Let's Do the Time Warp Again

In the days following Tropical Turmoil, Rob Williams was in the wind, escaping structure and routine. Rumor mills and travel schedules be damned. He was dying and needed to feel alive. After multiple plane flights, Rob settled in at one of the only places he’d ever felt free: the Applebees next to Hollywood Casino in Morgantown, West Virginia.

The failed suicide woke up that old feeling. He knew it well. The longing. Like the painful, gnawing absence of a lover. He yearned to feel that backdrip in his sinuses and the fuzzy stomach from that first shot. It was just a matter of watching the clock until he was in the cups again. Finally the pining got to be too much and he succumbed, like calling that old flame one last time.

So there he sat, higher than the grocery bill.

But hey, this Applebees had it all: rail vodka, Sinaloa sinus sauce, a pair of regulars likely to take him home. He was in his element, as God intended. Fuck you, brain tumor. He was alive in that Applebees, he was real.

His head was quiet except one thought: This is who the fuck I really am.

Just beyond his hazy line of vision, the vessel raised an eyebrow.

"The fuck are we doing in West Goddamned Virginia?" Anna thought aloud.

It was a stupid question to ask one's self. In taking a break from their actual life and the things that actually matter came the haphazard decision to check up on their favorite cult leader...which meant coming to the one place they had begun to hate the most: the PRIMEverse. But West Virginia? Its people were fucked up by the horrid fate of being born and raised in the state, a classic case of a populace being doomed to failure the first minute sperm hit egg. Anna in her totality would’ve felt more sympathy for the lot if it wasn’t for the fact that five no-toothed, older than the hills yokels had already made two bit passes at her in between appetizers.

The crowd laughed and hooted over the tale. She couldn't help smiling a little. Yeah, man was totally fucked up. But given the circumstances? Couldn't blame him.

You know how they talk about people who you can feel enter the room? That was Anna. He knew she was there instantly, but Rob was nothing if not a performer. He had to finish the story.

“He’s standing there bleeding out and holding his fucking eyeball in this spoon screaming about what does he do? So I said to him, bend on over and kiss your ass goodbye.”

And scene. Cue the back pats and one more key bump for the road. After a pained goodbye, Rob found his way to the end of the bar where The Muse patiently waited. Two fingers to the bartender and two heavy pours of General Beauregard sat in front of them.

“Well if it ain’t my favorite time traveler.” Rob raised the glass to Anna. “It looks like the wrestling gods have once again bequeathed us a tag match. I’ll drink to that.”

And he did.

“Funny. We thought you were already doing that. Could've invited us, shithead.” She followed through with her own shout, leaving no drop untouched from her lips as she did. Another tag match, yippie kai yay or however the fuck it went. “You know what? We're okay with it. The tag thing. It's fine. Maybe if the division lasts for longer a cup of coffee, it might actually save the damned place.”

Yet even as she said it, there was tremendous doubt. The tag division stagnated because one team kept so much of a stranglehold on the belts that everybody else said, in essence, fine, keep them. It didn't die with a bang, it killed itself with a whimper under the weight of two cowards that couldn't bother sticking around. Yet another thing about this idiotic promotion that left a taste in her mouth.

A taste she washed down with more booze.

“Let’s blow this shit up in their faces and win the whole thing. Really throw a monkey in their fucking machine. Y’know, I had a little field trip planned. Shit seems to work well with the rest of PRIME. What do you say, Time Mommy? You feel like opening our third eyes?”

How fitting for a great adventure between Rob Williams and Anna Daniels, both hellbent on destroying PRIME for different reasons, to begin in one of the many nondescript chain restaurants that came to symbolize the end of America’s golden era?

Throughout time, ayahuasca has been used for its medicinal properties. A large enough dose can lead to ego death. Destruction of the id, the idea of self. Many have walked away with a brand new lease on life.

They were standing at a crossroads, feeling continually spurned by the gods of fate in their attempts at glory, they were primed for drastic action. So there they sat, criss-cross applesauce in the wild and wonderful woos of West Virginia, and toasted two mugs teeming with ayahuasca. The irony of this trip after losing to Sage was not lost on Rob.

“You need to have a goal in mind. I'm fucking dying and I want bring PRIME along with me.” Rob stated aloud.

The Muse laughed in the dark. Somewhere, there was a shake of the head. He did have a point though. It would be nice to have some sort of goal. The ghosts of everything she had been through since coming to PRIME weighed on her. The endless contradictory advice, the lack of answers to honest and blunt questions, the anger of never being good enough for this stupid, fucked up place no matter what she did…

“We just want to be free of the bullshit. We're tired of trying to be on the inside only to be pushed out by stupidity. If these cunts really want to hate us for being–”

And even though he could not see it, she did the air quotes anyway.

“--’✨eSoTeRiC✨’ and paint us as the bad guy, then fuck them. We want to get rid of our give-a-fuck for this place that gives zero fucks about us.”

“See you on the other side." Rob replied.

It didn’t take long for the purge to begin.

Gallons of vomit carried from their bodies their worries, hopes, and ideas. All of the dark shit flowed from them.

The darkness didn't just flow from them. It consumed them, caressed them. If they were going to be damned, then damned they would be in their own ways and on their own terms. Anna didn’t flinch from this. While getting high by the chemical means was a rarity for her, the cracks in her mind were not a new experience. She saw the fear of the dark for exactly what it is: a desperate clinging of the old, rotting status quo. It is a love for the familiar that will kill you. A stagnation that insists that you're better off failing than venturing off into the night. Stagnation deserves death and colliding with the ground, the duo melt into the earth recklessly and with nothing left to lose.

It’s always darkest before dawn.

Through the decaying tunnels of his mind, Rob saw Fred Dick and STRONK. They were… ugly. Malformed. Their outlines nothing but maddening stray lines, colored in with a horrid end of the color wheel. All fuschia and baby shit green.

“I see them, Anna. I see Fred Dick and STRONK and I know what we have to do to beat them. The end is the fucking beginning, man. They’re foul to the core. If we want to fix them we have to go back in time.”

“You might just get your wish.”

Haphazardly, she pointed to the skies and the ever-widening crack in them. That… was not supposed to be there. Then again, are any of us really supposed to be here or is this all just a bunch of insanity slung at us by the creatures that created us? Either way, watching the heavens split open to reveal the truth beyond it all was a sight that felt familiar. It was how the Multitudes became Multitudes to begin with. The opening of the tunnel

(because make no mistake, it's always a fucking tunnel)

grew bigger by the second. This would normally be the point where, if she were halfway sober, she would drag Rob's sorry carcass to the safety of her timeship. But in this moment, who cared? The vessel's eyes glanced over at her partner.

“Guess we're rawdogging this ride.”

And before he could say anything, the sky began to inhale. Their bodies float, not unlike days-old corpses in a river. Third eyes were forced open as they got closer to the void. It stared back and the crack shut behind them.

A rapid ascent-descent, with the endless flickering of moments and universes speeding by like a highway of eternal NASCAR racers blazing through one another. Rob's eyes were wide, flickering between one thing and another, never being able to comprehend either. He didn’t get a chance before being grabbed and thrown into a nearby moment, Time Mommy close behind.

A single-wide trailer. Alone, surrounded by well-maintained crabgrass with a smattering of dandelions. The air is thick with the rancid smell of chicken coops. Once Rob finished hurling, they made their way inside.

The inside of the mobile home looks as if it was decorated by Hellen Keller. It seemed as vacant of life as it was of anything resembling love.

“There is no love here, this is no palace,” Rob remarks aloud as he takes in the funk of degeneracy.

Even though she understood what he meant, she couldn't help it. “No, shit. It's a trailer.”

A baby cried, shattering the silence like a bullet through a pane. The noise was all-encompassing, rough and suffocating like quicksand. Their cores revolted in discomfort.

Through the wood panel hallway, in a hand-me-down crib, laid the ugliest fucking baby you’ve ever seen. An unholy disgrace to all the beauty in God’s earth. This failed abortion was the source of their excruciating pain.

“What the fuck is that?” Rob pointed.

The shade of red upon its crown was something left behind in the Devil's toilet. The creature already had meth mouth. Anna looked at the mutant like he's a science experiment. It looked back at her with a blank stare and drooled.

“Hey, you said it, right?” She peeked over her shoulder. “The end is the beginning. This is a beginning. You said you can see the colors, right?”

Without warning, she picked it up. It wiggled in confusion, clearly not used to being handled in a way that didn't involve being dropped and punted soon afterward. The temptation to do just that was great.

“You tell us who this is.”

The airport bathroom baby was Baby Dick. Primed for prominence in the white nationalist movement and moderator status on a red pill reddit by the looks of the trailer.

Rob grabbed a pillow from the crib.

“Give ‘im here,” Rob instructed, raising the pillow over Baby Dick.

Under normal circumstances, this would be the best course of action. After all, Fred Dick was the absolute dog shit worst. Everything he touched turned to utter ash and even Reality itself was rooting for the extermination of all the Fred Dicks. They can hear the chanting of do it, do it, do it from somewhere in the ether.

Instead, Anna Daniels pivoted Baby Dick away from an admittedly worthwhile fate and palmed Rob Williams right square in the fucking nose. The hit stunned him enough to drop the pillow and clutch his face, mumbling obscenities. Baby Dick laughed his shitty little ass off whilst Reality screamed in rage. There was a counterpoint to all of this.

“That would be the easy way of doing things. When the hell have we ever done anything the easy way?”

It was an honest question from the only real voice of reason. The vessel looked at Baby Dick, who stared aimlessly. She laid him down and began to change his radioactive diaper, hastily replacing it with the last good overnight pad from the horrendous bathroom and a fragment from the stained bed sheet. Rob, of course, remarked about Baby Dick’s amazingly small weiner. Baby Dick stared in wonder, as if the concept of cleanliness was a new invention. It was only at this point that she held him out in full view of Rob.

“The Fred Dick we know never had a decent role model in his entire life. He had to make up his own pile of delusions just to survive this pathetic hellhole. But this little idiot–” Baby Dick babbles. He clearly knows that word applies to him. “--we might be able to help him.”

Time is a flat… well, you know, and Anna Daniels is its master.

Mercy. They give Baby Dick a second lease on life, free of all the lies, disappointment, and sweaty two-fisting cheeseburgers. In that parallel timeline, they stayed and showed Baby Dick compassion. Love. He grew into an actual human being instead of a maggot. The trio walked that new Fred Dick through all of his firsts right up to the day of his graduation from high school. In the sweltering summer heat they stood witness as Fred Dick actually got a diploma.

He was eloquent, emotionally intelligent, and had confidence. Still, something bothered Rob about even this version of Fred Dick. It was the dull ache of a rotten tooth and watching Fred chug Mountain Dew in his gown only amplified it.

“You can take the boy out of the trailer park...”

A sigh from the other half of the duo. “Yes, unfortunately. It's such a shame we can’t completely break that Mountain Dew addiction. But we actually got him to be a well-adjusted dude.”

Indeed, Fred still sipped on the glowing green drink as he planned another D&D masterpiece as dungeon master. Looking up at them, he smiled with all of his teeth gleaming in the sun and waved.

In the blink of an all seeing eye, they were gone. Sucked into another crack, another tunnel, and thrown haphazardly into another moment in time.

That place was the polar opposite of the trailer park. Everything smelled like bleach and sterilization. The brutalist architecture only served the purpose of boosting the NO FUN ALLOWED vibes. A world of concrete enwrapped in sand and surrounded by authority. The stars and stripes were emblazoned every five feet or so for personnel to salute. Anna immediately felt a certain amount of disgust.

“Fucking military base.”

In a nearby room, a loud man boasted on a ruby red phone. “MR. PRESIDENT, THE SUPER SOLDIER PROJECT IS GOING SWIMMINGLY! THE RESULTS SHOULD BE READY QUICKLY.”

She looked over to Rob. “Yeaaaahhhh. We need to fuck with STRONK's destiny and get the hell out of here. This feels too much like–”

Anna almost said home before reminding herself that Gallifrey hasn't been home in a long time. A group of scientists walked over to a very specific room with a not at all obvious KEEP OUT sign.

“Ah ha. We need to get in there.” Anna remarked.

Almost as if it were a dream, Rob spotted a fire alarm and adjoining janitor’s closet. Through his intensely high and extremely delusional state, Rob made a succession of hand motions at Anna. Two little fingers walking, a pulling motion, a circle for the alarm.

“No clue,” Anna responded blankly.

With a sigh, Rob moved to pull the alarm himself. Instantly the space was full with loud sirens and flashing alarms. This was the red. Fuschia, for those so inclined. Rob ushered Anna into the closet and they waited until the pitter patter of goose stepping military men fled the area.

“Coast is clear. C’mon,” Rob waves, peering out the door.. The duo tiptoed over to the room labeled “KEEP OUT”.

Inside was a bunch of science shit. Bubbling tubes, beakers, and bunsen burners. The caustic smell of chemicals in reaction.

“It’s a meth lab!” Rob called out as Anna facepalmed.

It definitely was NOT a meth lab. In fact, it couldn’t have been further. This was home to the US Military's Super Soldier program. Yes, the same one that created America’s Ass. However, after budget cuts and repeated failures, things took a very dark turn. There was only one specimen in production. A test tube holder held that specimen on a table in the middle of the room. The label was very clear:

“STRONK!” Anna points to the test tube.

“Wow, he was a test tube baby.”

Surrounding STRONK are many small beakers, all labeled with different traits, some physical, some emotional. The formula for STRONK is written on a Post-it sitting on the table: Loyalty Muscle Violence More Muscle

Fuck, that’s all? Inflation hits us all. Human traits are expensive. This all, at least, explained why the poor sack of shit could barely speak. There was better DNA on the socks in prison than in that tube.

“What a cunt.” Rob remarked while looking at the spread. “Let’s see what we got here, Anna.”

The two spent the next few thirty seconds picking traits and dumping them in by eyeball measurement,  knowing the distraction would only last so long.

Affectionate Sensitivity Intelligence More Sensitivity Erectile Dysfunction (picked by Rob, of course) Femininity

While this was hardly the finished product they’d hoped for, it would do.  In the distance, they heard the boots of returning soldiers. Anna quickly opened another crack opened and transported them to a coffee shop in some distant moment. The kind that sells homemade granola. A spotlight focused on a single bar stool at the front of the room.

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Rob breathed out through the patchouli.

The Muse sipped from a giant cup of tea. “Woof, bitch.” She pointed at a somewhat familiar figure. “Look at the other fruit of our labor.”

A tall, lean man seemed to manifest from the ether and into the spotlight. He sat at the barstool and adjusted his manbun. This man looked similar to STRONK, if you were to take away the muscles and mouth breathing and general resemblance to Shrek. A high pitched “Good evening” escaped his lips. Clearing his throat in a very feminine fashion, the man began reciting his poetry, filled with flamboyance. People began snapping.

It was fucking slam poetry.

That dull ache showered over Rob.

“We fucked up, Anna.”

“Really? His poetry actually isn't horrible.”

“The scorpion and the frog.”

She knew he was right. The poetry wasn't bad and Baby Dick made a great dungeon master, but they were destined to be complete fucking losers. It was their cross to bear. Better they be that losing to Anna and Rob than this.

Besides, they didn't need all of this to beat the Whoresmen.

Anna shrugged, finished her tea, and pulled some more time voodoo shit to return them to West Virginia.

Back in the woods, a sea of chemicals warbled in Rob’s stomach. What was even real? Was the Father real? Little Sister? The cancer? Did it matter?

Reality is what you make it. Just ask Fred Dick.

He was “The Legend”. She was “The Muse”.

They were two nasty motherfuckers of reckoning. Maybe that was all they needed to know. Who gave a shit if people see them as esoteric? A loss to some fucking hippie or a preacher? Charge it to the game. It was time to resign from the debating society. They didn't need to know if the chicken or the egg came first to enjoy some Kentucky Fried.

The moon shone on Rob’s flask. He took a plug, holding it up to Anna as it burned through him.

“Go on, it’ll help the medicine go down.” He nodded.

“In a most delightful way.”, Anna snarked while snagging the flask from his hands.

The moonlight disappeared behind the clouds.

“They want bad guys? Well, they get them. Crucifying the Five Star Father was small fucking potatoes to what we’re going to do with this tag run. It’s time to burn the ships.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” Anna asked with a laugh.

Rob lit a cigarette, the burning red tip illuminating his face for dramatic effect as he spoke.

“Cortés. When he landed in the New World with six-hundred men and dwindling supplies, he knew he had to motivate those fuckers. So he ordered the ships they arrived in burnt. It was conquer or die. They were brutal because their lives fucking depended on it. This is our path, our destiny. We conquer this tag division or we fucking perish.”

Rob held out his hand to her.

“Let's fucking burn, Anna.” Rob smiled.

Anna took his hand.

“Fuck it.”

And behold, Fuck Your Tag Team.