Max heard a loud screech, and glanced up from where he was carving gruesome things into Sam's desk. That sounded like someone parking a DeSoto outside the office. Or else it was a chimpanzee stepping on a nail. He always got those two mixed up. He was forced to conclude that it was probably the first thing when Sam stumbled in, his suit even more rumpled than usual.
"Max!" said Sam.
"Oh, hey Sam," said Max, putting down his knife. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember Sam leaving, but he couldn't remember what he'd just been doing, either. "You're just in time for pin-the-pushpin-on-the-perp night! I'll go get Leonard."
He jumped up, but Sam said "Not now Max. I've just been through the worst day of my life."
"Worse than the time Tony Anderson gave you swirlies for two hours straight?" asked Max.
"I told you never to talk about that!" snapped Sam. He calmed down a little. "It all started last year, just before our first case..."
Max made himself comfortable. Flashbacks always left him stiff.
–
"When are we gonna get another case, Sam?" complained Max, who was balancing on top of a bowling ball. "Surely the local lawbreakers must miss our esoteric brand of personalised criminal justice."
"Patience is a sharp razor to swallow, little buddy," replied Sam, levelling his gun at the apple on top of Max's head. "Now don't scream this time." He fired and missed like he had before, but this time he felt uneasy. "Max, did you feel that?"
"The wind from the bullet parting the fur on my exposed skull?" said Max. It had been a near miss.
"No! More like that feeling you get when time's out of joint and you and everyone you know or care about will be dead or enslaved by an evil cultist within the year."
Max nodded, the apple falling off his head. "Oh, that feeling. I get that all the time."
–
"That's not how it happened!" interrupted Max. He concentrated. "Uh... Wasn't there a herd of flying elephants and a single flying cow out the window that day?"
"How should I know?" said Sam. "I wasn't looking out the window. Now shut up and listen to the flashback."
–
They didn't get a case that day. In fact, they didn't get a case for another two months, when they were called in to rescue a studio audience that was being held hostage by a famous television personality. That case had been fun, and their next assignment, to infiltrate the Toy Mafia, had been similar so far.
Sam and Max shaken off the mobsters that had been chasing them, and were coming back to confront Ted E. Bear, the Don of the Toy Mafia. They entered the inner sanctum, and stopped and stared.
"Hey," said Sam, "there's a whole bear making factory back here!"
The factory appeared to be several times larger than the casino it was hidden in, but Sam never bothered himself with details like that.
"You mean, the respectable propriety of a gambling casino is just a front for the shadowy underworld of labor and industry?" said Max. "I'm scandalized!"
Ted E. Bear approached them, with a gun in one hand and one of the creepy looking bears that the Toy Mafia was producing in the other. "You two? Y-you're back? Inconceivable!"
Sam wasn't sure what bothered him more, the misuse of the word inconceivable or the Princess Bride rip-off.
"Come no closer," continued Ted E. Bear. "I know how to use both of these."
Ted E. Bear wasn't a very convincing crime boss even when he was waving a gun at them. Moles often weren't.
"I'll be honest," said Sam. "We're probably more worried about the gun."
"Indeed," said Ted E. Bear. "More fool you, then. This hypnobear will make you my willing slaves! You can do the factory work now that you've rid me of my inept underlings." He brandished the bear. "Look! Look at the hypnobear!"
Sam, who was skeptical, glanced at the bear.
The next thing he remembered, he was at the other side of the room and pointing his gun at Max, who was on top of some sort of weird factory machine thing.
"What?" Sam mumbled. He felt exactly like he'd just been walking down a garish tunnel painted in alternating stripes of green and pale green.
"What are you waiting for?" demanded Ted E. Bear, from somewhere behind him. "Shoot him!"
Without thinking about it, Sam pulled the trigger.
"Hey!" said Max, as the bullet missed him. "Quit that!"
"I... I didn't mean to do that," said Sam, squinting into the barrel of his gun. He tried to turn around and point his gun at Ted E. Bear, but he couldn't.
"Shoot him again, slave!" said Ted E. Bear, the excitable little rodent. Or whatever he was. Probably something ending in "morph".
"What did you just call me?" said Sam, as he was unable to stop himself from shooting at Max again. That was when he figured it out. "Holy synchronised swimming cerebrums in the Bay of Bengal! That bear hypnotised me!" Just like Myra had been in their last case.
Ted E. Bear started to say something, but Max took advantage of the distraction to jump off the factory thing and, from the sounds of it, onto Ted E. Bear's face. Sam spun around. Max was impressive when he really put his mind to beating up a criminal, but he couldn't always do it on his own.
He approached them, and Ted E. Bear said, between screams, "Get him off me! Hit him with your gun or something!"
Sam, who'd been about to kick Ted E. Bear, stumbled, nearly fell, and hit Max with the butt of his gun.
"Ow!" said Max. He seemed dazed.
"Max, are you okay?" said Sam, already thinking up some imaginative things to inflict on Ted E. Bear once he got free of the hypnotism.
"The hornets started it..." mumbled Max.
Then Ted E. Bear shot Max in the head, knocking him out. Sam jumped.
"You'd better hope you're not around when my little buddy wakes up, or you'll be in for a world of pain," he said, shaking his fist at Ted E. Bear.
Ted E. Bear looked down at Max. For some reason his eyes seemed to linger on the blood pooling around Max's head. "Uh... sure. Whatever you say, slave. Now why don't you go sort the bears for delivery, while I attend to... other matters."
He turned to leave, and Sam noticed a gaping but bloodless wound in his back. But if he didn't notice it, Sam definitely wasn't going to tell him about it.
Once Ted E. Bear was gone, Sam glanced at the bears the factory had produced, but they looked sorted enough already. So he just said "Max. Max, wake up."
Max didn't move. Sam sighed, hoping Max wasn't badly hurt. Max could take care of himself, of course, but even if Sam could've left to go after Ted E. Bear, he wasn't going to until he confirmed that Max was okay.
A phone rang somewhere in the factory. Sam ran for it, and picked up the receiver. "Hello? Oh, Commissioner!" The Commissioner had at least one of them microchipped, he was sure of it. "Yes? The mole? He was a traitor, and then he shot Max in the head! What? Yes? Failed?" They'd never failed to solve a case before, and Sam wasn't sure why the Commissioner thought they had now. But the Commissioner had more to say. "Time being meddled with? The end of the world as we know it? We're on the case!"
Or they weren't, because Sam was still hypnotised. Maybe he could fix that with his newfound ability to turn an assortment of everyday items into a cracked case... Yes, he could. "Stay on the line, Commissioner. I have a plan that's just convoluted enough to work."
He retrieved one of the hypnobears before its voicebox was inserted, and spent five minutes pulling the stuffing out of it. He reflected that it wouldn't have taken so long if he'd had claws or even fingernails, but finally there was a reasonable sized cavity in the bear's chest. He put the phone inside the bear and said "What was it you wanted me to do, Commissioner?"
The next thing he remembered, he was driving. Sounded like he'd run over a bicycle or a scooter or something, too. He hoped nobody had been riding it. He knew what he had to do, though. He had to go back to the 1970s and fix what had gone wrong, whatever that was.
–
Sam pulled over in an upscale neighbourhood and got out of the car. It felt like the right place and time.
"Well, here I am in the 1970s," he said out of force of habit. "I should keep my eyes open for anything—"
"Sam?" said an irritating voice that sounded like its owner had just hit puberty. "What are you doing here?"
Sam turned. The voice belonged to a kid— No, a short adult with red hair and a dorky red and white outfit. "There's bad trouble in the mid seventies," Sam replied in a monotone. He regained control of himself. "Who in the name of formal neckties are you supposed to be?"
"It's me! Whizzer! Don't you recognise me?" Whizzer seemed strangely happy about this.
"Uh... no..." Sam thought he'd remember a dwarf with a voice as annoying as that. "Are you the one who's been messing with time?"
"It was for the good of the world!" insisted Whizzer. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be universally despised, and to grow up as a—"
"Uh, let's skip the soliloquy," interrupted Sam. He wished Max was there to back him up, but he'd just have to manage on his own.
"Aw... okay," said Whizzer. He spoke more calmly. "I'm one of the Soda Poppers, a trio of former child stars who everyone... hates... So I went back in time to stop the TV show from being created!"
His story seemed to check out. "But what does that have to do with me getting hypnotised or Max getting shot?" said Sam, more to himself than to Whizzer.
"You can't be hypnotised!" said Whizzer. "What about the colander on your head that blocks hypnosis beams?"
Sam felt his head to make sure he was still wearing his hat. "My what?" But if he'd got a hypnosis blocking helmet as a result of meeting the Soda Poppers, then that meant... "The Soda Poppers have to exist, Max!" There was an awkward pause, and he remembered that Max wasn't there. "Uh... The Soda Poppers have to exist, me! Time is counting on it!"
"Did I mention that my brothers are even more annoying than I am?" asked Whizzer, sounding pathetically hopeful.
Sam paused. Whizzer wasn't that irritating, but three or more of him... Maybe the world really was better off without the Soda Poppers. Max had only been knocked unconscious—
–
"Actually Sam, it sounds an awful lot like I was—" began Max.
"You were unconscious," insisted Sam, balling his hands into fists.
–
—been knocked unconscious by that bullet. He'd be okay.
He started to tell Whizzer that he'd changed his mind, but instead mumbled "Must... fix... time..." Oh yeah. He'd forgotten that he was still hypnotised. "I've got to fix time and save my little buddy!"
Whizzer kicked the ground. "Oh, all right. The man who came up with the Soda Poppers is about to start his morning jog. I was going to distract him before he got the idea for the Soda Poppers, but now that you're here, I'll, uh, take a bathroom break!"
He ran away, so quickly that he blurred. Sam didn't trust him. Maybe he'd already distracted that guy, or maybe he'd already accidently changed time by using a bathroom or stepping on a butterfly or something. Sam had to make sure that the Soda Poppers would exist in the future himself.
These new cases certainly involved a lot of thinking.
Sam waited for a few seconds, and ran after the first jogger he saw. "Excuse me," he said. "Are you a highly paid television writer who's aching to come up with the next big thing?"
"Why yes," said the jogger smugly. "I am." Seemingly to himself, he added, "Talking dogs are huge right now..."
Sam outlined what he'd figured out about the Soda Poppers, which wasn't a whole lot, but the writer responded "Wonderful ideas! Thanks, Fido! And if you ask for royalties, I've never seen you before."
Sam was beginning to feel dizzy, and slightly out of breath, so he leaned against a wall until he felt better. He thought that that probably meant the time thingy was working. Then he ran back to the car, which took approximately half a second, and glanced around, confused. Had everything got bigger since he'd been inside? "That's strange... What the-?"
He hadn't sounded like that since before he'd hit puberty! And why were his feet so sweaty?
Then Sam caught a glimpse of himself in a nearby window. He was a puppy again, but that wasn't what shocked him the most. He was wearing the same outfit Whizzer had been wearing. He was a Soda Popper.
"Holy... great... parking meters..." Normally his exclamations of surprise just tumbled out without even having to think about it, but Sam was having real trouble this time. "Sweet... um... sweet clouds of..."
He couldn't do it anymore. That only left one thing to say.
"Nooooooooooooooooo!"
Sam inspected his reflection again, hoping he'd made a mistake. He'd been wrong about looking like a puppy; his snout and ears were too long and his eyes were too small; but that wasn't a great comfort. He was wearing shoes, which was why his feet were so sweaty. He crouched down to take them off, caught a whiff of how they smelled and quickly straightened up. He was beginning to remember. He hadn't taken his shoes off in years, because he couldn't stand the way they smelled after he'd been wearing shoes.
He remembered other things, too. It seemed that he had costarred with his brother, the greedy one, and his sister, the girl. Sam had played Dweeb, the nerdy one, and he still went by the name Dweeb in an attempt to cling to the pathetically small amount of fame he had left. He still acted like Dweeb.
If he hadn't felt that once a scene was enough, Sam probably would've yelled no again. He had to stop himself from auditioning for this role. He no longer cared whether the Soda Popper existed or not, as long as he wasn't one.
Before he could move, Whizzer came back. He started to say something, then saw what Sam looked like and stifled a laugh.
"Shut up!" said Sam. Then, to his embarrassment, he stamped his foot. "Shutupshutupshutupshutup!" By the time he realised how he was acting, the damage was done.
Whizzer laughed out loud. He was still a Soda Popper as well, for some reason.
"Wait an attosecond," added Sam. "If you are no longer a Soda Popper, why are you attired in those garments?"
"What?" said Whizzer.
Dweeb sighed. People were so stupid. "Why are you wearing those clothes?"
"Oh!" said Whizzer. "My time machine protects me from the changes until I get back to my time. It makes it a lot easier."
"How did you become so knowledgeable about time travel, anyway?" said Dweeb, trying to remember why he was having this conversation.
"I majored in it in college." Whizzer glanced around. "Okay, good luck with your new life."
"Hey, delay yourself for—" began Dweeb, but Whizzer had already run away.
Dweeb still couldn't remember what he'd been doing. He knew it had been important and something had upset him, but what was it? Something to do with time travel, evidently.
He looked around, but didn't recognise the part of town he was in. One thing that caught his attention was a car, which was parked right next to him. It was a DeSoto Adventurer, but Dweeb wasn't sure how he knew what it was. He'd never been that interested in cars.
He knew it because it was his. Remembering that triggered other memories and within a few minutes, Dweeb realised that he was really a tall, devilishly handsome private detective, not a former child star. That there was no reason to go by his character's name in a show that had never existed took him a little longer.
"I should use small words," said Sam aloud. Although this went against everything both of him believed, not only would he be better understood and not sound like an idiot, not talking like Dweeb might stop him from forgetting who he was again. He hoped. The experience of forgetting who he was had shaken him badly.
Sam jumped into the car and started the engine. He couldn't see over the dash anymore, but that little fuzzy white guy... the rabbity thing... Max, that was his name. He did that all the time, and he barely ever hit anything. At least not hard enough to dent the car.
Then there was a thump and a scream.
"Uh-oh," said Sam, hitting the brakes. Something in the back of his mind told him to just keep driving, but it was his civic duty to see if his actions had hurt... What was happening to him?
By the time Sam had sorted out this particular identity crisis and gone to see who he'd hit, they had gone. He took his hands off the wheel and shrugged, hoping that it was somebody he hated.
–
Sam found himself sitting alone in a room a little way in the future, waiting to be called in to audition. He was a bit later than he would've liked, because he'd started to wonder since when his car had started doubling as a time machine and that thought had taken a while to erase, but he'd still arrived in time.
"You can't go through with this audition!" Sam told his younger self, with all the urgency he could muster.
Young Sam inspected him. "You look familiar, mister." He sniffed the air and frowned. "And your feet smell."
Sam fought an irrational urge to let his lawyers handle this. "I mean it! You'll regret it every day for the rest of your life!" He was doing pretty well with the small words.
"You're just trying to steal my part," said Young Sam, folding his arms.
Sam sighed. He'd have to handle this carefully. Letting his younger self know who he was might result in Hitler winning World War II, or something. "Look, I'm you from the horrible, I mean bad, future where you got the part and became a... a Soda Popper. Okay?"
"Whatever you say, pops."
Sam reached inside his jacket for his gun, but all he found was a can of soda. Maybe if he shook it up, he could—
"Hey!" said someone behind Sam.
"Max!" said Young Sam. "You made it!"
But Young Max was looking at Sam.
"You're that guy! The guy in the dorky outfit who ran me over!"
Before Sam could say anything, Young Max had launched himself at him. Sam fought back, but Max, who he recalled was currently eight years old, definitely had the upper hand. Sam could hear Young Sam laughing, and remembered how much he'd loved violence when he hadn't been a former child star. Then Young Max punched him in the head and he forgot it again. Instead he just became irritated that his younger self was laughing at him.
Then someone else entered the room and said "We're running a bit behind, but— What is going on?"
"Fight," said Young Sam matter of factly. "My best friend Max is gonna win like always."
A thought occurred to Sam and he pulled out his can of soda.
"Oh dear," said the woman. "Are all talking animals this violent?"
Sam popped open the can right below Young Max's nose. Young Max screamed and grabbed at his face as the soda went up his nose.
"Uh... Not—" began Young Sam. "Max! Are you okay?"
"Yes!" said Sam in response to the director or whatever she was supposed to be. He pushed Max off him. "I do this all the time! Think of the uh... think of the children!"
Sam was beginning to feel dizzy again, but he heard the woman say, "Is that so? I think I'm going to have a talk with the producer about using such filthy violent animals as role models. Sorry kid. The audition's off."
"Aww..." said Young Sam, as the woman walked away.
"Did she just insult us?" wondered Young Max, a little indistinctly. He sneezed. "Hey! She did insult us! Look out, lady!" He and Young Sam ran out of the room.
Sam, who was feeling better, said "Score one more for the pale spectre of discrimination." He stood up and looked in a mirror. He was back to looking and feeling like an adult, but... "Hey! My voice changed again!" It was deeper and more relaxed, and his accent was a little more cultured. Still, nothing else about him seemed to have changed from before. He'd take it.
–
Max was proud of himself. He'd only zoned out two or three times during Sam's entirely too long story, a new personal best. Realising that the story was over, he said "Who woulda thought that the Soda Poppers would turn out to be so important to the timestream? We should be nicer to them from now on."
There was a brief pause, then they both burst out laughing.
"Seriously, though, let's go play Fizzball out on the street for the next couple hours," said Sam. "I could use some relaxation."
Max was excited. "And drench passing open-windowed cars in a foul smelling spray that'll take weeks to get out of the upholstery?"
"Exactly!"
Max grinned more widely than usual. "We're out of beer, so I guess we'll just have to use so—"
"Don't even joke about that, Max," replied Sam, following him out of the room.
–––
Some author's notes: I realise that dogs don't sweat to cool themselves. Sam does a lot of things that dogs don't do, and he does sweat in one of the cartoon episodes.
I have attempted to copy the speech patterns from the Telltale games, because that's when the story's set.
The Soda Poppers TV show started in 1970 or 1971, not the mid seventies, but since the Soda Poppers are 35 in 2007, the show would have to have existed around the late seventies or early eighties. So I split the difference, and set it at a time when Sam and Max would be around the right age.
This happens some time before What's New Beelzebub?, and I don't think it's inconsistant with it. I see Whizzer as the guy who just goes along with what his brothers do. I was going to make it clearer, or obvious at all, that the time travel thing was Whizzer's last attempt at living a normal life before he went along with the other two, but it didn't really fit in the story.
I hope I got the silliness right.