…takes the note, crumples it angrily, and throws it to the ground. “How could you think that mere money would replace my dear Cedric? I’ll never get to hear him play his bagpipe synthesizer again! Music was his life! And the incompetent staff of this store took it away!” Sobbing, she goes for the totally-unprepared clerk. the other mourners recoil.
“I’ll sue the store until its eyeballs bleed!” She starts to choke the unfortunate clerk (whose name really was Victoria, which explained why she wore a name badge reading Sam). Two other mourners restrain her, and the gasping Victoria, now pale with anger, says, “Take your hands off me! One more time and I’ll sue you till your eyeballs bleed!!” The two women glare at each other. The High Priestess has interrupted her service, and several mourners have cellphones drawn.
Meanwhile, the crumpled 26F is blown by the wind into the hedge surrounding the graveyard. A squirrel…
Meanwhile, in another part of reality, seven serious hooded… beings… sit around a table. Their leader, known only as The First, speaks.
:: We have a problem. ::
The others look up.
:: Reality has fractured. There are at least six contradictory timelines featuring 26F now, and the rate of splitting is increasing. ::
The First activates a holographic display. A complex branching diagram appears. As the Seven watch, lines lengthen, and occaisionally one splits.
:: If this keeps up, within 80 hours the strained Interdimensional Barriers will be weak enough to allow the Sluggoth Terror to break free from the Dimension of Death. The last time that happened, fifty billion sapients died.
We must do something to recombine the timelines… ::
… THE BLOOD!! The specially DNA coded blood on the note! That may do it. All we have to do is get Nikki Jailbait to hand her version of 26F to the correct clerk. The clerk, of course, is…
…the donkey explodes in a shower of sparks (and geneticly altered blood), some of the blood landing on 26F, setting off it’s transmitter again, this time sending a coded message to…
R. Lee Ermey, who is the de facto leader of the New World Masonic Order of Fraternal Security Guards. “My ass is in trouble!!” He shouts, referring to the donkey rather than his behind. He jumps into a Hummer and heads off to…
… Bottom Creek where all the explosions and actions have been taking place. The Hummer makes the most awful noise and R Lee Ermey cannot help but muse at the irony of the entire situation. He glances at the coded message he has received and grins sheepishly at the 26F. As he picks up the blood splattered note…
Standing before him are Seven, Nikki JailBait, Rudiger, Kevin Bacon, and a very confused squirell.
Looking down to his hands, he sees two 26F’s. Which one is real? Which one will cause all we know to disappear if chosen?
Seven says, “R. Lee Ermey! All creation is in your hands. Before you pocket one bill and leave, you must give the other to me. The message you received was from me. Hopefully, you now know what it means.”
Amazed, R, Lee thinks about what is happening. It causes him to giggle almost uncontrollably, for the message was…::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
…“Look behind you.”
He does. Standing there is Sally Mears, with three boobsie friends, the blond Olivia Short and Betty Idelson, and brunette, Russian-born Vera Tedson. Standing with them are Owen Sharp and his girlfriend Katrina.
Sally speaks for the group, in her sultry contralto. “Lee–if you look at the coded messages on that old fiver you’ll see the secret of the universe! Her tone of voice carries the unspoken message, If you do you will be permitted to have your way with my and my three bimbo friends.”
Lee is an old hand at this. He’s been around the block a few times and is not easily fooled. He takes a large magnifier and carefully scrutinizes the bill 26F on both sides; then he announces…
With this, a cat dies and half of reality fades away with it. Unfortunately for R Lee, Sally Mears and her friends were part of the disappearing half.
Dejected, R Lee goes to the Bellagio and wagers the One True 26F on the Don’t Pass line. Sadly, the shooter comes out with a seven and 26F goes into the drop box…
…Jesus announced that He was holding several fundie preachers hostage. The Son of God was demanding a large ransom be paid, all in small bills.
A local rastafarian, Gimji, was collecting from area businesses to insure that there would not not be enough small bills for Jesus and He would just go ahead and kill the fundies.
“Hey, mon, this here bill is filthy!” Gimji exclaimed (refering to 26F), but he put it in the attache anyways.
Later, as he was collecting from the prostitute / clerk at 7-11, Gimji realizes he has an attache case full of money!
…buys a ten year supply of “Extra Spicy” brand beef jerky and a case of Bud Lite, thus allowing the small bills to be used to ransom Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggart. Jesus, counting up the take, sees 26F and recognizes it as the 'ONE TRUE" 26F and holding it to his heart, tells everyone…
…the little old man, actually an off duty and slightly intoxicated CIA accountant from Duluth. Who, as he stuffs “The One True” 26F into his wallet, wanders into another casino leaving Jesus muttering to himself, “What a minute. Should that have been, Praise Us instead of Me?”
…The little old man from Duluth, nicknamed “Thorax,” wandered about the Gold Lined Streets of Heaven, looking for a bar. Being the Baptist part of Heaven, there were bars everywhere. Disguised as dance halls, none the less.
Any ways… the Virgin Mary was calling out Bingo numbers in the Catholic part of Heaven, wondering wht it was so sparsely populated, when Jesus walked in.
“Hey, Mom,” asks J.C., “Want to make some real dough?”
“Sure, Kiddo. What you got in mind?”
“Well,” explains Our Savior, “There’s this guy, Thorax, looking for some action. Being a CIA employee, he is of surprisingly low intelligence and doesn’t yet realise he is still in the Nether Worlds, much less Heaven. So let’s [whisper, whisper, whisper]”
A few hours later, 20 years by earthly clocks, Thorax wanders into what looks like a 7-11 run by prostitutes/clerks. 26F rests in his wallet. He glances at his watch…
…which is the same kind Dr. Watson handed to Sherlock Holmes to examine. In so doing, Thorax clumsily drops some objects from that pocket, including 26F. It floats ever so slowly back to earth, and is blown furiously along the jet stream, which drops it in Japan, on the Ginza, right in front of a local precinct station of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. A beat cop picks 26F up and…
…heads for the donut shop, an instinctive cop reaction to the texture of a $5 bill. This proves frustrating due to a) the scarcity of Dunkin’ Donuts franchises in this district of Tokyo and b) the lack of guaranteed legal tenderage of this gaigin bill which by now looks a lot like a very used restaurant napkin. (We shall not discuss what it smells like). Finally, though, he finds one (combined with a Taco Bell and a Baskin Robbins and a Pizza Hut) and in exchange for a bavarian creme and a large coffee hands all that remains mortal of 26F to the teenaged cashier, who…
… is the first to recognize that it is a rather un-clever counterfeit, having just been photocopied onto a piece of light green paper, and cut out to match the size of a fiver. The fact that only ONE side was copied was also a clue…
Meanwhile, the real 26F was still in the purse belonging to the trailer park mother of Tiffany – the pig-tailed girl who bought the Teen Slut Brittany doll – who was not among the merging realities that converged upon the single One True 26F[sup]TM[/sup], now revealed as a counterfeit.
Tiffany’s mom, Ethel – known by her friends affectionately as “Bubba” – was driving to the store (with 26F among the bills in her purse) to buy some new blocks for the trailer, when suddenly…