya mango.)

Sammy clung desperately to the empennage of the rickety Beechcraft. It was clear that he wouldn't last long, what with ramjet exhaust being fired into his face at supersonic speeds, but at least he had gotten rid of that Julie chick. She was getting obsolete. Other thoughts raced through his mind. Didn't the Trenchies realize that he wasn't a robot? A wired-up ex-human to be sure, but not a robot. In a blaze of frustration, Sammy reached through the fuselage, and pulled himself back into the aircraft.

"Geez" he thought, "today is turning into a whole bunch of no-fun."

He walked camly forward, into the cockpit, smiling and waving. No-one noticed. The only way to be accepted as a member of the Trench-coats was to go to Slobovia, and defeat Death- Bird. Sammy noticed a small button on the autopilot, and pressed it.

A small sign lit up: "Express to Slobovia, no stops enroute."

A warp in space-time opened up in front of the rickety Beech, and swallowed it up.

Not even a nanosecond later, the smuggler's plane and its contents were spit out onto the active runway of Slobovia International, confusing the hell out of a lot of people.

A somewhat sooty Sammy the Cyborg (oo oo alliteration...) turned from the controls to face the rest of the guys, grinned, and gave them a thumbs up.

"I just gotta be me."

After a long night of it, Richard Masters lay slumbering peacefully. the Spiderwoman was feeling restless, so she moved her graceful form over to the open window. the stars were shining coldly in the sky and a soft breeze was swaying the trees. Deep from within her mind, and idea slowly surfaced. She closed her eyes and concentrated her energy across the atlantic. "Dave, ninja master" she breathed softly. "Hear me. I call to you. You have what I need. you can help me. I can give you everything. Listen to my call and open your mind to me. Let our energies flow together and we will be as one. Join with me and I will give you everything you desire."

Relaxing her body even more, the Spiderwoman continued,"When you reach France I will contact you and you will come to me. You will be mine. That is what you want, what you have always wanted. Everything you desire I can give you. Say nothing of what I have told you. This is between us alone." Her message completed, the Spiderwoman opened her eyes, and walked slowly to the bed where she slid in beside Richard Masters who woke and took her in his arms. Aboard the aircraft, Dave suddenly stopped moving and shut his eyes tightly. From far away he heard a soft voice calling his name.

A voice he had heard only in his deepest fantacies. He breathed deeply and listened with his whole being. When the whisper ceaced, his body relaxed and he felt a calmness he had not felt before. His mind turned and a slow sigh excaped from his lips. She had called for him at last. She had a mission for him. For many years he had secretly desired to serve her. Desired her, for that matter. His personal motive against Richard Masters was that he held the soft form that Dave himself longed for. Things were different now. She had wanted him. He would obey her. She HAD promised him everything and he wanted a lot from her. He would say nothing to the others. He would continue as usual until he was needed by HER.

I stared at Sammy. He has somehow managed to pull himself back into the plane, walked into the control cabin, and passed out on the floor, mutter- ing "I just gotta be me." Strange.

"Look," I said to Pedrom pointing at the navigation panel. "We are three hun- dred miles from the French coast. You underestimated that ramjet. If we're lucky we can glide far enough to land in a field or on a road or something."

"GLIDE three hundred miles?" Pedro snapped incredulously. "Good luck."

"We could swim."

The next hour was hell, as Pedro used his metaphysical powers to try to keep the plane high, level, and fast. I tried to keep us on course. Barn opened the cargo doors and ejected the Bill the Cat bags to save weight. Dave just sat meditating - or so I thought.

Some time later, the fog-shrouded coast of Brittany hove into view below us. It didn't look friendly. Even if it had and Pedro screwed up, we would only have been scattered across a friendly-looking landscape.

"Pedro," I muttered, "don't screw up now."

"Not while I'm flying."

"There!" screamed Barn, causing Pedro and me (but not Dave) to jump about ten centimetres. The plane began to yaw uncontrollably.

"What the hell is it?" asked Pedro, struggling with the controls.

"A road! Land on the road!"

We moved in.

"Controling matter with the mind, my son, is a process which will take ytou many years to master. You must learn to touch everything with your mind, save that which you desire to hold. It will take you a lifetime to master child, and many lifetimes to understand." The words of the Bwana still rang through my head as I held the plane aloft. It was like looking through a collidascope, everything became a series of patterns to which I had to sublty weave in order to keep our injured craft from diving towards a watery death. For a moment, I almost lost it. Something had moved into the pattern, an almost straight line from France to here. I couldn't pick anything out, but I new it had something to do with Dave.

The road loomed up ahead and I struggled to glide the plane towards it. The floor of the plane shook mightily as we made our landing on the coast of Brittany. It was over, we were safe. But now, we had to get to Lower Slobovia somehow.

Somehow, I managed to haul myself to the exit door and get it open. Pedro and Barn had picked up Sammy and were carrying him out when I walked up to Dave.

"Yo! Ninja master!" I exclaimed, waving my hands in what must have looked like a very silly way in front of his face. There was no response, and I expected him to start chanting "om" or something. "Hello?" I tried again. Again no res- ponse. There was only one other alternative.

"Island Lager."

His eyes snapped open, and he looked around, rather stunned.

"Good," I said. "Having a little trouble snapping out of our trance, were we?" There was something wrong. Dave looked happy. Too happy. I didn't realize that trances could be quasi-orgasmic.

"Um, where are we?" he asked, still in a daze.

"France. Brittany, to be exact. Let's get out."

Sammy blinked. Twice. Flailing his arms and legs, he dove to the ground.

"It's ok! I'm just going to have to go underground for a while!" he shouted, and began burrowing through the tarmac.

Within seconds he was out of sight, leaving only a large pile of dirt.

The others looked at each other and shrugged. "Damn cyborgs," offerred Dave.

That was the last anyone saw of Sammy for quite a while.

Ignarp looked up to see a small plane gliding in for a landing on the pock- marked road. He, being one of those supra-intelligent types, didn't pay it very much attention. If you've seen one Beechcraft with a ramjet, you've seen them all.

Even in dense brush, the midday sun beat down upon Ignarp, who was sitting in a comfy lawnchair under one of those canopies you see stuck on the sides of motorhomes. This canopy, from True Value no less, was particularly ill-fitting

'Goddamn it, why can't someone make a canopy that fits the contours of my spacecraft? Shit man!', he grumbled in a perfect Southern Californian accent. Obviously picked up from watching HBO and other cable networks on his sub- space ultra-frequency transmitter/receiver.

Meanwhile, out on the road, the PIs were busily searching for Samuel the Cyborg who had mysteriously vanished. Big loss. (Ha ha. Big smirk.)

Ignarp looked at his sub-space ultra-frequency chronometric digital watch from Jafco, decided to pack up and go home.

'Might even make it home by dinnertime.', Ignarp mused.

I blinked. I could have sworn that there had been a spaceship in the field a few moments before. Maybe it was the heat. I looked back at the fuel-less Beechcraft and noted how incongruous it looked against the backdrop of the sunny French countryside, especially with the still-smoking ramjet strapped to it and shredded bits of Bill the Cat bags hanging from the wings. I fin- sihed looking back and looked forward, noting that the view in the other direction was no different, except for the absence of a plane.

"So," said Barn decisively.

"Mmmm," I muttered conclusively.

"Yeah," grumbled Pedro succinctly.

"Sex," said Dave.

"What?" asked Barn, Pedro, and I.

Dave was peering off at the horizon, staring blankly ahead. As we followed his line of sight, we could see what he was looking at. Nothing. As we were all

gazing eastward, a small yellow Renault delivery van nearly pasted us. It screeched to a halt and a short little man in a striped shirt and a beret leaped out.

"Est-ce que c'est votre avion?" he blabbered.

"What?" asked Barn.

"Eez zat yor plane, monsieur?"

"Well, yes."

"Could you get eet off of ze road, pleez? Eet iz in ze way of traffique."

"Um, it's out of gas."

"Zen poosh eet." With than, he bounded into his Renault and sped off.

I couldn't believe it. Here I was, acting like a complete idiot of this woman who I'd only seen about 200 times in the past. But the PIs didn't know that. That I'd seen her that is, not that I was acting like a love-struck teenager out of one of those cheap teen movies, you know the kind, with the bikini-clad women wandering in and out of hot-tubs and condos up on ski hills like Apex.. But that's a different story. Or weekend. Or trip.

There, even I could see how muddled my brain was. I wasn't thinking clearly. It was like I'd been drinking for 2 days solid and only taking time off to sleep and ski.

"Argh!" I screamed.

"What?" queried Dik.

"Sorry, I hit my toe," I lamely replied. I hoped none of them (the PIs would want to think about things like this) would notice that I hadn't moved, which meant I couldn't have stubbed my toe. I waited for the call I knew I had to receive. I wondered when she would call for me.

"No, Dave's not home", said Barney liltingly. He like lilting in La la land

Liltingly? I surprised myself with that last line. Why the hell would I say something liltingly. Not only is it hard to say but, it's hard to read with all those goofy i's and l's.

Awww, whatever.

'Hack-dooey!', Pedro was saying. Or rather gurgling, while trying to clear his throat. Very impressive, I thought. Much like the battle cry of the Tandoori Hopa-lolo-aju tribe of Northern Baffin Island. Impressive.

Dik hove into view. That seemed particularily strange. Must be due to my limited vocabulary.

'Let's get the plane off of the road before someone drives into it and gets turned into road pizza', Dik said trying to sound authoritative.

The other PIs and I fell to the task of pushing the Beechcraft onto the gravel shoulder. A number of people driving by in cars stopped to watch. I brandished my gun at them and they quickly departed with screams of 'Au secours!!' and 'Gendarmes!', whatever that meant.

We finished rolling the plane onto the side of the road, and I looked down to see that my hands were all dusty. I wiped them on my trenchcoat. Unfortunately the dust was the white kind that gets on dark objects, not the dark kind which gets on light objects (although I was sure there was some of that on my hands too, and that it would manifest itself the next time I tried to pick up a piece of paper). My trenchcoat now had rather large, smeared white handprints on the front of it. I unbuttoned it, removed it, and then looked around.

"Um, Dave?" I intoned. I was running out of synonyms for "said."

"Yeah?"

"You doing anything right now?"

"Not especially."

"Could you come here for a sec?"

"Sure." He ambled over and stood, staring blankly into space once again.

I proceeded to whack my trenchcoat against his upper body until it was free of dust. He didn't even notice, although he was substantially grittier than he had been beforehand.

"Now," said Pedro, spitting unglamorously towards the ground but managing to hit his shoe, "to the task at hand. How do we get to Masters?"

"I dunno," said Barn.

"No idea," said I.

A telephone rang.

"What was that?" I asked.

"That was a telephone ringing," replied Barn.

"I know that. Where is it?"

Looking around didn't help. There was nothing but wheat field. There was an- other ring. It was louder this time.

Unexpectedly, a bright red telephone dropped out of the sky attached to a small parachute. It landed with a soft thud at Dave's feet.

"Neat trick," chirped Barn. He was running short of synonyms too.

Dave looked at the phone as if he had been expecting it. It rang again, and he bent down and picked it up.

"Hello?" he said. There was a pause. "Yeah." Another pause. His eyes widened. "Okay. I'll be there." He hung up, and before we could do anything the tele- phone spontaneously burst into flames and disintegrated.

Pedro turned from the smouldering chunk of plastic slag on the ground and faced Dave. "What was that all about?"

Dave looked ashen. "Nothing."

"You're telling me that a phone drops out of the sky, lands at your feet, ringing, and turns out to be FOR YOU, then burns itself to a shred as soon as you hang up, and it was nothing?!"

"Yup."

"Oh."

Barn was looking up the road and waving his arms. I thought he might just be going over the edge into complete insanity but he was in fact flagging down a passing taxi.

El's mind again....with a twist.

'I am in trouble now. At least I took care of that chick who was doing the mind games....'

At that particular moment, a plane decided to land on the runway where El lay. This plane, seeing El, landed about 40 feet past El and came to a halt. A young woman jumped out of the plane, pinned a button on El's shirt and took off. The button said: 'Vive la Sepratiste! Vive le F.L.Q.!'

About 5 minutes later, a man walked up to the unmoving body of El and tried to sell him Life Insurance. Failing at this, he showed El an interesting assortment of plotlines designed to get him out of his coma and back into the group of PI's.

Another seedy-looking man trotted by, nearly tripping over the lifeless form. Looking down, he grinned, and tried to sell El used body parts for five minutes.

"You sure you don't need a new liver?"

Silence.

"How about a brain cell graft?"

More silence.

The man gave up, and trotted on. But not before he had ripped off El's wallet.

El was not impressed. A brain cell graft sounded like it was exactly what he needed to get out of his present predicament. Besides, it would relive the boredom.

His muscles began to stiffen. God, it felt bad. "I'll never eat at Rigatoni Morty's again..."

"Thank you Jacque. Thank you. Yes yes, you're payment will be in the usual place. Thank you. Good bye."

Masters hung up the phone.

"Charles! Yes, would you put five thousand francs in a box, along with enough explosive to eraticate say, one small, obnoxious french man with a Renault? Thank you Charles."

The Spiderwoman leaned over the shoulder of Masters.

"Is that the location of the PIs, dear?"

"Yes... one of my men just called it in. Seems they got here in some sort of small plane with a ram jet strapped to it of all things. Too bad it won't do a damned bit of good to them, I'm going to send a couple of Mirage IIIs out there for some practice dive bombing."

"Oh don't do that dear... you know where they are, but they don't know where we are..."

"So?"

"So lets play with them a bit dear."

"What do you have in mind?"

The Spiderwoman spelled out her story... Masters giggled, snickered, then laughed uproarusly.

"Jed? I want to drop a line to someone..."

When the Spiderwoman hung up the phone, Masters smiled. He couldn't help but be crazy about this woman, she was brilliant. Almost as devious as he, and with an incredibly creative mind for sadism.

"Boss?"

"Yes Charles, what is it."

"It's about that bomb Boss."

"The one for that french man?"

"Yeah. Ummm... I kinda overloaded the box with plastique."

"How much is 'kinda overloaded'?"

"Well, it destroyed the man, his van, the cafe he was parked beside, several other cars, and most of a hotel."

"Call the press and tell them that the PLO have struck another blow for their side."

"Right Boss."

"Oh, and Charles?"

"Yes Boss."

"I know you did that deliberately. As punishment, I want you to send a dozen men in two limos to these coordinates, track down the PIs, and beat them up."

"Gee, thanks Boss."

"Not you Charles. You get to go find Death Bird. I want him in France."

"Y-y-y-y-yes Boss."

"That is all Charles."

The taxi pulled over to the side of the road with a squeal of badly-adjusted brakes. Barn opened the door and hopped in, while Pedro leaped into the back seat (looking quite silly in the process, as his sombrero did not fit through the door). I managed to drag Dave along and throw him in beside Pedro, and was just stepping in when the driver began - as drivers will do - to drive away.

My left foot dragged along the pavement, and I cursed as I pulled myself into the seat and closed the door.

"By the way," asked Pedro, "where are we going?"

There was a moment of silence.

"I dunno," came the chorus of replies.

There was another moment of silence, during which Dave tapped the driver on the shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Either he was telling the

driver where to take us or he was weirder than I had thought. When he finished the driver sped up, roaring down the road at a good...oh...forty kilometres an hour; a four-cylinder car with four PI's and a driver in it does not go very fast.

"Um, Dave?" prodded I.

"Yeah, Dik?"

"Where are we going?"

"Nowhere."

"I see. I guess it's our big chance to get away from it all, then." I hate ripping off Star Trek jokes.

Somewhere, on some desolate road, stands a seemingly apparation of a man. Th e figure is shrouded by wisps of mist and fog, making him the centre of their attention. The man's body is totally encompassed by a full length mackintosh, collar up and capped with a shoddy fedora. Dark glasses are precariously perched upon hi s somewhat twisted nose. His hard featured grimace indicates apathy and discon tent. As our camera zooms in, we'll see if we can get an interview: NARRATOR: Excuse me sir?

MAN: Wha...? Fuck off an' get dat bejesus camera outta here, or yer rectum will have a permanent f.stop!

NAR: Sir, may I inform you that this is for a television program called " Weird People in Strange Places " and it pays a hundred dollars.

MAN: Why da fuck didn't ya say so in da foist place? Fess up da decasawbucks an' ask yer friggin' questions.

NAR: Again, this is for television, could you refrain from using such vulgar language?

MAN: Yeah, so what channel ya from? ^ NAR: CGAK cable 103.

MAN: So, who really cares?

NAR: Hmmm..you have a point there, so let's start with your name.

MAN: Cat Scratch

NAR: Cat, that's an interesting name, what's it short for?

MAN: Catastrophy, foist ting dat came inta me mudder's head when she hoid she wuz knocked up. People call me Catch fer short.

NAR: What about your father?

MAN: Dunno, never met da man. Asked me mudder once who he was and she gave me a multiple choice answer.

....[ will con't on next loggon ]

NAR: What is it that you do for a living Mr. Scratch?

MAN: Jus' Catch, okay buddy? Well I'm a private dick, gumshoe, or sleuth if ya prefer. My motto is," Da Cat can smell a Rat."

NAR: That must lead an exciting life, Catch. I assume that bulge under your shoulder is your weapon, may I see it?

MAN: Nosey mudder fucka ain'tcha? Yeah, it's a real sweetheart ain't it? It's one of a kind, had it made special. It's a combo of a Luger an' a Mauser, wit da look an' feel of a Welby, sportin' a Schmeisser 20cm. barrel. Dis baby can be fired fully or semi-automatic, butt load with a magazine that holds a special 32 shot calibre.30. clip.

NAR: Er...Catch, you're petting your gun.

MAN: Hey buddy, I'm da one wit da piece ya dig?

NAR: gulp...Yes, so why are you hitch- hiking on this road in the middle of nowhere?

MAN: What shithead sent ya out on this interview anyway, Geraldo Rivera? Look Nerd, fate tol' me destiny wuz gonna pick me up on this road here. Now, ya got yer fools money's worth so get da fug outta my face cuz I hear a motor comin'.

NAR: Well, I guess that just about wraps it up. Remember folks, you saw it first here on CGAK cable 103

Sombreros, some of us like to think, are the ultimate universal expression of paradox. I mean, look at 'em. Look closer. Mighty sharp isn't it? It's the kind of hat that girls see and think to themselves "Whoa, any guy wears a sombrero must be good in bed." The kind of item people look up to. Usefull too. Shades you from the sun, has plenty of roomy storage space, and makes a hell of a frisbee in a crunch. On the other hand, they don't, can't, never have, and never will fit in four cylinder cars. Fortunately, mine folds into a small ski mask. As we drove along I began to wonder just what was going on with everyone. Dave was weirded out in some kind of space warp continuum, Barney had been using words with more than two syllables, Bill the cat was no longer a hit, and Dik was worried, worried! about stealing Star Trek jokes. It was a bad day for left-wing drug abusing elephants from Mars.

"What the hell is that?"

"What are you talking about, Dik?" asked Pedro.

"Him." I pointed. Standing by the side of the road was a man dressed in a suit which was even more stereotypically detective-like than my own. I resent- ed that.

"I'd say he's a private eye there, Dik," Barn told me.

"But who?"

"Too late to find out now," said Pedro. "We just passed him."

Dave made no comment but just kept staring ahead and smiling like he was ogling a beautiful woman. Then it hit me like a ton of reprocessed peat.

"Shit," I said intelligently. "I think Dave's possessed."

"By what?" asked Barnard.

"I don't know yet, but I'm going to find out. Can you get anything, Pedro?"

Pedro closed his eyes and hummed, trying his best to meditate like one would expect a guru to meditate.

El' friggin' mind AGAIN!

'Fine...if they wont get me, I'll start sulking. Fine.'

El's body begins to form mould from his extended 'rest period'

I waited, humming for what I assumed would be an appropriate time for a guru to hum. I'd already done a mindscan of Dave's mind.

"Well, I've got good news, and bad news, and news that's totaly irrelevant." I said calmly.

"What's the bad news?" asked Barney in a great-going-you-dumb-wetback sort of voice. "Who you talkin' to in a 'great-going-you-dumb-wetback' voice you big oaf?" I responded. Things got a little haywire then, the car became enveloped in a whirlwind of smoke as we started fighting. Fists flung, feet fought, and Bill the Cat tote bags were being thrown everywhere. When things died down and the others had finished bandaging my damaged sombrero, Dik asked "So, what IS the bad news?" Flabergasted I answered "Well, I can't read Dave's mind, his ninja skills prevent it." Barn muttered under his breath and Dik started swearing. The man has a weird way of swearing, his mouth formed the words but all I could here were beeps. "The good news," I continued "is that ..."

I've tapped into his nervous system and have gotten other information from various glands and secretions."

"Huh?" said Barney

"It's simple really, other parts of his body are reacting minutely to his thoughts and I'm tapping his nervous system for the info."

"Well, what have you learned?" asked Dik.

"Well, his body is preparing to ward off poison of some kind of eight legged fuzzy creature, his skin is warm, and his libido is doing the bunny hop."

All at once lightbulbs began popping over all our heads. "The Spider Woman!" we chorused. That dealt with, we began following the road into danger.

"Umm, Pedro?" began Dik. "Yes, what is it?" He looked as if he was going to regret whatever it was he had to say. "What was the irrelevant news?" I sat back down and said "The Stock Exchange just put up shares in P.I's" "And?" he looked perturbed. "Well, we're worth about ten cents on the dollar"

Dik fainted. Evidently he had invested quite heavily in us.

Cat Scratch smiled confidently as he saw the taxi crammed full with PI's speeding towards him. A few moments later, the taxi cab was still speeding along and Cat was sort of, shuffling his feet and trying not to look too dumb.

'Ah fuck'em!', Cat muttered,'I'll catch up with them in town. Grumble grumble'

With that, Cat began walking.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the American Midwest:

'I sure hope it doesn't rain', El thought. 'I might drown.'

Sure enough, a sudden rainfall drenched his clothing and made his nose runny. And to top it off, the cold hard ground was threatening to give him hemmorhoids.

About that time, a Hughes 400D helicopter came into El's limited field of vision. The copter came to rest alongside El and disgorged a whole mass of people in brightly-cooured clothing.

El's mind raced...no,FLEW. What were they going to do to me? Why are they all smiling so maniacally? Where did they come from? How am I going to get away?

'OooooOOOOoooooOOOoo!',one of them cried,'Isn't he just gorgeous! Let's take him back with us!!'

Little did El Loco know that he had fallen into the clutches of the infamous Koloured Koalition Klan. The KKK!

Dik, Pedro, Dave the Ninja Master and I were crammed into a tiny car speeding along the highway. I wouldn't have minded being squashed normally, but Dik just had to wear his cologne, didn't he? Phew! Essence of Excrement #24.

I also wondered about Sammy the Cyborg. None of us had seen him since he had burrowed into the pavement and disappeared. Of course, no-one seemed to be particularily worried about it, so I forced it from my mind.

Anyways, I looked out of the rear window and noticed the dwindling figure of what looked like a fellow PI. He seemed to be waving his arms, jumping up and down and generally gesticulating wildly. Oh well, you see one wildly gesticu- lating PI, you've seen 'em all.

The little car trundled along at the mind-numbing speed of 20 kilometres per hour and the radio was blaring some kind of news broadcast. Something about 'un avion' or somesuch parked o^ut on the highway, whatever that was. I was worried that they were talking about our plane. At least we still had the element of surprise on our side!

Back in the Midwest, El attempted to ward off the evil forces of the KKK by creatively spitting at them. His salivary glands were noticeably atrophied due to his extended semi- concious, paralyzed and dehydrated state, and he only managed to make small whistling noises. Oh well, he was making progress.

The head KKK guy (or was it a girl?) smiled, and exclaimed "OOooh! He even does bird imitations!"

A passing Nimitz-class warship caused the strange group to run back to their helicopter, tripping over El in the process. Seconds after they lifted off, they were blown away by a surface to air missile, but that did nothing to help El, who had been turned over onto his face. The battleship disappeared mysteriously.

Mud ran through El's nostrils.

"Shit."

At least he didn't have to worry about hemarhoids anymore.

Two limos slid sideways, blocking the road in front of the taxi.

The frenchman swore loudly in french, turned sharply, and rolled the vehicle twice, landing it on its wheels.

Before the PIs could get orientated, the doors were ripped off their hinges, and they were hauled roughly out of the car.

For the first time since they landed the aircraft, Dave was animate. He promptly creamed the guy holding him, and three others for good measure, then got caught by a tranquilizer dart in the back, and slumped to the ground.

All this happened in a few seconds, before the others could do anything.

Even after that, before they could react, a large man, who seemed to have been running for quite awhile, jumped one of the men from behind, and flattened him in one blow, they pulled out his gun and dropped to one knee.

"Alright muddufuggers, reach for de sky or I blow you away."

From behind the limo, and man clad in black let off a short burst of machine gun fire.

"Think again."

A red light was flashing on the other side of the laboratory.

Damn. That El unit has frozen again! Stupid infinite loops. I wish the guys who programmed themose cyborgs would grab a brain.

(I just build 'em, I dont program 'em)

"Well, let's see, I'll set up a Comm-link and see if I cant break the loop"

I hacked and chopped away for a few minutes at the spagetti code.

"Done! Finally that silly EL unit can make some use of himself. I hate having my projects lying around. Besides, I need an inside man on the P.Is' team"

I merrily tapped away on the keyboard, entering a short sequence that would get El to france by any means necessary.

I hope I didn't miss a branch.

Suddenly, just as the mud was filling El's sinuses and attempting to go down his throat, his mind clicked. 'Aaahhh....ahem, cough cough, were the heck am I?' He was still in the midwest, but something like a motherly nature told him he had to go to France. With great haste, he flagged down the closest car on the closest highway and promptly killed the middle aged man inside, and assumed his identity, for he held a AmEx Platinum Card. El drove to the nearest city and sold the car. With the $2700 he made, he bought a 1-way to France. As he was boarding the airplane, he set off the metal alarm. The inspection officer told him to remove what was metal and place it on the counter. El took off his right arm.

The guard stared at the arm lying on the counter, doing about as much as one would expect a disembodied arm to do. He instructed El to walk through the detector again. There was no reading. The guard picked up the arm and shook it. He peered at it for a few more seconds and then gave it back to El, who reattached it swiftly and strolled into the boarding gate. For some reason no one else seemed to notice.

Whilst standing on a road in the middle of nowhere a.k.a. France, an overcrow ded taxi goes barrel assing by Cat (CAtch) Scratch. "Shit dere goes destiny passing me by, well I mights as well start hoofin' e r, sooner 'r later I'm bound ta catch up ta destiny, da crazy yahoos ain't get tin' far drivin' like dat."

The machine gun burst made a shambles of the taxi cab. 'Move and you're hamburger!!', snarled the man in black. He seemed to be pretty confident, oblivious to the fact that all of his henchmen were lying all over the road in various states of dismemberment.

Dik and Pedro exchanged glances. They were obviously shitting bricks about now. Dave, calmly gnawing on the man he had ripped to shreds, sat in what was left of the taxi.

'Stick it up yer anal orifice, Mack!', rasped Cat, suddenly, bringing up his captured gun to bear on the black-clad man. A shot rang out. A hawk screamed for its mate. A jeep raced...No, FLEW over the dry Central African Savannah!

The black-clad man cried out as he felt the hollow point teflon dum-dums rip through his body. His finger convulsingly tightened on the trigger of his Bullpup assault weapon and let loose a long burst as he fell backwards.

After all the pyrotechnics, I casually strolled over to the black-clad man and picked up his gun.

cont. next

'Heh, just the thing I've been looking for', I mused as I inspected the weapon carefully.

Back by the bullet-riddled taxi, Cat was casually twirling his gun and trying to look....casual. A tad too casual, because everyone was ignoring him, even though he had saved our bacon from getting singed.

At that point, the frightened taxi driver leapt out of the car and ran head- long into the bushes, screaming all the while. Obviously, he had never had someone shooting at him before.

'Well..',Pedro said aloud. 'I think we should commandeer those limos over there and head into town.'

'Good idea, Pedro.',Dik blurted, suddenly realizing he had compromised his brooding, gloomy PI guise. The first rule of being a PI was never to compli- ment a fellow PI, lest he get overconfident. Too late for Pedro, of course. His head was inflated to the size of the Goodyear blimp.

We piled into one of the limos and rediscovered the joys of big cars which contribute considerable amounts of revenue to several Middle Eastern nations. For some reason I ended up in the driver's seat. Pedro was next to me, and Barnard, Catch, and Dave sat in the back, watching TV. The black-clad men had obviously anticipated our need to steal their vehicle, for they had left the keys in it. I turned the ignition and there was a throaty roar of V-8 power from under the vast expanse of the hood.

"Where to, Dave?" I asked, hoping to get a response.

"Paris, under the Eif- oh shit." He had given our destination away. I pulled the car onto the road and started along it at the satisfying (but probably illegal) speed of 140 km/h.

"Why?" asked Pedro. "Does it have anything to do with that..." He left a dram-

atic pause. "...telephone call?"

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, there was a loud, cacophonous blaring of trum- pets and violins like there always used to be on old radio shows after a great proclamation such as this. Unfortunately, the response didn't live up to its introduction.

"No. It has nothing to do with the phone call." I could tell Dave was being evasive by the way he was staring at the floor, blinking, the way his voice quavered when he spoke, and the way he was trying to open the door and jump out of the car.

Barn restrained him by catching a belt loop with his left pinky finger. "We're not letting you get away that easily."

"What was the phone call about?" asked Pedro menacingly.

Dave said nothing. I knew there was only one thing to do. I tapped Pedro on

the shoulder and whispered my plan in his ear. He nodded and sat back, closing his eyes for a mind scan. I drove normally for a few seconds, then turned around, looked Dave in the face, gave him my best evil-beast-possessed-by- creatures-from-hell expression, and yelled in a very loud voice "Boo!"

Barnard fainted. Catch bolted out of his seat and nearly put a hole in the ceiling. Dave twitched slightly. I only use my evil-beast-possessed-by-crea- tures-from-hell expression as a last resort.

"I got it!" exclaimed Pedro, sounding distinctly un-cool. My scare tactic had broken Dave's telepathy-blocking ninja concentration for a fraction of a sec- ond, and that had been all Pedro needed to do a mind scan.

A crack appeared in the tarmac of the abandoned airport.

The ground shook.

And a very dirty Sammy the Cyborg appeared. He looked really dumb standing up to his neck in dirt, but hey, he was a cyborg. Cyborgs can program their own self-confidence, so he wasn't embarassed in the least. Sam's head swivelled around like a periscope.

"Where in the '&%( is El!"

NOW Sammy was embarassed. Embarassed enough to go back underground.

A pile of dirt appeared where the hole in the tarmac had been. Back to France.

That was the last anyone saw of Sam for a long time. And he didn't even notice the battleship.

It was horrible. Major mondo-gross kids. Ooooooh, that Master's, he's a bad pone. The others just kept staring at me waiting for me to stop exclamating and start talking. "He's going to...going to...oooooh, I can't say it, it's too despicable." It was true, I couldn't say it. The idea was so horrendous that it wouldn't get as far as my lips before I had to gasp. Dik looked slightly sick as he said "We have no choice, <gasp> we have to, have to... Do CHARADES!" The rest of the P.I.s quietly retched at the idea, but there was no other option.

"We don't have any other choice," I said disconsolately. "Okay, McTavish, give it your best shot."

Pedro held up two fingers.

"Two words," piped Barn.

Pedro tapped his fingers on his arm.

"First word. Two syllables," I suggested.

"First syllable," said Barn.

Pedro pulled his sombrero down over his eyes and looked around sneakily.

"Siesta," said Barn. "No? Ummm... illegal alien. No. That's two words."

"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom!" I shouted. "No. I guess not."

Pedro removed his sombrero and grabbed my hat, placing it over his head in a clandestine manner.

"I've got it! Dracula!" yelled Barn.

"Spy."

Pedro nodded.

"What did you say?" I asked Catch.

"I said 'spy.' Whaddya tink I said?"

"Okay then," I continued. "First word. First syllable. Spy."

Pedro nodded again and went on.

"Second syllable," I ventured. Pedro was making digging actions. "Shovel. Um...spade. Er...implement. Uh...gardening. Bill Vander Zalm. No?"

Barn gave it a shot from another direction. "Mining? Soil? Dirt?"

Pedro nodded again.

"Dirt? First word. 'Spydirt?'" Barnard looked quizzical.

"What the hell is spydirt?" I asked.

"Spider," said Catch.

"What?"

"I said 'spider.' Is youse guys deaf?"

"Second word. Two syllables," began Barn again. "What are you doing, Pedro? What is that? Melons? Two melons?"

"Cantaloupes. Two cantaloupes. Spider cantaloupes," I said.

Catch looked unamused. "They're suppose ta be tits, guys."

"What?" I asked.

"Tits. Ya know. Boobies. Breasts."

"Spider tits?"

Pedro shook his head.

"Spider boobies? Spider breasts? What is this?" Barn was very confused.

"What has tits, guys?" asked Catch. He was beginning to annoy me.

"What do you think we are? Stupid?" I asked indignantly. There was no reply. "Women, of course." Then it dawned on me. I felt rather stupid and was con sidering throwing this Cat Scratch guy out of the car.

"Spider Woman. Damn."

El landed with a thump on the hood of the limo, his parachute obscuring the view out of every one of the car's windows.

Everyone started spouting seriously profane adjectives.

And the limo stopped.

Strangely enough, no one was injured. El got in the massive vehicle, and they continued on their way.

The car had been gone a mere five seconds when the ground heaved. Sammy's head poked out of the concrete, and he gazed forlornly after the limo.

A mysterious passing blue Mini nearly sheared his head right off.

Masters chuckled diabolically.

None of the PI's had the good sense to look in the rearview mirror or out the back window. If they had, they would have noticed an unobstrusive blue Austin Mini following at a discreet 5 car-lengths. They would also have seen the horrifying mien of Skillprofessor, Masters' head cyborg specialist.

'Ahahahahahaha! The fools! They think they can escape me?! Pah! The fools! Hahahahahahaha! I'llxfind them wherever they go! Hahahahahaha! The fools!'. Unknown to even himself, Skillprofessor was an even bigger fool.

Back in the limo, the PI's were having a gay old time. Make that a good old time. It's pretty hard to keep up that harsh, indomitable personality of a PI when people think you're a t'twinkle-toes'. But anyways....

I looked out the side window and watched the French countryside whiz by. Dik figured that this was as good a time as any to polish his Mac-10. I noticed the other PI's shrink back visibly whenever the automatic's stubby barrel point in their general direction.

I, myself, was shaking in my size 12 booties.

'Say there, Dik, heh heh, ummm, heh...why don't you wait till we're not around to clean your gun, hmmm?', I said nervously.

Dik spun around in his seat bringing the barrel around to the level of my chest. I just realized that he was driving the car and cleaning the gun at the same time. I marveled at his coordination.

'What was that, Bernard? Oh heck, don't worry about it. I've got the safety on. Even if I pulled the trigger, nothing would would happen.'

I ducked down reflexively as I saw the pale orange flames leaping out of the barrel and as solid-tip slugs ricocheted around the cars interior. Screams, hoarse shouts and yells, the sounds of very quick frantic movement and the barely audible 'whoof' of bullets entering various thing intermixed with the 'BRAP BRAP BRAP' of the machine gun. Only when the clip was spent did I venture to take a small look around. I shuddered to think of what was left of the fellows. Yuck.

I looked at the safety switch. It said OFF. I flicked the switch to ON. Of course, now the trigger was locked. I had thought that something was wrong when I reassembled the gun. I suddenly realized what might have happened.

Miraculously, no one had even been grazed. One of the windows had been shat- tered and there were bullet holes in the upholstery, but no one was hurt. My mind reeled as it considered the improbability of such a situation. I look- ed back to make sure that everyone was still breathing. Barn wasn't, but he soon rectified the situation when he remembered that he needed to. As I was peering around the inside of the car, I looked out the back window.

A Mini. Somehow, it managed to look ominous - something which it is very difficult for a Mini to do. I tried to indentify the driver but his face was obscured by shadow.

As things calmed down I realized my voice had returned. "You nermals!" I yelled. "Can't any of you identify a double-mixed metaphor charade?" Dik looked rather angry. "Whaddya mean? We sit here for ten minutes doing charades, get them right, and you tell us we were wrong, right?" "No, you only analyzed the charades on one level, all good literature should be analyzed in different ways." "What are you talking about Pedro?" "What color are spiders?" I asked "Spiders are black Pedro" the rest chorused. "And when I had my hands open as if holding two large breasts, what else could I be holding?" "You could be holding four small breasts Pedro" they sang gleefully. "No! No you dumb anglos! Think! what fits into that shape?" They sat around staring at each other for a moment, then Catch said "Jelly Beans." Finally, I thought. "Huh?" amuttered Barn. "Black Jelly Beans" I explained.

"Yes," I said, "Master's is going to turn all the world's jelly beans black."

"You have got to be joking," I deadpanned. Boy, I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel for synonyms of "said."

"No. I mean it. Every single jellybean in the world will soon be black."

"What about the black ones?" asked Barn.

Barn gave him a look that made it clear that he was wondering if Barnard's brain had run out of his ears. "They stay black, of course."

"Oh."

"What does that have to do with old Mr. Zomboid here?" I asked, poking Dave in the shoulder. He didn't move. I remembered that I should have been driving and turned back to the road, occasionally glancing into the rear view mirror to see the ominous Mini still behind us.

"Not a lot," said Pedro. "But...well, the Spiderwoman does have something to d o with Dave."

"What?" asked Catch monosyllabically.

"She's the one that's possessed him."

"Why?" Barn asked bluntly.

"Because she's using him to lure us to Paris where he can meet her and be seduced by her and then we can all be killed."

"What a cheery prospect," said I.

"Since it's such an obvious trap, why are we still going to Paris?" Barnard sounded remarkably intelligent - and out of character.

"Because it would be kind of stupid just to give up and go home right now. It would be one anticlimactic story." I paused. "Besides, I want to see who this Spiderwoman is. I have some suspicions..."

"Is anyone going to do anything about that Mini?" asked Pedro.

"No," I said. "Just act like you don't notice him."

We sped on.

During all the commotion of Dik firing the gun, Dave's secret desires combined with his ninja skill and he climbed out of the shattered back window and crawled onto the car roof. During Pedro's interpretation of Dave's thoughts, Dave had caught a branch of a low tree and swung himself up and away from the PI's. In the Mini, Skillprof. noticed with a satisfying smile. Spiderwoman's plan was working. Dave waited until the cars were out of sight, then Jumped aboard a passing pickup and rode to the outskirts of Paris.

Catching public transportation, he arrived at the Eiffel Tower and went to a discrete cafe where he ordered a beer. (naturally) As he was glugging it to relieve his nerves, a Woman, medium hight, slim, pale with black hair approached him and draped her arm around his shoulder. all Dave's muscles went to attention. She slowly slid into the chair next to him. It was Spiderwoman. "It has been a long time, Dave" she breathed. "I have waited for this moment." Dave was left both speachless and breathless. His dreams could not compare to the reality of this lovely creature. His automatic ninja soul kicked him into action and he put his arms around her and kissed her as he had so often in his dreams.

Spider woman and Dave ordered lunch and talked of old times they had together when they both served Richard Masters. They talked of late dinners, early mornings, sensual showers and a certain elevator incident which Pedro had detected in Dave's mind. Afterlunch, spiderwoman took Dave's hand and walked with him through the narrow streets to her flat. By this time it was late in the afternoon and daylight was starting to fade. In the flat, the walls, carpet, and cushions were a deep