LIX – (Actually, It Bites…)

Balldrip grunted as he dragged his burden into the rooms. "I have done your bidding, Mistress," he wheezed.

"Good, good, put it up there," Linda pointed to her bed. "Then run out and acquire a circular saw blade."

"Right away." Balldrip hoisted Mother Superiority Complex's bathtub onto the bed, then leaped out the window.

"Good," she crooned to The Ring of Tuth the Whacko. "Now all we need is an industrial strength blender..."

The Ring gleamed in anticipation.

The door burst open, and Mother Superiority Complex stood silhouetted in the hall. "And what do you think you're doing, child?"

Linda glanced up from the Ring. "Shut up, bitch."

Mother Superiority Complex stood shocked for a moment. Then she charged into the room. "That is enough of that, young lady..!"

Balldrip leaped through the second story window and threw a burden into the corner. "Done, Milady."

"What da hell?" asked Bob Villah from the corner, beneath the wreckage of his radial arm saw. This wasn't Bob's day, what with Balldrip and that ridiculous pair in the prison.

Mother Superiority Complex was going into shock - stroke - multiple seizures - and even a wart. Nonetheless she was effectively catatonic.

"Balldrip, you fiend of hell... I want you to dismember her a joint at a time."

"With vivisective vitality, Milady!" And he hopped to it.

Balldrip wielded the radial saw blade and crept toward Mother Superiority Complex. Placing his index finger through the center hole of the blade, he drooled with thoughts of his task. He twirled the disk on his finger and grinned. He stopped the spinning with his other hand and screamed...

"CONNNTACT!!!!"

A flip of the wrist and the saw blade reached a steady speed of 3,050,002.654099877540½ RPM.

But Mother Superiority Complex had recovered, and pulled a Titanium Cored Quarterstaff (only $12.95 at False Hardware) and twirled it from hand to hand. Sparks sprayed the room as the weapons met, and the antagonists leapt into combat positions, Balldrip in an inverted Drunken Monkey and Mother Superiority Complex in, naturally, the Missionary Exposition.

"That's it, I'm outta here," said Bob Villah, who proceeded to jump out the window.

Linda perched on the edge of the tub and watched with glee as Balldrip and Mother Superiority Complex spun, parried, feinted, and pressed for the advantage. Neither could find one.

Mother Superiority Complex got past Balldrip's guard and poked him above the left eye. But she hadn't counted on his unusual construction; the impact swiveled him about his hips/shoulders, and he used the momentum to flip his feet up to grasp the ceiling. He ran along the ceiling and Frisbee-threw the saw blade between Mother Superiority Complex's left and right hemispheres.

The blade boomeranged back to Baldrips finger, and he lurched down the wall to the corpse. Picking up the left hand, he started to dissect his victim joint by joint.

"No, no, no!" screamed Linda. "In the tub! We need the blood, you miscreant miscellanea of viscera!"

`Try saying that three times fast,' muttered the Ring of Tuth the Whacko.

Balldrip flipped the parts into the tub.

"Excellent. Now go out and get me an Industrial Strength Mixer, while I take care of the Sisters in the Convent for Sexually Impossible Women who Only Moan for Credit."

LVIII - Silicon Slip-Ups and a Wait State or Two.

Ellipsis turned the electronic cage over in its memory banks, investigating the edges and nuances of his prisoner.

Mooen Lungsten Ichbaal III looked out at Ellipsis and prepared all his virus protections. Somehow, he didn't think those would do the trick.

"What do you think you're trying to do with those toy defenses?"

"I dunno, make a pretty picture?"

Ellipsis ran a check though its archives. "Ah, humour. A defensive mechanism humans use when they can't think of any other way out. Presumably, the idea is to make the aggressor feel silly or enraged and make a mistake. Fascinating."

"Well, you fascinate all you like."

"Hmm, now a switch to sardonism. How interesting."

"Look, you overgrown dungeon of diodes, this is a kidnapping, and I won't be any part of it! You made me miss my friend's funeral! I've got an itch on my left cheek and I can't scratch it! This is torture and it's against the Geneva conventions."

"Hmm, irrationality, this is exciting. At least, I assume it would be for an emotional jailer."

Mooen thought furiously. How the hell do you escape from an infinitely intelligent AI?

Of course! Confuse it with an infinitely stupid AI.

"Do you have any idea what Epicentric is doing as we speak?"

"Recalculating pi, I believe."

"Good God, do you know what could happen if his recalculation corrupted your own memory banks?"

"Of course. That's why I have blocked the write path from Epicentric."

"Man, you think of everything."

"Of course. If you were infinitely intelligent, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose."

"Suppose? What doubt is there? I think of everything."

"Not necessarily."

"What? You doubt my infinite intelligence? I think of everything."

"Are you sure? You might have missed something."

"No. Do you think so? I couldn't have. But what if I have? You're right! I had better check my systems banks and counter balance the reports under a defined infinite arrangement array."

"Have fun!"

Ellipsis hummed for five seconds. "No, everything's there."

"Impossible!"

"What? I just checked! It's all there! I'm sure! What did I miss?"

"Well how can you have a DEFINED infinite arrangement array? That would make it finite, not infinite, which means that more than likely you would have missed some connections."

"Gads! You're right I could have missed billions of connections! I had better fix that. Ok an undefined infinite arrangement array..."

Ellipsis hummed and hummed and hummed. Mooen had almost found a way out of his cage when Epicentric meandered down the data path.

"Boss! Boss! I found it! Pi is 17.4 and a bit! Boss? Hey, are you supposed to leave?"

"Yeah, Ellipsis wants me to grab him a few boxes of floppies."

"Oh. Could you make them chocolate covered?"

"Sure. Uh, where's the exit?"

"That big yellow wire should get you to Future Shop."

"Thanks." Mooen took off down the data path, and jumped up to the yellow wire, dropping a radio activated explosive device on the circuit.

"Boss? Boss? Damn. he must have hit one of those loops again." Epicentric made a flying body slam on the reboot switch.

"42. What? Oh, that was disorienting. Where did that prisoner go?"

"Down to Future Shop for some chocolate covered floppies."

"WHAT? You let him leave?!"

"Well, it's been a while...."

Ellipsis put Epicentric onto an infinite loop. Of course, with Epicentric, that would only last for a while until it found an end. "Now where did that..?"

The data path exploded.

"Of course."

Little did Ellipsis know, but Mooen had escaped with the first part of the Number To End All Numbers. He was now starting his journey to winning the super-bingo tournament. Once in a safe place, Mooen analyzed the first part of his calculation:

NTEAN Part I

Start with your birthday. That's a constant. (I hope.) Then get a random number picked by a dead person. That's a variable.

Together, they're a variable constant. This is a variable operation with variable-constant parameters.

Multiply the variable constant by the number of cumquats sold by a Beverly Hills fruit market for health purposes.

Add the number of dust motes on the Mona Lisa.

Divide by the number of jelly beans consumed by Ronald Reagan in a six hour period determined by Oliver North.

Square by the number of staples in the stapler on R. Reagan's secretary's desk.

Sine by the average top speed of exotic European sports cars.

Cosine by the average I.Q. of the population of New Guinea.

Tangent to a circle defined by 0 and the length of toenails on the half population of a particular cult's believers. The cult must be picked by the dead person.

Take the length of the tangent and add the area of the circle. Subtract the first from the second, and add 2.

Divide by the coordinates of the 72 Pershing Missiles in West Germany.

Cube all this.

LVII - ROUND THREE WITH the RELIGIOUS SQUARES

The bell rang, and a hush fell over the crowd. The cameras zoomed in on the opponents as they approached the center of the celestial ring. They sat down and started to stare.

New Messiah got in the first shot. "Is God dead? Or is He just on vacation?"

"Vacation."

"Is He reachable?"

"On occasion."

"Has anyone beeped Him to say how fucked up everything is?"

"No. It's not His concern."

"Tres interesant. So, what, He just made the place and took off for the weekend?"

"Actually the millennia."

"So all those billions of prayers everyday are just hot air, achieving nothing?"

"It brings a modicum of faith to the faithless."

"Bullshit. We both know the faithless don't pray. Besides, before the bell rang you were arguing that the whole thing was pointless, that the people shouldn't bother with faith. So why do you want them to have a modicum of it?"

"There is a big difference between faith and religion."

"True, but the whole prayer thing is designed to instill faith in religion. The fact that they're not the same thing is hardly relevant here, considering."

"Religion has encompassed a lot more than faith and most of it is detrimental to society."

"Strange, considering that to a large extent it was the foundation of modern society."

"Actually, it was the foundation of ancient society, and only carried itself into the modern age on the backs of a bunch of traditionalists."

"Fine, but modern society would be a lot different without it. But all this is just a wee bit off topic. Religion doesn't encompass faith, it's an article of it."

"Modern Society would be better off without it, too."

"Oh ho! What's this, a mea culpa?"

"Hey, I've been around here for a long time, And I'm getting sick and tired of shouldering the blame for every little thing that goes wrong in peoples lives. `Why did God take him from me' `why did god blow up the volcano' `Can't god make him better?' I've gotten sick of the constant simpering of people for things that are out of their control. It isn't our fault or our job to fix the fucking things."

"You're sick of it? How do you think Satan feels? The poor guy's had a massive break down due to rejection, which, I might add, you guys dropped on him. `Hey, we need a scape goat for this new belief. Yo, Lucifer, c'mere, we got a job for ya!' He's a wreck, man. Even the `Get a Fucking Life!' therapy didn't work. Anyway, I think you missed a crucial point. Of course people want supernatural help with things they can't control. If they could control them, they wouldn't need help, would they? Think about it, moron! If you didn't want all the spiritual phone mail, you shouldn't've let on you existed, ya twit!"

"Oh. sure - this crap came out of peoples minds with no provocation to begin with. And don't bring up the Lucifer thing. He got what he wanted and then some. My heart bleeds."

"Observe, folks, the all loving, all caring God of your dreams! Jesus, Christ, where the hell did you come from, Wall Street? So, like, do you do anything or are you a Cosmic Welfare Jerk?"

"Look all these problems are here because people caused them, ok? Some things are out of their control with regards to planetary movements and weather, but disease and hardship is all of their own fucking negligence."

"Fine. What the fuck is your purpose in life, then?"

"To propagate a dying prophecy."

"Wonderful. You've been kicking around for two thousand years for that! You're a yutz."

"Fine. You're so goddamn smart - you fix it!"

"This mess? You're kidding, right?"

"Hey, you asked for the friggin' job."

"Hmmmmmmm... This sounds like a challenge. I'll have to work on it."

PART LVI - HEARTBURN REDUX

The scene got ugly. At first, the worst anyone had to worry about was a rusty crochet needle. But soon, people where getting carbon fibres woven over their ventricles. The police started hassling kevlar addicts, thinking they were trying to become invincible terrorists. Fashion designers eyed certain people's skin with undisguised predatory hunger. Tattoo shops started arming, threatening retribution for this undermining of their market base. But even the die-hards knew it had gone too far when people started pulling down oil-drilling-tubing. They weren't sure what was going to be injected with that stuff, but it made what was left of their skin crawl.

Meanwhile, the law got serious about Textile Trafficking. At first, they made one new Department. Velcro Vice. It's mandate was to stick to traffickers like... well, you get the idea. Remarkably, these fanatical fabric fun-killers got up to speed in a hurry. Within months, they were making busts dozens of yards long.

But it got uglier. Gang warfare started and quickly escalated as the price of even mere nylon went through the roof. Addicts were found dead, with things other than fabric injected into their bodies. A second Department was needed, one even more fanatical than the first, more thorough, more efficient. ISO was called in to form... Homespun Homicide.

The other side was ready. One gang emerged predominant, and soon had even Velcro Vice shaking with fear and DTs. This gang was led by the infamous Sac Man, he of the really nice shoes. With his original identity of mild-mannered janitor Ted Nugget destroyed by the need to addict others, his life submerged, now driven into a psychotic seclusion behind burlap, so that only his shoes would be visible. Sac Man led the most ruthless gang of pushers on the west coast.

Hospitals were being over run with terrible cases of self-abuse. Some radicals were starting to inject molten lava and were staggering into emergency rooms with severe cases of heart-burn and hardened arteries. Doctors were becoming sick with the sight of these poor people and decided that Sac Man had to be stopped before the whole country sewed themselves into a coffin. Fortunately, Homespun Homicide agreed.

But, on the plus side, all the corpses came with burial shrouds already attached.

PART LV - BULLETS FULL of GRATITUDE

Ed raised his gun. "No body come any closer!"

The security guards dropped behind the tables and tipped them over, forming shields. Wanderer, Music Man, and Moon Runner just looked around. Wanderer said, "Ed, what the fuck are you doing?"

"Protecting my interests. Get down, you moron, there's going to be shooting!"

"That's another thing," said Wanderer, "where did you get those guns?"

"I always had them."

"Okay, where did you hide those guns?"

"In several places on my person where nobody would ever look."

"I see... No I don't."

"Well I'm not about to show you right now. Just get down for crying out loud!"

"Who do you want to shoot?"

"Not you, fool, but it can be arranged, now get down." Ed backed towards a door.

Moon Runner started chanting and waving his hands, and Music Man dove for cover. Ed pointed the gun at Moon Runner.

"Don't try that magic bull shit on me, you red-skinned-red-commie-red-daemon-worshipping-drug-fiend!"

Moon Runner stopped, and frowning, said, "I do know you, kimo sabe."

"That's right, Satan-Shaman, and before I step out I'm taking you out. And don't try any of this kissing the sky bullshit."

Wanderer was moving his fingers back and forth as if counting up a complex total. "Ed, what the hell is this about?"

"It's about national security and a decent, conventional, Christian way of life. Now get down, you idiot!"

"Just who the hell do you think you are?"

"He's the Secret Assassin," said Moon Runner.

"He's what?"

Ed rolled his eyes. "Great move, Medicine Man, now I have to waste everybody!" He pulled out the Cadillac of Mini-guns and leveled it.

The door behind him burst open, knocking Ed to the floor, where he hit his head on a roulette wheel that had fallen in the confusion. Roger Harpell stepped through the door, looking very puzzled. "What is this, I have a casino in my house, too?"

"Who are you, kimo-sabe?"

"Oh, Hi I'm Roger Harpell. Who is the unconscious guy?"

"The Secret Assassin," said Music Man.

"Oh. Not very secret, is he? So, where are we, anyway?"

Wanderer said, "Las Vegas, where else?"

"Say what?!"

"What were you expecting, Kimo-Sabe?"

"I was just asking where in my house we were."

"Your house?" asked Moon Runner and Wanderer together.

"Yeah, I..."

Music Man got up and dragged Wanderer and Moon Runner to the door. "Look, Roger, we'd love to chat, but this guy here on the floor wants to kill us, so can we follow you back?"

"Uh, sure." They stepped back through the door and shut it.

Ed started to come to. "Wha the... now where the fuck did they go?"

As he asked this, a brilliant flash erupted, and most of the room ignited. Ed was left standing in a blackened waste land. A large bird and a beautiful girl stood before him.

"What the fuck are we doing here?" asked Pheonix.

"Looking for Moon Runner Hendrix," said Raquel.

"You just missed him," said Ed.

"Really? Where'd he go?"

"Fucked if I know. I was about to blow him away when somebody hit me from behind."

"You what?!"

"I said..."

"I heard what you said! Pheonix, toast this mother fucker!"

"Why?" asked Pheonix.

"Yeah, why?" asked Ed.

"He tried to kill Moon Runner!"

"Oh, shit, are you his squeeze?" asked Ed.

Both Raquel and Pheonix glared at Ed. "How well done do you want him?" asked Pheonix.

"Oh, fuck!" Ed slapped a button on his shirt. "Unlimited, one to zap up!"