Chapter VIII

In the huge, windowless building with tiny, windowless rooms, there was a mystery wrapped in a conundrum inside an enigma. It was in a room even smaller than all the others. The room possessed one further distinction of importance from the usual tiny rooms in the huge building; it lacked doors as well as the window none of the other rooms had either. Completely sealed from the universe outside, the Dark Room, as it was called, had one occupant: the aforementioned enigma.

This occupant dreamed, and everything it dreamt actually happened. It thought of rain, and the heavens poured down upon the earth. It wondered over cats and cream cheese, slugs and strangers, and many other various and sundry wonderful things. One after another, they all came to pass, one damn thing after another.

The occupant of the Dark Room, known to those outside the walls of the doorless, windowless, tiny room as "the Sleeper," had a real name. He was called Clyde Pennet.

The particle continued its lonely journey, tumbling slowly through the void. Not that it mattered. Traveling across the vasty gulfs of night, it was eager to complete the directives programmed into it aeons ago. This eagerness grew as it finally approached its ultimate destination.

Clyde disliked being patronized. He disliked it even more considering it was his cat.

After many vanishings and reappearances, Tibby had yet again miraculously shown up, no longer sans fur. As Clyde examined the animal he could no longer of as a mere feline pet, he noticed things about Tibby he had never seen before. Like a faint number "9" imprinted in white on the cat’s forehead. Also, Tibby had fur again, but it was green and leafy. My God, Clyde realized, I have a Chia Cat for a pet...alien...whatever. As Clyde remembered he was an atheist, Tibby resumed patronizing him by telling him in a condescending tone a story. Condescending tone, or speech at all for that matter, is rather difficult for a cat, especially one with such an enormous ego. Struggling on regardless, he related the tale of the nine signs of the coming Armageddon.

And so it is written in the Book of Forever in the Chapter of Continuous Revelation that there shall be a great Apocalypse that shall threaten All Things in Existence.

And it is also written there that Nine shall be the Number of the Signs of this Apocalypse, the Number of the Signs being Nine.

And First there shall come Out of the Stars a Brown Package to Cleveland, this being the First Sign.

And Next the Minds of Iron shall speak without Words, unbidden and unwanted.

And Third shall come the Last Atlantean to avert Disaster in the form of a Horseless Carriage, a Great Being of Pontiac.

And Fourth shall there be the Sign of Thunder, as the Heavens smite the Abode of the Savior and Avatar, who shall be known by his Three Heads of Unnatural Stature.

And Then cometh the Cat Without Hair, who shall lead the Savior to the Three of Great Hair.

And the Sixth Sign of the coming of the Apocalypse shall be the Toy of the Greatest Member of the Triad. It shall be the Key to the Room Without Doors.

And the Seventh sign shall be a Vacuum Cleaner that speaks with the Voice of Another.

And Before the Last shall be the Nemesis, the Anti-Avatar. He shall come forth from his own Dreaming to Dream the Dream of Dreams.

And Last there shall be the Unseen for the Skies. Smallest of the Small, it shall bring the Greatest of the Great to the Lowest of the Low.

Thus cometh the Signs of the End.

Thus cometh the End of the Signs.

So Mote It Be.

By the time Clyde had gotten what minimal grip on reality the situation afforded, the slug-Thule-things had returned. The chocolate-smelling leader mover away from the group to confront Clyde. "The Grand Tribunal of Thule has reached a conjunction. Although the package we have in our possession is not in fact the Secret Weapon we had presumed it to be, it is in fact an even more Secret Weapon; it is a Continuity Gap. It should not exist in this universe, and yet it does. Since no one else seems aware of its existence, we can use it, first against the Roaches and then against the infidels of Pure Math. Then comes the final challenge: averting the eminent Apocalypse."

"This is way too much for me," Clyde interjected. "Then again, this was over my head from the start. What am I supposed to do in all this?"

"You have been chosen as the Avatar of Continuity, for you are possess the Three Heads of Unnatural Stature." Clyde blushed at this and glanced down at his naked body in embarrassment. The Sanctified Amorphous Being of Thule (S.A.B.O.T.) continued: "It is your sacred duty to wade into the fray bearing the Continuity Gap before you as the Sceptre and First Symbol of the Apocalypse. You shall do righteous battle with thine Enemies of Linear Space and Time. Come, the time to leave is now."

Clyde found the second package thrust upon him as he was hustled to the edge of the beach. The SABOTs gathered around him, nauseatingly fragrant. They began to speak and move around him in a ritual fashion. Clyde began to stifle in the smell and press of slugflesh.

"Continuity must be preserved," they chanted. "All hail the Great God of Continuous Being. Que será, será. C’est la vie. Tat tvam asi. So Mote It Be."

Before Clyde slipped into unconsciousness, he heard a final warning: "Beware the Anti-Clyde." When he awakened to question them about what they had meant by the last statement and ask how he was to get anywhere by standing on a beach, he found himself in another time and another place.

"How am I meant to save the universe if I don’t even know where I am in it," Clyde grumbled to himself.

"That is why I am here to guide, Savior," said Tibby, rubbing up against Clyde’s bare legs. "You don’t actually think you could hope to accomplish such tasks all by your pitiful self, do you? Hurry, we must find the Triad quickly."

"What Triad?" whined Clyde. His brain had begun to ache long ago just trying to keep up with a whirlwind of events and two matter transferences in one day didn’t help any. "And don’t call me ‘Savior,’" he added as an afterthought.

The Triad of Psychics: Dr. Zigmund Frye, Johnathan Safon and his sister Raindrop Safon," Tibby replied glibly without batting one kitty eye. "They are currently being pursued by the Roaches and the Pure Math fiends."

"So who’s side are we on, anyway?" Clyde asked plaintively.

"That would be telling," said the enigmatic animal.

"Would you at least tell me how we’re going to find these three, since I’ve no idea where we even are?"

Tibby sighed testily and instructed Clyde to open the Continuity Gap. "That is how we intend to track them," the cat said.

Glancing down into the brown package now black and phasing in and out of reality, Clyde gawked in amazement at what he saw before him: A sopping-wet piece of fabric and stuffing resembling the torn-off arm of a doll.

It was Bert’s arm, and it was glowing green.

"Of course!" cried Dr. DeGana, jumping into the air and slapping his forehead. "It’s obvious!"

Anderson grabbed him and shook him violently. "What? What is obvious? Stopping being so damn smug and spit it out!"

"The printer numbers aren’t backwash gibberish from the computers; they’re co-ordinates!" DeGana shouted triumphantly.

"Co-ordinates for what, Chet?" his somewhat baffled colleague questioned.

"How should I know?" DeGana complained. "I’m only paid to be brilliant, not omniscient."

Yolanda folded her arms and tersely bit off a single syllable: "Great."

Clyde Pennet dreamt on. After ceasing to exist for several hours that felt more like geological ages, he found it boring and his thoughts wandered again. He dreamt that the universe had been annihilated by a tiny particle (or maybe it was a number?) and that his stepbrother Clyde had been reincarnated as a dank, smelly sock in a garbage dump. Next, he dreamed he was a flamingo. Then he dreamed he was a flamingo dreaming he was a man dreaming he was a flamingo dreaming...

The stranger awoke. He realized he was in a strange land. His head swum as he remembered previous events. Beginning to drown in such recollection, he gently shook himself and reached down for his twin phalluses. He found masturbation cleared his mind wonderfully.

Mildly surprised not to find them there, he was even more astonished when a miniature Patrick Stewart began to declaim to him for the top of a die-cast 1984 Grand Am replica nearby.

In a tiny windowless room in a huge, windowless building, the man with the button was getting desperate again. They almost had killed him over the vacuum cleaner debacle. Cursing himself for listening to the mysterious caller who had said "Nine" after forgetting to dial the first time he’d tried, the button man shuddered at the very real possibility of getting Pi right in the face for his errors. Unable to hold out any longer, he desperately hit the button again. Another high-pitched whine rent the air in accompaniment to the man’s panicked cry: "Fuchsia Alert! Fuchsia Alert! The Sleeper has awakened!"