The Fulcrum Unification.

Lord Fulcrum crawled back to his feet, dusted himself off, and reoriented himself by taking note of his surroundings.

Inexplicably, he found himself in a donut shop.

Behind the counter were two scraggly looking gentlemen.
He looked at their nametags. The younger trainee was Phil, the older more haggered looking gentleman was called John.

"Not from around here, are you, mister?", the one called John asked suspiciously.

"Er, where is HERE exactly?", inquired Fulcrum cautiously.

John pulled out a crucifix "here, grab onto this", he more than suggested.

"Sure", Fulcrum complied, not seeing the harm.
And indeed there wasn't.

Afterward, John looked at the cross, and then Fulcrum's hand, seemingly shocked. "Oh. I guess I was wrong. Nevermind. So, you want to order something?".

Fulcrum wasn't in the mood for anything fancy "you got any just plain?".

John frowned "just ran out, but if you want to wait, I can start up a batch".

"No thanks, I've..got to get to work", Fulcrum mumbled; and with that, Fulcrum left.


Part two- Girl in trouble (is a temporary thing)

Fulcrum drove along aimlessly in the car that he had boosted some hours ago.

He was now in the country outskirts, well away from the awfulness of the city.

His mind swarmed with questions.
Where was this?
What sort of dimensional gateway had pulled him here, and who/what had created it?
What did it have to do with the donut shop?
Why had traveling through it erased his super powers, and changed his face from Chris Sarandon, to a young Chevy Chase?

The peacefulness of the country, and the fresh air blowing through the window had cleared his head some, and given him back his logic, but the mysteries still refused to crack open.

Just then, he saw something odd in the distance.
He slowed down to a rolling stop, and pulled up real close to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him.

A girl was standing at attention on someone's lawn, calm as could be, and with a cardboard sign with "for sale", scrawled on it in black magic marker hanging around her neck by a length of clothesline. A small black suitcase hung from her left hand.

She was dressed in a maid outfit.
Not a "saucy", french maid outfit, a bit more conservative.
Her skin was as pale as a piece of computer hardware, and her hair was jet black, and came to a cheek length bob.
She reminded him of a young Kim Catrall.

His curiosity was piqued.

"So, why are you for sale?", he asked.

She paused in thought, her eyes darting about as if having an invisible conversation inside herself.

"Do you like children?", she finally asked.

Just to see what would happen, he said "hate the little bastards".

More eye darting, and then "Then I beat the children of the household".

Obviously a lie, a very weird lie, but it intrigued him even more.

"So, how much?", he said with a warm smirk.

"One hundred dollars".

"Who do I pay?".

She took the longest pause of all with that one.
She turned to look at the house, then back at the car, then back at the house, and so on, for about 10 cycles.
Finally, she thrust out her hand "I'll mail it to them".

Fulcrum smirked, and pulled out his wallet, and handed her a hundred.
The hundred dollar bill from HIS dimension.
It was neon orange, and had a hologram of a martyred robot general on it.

She stared at it for a long time, sniffed it, shrugged, and stuffed it in her suitcase.

"Let's go then", she said, and let herself into the passenger's seat.

"Neat, free girl", Fulcrum thought to himself with a grin, and took off.

20 minutes later, Bruce came down the walkway to get his newspaper.
"Say, I wonder where Celine has gotten to", he said while scratching his head.


Part Three- Only solutions.

Jake Prong surveyed the grisly scene before him.

Dismembered heads, limbs, and entrails of dead hookers hung from chains, and lay splayed about on the barn floor.

The governor's creepy little weasel nephew had done this.

Jake shook his head in annoyed disgust.

No matter how many towns he had moved to, things always seemed to lead to dead hookers.
And it was always the governor's creepy nephew at the bottom of it.
Same old shit every time.

Right on schedule, the aforementioned creepy nephew dove down at Jake from the rafters.
In almost bored anticipation of this, Jake braced a pitchfork he'd found just right to catch and impale the creepy cannibal nephew through the belly, and then carry the momentum of his jump/fall into a flip onto his back.

Some few minutes later, Jake had set loose the guy's caged starving dogs, who, smelling the blood, immediately set to eating the guy's entrails eliminating all evidence of Jake's foul play.

It seemed like it took a decade for him to die.

Jake's hands hardly ever shook anymore now, unlike when he first started seeing shit like this.

After watching a few extra minutes to be sure, Jake got into his car and left.
He had to get back to the office.
These mercenary jobs were an amusing diversion, and afforded him some toys, but they didn't pay utilities or put food on the table.

Even so, Jake mentally noted, offing creepy geeky cannibals beat dealing with Scotsmen and ninjas.

Once he'd blended into the afternoon traffic, and felt secure enough, he activated his hands-free carphone rig, and called Lenny about lunch saturday.

Talking to Lenny would make things make more sense.

Lenny had life all figured out.
That sly bugger.
If only Jake knew his secret.


Part Four- Saved By Zero.

Steve Torrent did his usual routine.
He got up, walked the long flight of marble stairs to the kitchen, fixed himself some cereal, scratched his ass, and then took the long hike to the living room to watch some tube.

Comedy Central was playing "spies like us", again, so he grouchily decided to get out of the house and do something.

"Maybe I'll tour one of my businesses", he mumbled aloud to no one in particular.

His butler gave him a snooty look.
"You''re fired, butler", Steve grumbled.

"Yipee!", exclaimed the butler as he skipped towards the door.


Jake Prong had now been at the office for 6 hours.

He had done his usual routine of sorting the mail, loading it on the cart, making the delivery run, stocking the stationary/supply closet, refilling the paper trays on the Xerox machines, and was now organizing files in the records department.

One time, he asked what all the paperwork was for.
All he got was an angry blank stare for his trouble.
Ever since then, his lunch had had saliva blobs all over it.
He ate strictly from the candy machine now.

He stared at the clock for awhile, then haphazardly and randomly shoved some more files into place.

Clock, files, clock, files, papercut, swear, clock, files,....

Suddenly, a supervisor slinked around the corner.

"The CEO has come to take a tour of the place, time to gather in the cafetorium for inspection, make yourself look presentable, Prong".

Jake smoothed out his bangs, and tucked in his shirt, and headed gloomily towards the cafeteria.
He refused to call it a cafetorium.

After standing around in the cafetorium for 15 minutes trying to pass time striking up conversations with the people standing next to him, and snootily being rebuffed with eye rolls and hisses, the bigshot CEO finally strutted in.
He wasn't what Jake expected at all.

Pot bellied, bald as Kojak, bad posture, stubble faced, and shuffling around in PAJAMAS AND A ROBE in the middle of the afternoon IN PUBLIC, and with a perpetual sneer on his lips as if he was always about to say "fuck you", to the world in general.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Steve Torrent", introduced his supervisor's supervisor.

"So, this is the staff that runs the place eh?", said Torrent bored and unimpressed in between taking big gurgling sips of coffee brandy from a large Tupperware thermos as if it were a Mountain Dew Big Slam.

"So, what do I pay you guys to actually DO here anyway?".

Five different bosses gave Torrent the same type of stare they had given Jake.

"You don't even know, do ya?", Steve said with an un-phased smirk.

Jake immediately decided that he liked this guy.

Jake raised his hand "I'd be interested to know as well".

Steve got a shit eating grin on his face, and reciprocally decided that he liked this guy.
Even more so when he saw management's eyeballs pulsate as they whipped their heads in his direction.

"What's you're name son?", Steve asked calmly.

Jake swallowed "Jake. Jake Prong, sir".

Steve held that grin "I like your moxie kid, you're going places".
Then he turned to face the others, especially management "the rest of you are fired as of this very instant. Pile out. Now. You're history. BLOW!".

Everyone started leaving in an orderly manner like good little drones.
Jake was frozen in place in shock.

Steve lazily pucked a coin at one of them as they made their way toward the cafetorium door "here's an indian chick dollar, go buy yourself a cookie and a piece of soul, you mummy faced husk. Keep the change".

Jake raised his hand on drilled in Pavlovian conditioning.
"Um, may I enquire as to what that was all about?".

Steve took a slug of coffee brandy.
"Mmmm.....nah".
Another slug.
"Well, I'm closing up, you coming? Don't want to get locked in to ya?".

Jake didn't know how to process this, so just took it a second at a time.
"I...suppose so".

As they walked around the corridors shutting off lights, Steve reassured Jake "don't worry about those slap-happy dumplings, they'll have some more papers to shuffle in someone else's building by monday".

Jake started to say the next immediate question "what about...".

Steve interrupted "oh, your job? You needn't worry, you're promoted! I created this whole company just to find someone like you. I need people like you for some very SPECIAL work".

Jake tensed, grimaced, and nervously gulped.

Steve laughed "Don't worry, it's not gay stuff! Calm down. Jeez".

Jake finally found his voice again "so, what...IS this special work?".

Steve took another big belt off his thermos "well, y'see..could you get those last switches? There, good. Y'see I've got this project. Y'ever see the movie Treasure Island?".

Jake furrowed his brow "Ages ago, I don't remember any specifics if it's trivia you're after..".

Steve stifled a belch "doesn't matter, as long as you got the gist. I'll explain on the drive over to the location. Oh, and you'll be driving by the way, I'm shit faced".

Jake grimaced again "...um,...yes sir".


Part Five- Set me free.

Jake Prong had now been doing his SPECIAL work for 3 days.

He had just done his usual routine of sorting the datawafers, loading them on the grav-cart, making the delivery run, stocking the storage media supply closet, refilling the ridulin crystal trays on the Zkorekz machines, and was now organizing circuit boards in the plug racks of the records mainframe chamber.

One time, he asked what all the circuit boards and data were for.
All he got was an angry blank stare for his trouble.
Ever since then, his lunch had had saliva blobs all over it.
He ate strictly from the flav-o-mat now.

He stared at the clock for awhile, then haphazardly and randomly shoved some more boards into place.

Clock, circuits, clock, circuits, chipcut, swear, clock, circuits,....


Part Six- Words we couldn't say.

Fulcrum sat staring at his placemat, blurring his vision, and floating through his own personal la-la land.
He and Celine had come to this randomly chosen truckstop greasy spoon because Fulcrum had needed to piss, and to fill his belly.
At least that was part of the reason.
He also needed to gather his thoughts.

He was discovering, that the longer he spent in this dimension, the more it seemed to be grabbing ahold of him in a fundamental, and disturbing way.

Vast chunks of his memory, all of it from the several millenia he had spent creating his alternate timeline were slipping away like a forgotten fever dream.

All the languages he had learned, gone.
What it felt like to screw Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Sharon Stone, gone.
String mechanics, gone.
Psychohistory, gone.
The geopolitical chess moves he had use to gradually reunite the middle east in under two centuries, gone.
How to strip and reassemble a hyperdrive with a ratchet set, gone.

All gone.
Dissolving like a fart in the wind.

And yet, memories that he had thought long gone, lost to those same millenia, were coming back to him as fresh as seconds ago.
His real name.
His 5th birthday.
His first pet.
His favorite brand of frozen pizza.
His first car.
His first hangover.
His first premature ejaculation.
The numbers of his favorite Chinese food entrees.
His high school locker combination.
On and on they all flooded back.

And so, he continued to stare into his placemat, letting all these bits and pieces hopefully tumble back together into something that could at least function as a person again.

Celine for her part just stared unblinkingly.

Finally, she spoke.
"Electron analysis reveals his establishment is swarming with fecal bacteria".

Fulcrum shook himself back into awareness "whuh?".

"Maybe your immunity is up to the task Mr. Fulcrum, but all the same, you'd be taking your health into risk by eating here".

"Keith".

"Sir?".

"Call me Keith. Fulcrum is a name I made up for myself a long time ago, when I was....sick".

"Very well....Keith".

Finally, she blinked.

Lord, that was creepy.

Just then, the sloppy Joes arrived.
"Fecal bacteria be damned", Keith thought "I'm starving".
He dug in greedily and messily, grunting with pleasure in between swallows.

Celine didn't have anything, but watched his eating with a strange level of interest.


Part Seven- Push it to the limit.

Clock, circuits, clock, circuits, chipcut, swear, clock, circuits,....

Finally, the clock told Jake Prong what he wanted to hear.
Five minutes until quitting time.

He went to the bathroom to kill that last 5 minutes reading the paper while taking a fake dump.

Meanwhile, deep under the city, the configuration of the circuit boards he had jammed into their plugs/racks/shelves transmitted their data to a device deep under the city.

A device emitting anti-reality waves.

Anti-reality waves that needed to be tuned precisely and constantly.
And properly.
Tuned with a constant data flow from the records mainframe chamber.
Wich in turn had to be properly configured by the proper arrangement of properly programmed circuit panels.
Wich meant that lazily randomly stuffing those panels into place as if they were paper files being stuffed in by a disgruntled employee at an insurance firm would be very bad.

Jake Prong however, wouldn't have cared even if someone had bothered to explain this to him.

Nor would he have batted an eye if told that his indolence had caused the anti-reality fields to focalize over donut shops, instead of over Steve Torrent's house like they were supposed to.
Nor would he have lost much sleep over the fact that the reality sinkholes were now opened to a disturbing hell dimension rather than the alternate pirate-Earth Steve Torrent wanted to visit for his birthday like they were supposed to.

And if someone had shrieked at the top of their lungs that the reality holes were expanding, letting increasingly bigger monsters through, he still would have ridden out his 5 minute fake crap break, punched out, and gone home to his apartment.

Unless someone offered him money to stop up the reality holes.
But they weren't going to.
Since no one presently knew about the problem.

Well, except for Johnny, but being a low man on society's totem pole, his grievances would go unheard until it was too late.


Keith Sprunk and Celine were back on the road again.

Once he had some protein in him, Keith's head had become a lot clearer.

After a digesting awhile at the diner, he had figured out who could figure out what was going on, and how to fix it.

Steve Torrent.

Steve Torrent would know what to do.
Steve Torrent tinkered with multi-layered time travel as a hobby, and had bamboozled him time and time again across multiple histories.
A man like that could do anything.
He'd find Steve torrent, and demand that he make everything right, or else he'd kill him.

It had taken Celine 15 seconds on a high speed public internet terminal at the nearest mall to calculate his whereabouts.

Now, they were on their way.

Torrent had to fix this.
He HAD to.

Just then, Keith's belly rumbled, and sent up a foul smelling acidy belch.

"Oooh, those sloppy Joes ain't gonna go peacefully", Keith mumbled.

Celine looked at him, her expression always unchanged "I told you".

On a spontaneous impulse, he reached over and poked the tip of her nose and made an accompanying "boop", noise.

She crossed her eyes, then stared at him in apparent confusion.

Keith merely kept grinning goofily, and let out a chuckle.

Another of her pregnant pauses, and then a monotone "What is so funny?".

Keith chuckled again "you're adorable".

During this exchange, Keith's Darth Vader-y Fulcrum uniform had melted and morphed into a flannel shirt, white undershirt, jeans, and work boots.

Not that he noticed, since the memory of having the suit vanished along with much of his experiences in project Shazam.
He wouldn't miss them.

Just then, he noticed something in the middle of the road, and slowed to a stop.

It was a robot.

A big robot.

A big purple robot.

A big purple robot with a missile launcher on it's shoulder.

A missile launcher that was coming to bear on their car.

"That ain't good", Keith ironically deadpanned.

"Not that I have ever seen, no", Celine seriously deadpanned.


Meanwhile, Steve Torrent stood astride the roof of the Green Mamba, piloting it by remote control, and wearing a pirate costume deliberately modeled after the Captain Morgan lable.

"It's finally gonna happen! I'm gonna be a goddamned pirate!", Steve exuded with boyish excitement.


Meanwhile, Jake Prong had just been seated at the center table of Chez Lebelle


Meanwhile, Keith Sprunk came out of his roll, and looked back at his exploded car.

Celine had landed and rolled off in the opposite direction, and was several yards from him, and apparently at just the right angle that he was out of her field of vision.

She looked at the car, and then at the purple robot with it's smoking empty missile launcher.

At the car, then the robot, at the car, and then the robot, for about 10 cycles.

Then, finally she let out a simple "no".

Then, her features contorted into a snarl, and again with a simple and yet more stern "NO!".

Then, she raised her voice for the first time Keith had ever heard, by letting out a wailing "NOOO!!!", that could only be described as a mix of human rage and despair.

And with that, she cleared the 10 yards between her and the robot in about 2.5 seconds and tackled it, sending it reeling, and flailing it's arms.

"...holy shit", remarked Keith as he sat transfixed on what was occurring.


Meanwhile, the Green Mamba flew ever skyward, not finding the reality vortex that was supposed to be there.
Steve was too busy proudly comparing himself to the empty Captain Morgan bottle in his left hand for alarm bells to sound in his head.


Meanwhile, Jake Prong scarfed his bread and water, and fiddled with his napkin.


Meanwhile, Keith watched in baffled amazement as Celine continued to feverishly and systematically tear exotic looking electronic doodads out of the robot's wrended chest cavity, and stomp each one in turn into little plastic crumbles.


Meanwhile, Steve's foot slipped on a droplet of Captain Morgan's and fell off the Green Mamba with a surprised yelp.


Meanwhile, Jake Prong asked the pointy faced waiter to give him a few more minutes for his friend to arrive before ordering.

Little did he know that a red ninja had just blown his straw paper at him, but missed.


Meanwhile, Keith finally found a lull in the demolition in which to safely stroll up and say something "I think he's dead, sweety". Celine froze, seemingly shocked, then looked at her hands. During the tussle, all the skin had been torn away, revealing the chrome-y alloy underneath. Keith had to have known by now what she really was. This realization caused her lip to shake, and her eyes to well up.

Just then, the purple robot sprung to life, just long enough to take a random swing that bashed off Celine's head, and send it flying like a major league homerun baseball.

Her neck rained sparks, and then her body slumped to the ground.

Keith sprinted forward, yanked out another random doodad from the robot's chest, and stomped it.

That seemed to have done the trick, because it too slumped dead to the ground.

Keith calmly headed off in the direction Celine's head had flown.


Meanwhile, the ground continued growing closer underneath Steve.
He just laughed.
Deeply and freely.


Meanwhile, the pointy faced waiter received a call on his cellphone from a gentleman with a thick Scottish accent.


Meanwhile, Keith picked up Celine's head, and cradled it gently.

She looked up at him with puppy dog eyes, and then paused as if in thought, her harddrive rattled a bit, and then she asked "do you stil find me...adorable?".

Keith grinned, 'booped', her on the nose again, and said "always, kitten".

For the first time ever, she smiled.


Meanwhile, just at that moment Steve saw.....

Meanwhile, just at that moment Keith saw overhead....