As they made their way toward the food court's exit Tina pointed to an empty table and suggested they stick around and watch the floor show...

"It is pretty wild," agreed Kendra as she took in the spectacle of all the other patrons who had undergone transformations. A giraffe boy and an elephant girl seemed very much in love as they shared an ice cream sundae, oblivious to the hard stares of the normals. A party of piratine changelings were banging their heavy hooks on their table + singing pornographic sea chanties, and a bevy of TGD-girls had pushed a bunch of tables together to form a catwalk for a spontaneous fashion show, while overhead the nebulous form of an omnipotal fancier floated around creating miniature solar systems...

Tina shook her head, "That's not the floor show. I meant the one starring your two buddies over there."

"They're not my buddies," frowned Kendra, still recoiling from all the vicious things her former best friends had said to her, "Not anymore..."

"You'll enjoy this then. I guarantee they won't be calling anyone a freak after today!"

"What do you mean?" asked Kendra. The wicked vulpine grin on Tina's face was making her nervous.

"Just keep watching. You'll see..."

I LOVE LUCIDITY
by Laika Pupkino
PART TWO: IN DREAMS BEGIN RESPONSIBILITIES

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[WARNING: THIS PART CONTAINS A GROSS-OUT SCENE THAT MAY BE A WEE BIT OVER THE TOP...]
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EARLY SUNDAY MORNING:

On those infrequent occasions that their land-line phone rang at 1:30 a.m., it always turned out to be a wrong number, "Uh, sorry..." mumbled to the answering machine or no message at all. But tonight something made Kenny jump up out of a dead sleep and answer it.

Maybe it was the eerie sense of being all alone in the big apartment; since he just knew somehow that Jimmy hadn't made it home yet, and as he hurried to get to the device by the fifth ring he had an uncanny certainty that it was Jim who was calling, and that he was in real trouble.

Which he definitely seemed to be, although Kenny could barely hear him:

"KENNY! Buzzard gizzard gunk mishima moon! Seriously man, cops everywhere! I'm in the clown, but wishy gick ginkle the whole place, so I'm totally screwed here!"

His brother's cell phone was a cheap piece of crap to start with, and the way he was whispering rendered him completely unintelligible. "You need to talk louder, Jimmy."

"I can't, man! The whole flip flap follicle poodle zipper gump! The only ones who are getting away are jumping into the harbor, but I had to be clever and go this way! I thought it'd lead me out, but a clamboggle wiggled the mop and the fence is too high. Shit!"

Jim sounded kind of drunk, too. Kenny pushed the phone's volume control to the maximum setting, "So the rave got busted?"

"Well duh, what do you think's going on here? I'm hiding in a ....... it's this big ugly fiberglass clown's head, but they're coming this way. I never saw so many fucking cops in my life!"

Somewhere in the echoing maze of buildings and half-disassembled rides an amplified voice commanded- "YOU WITH THE GREEN HAIR- STOP! "

"You're not still holding, are you?"

"No. First thing I did when they showed up was to ditch it all. But listen, I need you to-"

"Even the transgenedrine?" asked Kenny. He knew where the rave was being held, maybe he could go there tomorrow, poke around, find it.

Jim barked fiercely,"WHAT?!"

"I-I just thought that stuff was legal, was all I meant," stammered Kenny. Jesus! Bite my freakin' head off why don't you?!

"If I'm curt with you it's because time is of the essence," said Jim by way of apology, "Maybe TGD is legal right now but they do weird things with the law, I'm not taking any chances. I've got that prior, you know..."

The things you learned in the weird hours of the morning. "No I didn't know."

"Well I do, for possession. And if they get me---which unless there's a tidal wave or something they're gonna do---they might be showing up there. So you have to get rid of everything. Everything in those boxes."

"Get rid of it?"

"Yes, down the toilet! A couple at a time so you don't clog the pipe."

"I thought that was a safe place we found. You sure about this?"

"Look, don't argue! That up there doesn't matter, it's all trash. A dumb little hobby at best, and at worst ......... Well in the wrong hands it can be bad."

"Like a two-by-four?" offered Kenny.

"I guess. And who am I to think I know who's a recreational user and who could be destroying their life? I got way more into this bullshit than I ever planned when I started. Got greedy. And I sure as hell never should've dragged you into this, a fourteen year old kid! I'm such a monkey molecule google the fugs..."

"Can you speak up a little?"

A male voice quite distinct from Jim's called out jovially, "Hello there! Keep your hands where I can see them, and slowly step out of the clown."

"Aw shit-"

The line went dead.
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<==0===0===0===0===0===0===0===0==>

Kenny went into his bedroom closet, opened the attic hatch as quietly as he could, took down the three boxes, ordering himself to THINK!

He couldn't exactly flush the scale down the toilet, so he set it up on the kitchen counter and stuck a banana (313.77 g) on top of it, then he pulled out some measuring cups and a few of his mom's low-carb recipe books and scattered them around it---like a still life or something---so that for the next several hours it was not some piece of drug dealer's paraphenalia but part of a weight conscious housewife's diet regimen. Hidden in plain sight, he smiled, like in that Edgar Allen Poe story we read in English class...

He lugged the other two boxes into the bathroom. Looked at the toilet, looked at the boxes brimming with neat little parcels of foliage. Goddamn it!

He knew he would not be faulted later if he did exactly as his brother had instructed. But it seemed such a waste to destroy all those beautiful little bags of sticky bud---not to mention the transgenedrine---when he was so sure that Jim hadn't been thinking clearly and was seriously overreacting...

Without any product on his person, wasn't he really only guilty of being at a rave? Trespassing or whatever the charge would be, one of scores of arrestees that would be booked and released over the next few hours; anonymous in that big colorful mass of ravers if he didn't do anything to stand out---something stupid like mouthing off to a cop about his mama---which Jimmy wouldn't do. So even with a prior conviction there didn't seem to be any reason for them to obtain a warrant and show up at this condo in one of Star City's most genteel neighborhoods to start tearing the place apart. Kenny had observed a strong paranoid streak in his sibling before, that got even stronger when he'd been smoking chronic, which tonight he must've been doing like a Rastafarian chemo patient.

Or was there something going on that he hadn't been told about? One of those big multi-site drug busts in progress, overseen by serious men with DEA on their jackets in giant yellow letters, which Jim---being a far more notorious criminal than Kenny had ever realized---was one of the main targets of!

Kenny had two options. The first was immediately tragic and regrettable, while the second was potentially far more disasterous- but only potentially so. It was a heavy responsibility that had been dumped into his lap so unceremoniously here, and since simply going back to bed wasn't really an option he decided the best thing to do would be to smoke a J and think about this...

He rolled himself a fairly substantial one, then decided that just in case there was anything to his brother's freaked out babbling, it probably wouldn't be wise to stink up the house with pot fumes. He took the blunt, a lighter, Jim's novelty ashtray and a glass of Strawberry Quick out onto the balcony .......... The breeze blowing in from the Pacific was kind of chilly and damp, but his mom kept a nice comforter in a beat up old chest out here, which he draped around himself before settling in to one of the four redwood Adirondack chairs, sparking up the joint and gazing out across the city as he dragged on it...

This was the one good thing about living in Seven Hills. The neighbors were a bunch of boring snobs. Just walking down to the convenience store was a serious trudge, and it was even more of one coming back (there'd be a lot of hiking between now and when he would be allowed to drive...) but the view really was incredible. The vaguely sinister skyline of Downtown. Those grids of lighted streets radiating out from the inky black pentacle of Metro Park with the great floodlit Winged Victory in its center. And the wide semicircular harbor spanned by that elegant suspension bridge trimmed in neon lights...

A monorail with glowing yellow windows emerged from the subway part of the SMART system and crested the hump up onto one of the elevated lines. The freeway was still humming with cars at this hour, and down in the Rainbow Quarter the party looked like it was still in full swing (Kenny didn't really hate queers. If he wasn't actually one himself he at least had a thing or two in common with them. Perhaps he'd overdone it with all that bogus revulsion when he was talking to Jim earlier...), and over the slums of the 'Shine a trio of police helicopters were circling intently, chasing some poor bastard with their spotlights .......... But his own neighborhood was eerily silent. It was quiet here in the daytime---you could clearly hear the thrumming of a hummingbird's wings as it refuelled at the feeder Mom had hung out here---but at this time of night the district was as silent a graveyard, not a car moving on the winding streets below.

It occurred to him that since there was just the single steep road leading up here, if he sat out here and watched the intersection down at the bottom of the hill he'd have plenty of warning if the police really did come. He'd make a pot of strong coffee and drink that until the sun came up, enjoying the view and maybe another joint at around 4:00. And if he kept those shoeboxes beside him he could fling them from the balcony if he had to. As steep as the hillside below them was they'd land somewhere well off this building's lot, in that weedy terrain that even a mountain goat would have second thoughts about strolling out onto. Not that anyone was coming, but this seemed like the perfect compromise between Jim's plan of action and his own.

Tilted back as it was, the big wooden chair was quite comfortable, and this soft blanket was keeping him nice and warm. He would get up and make that coffee in a minute. Maybe set up his telescope too, that'd be fun. The stoplight at the base of the hill turned from green to yellow to red then back to green. That's all it does. All day and all night, cars or no cars. Shit I'd hate to be a traffic light...

A short while later a lone SCPD black and white did come up the hill as a routine part of its nightly meanderings, but Kenny wasn't awake to worry about it.

<==0===0===0===0===0===0===0===0==>

It had started out like any other aimless weekend day at the mall .......... Looking through the games and music CD's at Media City, debating the hotness or skankiness of the various girls they saw, razzing that dumb dorky overweight mall cop on his dorky segway (Kenny wincing at how far his two friends took this, calling the guy "Chester Molester" and telling him to "Go read your kiddie porn!", with no basis for this whatsoever...); then settling in for lunch at the Kalliopē Food Court.

When suddenly Mitch and Andy started bagging on him, giving him shit. A whole bunch of shit! And this wasn't the sort of facetious ribbing they'd always engaged in since the three of them had hooked up back in fifth grade, but a regular interrogation, with no hint of a smile on their faces...

"Just what the hell is going on with you?" the chunky redfaced Mitch demanded to know, "You're turnin' into such a goddamn bitch these days!"

Kenny couldn't believe the way they were acting. He jabbed his forkload of lettuce and vinaigrette at them, "Why? Because I ordered a salad? That's just stupid."

Andy---the would be rock star, so proud of his lank long brown hair---said around a mouthful of enchilada goo, "That and a million other things. It's like I hardly know you anymore, Dude! And I wouldn't be calling anyone stupid if I was you."

"You're so full of it!" countered Kenny, "I don't act any different."

Andy nodded gravely, "That's true. You don't. Because you always did kind of act like a girl. But now you're totally looking like one."

"Are you fucking high? What have you two been taking? I don't-"

The words froze in Kenny's mouth as he glanced down and caught sight of the two quite sizable breasts that strained against the sheer fabric of the sherbert colored striped tank top he seemed to be wearing, their big plump nipples clearly defined. What the fuck?!!

The hands that rose to touch them---Are these things real?---were slender and pretty, their fingers tipped by long glossy pink-painted nails. The tank top was tucked into a pair of red corduroy shorts that hugged wider and fleshier hips than he recalled having, and from which extended a pair of smooth, graceful and very feminine legs. The shoes on Kenny's feet weren't heels but a pair of those Punkrose tennis shoes in a style he'd admired, their canvas surface printed with a pattern of dollar, pound, yen and euro signs in a cheerful confusion of colors, with rather a sheer pair of pink ankle socks protruding from them. A memory---which didn't seem terribly trustworthy---lept into Kenny's brain: I wore these because I knew we'd be doing a lot of walking, and I love those heels but they just about destroyed my feet when Marybeth took me shopping here last week, totally stoked about finally having a sister...

"I dunno Andy, what've we been taking?" jeered Mitch, "Whatever it is, it ain't same shit that Kenny's been taking- That stuff that turns you into a chick!"

"Transgenedrine? But I didn't even try it yet," protested Kenny, his own voice now sounding distinctly female in his ears.

Andy whooped at this unwitting confession, "You hear that? 'Yet'..."

"If you didn't then you must've just mutated on your own," said Mitch, "Either way, a fucking mutant is a fucking mutant. You're a sicko, Kenny!"

"But this wasn't what I- I mean how could TGD change your body? It's a brain thing, it just gives you really real-seeming fantasies. You know, like Toontown!"

"Toontown? You don't remember much about these last couple weeks, do you?" said Andy, "I guess all that's true then, about what the shit does to your brain. I'd almost feel sorry for you people, but it's your own stupid fault!"

Glancing across the food court, Mitch groaned, "Oh fuck! Here comes Tina Ochoa."

Andy turned, "And she's heading right this way. I think I'm gonna hurl!"

Since when didn't Mitch and Andy like Tina O.? They both were totally smitten by the beautiful Latina honor student, and should be delighted that she was deigning to come talk to them...

Tina had on one of those blue and white schoolgirl's sailor blouses. It looked really cute on her. Tina Ochoa was a fox.

"Hi Mitch. Hi Andy. Hi- Kenny is that you? My gawd, you're gorgeous! I see you took TGD. It really suits you! And I love those sneaks," she gushed, still the same old Tina in that respect at least. Carefully seating herself in the table's unoccupied fourth seat she picked up Mitch's Coke and went to drink from it, "I'm kind of thirsty, d'you suppose I could have a sip?"

Mitch wrested it away from her, "Fuck no!"

She picked up Andy's Mountain Dew, "Hey Andy, I just need a little-"

Andy grabbed his paper cup back, "Get your paws off my drink!"

"Here Tina," said Kenny and offered her some iced green tea from Nasty Joe's Coffee.

A bit clumsily, Tina took a sip from it, then smiled and winked, "Graçias, mi hermana."

"Figures," snorted Mitch, "Me, I wouldn't care if you were dying of thirst. Get out of here, you freak!"

The fox-girl's tale swished indignantly, "We're not freaks. The proper word for us is changelings, and we're here to stay, so get over it! Isn't that right Kenny? But I guess it's not Kenny anymore, is it?"

The girl who had been Kenny just a few minutes ago (Or had she?) struggled to comprehend what was happening. There were a number of antecedents for this bizarre tableau, but they all seemed to have occurred in comic books ........ And she realized that she did love this new body she was in, although it was a shame that she had evidently lost her two best friends in obtaining it- however this had come about. She said quietly, "I guess it's Kendra now."

"Kendra!" sputtered Andy, trying to sound like this was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, his mocking laughter as inane as it was forced. She guessed they never were such great friends after all...

"Oh grow up," snapped Tina. She had a heavy lisp that Kendra didn't recall her having, but with her face shaped so differently it was surprising that she could speak as well as she did. She said, "It takes guts for a person to take the steps that'll let them be who they were always meant to be. Something all you smug little normies who think you're just perfect and would never need to change wouldn't know anything about!"

"A person?" scoffed Mitch, "Don't fucking lecture me, you're not even a person! And I thought we told you to get out of here."

"Yeah, go chase a car or something," laughed Andy, "Go roll in a dead squirrel!"

Tina levelled her oversized brown eyes at them and said, "This is a public place, and I've got as much right as you do to be here. I can go where I want, and say what I want!"

"What about my right to not talk to you if I don't want to? To not be seen hanging around with a goddamn mutant? Don't normal people have any rights anymore?" lamented Mitch.

Tina O. sprang to her feet with a graceful, fluid motion. Kendra noticed for the first time that while she did have on the sailor blouse she wore nothing on her lower half except a pair of bright yellow child-size huarache sandals. Since a lot of cartoon animals dressed this way---and her furry new body was clearly modelled these sorts of characters---it didn't register as nudity in people's minds, even those who would love to have another excuse to despise the freaky mutant. She said, "Fine, I'm going. You're not such great company yourself you know. You think I'd want to be seen with a couple of assholes like you like?"

"If not wanting to talk to some nanobot-infested freak makes me an asshole, then I'm an asshole!"

"Oh, that's not what's making you an asshole," said Casey, and started laughing uproariously.

"You're crazy," gasped Andy, unnerved by the not-quite-human sounds she was making.

"Crazy like a fox," grinned Tina smugly. She licked her paw and smoothed back her whiskers with it.

"Beat it, you crazy bitch," shouted Mitch, "And take Tits here with you!"

Kendra's face flushed and burned over this ugly nickname, spat out in a way that reduced her to a dirty joke, something scrawled on the wall of a grimy gas station crapper. She'd often fantasized being verbally degraded and dehumanized; but here---in this context not of her choosing---the real thing wasn't any fun at all!

"You pig," hissed Tina, "Don't worry, that was my whole idea all along. I saw you two being so awful to my sister changeling, and couldn't just ignore it. I'll take her where she'll be respected for who she is. All she's guilty of is trying to make her outside match her insides. Everyone's outside should match their inside, don't you think?"

"Oh I hate long goodbyes," groaned Mitch, then smiled broadly at his own joke.

"Y odio pinche culos estupido! Tina shot back. She smiled at Kendra, "You coming, beautiful?"

Kendra realized she had no reason whatsoever to stay here. She stood up, "Hell yeah!"

"Then in parting I would just like to say," Tina raised her paw, furry side out, then remembered that it only had four fingers on it. She turned to Kendra, "Would you do the honors?"

Grinning wickedly, Kendra flipped the two boys off---emphatically, one with each hand---before she and her new friend swivelled smartly around and marched away, their heads held high...

As they crossed the dining area Kendra asked, "So where are we going?"

"There's a meeting at two o'clock, at what they're calling Changeling Community Center. You're gonna love this place! So what did your parent say about your changing?"

Kendra strained for some memory of the past few days. "I don't know if they even know yet..."

"You can always remind them that at least you're not a Toon like this one girl you know. Mine just about shit! They hauled me to this plastic surgeon, shoved me into the car when I refused to go. But he said nothing they did would ever make me look human again, and the best they could do would leave me looking like some weird alien, and I'd be a whole lot cuter staying like this. I swear, he was flirting with me!" she exclaimed, then started laughing, and Kendra found herself joining in...

Though it wasn't part of her that she'd really focused on in those fantasies she used to have as Kenny, Kendra had realized---while giving those two nimrods Mitch and Andy their fairwell salute---that she loved her new hands, her perfect nails. Would they stay this nice as if by magic, or need maintenance? She knew so little about her condition, beyond the fact that this was not at all what she'd expected transgenedgrine to do to her. And while she'd never intended to become a girl permanently, oddly enough she couldn't seem to feel any remorse. It was like going to your favorite Hawaiian island on vacation and being told as you tried to leave that the rest of the world had mysteriously disappeared and you were stuck here. "Aw, shucks!" but not really. Something important was over and done with; she might be a mutant but she was free of that guilt she'd had over being a guy with inappropriate desires, and whatever happened now in her life would happen...

When they reached the far side of the food court Tina pointed to an empty table and said they should stick around a while and watch the floor show.

"It is pretty wild," agreed Kendra as she sat down, taking in the spectacle of all the other patrons who had undergone transformations. A giraffe boy and an elephant girl seemed very much in love as they shared an ice cream sundae, oblivious to the hard stares of the normies. A large party of piratine changelings and their bawdy wenches were chugging down whatever passed for grog at a mall food court, banging their heavy hooks on their table and singing Friggin' in the Riggin'; and a bevy of TGD-girls had pushed a bunch of tables together to form a catwalk for a spontaneous fashion show, while overhead the nebulous form of an omnipotal fancier floated around creating miniature solar systems...

"No, that's not the floor show. That's just our people, doing what we do," said Tina. "I meant the one starring your two buddies over there."

"They're not my buddies," sighed Kendra, "I always knew they could be a couple of real pricks, some of the things they say to people, but I had no idea!"

"I'm sure you'll enjoy the show then."

"What do you mean?" asked Kendra, suddenly a bit apprehensive about this.

"You remember the first thing I did when I came over, how I was trying to drink their sodas?"

Kendra nodded.

"I knew those jerks would spazz out about it, that they're the kind who'd believe all that crap about how we're contagious- Oh, and thanks for giving me some of yours by the way, a thing like that really means a lot! But all I was really doing was slipping some of these into their drinks," she said, dropping a ziplock bag onto the table.

The few pills inside the bag bore no resemblance to TGD, which looked like it could've come from one of the big pharmaceutical houses. These were crudely made---large and crumbly and unsavory looking---and when Kendra saw what looked like a corn kernel pressed into one she went- "Ewwwwww!"

"They're called ko-rectumal and ......... Well do you remember what I said about how people's outsides should match their insides?"

"NO!!" gasped Kendra, and searched Tina's cute cartoon-animal face for some sign that what she'd just concluded about these ugly brown pills was wrong, or that her friend was only kidding.

"Yep," nodded the fox girl, just as from across the food court Andy started screaming in horror!

In his hand was a huge mass of his long hair, which had come loose from his scalp as if it had never been rooted to it. When he felt another part of his head the same thing happened, and he shrieked again.

Mitch thought this was hilarious. He laughed and pounded on the table until the way he was tossing his head around caused his own hair to go flying everywhere, leaving him sitting there as bald as a billiard ball and staring dumbfoundedly at the hair covering the table. Suddenly his friend's predicament wasn't so funny to him .......... Kendra gulped, knowing this was about to get infinitely worse, but she couldn't look away.

Now both boys yelped as their shoulders began growing upward and outward, causing their shirts to rip open and fall off of them like The Hulk, except this new body mass wasn't green and muscular but pink and flabby, great soft orbs whose swelling it was clear would soon bury their heads completely- especially with how their heads were shrinking at an ever accelerating rate!

They ran in circles, their baby-sized arms flapping ridiculously, each shouting at the other with their pursed little toothless mouths to dooooooooo shomething!; until their tiny mouths puckered so tightly they could no longer speak, and both of them stopped in their tracks as they started choking; their inflated barrel-shaped chests bucking wildly, the panic in their eyes mixed with deep revulsion---as if they tasted something unspeakably disgusting---in the second before their eyes were covered by those immense converging ass cheeks and they started vomiting torrents of goopy black shit all over each other!

Forks dropped all across the food court as diners gave up on the idea of eating another bite here today. Then everyone laughed and applauded when the smaller of a pair of clown girls hollared in big booming voice, "SOMEBODY GET THOSE ASSHOLES OUT OF HERE!"

For assholes they were. Armless, headless 400-pound blubbery masses of ass, stumbling blindly around on their incongruous human legs; which might have been mistaken for a pair of ambulatory potatoes were it not for the distinctive cleft running down each of their centers.

The mall cop---who was no longer a fat dork on a segway but had become a handsome and quite muscular centaur---was twirling a lariat over his head, and now expertly flug it, lassoing his two former nemeses and cantering deftly backward to pull it tight around them. The two assholes struggled futilely, unable to even discern the nature of their sudden confinement.

Kendra moaned softly, "Oooooh Tina. That's horrible! Did they really deserve that? I mean sure they were fuckheads, but to do that to someone, it's ........ it's-"

"Inhuman?" suggested Tina. She'd fully expected Kendra to react the way she had, and said without censure, "You have to understand honey, I'm not human. You ever heard the expression, 'Nature, red in tooth and claw?' Well that's me now."

"But you're a cartoon animal! You're supposed to be- I don't know, cuddly!"

"I'm very cuddly. You won't find anyone more ready to make friends with whoever wants to. But I also have a canine's sense of loyalty, so if somebody messes with me or mine I don't b.s. around with half measures but go straight for the jugular-"

A telephone began ringing, as loud as church bells tolling. Kendra looked around in confusion.

"That's for you," said Tina.

"But I don't have a cell phone."

"No, the one in the kitchen. Go answer it. Goodbye chica, it was cool while it lasted, wasn't it?"

"Huh? Oh! Yeah it was," said Kendra with a last wistful look down at her body, and woke up.

<==0===0===0===0===0===0===0===0==>

His father's recorded voice was asking the caller to please leave a message when Kenny picked up the phone and shut off the answering machine.

It was Jim, sounding as urgent as he had the last time he'd called-

"Kenny! Izzat you?"

"Yeah it's me."

"Oh good! Now tell me, please tell me, oh God in Heaven please tell me that you didn't flush my stash!"

"I didn't flush your stash," answered Kenny, "What time is it anyway?"

He turned and got this last bit of information from the wall clock just as his brother said, "It's a quarter to seven. Let me tell you, that is great to hear! I was so worried, no way to get ahold of you, just going 'Oh God, please no!' all night. You don't know what a load that is off my mind! What's up with your voice? I thought it was Mom there for a second..."

"Huh?" Kenny startled. Taking a quick inventory of his body he was relieved to find that he wasn't back in that weirdly realistic dream somehow. "Nothing. You just woke me up, is all. So what happened to you?"

"I just got cut loose. All they did was put me in the drunk tank overnight."

"That's about what I figured would happen. And why I held off on doing that..."

"For once I'm glad that you didn't listen to me. I could sooooooo kiss you right now!"

Kenny gloated inwardly, then was struck by a brilliant idea, "Listen. To tell you the truth I did start to flush them."

"Oh shit!"

"But hey, that's what you told me to do! And don't worry, it wasn't much."

"How much?"

"Like I say, I barely started before I stopped and decided to wait and see. I went out on the balcony where I could watch for any cops coming up Parnassus Hill Road. It was just one bag of weed, one of the fifties, and then I started pouring those those pills into there-"

Jim sucked in air, a sound of dread. "How many of those?"

"I don't know. Eight, maybe a dozen. You want me to go count what's left? I know most of them are still there though. Something just told me to stop, that the situation wasn't really that major..."

"That's great! I mean- wheewwww!" whistled the older teen, "Compared to what could've happened, this was nothing! And no, don't bother counting them, I'll do it later."

"So are you coming home now?"

"Actually no. I met this girl when we were both getting let out. I'm hanging out with her today. Shelly lives here in the Harbor District, and today's the big sailboat regatta, some people sailed clear up from San Diego to enter this. We're watching it from her porch, having a barbecue, then walking over to The Animal Shelter, this bar she works at. She says they won't card me if I'm with her. Supposed to be a little rough but a really fun place. A real waterfront dive-"

A female voice said something and Jim answered her, "No, not for me right now. It's a little early to start. For me anyway, you go right ahead- Yeah, like that. Just let me get some coffee in me first---the floor in that jail wasn't very comfortable---and I'll try and catch up with you ........... So anyway Kenny, I'll be home tonight. Mom and Dad's plane lands at eleven, so it'll be just before then. You'll be alright without me, right?"

"Of course. I was up pretty much all night so I'll mostly be sleeping."

"And we don't tell Dad or Mom about any of this, right?" asked Jim in a conspiratorial tone.

Kenny huffed, "Hey, I'm not stupid!"

"No I guess you're not, I'm starting to realize that," his brother began, then clarified this unintended slight, "Or no, I never thought you were; but I meant ........ Well like watching for the law from the balcony, that was slick! You did real good little Bro'. I definitely owe you one."

"No you don't. What you gave me was plenty. I mean what are brothers for?"

"Okay I hear you. But I'll definitely take you to out for pizza or something. So I'll see you tonight then," said Jim, and then suddenly gasped. There were sounds of a struggle, and muffled laughter, "Oh SHIT that's cold! Shelly! Shelly! Quit it!"

"'Kay. See ya," said Kenny, wondering briefly what was so cold and where it had been applied.

And hanging up the phone he broke into a crazy little dance! He had another nice bag of marijuana, which just yesterday would've been a real score, but this paled in comparison to his other windfall...

He'd gotten his transgenedrine, and by some provident alignment of forces he had the house to himself all day so he could take one!
.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM-G0bkl8MQ&feature=related

NEXT WEEK: LUCY IN DISGUISE WITH DYNAMITE...
.

And now for some totally unrelated bullshit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmLAj9iIfQk
.
NEXT WEEK: LUCY IN DISGUISE WITH DYNAMITE...

,
NOTES FOR PART THREE.
(My computer is dying. I'm storing this here.
It won't make a lot of sense as is...)

Suddenly she knew what television series she was in. This was I LOVE LUCY, a show that Kenny had only seen about ten minutes of once before deciding he hated it. His grandmother had been stunned by his response---as if such a thing couldn't be possible---and had the gall to suggest that the show's humor was over his head; saying, "When you're older you'll understand it!"

What was there to understand? Lucy/Kenny thought she had a pretty good handle on grown-up humor, and there was nothing grown-up about that stupid show! It was utterly moronic; especially the way the main character acted! She simpered. She whined. She acted like a spoiled little kid, alternately cloyingly cutesy and doing this fake crying thing ("Waaaaahhh!") that had set Kenny's teeth on edge. And oh God was she needy! And now she was Lucy. Just great! Of all the wonderful female characters she could have imprinted on, she had to be this goofball...

Well, sorry to disappoint you folks out there in TV Land, but this is my hallucination and there is no way I'm carrying on like that airhead! I refuse to act like some-

Just then a man strode purposefully into the room, "LUUUCY! I'M HOOOOOOOME!"

Suddenly all she knew was need, and with the mindless desperation of a moth seeking the heart of a flame she flung herself into his arms, "Oh Wicky, I missed yooooooouuuu!"

I LOVE LUCIDITY
by Laika Pupkino
Part Three: Lucy In Disguise With Dynamite...
.

8:00 Sunday Morning:

The crisis---if there had ever really been one---was over. The SWAT team had never shown up. His brother Jim had been released after his night in jail, but apparently had a new girlfriend and would be over at her place all day; and his parents were still at that weekend couple's retreat, kayaking and learning about the Reality Now movement's "Five Irreducable Truths". Kenny was home alone, with nothing to keep him from trying the transgenedrine he'd aquired, and experiencing for a few hours what he'd been told would be a perfectly convincing illusion that he'd become female...

As for what he'd done to get ahold of this drug, he couldn't help feeling kind of guilty. After vowing to mend his ways and be honest with Jim from now on, Kenny had scammed and lied to the eighteen year old ("Hey, what are brothers for?") worse than ever! But then he reminded himself that he'd earned the handful of pills he would be skimming from Jimmy's stash, having saved the big paranoid doofus hundreds or possibly thousands of dollars by not flushing every bit of it down the toilet...

Though he hadn't been told anything about this one way or the other, "nanoelectronics" didn't seem like something you should take on an empty stomach---he imagined indigestable little plastic and metal circuit boards bobbing around inside him, their sharp edges poking at the lining of his stomach---so he fixed himself a bowl of Peanut Butter Captain Crunch and sliced banana in strawberry milk.

As he ate he noticed the scale that he'd moved into the kitchen last night when he thought the police might be coming here, since an scale like this ($316 from the Sharper Image catalogue) had about as much business being in a teenager's bedroom as a money counting machine. Kenny carried the scale back to his room and returned it to its hiding place in the ceiling of the closet, then decided that better go ahead and hide the rest of the drugs now, since wasn't sure what was going to happen to him when he took the transgenedrine, or how long it would last. He helped himself to the baggie of marijuana that he had reported lost, then opened the bag with the tiny pink pills in it. How many should he help himself to? Ten seemed like a good number. Or would such a precise quantity look suspicious? Better make it eleven...

According to Jim, whatever you were looking at when you came on to this stuff set the theme for your trip. He had a couple of pornos stashed under his bed, but TYLA FLOWERS DOES BELLFLOWER or BIG TIT DILDO BONDAGE seemed sort of heavy for a first experience on this stuff. Maybe there would be something good on television...

He piled a bunch of a comfy pillow on the couch and settled back into them. Carefully poured the eleven pills in his hand onto the table beside him and made a little starburst pattern out of them. He'd only take one this morning, until he knew exactly what he was dealing with here, but he liked looking at them. He calculated that he had something like $400 worth of TGD here, which he hadn't paid a cent for!

"Down the hatch," he said uncertainly and washed one of the tablets down with Dr. Pepper, then clicked on the remote.

On the big flatscreen a disturbing image appeared. Some crazy guy was riding an immense cylindrical bomb straight down through a howling wind toward a distant black & white checkerboard landscape, screaming "Yeehaw!" and "Yahoo!" and waving his cowboy hat madly as he and the bomb grew smaller and smaller, his cries fainter and fainter. The screen went white.

Whatever the fuck THAT was, shrugged Kenny and turned to MENU, the display of everything that was on cable this morning...

He didn't see anything he liked. There was one movie starting soon that starred Charlize Theron---you couldn't do much better than her, and Kenny recalled her being stunningly beautiful in Gia---but then he remembered that the supermodel she'd played in this film wasn't really happy to start with, and had come to a really horrible end. He didn't know how closely a transgenedrine trip would follow the source material it "imprinted" from, but he didn't want to risk becoming strung out on heroin and then dying of AIDS. That would be far worse than those singing spleens and tap-dancing pancreases he'd seen on his one and only LSD experience!

Not finding any suitable movies on regular cable he went to the "On Demand" option. Or he thought he had, but realized that he'd accidently clicked "Pay Per View", the ones that cost money. But when he saw that something called THE VICTORIA'S SECRET FASHION SHOW was being offered he knew this was the show to watch. A whole room full of Gias without any of the tragic stuff. He paid for the program...

The music thumpa-thumpa-thumped compellingly; flashbulbs flashed, and the middle-aged-but-still-attractive Mistress of Ceremonies prattled on urbanely as the girls strutted proudly down the immaculate elevated walkway in their bras, panties, bustiers, teddies and such. Kenny would be happy to suddenly become any one of these statuesque hotties; the eye of everyone's attention, looking fantastic and proud of it, and with far more copious breasts than the models at regular fashion shows tended to have, which were shown to full advantage by these outrageous little outfits.

Kenny knew that his sister---who was a year older than Jim and attending Jefferson State University a hundred miles inland---would have nothing but bad things to say about this show. She would call it exploitative and degrading, superficial and sexist, and say that it sent a bad message to women. He loved Marybeth, and was a bit in awe of how intelligent she was, but he could never understand what she meant by all that. What was wrong with wanting to look hot? Being sexy didn't mean that this was all you were, or couldn't be smart too, and if that's what someone thought then it was their problem; they were too lame to even worry about. Youth and beauty were fleeting things, so why not enjoy this---the rush of being desired by guys and even girls---while you could?

He suspected that his failure to fully understand these feminist points of contention meant that at root he was basically a guy, despite the direction his fantasies ran in. He knew that he wasn't a TS in the classic vein. He chatted with some occasionally at the transgender-youth website Aunt Hattie's Haven, and these girls were nice enough; but their desire to be female wasn't a sexual thing like it was with Kenny. Though he logged on as Kendra, and did feel like he had some right to this identity, he always wound up having more fun talking to the young transmen in these chat groups, trading crude banter and sick jokes with them---(SgtRock: Kendra u r nasty!)---until the t-girls roll their eyes. Or rather the little animated smileys they stuck up on the screen did this...

Though he had no illusions that transsexuals' lives were easy---they faced hostility from the world, and even those who were supposed to be closest to them had serious misconceptions about these girls that they stubbornly held onto---at least when somebody did believe they were who they said they were, the issue became simple. Wrong body, needs to be fixed so they can dress and live as who they really are. Though gender variant they were basically wholesome souls, without this unsavory element of getting all turned on about the matter. What was he, anyway? Just a plain old pervert? A fetishist?

And when he made his way into a crossdresser's chat group, Kenny found himself lost on a sea of issues he'd had little experience with. Technical minutiae about the matter of passing; how to best come out to your significant other; long, involuted diatribes on the dilemna of wigs; what to say to the occifer when you're pulled over while driving en femme; and fashion, fashion, fashion .......... He'd had passing thoughts about what Kendra might look good in, when something that some girl was wearing struck him as particularly cute, but he didn't know the names of half the garments these transvestites were discussing, or really share their passion for the matter...

But the outfits on this show he loved! With their revealing lines, their satin and lace and little bows and strategically placed red hearts, they were all about s - e - x. And he hoped that when he came onto the TGD he would be her, wearing that one...

Then the program was over. Was it only a half hour show? What a rip-off, charging $2 for that!

But checking the info on it, he saw that it had run 68 minutes. And while he'd done a nice bit of fantasizing about being one or another of those models, he hadn't noticed anything like what this stuff allegedly did for you ........... Not counting alcohol and caffeine, Kenny had sampled five different recreational drugs in his life, and none of them had taken him this long to come onto. Even with the acid---which they'd been told could take a while---he'd been the first of the five friends at that free concert in Metro Park to start seeing stuff...

But what he had experienced before was duds, drugs that either by intentional fraud or somebody's screw up had had no effect on him. That was obviously a bad transgenedrine pill he'd taken. He took another.

He scanned the MENU again. Reservoir Dogs was about to start, and Shawshank Redemption; neither of which really even had any female characters in it. Oceans 13 would be on in twenty minutes, and Katherine Zeta Jones was in that; but she had to share her screen time with those other twelve bozos, and Kenny sensed that the character he wanted to be should be in most of the scenes, or he could wind up imprinting on some extra, like this tubby gray haired waitress pouring coffee for this detective here. After reading the synopsis, he tuned in to a foreign film called Amelie that was half over. The girl in it was kind of cute, but her "whimsical eccentricities" didn't charm him, they bugged him. And if he started speaking French he wouldn't even know what he was saying...

Should he watch the Victoria's Secret program again? No, better not. If it showed up on the cable bill once his mom would just shrug, compared to some of the shows on Pay Per View it wasn't exactly hard core pornography. But for it to appear on there twice in two hour would look like someone was having a real wank-a-thon around here on that weekend when the adults of the family were out of town...

Anxious that the drug could take effect at any moment, he started channel surfing, finally settling on a television show---on the channel that called itself Planet Sitcom---that he never would have considered. But the girl in it was a very attractive blonde in a cute little harem-fantasy outfit, and she had sort of a strange relationship with the man she called "Master" that Kenny found weirdly appealing. She seemed to be his property in some way. Plus she had all these magical powers, which would be great to find himself in possession of when he became her...

The program was mildly amusing if predictable in every way, and when it ended twenty minutes later another episode came on. Apparently this channel did this, running whole blocks of the same sitcom, for those who couldn't get enough of Alf or Urkell. Which was a good thing, because he still wasn't coming on to the transgenedrine. The thought flashed through his head that this might be an exceedingly stupid thing to do, but Kenny was getting frustrated by now, and as the second I DREAM OF JEANNIE was ending he took another pill.

Could this be some fucked up joke that Jim was playing on him? Had he known about Kenny's fantasies somehow, and dangled that whole bogus story about "transgenedrine" in front of him as revenge for stealing from him, knowing Kenny would eat a bunch of them, and suddenly discover that they'd actually been some powerful laxative, which is what that dream he'd had was trying to warn him, in the garbled manner of dreams-

No. Jim wasn't devious like that. If he had a problem with you he'd confront you, calm and rational. And he didn't knowingly sell bunk product either...

Weird, that dream. How his Kendra self had been oddly accepting of her permanently transformation, less like a fetishist than like those girls Kendra talked to on line; eager to embrace every little thing about being a girl- from the suddenly redefined relationship with her sister and other female friendships (she'd hoped that the girls at school---especially that bunch who palled around with Daisy Cloverfield---would get past her being a mutant and want to hang out with her...); to dates with guys that would be dates, and not just hasty set-ups for some sordid fantasy of utter debauchery; and somewhere in the back of her head hoping that the nanobot-laced TGD she'd taken had left her able to have babies, who she would devote herself to with heart and soul...

Now he was feeling something. Dizzy mostly. Just dumb dizzy. Here we go or something. Obscure and into the void. Was this really the best show he could be watching for this? It would have to be, since he couldn't seem to reach the remote, which was weird because it was in his hand. (Huh?) So it was either Jeannie or that Macy's calendar lying there on the coffee table, a million miles away. The whole room started to waver. Earthquake? No, a lap-dissolve...
.

Sunday (probably...):

She sort of faded in. There was music. Like a radio playing loudly, but not. Somehow she knew that this upbeat and vaguely familiar theme music was about her.

She was in an apartment quite unlike the condo Kenny had just been in. The furniture all colonial style, with brass handles on the dresser drawers and bumpy white glass covers on the lamps, and the walls were plastered with ugly wallpaper, a grid of gray and white diamond shapes, each with a cluster of fruit in its center. Everything in black & white here, including her own unfamiliar flesh, making her felt like an old photograph in some stranger's family album, so it was weird from the start.

There was a calendar on the wall, a picture of a dark-skinned woman clutching a pair of maracas, wearing a hat that for some strange reason was covered with a great mound of fruit (what was it with these people and fruit?). She went over to inspect it. It was May 1st. So wherever she was, she'd gone back in time a day.

Then she noticed the year printed across the bottom, and startled at it. As she did so a handful of people started laughing, seemingly at what she'd done, but she dismissed this paranoid notion. They must be in the apartment next door...

So she'd gone back much more than a day. Wow, Kenny hadn't even been born in 1962, and she didn't think his parents had been either. This explained the clunky décor here, and these clothes she was wearing.

Okay, this was obviously an old television show, but which one? Not Jeannie, that was in color.
The phrase popped into her head: YOU NEVER HEAR THE ONE THAT GETS YOU. Weird...

Hadn't there been a movie like this, Nicetown or something, about some kids who went inside their t.v., landing in some hoaky old sitcom? She wasn't sure if she'd really seen such a flick, it seemed like a pretty stupid premise for a story. But she did remember starring in a couple of movies- The long days on the set, joking around with the lighting crew between takes, the stale pastries in the commissary, it was weird having someone else's memories. This whole trip was weird...

But at least she was a woman. Transgenedrine was everything they said it was. In the mirror sticking up from behind the dining room hutch she saw that she was much older than the girl she'd been in her dream, and to her mind not nearly as pretty. But when you got past the funky upswept hairstyle, the somehow clownish makeup that had accentuated her big mouth and gave her eyebrows that were actually heavier than her Kenny ones, and got past these clothes like some boring old aunt might wear, she wasn't really ugly either.

It could have been a lot worse- she might have turned into that big fat screechy woman on that cooking show (Bon Appétit, with Julia Child) that she had hurriedly clicked past, who'd been wrestling a dead pig onto a big platter with her burly arms- looking for all the world like some slaughterhouse employee in drag. At least she wasn't her ....... Her body had some decent curves to it, and nice long legs. As she pivoted on her pumps to check out her legs the woman next door tittered. Were they drinking over there?

She felt her boobs through the front of her dress. They were plump and soft, and had weight, and were nice and sensitive (not at all like her bra had been stuffed with Nerf balls!), and-

And suddenly a whole roomful of people started howling with laughter! This made her jump a mile, which made her unseen audience laugh even harder! There were too many of them to fit in the apartment next door, and the fact that they could see her but she couldn't see them was incredibly sinister! She freaked the hell out-

"Who are you people?! Why are you spying on me?! You're all a bunch of gosh-darn Peeping Toms," she screamed, baffled that the expletive she'd intended to use had come out as 'gosh darn'...

This only brought more laughter. She ran into the kitchen, but they were in here too!

Then she realised what was going on. They were the laugh track to the comedy series she was starring in. Suddenly they weren't so scary, but this was annoying. Were they going to be laughing at everything she did? She said the first thing that popped into her head, "I claim thees Planet Sitcom in the name of the Queen of Spain!"

They loved that. They were the ultimate easy crowd...

"Well it looks like we're stuck with each other," she sighed, and knowing right where everything was grabbed a glass from one cupboard, dropped some ice cubes into it from a bowl in the ice box, poured in some scotch and a spritz of soda from another cupboard. And as she sat down at the kitchen table she remembered something that Penn had said (Who? Oh yeah, that oddball magician. A Kenny memory...) about the laugh tracks you heard on these situation comedies. That they had been recorded long ago, and so what you were hearing was "the laughter of dead people"; the sardonic Penn Jilette trying to make it sound like this was some supernatural occurance that we should all find more than a little disturbing...

"Go ahead and laugh," she told the voices, "But you realize you're all dead, don't you? That's right- Dead!"

Nobody laughed. In triumph she took a slug from her drink, and without even thinking about it flipped open an ornate little box on the table, dug out a Chesterfield King and lit it up, before Kenny could think- Hey, I don't smoke!

But Lucy apparently smoked like a fiend. She took a deep hungry toke, relaxing as she let the smoke jet out her nostrils.

Lucy? That was her name, she knew this somehow. The same way she knew her hair was a vibrant shade of red, even though she couldn't remember what red or any other color looked like. This had to be I LOVE LUCY then, a program that Kenny had only seen about ten minutes of with his grandmother a few years back before deciding he had to leave the room.

Lucy took another angry drag off the Chesterfield as she remembered that day. Grandma had been surprised by Kenny's response, protesting that it was the funniest show in the history of television, and coaxed him into watching another five minutes, which only deepened his loathing for it...

Suddenly she knew what television series she was in. This was I LOVE LUCY, a show that Kenny had only seen about ten minutes of once before deciding he hated it. His grandmother had been stunned by his response---as if such a thing couldn't be possible---and had the gall to suggest that the show's humor was over his head; saying, "When you're older you'll understand it!"

Then Grandma had the gall to state that the reason Kenny didn't go ape for this putrid swill was because its grown up humor was over his eleven-year-old head. And Grandpa had nodded in agreement (weirdly, this was about the only thing that Kenny/Lucy could recall them not arguing about for hours), saying, "When you're older you'll understand it!"

What was there to understand? Kenny thought he had a pretty good handle on grown-up humor---which to him meant people behaving absurdly but believably, like that nightmare of a best friend in that movie Sideways---and there was nothing, Nothing, NOTHING! grown-up about fucking I LOVE LUCY!! It was puerile and moronic, and largely because of how the Lucy character herself acted. She simpered. She whined. She acted like a spoiled little kid, alternately cloyingly cutesy and doing this fake crying thing where she yelled "Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!", that set his teeth on edge. And yet people ate it up!

And now he was Lucy. Oh just great!

What was there to understand? Lucy/Kenny thought she had a pretty good handle on grown-up humor, and there was nothing grown-up about that stupid show! It was utterly moronic; especially the way the main character acted! She simpered. She whined. She acted like a spoiled little kid, alternately cloyingly cutesy and doing this fake crying thing ("Waaaaahhh!") that had set Kenny's teeth on edge. And oh God was she needy! And now she was Lucy. Just great! Of all the wonderful female characters she could have imprinted on, she had to be this goofball...

Well, sorry to disappoint you folks out there in TV Land, thought Lucy as she ground out her cigarette and knocked back the rest of her drink, but this is my hallucination and there is no way I'm going to carry on like that dipshit on that show! I'm gonna go out and have a good time. What did they have in 1962, beatniks? I'll go make the real gone scene with some beatniks! I'm not going to debase myself acting like some-

The invisible audience applauded as a man strode purposefully into the room, "LUUUUUCY! I'M HOOOOOOOOOME!"

Instantly her heart and stomach started doing strange things. Ohmigod, it was Ricky! It was Ricky! It was Ricky! It was Ricky-Ricky-Ricky-Ricky!

Well, sorry to disappoint you folks out there in TV Land, but this is my hallucination and there is no way I'm carrying on like that airhead! I refuse to act like some-

Just then a man strode purposefully into the room, "LUUUCY! I'M HOOOOOOOME!"

Suddenly all she knew was need, and with the mindless desperation of a moth seeking the heart of a flame she flung herself into his arms, "Oh Wicky, I missed yooooooouuuu!"

She jumped up and---like a moth driven by instinct into into the heart of a flame---pounced on the guy, "Oh Ricky, I missed you!"

Oh God, this guy, thought the Kenny part of her mind. But Lucy was in control, thrilling when he returned her hug, disturbed because it wasn't a very enthusiastic hug, desperately insecure when he pushed her gently away.

"Don't be
.

.

DESILU STUDIOS- STARDATE UNKNOWN

<==0===0===0===0===0===0===0===0==>

"What are you doing, Lucy?"

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LUCY'S SPEECH:
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible: Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good Earth is rich, and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way .......... Our knowledge has made is cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life will be violent and all will be lost ........... Even now my voice is reaching millions, millions of despairing men, women and children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can here me I say: Do not despair. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die. And the power they took from the people will return to the people, and so long as men die liberty will never perish. Soldiers! don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to think and what to feel, who use you as cannon fodder! Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. In the 17th chapter of the Book of Luke it is written: The Kingdom of God is within Man. Not in one man or a group of men but in all men- YOU! You have the power to create happiness, to make this life free and beautiful, a wonderful adventure! Then in the name of democracy let us use that power, let us all unite, let us fight for a new world, a decent world, that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age security ........... By the promise of these things Brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves and enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! In the name of democracy, let us all UNITE! ............... Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up Hannah! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We're coming out of the darkness, we are coming into a new world, a kindly world. Where men will rise above their greed, their hate and brutality ........ Look up Hannah! The sould of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, to all of us. Look up Hannah. Look up....

Now she was trying to run, but her feet were like lead. And the bells went ding ding ding...

Tina was trying to help her along. "Come on girlfren', we gotta get you out of here. Oh shit, I could get in so much trouble for this!"

"What's wrong with me? This is worse than that time I took Vitameatavegemin! What's wrong with me?" Lucy found herself repeating woodenly, "This is worse than-"

"Yes I know," said Tina impatiently, "Vitameatavegemin.Do you know how damn many of those pills you took?"

"No how many? Three, right? I know that's kind of a lot, but-"

"You took eleven. More than 'kind of', Chica...

"But Kenny took those. That was out there in Star City. I mean he's not going to be born for years and years. I'm Lucy. I should be okay, right?"

"Um, Lucy?"

"Yeah?"

"You are Kenny. What happens to his body happens to you."

"Oh shit! This is my swan song. My goose is cooked! Don't cry for me Sargeant Tina...."

And now Tina is gone, there's a band playing offstage---or no, there they are!---and weird is way back there someplace as the music chasing us around like stinging needles.

Surfer Bird,
on the Beach,
In the Heat of the Night,
The Night of the Hunter
-the bird bird bird is-
Oooeee, oooeee baby,
Oooeee, oooeee baby,
I wanna take you on a sea cruise,
Beneath the Mambo Sun, I've got to be the one...
WHO IS NUMBER ONE?
Have you heard? The word is love...
(take these broken wings and learn to-)
Ball two, low and outside.

You know folks, Farmer John hams are shipped live and slaughtered right here
in the studio like the capitalist pigs they are, so they're always fresh-

-I cover the waterfront, I'm watching the sea-

In this night of a thousand stars.

Fidel now with face akimbo, the urt more margle:

Uh hey have a cigar- HOOP!

I say wherezat dippy Lucy go?!
Cuba WHAAAH?! What this flotilla you talk?
BABALOOEY WHAHHHHH?! Deal boyo, you comprende?!!

Cerebella panatella. Peel off cellophane dickhole wrapper...

Low-angle scream of cone hatted steamwhistle against black+white rollerpaint sky.

Rubicon! Rubicon!

Comprende one cigar. Yellowbulb dungeon, utility gestures enfold.

Or Lucy now all Marlene Dietrich in swallowtail tuxedo with the June Taylor Dancers
swaying all oooooooooo-eeeeeeee-ooooooooo behind her. "Bring the band down behind me boys..."

Ya move on up...
To the top of the stairs...
Uh-bomp bahbomp bahbomp bahbomp, um-bwamp, Pah Pah!

.........dancing up a wide white-block stairway into space with bad actor's smile
of idiot bliss plastered on her mug. Uh hey have a cigar!

Tick, tick, tick it wears off.

But whatever you try, the Tumbling Boxes Theory will out. Cosmonaut rimshot:
Five, four---inject brain-hole lighter---three, two...

=========>

Break wind inna gray room.

=========>

One.

Vince Morrow battles ex-colonial furniture as Juan Batista flees Havana
with a suitcase full of floor buffer attachments.
Cigar boyo HEY puffa puffa!
Power-drill trepan flowers...

Through the night jungle to white tux Macambo night club:
All jades inside for The Masque of The Green Dissolve.

"Fan tan, Mr. Bond?"

Quite...

Hinged skull metal retrofit: closing back up as 52-cigar iron maiden to hiss of burning brainflesh.
Lucy's blank rachet smile as smoke jets---TOOT!!!---from ears.

Batista Meat Bath.

Rockets from the Zone.

Ricky Ricardo entering radar range 1962...

That famous Bay of Pigs episode, Lucy disguised as Castro in fatigues + silly beard,
playing mirror to the real Fidel, almost caught when he breaks into a spirited Charleston...

Pigs I'll say as Oroborous swallows his tail-
this circle collapsing inward, and it sprang when it flailed.

Old rooster crows confused at this new 3 a.m. ground-level sun.

Duck and cover and it screamed when it rained, and it flamed and it flailed
as it fell.

Babalooey kablooey as 1000 Hollywood Stars go supernova! And them bells went-