2

Ol' Prince John, he's always been a few cuckoos short of a nest, but that year of hard labor he did really threw his noggin for a loop. He's started dressing in armor and demanding to be referred to as "The Invincible." He threw an entire nursery into prison because he heard tell that one of the children called him paranoid. Can't say I blame the little tykes. Gone are the days where Prince John would parade his jewel-bedecked royal hide around. Now he doesn't let anyone near him, not even Sir Hiss, who's in prison with the rest. "Prince John the Invincible" spends most of his days in the royal castle, and when he ventures out, it's always with a full squad of troops around him.

As for all the money he takes from us; well, we'll be darned if we know what he does with it. He doesn't spend it in Nottingham though, that's for sure. Coin keeps flowing into the pockets of the Sheriff and nothing ever flows back. Around town, we're back to the ol' barter system, but it's not so bad; Folk from Nottingham know how to help each other out. But I shudder to think what'll happen to the town when the next tax day comes and we try to pay in wheat and beets.

Dr. Emmett Brown paced around the forest clearing, tugging at his voluminous white hair. He tasted a leaf, spat it out, and resumed pacing.

"Damn!" he swore. "Damn damn damn!"

From the smoking DeLorean, a second figure emerged. "Doc," he said. "Where the hell are we? This isn't Hill Valley!"

"The question, Marty, isn't Where the hell are we, but rather When the hell.. well, yes, also I have no idea where we are."

"Aw, Doc," said Marty McFly. He was a short, athletic teenager, wearing jeans, expensive sneakers and an orange vest that looked like a life preserver. "Something always goes wrong when we use this thing! Why couldn't you just have paid that library fine?"

"Twelve dollars?" exclaimed Doc. "I could have bought the book for that! Besides, you wanted to go back in time too."

"Alright," said Marty. "Let's not point fingers. Let's try to figure out what's going on here. For starters, why does everything look like a damn cartoon?"

As they were speaking, a young rabbit in a blue tunic and tan hat came skipping along, singing to himself. No more than five years old, the rabbit child was oblivious to the presence of strangers until he collided with Doc Brown's leg. He looked up and his eyes filled with terror. The poor kit froze and barely managed to squeak out, "Puh-please..don't hurt me!"

Doc and Marty looked at the talking, fully clothed rabbit, then back and forth at each other. "Doc," asked Marty, "are we on LSD? Or dead?"

"Preposterous suggestions," said Doc Brown. "All brain activity ceases at the moment of death, and I swore off all drugs after my third trip to Woodstock '69. There's a perfectly rational explanation."

He knelt down and addressed the shaking rabbit. "Don't fear, little one. We mean you no harm. Your name is Skippy, isn't it? Here, Skippy, have a present." And he handed the rabbit a pen from within his pocket.

Skippy stopped trembling. He gave the two strangers a feeble smile, clutched the pen tightly, and hopped away. Marty shook his head. "So what's this perfectly rational explanation?"

Doc's eyes grew wider and he grinned an excited, slightly insane smile. "The flux capacitor was designed to navigate across the fourth dimension, but it's now clear that the field that it generates does more than temporal displacement. Somehow we've pulled ourselves free of our reality, entered Planck space, and travelled through the multi-verse. Marty, we are now living in a parallel universe; and from the looks of things, one that is identical to the 1973 movie Robin Hood!"

"Aw, jeez," said Marty. "I liked our universe, Doc! Plus, how can you possibly know all this?"

"Don't be obtuse, Marty," said Doc. "Our surroundings are clearly drawn and painted, yet we can smell, feel, touch and taste them. That's not possible in our universe, so we must have left it. The following deductions were basic theoretical physics. As for the specificity of our location, how could you not recognize that adorable little hare? Didn't you watch Robin Hood?"

"I don't watch kid movies," said Marty, with a teen's juvenile bravado. "Doc, I'm not buying this. What are the odds we'd end up here out of everywhere in the galaxy?"

"Not everywhere in the galaxy, Marty, everywhere in every galaxy! Well, as there are infinite universes, the idea that one would perfectly parallel an animated movie is, mathematically, a given."

Marty picked up a nearby cartoon sword that a crocodile had abandoned and swung it through the air. "All this science is too heavy for me, Doc. I just want to know…how do we get home?"

"Well, Marty, in order to know that, we need to know how we got here. Tell me, what did you put in the Mr. Fusion generator to power our journey?"

"Lemme think," said Marty. "I think maybe an old Caramel Crunchy-town candy wrapper."

Doc's eyes, impossibly, grew even wider. "Caramel Crunchy-town? Is that the one that has the promotional gold-leaf wrapping?"

"I think so," said Marty, "but you know, Doc, there's no need to get bent out of shape, they're really not worth much."

"I'm not bent in any unusual shape, Marty, I'm telling you that it was the Caramel Crunchy-town wrapper that got us to where we are! How many times must I tell you: only put things in the Mr. Fusion with an atomic number lower than fifty! Do you how many protons there are in a single atom of gold alone?"

"Uhhhhhh…"

"SEVENTY NINE!" howled Doc, clutching at his head. "The number of bonds being formed, broken, reformed…we must have generated over five hundred gigawatts of electricity! I'm amazed we weren't cooked in our seats! And then the extra electricity must have altered the nature of the flux field so that rather than just navigating the fourth dimension, we escaped its orbit entirely!"

"Break this in to English for me, Doc," said Marty tersely. "Are you telling me that all we need to do to go home is to put some more gold in there?"

"Precisely, Marty! Of course, since we're still not certain how to navigate in the multiverse, we may just wind up somewhere less hospitable…"

But he broke off, for at that moment, a clever, foxy face popped out of the bushes and regaled the two time travelers with a smile.

"Pardon me," said Robin Hood. "But did I just hear you fine gentlemen say something about gold?"