Eventually there will be a chapter without an author's note: Did you know I'm on twitter? I'd love to chat with the people who keep leaving me such lovely reviews. Come find me, my username is VikkieTheMimm Anyway. Onwards.

(-*-)

"This is creepy…" Castiel muttered, torches casting light down the long stone corridor.

"I know." Balthazar grinned. "Isn't it great?"

"Look at it…" Castiel motioned around the derelict equipment that appeared to have just been abandoned.

"What happened to this place?" Balthazar shone his light on the dust-covered bricks. "I mean, why did they die out?"

"Look around." Gabriel muttered. "I'm prepared to guess there wasn't much else to do."

"Hey…" Castiel started examining a particularly dusty nook behind some long-abandoned piece of alien equipment. "I don't think we're the first to explore this planet."

"What makes you say that?"

"Look! Mouse droppings!"

"You and your damn mice." Gabriel sighed. "Should have left you outside with the robot and bought the human."

"Wait…" Castiel stumbled to his feet, following after Gabriel. "You told Dean to wait outside? Why?"

"It's not like he'd do anything useful." Gabriel sighed, dismissing his semi-cousin with a wave. "Besides, don't you want this to be like the good old days? The three of us, doing things we really shouldn't?"

"They did make for good stories." Castiel conceded. Balthazar chuckled.

"Yes, and if I remember rightly, Castiel never got the happy ending."

Gabriel shrugged, grinning wickedly.

"I don't know what you mean."

Castiel sighed and muttered something to himself. Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

"Excuse me?"

"I said…"

"Shh!" Balthazar held up his hand, pointing down the tunnel. "What's that light?"
"Nothing." Gabriel dismissed. "Reflection of the torch. Now, Cas, have you got something you want to say?"

"I just think you've got no…"

"There is definitely something down there." Balthazar whispered, peering down the corridor. "Can't you hear that humming noise?"

"Balthazar; it's a dead planet. Castiel, I'm just looking out for your best interests. A post-traumatic primate is not your best interest."

"I'm not a child, Gabriel. I don't…"

"Ok, guys, I really think there's something going on down there. And that noise; listen!"

The humming was loud, and low, getting louder and more intense all the time. It was a throbbing, pulsating hum that shot through the nervous system.

"Hey, yeah. What the…"

There was a sudden screech, and a blinding light.

(-*-)

The Bloody Invaluable Book is, as has been previously mentioned, somewhat unevenly edited. In between the useful, the inaccurate and the depressing, lurk the entries which seem to have been submitted solely to fill a quota. These are usually stories or interviews which highlight particularly condemnable or commendable behaviour from certain galactic races, such as the Sma'aritens or an architect from the desert planet of Fewl who built his entire house, not only out of, but on top of, the Fewlian Shifting Desert, and was promptly made homeless and jobless when the desert lived up to its name and shifted, proving the old adage that it is a Fewlish man who builds his house on the sands.

One such tale is the story of one Victor Henrikson, a member of the elite Universal Special Forces who, after an evening of hard drinking with Gabriel Angeles, became quite obsessed with the whereabouts of all the disposable lighters he had brought over the course of his adult life. For a period of years, it became an increasing obsession, aided along by painstaking research, universe-wide interviews, and several heavy abuses of his authority, but eventually he found an answer.

He posed the theory that, somewhere in the ever expanding universe, or perhaps one of the uncountable and therefore potentially infinite parallel dimensions beyond, there was a planet inhabited entirely by living cigarette lighters. He believed that it was to this planet that lighters, once freed from their plastic prisons behind the counters of space ports and fuel stations, would quietly escape to, through liberal use of wormholes, dimension shifts, and their ability to stow away in bags and pockets of unsuspecting travellers.

The theory was an interesting one which quite charmed talk show hosts for a time, and Agent Henrikson grew quite wealthy on the profits, which would have all been fine if he hadn't later announced that he had not only found the planet in question, but claimed to have worked there for a while as an executive butler for an uppity family of Zippos. This was something of a wormhole too far, and Henrikson was locked away in a secure facility, given his own reality TV show, and promptly exiled from polite society.

When, out of nothing other than sheer, morbid curiosity, an expedition was sent to the galactic coordinates Henrikson had claimed was the location of the lighter planet, they found only a small moon, which was inhabited by a solitary man who refused to talk to them. That and a box of business cards for Gabriel Angeles' second hand lighter business.

Meanwhile, on the surface of Krippketha, two suns have just set. Dean gazed out over the fiery dusk, as the stars of an unfamiliar sky flickered into visibility. Sam the sarcastic cyborg noted his awe.

"I know. It's sickeningly depressing, isn't it?"

"What?" Dean stared at him. "You remember what sunsets were like on Earth, right? I've never seen anything like it..."

"Yes." Sam sighed. "But when you're been halfway around the cosmos and back, you realise that sunsets are just another mark of time slowly slipping by. And when you're a robot, you can't even rely on the fact that one day you'll get released from the whole messed up thing by dying."

Dean blinked at Sam for a moment.

"Do you get on well with the other robots?"

"I hate them. They're all so incredibly stupid. Hey, where are you going?"

"Somewhere else." Dean yelled, already walking away from the robot. He really wished he'd been evacuated from Earth with a coat; Krippkethan night was bitter cold, and his work shirt wasn't doing much to block it out. He flapped his arms around himself in an attempt to generate some heat.

"Yeah, it is a little cold out, huh?"

"Bah!" Dean yelled, recoiling as the small, nervy man stepped out of the darkness towards him. His robe and unruly hair meant that the outlines between him and his dark surroundings were blurred, so it took a while for Dean to pinpoint the exact location of the new arrival. Dean tried for something a bit more assertive.

"Who are you?"

The man stepped forward again, his pale hair and dark skin making him seem gaunt and ethereal in the dim moonlight. He was nervy, his hands shaking and his eyes darting left and right as he spoke.

"My name isn't important. Why did you yell?"

"Why? Dude creeps out of the shadows at you, you wouldn't jump?"

"I mean you no harm, Earth creature."

"Yeah, sure, apart from the thing with the guided missiles."

"An ancient computer-operated system." The man seemed apologetic, smiling awkwardly at Dean. "I think they just shoot a couple of missiles every now and then to justify their existence… but you still seem uncomfortable."

"Well, yeah… I mean, I was told this planet was dead."

"Dead?" The man chuckled. "No. We've been sleeping. You know, through all that universal recession stuff. Thought it would be better to wait until people could afford our business. You do know about that, right?"

"Uh… custom made planets?"

"Yes. It was actually a pretty enjoyable job. I liked making the hills and valleys."

"You don't say."

"I'm a simple guy... But yes, we hooked up the computers to the galactic stock market on one end and the cryochambers on the other. We had planned to awake when the recession had backed off enough to let people afford our services."

"Shrewd." Dean nodded, his corporate senses tingling. "Probably not particularly cost effective."

The man shrugged.

"I don't make the policy, I just follow it. Anyway… great events are about to unfold. You must come with me. What is your name?"

"Dean. Dean Winchester."

"Well… "Dean, Dean Winchester", you must come with me, or I'm afraid I'll have to take you." The man produced a small, deadly-looking pistol from his robe. "I know I'm not that threatening, but I understand that is standard protocol in today's world, and hopefully the gun communicates anything I can't."

"It does." Dean nodded, eyeing the gun. "Lead the way."

"We'll take my aircar." The man gestured to a small craft that looked like a cross between a golf buggy and a hovercar, as dark and shapeless as its surroundings. "We must go deep into the bowels of the planet, where as we speak the members of y race are slowly being re-awakened."

"Yeah, look…" Dean tried, before realising the situation was just too odd for him to protest usefully. "Well for starters, I don't even know your name."

"My name… my name is…" The man took a deep breath, staring sadly into the distance. "Shurleyburlfast."

Dean made a noise that sounded something like a car back-firing into a whoopee cushion.

"What?"

"Shurleyburlfast… Look, I told you it wasn't important." The man cringed as he started up the aircar and they began to zoom towards a similar entrance to the one Gabriel and the others had gone down. He sighed, as Dean tried not to laugh in his face. "Just… call me Chuck, ok?"

(-*-)

The principle that things are not as they appear is the foundation for universal arts, entertainment, literature and politics. Take, for example, the recently demolished planet Earth, the ape-descended inhabitants of which had always believed that they were the most intelligent species and not, in actual fact, the third. Man had believed himself more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much (the wheel, nuclear fusion, personalised ringtones and so on) while all dolphins had done was mess around in the water entertaining tourists. Oddly, dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent for exactly the same reason, which does call into question the average intelligence of an Orlando Resort mascot.

However, there was a third species. Not native to Earth, these pan-dimensional beings constructed such careful and intricate tests on the intelligence of the lesser species that only one of them ever began to suspect it, and his attempts were dismissed as comic science fiction by the populace at large. Dean Winchester, certainly, was completely unaware, although he was beginning to believe everything was possible. He stared around as his surroundings raced past them. He didn't know what speed they were going, but it was fast.

"I should warn you." Chuck gripped the steering tight. "The next room doesn't actually exist inside this planet. It goes through a hyperspace pocket dimension, and it kinda screws with your sense of perspective. Scares the shit out of me."

Dean was about to ask exactly what he meant, when the world apparently decided to explode around him. It opened out into a cavernous chamber so wide and so tall that it seemed to be an endless sea of white walls, which Dean's brain had to bend and sprain itself to comprehend. They continued to tear through the endless room.

"Welcome to the factory floor."

"The light…"

"Yeah, it's a doozy, huh? This is where we made our planets, back in the day."

"And… what, are you starting everything up again?"

"No." Chuck laughed. "The galaxy isn't nearly recovered enough for our fees. This is… something of a special job."

"What's so funny?"

"Look up ahead."

Dean peered into the distance, and saw a shape emerge on the horizon. It was familiar. It was sickeningly, horrifyingly familiar.

"But…" Dean's mind was a blank. His jaw dropped as his eyes continued to stick to their stories. "That's the Earth."

"Yeah. Well, mark two. We were all very upset when we heard about it being demolished. I mean, you must be heartbroken."

"Yeah… yeah, thanks."

"I mean, if it had happened five minutes later, it wouldn't have mattered."

"What?"

"The final experiment was interrupted five minutes before it got completed. The clients caused a huge fuss, and we had to dust off the old blueprints to make it again."

"Whoa, what? 'Again'? Are you saying you made the Earth the first time around?"

"Yeah. I personally oversaw San Francisco, but I think I've got… I think they call it Minnesota, this time around? Either way, we're having to build quickly; the mice are furious."

"Wait." Dean said, his brain still desperately trying to keep up with all of the new information he was being given. "Wait. Wait… Experiments? Five minutes too early? Mice? I don't… what?"

"Yes." Chuck looked at him like he was amazed Dean had missed the memo. "The whole thing was the mice's experiment; a ten-million year research program into finding the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. It was about to finish, as well, when the Rhaptoor task force destroyed it all. Biggest bureaucratic screw-up in history. Hey, are… are you alright? You look kinda pale."

Dean stared at his surroundings, before staring at the nervous, squirrelly man who had apparently made San Francisco.

"I'm just wondering whether it'd be easier to just give up and go crazy right now."

Chuck thought for a moment, before shrugging and driving on.

"Maybe we should go to my office. There's some tapes there that might help clear up any confusion you've got, and you look like you could use a coffee."

"Yeah…" Dean sighed. "Coffee sounds good. If you've got any whisky, I wouldn't say no."

"Whisky?" Chuck laughed. "You Earth creatures. So quaint."