Chat Is A Hopeless Dork And Nothing Else (they’re Gonna Need Some Time To Get Used To Him Like LB Has)

Dimension 52

(View the other chapters here [Chapter 1][Chapter 2])

Chapter 3:

It had been a couple of months since Ford had initially landed in Ooo, Six months to be precise. His records of how long he’d been lost were kept as accurate as possible. He’d had time to meet some of the other denizens including Princess Bubblegum’s friend, Marceline the Vampire Queen. She’d visited for a bit of a prank, namely moving Bubblegum’s bed halfway across Ooo. There was the Ice King, apparently an old senile wizard who came into Bubblegum’s castle with the intent to kidnap her. Ford fought the Ice King back, knocking off the crown that was seemingly the source of his powers (Afterwards the Ice King left sulking over the fact that Princess Bubblegum apparently had a new ‘boyfriend’, a statement that left Ford quite confused for the longest amount of time.) He even ran into a pair of talking dogs named Joshua and Margret who seemed to be paranormal investigators like himself. Ford spent most of his time either training or working alongside Bubblegum on one of her recent projects, some kind of defense robot named RATTLEBALLS.

Recently he’d come to the conclusion that he wasn’t really needed in Ooo anymore, and he had more or less finished his hand-to-hand combat lessons he’d been taking. There was also the rather unnerving issue of the candy citizens that kept calling him Billy for some strange reason.  So Ford grabbed his things, including several devices he and Bubblegum had built and some food for his journey ahead. It was time for him to discuss with Bubblegum his departure from this dimension.

“Hey Peppermint Butler, where’s Princess Bubblegum?”

“She’s in her Lab currently. Do you need me to get her?”

“No, that’ll be fine, I need to talk to her myself. Thank you Peppermint Butler.”

Ford found Princess Bubblegum sitting at her lab working furiously on an invention. “Hello Princess Bubblegum.” Bubblegum silently continued to work on her invention, not really acknowledging Ford’s presence. She put down a soldering iron and picked up a screw driver sealing the case on a piece of electronics. At this point she looked up and noticed Ford’s presence.

“Hey Ford, what’s up.”

“I’m ready to go home now.”

“I understand. I figured this day was coming.” Her tone sounded off to Ford. This wasn’t her typical cheery, bubbly attitude she had.

She grabbed her device off the table, revealing a second one sitting across from it. She gave a push to her desk causing her chair to slide across the room to the Traveler’s Stone. She picked it up on the way past, smoothly exited the chair, and walked over.

“So from what I learned of the it, all you have to do it is hold it and concentrate on your destination.”

“Really? It’s that simple?”

“Yup. But before you go, take this.” She held out the little device in her hand.

“It’s an interdimensional communicator. It’s a pretty basic prototype, but it gets the job done. I’ve got another one on my desk.”

“So how does it send messages back and forth? Is it a full digital interface? I’d say my experience with these is a little behind your tech.”

“The interface is only partially digital, it just sends a physical letter through it. It’s got this dimensions address already programmed into it. All you have to do is give it something to send.”

“Any restrictions to it?”

“For one thing, anything sent has to be less than five inches wide and less than one inch thick.”

Ford looked into the sole slot on the device and noted it matched the measurements given.

“I’ll also need you to send me your current dimensional ID every time you hop to a new dimension, otherwise I won’t be able to reply.”

“Sounds pretty useful if I can get the hang of it. How do I interact with it if I need to change the settings or something? Also can it send anything that fits in it?”

“You can send anything that isn’t alive. I simply think the results would not be pretty. Other than that, size is the only factor.”

“Have you tested it yet?”

“Give me a second.”

She walked back to her desk, grabbed a folded up letter, and inserted it into her device. It continued inside the device on it’s own. After a second, the letter was gone and Ford’s device beeped out a “You’ve got D-mail.”

“Okay so now you push the button here.”

As he did so, the letter emerged from the slot in his device. It read “DMD: Dimensional Mailing Device Instructional Manual.”

“Let’s do a quick test to see if yours can send properly.”

After more than enough tests of Princess Bubblegum’s invention that may have been an excuse to spend just a bit more time together they grabbed the stone and left the lab.

“If my understanding of the Traveler’s Stone is correct being on top of the castle will be the safest location to avoid mishaps.”

A faint breeze blew by as the two of them looked down on the Candy Kingdom. The time to say goodbye had finally come. Princess Bubblegum started to hand the Stone to Ford, but after a moment’s hesitation she set the stone aside to give Ford a  well-deserved hug. Though it felt awkward and unexpected on his end Ford reciprocated the hug.

“I’ll miss you.” She whispered to him.

Ford’s face turned a shade of pink brighter than Bubblegum’s hair. He picked up the stone and a second later it floated out of his hand. After shifting into a vertical ring a glowing portal appeared inside it.

“Goodbye Princess Bubblegum.”

“Call me Bonnie.”

“Goodbye Bonnie.”

With that, Ford stepped through the portal.

“‘Aw Balls’? What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Man, this is only the second time this has happened. Though it’s kinda weird it’s happened twice man.”

Stanford Pines stood in the middle of Prismo’s time room, with the only other object in the room being a little waste basket with a miniature basketball hoop attached. The rest of Prismo’s room was a bright yellow, except for the pink of Prismo himself. Prismo looked to be nothing more than a shadow cast upon the entire room from a higher plane of existence. Honestly Ford wasn’t exactly sure what Prismo’s true form was, but odds were good he looked more impressive than his results did.

“Okay, explain to me why when I wish to be able to go back to my home dimension, a trash can appears.”

“Well, err… I’m not exactly sure why the waste basket appears. Perhaps your true home could be in the trash.”

Prismo didn’t seem to be very sure of what was going on, but he seemed to be attempting to lighten the mood judging by his tone. However the joke was as tasteless as one of Stanley’s used to be. It had been what 11 years or so since he’d last heard a joke from Stanley. Ford felt a kind of emptiness over this reflection, but he pushed down these feelings and tried to focus on the conversation.

Prismo looked at Ford noting Ford’s complete distaste towards the joke and resumed speaking. “Ok, I’m sorry, I guess that wasn’t that funny. Look I can try to explain as much as I can, but it might be a little long. You shouldn’t need to worry too much though, since it won’t take any time in any other dimensions, which is why it’s called my time room.”

Prismo took in a deep breath and began: “So as you are well aware, there are many different dimensions and timelines and universes in the multiverse, or multidimensional space, or whatever you want to call it. My powers are limited in that I can only alter certain dimensions that are within my domain. So if say someone from the Land of Ooo comes in and wishes that say the Lich never existed, I’d alter the universe for their wish, and insert them into their new Lich-free reality. Of course there can be plural universes for dimensions, so I only change or create the relevant universe. If someone comes in and wishes to go to another Dimension entirely, the new dimension needs to be within my circle of power for me to be able to get them there. Unfortunately yours is out of bounds. I don’t even know where you’re originally from. Theoretically you might never get back.”

“Well thanks for the hope.”

“I said theoretically. You do still have residual traces of your home dimension on you, so someone could track you by the trail you’ve been leaving as you journey around. In addition you might stumble back into your home dimension on accident. Future prediction is a nasty business Ford. You never know when something good or bad might happen. You can only guess the chances that it might happen.”

“What do I do now? I don’t even know how to leave this room.”

“Well all I said was that I couldn’t quite get you home, right?”

“Are you implying that you can get me closer to home?”

“Yep, I’ll even let it be on the house for you. That way you’ve still got one wish left.”

It looked like Ford wouldn’t be back as home as easily as he thought. At least a wish and a push in the right direction would be useful.

“So where will you send me exactly?”

“You followed a certain vector in the 4th dimensional plane. I believe that I can pinpoint it, and boom, I’ll send you right back in that direction. You’ll end up closer to where you left from, but that’s really the best I can do here.”

“Okay, So about that wish…”

[Chapter 4]

The Video Facial Discussion

Dib sat in front of his computer. He checked the time again, 3:37 PM, or 15:37 as they insisted upon measuring it. Honestly Dib actually did kind of prefer using military time as a system of measurement. It did result in notably less confusion than the standard everyone else went by. It helped to further reduce confusion when you worked the same hours that Dib did. In fact over the past week, Dib had spent arguably just as much time awake at night, as he did during the day, perhaps even more. He felt close to a breakthrough, though he wasn’t exactly sure on what. Regardless the time had come for another one of his progress reports, or “Verifiable Factual Debriefings” as they insisted upon calling it. Honestly he never quite understood all of the insistance of this repetition of these acronyms. Everywhere he seemed to look it was “VFD” this, “VFD” that. If they could figure out some way of phrasing it as a VFD they did. He honestly didn’t understand why they couldn’t just call it a video-conference or something. If anything, at this point the insistence on the VFD was more debilitating than anything else.

Keep reading

A quick short story

So, I recently wrote a quick short story to prove a point about storytelling (Ironically how to NOT do it) but I ended up actually rather liking the piece. So I’ll be posting it below. So, without much further ado, I’ll be posting the piece. Except for one problem. The piece itself gets dark. Quite dark for what I typically write. So I am trying to figure out how to “Tag triggers” because I’d rather not surprise readers with how... bad... it gets. But the to list the triggers outright would be an outright spoiler to the ending of the story, but to have a reader read a part of the story that greatly upsets them is not something I would do, because I would dislike a similar twist being pulled upon me (which, again sort of ironically, plays into the reasons for creating the story. Funny that)

So my question is simply, What is the best way to tag a trigger that is also a spoiler?

Pidge: I don’t know what to say to Lance.

Hunk: Just be yourself. Say something nice.

Pidge: Which one? I can’t do both.

Paladins-on their way to earth

Hunk: You are my fire

The one desire

Believe when I say

I want it that way

Lance:Tell me why

Both: Ain’t nothin’ but a heartache

Shiro: Tell me why

All three: Ain’t nothin’ but a mistake

Keith: now number five

Pidge: I never want to hear you say

All: I want it that way

*Bonus*

Allura and Coran: (unaffected)

romelle: is this normal human bonding?

Coran: it’s better to not question it

hades isn’t a badass. hades named his three-headed-guard-of-the-underworld-dog spot. hades whispers to his flowers to make them grow. hades grows fruit. there’s no sun in the underworld.

hades isn’t a badass. stop saying this false thing

the idea that they didn’t make frequent pit stops at random dingy alien trucker bars to play late-night sessions of monsters & mana on their long road trip back to earth? ……………preposterous.

So I added a cipher to VFD

So the story called VFD actually needed an end cipher to it, and since I forgot it, here it is:

Omht xdt fv jsh ytrm hojxhn, fqjykzw gjtu juhix.

So happy solving. Or if you’re lazy here’s the key:

VFD

Not cool dude, but I understand, it was a hard key.