Chapter Text
“And so, the Hatter Josh from across time journeyed forth with his-”
“Can you turn on the A/C?”
“Yes, it… it comes on automatically. So, the Hatter from across time journeyed forth with his calm, collected, and-”
“Oh baby, where’s the vibrate setting on this chair?”
“You know there isn’t one. I’m trying to-”
“Do or don’t, stop trying. Bub. Or whatever the frog said.”
“Yeah never saw those… And so the Hatter from across time journeyed forth with his calm, collected, platonic companion Rudy the Bare-Fist Brawler.” Josh eyed his friend shiftily as he spoke quickly into the recorder. “Their mission: to gather unique items from across the multiverse to sell at fair yet luxurious prices. Will they become the most successful people in every possible universe? That is what our story-”
“Hey Josh, last question, I pinky promise, can I roll down my window?” Rudy just managed to keep his lips from curling into a grin. He had close cropped dark hair that grew down the sides of his cheeks into a short beard. His face was compressed in a way that lent it the rat’s sense of mischief, though his small brown eyes always looked you straight on. He wore a simple tan robe with the sleeves cut off, and Rudy said every few days that he wore nothing underneath. Whether or not this was true, Josh didn’t know nor cared to discover.
Rudy’s companion sighed and hit the stop button on his tape recorder. “No. You cannot. We talked about this. Multiversal vessels do not allow for that. I mean- I mean have you ever read any Lovecraft?” Josh was a slim man standing just over five feet. Hair grew on his head in a dirty brown mop formed like a nest. His eyes were the color of a cloudless sky, containing subtle hints of yellow. His jeans were a similar faded hue. He wore a black leather jacket and a black top hat on his head with a red band along the brim.
“No, but I played all the Silent Hill games, even Homecoming, and I’ve seen Evil Dead thirty times.”
“Well,” Josh said, adjusting some dials as their ship readied itself for a voyage across not-space and un-time, “imagine a moment of the barest exposure to the paracosmos has the potential to make you a Deadite.” The paracosmos, the ever-shifting middle ground between universes. Whereas each universe was held to its own rules (at least, as a general rule; the only consistency in a multiverse is no consistency), the paracosmos fluctuated freely between states of being, changing to random rules at equally random intervals. At the moment they were flying through an asteroid belt; when they had left the Super-Central Mall, they had been tunneling through caverns of papyrus with unreadable scrawlings.
“You’re keeping me from my destiny Josh. I’ll steal your soul.” This last phrase he uttered with the raspy tones of that Necronomicon’s ilk.
“You ask to roll down the window again, I’m tossing you into the Evil Dead universe.” Josh flicked one more switch and the paracosmos around them twitched menacingly as they drove away from the border of the universe containing the Super-Central Mall.
“If I’m only fighting Deadites it’ll get boring,” Rudy said as he watched Josh mess with the controls, “Can you come along so I have to keep a useless NPC alive?” Their ship was vaguely car-like, having a set of four wheels each of a different type. It was constructed mainly of silver metal and had pipes on the back which pumped out purple exhaust when the engine was running. There was one large door on the driver’s side of the ship and a total of two seats. The area behind the seats could be used for storage, if either man had brought anything worth storing.
“I was recording about how we began this perilous journey, how our hearts were awakened to this epic destiny.”
Seven Minutes Prior
“You have never heard of Purple Flurp? Jimmy Neutron?” Josh leaned over the counter, his top hat bumping against the cashier’s company baseball cap. Josh had randomly recalled one of his favorite TV shows while pacing about their apartment in a bout of insomnia the night before.
They went to the Super-Central Mall, a shopping center built on a natural weak point in the paracosmic barriers. Plenty of people wound up there when they fell out of their home universe. Over time the place became a hot spot for the various travelers across the multiverse- rumors, tools, and weapons were all sold in equal quantities. The planet this was built on was either way in its version of the Pre-Cambrian Era or way after humanity - or, the local equivalent thereof- had wiped themselves out. Outside the megalopolis of the Mall, the planet was a wasteland, the rest of the nearby universe equally so.
“Sir, this is a soda shop,” the weary teen said. Low energy pop music pumped from the ceiling, Kurt Cobain chanting that he was a material boy.
“Yet no Nuka-Cola, no Purple Flurp. Not even Dr. B?”
The cashier rolled his eyes. “You’re definitely making that last one up.”
Josh turned away from the counter, an idea worming its way through his frustrated haze. “Rudy! C’mon! We have a mission.”
Rudy looked up from the booth he had claimed for them. “I just started my salad.”
“You can eat it on the way.” Josh said, rubbing the brim of his hat and nodding to himself. His jacket blew in the wind as he stormed off.
“You still made me throw away my salad,” Rudy said.
“Nope,” said Josh, “You had a chance to eat it while we walked back to the ship.” They passed a look and a pair of chuckles. Paracosmic space whispered around the ship, occasionally muttering unintelligible phrases in a garbled chant.
“I’ll, uh, I’ll get your salad next time, deal?” He licked his lips, eyes glued to the unrealm before them.
“You betta, Chubby Cheeks,” Rudy said, using one of the voices he spoke in for humor, sounding like a bastardized orphan of a Bostonian accent. More laughter ensued.
The ship’s radio crackled, spitting something out: “Svool zmw dvoxlnv gl Zgyzhs Izwrl. R zn blfi slhg, Nzw Szggvi-Nzwnzm-”
“What was that, the new Green Day album?” Rudy asked.
“Nah,” Josh replied, giving the snide comment only a weak grunt of a laugh, “Atbash Radio. Because their universe, or at least the place this radio’s posted at, speaks in an Atbash version of English, you know, A=Z, B=Y, and so on, can’t understand them at all.”
“You can’t mortal, but I can read all types of Bash and destiny itself,” Rudy said, earning further polite chuckling from his friend.
And indeed, destiny did await them both on the path they carved through the multiverse. But, no need to get ahead of ourselves just yet, hm?
“Svool zmw dvoxlnv gl Zgyzhs Izwrl. R zn blfi slhg, Nzw Szggvi-Nzwnzm, drgs nb fhfzo xl-slhg Nlmpvb-Yizrm Nlmp.”
“Nzw-rhlm, R'n gsv slhg, blf'iv gsv tfvhg dsl wlvhm'g ivzorav sv hslfow szev ovug ztvh ztl.”
“Zs vzg z wrxp, Nlmp. Zmbdzbh, urihg hlmt dv tlg fk rh "Irhrmt Slkv," yb Orhz. Mlg hfiv gszg'h sld blf hkvoo rg, yfg mlg orpv zmblmv'h ivzwrmt dszg R'n hzbrmt... li, ziv blf?
Zmbdzbh, "Irhrmt Slkv" rh z tivzg hlmt uli gsv yvtrmmrmt lu z tllw hglib... zmw gsviv'h zodzbh z hglib yvtrmmrmt, hlnvdsviv znlmt gsv hgzih.”