"No, You're Not Seeing Things" (part 1)
Oct. 9th, 2008 05:32 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
fluffyblackcat.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
thedailyshow_rpsA Fake News Fanfic by Fluffyblackcat
Rating: PG-13 for . . . well, probably everything.
Pairing: None at the moment
Premise: When reality starts wearing thin, simple choices can have strange and far-reaching consequences. Even with the help of the most classified (and underfunded) division of the DHS, it’s going to be impossible to keep all of them at bay.
Warning: Blood, theories on the nature of reality, OCs, etc. Basically, if you want cute, slashy fluff, run away now.
Disclaimer: 100% Fiction. Not intended to represent actual reality in any way. All copyrighted material referenced is property of its legal owner(s).
“The nightmares concur with the flashbacks.
The scene is set for confusion, the conflict oppresses.”
- Project 86, “Numb”
Prologue
Yesterday, between 7 and 8 pm EST:
"Anything happen while I was gone?" Garvin asked as he crossed the hotel room and sat down next to Myers, taking care not to disturb the four laptops set up on the bed.
"Nothing much," she replied. "No monsters leaping out of invisible portals to other worlds and eating people on the streets."
"So the metadimensional instability's still generalized," Garvin translated.
“That’s what I said. Only I said it in Normal Human, not Alien Technobabble.”
“Even if I’m not human, which I’m not sure I believe, I’d be a chameleonic metacreature, not an alien,” Garvin said patiently as he picked up one of the laptops and started clicking through a series of images that would look like weather radar to the average observer.
Myers rolled her eyes, then leaned in to look at the screen. "You can see the instability getting worse around the Broadway theaters late yesterday evening," she said, pointing, "but it never reached a critical level. I can see why reality is weak around here -- all the theaters, TV studios, writers, actors, people with big dreams -- but I would have thought this city would be full of portals by now with all that going on."
Garvin shrugged. "Reality is resilient. People have to be totally wrapped up in something really mind-bending to create a zone where anything more than ideas can cross over, even in conditions like this." He switched to the most current image. "Wait a second. I see a red spot."
Myers looked over his shoulder. "Doesn't seem familiar," she said.
"I've got the location mapped. As soon as the street view loads, we'll know what this is."
"This is the Colbert Report!" Stephen declared. The audience erupted in wild applause as the title sequence rolled, and he leaned back, closed his eyes and basked in it, using their unqualified admiration to tap into the unqualified arrogance of his on-air character. He sat up just before the titles came to an end and graciously acknowledged the audience for giving him his due praise, then dismissed them with an imperious wave of his hand. "Nation," he announced, "This has been another historic week in the presidential campaign . . . "
Chapter 1: Number 0367
It was raining lightly as Jon walked into the building where The Daily Show and The Colbert Report had their studios. Inside, people were already rushing around, discussing news items, trying out jokes, and getting their second or third cups of coffee. A few of them said hello in passing. They knew not to ask Jon for input this early in the day. Of course, they usually didn't need to. The writers were good, and they knew the kind of material he wanted.
Jon unlocked his office, hung up his jacket, closed his door, and stopped. He suddenly had a feeling that something dangerous was right behind him. He told himself it was probably nothing, but the sensation was too strong to be overruled by logic. After a few seconds of trying unsuccessfully to work up the courage to just turn around, he edged over to the wall and pressed his back against it. The feeling was stronger now, and it seemed to be related to something in the main part of his office.
Keeping his back to the wall, Jon scooted to the end of the entryway and craned his neck to see out into the room. It didn't look like there was anything wrong, but the tense, cold dread was still there. A sudden sensation of falling swept through him, disappearing as fast as it hit. When his head stopped spinning, he realized he was breathing hard and gripping the wall. Aside from that, everything now seemed normal and unthreatening.
He stood up slowly and scanned the office again, looking for anything out of place. Only one thing caught his attention: the trash can by the end of his desk had been knocked over. He took a step forward, intending to simply pick up the can, and stopped when he saw a pair of feet in mud-caked shoes sticking out from behind his desk.
"Hello?" he said.
There was no answer.
"I can see you back there," he added, raising his voice slightly.
Still no response.
Jon cautiously walked toward the desk and peered around it. The first thing he felt was relief that all the horrors that had piled into his head as he crossed the room had been purely imaginary. Immediately after that came the realization that there was in fact an unconscious man sprawled on the floor behind his desk, followed very quickly by the fact that this man was seriously hurt. His shirt was soaked with blood on the left side, and his right hand covered most of the area, as if he has been trying to stop the bleeding before he passed out.
Jon stepped around the desk and knelt to feel for a pulse on the man's wrist. This allowed him to see the man’s face for the first time, and for the third time in two minutes, he froze, unable to do anything but try to wrap his mind around the situation. It was one thing to find a stranger bleeding on your office floor. It was another thing to find a friend. But, Jon thought, even that was entirely different than finding yourself bleeding on your office floor.
Of course, it couldn’t actually be him; it was just someone who looked like him, or at least like Jon assumed he would look if he had survived a plane wreck and spent the next three weeks fighting off wolves as he hiked to the nearest road or something. The man’s clothes were dirty and torn, his hair a limp, shaggy mess, and he had a short, scruffy beard.
His concern more urgent now, Jon pressed his fingers against the inside of the man's wrist. The skin felt too warm, and the pulse too rapid, but at least the man was alive. Jon tried to remember if there was anything you were supposed to do in this sort of situation, aside from calling 911 and trying to stop the bleeding. He couldn’t think of anything.
As he reached for his phone, he heard a knock on the door. He went to answer it as he made the call, hoping he could persuade whoever it was to help him with this situation.
When he opened the door, he saw four people standing there, all dressed in serious black suits of the sort usually associated with government agents. Two of them were tall men, one blond and goateed, the other dark-haired and clean-shaven. They both looked strong enough to pick Jon up with one hand. The others were less intimidating -- a lovely young woman with a businesslike expression and a slender young man who seemed intensely interested in a gadget he was fiddling with. The blond man plucked the phone out of Jon’s hand just as the dispatcher answered.
"Sorry," he said into the phone, "I must have hit the emergency button by mistake." He ended the call and handed the phone back to Jon, who was staring at him, trying once again to figure out what the hell was going on. "Where is he?" the agent asked.
"Uh, in here. Other side of the desk," Jon said. "How -- how did you know about this?"
"Long story, no time," the blond man said.
They pushed past Jon into the room, and the woman headed straight for the figure behind the desk. The smaller man dropped his bag on the already-overloaded couch and started rummaging in it. The blond man strolled toward the desk, taking a good look around the room as he did so. “My name is Riley, and these are my fellow agents, Myers, Garvin, and Miller,” he said, gesturing in turn toward the woman, the smaller man, and the dark-haired man who was now guarding the door. “We’re a federal investigation team.”
“Why federal?” Jon asked, watching as Myers opened her medical kit and began tending to the injured man. “Wouldn’t this be an NYPD thing?”
Riley smiled and shook his head, as if Jon had said something funny. “This situation isn’t as simple as it looks.”
“Did you notice anything unusual when you first came in?” Garvin asked, glancing up from the screen of the device he had pulled from his bag. “Any odd sensations, unexplained sounds, anything like that?”
“I did feel like there was something dangerous in here,” Jon replied, “But I got dizzy for a second and the feeling was gone when it passed.”
Garvin nodded. “Not surprising.” He went back to whatever he was doing with his gadget.
“So what the hell’s going on here?” Jon demanded.
“What do you know so far?” Riley asked Garvin.
“It’s definitely a three hundred. Which one I’m not sure, but it looks a lot like seven-six,” Garvin said, not taking his eyes off his equipment.
“It feels like seven-six to me,” Riley replied. “Go ahead and contact Crazy and his people. We’ll need a full guard, as low-profile as possible.” He turned to Jon. “We don’t usually tell people this, but in your situation, you need to know what’s happening. First, there are thousands of versions of this world in existence. They branch off from each other like a tree when world-changing events occur. Number 0376 is a recent split, about six weeks old, and it’s extremely dangerous. With me so far?”
“Yeah,” Jon said, his voice tinged with skepticism.
“Second,” Riley began, taking a deep breath, “I know this sounds totally insane, but there are a lot of malevolent beings in other worlds that want to wipe out the human race. They’re what inspired our mythology about things like vampires and goblins and the water kelpie. They show up on Earth now and then and kill as many people as they can before someone drives them off. About six weeks back, they made an organized attack. We won the fight here, but it was a big enough event that another Earth reality split off -- one where they won. That’s what 376 is, and if they find out there’s a portal between the two, we could be in really deep shit.”
“Riley,” Myers interrupted, “I think you need to deal with this.” She was kneeling next to the injured man, whose shirt she had cut away. There were three gashes in his side, two of which had gone all the way down to the cartilage and bone of his ribcage. “I’m fairly sure there’s some internal injury. It looks like he was pretty banged up even before this,” Myers said as Riley took off his suit jacket and knelt next to her.
“You’ll have to excuse me a minute,” Riley said to Jon as he rolled up his sleeves.
“So, wait a second, if he’s from another reality, could he be another version of me?” Jon asked.
Riley paused, considering the idea, then nodded. “The two of you are basically the same person,” he said. “He’s likely to have a very different outlook on things, though, considering 376 had a major earthquake in New York nearly a month ago and from what we heard, the creatures have taken over what’s left of the city.” Riley laid his hands and forearms on the other Jon’s chest and crouched over him.
“What are you doing?” Jon asked.
Riley didn’t answer, and after a couple seconds of silence, Myers spoke up. “He hates to talk about it, but he can heal people.”
“You’re kidding,” Jon said. He blinked. He could have sworn he had just seen Riley flicker, as if he was on a reel of film that had slipped.
Riley exhaled heavily and slowly straightened up. Myers handed him an antiseptic wipe, and he started cleaning the blood off his left forearm.
Jon stared. The gashes in the other Jon’s side were gone -- not simply healed over, but totally gone, as if they had never happened. The only evidence they had existed at all was the blood that had soaked his clothes and pooled on the floor. “What -- how -- how did you do that?” he stammered.
“I’m not sure exactly how it works, but it’s related to some other abilities I have,” Riley answered. “And don’t bother asking about those, because we have more important things to talk about. Where were we?”
“You were telling me how my office is the evil twin of the wardrobe from Narnia or something,” Jon said.
“Actually, it’s not just your office,” Garvin said. “It’s a larger area of unstable reality that extends throughout the whole building, maybe a bit further. Portals won’t open very consistently because it’s too big for a stable one to form, but when they do happen, they could be anywhere in the zone of instability.”
“So my building is the evil twin of the wardrobe from Narnia,” Jon said.
Garvin shrugged. “If it helps you to think of it that way,” he said.
There was a knock at the door. Miller opened it a few inches. “Can I help you?” he asked.
“I need to talk to Jon,” said a voice from the doorway.
Miller turned to look at Riley. “It’s Colbert.”
Riley looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Let him in. He needs to be part of this.”
Miller stepped back and let Stephen in. Jon could see the confusion on his friend’s face as he noticed the other agents in the office. “Am I interrupting something?” Stephen asked.
“No,” Riley said. “I was sort of hoping you would show up. It may make this whole thing a bit easier.”
“What thing?” asked Stephen, taking a seat on the arm of the couch.
Riley nodded to Jon. “This is your show, Mr. Stewart.”
“Why me?” Jon asked.
“Trying to explain things helps you understand them better,” Riley said with a half smile.
“Okay,” Jon said, taking a deep breath as he tried to organize his thoughts. “These guys tell me there are tons of alternate versions of Earth, and new ones branch off ours when important events happen. There are also all kinds of monsters trying to destroy the human race. There was a big secret fight with those monsters about six weeks ago, and this is the reality where humans won. There’s some kind of weird thing going on right now where at any moment, a portal to the reality where the monsters won could open up somewhere in this building.”
Stephen nodded thoughtfully. “So do we have a team of wizards or superheroes to defend us, or are we in such a desperate situation that it will reveal our hidden superpowers?”
A snort of stifled laughter erupted in the entryway. They turned to see Miller, his hand covering his mouth and his shoulders shaking helplessly as he tried not to laugh out loud.
Riley shot him a perturbed look. “You can stop,” he said. “All of you,” he added, glaring at Garvin and Myers, who were both smiling as if they found the situation amusing. “We are not,” Riley continued, “the type of people who prance around in skin-tight uniforms and fancy robotic armor, no matter how fun you think it would be.”
“Why not?” Stephen said. “It would really amp up the comedy. I know it feels like a cheap laugh, but it can work really well if you do it right.”
That got a derisive chuckle from Riley, who shook his head in disbelief.
“Stephen,” Jon said, “This isn’t supposed to be funny.”
He motioned for Stephen to come look behind the desk. Myers had done an admirable job of cleaning up most of the blood, and she was now checking her patient’s blood pressure. Stephen seemed taken aback at the sight; he had obviously been unaware of the man behind the desk.
“Does he look familiar?” Jon asked.
Stephen turned to Jon. “He’s not your brother, is he?” he asked anxiously.
“No,” Jon said gravely. “That’s me. From that other reality.”
Stephen looked back and forth between the two of them a few times. “How do you know for sure?” he asked.
Jon ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I am sure.”
“He’s waking up,” Riley said without looking.
--------
A/N: If you'd like to see more, please comment!
It may take a while (seeing as I have tickets for both TDS & TCR next week, followed by at least 1 day of whitewater kayaking for the Bridge Day celebration), but I'm currently working on the second chapter. Beyond that, how complicated the story gets depends on how much people want to read.
Rating: PG-13 for . . . well, probably everything.
Pairing: None at the moment
Premise: When reality starts wearing thin, simple choices can have strange and far-reaching consequences. Even with the help of the most classified (and underfunded) division of the DHS, it’s going to be impossible to keep all of them at bay.
Warning: Blood, theories on the nature of reality, OCs, etc. Basically, if you want cute, slashy fluff, run away now.
Disclaimer: 100% Fiction. Not intended to represent actual reality in any way. All copyrighted material referenced is property of its legal owner(s).
“The nightmares concur with the flashbacks.
The scene is set for confusion, the conflict oppresses.”
- Project 86, “Numb”
Prologue
Yesterday, between 7 and 8 pm EST:
"Anything happen while I was gone?" Garvin asked as he crossed the hotel room and sat down next to Myers, taking care not to disturb the four laptops set up on the bed.
"Nothing much," she replied. "No monsters leaping out of invisible portals to other worlds and eating people on the streets."
"So the metadimensional instability's still generalized," Garvin translated.
“That’s what I said. Only I said it in Normal Human, not Alien Technobabble.”
“Even if I’m not human, which I’m not sure I believe, I’d be a chameleonic metacreature, not an alien,” Garvin said patiently as he picked up one of the laptops and started clicking through a series of images that would look like weather radar to the average observer.
Myers rolled her eyes, then leaned in to look at the screen. "You can see the instability getting worse around the Broadway theaters late yesterday evening," she said, pointing, "but it never reached a critical level. I can see why reality is weak around here -- all the theaters, TV studios, writers, actors, people with big dreams -- but I would have thought this city would be full of portals by now with all that going on."
Garvin shrugged. "Reality is resilient. People have to be totally wrapped up in something really mind-bending to create a zone where anything more than ideas can cross over, even in conditions like this." He switched to the most current image. "Wait a second. I see a red spot."
Myers looked over his shoulder. "Doesn't seem familiar," she said.
"I've got the location mapped. As soon as the street view loads, we'll know what this is."
"This is the Colbert Report!" Stephen declared. The audience erupted in wild applause as the title sequence rolled, and he leaned back, closed his eyes and basked in it, using their unqualified admiration to tap into the unqualified arrogance of his on-air character. He sat up just before the titles came to an end and graciously acknowledged the audience for giving him his due praise, then dismissed them with an imperious wave of his hand. "Nation," he announced, "This has been another historic week in the presidential campaign . . . "
Chapter 1: Number 0367
It was raining lightly as Jon walked into the building where The Daily Show and The Colbert Report had their studios. Inside, people were already rushing around, discussing news items, trying out jokes, and getting their second or third cups of coffee. A few of them said hello in passing. They knew not to ask Jon for input this early in the day. Of course, they usually didn't need to. The writers were good, and they knew the kind of material he wanted.
Jon unlocked his office, hung up his jacket, closed his door, and stopped. He suddenly had a feeling that something dangerous was right behind him. He told himself it was probably nothing, but the sensation was too strong to be overruled by logic. After a few seconds of trying unsuccessfully to work up the courage to just turn around, he edged over to the wall and pressed his back against it. The feeling was stronger now, and it seemed to be related to something in the main part of his office.
Keeping his back to the wall, Jon scooted to the end of the entryway and craned his neck to see out into the room. It didn't look like there was anything wrong, but the tense, cold dread was still there. A sudden sensation of falling swept through him, disappearing as fast as it hit. When his head stopped spinning, he realized he was breathing hard and gripping the wall. Aside from that, everything now seemed normal and unthreatening.
He stood up slowly and scanned the office again, looking for anything out of place. Only one thing caught his attention: the trash can by the end of his desk had been knocked over. He took a step forward, intending to simply pick up the can, and stopped when he saw a pair of feet in mud-caked shoes sticking out from behind his desk.
"Hello?" he said.
There was no answer.
"I can see you back there," he added, raising his voice slightly.
Still no response.
Jon cautiously walked toward the desk and peered around it. The first thing he felt was relief that all the horrors that had piled into his head as he crossed the room had been purely imaginary. Immediately after that came the realization that there was in fact an unconscious man sprawled on the floor behind his desk, followed very quickly by the fact that this man was seriously hurt. His shirt was soaked with blood on the left side, and his right hand covered most of the area, as if he has been trying to stop the bleeding before he passed out.
Jon stepped around the desk and knelt to feel for a pulse on the man's wrist. This allowed him to see the man’s face for the first time, and for the third time in two minutes, he froze, unable to do anything but try to wrap his mind around the situation. It was one thing to find a stranger bleeding on your office floor. It was another thing to find a friend. But, Jon thought, even that was entirely different than finding yourself bleeding on your office floor.
Of course, it couldn’t actually be him; it was just someone who looked like him, or at least like Jon assumed he would look if he had survived a plane wreck and spent the next three weeks fighting off wolves as he hiked to the nearest road or something. The man’s clothes were dirty and torn, his hair a limp, shaggy mess, and he had a short, scruffy beard.
His concern more urgent now, Jon pressed his fingers against the inside of the man's wrist. The skin felt too warm, and the pulse too rapid, but at least the man was alive. Jon tried to remember if there was anything you were supposed to do in this sort of situation, aside from calling 911 and trying to stop the bleeding. He couldn’t think of anything.
As he reached for his phone, he heard a knock on the door. He went to answer it as he made the call, hoping he could persuade whoever it was to help him with this situation.
When he opened the door, he saw four people standing there, all dressed in serious black suits of the sort usually associated with government agents. Two of them were tall men, one blond and goateed, the other dark-haired and clean-shaven. They both looked strong enough to pick Jon up with one hand. The others were less intimidating -- a lovely young woman with a businesslike expression and a slender young man who seemed intensely interested in a gadget he was fiddling with. The blond man plucked the phone out of Jon’s hand just as the dispatcher answered.
"Sorry," he said into the phone, "I must have hit the emergency button by mistake." He ended the call and handed the phone back to Jon, who was staring at him, trying once again to figure out what the hell was going on. "Where is he?" the agent asked.
"Uh, in here. Other side of the desk," Jon said. "How -- how did you know about this?"
"Long story, no time," the blond man said.
They pushed past Jon into the room, and the woman headed straight for the figure behind the desk. The smaller man dropped his bag on the already-overloaded couch and started rummaging in it. The blond man strolled toward the desk, taking a good look around the room as he did so. “My name is Riley, and these are my fellow agents, Myers, Garvin, and Miller,” he said, gesturing in turn toward the woman, the smaller man, and the dark-haired man who was now guarding the door. “We’re a federal investigation team.”
“Why federal?” Jon asked, watching as Myers opened her medical kit and began tending to the injured man. “Wouldn’t this be an NYPD thing?”
Riley smiled and shook his head, as if Jon had said something funny. “This situation isn’t as simple as it looks.”
“Did you notice anything unusual when you first came in?” Garvin asked, glancing up from the screen of the device he had pulled from his bag. “Any odd sensations, unexplained sounds, anything like that?”
“I did feel like there was something dangerous in here,” Jon replied, “But I got dizzy for a second and the feeling was gone when it passed.”
Garvin nodded. “Not surprising.” He went back to whatever he was doing with his gadget.
“So what the hell’s going on here?” Jon demanded.
“What do you know so far?” Riley asked Garvin.
“It’s definitely a three hundred. Which one I’m not sure, but it looks a lot like seven-six,” Garvin said, not taking his eyes off his equipment.
“It feels like seven-six to me,” Riley replied. “Go ahead and contact Crazy and his people. We’ll need a full guard, as low-profile as possible.” He turned to Jon. “We don’t usually tell people this, but in your situation, you need to know what’s happening. First, there are thousands of versions of this world in existence. They branch off from each other like a tree when world-changing events occur. Number 0376 is a recent split, about six weeks old, and it’s extremely dangerous. With me so far?”
“Yeah,” Jon said, his voice tinged with skepticism.
“Second,” Riley began, taking a deep breath, “I know this sounds totally insane, but there are a lot of malevolent beings in other worlds that want to wipe out the human race. They’re what inspired our mythology about things like vampires and goblins and the water kelpie. They show up on Earth now and then and kill as many people as they can before someone drives them off. About six weeks back, they made an organized attack. We won the fight here, but it was a big enough event that another Earth reality split off -- one where they won. That’s what 376 is, and if they find out there’s a portal between the two, we could be in really deep shit.”
“Riley,” Myers interrupted, “I think you need to deal with this.” She was kneeling next to the injured man, whose shirt she had cut away. There were three gashes in his side, two of which had gone all the way down to the cartilage and bone of his ribcage. “I’m fairly sure there’s some internal injury. It looks like he was pretty banged up even before this,” Myers said as Riley took off his suit jacket and knelt next to her.
“You’ll have to excuse me a minute,” Riley said to Jon as he rolled up his sleeves.
“So, wait a second, if he’s from another reality, could he be another version of me?” Jon asked.
Riley paused, considering the idea, then nodded. “The two of you are basically the same person,” he said. “He’s likely to have a very different outlook on things, though, considering 376 had a major earthquake in New York nearly a month ago and from what we heard, the creatures have taken over what’s left of the city.” Riley laid his hands and forearms on the other Jon’s chest and crouched over him.
“What are you doing?” Jon asked.
Riley didn’t answer, and after a couple seconds of silence, Myers spoke up. “He hates to talk about it, but he can heal people.”
“You’re kidding,” Jon said. He blinked. He could have sworn he had just seen Riley flicker, as if he was on a reel of film that had slipped.
Riley exhaled heavily and slowly straightened up. Myers handed him an antiseptic wipe, and he started cleaning the blood off his left forearm.
Jon stared. The gashes in the other Jon’s side were gone -- not simply healed over, but totally gone, as if they had never happened. The only evidence they had existed at all was the blood that had soaked his clothes and pooled on the floor. “What -- how -- how did you do that?” he stammered.
“I’m not sure exactly how it works, but it’s related to some other abilities I have,” Riley answered. “And don’t bother asking about those, because we have more important things to talk about. Where were we?”
“You were telling me how my office is the evil twin of the wardrobe from Narnia or something,” Jon said.
“Actually, it’s not just your office,” Garvin said. “It’s a larger area of unstable reality that extends throughout the whole building, maybe a bit further. Portals won’t open very consistently because it’s too big for a stable one to form, but when they do happen, they could be anywhere in the zone of instability.”
“So my building is the evil twin of the wardrobe from Narnia,” Jon said.
Garvin shrugged. “If it helps you to think of it that way,” he said.
There was a knock at the door. Miller opened it a few inches. “Can I help you?” he asked.
“I need to talk to Jon,” said a voice from the doorway.
Miller turned to look at Riley. “It’s Colbert.”
Riley looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Let him in. He needs to be part of this.”
Miller stepped back and let Stephen in. Jon could see the confusion on his friend’s face as he noticed the other agents in the office. “Am I interrupting something?” Stephen asked.
“No,” Riley said. “I was sort of hoping you would show up. It may make this whole thing a bit easier.”
“What thing?” asked Stephen, taking a seat on the arm of the couch.
Riley nodded to Jon. “This is your show, Mr. Stewart.”
“Why me?” Jon asked.
“Trying to explain things helps you understand them better,” Riley said with a half smile.
“Okay,” Jon said, taking a deep breath as he tried to organize his thoughts. “These guys tell me there are tons of alternate versions of Earth, and new ones branch off ours when important events happen. There are also all kinds of monsters trying to destroy the human race. There was a big secret fight with those monsters about six weeks ago, and this is the reality where humans won. There’s some kind of weird thing going on right now where at any moment, a portal to the reality where the monsters won could open up somewhere in this building.”
Stephen nodded thoughtfully. “So do we have a team of wizards or superheroes to defend us, or are we in such a desperate situation that it will reveal our hidden superpowers?”
A snort of stifled laughter erupted in the entryway. They turned to see Miller, his hand covering his mouth and his shoulders shaking helplessly as he tried not to laugh out loud.
Riley shot him a perturbed look. “You can stop,” he said. “All of you,” he added, glaring at Garvin and Myers, who were both smiling as if they found the situation amusing. “We are not,” Riley continued, “the type of people who prance around in skin-tight uniforms and fancy robotic armor, no matter how fun you think it would be.”
“Why not?” Stephen said. “It would really amp up the comedy. I know it feels like a cheap laugh, but it can work really well if you do it right.”
That got a derisive chuckle from Riley, who shook his head in disbelief.
“Stephen,” Jon said, “This isn’t supposed to be funny.”
He motioned for Stephen to come look behind the desk. Myers had done an admirable job of cleaning up most of the blood, and she was now checking her patient’s blood pressure. Stephen seemed taken aback at the sight; he had obviously been unaware of the man behind the desk.
“Does he look familiar?” Jon asked.
Stephen turned to Jon. “He’s not your brother, is he?” he asked anxiously.
“No,” Jon said gravely. “That’s me. From that other reality.”
Stephen looked back and forth between the two of them a few times. “How do you know for sure?” he asked.
Jon ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I am sure.”
“He’s waking up,” Riley said without looking.
--------
A/N: If you'd like to see more, please comment!
It may take a while (seeing as I have tickets for both TDS & TCR next week, followed by at least 1 day of whitewater kayaking for the Bridge Day celebration), but I'm currently working on the second chapter. Beyond that, how complicated the story gets depends on how much people want to read.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-10-26 08:05 am (UTC)And, because you have tickets to see both Jon and Stephen, I hate you, you lucky bitch!
[that was a joke, please do not be offended by it. D: i've gotten attacked for that sort of thing before, so i have to be careful. XD]
no subject
Date: 2008-11-11 03:58 am (UTC)If you (or anyone else) would like to read this story with proper formatting, it's up here (http://community.livejournal.com/fakenews_fanfic/505539.html).
All future chapters will be posted at