"You're all both real and the same actual people as your counterparts," he told them. "You're just from different threads." Since this bit of information just left them more confused than before, Sid recited the Standard Explanation of Life, the BE AddVenture, and Everything, for the edification of all of the Currently Shelved. Credensa and Sendula leaned on their spears during this, and the latter started filing her nails. They had heard it all before, and it didn't get any more exciting from repetition...
This done, Sid carefully separated the cheerleaders from their lab student counterparts, not wanting any fuck-ups in sending people back to their proper threads. "Right, then," he told the lab students. "Roll call, please!"
"Michele Banneker."
"Cynthia Bruss."
"Jane Castle."
"Rita Daguerre."
"Vanessa Davis."
"Chloe Noel DeLeone."
"Sandi Dunlap."
"Rosa Fernandez."
"Denise Flaherty."
"Robin Foster."
"Kia Hashimoto."
"Abdula Hussein."
"Jane Jones."
"Monica Juniper."
"Janet Knight."
"Erica Matthews."
"Debra Milton."
"Sarafina Murada."
"Akio Nagatori."
"Lisa Perlroth."
"Jessica Plantagenet."
"Annemarie Simmons."
"Rachel Untermeyer."
"Donna Yang."
Author, here. Sorry if you found that dull, but I have a fetish for naming unnamed characters, as you will find in many of my earlier episodes. (No, not that kind of fetish. Those of you as anal-retentive as I am may be interested to learn that all of these girls are previously estabished (or at least, previously "optioned" characters in the BE AddVenture, and yes, they nearly all really were established as classmates of Jim in one or another version of his high school... Several in addition to our three duplicate girls originally came on stage as cheerleaders. I have provided last names for those characters who previously (as far as I have been able to determine) had no last names established. And now, on with the episode.
"Very alphabetical," Sid deadpanned, and took a device out of his pocket looking much like a cellular telephone.
"What's that?" asked Sarafina Murada, a Gypsy girl from the lab.
"Portal opener," Sid replied. "A piece of restoration hardware, if you will. As soon as I enter the proper episode reference to send you back to, it'll open a portal to that episode, you and your friends can walk through, and everything's hunky-dory."
"I thought you said you could open portals yourself," said Michelle Banneker, a stunning black girl.
"Yep. Duly empowered to do so by my boss, Deja Voodoo. Trouble is, it's hard to callibrate the episode precisely when I do it myself, and with the PO I don't need to worry about that. Of course, if you'd rather take the chance of stepping back into an episode where mad-god Jim Russell's still active and your clothes aren't available, I'll be happy to go with the mumbo-jumbo method..."
"That's okay!" cried half the lab girls.
"The PO will do just fine!" seconded Michelle.
"Right, then," said Sid, and entered 131634. Beside him, what appeared to be a shimmering hole in space appeared beside him. "Hop on through," he ordered. "You'll recover full independence of mind on the other side. My apologies for deadening your wills earlier, but it did seem like the best way to avoid unneeded further complications."
Michele, the first girl in line, hesitated, then resolutely stepped into the portal and vanished. Her twenty-three classmates filed silently through after her. The portal vanished.
Credensa and Sendula breathed a sigh of relief. The way things had been going up until now, they had been certain something would go wrong. It was good to have those two dozen naked teenaged girls out of the way, too. Not that they had any doubts about their husband, but there was no sense in letting so much bare female flesh parade around in front of him any longer than was strictly necessary...
Fri Mar 2 11:46:45 2001
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