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I tried to remember how I got here...although here is a relative term because I don't even know where here is. Here could be me dreaming and waiting to wake up from the longest nightmare imaginable or here could be a quick trip back through time so I would have the pleasure of reliving the longest nightmare imaginable, or as a third and final alternative, here could be my very soul sucked into an incredibly powerful computer program running at light speed, recording my actions for study and, as a funny byproduct, making my very thoughts become reality so long as I could lie myself into believing it was actually a memory. Don't even ask! As usual, I don't even know where to begin. Aliens, monsters, demons, whatever you want to call them came, stuff happened, 'nuff said. I could tell you my name is Sergeant Flynn Peter Taggart, formerly of Fox Company of the former Light Drop Infantry Regiment of the former United States Marine Corps...but I'm not even sure of that anymore.

I'm sort of a religious man. I say sort of because there's only so much faith one can have after battling a universe full of monsters invading one's home world and then find out that the reason they came to destroy us is all part of some sort of interstellar chess game between two opponents that have been at war for six million years. Apparently, we were just a pawn in this game and the aliens didn't really have anything against us except for the fact that we can die and they can't. Needless to say, the whole thing was very confusing. Ironically, at one point, it was only our faith (we being myself and the only other living human being who actually remembers the once great and proud nation called the United States of America, namely Arlene Sanders) that kept us from being turned into slaves of some cosmic evolutionary race who thought we were broken and wanted to fix us. Faith was the antidote to their biological infection if humanity.

In my opinion, I probably could've lived a normal life if it hadn't been for the last year (few centuries?) Arlene and I have spent gallivanting across the galaxy. We've gone from the swampy muck of battling the Scythe of Glory in Kefiristan which didn't exactly prepare us for the two-man war we waged against untold hordes of invading monsters on the moons of Mars. Then it was a giant leap back to Earth where we were joined by two brave souls whom I will never forget while we laid waste to what remained of Los Angeles. Then we went on vacation in glorious Hawaii before we jumped on a space cruiser and went back to Mars. I know, I'm yakking, blah blah blah...I could have been a travel agent...well maybe not.

To make a very, very, very, very, very long story short we've spent the last 287 days, 12 hours, 11 minutes and 55 seconds living the most unbelievable adventure any two people ever shared. We visited an alien base just outside our solar system, met up with a pair of cartoony Magilla Gorillas who called themselves Sears and Roebuck. They were part of the 'good side' of the war called the hyperrealists. Traveled two hundred light years to a Fred base (the Freds were the bad guys, the deconstructionists) and kicked ass. Got sent to the Fred home world where we found it to be devastated by a race called the Newbies (and later the Resusitators). Followed their trail to another world where we ran into 25th century humanity that had been taken over by a viral version of the Newbies, hence had become the Resusitators. And then had our souls removed from our bodies and placed into this place. Believe it or not!

I can't be exactly sure of the timing because the watch I remembered having was broken and with all the interstellar traveling Arlene and I have been doing at near-light speeds, you might be able to round that figure off to about three or four hundred years. Some relativity thing, you can ask the college graduate about it. Numbers just give me a headache.

Anyway, the here and now consists of Arlene and me staring up at the Earth from Deimos. Once again, the Martian moon had decided to get up and visit Earth for awhile. Arlene and I had been here before, but back then our circumstances had been very different. Back then we were by ourselves. Back then we had to build our own little rocket to get back home. Back then we didn't have an army of monsters fighting on our side. It was just then I was beginning to have problems with my memory.

"Fly," Arlene was tapping me on my shoulder while I still stared that the old mud ball which was just out of reach. "If my memory serves, we have to build a rocket."

I knew what she was talking about. I knew it would take us much less time to build it than the last time. I knew it would fit Arlene and me…barely. The problem was that there were almost a hundred alien converts behind us who thought of me (Me! Of all people!) as a god and probably would want to come with us. The thing you need to know is that I'm not really a god and taking them with us was not within my power to grant.

"Arlene, I don't think we can rely on our memory anymore. If we happen to be fortunate enough to live out full lives in this computer generated fantasy world, whatever happens is going to be totally different this time around."

"You mean because of them?" she said pointing at the mob behind us. They were busy trying to play military. I'd decided to give my first convert, an imp by the name of Slink Slunk, the rank of Private First Class and had tried to explain to her the duties and responsibilities that were inherent to that charge. It was amusing to watch her try to line up the soldiers for inspection. Arlene nearly fell apart once when Slink had ordered one of our zombie converts to put his brains back in his head after a pinky had bitten a nice chuck out of it. That one ended up getting blown to bits anyway when we went up against the steamdemon. You all remember what that is, right?

"Think about it Arlene. If we take them with us and end up at Salt Lake City again and run into..." I shut my mouth just then when I realized I almost reopened a very deep wound in Arlene. Her face started to turn red. I rephrased myself. "If we end up in Salt Lake City again being tailed by an army of monsters that humanity's resistance forces have no reason to do anything other than attack...well, you get the idea."

Arlene was grim. I knew what she was thinking. We'd spent more time together in the past year or two than most married couples share in a lifetime. She was thinking about Albert. Her husband whom she would never see again. Her husband who, relativistically speaking, was several centuries dead and in the grave. She was thinking that she could start over. To see Albert again and run up to him and throw her arms around him and kiss him and...you know...

She was also thinking about how it simply wouldn't work out like that. Realizing how awkward it would be for both of them. Arlene would be torn apart because she loved a man who didn't even know who she was. Albert, that big beefy Mormon would have his faith ripped to shreds finding out that he didn't really exist! Arlene and me, we were lost in time. We couldn't go back to Salt Lake City. We wouldn't meet Albert and Jill again (no matter how much we both wanted to). We wouldn't stand before the President of the Counsel of Twelve and therefore wouldn't be sent to L.A. where we wouldn't rescue Ken Somethingorother (I never was good with last names, not in this day and age anyway) and make a getaway to Hawaii. It just wouldn't be the same.

"I'm never going to see him again am I?" I could tell she was trying very hard not to cry.

"We're never going to see them again. We can't go back. Even if we didn't take our little army with us, you know they'll never believe our story. Hell they barely let us get away with the one we had last time!"

"I'm not thinking about SLC, Fly. I'm thinking about what we're going to do until the Res-men pull the plug, if they ever pull the plug and if they're still Res-men."

I didn't believe her. No way she wasn't thinking about Albert. Even I was thinking about Albert. And Jill. Albert and Jill. If it wasn't so far-fetched, I might have been about to remember the two of them coming out of the storage locker right then and there and running up to us as if we'd only been gone a week.

"The way I see it, there is simply no way for us to get back to the real world unless we hijack some new bodies or find our own some how." As I said the words, I noticed a glimmer of hope in Arlene's eyes...nah, there was no way we could do that...could we?

I faced Arlene and looked dead in her eyes, trying to figure out what was going on in the college-educated brain of hers. She turned away so I wouldn't be able to see her facial expressions. Then she fell on her ass. Instinct kicked in and I turned to see what had given her the biggest surprise of her life. And then I fell on my ass.

We were facing an enormous spacecraft. It stretched up two hundred feet to the top of the ceiling, just barely touching the glass of the pressure dome. It was sleek and cylindrical reminding me of a much smaller version of Sears and Roebuck's ship. I had never seen a bright almost neon green painted spaceship before though. And Slink was already ushering our army up a giant ramp into the ship. Seeing almost twenty zombies, a few clydes, and two platoons full of imps, or spinies as Arlene called them, marching up a ramp with almost military attitude was enough to surprise even me, and I thought I'd seen everything up until that very moment.

Arlene and I just sat there watching the surreal spectacle. I couldn't even decide which sister to thank for this miracle. So I thanked them all.

Arlene had gotten over her shock quicker than me and was the first of us to speak. "I don't remember this, do you?" Honest to God, she sounded as though she was accused me of some terrible crime as she asked that question.

"Don't look at me!" I stammered, "I didn't do this."

We watched for a few more minutes before Slink came back down the ramp. I couldn't be sure, it was hard to discern emotions from an imp by reading its facial expressions and body language, even one as articulate as Slink, but I would have to guess that she was smiling as though she'd gotten everything she wanted for Christmas. Then she threw us the biggest bombshell I'd seen yet. "Massster hasss given promissse. Ssslink hasss the power. Massster wissshesss to go home?"

I couldn't believe it. It had been an idle promise when I met Slink. I didn't think it would actually be possible. After all, Arlene and I were the only two real souls here. There was no reason to think that the program would actually be able to give itself the power to 'remember' whatever it wanted. Unless the program was so technologically advanced that the AI used to govern the recreation of our memories actually gave birth to a new soul! That was a scary thought. But it gave me an idea. A crazy, off-the-wall, lock-you-in-a-padded-room-and-throw-away-the-key idea, but I didn't think it was impossible. I was beginning to think nothing was. Except for faster-than-light travel, Goddamn it! That still pisses me off.

Arlene leaned over and whispered in my ear after reading my mind. "Uhh Fly," she started. "If Slink has the same kinds of powers that we have, wouldn't she have to be, you know, alive? Wouldn't that mean she has a soul?" I had already picked up that reasoning, but she found something that I had missed. "And if so, wouldn't that mean others could ascend to that level of consciousness? Enemies even?"

My eyes went wide with realization. If it could happen once, why couldn't it happen again? "You're not thinking..."

"Slink is the smartest of the bunch. If it had to happen to any of them, it would have to happen to her. What about all of those spiderminds on Earth that we remember so fondly? I mean, we learned yesterday that there is absolutely no way to convert one of those."

I remembered. We had tried. Yesterday we met up with the spidermind and ruled like a fat cyber king on Deimos and it was an interesting challenge trying to subdue the monster. Slink had ordered our forces to circle the spidermind after a little bit of technical work that had pumpkins and hell princes fighting and killing each other. That part wasn't so hard. Those two just hated each other as if nothing else in the universe could match their ire.

While our converts distracted the spidermind (which was probably having conniptions trying to figure out what was going on) Arlene started pumping the JP9 rocket fuel into a nice lake beneath it while I managed to jump on top of it. Lying on top of that glass shell with nothing to hang onto while the spidermind jerked like a bull trying to get the cowboy off its back was hard enough. Trying to shout my words of wisdom over its screeching and pounding thousands of 9mm shell holes into the surrounding architecture was just impossible.

It finally managed to buck me to the ground where it tried to stomp on me like a bug. I rolled around on the ground trying avoiding its footfalls and ended up soaking myself in rocket fuel. That was a big problem because I just happened to be surrounding by eighty imps, each of which had the power to turn me into the human torch just by touching me. As a result, Arlene couldn't ignite the fuel and burn the spider down.

There was a brief moment of panic.

The next thing I knew, Arlene had found some sort of rope or wire and was sprinting circles around the spidermind at blinding speed. It took me a moment to realize that she was wrapping the spidermind's legs so that it would trip. I got dizzy watching her work.

Finally, when she ran out of string, she picked up a rock and threw it at that disgusting mound of flesh sitting protected inside that nearly impenetrable shell. A fat lot of good that's gonna do, I thought. But it worked. It was just enough to get the things attention without using anything that would start a fire. That girl is so smart.

It shambled toward her but after three steps, the wire caught on the leg joints and the whole thing went down. The glass shell shattered upon impact and the brain inside it exploded and leaked out like spilled honey except it smelled much worse. And that was that. We'd beaten the spidermind again and gained some valuable intel to that end. So far, only zombies, imps, clydes, and fatties could be converted. Our memories of everything else was simply too vivid to change what they were.

I thought about all of the available information for a moment. I thought about what I knew about this computer simulation, the accomplishment Slink had just made, and I toyed with the idea of actually returning to the real world. I looked at my Lance, then I looked at Slink, and then I looked at my Lance again. I decided that this was only a minor setback, but at least I knew what to do now. "Lance," I said, "Get your butt on that ship. I've changed my mind. The only place we can go is Salt Lake City!"