Now that Squint has been resurrected as a computer simulation a whole new set of challenges await.  In the previous chapter he met Jesus at a Spaghetti Monster Church, and then Jesus pushed him into a scary looking van.  But what do these people want with Squint?  And where are they taking him?

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 And if you'd like to start from the beginning of the story, then click here. 

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Chapter 23 – What Could Go Wrong

  “So, you thought you could evade our little group,” said a mysterious voice.  There were no windows or seats in the van, just some people wearing ski masks, and one baby goat.  They looked like they were bank robbers or something.  I didn’t know what was going on but it seemed crazy.  “Enough small talk!” one of them said, it was hard to tell which one of them was talking because the masks covered their faces. 

  “Bahahahaha”, said the tiny goat.  The guy who was holding the goat tried comforted it saying, “It’s okay Master, we’ll get you to the party on time.”  They all just kind of stared at me for a moment.  “Um, is this an intervention?” I asked.  A couple of them laughed at that, and then one of them said, “Look Nixon, just tell us where the Time Traveler is!  We heard you knew a guy who could go back.  We both know the computers can only slow things down, nobody can go backward in time.  If you know where a real time traveler is then just tell us and we’ll let you go.” 

  “No, no no.” I was starting to get scared now, I had to think fast.  “I’m not Nixon, you’ve got the wrong president!”  They seemed surprised, “Look, Nixon, don’t toy with us, we paid a lot of money for this meeting...” I shook my head, “No! I’m not Nixon, I’m the other president.  Look, there were a lot of famous historical people back there, they...” 

  “No way!” the driver said, “Jesus snatched the wrong guy, I can’t believe it!  I should have known that goody two-shoes wasn’t going to play ball.  We gotta get back there, fast!”  They hit the brakes and swung the van back around with a sharp hairpin turn.  Pounding on the gas pedal, they started shouting at each other in a language I didn’t recognize, even the goat was making strange noises.  Before I knew it they were parking in front of the FSM church.  One of them helped me out of the van and brought me to the side door to the churches basement, “So you were a president huh?  Welcome to the FSM, have a nice day.”  He even opened the door for me and then he shouted into the room full of people for Nixon to come out.  Nobody responded, then he started to panic and went back to the van which quickly disappeared. 

  “I don’t know that guy.” I said as I walked back in.  Emilia Earhart was sitting near the door.  I walked over and asked her if she had seen Jesus.  She said she thought he was with me.  I looked around and didn’t see any sign of Jesus, or even Nixon for that matter.  I didn’t feel safe there so I left. 

  I wasn’t sure where to go so I just headed back to Ali’s party spot.  It was a few parallel universes away, so I would need to teleport quite a few times to get there.  On my way I saw a lot of stores, some of them had animated displays.  All of a sudden I saw all of the displays flash and light up, they were now showing a picture of me with the words ‘Rich watch-maker disappears!  Huge reward!’ 

  I wondered who was paying the reward.  Looking around, I didn’t see anybody nearby.  So I just kind of stood there for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on.  Things were a lot simpler when I was just a human, but now that I was a computer program it made it a little more complicated.  I didn’t even know where on Earth my program was running.  Now that I thought about it, maybe that’s what they meant by ‘missing’, maybe it wasn’t me (my avatar) that was missing, maybe someone hacked the computer where my program was running and stole some files or something. 

  I was a total newbie with these new quantum computers and how they worked, they were nothing like the old PCs I had been used to.  Either way, I decided that I needed help.  Trying a trick that Ali had taught me, I thought the command ‘Tilde M’ which brought up a mini-map of the local area in my heads up display revealing a police station about one and a half blocks away.  I hoped I would make it there before anything bad happened. 

  Turning the corner onto the street where I saw the blip for the police station, a loud vehicle drove by, but didn’t stop.  I was almost there, but I started getting a strange feeling that I was being watched.  Running seemed like a good idea, so I ran and got to the doors of the police station even quicker. 

  Dashing inside I nearly slammed my face into the glass door because I didn’t see it at first.  The place smelled heavily of cigar smoke.  I walked up to the front desk to see a young looking officer eating donuts and drinking coffee.  “Take a number,” he said, with a bored expression on his face.  There was a ticket dispenser thing next to me with a ticket sticking out that had the number ‘one’ stamped on it.  I reached over, grabbed the ticket and quickly handed it to the man in uniform behind the desk. 

  “What can we do for you today, sir?” asked the policeman as he slowly reached out his hand for the ticket.  “I think I might be a missing person.” I said.  He took a closer look at me and nodded his head, saying, “Oh, yes, they’ve been looking for you.  Here,” he handed me a piece of paper, “scan this form and fax it back to me with a copy of your birth certificate.” 

  “Wait, what?” I asked, “But I’m a computer program, I don’t think I even have a birth certificate.”  I pushed the form back across the desk and started to argue, but he interrupted me.  “That’s kind of suspicious,” he said.  “Most people complain about having to fax the form back to me.  In fact, everything about you seems out of place.”  We both looked at each other blankly.  Then he asked, “Are you sure you’re not trouble?” 

  “No no, I’m IN trouble,” I exclaimed, “I’m missing and there’s...” but before I could finish he shouted behind him, “Hey everybody, this guy says he’s with Trouble!”  Suddenly, a bunch of other police officers came from around a corner, they were all staring at me with angry looks on their faces.  “What’s he doing here?” said one of them. 

  Just then somebody with a ski mask over their face walked into the police station behind me and said “Hey” to the first police officer behind the counter who looked away from me just long enough to say “Hey, ‘sup.  Oh, are you the guy?”  And the man in the ski mask replied, “Yep.”  The first cop looked at him again and said, “Okay,” then he opened a drawer in the desk, pulled out kind of a box and handed it to the creepy ski mask guy. 

  Then the police officer turned his attention back to me as the other man walked away, apparently opening his package.  “Where’s the enemy hideout?” the policeman shouted into my face.  I blinked a little and said “What?  Who’s enemy?  What hideout?”  The cop looked a little confused by my response and said, “You’re not doing it right.” 

  Just then the mysterious masked man returned with a gun.  He pointed it right at my head and said, “Where is the time traveler?”  This time all of the cops in the room started paying more attention to him and the first cop said, “Yeah!  That’s even better!  Tell us where the time traveler is, or else!”  I was in shock.  I didn’t know what to say.  I just kind of mumbled something about the state of society in modern times. 

  “What’s wrong with this guy?” asked one of the cops, “It’s like he’s not even trying,” said another one.  The masked man seemed to be getting more agitated now.  He took a couple of steps back and leveled his gun at the crowd of us.  Then he quickly and repeatedly pulled the trigger, relentlessly spraying everyone with ice cold water.  “What?”  I managed to say without getting any water in my mouth. 

  The masked man looked with wide eyes at the gun in his hand and shouted at the first cop, “What’s wrong with you?  When I called ahead and gave you my credit card number for the most powerful gun in your arsenal...”  The first cop looked confused and said, “But, that is our biggest gun.”  That irritated the masked man even more, and he began hitting me in the head with his new squirt gun. 

  “Quit it!” I said.  It didn’t really hurt, but it was kind of annoying.  The other police officers in the room didn’t seem to be exactly sure of what to do now.  One them said to another one, “You know I thought that guy kinda sucked at role play, but now he’s pretty good at taking a beating.  I think he might be an actor or something.” 

  “Wait, what?” asked the masked man, “Role play?”  The cops all looked at each other, none of them acted like they wanted to explain it.  “Yeah, didn’t you know?” one of them finally spoke up, “This whole block is a role play community.”  Then the first cop said, “Yeah, why did you think we were cops, man?  None of us are.  Half of us aren’t even old enough to get real jobs.” 

  Just then another pair of cops came in through the front doors and said, “Alright, alright, what seems to be the trouble here?”  And I freaked out, I had enough of these people, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore.  I turned around, grabbed Mr. Ski Mask’s squirt gun and started squirting the new police officers right in their faces instead of explaining what the trouble was. 

  They looked really mad at me but I just kept squirting them.  “Uh, dude, I think those guys are real cops!”  Said a fake cop.  I turned around to look at him and thought ‘Yay, real cops.  I’m saved!’  Then I looked back at the real cops just in time for them to start hitting me with some kind of taser sticks.

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