"Surplus to Destiny" part one: The Post-Valentine's Day Blues was made by Visionary, with his own unnecessary continuation. on 4/19/2003 at 10:22:25 AM.
Author's note: I wrote this after reading Finny's conclusion to the Valentine's day epic, but I hadn't gotten around to posting it because I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with it (finish it myself, ask someone to partner with me, or what). But then Dancer posted her own post-Valentine's day story that patched over the part I was filling in and, well... now I really don't know what I want to do with it. I mean, there's still room for the story to work out... it just doesn't seem all that urgent to finish, though.
Ah well. It's still sort of fun, though it has way too much exposition. (I didn't oversell it, did I? ;-)
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"Well, this sucks" Visionary observed sagely.
"It is kind of minimalist, isn't it?" Fleabot agreed, peering out into the vast emptiness that surrounded them. It was sort of a uniform beige... Much like the generic carpeting color popular with people who like to hide dirt and avoid vacuuming for extended periods of time. And considering that there was absolutely nothing existing in that large expanse of taupe besides the two of them, one had to assume the vacuuming here was irregular at best.
Visionary blinked repeatedly. "Can you go beige-blind?" he asked. He looked down at his green sweatshirt and yellow coat for reassurance that other colors still existed. "Hey! I'm not a ferret any more! And I've got my clothes back!"
"Yes, well... considering that you're all I have to look at, that does come as a great relief."
"What happened? My mind's kind of hazy..."
"Oh, that one's not even sporting" Fleabot grumbled. "In any event, I have no idea. Last I can recall, we were on that SHAG ship to rescue Finny. Then spiffy and Thud showed up out of nowhere, and people started zapping in and out. Next thing I know, we're in the big beige nowheresville."
"Exactly right" a familiar voice called out from above them. At least, Visionary figured it was above them... though he wasn't entirely sure which direction was up. Craning his neck, he finally spotted a black speck circling towards them. "We are precisely in the middle of nowhere" the small black raven known as Quoth informed them gravely as she landed at their feet. "Absolutely nothing is here, and unfortunately, that currently includes us."
"Um..." Visionary said by way of greeting. "What?"
"I'm afraid we no longer exist, sir" Quoth clarified. Whatever surface she and Visionary seemed to be standing on seemed to be noncontiguous, because she was slowly rotating clockwise to his perception.
"So... I'm dead this time? For real?" Visionary asked, not completely against the idea.
"Er... not exactly, sir. Being dead requires having once been alive. You weren't."
The Leader of the Regulars scowled. "We're not getting into that whole 'fake' thing again, are we?"
"No sir... That's something for a whole other story" Quoth assured him. "And you never were Leader of the Regulars, sir."
"Well, they never exactly followed... or even listened to anything he had to say..." Fleabot agreed.
"That's not it... He never was Leader of the Regulars. Or Leader of the Lair Legion."
Oddly, hearing this wasn't as much of a relief as Visionary once imagined it would be. "Wait..." he countered. "Um... what?" In truth, Quoth had never made all that much sense to Visionary, ever since she first showed up in his life claiming that it was actually the second time she showed up in his life. And that didn't even take into account her wild stories about him being Chronicler for a day or any of the other cosmic rigmarole she could launch into at a moments notice. He had a suspicion that just such a launch was imminent.
Quoth sighed. "Let me start at the beginning" she began. "Hmmmm, actually, let me start near the end, since that's where this really began. Yo and Dancer needed your help, and you and Lisa used the Happy Place Conduit to go rescue them, remember?"
He nodded. "And ultimately to save Finny from having sex" he added. No matter how many times he said it, that still sounded wrong to him.
"You see sir, from that point on, things got a little... strange."
Visionary was pretty sure things were a hell of a lot strange long before that point, but he had the good sense not to argue.
"As it turns out, the fabric of the Parodyverse was overly frayed, and the distressing of reality by the Happy Place Conduit finally snapped the threads... Your reality started to unravel."
"Hold on..." Fleabot interrupted. "Are you telling me that an attempt to get Finny laid nearly ended all existence?"
"In a roundabout way, yes." Quoth confirmed. "It's not the worst reason the universe ever disintegrated, actually. This one time, about 550,000 years ago, there was this... well, I suppose the nearest equivalent would be a chicken-plucker, out on Ratejczakth in the Unop galaxy..."
"Does the chicken-plucker have anything to do with me not existing?" Visionary asked, fighting off a migraine. The crow was now floating at right angles to his head.
"Oh, um... not really." Quoth noted apologetically. "Perhaps we should save that story for later. And it's raven, sir... If you don't mind." She brought a wing to her beak and let out a delicate little cough. "So, as I was saying, reality started to unravel... This is when people began to blink in and out of different locations. The Chronicler's Book of Time was having a devil of a job keeping up. Ultimately, it had to break the narrative to take an accounting of the major players involved at the heart of the disruption, so as not to misplace any of them."
Fleabot nodded. "So..."
"It misplaced you" Quoth confirmed, producing a Xerox from under her wing.
Visionary scanned it. It read:
So, to summarise, we have Dancer, Yo, spiffy, and thuddy on the love rocket, about to be attacked by the teleporting-in hordes of SHAG fanatics. We have Lisa in the Happy Place having to make her way through a horde of rampant rabbits to close down the Happy Place conduit that is our heroes’ only hope of getting home but that is royally buggering up the structure of the Parodyverse. We have Sorceress, Al B., Falcon and so on fighting a berserker kumquat and Dr Mango in central Parodiopolis. We have the rest of the LL, Chronic, and Manny in the Unhappy Place vs the Tellytubbies of Doom, and we also have Finny and Ziles in a different bit of the Unhappy Place, happier than they’ve been for some time. Why o why o why do we start these things off? Do we never learn? Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again for all eternity?
"The Book of Time has a bit of an attitude" Fleabot observed, reading over Visionary's shoulder. The two of them definitely weren't included. "And you're saying we never showed up in any later segments?"
"None at all" the raven answered. "At first, I admit I didn't notice... I mean, things *were* fairly hectic, and there were giant kumquats involved, and that always messes with the space-time continuum a smidgen... And then there was this rather lengthy bit with Wang the Conqueror, where the Chronicler had us working to find the center of the universe and all..."
"Wait..." Visionary interrupted again. "How lengthy was the Wang bit? How long have we been gone?"
"There really isn't any 'how long'... We're currently outside of time altogether, sir. Besides, you haven't been gone at all" the bird answered patiently. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. You were never there. Since you didn't die, or get destroyed or even retconned, your narrative was simply a loose thread in the fabric of the Parodyverse, and when reality was all sewn up again, well... the unattached thread was just... removed."
Visionary blinked indignantly.
"It wasn't anything personal, you know" she tried to comfort him. "It's just... well... you are cosmically insignificant, after all."
Apparently, avian concepts of what is personal differed considerably from Visionary's.
"This is that 'surplus to destiny' thing you mentioned way back when, isn't it?" Fleabot asked. "The bit where Vizh here would never do anything that would affect the outcome of the Parodyverse."
"Exactly" she agreed. "Everyone has a roll to play in the grand scheme of things, even if it's only to sneeze at a specific moment. Except for Visionary. So you can see why, on the great tapestry, his loose thread was simply removed like so much lint. I'm afraid everything wove together just fine without him."
Fleabot spared his friend a sympathetic glance, then let out an embarrassed cough. "And, um... What about me?"
Quoth cocked her head. (She was now floating completely inverted in relation to the two of them.) "As near as I can tell, you're just unlucky."
"What about Cheryl?" Visionary suddenly asked, concerned. "She's going to wonder where I've gone... be worried..."
"Actually, she never met you. You didn't exist."
"I... that..." Visionary stammered. "That can't be right..."
"What about Asil?" Fleabot asked, the implications dawning on him. "Does she even exist?"
Quoth blinked. "Hmmm? Oh, certainly. She has a part to play, still. As I understand it, she's simply a very big fan of that ferny little fellow... spiffy."
"Everyone has forgotten me? Forgotten Fleabot?" Visionary finally asked in a pathetic little voice.
"Oh, no sir... Not quite" the bird hastened to assure him. "Just everyone but the three of us."
"Yeah, that'll bandage the old ego." Fleabot shot the raven a dark look. "So how is it *you* remembered us enough to come looking for us?"
The black bird somehow managed to blush. "I, ah... well, I *am* a Raven of Destiny... and we're more attuned to the threads of reality, after all." She shuffled her feet in the beige nothingness. "And... well... I sort of got a promotion from serving as Visionary's head raven for the day he sat in as Chronicler..."
"So you remembered your missing promotion after it ceased to exist" Fleabot finished for her.
"Well, ah... yes... it *was* a proud day for me, after all..." she confirmed, with her head lowered. "It prompted me to start investigating, and I managed to catch the relevant passages before the Book of Time completely adjusted to your absence. Thankfully, we had just gotten the copy machine repaired... I just had to file the copies under 'fiction' to keep them from fading out as well..."
Visionary, in his own simple way, managed to push the implications of their situation aside for the moment in order to concentrate on getting back to Cheryl and the others. "So... how is it that you're here with us, wherever that is? And can you get us back?"
"Where we are is outside of the narrative of the Parodyverse. I was able to convince Ms. Jury... that is, the Shaper of Worlds, to start a side narrative featuring no characters, no settings and no connection to the rest of the universe as an experiment. Then, when everyone else was out having dinner with the new Center of the Universe, I... I..." She gulped. "I broke my ravenly vows, sir" she confessed miserably, her feathers bristling with agitation. "I just couldn't think of any other way... and the Book was right there... and I saw you do it once before..."
"Huh?" Visionary blinked in confusion at the forlorn bird. "What did you do?"
"I... I erased passages from the book" she answered with a croak. "Altering the Book is our most grievous crime. I'm now unfit for destiny." Her feathers seemed mottled with her shame.
Fleabot looked at her in astonishment. "You erased yourself, didn't you?"
She nodded her head while keeping her eyes downcast. "I couldn't write in the Book... that would be too blasphemous... but I figured... I mean, if I only affected myself... and it was the only way to get here..."
Visionary was so touched he didn't know what to say. And then it came to him. "Isn't it your ravenly obligation to faithfully and loyally serve those who hold the office of Chronicler?" he asked.
Quoth blinked and then nodded.
"Well, then as..." he paused and looked at Fleabot. "What number did she say I was again?"
Fleabot grinned. "I believe it was the 310th."
"Then as The 310th Chronicler Since Time Began, I commend you for your duty. I cannot imagine any raven being more faithful... or loyal. You're a credit to Destiny." He met her eyes as she looked up at him and added "And, on a more personal note... Thank-you"
The black bird's head rose a bit higher, and the sheen seemed to return to her feathers. But then a hesitant look returned to her face. "I'm not sure those commendations count... you don't actually hold the office of Chronicler any more, sir."
"Hey, you're the one who said we were outside of time" Fleabot reminded her. "How can when he held the office matter?"
"I don't think it works like..."
"So!" Visionary interrupted quickly. "How do we get out of here?"
Quoth still looked a bit skeptical, but the gleam was back in her eyes. "Luckily, we've been shunted to this side narrative instead of just fading out of existence altogether. That's kind of due to our threads in the tapestry having a sort of... static cling, I suppose." She looked about thoughtfully. "In fact, others that fell out of destiny might be drawn here eventually as well. That could be problematic."
"Why is that?"
"You were excluded from reality mostly by accident, and the fact that leaving you out was relatively harmless. Others were excluded more... purposefully."
"That sounds suitably ominous" Fleabot noted, glancing around to make sure they were still alone.
"Hopefully we'll be gone before any might show up" she assured them. "I managed to get us appointments with the Queue Master."
Visionary raised his eyebrow. "Rick Moranis from 'Ghostbusters'?"
"That was the Key Master" Fleabot reminded him.
"He's a minor cosmic office holder... strictly behind the scenes stuff." Quoth explained. "He lines up new talent for parts in the Parodyverse, when they become available. Mostly he deals with nebulous, newly formed consciousness types, but occasionally he deals in the reincarnation placement pool. We'll need to convince him we have the skills needed to fill a position."
"How'd you swing the scheduling? Especially if you no longer exist either?" Fleabot asked.
"Ah, well... One of the Storks of Reincarnation agreed to enter the appointment into his books in exchange for a... um... favor."
Visionary swore she was managing to blush again. "And that'll still exist?" he asked to move onto safer ground before Fleabot could comment.
"Oh, yes... The reason for the entry may have changed once I stopped existing..." she pointedly ignored Fleabot's grin, "...but not the entry itself. Three nobodies are due in his office at 8 am, Monday morning. Our unattached narrative strand will be the easiest way to fill that weave of the Parodyverse, and so we should get picked up... if Monday decides to happen here."
Considering how little control he had over things, Visionary wisely chose to ignore the use of the words "should" and "if". His ulcer would have thanked him. "But... Reincarnation? Won't we be cast as new people?"
"That's the tricky part, sir..." Quoth nodded. Considering how fragile the plan seemed up to that part, Visionary's ulcer began to kick in anyway. "We all need to remember who we really are... no matter what. If we lose track of that, then we'll simply become our new personalities and never make it back to our own continuity."
"Hold on a minute!" Fleabot exclaimed, racing ahead in the conversation. "Our own continuity? You're saying we make it back to the Parodyverse and then get our lives retconned back into existence..." He blinked. "But that would take the cooperation of someone like..."
"The Hooded Hood" the raven confirmed.
Visionary was really wishing some antacid had been wiped out of existence along with him. "Um... wait... isn't he sort of... dead?"
"Ah... yes, well..." Quoth looked at the ground as she shifted from foot to foot. "... that might be the other tricky part."