Chapter 32: Truth or Consequences

10 CPTV (PBS, Connecticut)
The New Stoicism

"The Twentieth Century has taught us two important lessons.

"First, the universe is populated by a multitude of strange and wondrous species, many of whom are far superior to us in intellect and technological progress.

"Second, they all despise humanity and wish we were dead.

"How is the thinking person to respond to this?"


*CLICK*


39 TBS
Movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark

"Get back to Cairo. Get us some transport to England: boat, plane, anything. Meet me at Omar's. Be ready for me. I'm going after that truck."

"How?"

"I don't know, I'm making this up as I go."


*CLICK*


20 WTXX (UPN, Waterbury)
People's Choice Movie of the Week

"We now return you to the movie voted Connecticut's favorite for the fifth week running: Soylent Green."

"You've got to tell them! SOYLENT GREEN IS..."


*CLICK*


19 WGN
Magnum, P.I.

"As you may have noticed, I have fired the groundskeeper. Until I find a successor, Magnum, I'd like you to assume some of the responsibilities."

"But Higgins, I don't know the first thing about gardening!"

"I assure you, the kind of work I had in mind requires no intelligence whatsoever."

"Like what?"

"Like distributing fifteen hundred pounds of recycled vegetation that was delivered this morning."

"Recycled vegetation? What do you mean 'recycled vegetation'? Recycled how?"

"Through a cow, of course."


*CLICK*


77 CSPAN
Senate Subcommittee On the U.S. Auto Industry

"Chairman, the picture you paint of your company is indeed dire. What do you think needs to be done to save the auto industry?"

"Save it? There's nothing that can be done to save it. All things must inevitably end. Sure the American auto industry had a good run, but it's time for others to take over, as we sink into inevitable obsolescence."

"...oh. I guess you're dismissed, then."


*CLICK*


82 HBO
Movie: Real Genius

"I never sleep, I don't know why, I had a roommate I drove her nuts, I mean real nuts, they had to take her away in an ambulance and everything, she's okay now, but they had to transfer her to another school, but I don't know if that had anything to do with my fault, but listen, if you ever need someone to listen when you need to talk you just let me know, because I'm just a couple doors down from you guys and I never sleep, OK?"


*CLICK*


36: ESPN
SportsCenter

"Today's Career-Ending Move of the Week is brought to you by the Life Insurance Industry. When your career inevitably ends in failure, isn't it comforting to have a good life insurance plan?"


*CLICK*


41 TNN
Movie: "Crocodile" Dundee

"Mick, give him your wallet!"

"What for?"

"He's got a knife!"

"That's not a knife. This is a knife."


*CLICK*


53 MTV
Total Request

"'Cause it's a bitter sweet symphony, this life
Trying to make ends meet
You're a slave to money then you die
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places
where all the veins meet yeah

No change, I can't change
I can't change, I can't change
But I'm here in my mind
I am here in my mind
But I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mind
No, no, no, no, no."


*CLICK*


27 Disney
Movie: The Rescuers

"Oh, it's that poor little young-un. She's trying to run away again."

"It's Penny. Oh, how terrible. Hurry, we've got to find out where they're taking her!"

"You need a boat. Evinrude's got the fastest boat around here. Evinrude, wake up! Start up the engine, boy! Send Evinrude back as soon as you need help."


*CLICK*


70 CNN
Headline News

"...there were no survivors. We now turn to Greg Evans with the latest update of 'The Emperor Under Siege'."


Finally hearing something that interested her, Carolyn turned to look at the television, hoping that she would hear something useful before the channel randomly changed again.

Underneath the image of the news anchor at his desk, the scrolling tickertape read [SERBIA SEALS KOSOVO'S BORDER WITH ALBANIA.]

"Yes, this is Greg Evans, here in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where the siege enters its second day."

[LIAR] read the tickertape. [IF THE SIEGE WAS STILL GOING ON . . . ]


*CLICK*


05 WNYW (Fox, NYC)
Sam & Max

"Death from above!"

Oddly for a Saturday morning cartoon, Sam & Max had a news ticker identical to CNN's. It read, [. . . WHERE IS THE SOUND OF THE ASSAULT?]

"Lain?" Carolyn asked the television. "Is that you?"

[PLEASE COME CLOSER TO THE MICROPHONE, I CAN'T HEAR YOU VERY WELL.]

Carolyn and Honker positioned themselves so they could watch the television and still be heard by the Emperor's monitoring equipment, which Lain had managed to commandeer once again.

"Is the Emperor's robot army defeated?" asked Carolyn.


*CLICK*


18 WHCT (Independent, Hartford)
Pinky & the Brain

"Well I think so, Brain, but if Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why does he keep doing it?"

[YES, BUT NIMNUL SURVIVED, SO YOU HAVE TWO HOURS BEFORE HE RETURNS TO CONNECTICUT.]

"How are you doing this?" asked Honker. "That's an analog set."

[A SIMPLE MATTER OF MODIFYING THE SIGNAL AT THE TRANSMITTER.]


*CLICK*


09 WWOR (UPN, NYC)
Extreme Dinosaurs

"These dinosaurs...are extreme."

[IT WOULD TAKE A TIME LORD TO BE ABLE TO RECONSTRUCT THIS CONVERSATION.]

"Stop showing off," said Carolyn. "Just out of curiosity, how was Nimnul defeated? How was my father involved?"


*CLICK*


86 TMC
Movie: Rustler's Rhapsody

"Rex is coming! He's coming! And he's standing in the saddle!"

"Standing in the saddle?"

Yup, standing in the saddle.

[YOUR FATHER HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THE DAY WAS SAVED BY SOME JERK IN A MASK AND CAPE.]

"The Masked Marvel!"


*CLICK*


03 WFSB (CBS, Hartford)
The "Weird Al" Show

"This just in: 'ping pong' spelled backwards is 'gnop gnip'."

[THE SAME. HE TOOK DOWN THE ENTIRE ARMY WITH DOCTOR IRWIN'S SECRET WEAPON.]

"Not the nuclear-powered robo-bees?"

[YES.]

"Nuclear-powered robot bees?" asked Honker. "That sounds impossible, even for Dr. Irwin. Did any of her inventions work before?"

"Well, the KEEN worked, but not as she planned. The stuff she made based on other people's designs worked. Otherwise, nothing she invented worked...before the day she met Nimnul."

Honker looked down at the copy of Waldo & Magic Inc. in his hands. "You're not saying..."


*CLICK*


48 Sci-Fi
MST3K: Invasion of the Neptune Men

"A tiny stick! No! Cancel the invasion!"

"Yes, of course! Why didn't I think of that before?"

[YOU BETTER NOT BE THINKING WHAT I THINK YOU'RE THINKING.]

"Nimnul changed nothing! Magic is loose in the world!"

[THAT'S WHAT I WAS AFRAID YOU WERE THINKING-YOU'VE GOT THIS ALL WRONG.]

"The world is pleuripotent, and reality is just a consensus opinion."

[THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS ROAD YOU ARE HEADING DOWN. I URGE YOU TO THINK VERY CAREFULLY BEFORE . . . ]


"Carolyn Maughlarde?" asked Officer Lee.

"Yes?"

"Your transport is waiting for you outside. There's also a package waiting for you."

"And it's not even my birthday! Goodbye, folks!"

"Good luck!" said Tom.

"You know what, I think I'll make my own luck."

[YOU'RE PUTTING US ALL IN GRAVE DANGER! IF YOU ARE NOT VERY CAREFUL, YOU COULD BRING THE WHOLE WORLD DOWN AROUND YOU! DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKES THAT I MADE! CAROLYN! CAROLYN!]


*CLICK*


48 Sci-Fi
V: The Series

"You know, I never lost in mortal combat."

"Idiot. If you had, you'd be dead."


*CLICK*


There was a steel cage on the mahogany table.

The cage was three feet across, two feet high, and two feet deep. It was made up of steel bars spaced a half-inch apart. The door of the cage was secured with an ancient brass smokehouse padlock, the keyhole covered with a sliding panel in the shape of a lightning bolt. The floor of the cage was covered with woodchip bedding, and a full glass water bottle was attached to an inside wall. Inhabiting the cage were two chipmunks, two mice, a small turtle and a pink bat. Hanging inside the cage from the back wall were five plastic doll hangars. The first held a little faux-leather jacket and a matching fedora with two slits cut in the top, the second held a little Hawaiian shirt, the third a not-so-small aqua pullover sweater, duffel coat and aviator's cap, the fourth held an oddly-shaped red pullover sweater, and the last held a small lavender jumpsuit, belt and blue goggles. Sitting behind the table and looking at this clothing in some confusion was Galt Braunbight, a veteran newscaster who thought he had seen everything strange and unusual in the course of his career. On the opposite side of the cage was a television camera. Seeing that the camera was transmitting, Braunbight pushed the cage to one side.

"Ah, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. What you just saw is the center of the controversy that brings the world today to Gogol Mansion, in picturesque northwestern Connecticut. Those were the Rescue Rangers. Please note that I am only allowed to say the words 'Rescue Rangers' today because I am discussing the law that forbids their utterance together. Under any other circumstances, saying those two words is considered a felony. And having any closer association with these Rescue Rangers is an act of treason against Emperor Norton II. The statute that instituted these rules, Imperial Law 567423, has been brought up for review by you, the people of Earth.

"This is a very unusual procedure, only used once before, when this hair of mine was still its natural color. Back then, the voting procedure was done with telephone and plain old mail. Those methods will still work, and the appropriate addresses and phone numbers should be scrolling at the bottom of your screen. The preferred method, however, will be by way of the Wired, using the '567423 Review' node. This method will verify your identity and employ a whole host of other anti-fraud measures that an old fogey like myself couldn't begin to understand. That node also has the complete text of the law and statistics regarding how it has been implemented and how much has been spent to enforce it. By one of these three means, you will be asked to decide whether this law should continue to stand, or if it should be overturned and all individuals convicted of violating it should be pardoned.

"That brings us to the main purpose of this broadcast, to provide a debate between advocates arguing to maintain or to abolish this law. The debate has been sponsored, with limited commercial interruptions, by Coo-Coo Cola ('Bottled in Pensacola') and Coin/Clutch Jewelers ('When You Simply Must Be Wearing the Largest Gem in the Room'). I, Galt Braunbight, will be the moderator of this discussion to present the different sides of the issue. Arguing in favor of the law, we have Francine Orlac Nulton, daughter of millionaire industrialist Peter Orlac, empress of the world, and one of the most intelligent and cultured women I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Mrs. Nulton, it is an honor to meet you once again."

"Why, thank you."

"And may I also note that you have done an excellent job of maintaining and restoring this mansion? This place is absolutely spotless."

"Oh, well thank you once again. I try to do my best to keep the forces of decay at bay in my home."

"And that dress..."

"This? Oh, it's nothing."

"I forgot to ask: how has your quest to regain control of Orlac's Machines gone?"

"As a matter of fact, the judgment came down this morning: I am now president of the company."

"Congratulations! If I may ask, what are your plans?"

"Well, once I have the company reorganized to my satisfaction, I intend to replace the current product line with something worthy of the Orlac name. But enough about me. Surely you need to introduce my opponent in the debate."

"Well, if you insist."

"I do."

"Very well. Arguing against the statute is Carolyn Maughlarde, high school graduate, in some parts of this country not even a legal adult."

"I suppose I should resent that."

"Ah-ah-ah! It's not your turn to speak yet, young lady."

Francine Nulton was indeed impeccably dressed and coiffed. Carolyn, on the other hand, despite her best efforts to the contrary, still looked like she had spent the last twenty-four hours in jail. The two women were standing behind podiums on a raised stage at one end of the conference room. Next to Carolyn's podium was a head-sized cardboard box. Peter Orlac had included the conference room in his 1958 renovation of Gogol, but it had rarely seen any use. Peter Orlac had preferred his New York offices for announcements, while Harold Largess preferred more grandiose locations, like standing on the head of the Statue of Liberty. Above their heads was a large skylight, relic of an era when people actually had a reason to look up at the sky. All it showed currently were gray clouds and a steady torrent of rain falling vertically.

"Do I get a turn to speak?"

"The debate will be in two parts," Braughnbight continued. "The Empress will begin by stating her position on the first topic for debate for three minutes, and then the challenger will be allowed to express her position for two minutes. This will be followed by a five-minute period where the two debaters will be allowed to question each other. It will be my job to make sure this part of the debate remains civil, and I may extend the time limit at my discretion. After that, the challenger will have three minutes to sum up, and the Empress will get two minutes to have her final word. After a brief intermission, the second topic for debate will follow, with the order of speaking reversed. Finally, if the debate has raised any additional topics worthy of discussion, those will be covered one at a time in the same format as before. With the rules established, let us begin.

"The first topic of debate is the Rescue Rangers television program. Imperial Law 567423 holds the contents of this program to be treasonous to the Emperor. Would Your Excellency care to explain why this is the case? You have three minutes."

Francine nodded. "Galt, ladies and gentlemen of the world, I bid you welcome to Gogol, the home of Emperor Norton Nimnul. The deeds of Norton Nimnul do not need to be stated; they are known by every one of you. And his work for the world continues today. Even as we speak, the Emperor is risking his life to personally lead an expedition to recover the Moon from the band of miscreants who have seized it, a group that if not stopped will be in a position to indiscriminately lay waste any spot on Earth they should choose.

"Norton Nimnul's job is to protect the world from any sort of extraordinary danger it should face, and, in addition, he considers it his obligation to use his genius to serve this world, to improve the quality of life of every person living upon it. In return for this responsibility, he is granted certain rights not given to most people on Earth. For example, he has a security force, paid for with public funds, to protect him from the deranged individuals that always tend to fixate on those more powerful and beloved than themselves.

"With Imperial Law 567423, the emperor has requested another privilege: the right to protection from slander. The emperor has made the details of his past public knowledge. The Rescue Rangers program, on the other hand, was made without the emperor's participation, and without his consent. How, then, can it be trusted to truthfully portray the details of his life, especially as this show casts the emperor as one of the antagonists? The answer is that it cannot.

"In addition, the very existence of this program is suspicious. So long before Norton Nimnul's arrival, how could anyone have known about his existence? The creator and head writer of the show, E. Thaddeus Rockwell, always claimed in interviews that the show was completely fictional. Now that the presence of Norton Nimnul has revealed this claim to be a lie, Mr. Rockwell is nowhere to be found. He has become a fugitive from the law.

"So where did Mr. Rockwell learn about Norton Nimnul? We can only speculate, but the emperor has a theory. He believes that Mr. Rockwell was contacted across the dimensions by the evil genius of the Rescue Rangers, Gadget Hackwrench. This Gadget must have invented a device that allowed her to communicate with individuals on parallel Earths, and she used this to propagate her lies about those individuals on her enemies list. Norton Nimnul was especially targeted, because of his genius, of which she was understandably jealous. Is it any wonder, then, that on the Rescue Rangers show that resulted, this same Gadget is portrayed as a nearly-perfect character? While Norton Nimnul, on the other hand, is shown as grotesquely short and hunchbacked, a stereotypical mad scientist complete with lightning-equipped mountaintop laboratory?

"In short, The Rescue Rangers is a tissue of lies, deliberately designed to harm the reputation of Norton Nimnul, and hinder him from carrying out his work for humanity. For this reason, the show should be banned, and all recordings of it destroyed."

Braunbight turned to Carolyn, picking up a stopwatch. "You may begin your rebuttal to the Empress and the seven hundred million people currently watching this broadcast...now."

It took a moment for the young woman to find her voice, as the weight of all those people sunk in. "Ladies and gentlemen," she finally began, "our world has been graced with The Rescue Rangers, which we thought was a fictional TV show. The critics of the time thought it was, the people who watched it thought it was, and yet here we stand in a world ruled by a character from that show. It was not fiction, it was news, and news is exempt from prosecution.

"This TV show was not staged, it was merely a person reaching out and somehow seeing the adventures of this group of animals, in another parallel universe. The show was not one that was built as a 'tissue of lies', rather it was merely as if someone recorded real life, and that is exactly what it was. The fact that it seemed to come out episodic was just a byproduct of the sorts of adventures that this group of animals were having. In that, the show is reality, the show is truth, the show is real. The events that happened within the show are reality, true and real, and the fact that they are not flattering to Nimnul is an unfortunate consequence of that reality and the events of another dimension. If he acted badly in that world, then that should be his problem, not ours for knowing what he did."

"Time's up."

"I'd like to know in what universe that was two minutes," Carolyn muttered.

Braunbight ignored that remark. "You now have five minutes to address each other."

"Nice speech," said Francine. "One problem though: your theory is just as speculative as the Emperor's."

"Ah, but I have proof." And with this, Carolyn picked up the cardboard box at her feet and removed from it a red football helmet with wires and lights attached.

"Was that part of your Halloween costume last year?"

"Yes, it's a blender and an inter-dimensional viewing apparatus, all in one! Nimnul himself said that he did not invent the Dimensional Viewer. It was created in the 1940's of his world, and it was very easy for him to reproduce it when he arrived on this world. Therefore, it should be no surprise that it was independently created here, on this world. It's called a KEEN, for Kaon-Emission Equivoyant Neuralyzer. Like the Dimensional Viewer, it shows you what your counterpart on another world is up to. E. Thaddeus Rockwell, contrary to his interviews, used it to create The Rescue Rangers show, and I managed to get my hands on it around the time of his disappearance."

"Does it still work?"

"It works wonderfully, and I'd be happy to demonstrate its use. Hopefully that will convince you that the show was based in fact."

"If the KEEN is what you say it is, then I myself will make a much better subject. My counterpart was the antagonist in an un-produced episode of the Rescue Rangers. I managed to find a copy of the script on the Wired, and it was quite prejudiced against me. I did not want to bring this up before, because the law was created to protect the Emperor, but I should point out that the Rescue Rangers had other antagonists on their show besides Norton Nimnul, any of whom might have counterparts with reason to not want to see this show aired."

"I'll certainly give you the chance to try this device out to view your counterpart. May I first ask her permission before I give you access to her mind? She's currently sitting right next to my counterpart." Carolyn put on the KEEN and flicked a switch, causing several lights to start flashing. "Hello, Tammy, are you receiving me?" As she said this, she turned a dial on the side of the helmet.

"Receiving you clearly, Carolyn," said a voice which emerged from the helmet and which was caught by Carolyn's podium microphone. The voice sounded similar to Carolyn's, but different somehow, like it was coming out of a smaller voicebox. "Winifred is with me. She's on lunch break, so we have to make this quick. I'll put her on the Viewer now."

Francine's eyes narrowed as she realized that this whole scenario was planned in advance. "On second thought," she said, "I'm not sure I want to place a strange device on my head. I hope you understand."

"Well then, we are at an impasse. Without a demonstration, how can I prove my claim that the Rescue Rangers show is based on truth?"

"The answer is simple. If the KEEN is truly based on the same principle as the Dimensional Viewer, we can move the venue of the debate to the bunker where the emperor keeps that device, and I can safely contact Winifred from there."

Carolyn reached up and turned down the volume on the KEEN, using this gesture to hide her momentary look of apprehension at the thought of Laurel being discovered.

Francine looked down at the podium and spotted a speck of dust. Noticing that the camera was now pointed at Carolyn, she got out a cloth and some wood cleaner and proceeded to scrub the speck into oblivion.

"Can we get all this television equipment down there?" Carolyn stalled. "I saw an interview with the Emperor soon after the switch, and it looked awfully small." She stopped to hear something from Tammy before continuing. "That's right, Tammy! The dampness down there will probably fog up the cameras. And the smell! It was converted from a bat cave, after all. Have you ever been down there, Your Excellency?"

Francine shuddered, and then started writing something on a scrap of paper. "You know, I wouldn't want to delay the debate just to move to another location. We are already taking up the valuable time of the people of the Earth by having this discussion, so let's not waste it. The Emperor originally constructed a working model of the device he used, before creating the machinery in the bunker. That model, and the Tesla coil that powers it, is still locked in a safe in the second guest bedroom. I'll have somebody retrieve it." One of Francine's guards passed her on the way out of the room, receiving the piece of paper with the safe's combination on it.


A few minutes later, the Tesla coil was sitting in the center of the conference room, spitting sparks in every direction. The television producers were not very happy with the amount of noise it produced, and had to take care never to have the coil and anybody in the same shot, as the brightness of the sparks drowned everything else out. After cameras were repositioned, more-appropriate microphones were substituted, and Francine triple-checked the settings on the model Dimensional Viewer on her podium, the debate could continue. Francine turned the device around in her hands. Unlike the original, this Viewer had a speaker attached.

"Tammy? Tammy?" asked Carolyn, still wearing the helmet.

"Yes?" the voice of Tammy replied.

"Change of plans. We'll be doing this one-way only. Winifred is not to use the Viewer. Just have her try to stay calm and keep her mind open."

"Done," Tammy replied after a pause.

"Go ahead," Carolyn told Francine.

Francine lightly rested her hand on the Viewer's handlebar. And saw the face of a red-furred cartoon character on the screen. It looked like no species she had ever encountered in the real world. She was seeing this character over the shoulder of a red-haired cartoon woman, who was sitting on the ground in the middle of a stereotypical mad scientist's laboratory. Of course, Francine thought glumly. Nimnul's old laboratory, straight out of the cartoons-where else would you go to make me look like an idiot? Thinking about turning her head caused the display to move accordingly, revealing a man and a woman in black trench coats, as well as a bird, a pink bat, two chipmunks, two mice and a fly. The last five characters were obviously the Rescue Rangers, even unclothed, while the bat was Foxglove. They were all looking at the red-haired woman when she suddenly spoke.

"I think that's her," she said, in a voice very similar to Francine's. This woman was Winifred.

Francine saw now that Winifred's head appeared to be semi-transparent. With an effort, she plunged inside it. The image on the screen continued to show the group in Nimnul's lab, but now superimposed upon Francine's vision was the landscape of Winifred's mind, a pink void in which floated memories and stray thoughts (one of which was "Whoa. That was weird."). Francine "grabbed" the most interesting memory and "spread it out" so she could "read" it.


The scene was pitch black.

"Winifred Cadwallader," said the voice of a mouse.

"Who said that?" Winifred asked, quietly, remembering what the guards did to her the last time they thought she was talking to herself.

"We are the agents of the Prisoner's Aid Society. Our first duty is to help all of those poor souls who have been wrongly imprisoned."

Winifred paused here. There was something that needed to be said, but she didn't want to say it. "So you think I've been wrongly imprisoned?" she asked, finally.

No response.

Winifred sighed. "I haven't been wrongly imprisoned. I have sought to impose my will on other sentients without their consent."

"It is good to have admitted this," replied a second murine voice. "You are now ready for our services."

"But you said..."

"The first duty of the PAS is to assist the wrongly imprisoned. The second duty is to rehabilitate Speakers who have been rightly imprisoned."

"The guards are coming with your dinner," the first voice said. "One of them has bet the other that they can provoke a temper tantrum out of you by calling you 'Freddie'. If you arrange for him to lose that bet, we will return in two hours."

"I will," vowed Winifred, having for the first time in years a good reason to behave.


"Interesting..." said Francine. The turn of an imaginary knob caused the vision of Winifred's mindscape to fade most of the way out of existence, returning the world of the conference room to the fore, a reminder that she had to watch what she said, as well as what Winifred said, as both were being picked up by the microphone on her podium. It also appeared that time had ground nearly to a halt while she was exploring, as the expressions of those around her looked identical to before. Francine turned the knob back to its original setting, returning focus to the inside of Winifred's head.

She grabbed another memory...


Winifred was wearing a shapeless lavender dress, a purple vest with white stars, and a headband. She was sitting astride a canister vacuum, which had decided to violate the law of gravity by floating a foot above the roof of a museum.

"Straggly scrub-brushes," she swore to herself. "What's taking those two so long?" She looked up to see Foxglove, hovering through more natural means. "Well, look who's shown up at last. It's about time!"

The bat landed on the end of the vacuum's hose attachment. "I...I brought you the list of ingredients, Winifred," she said, holding out a piece of typing paper on which was written a list of five items. The first two had been crossed off, leaving "Lightning Bug Bulbs", "A Chieftain's Hair" and "A Moon Rock".

Winifred grabbed the list. "Oh, some helper you are," she snapped. "I don't need this list anymore! Now get in there and help the others before I turn you into a Louisville Slugger!"

"Yes, of course, Winifred! Right away!" The bat took off and flew down over the edge of the building. Less than a minute later, she returned, with a slightly glowing rock clutched in her feet.

"Well, well, Foxglove!" she declared. "You succeeded! Maybe you'll make a decent witch's assistant after all!"

"Really? Do you really think so?"

"Once I complete my spell and become a real witch," said Winifred, taking the rock, "no one will stop me!"

"Haaaay, look at that balloon!" interrupted the spider Lou, who had climbed up onto the canister vacuum with the snake Bud.

Winifred looked to see a strange contraption, a flying bagpipe attached to a hardhat. The vehicle was somehow propelled by the song being emitted from the pipes. A mouse in overalls was visible playing the song on the pipe, while a mouse and two chipmunks were riding in the hardhat.

"I'm not afraid of a bunch of rodents in a bagpipe!" exclaimed Winifred. She leaned forward on the vacuum, causing it to fly down to a fountain. She used the hose attachment to vacuum up some water and stones. She turned around and handed the moon rock to Bud, ordering him to "hold this until I tell you different!" Then she leaned back, which caused the vacuum to fly straight up towards the flying bagpipe.

"What are you going to do?" asked Foxglove.

Without answering, Winifred flicked a switch on the canister, reversing the suction and blasting the bagpipe with water and rocks, nearly causing it to crash.

"They didn't do anything to you!" the bat protested, flying up into the face of Winifred. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I enjoy it!" the would-be witch cackled.


Francine now had the evidence she was looking for, but one memory looked particularly interesting...


It was the back room of the abandoned Laundromat, one second after midnight on All Hallows Eve. The windowless room was illuminated by flickering candlelight. Only the candles had just been melted by the blast of heat from one second earlier, so the flames were floating unsupported above the cracked concrete floor.

Winifred shook her head and slowly got up. She reached to the back of her head to feel something wet. Just touching it made her head ring like a gong. That head felt curiously light, like something had been removed from it.

"WINIFRED CADWALLADER," a spectral voice intoned, and the whole room shook.

It occurred to Winifred that the most important moments in her life always seemed to begin with someone saying her full name. More importantly, there was something different in this voice. In latter years Winifred trained herself until she could identify the species of anyone purely by their voice, but she never before and never again encountered someone with the same species as this voice. It wasn't even really a voice, in the sense that a voice is the vibration of a column of air altered by tongue, lips, nose and cheeks. There was nothing organic about this voice. It was as if the concrete floor was speaking to her, the four walls and the broken light fixtures shaping the sound. Winifred's world was speaking to her and yet at the same time, it seemed that Winifred was speaking to herself.

"IT HAS BEEN FIVE CENTURIES SINCE SOMEONE HAS SUMMONED ME WITH THAT SPELL."

"What have you done to me?" Winifred demanded, surprising herself with her daring.

"I HAVE REMOVED THAT WHICH WAS HOLDING YOU BACK FROM ENJOYING WHAT YOU MOST DESIRE: TO INFLICT PUNISHMENT UPON YOUR ENEMIES, TO HUMBLE YOUR TORMENTORS, AND TO MAKE ALL WHO SEE YOU TREMBLE AT YOUR MIGHT. TO ACHIEVE THIS, YOU MUST BECOME A FULL WITCH. HERE IS WHAT YOU MUST DO..."


At that moment, the dream contracted down until nothing could be heard, and all that was visible was Winifred's right shoe. Everything else had apparently been wiped from Winifred's mind. A few seconds later the memory picked up again:


"...IF YOU FAIL, THEN I WILL EXTRACT AN ALTERNATE PRICE...OUT OF YOU. NOW, BEFORE I GO, LET ME GIVE YOU A TASTE OF THE POWER YOU WILL RECEIVE..."


The memory was suddenly torn away by a ghostly Winifred. "Stay out of there!" she cried, crumpling the memory into a tiny ball and stuffing it under a metaphorical mattress. "I spend every waking moment trying to repress that memory...and the other one...and you just drag it out! You've seen enough, haven't you?"

"Yes," said Francine, "I've seen enough."


Francine removed her hand from the Dimensional Viewer's handlebar and turned off the switch.

"I am willing to concede on the first point," she said.