EPILOGUE - Midnight Plus 6 Years

Like they did every December 31st, the seven survivors of the Poseidon disaster gathered together at Butters' and Kenny's house. They'd quit 'celebrating' the arrival of the New Year, and instead got together to reminisce about how they'd all almost died on this night. Kyle had thought this might go on for a year or two, but now that it's been six, he'd begun to accept that this was going to be a regular fixture in their lives, at least for a while.

Craig was the only outsider they allowed into this gathering. He and Tweek were sitting next to each other on one of the couches having a whispered conversation. Tweek was drinking coffee from Kenny's skull and roses beer stein; Craig had a can of Mountain Dew.

"It's almost midnight," Kenny said, picking up the TV remote. "I guess we could watch the ball drop." It was a rerun from two hours ago on one of the local networks; they gathered around to watch the crowd in Times Square go insane as midnight rolled around. They were quiet as the New Year arrived, but when the crowd began singing Auld Lang Syne, they all sang along, both verses. Tweek and Cartman had taught them the lyrics the first year they'd done this.

At 12:05 the phone rang. "This is sort of late," Kenny said, turning the TV down and getting up to answer the phone. "Hello?" He listened for a moment with a puzzled expression, and then his face suddenly lit up happily. He snapped his fingers, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

"Robin! Hey, man, how are you?" He listened for another moment, and then interrupted. "Hey, Robin, hang on a second…let me put you on speaker phone, okay? We're all here, all seven of us!" Everyone gathered around Kenny as he flipped a switch on the side of the phone. "There. Now we can all hear you."

"Hey, guys!" The voice was deeper, but there was no doubt that it was Robin's.

"Hey Robin," Stan replied first.

Without a pause came the same voice: "Hey Stan!"

"Hi Robin," Wendy said. "How's your hand doing?"

"Hi Wendy…or is that Dr. Testaburger? It's great now; it's like nothing ever happened to it."

"That's wonderful to hear, Robin. And you can call me Wendy…or Dr. Cartman."

Robin laughed. "So you and Eric…?"

"Hey Robin," Cartman interrupted. "Yeah, we figured if we could survive being in a shipwreck together, we'd probably survive being married to each other too." He put one of his huge hands around her waist and pulled her to him.

The other Poseidon survivors took turns saying hello. Once they'd made their way around the room, Craig deadpanned: "Hey Robin."

From the phone: "Uh…" They could hear laughter on the other end, coming from two different people. "Who's that?"

"This is Craig Tucker."

"Oh…hey Craig! So you and Tweek are still…" Robin's voice trailed off.

"Yeah. Me and Tweek are still." Tweek was standing behind Craig and nuzzled his neck happily.

"I'm really glad to hear that." The sincerity in his voice shined through, even though the tinny-sounding speaker. "And hey, there's someone else here, too. Say hi to Pete!"

"Well, hey Pete!" Kenny said. There was a chorus of hellos from everyone in the room.

After a few moments, Robin said, "Hey, I, uh, finally told Pete all about you guys. We're…together now too."

"Aw, that is fucking—sorry—that is awesome, Robin!" Kyle replied. "Um, how long have you two been…?"

"Fifty one days," Robin and Pete both answered, laughing.

"Not that anyone's counting or anything though," Butters said. "Congratulations you two, that is wonderful!"

"Thanks," Pete said, "It is pretty nice." They could hear the smile in his voice. "Hey, we wanted to ask you guys something. Robin and I want to drive out west for a couple weeks this summer after we graduate high school, go hiking and camping a couple days maybe, and neither of us have ever seen real mountains—"

Robin interrupted. "And we looked at your town on the map, and there's lots of mountains there. The thing is, we have to kind of do this on a budget. We were sort of hoping…"

"You want to come stay with us?" Kenny said happily. "Sure! Come stay as long as you want to; we'll show you all the mountains you'd ever want to see."

"Great!" Pete said. "Uh…and I wanted a chance to thank you guys in person for, you know, helping Robin."

"Oh dude, that was our pleasure," Stan said. "You have no idea how happy we are that you two called. We're grinning like a bunch of idiots here; well, all except for Cartman, but he's a heartless sociopath."

"Ey!" Cartman said. "Watch it, hippy!"

They talked for another ten minutes and once they said goodbye and hung up, the four couples stood together looking at the phone. Kyle took one of Stan's hands in both of his.

"Hey Stan?"

"Yeah, Kyle?"

"Next year…how about we celebrate New Year's…instead of this fucked up anniversary of the disaster we lived through?"

Stan looked around the room and saw that all eyes were on him. He leaned forward to give Kyle a kiss.

"Sounds good to me, dude."

THE END

AFTER WORDS: In the movie, after the hole had been cut through the hull and the rescuer called down, "How many of you down there?" James Martin had answered "six." To get from six to eighteen I added the seven people from South Park, Robin's parents…and saved three peoples' lives (four, counting Robin's death in the novel): Reverend Scott, Linda Rogo, and Belle Rosen.

The first time I saw The Poseidon Adventure was when I was 14, and I became rather obsessed with it. Because he was so close to my age, I identified pretty strongly with the Robin Shelby character. It wasn't until months later that I read the Paul Gallico novel, and it was my first major experience with a movie being very different than the book it was based on. I took Robin's death in the novel pretty hard…and the opportunity to write this story 40 years later sort of became a way to set something right with the universe. I figured while I was in there I would save a few more, so I gave them all happy endings. I just wish I could have saved Mr. Acres too.

Thank you for reading!