Post by redsycorax on Nov 23, 2022 3:39:26 GMT
Like Batman in some of the dodgier corners of the multiverse, Badman the Caped Criminal of Earth 12/55 has had incongruous and quite out of place SF -themed adventures. This one takes him into the distant future, long after the Earth's sun has turned into a red giant and then a white dwarf and finally a black dwarf and even further, when all the longest lived red dwarves have gone dark. This far future universe is full of decaying stellar remnants- black holes, neutron stars, white and black dwarves and brown dwarves that never got started in the first place. It's called the Degenerate Era for that reason and not for any cheap, smutty, prurient ones, thank you very much!!!
++
THE PRESENT:
As Brian Payne read a book on the latest developments in computer fraud, he was startled by an unseemly protrusion in space/time:
"Brian. Payne. Badman. Help. Me. It's. Captain John T. Pork of the Starship. Unimpressed. Help. Me. The starship's transporter. Overloaded. With my current weight. And went out of control. Blasting me. Across the space/time. Continuum."
"Tough, lardo. You only have yourself to blame. And I quote "Diet. Is Die. With a T on. It"
"You. Misunderstand. Brian. I'm. Taking you with. Me."
"No! Pork, you idiot..." But Captain Pork grabbed Brian Payne, somehow transforming him into his Badman secret identity and in his hammy grip, the hapless Caped Criminal was pulled through the pulsating cheap special effects of the Universe-55 time vortex, until...
THE DEGENERATE ERA: AROUND ONE QUINTILLION TO DUODECILLION CE OR THEREABOUTS:
"All right, Pork, where are we exactly?"
"Oh Badman. It's well. Into the. Degenerate Era. Of cosmic history."
"Am I to guess that this is an exceedingly feeble attempt to satiate your overactive libido?"
"Not. That. Sort of. Degenerate Era. Oh. No. What. Is It? I'm. Out. Of. Here!"
The young figure who had just joined them cleared his throat:
"Hi, I'm Scrabbly Grabbit."
"No, don't tell me. You're Earth-55's version of Ma Hunkel/Red Tornado I's friend Scribbly Gibbet."
"I would have thought that was obvious. What's a long-dead bad Batman parody like you doing in a decrepit era of cosmic history like this one?"
"I was sucked into Captain John. T. Pork's gravitational field and into this era. I might respond the same to your presence here? I imagine humanity is either extinct or has evolved beyond the confines of material existence?"
"Yes, either of them. We are the sole surviving sapients in this period of cosmic history, except for a few others who we'll meet shortly."
"Like that small yellow duck that just appeared beside us? Hey, buster. Aren't you supposed to be on Earth-C?"
"No! For I can travel the multiverse at will! I... am Infinity Duck!!!"
Badman burst out laughing: "Infinity What?!"
"Listen, you specieist ratfink! I have the powers of a deity, so you'd better zip the lip!"
"I refuse to be threatened by an avian with delusions of grandeur. Go on, zap me into next Thursday!"
"I can't, because physical constants aren't behaving particularly consistently anymore. Sorry, I have to go have an adventure with Earth-C's Zoo Crew in its version of this era. Watch yourself, corpulent criminal!" And with that, Infinity Duck disappeared in a blinding flash. Next came another wholly unexpected figure:
"Tremble in fear, because I am the Sandman!"
"No, you're not. According to Neil Gaiman's retcon, you're an unsuccessful Jack Kirby concept which didn't last particularly long and was rarely revived. Hence the strange speech emphases in your dialogue."
"How dare you! I'll banish you to the Dream Dimension. I am not to be flambeed with!"
"Badman, how are you cognisant of the Authorial Presence of the Veil Beyond, which Cannot Be Spoken Of?"
"Or Presences. Elementary, my dear Scrabbly. It's because of the number of intermittent discontinuities and hackneyed plotlines in our universe. This suggests the existence of a not particularly competent or bright metaphysical Author or Authors which implies a metaverse, which has seen better days."
"Help. Help. These. Smurves. Want to. Have me. For supper."
"Cannibal Smurves? See what I mean? No, don't tell me. There's a vicious struggle going on between the Smurves and Ewoks for what's left of this universe."
"But how did you know, Badman?"
"Possibly because the Degenerate Era is also a hideous wasteland of some ghastly characters that got dumped here because they were too ghastly even for Limbo. Hence that Aldebaran Fried Pikachu outlet and Gee Bees wailing in the disconsolate dorkness. I'm sorry. I mean darkness. Oh, look, a six-foot tall lapinohumanoid skeleton which is probably Jaxoff, given how much the current Presence obviously has it in for particularly awful media concepts. That's not even original. I bet he or she or they has a copy of the Legion of Regrettable Sidekicks with him. Ah. Oh look, a ghastly colour un-coordinated jacket from the eighties Sixth Doctor period of Doctor Who, thrown in because it belongs here. Put it on, Scrabbly and let's see if we can find a way out of this declining error of cosmic history. Oops. It looks like the Smurves have caught Captain Pork..."
"No. No. Is. This. The End. Of James. T. Pork?!"
"If his name is Pork, why is he so hammy?"
"Search me. Ah, a chartreuse hole."
"Shouldn't that be black?"
"Obviously someone's been redecorating."
CORRESPONDING TURQUOISE HOLE ON THE OTHER SIDE:
Abruptly, they were surrounded by a somewhat demonic group of elderly women on mobility scooters with bloodshot eyes, swilling whiskey and licking their lips:
"Hell's Grannies!"
"Hang on, that was a Freddie Pythons Flying Circus skit from the seventies. How did they get materialised and out here?"
"Possibly quantum flux, which is what lazy authors use to excuse plot inconsistencies and continuity errors AWP!!!" [At that point, Scrabbly Grabbit was abruptly disintegrated by a stray neutrino burst which had been travelling toward him for the last three billion years or so. Let this be a lesson to wisearse fanfiction characters who mock their Authors- R]
"No! Scrabbly!"
But at that point, who should show up, but: "Amoeba "Man?!" But weren't you wiped out when the Dork Multiverse got erased from existence?"
Amoeba "Man" pulsated in reply: "Yes, Brian Badman Payne. However, given the vast amount of aeons that have now elapsed since my native universe went flat, I have been able to regurgitate my atoms and being out of the quantum flux. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Wow, aren't these cliches handy!"
"Just out of curiosity, why did Wonder Woman think of you as a 'man' when amoebae are asexual/neuter and have no specialised organelles equivalent to (ahem) mammalian outdoor plumbing?"
"Who knows? Possibly because Robert Kanigher was an outright scientific ignoramus. It makes as much sense as me being a seven foot tall 'micro-organism.'"
"Ah. I see Hell's Grannies have vanished while we were conversing."
"Yes! It is because of I, Sandman, the Master of the Dream Dimension!!!"
"Amoeba Being, can you tell me why that nuisance pops up so intermittently?"
"He used to be in Limbo until that Legion of Super Heroes intervention shut it down, but everyone still forgot about him, apart from a few fanfiction authors on Earth-33 and Neil Gaiman, who killed him off once and for all. Unfortunately, this whole quantum flux plot device means that he still has a presence here."
"How? Surely no-one's alive to dream and his whole existence is redundant as a result?"
"Such are the mystical ways of the quantum flux, Badman."
"What. Are You Doing. Stop. Stop. I Feel. Dizzy. No. No. No. No."
"Oops. It looks like the Smurves have wholly consumed John. T. Pork. It looks like it's going to be one of those 'grim and gritty' episodes again."
"And why was that dialogue filched deliberately from the final Second Doctor episode of "The War Games" story arc? Amoeba Being, if we don't stop soon, this will degenerate into a Robot Chicken out take and no-one will ever see us again."
"What have you against the Robot Chickens? They are wonderful paean to success of Soviet Union's Five Year Plans and Triumph of the Dictatorship of the Communist Party Instead of the Proletariat."
"Excuse me, why do you bear more than a passing resemblance to Leonid Brezhnev?"
"I not clone of Glorious Leonid the Bejoweled! I was his third through seventeenth successors, Alyoshka Dubienken!"
"What? Hang on, surely that was Gorbachev?"
"Er, nyet..."
"Brian Badman Payne, I seem to detect curiously foreshortened telomeres, indicating that this Dubienken character is indeed a clone and is lying to us. And a corrupted one at that."
"Nyet! Nyet! I melting!!! Oh, my people's socialist advanced technology!! Nyettt..."
"Comrade Chairperson!" A heavy set woman stomped onto the scene, as Amoeba Being turned to Badman:
"Not again. You seem to know this woman, however?"
"Only from the history books. This is Mrs Elena Bereznik Blatantsky, founder of the Theosophistry Society in the nineteenth century."
"Ah! Badhunk! Come into my line backer muscular arms and together, we shall make children to repopulate this far future error."
"Sorry, Mrs Blatantsky, but dudes rock my boat and while you're the right build, you're the wrong gender."
"But what am I to do? The spirit world whisked me to this far future time and I am without human company?"
"Come away with me, the Sandman, and be my new consort!"
"Da! It's a deal, given how nicely tight your lycra is..." And finally, with that, the Sandman faded away to the Dream Dimension forever, or so one hopes.
"It looks like we need a completely unconvincingly prop to get us back to the early twenty first century. And before you ask, Badman, I can't go on living like this any more. It has no atmosphere, sunlight, gravity, and it's perilously close to total spatiotemporal cessation and entropy. Ah. Some conveniently placed time trousers!"
"All right, then. Will you be turning inexplicably villainous, then?"
"Actually, I was to start with, when my species attacked the alternate Earth in our universe and tried to marry our Wonder Woman."
"Good. We need far more badly conceptualised evildoers to take on the ghastly ripoff of the Justice League that is the Freedom Brigade of the United States."amd
And thus, with a burst of bargain basement BBC radiophonic workshop electronica, Badman and Amoeba Being were whisked back to 2022, to begin slightly shopworn and tatty lives of villainy.
THE END [3.07 PM, NOVEMBER 27 2022]
++
THE PRESENT:
As Brian Payne read a book on the latest developments in computer fraud, he was startled by an unseemly protrusion in space/time:
"Brian. Payne. Badman. Help. Me. It's. Captain John T. Pork of the Starship. Unimpressed. Help. Me. The starship's transporter. Overloaded. With my current weight. And went out of control. Blasting me. Across the space/time. Continuum."
"Tough, lardo. You only have yourself to blame. And I quote "Diet. Is Die. With a T on. It"
"You. Misunderstand. Brian. I'm. Taking you with. Me."
"No! Pork, you idiot..." But Captain Pork grabbed Brian Payne, somehow transforming him into his Badman secret identity and in his hammy grip, the hapless Caped Criminal was pulled through the pulsating cheap special effects of the Universe-55 time vortex, until...
THE DEGENERATE ERA: AROUND ONE QUINTILLION TO DUODECILLION CE OR THEREABOUTS:
"All right, Pork, where are we exactly?"
"Oh Badman. It's well. Into the. Degenerate Era. Of cosmic history."
"Am I to guess that this is an exceedingly feeble attempt to satiate your overactive libido?"
"Not. That. Sort of. Degenerate Era. Oh. No. What. Is It? I'm. Out. Of. Here!"
The young figure who had just joined them cleared his throat:
"Hi, I'm Scrabbly Grabbit."
"No, don't tell me. You're Earth-55's version of Ma Hunkel/Red Tornado I's friend Scribbly Gibbet."
"I would have thought that was obvious. What's a long-dead bad Batman parody like you doing in a decrepit era of cosmic history like this one?"
"I was sucked into Captain John. T. Pork's gravitational field and into this era. I might respond the same to your presence here? I imagine humanity is either extinct or has evolved beyond the confines of material existence?"
"Yes, either of them. We are the sole surviving sapients in this period of cosmic history, except for a few others who we'll meet shortly."
"Like that small yellow duck that just appeared beside us? Hey, buster. Aren't you supposed to be on Earth-C?"
"No! For I can travel the multiverse at will! I... am Infinity Duck!!!"
Badman burst out laughing: "Infinity What?!"
"Listen, you specieist ratfink! I have the powers of a deity, so you'd better zip the lip!"
"I refuse to be threatened by an avian with delusions of grandeur. Go on, zap me into next Thursday!"
"I can't, because physical constants aren't behaving particularly consistently anymore. Sorry, I have to go have an adventure with Earth-C's Zoo Crew in its version of this era. Watch yourself, corpulent criminal!" And with that, Infinity Duck disappeared in a blinding flash. Next came another wholly unexpected figure:
"Tremble in fear, because I am the Sandman!"
"No, you're not. According to Neil Gaiman's retcon, you're an unsuccessful Jack Kirby concept which didn't last particularly long and was rarely revived. Hence the strange speech emphases in your dialogue."
"How dare you! I'll banish you to the Dream Dimension. I am not to be flambeed with!"
"Badman, how are you cognisant of the Authorial Presence of the Veil Beyond, which Cannot Be Spoken Of?"
"Or Presences. Elementary, my dear Scrabbly. It's because of the number of intermittent discontinuities and hackneyed plotlines in our universe. This suggests the existence of a not particularly competent or bright metaphysical Author or Authors which implies a metaverse, which has seen better days."
"Help. Help. These. Smurves. Want to. Have me. For supper."
"Cannibal Smurves? See what I mean? No, don't tell me. There's a vicious struggle going on between the Smurves and Ewoks for what's left of this universe."
"But how did you know, Badman?"
"Possibly because the Degenerate Era is also a hideous wasteland of some ghastly characters that got dumped here because they were too ghastly even for Limbo. Hence that Aldebaran Fried Pikachu outlet and Gee Bees wailing in the disconsolate dorkness. I'm sorry. I mean darkness. Oh, look, a six-foot tall lapinohumanoid skeleton which is probably Jaxoff, given how much the current Presence obviously has it in for particularly awful media concepts. That's not even original. I bet he or she or they has a copy of the Legion of Regrettable Sidekicks with him. Ah. Oh look, a ghastly colour un-coordinated jacket from the eighties Sixth Doctor period of Doctor Who, thrown in because it belongs here. Put it on, Scrabbly and let's see if we can find a way out of this declining error of cosmic history. Oops. It looks like the Smurves have caught Captain Pork..."
"No. No. Is. This. The End. Of James. T. Pork?!"
"If his name is Pork, why is he so hammy?"
"Search me. Ah, a chartreuse hole."
"Shouldn't that be black?"
"Obviously someone's been redecorating."
CORRESPONDING TURQUOISE HOLE ON THE OTHER SIDE:
Abruptly, they were surrounded by a somewhat demonic group of elderly women on mobility scooters with bloodshot eyes, swilling whiskey and licking their lips:
"Hell's Grannies!"
"Hang on, that was a Freddie Pythons Flying Circus skit from the seventies. How did they get materialised and out here?"
"Possibly quantum flux, which is what lazy authors use to excuse plot inconsistencies and continuity errors AWP!!!" [At that point, Scrabbly Grabbit was abruptly disintegrated by a stray neutrino burst which had been travelling toward him for the last three billion years or so. Let this be a lesson to wisearse fanfiction characters who mock their Authors- R]
"No! Scrabbly!"
But at that point, who should show up, but: "Amoeba "Man?!" But weren't you wiped out when the Dork Multiverse got erased from existence?"
Amoeba "Man" pulsated in reply: "Yes, Brian Badman Payne. However, given the vast amount of aeons that have now elapsed since my native universe went flat, I have been able to regurgitate my atoms and being out of the quantum flux. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Wow, aren't these cliches handy!"
"Just out of curiosity, why did Wonder Woman think of you as a 'man' when amoebae are asexual/neuter and have no specialised organelles equivalent to (ahem) mammalian outdoor plumbing?"
"Who knows? Possibly because Robert Kanigher was an outright scientific ignoramus. It makes as much sense as me being a seven foot tall 'micro-organism.'"
"Ah. I see Hell's Grannies have vanished while we were conversing."
"Yes! It is because of I, Sandman, the Master of the Dream Dimension!!!"
"Amoeba Being, can you tell me why that nuisance pops up so intermittently?"
"He used to be in Limbo until that Legion of Super Heroes intervention shut it down, but everyone still forgot about him, apart from a few fanfiction authors on Earth-33 and Neil Gaiman, who killed him off once and for all. Unfortunately, this whole quantum flux plot device means that he still has a presence here."
"How? Surely no-one's alive to dream and his whole existence is redundant as a result?"
"Such are the mystical ways of the quantum flux, Badman."
"What. Are You Doing. Stop. Stop. I Feel. Dizzy. No. No. No. No."
"Oops. It looks like the Smurves have wholly consumed John. T. Pork. It looks like it's going to be one of those 'grim and gritty' episodes again."
"And why was that dialogue filched deliberately from the final Second Doctor episode of "The War Games" story arc? Amoeba Being, if we don't stop soon, this will degenerate into a Robot Chicken out take and no-one will ever see us again."
"What have you against the Robot Chickens? They are wonderful paean to success of Soviet Union's Five Year Plans and Triumph of the Dictatorship of the Communist Party Instead of the Proletariat."
"Excuse me, why do you bear more than a passing resemblance to Leonid Brezhnev?"
"I not clone of Glorious Leonid the Bejoweled! I was his third through seventeenth successors, Alyoshka Dubienken!"
"What? Hang on, surely that was Gorbachev?"
"Er, nyet..."
"Brian Badman Payne, I seem to detect curiously foreshortened telomeres, indicating that this Dubienken character is indeed a clone and is lying to us. And a corrupted one at that."
"Nyet! Nyet! I melting!!! Oh, my people's socialist advanced technology!! Nyettt..."
"Comrade Chairperson!" A heavy set woman stomped onto the scene, as Amoeba Being turned to Badman:
"Not again. You seem to know this woman, however?"
"Only from the history books. This is Mrs Elena Bereznik Blatantsky, founder of the Theosophistry Society in the nineteenth century."
"Ah! Badhunk! Come into my line backer muscular arms and together, we shall make children to repopulate this far future error."
"Sorry, Mrs Blatantsky, but dudes rock my boat and while you're the right build, you're the wrong gender."
"But what am I to do? The spirit world whisked me to this far future time and I am without human company?"
"Come away with me, the Sandman, and be my new consort!"
"Da! It's a deal, given how nicely tight your lycra is..." And finally, with that, the Sandman faded away to the Dream Dimension forever, or so one hopes.
"It looks like we need a completely unconvincingly prop to get us back to the early twenty first century. And before you ask, Badman, I can't go on living like this any more. It has no atmosphere, sunlight, gravity, and it's perilously close to total spatiotemporal cessation and entropy. Ah. Some conveniently placed time trousers!"
"All right, then. Will you be turning inexplicably villainous, then?"
"Actually, I was to start with, when my species attacked the alternate Earth in our universe and tried to marry our Wonder Woman."
"Good. We need far more badly conceptualised evildoers to take on the ghastly ripoff of the Justice League that is the Freedom Brigade of the United States."amd
And thus, with a burst of bargain basement BBC radiophonic workshop electronica, Badman and Amoeba Being were whisked back to 2022, to begin slightly shopworn and tatty lives of villainy.
THE END [3.07 PM, NOVEMBER 27 2022]