HSSS 9 (or is it 10?) - Pandora's Alternate Reality

'Hey, Darius? Nice job on the JOI diary piece."

' Uh, who's speaking?'

'Very funny, partner.'

'Well, you so rarely give me a compliment,  my mind didn't allow for the possibility it was you.'

'Okay, Mr Man, count that as one of those slivers in which lie infinities you wrote about in Part Deux.'

'Well what do you know. Miracles happen.'

'Umm hmmm. And to reinforce your theory of possible outcomes, well it's not really your original theory per se, but your well-parroted version, by which I mean expressed the way you understand the concept, er, you can take more than mere rudimentary solace in the fact that you grok it so well....'

'Get to the point, please, Pox, you're addling my brain.'

'Oh, all right. Well, when you took on the very daunting task of extracting me from the IJ 8 cartridge I was stuck inside of due to my own relentless curiosity, I admit to that, indeed I do, D..'

'There you go being all alliterate-y again...'

'...so while I was in there I had thought up a different outcome to my dilemma. Wanna hear it?'

'I suppose I have no choice.'

'Be nice, now. This is storytelling, not real life. Just sit back and imagine I'm still in the cartridge....'

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'We regret to inform you that your application for transubstantiation has been rejected. ' Pox reads the latest in a long litany of inquiries made to escalating hierarchies within the church (this time, on official stationery from the Syracuse NY diocese of the RCC) that Darius has left on his desk, in plain sight of her cartridge-bound soul. She peers at it in dismay from her tiny peephole.

'Oh, isn't that just fucking great, D.'

'...'

'Darius? Darius? Are you even listening to my latest lament?'

'I hear ya , Pox, but it's not like it's new news. What did you expect they would say?' He resumes sipping on a microbrew and studying his next chess move. He is white this time.

' Huh. Easy for you to say, Mr. Man, you're free....well kind of free in an unfree world, er, I mean your mind and soul are like free to frolic within your own body. I'm so... uh, what is the word? ....artsy.....antsy.... what I mean to say is I hate being disincarnate and discorporeal. You know, don't you, my body had its tissues, er, I mean ISSUES....who amongst us could cast the first stone when it comes to fleshly problems? But really, D, this incarceration is really getting out of hand and I am not getting any younger here...'

'Pandora, my duck, actually you're in a much better place than almost anyone else on this godforsaken mudbucket called Earth.'

'Say what?'

'Well, you're kind of ahead of the game, aren't you? No need to bathe, shave, slave, mow the lawn or shovel the snow, no damn boss on your ass, no sleepies or eaties, no bill collectors barking up your butt. It could be worse, you know, is all I'm saying.'

Pandora senses his sayin' with the unerring sense that is intrinsic to all females. He really in the greater scheme of things does not give a rat's ass what happens to her. He kind of thinks she deserves her fate.

'Darius. Listen up. Since being in this...this...microcosmic world I currently inhabit, I have been able to achieve a...shall I say...kind of expertise, something quite unlike anything you have ever experienced in your corporeal form. DMT nothwithstanding, and no disrespect intended.'

'What are you selling, Pandora? Cartridge porn? I am SO not interested.' He says with his fingers crossed.

'Oh no, Mr Man, I have progressed infinitely far beyond the merely carnal. What I have to offer you....is so much more beguiling.....come closer....and I will show you.'

Darius is nobody's fool but on the other hand, tomorrow is Monday. A full work week lies ahead. He invokes his nascent DMT and presses his left eyeball up to the cartridge in which Pox is encapsulated.

'Hit me with your best shot,' he says.

Suddenly, things go all wonky. Darius watches scenery move swiftly past and lands with a thump on the edge of a sombrero somewhere in the desert near O.N.A.N.'s southernmost appended nation. Not Tucson...but it smells like tacos so it must be close.

'OMG, Pandora. What's happening to me?'

She laughs her trademark laugh which everyone could hear, if only they were tuned to that particular channel - WYYY, Boston.

She hands him a virtual Whataburger, medium well. 'Psychosis, anyone?'

'You incorrigible minx!'

--------------

'Not bad, Pox, not bad at all. '

'I hear a voice, I wonder who it could be?'

'Is there an echo in here? But once again, Pox, you've stolen my idea, by enticing me into the cartridge with you...'

Pandora sighs a heavy, deep sigh that resounds all the way to the corners of the room and all the rooms beyond the one that these two are virtually stuck in, together. 'That's your version of the same event, Darius....not mine and not the same one as in Part IV the Extraction, even. Which need I remind you, you yourself wrote.'

'You mean to say, how uncookiecutterish of me?'

'That's one way to put it.'

'Finally! consensus!'

'Let's go celebrate over a Whataburger, whaddaya say?'

'You buying?'

'Oh you...'