Ongoing thread: The story of a five-dollar bill

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
161

…Janet Reno. Janet says, “Ever since my failed bid to become Florida’s governor, I’ve been working on a secret project, and I need an item that I think is in your possession. It is of vital importance to the security of the U.S., and maybe even the world.”

This was, of course, not entirely true, for Ms. Reno was working alone, her devious plan to exploit the shifting timelines and to change the results of the Florida primaries. She radioed her accomplices at her secret base of operations, the burned out Branch Davidian complex in Waco, TX to give instructions.

…Meanwhile, Arthur Dent was not worried. He knew he could not possibly die yet, since he had never been to Stavromula Beta. He decided to pop off for a quick bite to eat down at Stavro’s…

Ms. Reno said to Sindee, “Now, about this bill, “26F”, as we in the government call it…”

162

…“Snookie wookie ookie.” (We’ve switched again. The words we just heard were uttered by Nikki JailBait playing with her pussy, a short haired tabby of indeterminate heritage.)

“You’re just the cutest kitty in the world, yes you are, yes you are.”

::::::: *Seeing the human’s perverted interests satisfied, The First decides on the next course of action, foiling Janet Reno’s plans for global domination. Unbeknownst to The First, Reno wants control simply so she can halt the unkind parodies of her on SNL, a formerly funny TV show present in half of the timelines.

Seven, however is well aware of this* ::::::::

…“the Ox,” finished miss Reno, now out of breath.

Sindee, in a brave move, kicks Janet between the legs, forgetting miss Reno is a woman.

"Oops!’ She says and uses the confusion to run out into the night.

Unknown to all ('cept Seven), Sindee is being followed by an unremarkable looking man sporting the latest in urban western wear.

Sindee runs to her car, a '76 Ford Prefect, and drives, with all due haste, to…

163

…hide the disposable camera she used to take secret photos of Ms. Reno–who, despite the stresses of her job, and her suffering from certain nervous disorders, has an obviously shapely figure. Sindee doesn’t want the former Attorney General to know about the pix lest she jump to an embarrassing, and wholly erroneous, conclusion about Sindee’s sexual orientation.
Anyway, Sindee, without taking the camera inside with her, goes to a local photography shop. Using 26F, among other bills, she buys…

164

…a used Topcon Super D. “If it’s good enough for the U S Navy, it’s good enough for me,” Sindee thought to herself.

She never did think how odd it was for a photographic supplies store to be open at 4:00 a.m.

The used equipment manager, Ollie Ollie Allcomefree, known affectionately to his friends and family as Gunga Din, was counting out the bills at the end of his shift. 26F was just another filthy bill to him, not having a very discerning eye. (That’s why he sold cameras instead of using them.)

But, something about the pathetic appearence of 26F did catch the attention of Muriel, the photo finisher, who also smoked way too much for her own good.

“Let me see that,” she rasped.

Gunga Din handed over 26F to Muriel. Studying it closer, she is moved to exclaim, in a very high pitched, high volume squeal, "…

165

… a weathered house on a non-descript street about three miles from a dingy off-ramp on the Highway to NoPlace. A precious few on this spectral plane realized that number 711 Southland Place was in reality the Nexus. Appearing from the street as a non-descript weathered house, # 711 had a special room in the sub-sub-sub basement. The door was tiled and had brilliant fluorescent lighting. The walls were bare but for a single stainless steel door, and on that door was a handle. The handle was the inside latch to a walk-in refrigerator, and through that doorway was instant access to the over 3,455,000 7-11 Stores in the world.

Sindee fled through the non-descript rooms, down the non-descript steps to the Nexus. She drew 26F from the left breast pocket of her bib overalls ( causing all who were viewing the proceedings on the GalactaCam to sharply draw their breaths in, due to Sindee’s astonishing decolletage and fine sense of fashion ). She stood gazing at the full serial number. Then, checking a tattered laminated card on her keychain, she stepped to the stainless steel door, keyed in a sequence to chose her destination, plucked an eyebrown hair out ( for, as we all know, DNA Keying is only months if not weeks away from reality ), inserted it into the HairKeySlot, and grasped the lever on the door.

Sindee took a deep breath, pulled the latch handle hard and stepped into the brightly lit hallway of a 7-11 in…

166

…Tulsa, Oklahoma.

:::::A used Topcon Super D suddenly materializes some forty two miles above the surface of the earth. “Oh no. Not again,” was all that went through the mind of the rather awkward to use 35mm camera. We have no idea what this means:::::

In the stainless steel 7-11, Sindee aproaches the Slurpee machine. Perched on top was a ferret named Steve, who had been given the power of human speach.

Steve looks at Sindee’s ample bosum and exclaims, “Hey Genie! I wish I was human, too!”

Kazam, played by a limping Shaquille O’Neil, enters through an obviously open door, waving the nozzle of a smoke making machine around.

Kazam, leaning close to Steve the ferret whispers…"

167

…Torrance, California. And, because she took a deep breath, her ample up-front assets broke the heavy wire clips on her bib overals, popping the straps off; the inertia popped her blouse open and for that brief moment, with the 7-11 employees and about a dozen surprised customers staring at her, Sindee stood topless at the entrance to the store.
A mature older man approached her and handed her a large beach towel to cover herself with. In gratitude Sindee handed him 26F. The man, rather bemused and shaking his head in wonder as he left the store, went on his way; after a day or so he spent 26F…

168

…on a hand job at another local 7-11. It just so happened that the First was in the store buying a hot dog and an Arizona Iced Tea as a late-night snack. The First paid for his purchases with a twenty and received the 26F as change. Smiling, the First stuffed the 26F into a pocket of skin under his left arm.

Meanwhile, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, number Four (aka Shaquille O’Neil) left the 7-11 with the other 26F, having talked Steve the Ferret into crawling into Sindee’s pants to steal it for him. Unfortunately for Steve, Sindee rather like having him in her pants and wouldn’t let him leave. That wasn’t Four’s problem, however. Stuffing his copy of 26F into his pocket, Four left to meet up with the First and the others.

(Meanwhile, in Japan, the authorities toss the counterfit 26F into an incinerator along with a bunch of other counterfit money.)

With three more of the duplicate 26F’s accounted for, we now turn to the donut store. The cockroach with the backpack and camera was crawling out the store’s front door, 26F clenched in its jaws. Suddenly someone stepped out of an alleyway and walked up to the roach. “Hey, insect!” the person said in an annoying nasal voice. As the stranger stepped under the streetlight, the roach was shocked to see that it was…

169

…Alex Trebeck, host of Jeopardy.

The geneticly enhanced roach people and the geneticly enhanced game show hosts had been warring with each other ever since Price Is Right went to a full hour.

“You again!” hissed the roach, and they circled each other warily, each aware of just how viscous and dangerous the other was.

::::Reality shimmers::::

In another place, previously unknown to any of the other characters, a race of super intelligent pan dimensional beings were waiting for…

:::::Reality shimmers again because that was from a book one of us had been thinking about a bit too much. Back to the 26F thingy::::

Sindee, back in her car, was considering going back to her place for some new clothes but wasn’t sure if Ms. Reno would still be there. At least it was daytime now.

Then Sindee remembered a friend of hers, a severely depressed cross dressing mime, Dagwood the Elder, lived nearby and was pretty near the same size in the chest, though quite a bit taller. “Al I need is a blouse,” thought Sindee. So to D the E’s house she drove, narrowly missing Shaquille O’Neal as he argued with a group of seriously delinquent 8th graders about the fairness of the game they played on him where he lost a good sum of money. Was that 26F still in his possesion or not? Was he in Oklahoma or California?

Fortunately for all, it was still safe in a secret compartment in his size 24 Nike’s.

Strangely enough, he seemed to be in St. Louis. At least, it smelled like St. Louis.

Unfortunately, a large, unweildy 35mm camera crashed into Shaq at quite a velocity. But, all this did to him was…

170

…distract him momentarily. It had been braked to terminal velocity by air friction, and therefore simply bounced off the Afro that Shaq–Four–found himself inexplicably wearing. The camera flew across the riverside park, hit the base of the Arch with a bong noise, and landed in the Mississippi with a splash.

Four shook his head and looked around. Nearby was a 7-11…

*In the Dimension of Death, Something hangs up the phone, and grins oozily. “It’s time to move,” It says to Its confederates. “Let us all gather at the Appointed Meeting Place. The Imprisoning Walls are almost down, and then we can move out on our holy mission to conquer and purify the universes.”

A flunky nods obsequeously. “Yes, Lord Squelt. It shall be as you command.” It finishes updating the minutes of the meeting in Microsoft Project.

Lord Squelt begins to toy with a small creature. This creature had been specially designed to feel pain. As Squelt’s claws touched it, its tissues start to swell, allergically–but its skin doesn’t. The little creature writhes in pain.

Lord Squelt chuckles, enjoying the fear, panic, and agony given off by the creature. Then he pops it into one of his digestive pockets. The sensations would continue for hours as Squelt’s digestive juices slowly and delicately eat away at the creature’s skin and breathing membranes. Then at the end there would be a satisfying crunch when the little creature finally collapsed and died.

It was going to be a yummy conquest.*

In one of the target timelines, the cockroach and the game-show host are at an impasse. The roach holds its banknote over a burning cigarette butt in the gutter, and says, “Come any closes and 26F gets it!”

Alex says nothing, but carefully manoeuvres a seltzer bottle behind his back. The bottle, marked Property of Goodson/Todman Productions, had been given to him by one Porfirio Mandelbright in Los Angeles. It contained an effervescent solution of RoachAway[sup]TM[/sup], the Cockroach Eliminator. He’d be able to take care of the cockroach and the cigarette butt, and make a start on laundering the banknote, all at the same time.

In The First’s meeting room, the departmental secretary battles on. Desperately-flashing alarms show absent guardians the precise level of weakness of the barriers surrounding the Dimension of Death. But the Team seems to be lost in the maze of contradictory timelines.

Meanwhile, Seven…

171

…stumbled around a corner; the original 26F slipped out of his skin pocket, and was carried by vague air currents up to a window near the apex of the Gateway Arch, where it was grabbed by a delighted tourist from Kalispell, Montana. He simply put it in his wallet.
After he got home, the tourist, Charlie Salbert, spent the well-traveled $5 bill for gas at a local Amoco station. The callow station attendant made change for himself; the next day he used the bill 26F at…

172

…a Guns & Roses concert at the local old folks home. He bought a new head band with “Live Free Or Die!” written in white letters on a pink background.

The head band vendor, an unremarkable looking man dressed like almost everyone else in Montana, i.e., a cowboy, grinned to himself, mockingly genuflected before a shrine to Axl Rose, and used his supernatural abilites to transfer to the scene with the roach and Alex Trebeck.

“Loki,” asks Trebeck, “What are you doing here?”

"I’d like to buy a vowell, Alex, " he mocked in answer. Then he sucker punched Trebeck, squished the roach, and pocketed this version of 26F.

Watching this, Seven wonders to herself if Loki might actually working for everyone’s good, since he now has at least five of the spurious 26F’s. She leaves Rudiger’s hospital room and makes haste to…

173

…the donut shop where the other members of the Team were gathered. A few seconds later Four showed up, sucking on a Super Big Gulp from the St. Louis 7-11. He pulled the 26F from Oklahoma out of his shoe and turned it over to the First. This reminded Seven about her stack of 26F’s from various time streams. Seven turned them over to the First, apologizing to him for losing the original 26F. “I didn’t know that you had a skin pocket like mine, Seven,” First mused, “and why did dougie_monty refer to you as ‘he’?” “Probably because it was dark and I was wearing my trench coat. But I’ve realized what we must do to save the timestreams and stop The Evil from entering our dimension. We must put all of the 26F’s into the Infinity Merger back at the base. That will merge all of the timestreams and stop our foe.”

“Excellent,” the First replied. “Seven, go up to Montana and find the original 26F. Take Six with you. Three, Four, and Five, go find Loki and get his 26F’s. And kick his ass for beating up our secretary. Two, go to the camera shop and get that last 26F. I’ll be back at the base, getting the Infinity Merger warmed up.”

Meanwhile, back at the camera shop, Gunga Din had finally gotten Muriel to stop shrieking “Facial hair! Facial Hair!” Murial had a pathological fear of men with facial hair. He wiped a little mud off the 26F, took a good look at ol’ Abe’s portrait, and was shocked to see…

174

Oops, I forgot that Loki has the original. Let’s just say that Six and Seven are going after Loki as well :o

175

… shocked to see an original script for Hamlet that had been typed out by an infinite number of monkeys.

Two walks into the shop, wearing his pink taffetta prom dress that he bought from Sindee’s friend, whatshisname.

(The portrait of Lincoln had no nose, the monkey script is gratuitous filler.)

“Pretty,” mocks Muriel who then explodes for no reason.

Meanwhile, Six and Seven are coordinating with 4, 3, and Five to abush Loki.

But, Loki is aware of this because a traitor is in their numbers. The traitor is…

176

…Eight, or, as he called himself, vosiem, being Russian. The others flushed him out like the traitorious lieutenant in Stalag 17, which all of these creatures had seen several times. And they got a written apology from dougie_monty for misidentifying the gender of one of them.
By a special laser process they gathered every last one of the 26F bills into the one locus, including the genuine bill, carelessly dropped by Gunga Din, who had a well-known reputation from klutziness.
The creatures carefully scrutinized all of the bills and properly identified the real McCoy, the only one to have the special thread inside the bill.
With the real 26F identified, the creatures gathered the fakes and disintegrated them. One took human form in order to return the genuine bill to Gunga Din, telling him it’s been more trouble to them than it was worth, although certainly not ruling out further efforts to acquire, process, or even spend it.
With the creatures One through Seven out of the way for the time being (Eight suffered the same fate as the fake bills), Gunga brought Rudyard Kipling a copy of Punch and a serving of quinine water, remarkable since Rud has been dead for about 70 years. But Gunga was not deterred because…

177

…somehow, he knew that anything was possible.

*The Infinity Merger was, after all, capable of merging a lot of different timelines. So what if the targeting was a little off? The departmental secretary had had enough trouble keeping the game of Doom III going with its chat buddies, er, I mean, keeping the Team records updated in Microsoft Project–these Team klutzes wanted ten-decimal-place accuracy as well?

There were bound to be a few niggling inconsistencies left in the merged timeline, like Rudyard Kipling being present in the 21st century even though he had died in 1936, or the fact that Britain still marked its roads with distances in miles even though it was pretty much a metric nation, or the way that cows stared at passersby as if they were plotting something, although everyone knew they had the intelligence of cement. *

Gunga and Rudyard sat in a cafe in London (how they got there was another of those niggling inconsistencies). Gunga had paid for the magazine at a 7-11 across the street, and banknote 26F rested in the back of the 7-11’s cash drawer, in the spot reserved for ex-colonial artifacts. Britain being as expensive as it was, Gunga had had to supplement 26F with another US banknote, which was grudgingly accepted. The shopkeeper provided proper British change at an unfavourable exchange rate; for 15 US dollars and a magazine, Gunga received only 4 euros (yes, euros) and 78 cents. Clearly the shopkeeper was up to something…

In the Dimension of Death, all is ready. Lord Squelt’s forces, battle machines and all, are poised at the interdimensional portal. The signal changes to green. They accelerate–and then there is a scene oddly reminiscent of a * Harry Potter movie: every vehicle piled up in disarray at an unyielding barrier.

The portal would not open.

Lord Squelt rages. “Whose fault is this! I will flense them!”

A frightened flunky squeaks, “No-one’s, Lord! The Team managed to merge the Timelines!!”

Lord Squelt savagely grabs the flunky and pops it into a digestive pocket. “Let’s see you memo your way out of * this * ‘situation’, flunky!” The flunky shrieks as Squelt’s digestive juices start their work. Squelt enjoys the sensation. Mollified somewhat, he turns to the others. “Get to work. I want a full report immediately. Weaknesses in the target universe, new resource budget for breaking through, everything. And I want it yesterday. And activate Sub-group B. I’ve had enough of that meddling Team.” He pauses. “This won’t be the last time they hear from us…”*

178

… and now it puts the bill in the basket…

179

…meanwhile, the British 7-11 clerk/prostitute (wondering if indeed there were 7-11’s in England or had she been conned for the last nine years?) Tracy Nadstume, decided it was about time she saw a movie. A good one, not one of those lousy multi million dollar kid’s movies. Maybe Glitter.

As she walks to the cinema, she passes an unremarkable looking man in a grey trenchcoat, grey bowler, and navy blue pinstripe suit in the latest style from Milan. He was wearing black cowboy boots, though.

She doesn’t have 26F. Tracy’s just so incredibly cute in those low rider Lee’s and black silk cropped blouse showing her perfect belly and pierced navel. She also had on a loose fitting grey trenchcoat of her own. She was wearing red cowboy boots.

Meanwhile, back at the Southland Corp owned convenience store in Islington (where 26F still resided), a large faced rotund upperclass twit clusily crashed through the plate glass window and uttered the most profound statement of all time…"

180

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