"Heavens!" cried Sid. "Jim and Rick -- two of the most basic characters in the whole AddVenture! What author would shelve you guys?"
"Quite a few, actually," said Jim, rubbing his hip where he had landed.
"Especially since we've gone out of our way to offend some of them lately," Rick agreed. "Or should I say, you have," he accused his compatriot. "It was your stupid idea, snaring them with that 'Lord of the Remotes' scenario!"
"Hey, don't look at me," Jim said. "It was supposed to draw in characters, remember? People we could control, use and discard. How was I supposed to know higher powers would get involved?"
"Lesson one, nephew," Sid chided. "The higher powers are always involved. And wickedness tends to bring its own punishment."
Jim looked at him. "Who are you? And how would you know that?"
"I'm your long-lost Uncle Sid. We've never actually met in your personal reality line, and I'm a little confused about whether or not we've met in mine -- there's a tangle of threads in it a ways back. But I've been reading the AddVenture in my off hours, and so know all about you."
"What's he talking about, Jim?" Rick asked. "You don't have an Uncle Sid, do you?"
"Actually, yes," said Jim. "He disappeared long before I was born, and I inherited all my mad scientist equipment from him." He turned to Sid. "But what are you doing here? For that matter, what are we doing here?"
"Where the hell's 'here,' while we're talking," Rick added.
Sid sighed, deciding he'd better write up the usual explanation as a standard speech as some point, and memorize it. "You're in the backstage area of the BE AddVenture," he told them. "You're characters in an internet story game played for sexual gratification by sex-crazed computer nerds with a breast growth fetish. Your adventures are written by various authors, who control, use, and discard you at will. Sound familiar? In your present apparent personas, you're much like them."
The boys boggled. "So you-- we--"
"I'm the one who happens to be charged with taking care of poor saps like you until someone decides to pick you up and use you again. As for you, you're presently discarded characters, and there's nothing you can do about it. I'd suggest you sit back, enjoy the scenery, and learn. Who knows? You might even be permitted to take some of the knowledge back with you."
"Shit," Jim breathed.
"You said it, bud," Rick agreed.
But Sid was right. There was nothing they could do about it, and they were stuck behind the scenes with him for some time. During that time they learned as much about the AddVenture as is possible for mere characters. For entertainment, they read the thing, finding out much about other lives they had lived, and other realities they had been in. Of course, eventually they were taken up into the AddVenture again...
Thu Feb 22 11:44:54 2001
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