"You rang?" spoke an eerie sepulchral voice. The five guys jumped, and whirled toward the voice. Standing behind Rick was Lurch, in the full black-and-white flesh, glaring at them!
Suddenly Lurch evaporated into thin air. His disappearance revealed the table behind him, at which sat a man and a young woman. The woman was sipping on an iced tea, while the man was resting his fingers on the keyboard of a laptop. He was grinning idiotically. "I've always wanted to do that!"
Jim and Rick looked at it in fear at the laptop. The guy saw the look, and hastened to reassure them. "No, don't worry, it's not one of those laptops. I just use it to get around. I'm Adama, by the way. You were looking for me?" He flipped the computer closed.
Rick managed to recover his voice first. "You're Adama? You're the one behind all this??"
"Hardly. You've got to remember that the Addventure is a massively free-form, almost anarchic, undertaking. A guy named MarkT keeps it running and enforces the rules, but everything that happens to you guys is the sole responsibility of the writers that create your episodes. Except for some responsibility to maintain established continuity, an Author has absolute authority over its characters. As for me, I'm just a chronicler, trying as best I can to adhere to the Oath of the Scrivener."
Doubtfully, Tom asked, "So... you've never written any episodes?"
Adama looked uncomfortable. "Well, not much anymore. I used to write stuff with Jim and Rick, but that was a while ago. Mostly episodes dealing with the 'magic wand.' And I'm writing this episode, of course."
The five were stunned into silence. Jim finally spoke. "But we thought we'd escaped from the Addventure! We're sitting here in the DC Comics world, after all. And we're openly discussing the Addventure -- would that be possible in a normal storyline??"
Billy said "You're right, Jim. I think he's lying. He's trying to trick us into going back into the Addventure, where we'll be powerless again!" Tom nodded, though the others weren't so sure -- they'd seen some pretty strange things.
"Well, we're in something like a meta-episode, where discussions like that can take place. We've already had four or so meta-threads before this one. If you don't believe me, well..."
Suddenly, all five of the guys turned into girls. Rather busty girls, at that. Jim and Rick were startled, but just sighed in disgust. Billy looked down and said "Ah, shit." Tom and Francis shrieked in fright, never having been exposed to anything like this.
Fortunately, they reverted to normal a minute later. Tom and Francis soon quieted down, but had to be restrained from running out of the coffee shop.
"As for what you're doing here, you'll have to talk to Billy BadAss about that. He's the guy who wrote you into this situation. If you need help with past information about the Addventure, my address is in the front of the book you've got there. Just invoke it, and I'll show up. It may take me a while, though; I'm running three months behind, currently..." With that, the guy opened up his machine and seemed to be about to leave.
"But who's that?" Tom asked.
"Who?"
"The woman sitting next to you!"
Adama looked puzzled. "Huh? What woman? I'm here by myself." The guy was looking right at the chair next to him, but couldn't seem to see the woman. He waved his hand over the chair ... and it passed right through her!
While the rest of the guys stared, flabbergasted, the woman raised a finger to her lips and winked at them.
"Any more questions? No? Well then." With that, he pressed a key on the laptop and the two of them disappeared.
[Thanks for the chance for the ego trip, Billy BadAss!]
Sun Jan 21 22:12:34 2001