THE TEROS TRIP TRAP by R.K.Galvez

Johnny Quagga looked depressed. Despite being a shabby being[and apparition], he looked ageless. He was dressed in a ripped suit, and donned his old bobble hat. His shoes were heavily worn, and stained with various experimental acids. This is not the interesting thing about Johnny Quagga, though he is not particularly interesting. Quagga was easy to ignore, almost ghost-like. But I met him in an awful public house, called the Christchild and Vonderpump, somewhere in Ye Olde Londonium. He was drinking the frothy left-overs from the drip-trays, mumbling to himself, clutching various papers. He had claimed to have been abducted by unknown forces. He also claimed he was some type of alien hunter. I did not really understand at the time.

At first I dismissed this as paranoid joking. But he showed me his strange collection of notes and grimoires. I did not understand a word of them. I finished my Bristol Cream to go back to my cosy Post Office slumber - which is where I was lucky enough to be placed at the time. I had put my coat on. I did not think of anything, as I left the foul public house[only secretly wishing it would return to the procurement of fine laudanum].

That was when I was suddenly sucked away.

I still cannot explain what happen - it just happened. You must believe me - please.

As I tried to correct my vision[without a lazer], as it was failing rapidly, I noticed powdered walls. They were made of very fine grainy powdered crystals. I did not know this grainy realm. I realized I was trapped. A grimy hand appeared through the powdered wall, it groped around as if looking for something. I got angry and stamped on the hand. There was no sound. I regretted being angry, but I was not used to being sucked away from my current existence.

I noticed that this strange hand had tiny eyes for fingernails. I took my keys from my pocket and stabbed at one of the tiny eye that grew back as quickly as I gouged them. Then I prodded the hand. Still no sound. I reluctantly assumed this realm was not of this world. I needed to organize myself. Thoughts were rushing through my molecular mind, but I had given up trying to rationally explain what was going on. I went with the flow. I emptied my pockets. It revealed exactly this: some loose change, a near empty pack of rolling papers, my wallet. And my keys - I was holding on to them. They were my only weapon[s]. I felt unsure whether to include the fob which was rather large as a weapon also...but as I thought, things suddenly changed around me...

The hand groped around more, it was now heavily perspiring. I felt like every bead of evaporated sweat droplets were slowly absorbing me; I was, possibly, transpiring as if I was some plant, but my scientific analysis was very rough at best.The hand's secretions started dissolving my powdered prison. As I tried to touch the hand, it tried to grab for me. It started to change cloured and turned a weird green then purple colour, as the hand sprouted hair-like feelers from its palms and oily, sweaty warts bloomed freely. The hand also had grew sharp claws, which tried to dig into me.

I stepped back, against the powdery wall, slipping down. I was about to cry, until I realized I had lost my mobile telephone. It had been replaced with a smouldering block of plastic and wires. It was also starting to burn me. I was sure I had not noticed it before. I threw off my coat as it spontaneously combusted. I prodded the remains with my keys, coughing on the smoking embers. The coat was synthetic and cheap. So the fumes made me feel quite sick, but relaxed at the same time. I always preferred that toxic smell. It dawned on me that the charred plastic was my mobile telephone. I was cut off.

But I had momentarily forgotten that the perspiring hand was still aimlessy groping for me. It was distressing, but I tried to be calm. At least I had got some time off as I was working a "rest day". Maybe I was tired and I would wake up soon. I rubbed my eyes, as I stopped rubbing them. They started stinging. Through my tears, I noticed the powdered wall transform to slush. The hand now had, somehow, grown an arm. I feared it would be another gory discovery I would have to try to explain to the authorities. Maybe my Bristol Cream had been spiked. But who would want to spike Bristol Cream? Exactly. That's what I thought.

As I thought on for long periods, the powdered walls had dissolved away. All that was left was the powdered floor I was occupying. It was suddenly very windy, as I looked into darkness. Strange lights appeared. I thought of nothing. They were just lights. Or giant fluorescent eyes. Then I looked at the arm. It was gone. I was relieved I had imagined it. But I was tapped on the shoulder. This made me jump. I almost screamed, but gasped loudly instead.

As I turned round, expecting some foul beast from a trashy horror-sci-fi-fantasy adventure, I was greatly disappointed. Instead I saw Johnny Quagga standing there. He was in a pzi-chemo-bio-robotic suit. He was still wearing his bobble hat and transparent fecal mask. He smiled. I was amazed that he had found me. He looked annoyed, as I was about to speak, so I decided not to any impart sounds. He was not one for talking. He motioned to another bio-robotic suit that appeared from the darkness. I did not want to bombard him with questions, as I had an idea he had done this before.

As I clambered into the suit I noticed that I was being attached to it, by wiry veins. They connected with my own. It was an instant fit, and it was very comfortable. I understood everything now, but I do not know how. It was Quagga mind-probing me. Possibly the affects of some great dimensional transition. Words were dead. I need them to explain to devolved humans, though. We had evolved with these suits. I had felt sudden feelings of euphoria - as if being in a warm bath. But it was constantly warm. It was blissful.

Quagga motioned towards the abyss. We needed to penetrate it. Quagga casually sliced a portion out of the abyss with his standard-issue air purifying gun. A gaping, bloody, entrance opened up in the abyss, there was no light just flesh. It was a strange colour for blood, as other secretions had turned it a coffee-like colour with a strange orange tinge. We navigated through the hole, our bio-robo suits withstanding all attempts to crush us as we burst through the abyss.

We had cut through time's umbilical cord as Quagga mind-linked this information to me. I realized I had devoloped semi-telepathic instincts through my basic bio-robo-suit. This was no holed-up Holy Worm scenario. Quagga made a grunt-fart, which I had heard over the psi-comm. He knew I had been a fan of silly trivial so-called "entertainments" that deal with these things. It does sound very trivial and I tried not to feel inadequate [as my status as a Sci-Magus was unproven] and shrug it off by mentally retorting that my mother was a bigger fan of these whimsical fancies. I noticed we had not taken in our new environment. There was a red mist everywhere. The ground felt like marble, but it looked like a cola-coloured ice lolly. We stepped on it, but noticed icy clouds looking at us. They had repitilian eyes.

Quagga had psy-commed some problems about Sirians to me, but I was uable to grasp his ideas. But he had thought these were eternal disturbances that flaired up in our time during the 1950s. I was amazed. It seems our history is one big lie[based upon great truths]. But I ignored these facts for my quest for yet more facts. We knew the clouds might cause trouble [the sanctuary had drifted away]. They turned into feral cherubs. Small, winged, kittens with large fang-like feeler-teeth. These small pussies were enticing, but very uncontrollable; their pleasures were never contained for long[which can be a good thing]. Quagga sent me a mind-vid-read out[free trailer/v.o.d/p.p.v]:

They were in fact, according to Quagga, part of the Tyme-Pyre genus. A Tyme-Pyre was fiercely loyal to its "Tyme-Tag" or "Feed-Stream". It would tirelessly battle over every bit of history[including space and time]. They were already morphing into religiously fundamental Communist-Nazis tee-totalitarians. They had sub-machine guns, and fired at us. Instead of bullets, they fired a pulsating blast of fleshy detritus at us; it half ponged! We were getting pinned back, despite our in-built bio-flesh-shields. They continued their onslaught.

Quagga sent me a sudden mind-link. He told me that the Tyme-Pyre crews were sent by the mercenary Sirians and that these Tyme-Pyres fed off the violent wars and deaths on our own world. They were sucking life off Earth and tunring it to rotten flesh to fire at us now. The thought sickened me, though I had not consumed solids for some time - I gladly gulped my vomit back down. It may have, also, interfered with my suit if I had orally ejaculated it.

A tube from the suit later extracted it for me, and placed it into a decomposed looking Quagga; I noticed his face looking more skeletal. Quagga tutted at me, shaking his head, smiling a pukey smile. He had administered a lag-time subsitute to the Tyme-Pyre, but they were not thrown off. The Sirians must have had them vaccinated. We knew this battle may go on for some time...

By this point we had tried to hide in 1979 and Quagga was wracked with a great melancholy for some strange reason. There was always an infinite sadness, which is what we needed to abolish. The Tyme-Pyres were on our mission to destroy this time-zone-lock-in-out. The Sirians wanted to capture us and take us out and remove us off Earth. They need the resources just like we did, but they took from all planets they could. We were merely an inconvenience to their grand schemes.

Mr. Quagga grumbled, as we absorbed our bio-robo suits into our bodies. We tried to blend into the time, but I was not very good at this yet. Quagga, who was starting to annoy me, assured me it was a skill I would lean to harness as my astral exploits unfolded further. I had no idea we would yet surivive this minor trans-dimensional skirmish. Quagga suggested another time splice and another realm: I was very confused; I felt like a ghost as we moved from one place to another, briefly saying to watch 'The Wall' in the early 1980s, before finding a loose fissure, which Quagga worried over for some time. It stabilized in this realm, for a long time.

However, I was totally absorbed in The Wall for some time. It was good to escape - if not for long. And I needed a laugh. We were fully bio-power-suited now and close to invisible as possible in this realm, though we left a heavy electromagnetic particle trace and many soothe-sayers claimed to have felt us[up....there] We felt up everyone, and all the times seemed miserable: you had to make your own inner happiness.

Quagga was starving himself, as his quest was destined to be a tortured one; he needed the suffering to get excited, of course. He would not be sated, until everyone who dwelt on Earth found enlightened immortality. I thought this dull ideal rather Utopian, though he had tried to get noticed briefly, as he tried to published a pamphlet through to his widely ignored future-time blog.

Everyone ignored us, anyway. It was the way the Agency had planned it and Quagga secretly liked it, of course [the Giggle Factor was randomized and very secretive, as those in the know will know]. Those destructive agents, VeeCee and Von RapArd, appeared to remove us from this time-scene-thingummy. They were just cleaners. But I was happy to go, although Quagga had mysteriously vanished. We were no longer one, maybe we never had been one....

[...maybe a bit earlier? Whenever's good for you...Aeons fly by...]

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