by Joshua Price
A rush of frustration overtook Captain Rescue and he gave his arms and sharp tug. They effortlessly jumped forward and crashed together in front of him. The hero looked down and tried to figure out what the hell just happened. When he saw no rope around his wrists, the hero spun around and inspected the post, which had up and vanished. He glanced to his left and right and saw his friends having similar experiences. He spun back around and smacked his face against the inert bigfoot’s pistol. Captain Rescue rubbed his sore jaw and then kicked the bigfoot in the shin for good measure.
The hero darted to the center of the field and looked at the others, who were staring skyward. Captain Rescue did the same and saw that the dark storm clouds had already begun to dissipate only to have an eerie orange mist take their place. He watched the creepy cloud slowly descend like fog. Soon, it covered the entire settlement and stretched as far as the eye could see. The hero, unsure whether or not this orange stuff was hazardous to his health, cupped his hand over his mouth. Before long, the orange cloud began coalescing before them. The fog grew thicker and thicker until it no long resembled a formless mist, but a round blob. This orange blob soon sprouted arms, a head, and a thin wispy tail. Everyone’s favorite genie, Greg, had come out of nowhere to the heroes’ aid.
“You!” Charlie bellowed as he pointed at the genie.
“Yes?” Greg replied as if there were nothing peculiar about his actions.
“What are you doing here?!”
“What does it look like I’m doing here?”
“It looks like you just saved our asses!” Captain Rescue cheered as he tried to give the gaseous genie a hug, but tumbled straight through him.
“Yes, well. I would appreciate it if you would not try to touch me.”
Dr. Malevolent pushed the hero aside. “Hold on, I thought you hated us.”
“Hate? Does a small boy hate the ants within his ant farm?” Greg said like a philosopher. “I think not. You creatures interest me.”
“So, you’ve been watching us?”
“For some time now.”
“So,” Charlie began, “you’re indifferent, but you decided to save our lives anyway.”
“It sure looks that way.”
“Why?” the bunny laughed.
“Well, if that old creature over there didn’t get himself killed,” Greg said as he pointed to Harold’s lifeless corpse, “I thought maybe I could have asserted myself as one of their ‘spirits’.”
Finally bored of passing his hand through the genie’s gaseous tail, Captain Rescue spoke, “So, now what?”
“Well, I can’t keep time on hold forever.”
Charlie glanced at the motionless apes. “Exactly how long do we have?”
“Thirty seconds, give or take.”
Dr. Malevolent laughed nervously. “You just let us stand around while the clock ticked? We’re never making it out of here alive now!”
With a battle cry of utter gibberish, Captain Rescue sprinted for the alpha ape. He leapt into the air and dove into the bigfoot, which time had crafted into an immovable object. The hero bounced from the makeshift statue and flew backwards. The genie shook its head and then crossed its arms and nodded once. Captain Rescue concluded his journey by slamming into a smooth golden floor. He rose to his feet and took in the oval room. At one end, a series of knobs and levers, and at the other end, Greg’s living quarters, complete with a brand new plasma television. In the middle, Freight’s unconscious body.
“This is your lamp!’ Captain Rescue said excitedly before noticing his utility belt graced his waist once more, “And you returned my utility belt! I think I love you.”
“As much as your strange affection warms my heart, don’t touch anything,” the genie replied tersely.
“Hold on a minute!” Captain Rescue said as he stumbled from shock, “If we’re in your lamp, then that must mean we’ve been shrunk!”
“Yes, that’s how this functions.”
The hero grasped the sides of his head and fell to his knees. “How can I think if my brain’s smaller!”
“Hasn’t stopped you yet, now has it?” Dr. Malevolent scoffed.
Captain Rescue’s attention span had already moved on to bigger and brighter things. “You have a vending machine!”
“Yes, don’t touch it, it’s vintage.”
Greg’s words fell on deaf ears as Captain Rescue headed towards the captivating machine. He pressed his ear against the cold metal and listened to it hum. Finger by finger, he slid his thick black leather gloves from his hands and then tucked them underneath his utility belt. Smiling in adoration, Captain Rescue reached in and gently caressed the dimly lit buttons along the menu. The hero tapped one of the buttons and listened in glee as a glass bottle rolled down the chute singing a lovely melody as the glass tapped against the metal. The drink then sat there at the end of its journey, beckoning the hero to take it in his hand.
Captain rescue reached down, took the glistening bottle, and reveled in its chilly perspiration. The experience brought back such fond childhood memories of asking his mother for money to buy a soda from the corner store. Memories of a life before dolphins ripped her flesh from the bone. He slid the tip of the bottle into the opener mounted into the door and pressed down. It popped with a fizzle. Then like a beautiful girl in a commercial, Captain Rescue lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long gulp. Almost as soon as the bottle left his mouth, the hero released a resounding belch that spewed spit all over the face of the vending machine. He leaned his back into the machine and discreetly tried to wipe it away.
“This is why I asked you not to touch anything,” the genie said.
The hero hung his head in shame and apologized under his breath, “Sorry.”
“Now get away from it before you damage it any further.”
Captain Rescue nodded solemnly and wandered over to the magical lamp’s bow, where all the complicated yet quite colorful controls were—no doubt a more dangerous place for him to loiter. He set the bottle down on the control panel and took a close look at the array of buttons before him. None of them appeared to have any sort of label or description of what they did; they just stared back at Captain Rescue in colorful wonder. It took every ounce of self-control he possessed to resist pushing them at random. Over his shoulder, he could hear the grownups start to talk.
“You have to take us back to the city so we can warn the armed forces about the army of yeti planning something massive,” Charlie said to Greg.
The genie huffed. “Sure, this is your personal taxi service anyway.”
“Well, I certainly doubt you want to keep us here any longer than you need to.”
“Right you are, rabbit.”
“Yeah!” Captain Rescue cheered from the control console as he swung around and dragged his cape across the panel. “We have innocents to save! There’s no time to waste.” A few seconds after his rousing declaration, the hero could feel a dampness spreading across his butt. “Oops,” he said quietly while trying not to draw the other’s attention.
“I told you not to touch anything,” the sharply eared genie groaned, “now what did you do?”
Captain Rescue frowned and stepped aside, revealing a sparking control panel, and off to the side, smoke drifted around a soda bottled lying on its side. When the hero gave his rousing declaration and swung around, his cape knocked the bottle over and spilled its contents all over the console. The sugary syrup had begun draining into the delicate machinery, which caused it to go haywire.
Dr. Malevolent gritted her teeth. “You idiot. Do you honestly have to break everything you touch?” She turned to the genie. “This isn’t good, is it?”
“No, no it’s not.”
Captain Rescue grabbed his cape and used it to wipe down the console. “Are we going to crash?!”
“Well, not exactly,” the genie began, “we’re not exactly in motion. So we can’t exactly crash.”
Captain Rescue let go of his cape and turned away from the console
. “I don’t get it.”
“This lamp bends time and space to arrive at its destination.”
Bewilderment overcame the hero. “That sounds dangerous!”
“Well, yes. It’s advisable that you don’t spill anything on the sensitive controls.”
“So,” he began, “we are crashing but we won’t feel it and we don’t know where we’ll crash.”
“Or when.”
“When?!”
The genie nodded, “Yes you can’t go around bending time and space and expect to end up anywhere near where you started.”
“So, we could have already crash landed?”
“Technically, we crashed moments after you spilled your drink all over my lamp.”
“It wasn’t all over,” Captain Rescue pouted.
“Yes, but it was all over the parts that mattered,” Dr. Malevolent mocked.
The hero threw up his hands in defense. “Don’t blame me because the genie has stuff in his magical lamp that breaks easy. You’d think that a being with infinite cosmic powers wouldn’t need a magical lamp to get around.”
Charlie nodded in agreement with the hero for once in his life. “Those are my thoughts exactly. Why do you need to rely on technology?”
“As you might be able to guess, bending time and space is tricky. The particulars, however, are beyond your simple minds to comprehend without extensive and boring explanations that I don’t really want to give.”
The genie took a deep breath, even though it didn’t need to breathe.
“Let’s just put it this way: my powers are limited to one universe and one universe alone, and I need the lamp to access other, more exciting universes as well. Then there’s time travel, to do anything fancy, like freezing time or going backwards and forwards, I need the lamp.”
Captain Rescue raised his hand.
“What is it?” the genie growled.
“Don’t you mean ‘universe’ since there’s only the one?”
Dr. Malevolent laughed, “No idiot, Greg is clearly stating that there are many parallel universes.”
“Bingo.”
“Okay well,” the bunny said over Freight’s snoring in the center of the magical lamp, “Putting the intricacies of the universes aside for a moment, how long ‘til you fix the lamp and we can go home from wherever we are?”
Greg thought about it for a moment. “Not too long.” He then turned to Captain Rescue as the barrage of questions continued.
“Where are we anyway?” the hero asked.
“How am I supposed to know? You brought us here.”
Captain Rescue glared at him and then ran to the front of the magical lamp. “Wait a second, how do we get out of here?”
Greg lifted his bloated orange arm and pointed at the spout. “Start climbing.”
Captain Rescue searched for something to climb—a ladder, a rope, an escalator, an elevator, anything. He stared at the genie with a suspicious look in his eyes and then suddenly realized the sarcasm at play. “You’re not very funny at all,” he scolded.
Greg started to wave his arms in a dramatic fashion, conjuring the powers before him, and an exit hatch magically appeared in the wall of the lamp. The genie could have done this instantly without the flamboyant hand gestures, but he really just wanted to show off. In fact, the hatch was always there, Greg just liked to hide it because it clashed with the décor.
He pointed at the hatch and coldly stated, “Get out.”
Chapter 8: A Detour to End All Detours
The heroes poked their heads out of the hatch and tried to figure out where or when they had landed. Considering an alien atmosphere did not suffocate them or melt their insides, it was safe to say they were still on Earth. Even if everything did have an eerie pink afterglow, and even if it looked like civilization was in utter ruins.
“Uh,” Captain Rescue stammered, “where are we?”
Greg floated up behind him. “It sure looks like the Earth, more less.”
A groaning crept up from behind as an awakened Freight came to investigate the commotion. He took one look at the ruined city, with its collapsed walls, broken windows, and debris-littered streets, and uttered a single statement, “Am I dead?”
Dr. Malevolent laughed. “Not yet, but you can thank this idiot here for where we are.”
Freight gave Captain Rescue one quick shove and pushed him through the hatch and out of the magical lamp. Its influence gave way and the hero ballooned to his normal size almost instantly. He gazed down at the tiny lamp and its occupants and couldn’t keep from laughing. Captain Rescue glanced at the ruined city around him and Greg, not ready to let the little guy out into the world quite yet, yanked the hero back into the lamp.
Startled and a little freaked out, Captain Rescue soon realized what just transpired and shook his head of the confusion. “Whoa,” he said plainly, coming back to his senses.
“Okay,” Charlie said, “I’ve seen enough, let’s go home.”
“I’m afraid it’s not going to be that easy,” the genie replied.
“Uh… what?” the confused rabbit stuttered.
“Well, firstly,” Greg began as he motioned for the lamp’s interior behind him, “it’s going to take some time to fix these controls.”
“Can’t you just use your powers to fix them?”
The genie laughed. “That’s the second problem. Something is dampening the best, most exciting ones.”
“How does a genie get its powers dampened?”
Captain Rescue gasped. “Those creepy dolphins have a thing against genies!”
“And who could really blame them?”
“Wait,” Dr. Malevolent began, “he’s right? That’s what’s dampening your powers?”
“Sure looks that way, unless you have a better idea.”
“I guess it makes sense, you did rescue us from our execution and teleport us from the camp. They probably didn’t like that.”
“Evidently not.”
The super villain scratched her chin. “Do you have any idea what’s causing this dampening of your powers? And if so, what we can do to fix it?”
With a grumble, Freight slipped in before Greg had the opportunity to reply, “Whatever it is, I hope we can blow it the hell up.”
“Yes, I do believe that whatever is causing it will need to be blown up,” the genie said. “I would imagine it has something to do with the suspicious pink glow everything has.”
“Yes,” Captain Rescue replied with narrow eyes, “We have encountered pink before. It’s a very bad color.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Freight leapt through the hatch and became his normal size before hitting the ground. “Weird,” he uttered softly after shivering from the sudden influx of size.
“I know… right?” Captain Rescue said as he stuck his head out of the hatch. It and his shoulders instantly began to grow without the rest of his body following suit. The hero fell forward under the weight of his gigantic bobble-head, which slammed against the pavement and pulled his miniature body with it. The disproportioned dimwit quickly equalized and his body tumbled from its upright position and hit the ground with a thump. He picked himself up from the ground and then checked to make sure all of his bits were the same proportion.
The blue plush foot of a bunny rabbit planted itself in the ground next to him. Charlie shivered the icky feeling of being resized from his fur and then looked down at the tiny lamp below, trying to rationalize how he could have ever been inside of it. Within the tiny open hatch, he could see Dr. Malevolent staring up at him. Charlie waved down to her just as she stepped from the lamp and grew in front of him.
“Well,” Dr. Malevolent said as a jittery wave passed over her body, “that was the single strangest feeling I’ve experienced in my life.”
Captain Rescue stepped in front of her and shoved his pinky into her face. “Does this look like it’s the right size?”
She brushed the finger away with an exasperated sigh. “I have never really tak
en the time to inspect your pinky in the past, and I do not intend to do so now.”
Captain Rescue held it to his face. “I could swear this pinky was smaller before.” He stared at it for another moment and then chuckled. “Swear… pinky… pinky swear.”
“Your odd ability to find humor in the mundane aside, I really doubt the experience would have made your pinky any bigger than it already was. So it must all be in your head.”
He stared at his pinky for another brief moment and then accepted her reasoning. “Well, okay.”
A streak of lightning arched across the sky, pulling Captain Rescue’s attention away from his pinky. He looked for clouds, but to his surprise, this burst of energy did not originate from some mere storm. High in the sky an energy field stretched as far as the eye could see, giving everything the strange pink hue. The source of this energy field was off in the distance; the bigfoot had apparently completed work on their futuristic LEGO structure, for now an immense black spire rose beyond the clouds. From its heights, rippling energy pulses flowed outward and down through the energy field.
“So,” Charlie began, “I think we found our genie dampener.”
“It sure looks that way,” Dr. Malevolent agreed as more lightning arched across the sky.
Freight pointed at the spire and spoke directly to it, “We’ll be coming for you, coming to blow you up!”
“I don’t think it can hear you from this distance,” Captain Rescue said to him in a matter of fact tone.
“Hey,” a disembodied voice said, “aren’t you forgetting something?”
Greg suddenly appeared before them with the lamp in his hands. “Take good care of this in that pouch of yours, would you?” the genie said, handing the lamp to Charlie. “If you break it, you’ll never get home.”