and
present:
Of Possible Alternatives
(a.k.a. The God of Copyright Infringement Takes a Holiday)
-------- Part One --------
by Jason Bertovich
©2013 by Jason Bertovich and Matthew Atanian
Boy Scouts ½ created by Matthew Atanian
Perspectives created by Jason Bertovich
Kenny's Laboratory created by Matthew Atanian
Of Possible Alternatives
(a.k.a. The God of Copyright Infringement Takes a Holiday)
-------- Part One --------
by Jason Bertovich
©2013 by Jason Bertovich and Matthew Atanian
Boy Scouts ½ created by Matthew Atanian
Perspectives created by Jason Bertovich
Kenny's Laboratory created by Matthew Atanian
Several miles under the surface of the Earth lay a very large room. The room was so big you couldn't even call it a room. It was immense, gigantic, and cavernous. The far wall was indistinct, the ceiling faded away in a cloudy haze. Machines and instruments crowded every open space atop shiny aluminum counters and cabinets filled with scientific journals and essays of all sorts. There were scores of bookshelves, hundreds of test tubes and thousands of multicolored beakers and flasks. Giant pipettes stood next to voltronic pacificators and double glass refibulators and dozens of other devices that would tongue-tie Dr. Seuss, himself.
Sitting, cross-legged upon a plush cushion concealed inside a giant egg-like chair, underneath a gigantic poster roughly the size of Lambeau Field depicting the real periodic table of elements (the one that contained all 135 elements, not just the ones the scientific community insisted actually existed), sat Kenneth “Kenny” Pendrell. The chair sat in front of a large computer terminal that only looked small when in direct relation to the aforementioned poster, but was still large enough to perturb most rational minds. This cavernous chamber of gigantic science was Kenny’s pride and joy, his Laboratory.
Kenny stared at the monitor whilst furiously typing on the wireless keyboard he had nestled on his lap, pausing for brief moments to jab the air with his skinny digits, only to see the air at his fingertip light up as if a holographic button was pushed, which of course it had. At his feet, sat a vintage 1950’s stainless steel two slice toaster. Attached to the toaster were two glowing, translucent tube-like cables that ran the length of the lab all the way to his most notorious invention, his transdimensional teleportation device, a.k.a. ‘The StarGate’.
Kenny continued to type and smiled as he jabbed the enter key on the keyboard. A moment later, a plastic rectangle emerged from the toaster with a satisfying ding. Kenny pulled it from the slot and examined it. It was splashed with bright graphics and vibrant words. He cracked it open like a book and inside a concave slot sat a shiny silverish disc that looked for all intents and purpose like a Compact Disc. Kenny smiled, and nodded to himself with satisfaction. Another success.
His concentration was broken the second he heard the ear-drum shattering crescendo of a metal grinder attacking the entire orchestral pit of the London Philharmonic. That noise could only signal one thing. It was 3:57 PM on Friday and his lab assistant, cohort, and friend Jon Becker had made his melodic arrival.
“Hey, Kenny!” Becker shouted over the loud din inside around his head.
Kenny sighed, reached into his pocket, pulled out a small remote control the size and thickness of a credit card, and then pointed it to the ceiling as he pressed a button, thus activating the Lab’s magnetic field dampeners. A moment later there was absolute silence as his CD player went dead.
Becker looked down and jammed the front panel of his Discman and frowned. He then looked at Kenny, saw the remote, and frowned further. “Aw man, c’mon. I still had three minutes until I was on the clock.”
By ‘on the clock’, Becker was referring to an agreement that he and Kenny had come to in order to preserve some sense of balance between their personalities and avoid conflicts from coming to blows… again. From 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM on weeknights, Becker was to aid Kenny in his serious scientific pursuits, in return the rest of the time Becker would have access to the lab to pursue more light-hearted experiments. Becker agreed to these conditions and while he was ‘on the clock’ as he liked to call it, he was actually pretty well-behaved and dedicated to following Kenny’s directions, so it seemed like the arrangement was working out fairly well.
Kenny looked him with an arched eyebrow. “You know the rules. The music stays up in the house while you are down in the lab.” It was the rule, and while Kenny had loosened up considerably since Becker came into, or rather (depending on how you view temporal causality paradoxes) reentered, his life, Becker’s habit of listening to music at volumes that were not only dangerous to his health but at volumes that were dangerous to the hearing of everyone around him, Kenny had to put his foot down in order to keep both his hearing and sanity intact and thus had modified the EMP dampener as a way of teaching Becker a lesson about following this rule.
Becker sighed. “Okay, yeah, I know.” He then tossed his disabled Discman on the nearby workbench and slipped on his personalized lab coat, with the letters ‘J’ and ‘B’ in black script monogrammed on the breast pocket. It was also decorated with some rock band themed pins and buttons. He didn’t bother to button it up and he stuck his hands in the pockets of the blue jeans he was wearing. “So, what’s on tap today? Strange new worlds and civilizations or notes and beakers?”
Becker then spied the plastic rectangle in Kenny’s hand and his eyes brightened like a boy on Christmas who just got the Red Rider lever-action BB Gun. “No way! You got one of those new DVD players?! Dude, I’ve been dying to check one of those out. That had to cost you a fortune.”
Kenny arched his eyebrows in confusion looking at the Holographic Memory Disc in his hand. New? DVD? Oh yeah, that’s right. That patent I sold the TWG three years back is just now gaining momentum in the commercial marketplace. Those things have only been used for movies here about, um, eighteen months now and most likely won’t see total market penetration for at least two to three more years. “Actually, this is today’s experiment, Mr. Becker,” Kenny explained.
“Seriously? Cool, man,” Becker replied whilst reaching into the mini-fridge the pair had kept under the workbench to keep certain specimens cold as well as a supply of carbonated beverages. Becker pulled out a chilled can of Dr. Pepper and cracked it open with a crackling hiss. After taking a short pull from the can, he looked back to Kenny who was standing next to him and asked, “So, what’s the deal?”
“Now, I assume you have read the full experiment log in regards to the ‘Stargate’, yes?” Kenny asked.
Becker nodded an affirmative. “I watched the security footage and read the full report. From what I gathered it was an exciting, if dangerous, adventure. I know it almost cost you and several of the guys from the Troop their lives at the hands of Cadium II radiation,” Becker answered smartly.
“Quite,” Kenny agreed, “so what I have done is I have worked out a way to potentially scout out these alternate dimensions while minimizing the risk to ourselves.”
“That kinda sounds like Columbus trying to discover America whilst sitting on his couch in Spain,” Becker said while scratching his head.
Kenny paused for a moment, tempted to correct everything wrong Becker just said, but decided to ignore it instead and move forward. “I tend to think of it more as if Captian Kirk has sent a small away team before allowing multiple officers to put themselves at risk on a new planet.”
“Nerd,” Becker joked.
Kenny smiled at the complement.
Becker laughed loudly and slapped Kenny on the shoulder. “Okay, I see where you’re coming from. But how do we scout a new dimension without putting someone at risk? If we follow your analogy, then even if we don’t go ourselves, and we send someone else to scout it out, we're still putting the away team at risk. I personally don’t want Tasha Yar’s death at the hands of the tar monster on my conscience,” Becker postulated.
“True, but I’ve invented a way to avoid putting anyone at risk and still allow us to see these new dimensions and weigh the risks of visiting them from the comfort of the lab,” Kenny said holding up the plastic DVD case, he then handed the case to Becker.
Becker looked it over with a dubious expression and noticed that he and Kenny’s faces were emblazoned on the front, looking quite determined. Slashed above them in dramatic movie font were the words ‘Kenny’s Laboratory.’ Becker flipped the case over and after scanning it he began to recite the blurb on the back, “'Kenneth ‘Kenny’ Pendrell and his stalwart lab assistant do battle against an evil genius with the fate of the world resting on their shoulders. Can they possibly succeed with evil hordes of orcs and sinister cyborgs overrunning our planet?'” Becker then arched an eyebrow, “I don’t remember any of this.”
“That’s because we didn’t do it. It’s about a parallel version of us that exist on another plane of existence in the multiverse. What we have here is a window in that universe that we can study and, if we so choose, can later visit,” Kenny explained.
“Doesn’t sound like too great of a universe to me considering the back of the package shows you with an arrow sticking through your chest,” Becker commented.
“Well, not every universe is going to be all smiles and giggles, Mr. Becker. While this may show us some very unpleasant places, at least we are not putting ourselves at risk to see them,” Kenny replied.
“Hey, I’m all for playing it safe. How does it work?”
Kenny motioned for Becker to follow him to the chair he was sitting on prior to Becker’s arrival. Becker looked down at the vintage toaster and the wireless keyboard that Kenny had set on top of it. Becker then leaned in for close inspection, blissfully unaware that the Dr. Pepper can was still dangerously full, a fact that was made painfully obvious as brown carbonated liquid gushed out of the little opening onto the keyboard and toaster.
“Oh… DRAT!” Kenny shouted.
“Augh!” Becker shouted out and he quickly righted the can, but it was too late as the damage was done. The keyboard and toaster both began to spark violently, which in turned caused Becker to flinch away, in the process managed to tangled his feet in the cables connecting the toaster to the StarGate.
“Mr. Becker, Watch out!” Kenny shouted.
Becker flailed, hopelessly trying to maintain his balance, waving his arms in a frantic panicked manner, which was causing the motion sensitive holographic controls in the vicinity of the chair to flash and activate, giving Becker the appearance that he was doing the World’s worst dance in a tiny self-contained discotheque. This continued for a few more horrible seconds before Becker grabbed the only thing he could to regain his stability, which happened to be Kenny, and since Kenny was not prepared to be grabbed, both he and Becker collapsed to the floor in a soda covered heap.
The sparks from the toaster subsided and for a few moments, the lab was quiet again. Kenny pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and eyed his invention cautiously.
“Um… oops?” Becker weakly apologized. A moment later the toaster began to shake violently. Kenny yanked Becker down to the floor and covered their heads with his arms. A moment later there was a “Ding!” sound and then erupting from the toaster, like plastic machine gun bullets, came several hundred hard plastic cases like the one Becker had been holding a few moments earlier. They hung in the air momentarily as they reached their apex before obeying gravity’s whims and started descending back to lab floor, raining down on Kenny and Becker like giant, hard plastic snowflakes.
The toaster sputtered a moment and then ceased movement. A tiny wisp of grey smoke wafted from the slots. As the last DVD cases fell upon them, the lab was once again silent. Kenny cautiously lifted his head, a few DVD cases sliding off his crown, and lifted his arm off of Becker’s head. “Are you Okay, Mr. Becker?”
Becker lifted his head and looked around. “Yeah,” He replied and then looked at the mess around them and sighed. “Ah, man. I’m really sorry, Kenny. It was an accident, I swear.”
Kenny shook his head knowingly, “I know, Mr. Becker. Apology accepted.” Kenny then looked around some more and shrugged his shoulders, “Guess today’s lab time will be dedicated to cleaning up this pile.”
“I’ll get the broom,” Becker said with a sigh.
About an hour later, Becker had finished stacking the last of the DVD cases into a large square stack, and had managed to wipe up the spilled soda. There had to be at least three or four hundred plastic cases. He then looked to Kenny, who was busy with a screw driver poking and prodding the toaster.
“Hey, Kenny? What do you want me to do with these DVD’s?”
Kenny looked up and looked to be thinking about the question with serious aplomb. First he was thinking of correcting him and telling that they were actually HMD’s, but decided against it. He then considered the actual question. “Well, the whole point of this experiment was to look into parallel worlds in order to determine the risks of future visits, so I suppose there’s really only one thing we can do, isn’t there?”
“You mean, we’re gonna watch them? Like a giant parallel universe movie marathon?”
“Indeed. For science, of course,” Kenny confirmed with a smile.
Becker jammed his finger into the air and shouted triumphantly, “To the Entertainma-drome!”
Kenny smiled at Becker’s enthusiasm and reattached the loose metal panel back onto the toaster, dusted his hands off, and stood up from off the floor. “While don’t you grab a quick shower to clean off the soda, then change into your spare clothes, and I’ll meet you there?”
“Oh, okay. Sure. What will do be doing?” Becker asked.
Kenny smiled and laughed, “Making popcorn, duh.”
Fifteen minutes later, Becker emerged into the ‘Entertainma-drome’, a large movie theatre-like chamber Kenny had built for the purposes of R & R. Sitting below the large fifty-foot wide screen were several recliners, each with built-in cup-holders and a personal storage unit underneath containing snacks and beverages. Sitting in one, with a rather unhealthy-sized bowl of yellow popcorn, was Kenny.
Becker, wearing a pair of track pants and a sweatshirt, dried his hair with a towel he had brought with him from the chemical burn showers and proceeded to flop onto a chair, flipping it into the reclining position with gusto. Kenny passed over the popcorn bowl and reached over the side of his seat. “There are obviously more discs than what we could possibly watch in one setting, so I grabbed a handful of what seemed to be the more interesting selections.”
“Cool,” Becker stated in between mouthfuls of buttery popcorn, “So what’s the first feature?”
Kenny picked the top disc off the smaller, but still way too large, stack and looked it over. “This one is called The Scout,” he then flipped it over and continued, “Matt Atanian wakes to find himself prisoner at a strange campground, dubbed ‘The Reservation.’ Held against his will and finding escape impossible, will the newly dubbed ‘192’ be able to solve the mystery of why he is there?”
“Neat. Apparently a universe where Matt is pretty important, eh?”
“Indeed,” Kenny agreed.
“Well, it’s show time.” Kenny then opened the case, pulled the disc from the case and inserted the disc into a slot built into control console built into the arm of his seat. The lights then dimmed and the screen came to life…
Sitting, cross-legged upon a plush cushion concealed inside a giant egg-like chair, underneath a gigantic poster roughly the size of Lambeau Field depicting the real periodic table of elements (the one that contained all 135 elements, not just the ones the scientific community insisted actually existed), sat Kenneth “Kenny” Pendrell. The chair sat in front of a large computer terminal that only looked small when in direct relation to the aforementioned poster, but was still large enough to perturb most rational minds. This cavernous chamber of gigantic science was Kenny’s pride and joy, his Laboratory.
Kenny stared at the monitor whilst furiously typing on the wireless keyboard he had nestled on his lap, pausing for brief moments to jab the air with his skinny digits, only to see the air at his fingertip light up as if a holographic button was pushed, which of course it had. At his feet, sat a vintage 1950’s stainless steel two slice toaster. Attached to the toaster were two glowing, translucent tube-like cables that ran the length of the lab all the way to his most notorious invention, his transdimensional teleportation device, a.k.a. ‘The StarGate’.
Kenny continued to type and smiled as he jabbed the enter key on the keyboard. A moment later, a plastic rectangle emerged from the toaster with a satisfying ding. Kenny pulled it from the slot and examined it. It was splashed with bright graphics and vibrant words. He cracked it open like a book and inside a concave slot sat a shiny silverish disc that looked for all intents and purpose like a Compact Disc. Kenny smiled, and nodded to himself with satisfaction. Another success.
His concentration was broken the second he heard the ear-drum shattering crescendo of a metal grinder attacking the entire orchestral pit of the London Philharmonic. That noise could only signal one thing. It was 3:57 PM on Friday and his lab assistant, cohort, and friend Jon Becker had made his melodic arrival.
“Hey, Kenny!” Becker shouted over the loud din inside around his head.
Kenny sighed, reached into his pocket, pulled out a small remote control the size and thickness of a credit card, and then pointed it to the ceiling as he pressed a button, thus activating the Lab’s magnetic field dampeners. A moment later there was absolute silence as his CD player went dead.
Becker looked down and jammed the front panel of his Discman and frowned. He then looked at Kenny, saw the remote, and frowned further. “Aw man, c’mon. I still had three minutes until I was on the clock.”
By ‘on the clock’, Becker was referring to an agreement that he and Kenny had come to in order to preserve some sense of balance between their personalities and avoid conflicts from coming to blows… again. From 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM on weeknights, Becker was to aid Kenny in his serious scientific pursuits, in return the rest of the time Becker would have access to the lab to pursue more light-hearted experiments. Becker agreed to these conditions and while he was ‘on the clock’ as he liked to call it, he was actually pretty well-behaved and dedicated to following Kenny’s directions, so it seemed like the arrangement was working out fairly well.
Kenny looked him with an arched eyebrow. “You know the rules. The music stays up in the house while you are down in the lab.” It was the rule, and while Kenny had loosened up considerably since Becker came into, or rather (depending on how you view temporal causality paradoxes) reentered, his life, Becker’s habit of listening to music at volumes that were not only dangerous to his health but at volumes that were dangerous to the hearing of everyone around him, Kenny had to put his foot down in order to keep both his hearing and sanity intact and thus had modified the EMP dampener as a way of teaching Becker a lesson about following this rule.
Becker sighed. “Okay, yeah, I know.” He then tossed his disabled Discman on the nearby workbench and slipped on his personalized lab coat, with the letters ‘J’ and ‘B’ in black script monogrammed on the breast pocket. It was also decorated with some rock band themed pins and buttons. He didn’t bother to button it up and he stuck his hands in the pockets of the blue jeans he was wearing. “So, what’s on tap today? Strange new worlds and civilizations or notes and beakers?”
Becker then spied the plastic rectangle in Kenny’s hand and his eyes brightened like a boy on Christmas who just got the Red Rider lever-action BB Gun. “No way! You got one of those new DVD players?! Dude, I’ve been dying to check one of those out. That had to cost you a fortune.”
Kenny arched his eyebrows in confusion looking at the Holographic Memory Disc in his hand. New? DVD? Oh yeah, that’s right. That patent I sold the TWG three years back is just now gaining momentum in the commercial marketplace. Those things have only been used for movies here about, um, eighteen months now and most likely won’t see total market penetration for at least two to three more years. “Actually, this is today’s experiment, Mr. Becker,” Kenny explained.
“Seriously? Cool, man,” Becker replied whilst reaching into the mini-fridge the pair had kept under the workbench to keep certain specimens cold as well as a supply of carbonated beverages. Becker pulled out a chilled can of Dr. Pepper and cracked it open with a crackling hiss. After taking a short pull from the can, he looked back to Kenny who was standing next to him and asked, “So, what’s the deal?”
“Now, I assume you have read the full experiment log in regards to the ‘Stargate’, yes?” Kenny asked.
Becker nodded an affirmative. “I watched the security footage and read the full report. From what I gathered it was an exciting, if dangerous, adventure. I know it almost cost you and several of the guys from the Troop their lives at the hands of Cadium II radiation,” Becker answered smartly.
“Quite,” Kenny agreed, “so what I have done is I have worked out a way to potentially scout out these alternate dimensions while minimizing the risk to ourselves.”
“That kinda sounds like Columbus trying to discover America whilst sitting on his couch in Spain,” Becker said while scratching his head.
Kenny paused for a moment, tempted to correct everything wrong Becker just said, but decided to ignore it instead and move forward. “I tend to think of it more as if Captian Kirk has sent a small away team before allowing multiple officers to put themselves at risk on a new planet.”
“Nerd,” Becker joked.
Kenny smiled at the complement.
Becker laughed loudly and slapped Kenny on the shoulder. “Okay, I see where you’re coming from. But how do we scout a new dimension without putting someone at risk? If we follow your analogy, then even if we don’t go ourselves, and we send someone else to scout it out, we're still putting the away team at risk. I personally don’t want Tasha Yar’s death at the hands of the tar monster on my conscience,” Becker postulated.
“True, but I’ve invented a way to avoid putting anyone at risk and still allow us to see these new dimensions and weigh the risks of visiting them from the comfort of the lab,” Kenny said holding up the plastic DVD case, he then handed the case to Becker.
Becker looked it over with a dubious expression and noticed that he and Kenny’s faces were emblazoned on the front, looking quite determined. Slashed above them in dramatic movie font were the words ‘Kenny’s Laboratory.’ Becker flipped the case over and after scanning it he began to recite the blurb on the back, “'Kenneth ‘Kenny’ Pendrell and his stalwart lab assistant do battle against an evil genius with the fate of the world resting on their shoulders. Can they possibly succeed with evil hordes of orcs and sinister cyborgs overrunning our planet?'” Becker then arched an eyebrow, “I don’t remember any of this.”
“That’s because we didn’t do it. It’s about a parallel version of us that exist on another plane of existence in the multiverse. What we have here is a window in that universe that we can study and, if we so choose, can later visit,” Kenny explained.
“Doesn’t sound like too great of a universe to me considering the back of the package shows you with an arrow sticking through your chest,” Becker commented.
“Well, not every universe is going to be all smiles and giggles, Mr. Becker. While this may show us some very unpleasant places, at least we are not putting ourselves at risk to see them,” Kenny replied.
“Hey, I’m all for playing it safe. How does it work?”
Kenny motioned for Becker to follow him to the chair he was sitting on prior to Becker’s arrival. Becker looked down at the vintage toaster and the wireless keyboard that Kenny had set on top of it. Becker then leaned in for close inspection, blissfully unaware that the Dr. Pepper can was still dangerously full, a fact that was made painfully obvious as brown carbonated liquid gushed out of the little opening onto the keyboard and toaster.
“Oh… DRAT!” Kenny shouted.
“Augh!” Becker shouted out and he quickly righted the can, but it was too late as the damage was done. The keyboard and toaster both began to spark violently, which in turned caused Becker to flinch away, in the process managed to tangled his feet in the cables connecting the toaster to the StarGate.
“Mr. Becker, Watch out!” Kenny shouted.
Becker flailed, hopelessly trying to maintain his balance, waving his arms in a frantic panicked manner, which was causing the motion sensitive holographic controls in the vicinity of the chair to flash and activate, giving Becker the appearance that he was doing the World’s worst dance in a tiny self-contained discotheque. This continued for a few more horrible seconds before Becker grabbed the only thing he could to regain his stability, which happened to be Kenny, and since Kenny was not prepared to be grabbed, both he and Becker collapsed to the floor in a soda covered heap.
The sparks from the toaster subsided and for a few moments, the lab was quiet again. Kenny pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and eyed his invention cautiously.
“Um… oops?” Becker weakly apologized. A moment later the toaster began to shake violently. Kenny yanked Becker down to the floor and covered their heads with his arms. A moment later there was a “Ding!” sound and then erupting from the toaster, like plastic machine gun bullets, came several hundred hard plastic cases like the one Becker had been holding a few moments earlier. They hung in the air momentarily as they reached their apex before obeying gravity’s whims and started descending back to lab floor, raining down on Kenny and Becker like giant, hard plastic snowflakes.
The toaster sputtered a moment and then ceased movement. A tiny wisp of grey smoke wafted from the slots. As the last DVD cases fell upon them, the lab was once again silent. Kenny cautiously lifted his head, a few DVD cases sliding off his crown, and lifted his arm off of Becker’s head. “Are you Okay, Mr. Becker?”
Becker lifted his head and looked around. “Yeah,” He replied and then looked at the mess around them and sighed. “Ah, man. I’m really sorry, Kenny. It was an accident, I swear.”
Kenny shook his head knowingly, “I know, Mr. Becker. Apology accepted.” Kenny then looked around some more and shrugged his shoulders, “Guess today’s lab time will be dedicated to cleaning up this pile.”
“I’ll get the broom,” Becker said with a sigh.
About an hour later, Becker had finished stacking the last of the DVD cases into a large square stack, and had managed to wipe up the spilled soda. There had to be at least three or four hundred plastic cases. He then looked to Kenny, who was busy with a screw driver poking and prodding the toaster.
“Hey, Kenny? What do you want me to do with these DVD’s?”
Kenny looked up and looked to be thinking about the question with serious aplomb. First he was thinking of correcting him and telling that they were actually HMD’s, but decided against it. He then considered the actual question. “Well, the whole point of this experiment was to look into parallel worlds in order to determine the risks of future visits, so I suppose there’s really only one thing we can do, isn’t there?”
“You mean, we’re gonna watch them? Like a giant parallel universe movie marathon?”
“Indeed. For science, of course,” Kenny confirmed with a smile.
Becker jammed his finger into the air and shouted triumphantly, “To the Entertainma-drome!”
Kenny smiled at Becker’s enthusiasm and reattached the loose metal panel back onto the toaster, dusted his hands off, and stood up from off the floor. “While don’t you grab a quick shower to clean off the soda, then change into your spare clothes, and I’ll meet you there?”
“Oh, okay. Sure. What will do be doing?” Becker asked.
Kenny smiled and laughed, “Making popcorn, duh.”
Fifteen minutes later, Becker emerged into the ‘Entertainma-drome’, a large movie theatre-like chamber Kenny had built for the purposes of R & R. Sitting below the large fifty-foot wide screen were several recliners, each with built-in cup-holders and a personal storage unit underneath containing snacks and beverages. Sitting in one, with a rather unhealthy-sized bowl of yellow popcorn, was Kenny.
Becker, wearing a pair of track pants and a sweatshirt, dried his hair with a towel he had brought with him from the chemical burn showers and proceeded to flop onto a chair, flipping it into the reclining position with gusto. Kenny passed over the popcorn bowl and reached over the side of his seat. “There are obviously more discs than what we could possibly watch in one setting, so I grabbed a handful of what seemed to be the more interesting selections.”
“Cool,” Becker stated in between mouthfuls of buttery popcorn, “So what’s the first feature?”
Kenny picked the top disc off the smaller, but still way too large, stack and looked it over. “This one is called The Scout,” he then flipped it over and continued, “Matt Atanian wakes to find himself prisoner at a strange campground, dubbed ‘The Reservation.’ Held against his will and finding escape impossible, will the newly dubbed ‘192’ be able to solve the mystery of why he is there?”
“Neat. Apparently a universe where Matt is pretty important, eh?”
“Indeed,” Kenny agreed.
“Well, it’s show time.” Kenny then opened the case, pulled the disc from the case and inserted the disc into a slot built into control console built into the arm of his seat. The lights then dimmed and the screen came to life…
Notes From Matt
Hello, Matt here!
So, what is this, you may ask? A long time ago (and by that, I mean December of 2010) Jason Bertovich sent me a new story he had been spontaneously inspired to write, Of Possible Alternatives. It is, without a doubt, the longest single story thus far written for The Boy Scouts ½ Universe. So long, in fact, that as I only just now finally get to presenting the story online, I have decided to split it into multiple parts.
Thus, you shall find any post-story notes of Jason's awaiting you at the end of the final part once we get there, and I shall save any overly introspective notes of my own for that point, as well.
This story is a Universe-spanning one, by that meaning that it takes elements from all aspects of The Boy Scouts ½ Universe: the main series, Perspectives, and Kenny's Laboratory. It did need a specific home on the website, however. Since the framing device involves Kenny and Becker in the Laboratory, I decided to index it on the Kenny's Laboratory section of the website. However, it is likely that knowledge of the entirety of Boy Scouts ½ and its spin-offs will be somewhat useful for full enjoyment of the tale that is being told here.
Anyway, hope you have been entertained by the first part of this tale, and I'll be back soon to share the next part with you, as we begin exploring some of those possible alternatives!
So, what is this, you may ask? A long time ago (and by that, I mean December of 2010) Jason Bertovich sent me a new story he had been spontaneously inspired to write, Of Possible Alternatives. It is, without a doubt, the longest single story thus far written for The Boy Scouts ½ Universe. So long, in fact, that as I only just now finally get to presenting the story online, I have decided to split it into multiple parts.
Thus, you shall find any post-story notes of Jason's awaiting you at the end of the final part once we get there, and I shall save any overly introspective notes of my own for that point, as well.
This story is a Universe-spanning one, by that meaning that it takes elements from all aspects of The Boy Scouts ½ Universe: the main series, Perspectives, and Kenny's Laboratory. It did need a specific home on the website, however. Since the framing device involves Kenny and Becker in the Laboratory, I decided to index it on the Kenny's Laboratory section of the website. However, it is likely that knowledge of the entirety of Boy Scouts ½ and its spin-offs will be somewhat useful for full enjoyment of the tale that is being told here.
Anyway, hope you have been entertained by the first part of this tale, and I'll be back soon to share the next part with you, as we begin exploring some of those possible alternatives!