Comedy Open Mic Round 40 (Entry #2) : OVER THE SILVER SKY TO THE WORLD OF NEVER : Part 82 - I Have Little Use For Knees Or Their Caps.

George Midget Fondler Clooney, pictured below with someone who actually works for a living, is simply far too good to be true. He makes all other men look bad by existing. You just know he's got some deep dark disgusting secret which explains why he has gone prematurely grey. You don't get hair that color from a clear conscience. He's constantly wrestling with those deep dark demons that make him do stomach churning things. Possibly with rodents or other small animals. Although I wouldn't dismiss giraffe's. He's got that look about him and I understand Clooney has a large selection of ladders. Thanks to his celebrity status he has free rein in zoo's the length and breadth of his penis. That's not something to be sniffed at, unless you're into that kind of thing. And who am I to judge you? Especially after what I'm imagining George Clooney doing with a toothbrush and a baby terrapin. It's his wife and children I feel sorry for, not so much the giraffe's and terrapins he has definitely abused in pursuit of his sickening fantasies. It's also a fact that he doesn't believe in goats (Somebody suggested I'd misheard him and he said ghosts, but I'm ruling that out due to him appearing in From Dusk Till Dawn). Please bear this in mind as you endure more of my nonsense.

(The copyright to this image is the property of Fox News.)

Stepping once more into the simulation of Port Bristol, Jake spotted some subtle differences to his previous visits. It was dark, cold and damp with a medium thick fog. The stench assaulting his nostrils nearly indescribable. Stale urine and cheese notes with an underlying taste of horse shit, as a wine connoisseur might put it. There were flickering yellowish orange lights in the distance and lightless buildings to either side. His first instinct being he'd inadvertently entered the wrong simulation. Unless one of the former disgruntled patrons he'd ejected had done a reset. Stepping back through what he'd thought of as his entry point only took him through more of the same. Asking Hermes what was going on drew nothing but silence. This was not Bristol or Port Bristol.

He studied the sky intently. At first he saw nothing. Then a gust of salty sea air temporarily parted the fog. A crescent moon and a scattering of brighter stars. No sign of that silver band across the blackness. This wasn't the earth he'd thought he was on. It wasn't a simulation of it either. Jake was left with no other option than to explore further. Hoping he'd be able to find his way back to this spot. He'd come in through here, surely that meant he could go out. Although logic had pretty much lost the plot as far as he was concerned. Where the hell was he? How he'd come there could wait? A closer examination of one of the gloomy buildings led on to another conundrum. When was he? Not important yet. A potential problem further down the line. Idle speculation was pointless right now. He had to move on. In the direction he'd been facing when he first entered this puzzle.

The street was paved. Very badly paved, with the narrow ruts of wheels that were from no car. Carts and carriages had worn them into the stone and mud over decades of use. No drainage, judging by the amount of wading he had to do. Best not to think about what he was wading through. This town had all the hallmarks of being somewhere they emptied out the chamber pots into the road below. He pulled his coat closer. Having become accustomed to the balmy warmth of his former location, this was decidedly chilly. The side street he was on joined what looked to be a main street. There were actual people walking along. It was more crowded than the futuristic place he'd thought he was in. Attempting to accost a passerby looked like his sole option. One he discarded when the first two he attempted to engage swore at him and threatened harm. He could have taken them, he assured himself. It was too much trouble.

Judging by the clothing this was an eighteenth century style place. It might even be eighteenth century. He still hadn't determined whether this was reality, a simulation or he'd traveled back in time. A carriage being driven hard, splashed water all over him. That was going to test the self cleaning fabrics. The sight of a man holding the pommel of his sword made him check he still had his kit. Which he did. This reassured him. He'd turned left out of that side street. An instinct with no known source. In this case it proved to be serendipitous. There up ahead of him on the opposite side of the road he was sure he'd spotted something familiar. A peeling wooden sign with the legend "Ye Olde Booke Shoppe, established 1647".

"Awww shit." He moaned. "What the hell has brought me back to that place? I don't remember breaking that many mirrors. Or being that cruel to animals and orphans. I really could do without this."
A man walked past giving him an aggressive stare. Not used to people talking to themselves. Jake cheered himself up by thinking that at least now he wasn't the ugliest person on the planet. Admittedly he wasn't the best looking either. Despite his life long access to dentistry, medicine and indoor plumbing. He had to take what he could get. When life gives you lemons, squirt lemon juice in its eyes, as his mother never used to say.

The empty road became busy. Three carts and another speeding carriage going past before he could get to the book shop. Same stone steps down into the basement. Same door without a handle. If that lions head was going to make another lunge for his groin he was going to hit it. As his head sank below ground level he heard the sound of distant singing and smelt the stale beer. The door was as before. The yellowish half globe at head height only this time the lions head door handle was already there. Jake cautiously grasped it. Pleasantly surprised to find it didn't inject him with millions of tiny robots. Unpleasantly surprised to find he'd forgotten how icky being turned inside out was. He stood in the Nodal Reference Center. That guy he'd christened Blinky should be around somewhere. The layout wasn't anything like it had been before. Now it resembled something from the 1950's. There were book shelves on every wall and down the center ran desks with green shaded lamps above them.

"Finally." A voice exclaimed. "You're here at last."
Grimacing to himself Jake turned toward the source.
"Blinky, we meet again. Opening question. How can you be impatient when there's no such thing as time here? You cantankerous old twat."
The librarian drew himself up to his full five foot four inches.
"Possibly the forty three million, seven hundred and eighty seven thousand four hundred and twenty six beings who've visited since you were last here."
"Again that asks more questions than it answers." He looked around at the long empty room. "Funny. You don't look to be that busy."
"You dullard nincompoop. Slack jawed and even slacker witted as always. The Nodal Reference Center is infinite. Any finite number divided by infinity is zero. I thought you'd read "The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy"?"
"I have. Only I didn't realize it was a reference book."
"All books are reference books. That should be obvious to even a simpleton such as yourself. Even works of fiction contain truths and cultural markers. Otherwise no one who read them would understand them."
"I should point out that I'm armed this time Blinky. I'm not above kneecapping you." Jake tapped his shotgun stock.
"Feel free. I have little use for knees or their caps."
"You do feel pain though." He riposted pointedly.
"Indubitably. You're giving me ones in my chest and stomach. Most disagreeable as I have neither. Are you prolonging this preamble out of spite? It serves no purpose."
Jake rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"It's a possibility. I know I can spend as long as I like in here then return to exactly when I came. On with the business at hand. Why are, will you, have been waiting for me impatiently."
Blinky glared at him over his small round spectacles.
"That wasn't clever or correct. The syntax was all wrong. If you must know I've readied the tomes you requested."
"Of course I must know, you irritating dick. There wouldn't be any point me being here otherwise."
"That's not for me to know. Causality is beyond my ken. I simply am."
"You simply am a prick, more like. I'm beginning to understand why I punched you. I'm also wondering why I haven't done it far more often. I'm also starting to miss Hermes more than I like. Okay I'll take those books to go thanks."
"You most certainly will not sirrah. Nothing leaves this library, because everything that leaves it is nothing. You take an opus from here and I'll have to search for nothing then re-catalog it when I find it. That's a devil of a job and no mistake."
"Fine. Have it your own way. Where are the books in question?"
Those small, moist piercing blue eyes moved to indicate the four volumes on a reading table right beside him. Blinky tutted.
"It's like dealing with a retarded five year old and no mistake."
"Hey! That's our word. Nobody who isn't retarded gets to use it." Jake took a seat. "You'll find that funny later."

He set about his reading with a despairing heart. These were very thick books. They had a lot of pages in them. Jake had the growing suspicion from their earlier meeting that the individual pages were several pages long. He took the first one in the pile. It had Ashenram in the title. My hadn't he been clever. Requesting these books at some past or future point. Knowing the firewave wouldn't function here he checked it anyway. It looked like he'd have to hit the books like he had in the old days. When libraries didn't have coffee shops in them. The first one was absorbing. Containing as it did all that was known and would be known about Ashenram. Part myth and all highly educational. How long he was there became impossible to gauge. As with those training simulations time was an abstract, unmeasurable concept. In this place more than anywhere else if you thought it through

Without the aid of Hermes his eyes became strained. His back began to cramp. While his brain became a huge sponge. This was cramming for the most important exam of his current life. All those hours spent forcing facts into his mind then spewing them out in one huge splurge now became handy for the first time since school. The other three books were thankfully less work. There were a series of bookmarks in certain sections. Blinky had done some excellent work. Otherwise Jake would have been screwed. This wasn't just science it was crazy science. Stuff that made the quantum world seem pretty basic and easily understood. The last one brought all of it together. Rubbing the bridge of his nose Jake stood up, his muscles cramping. Legs numb from lack of use.

"Many thanks Blinky." Jake called into the vast room.
He jumped when the voice emanated from right beside him.
"I do wish you wouldn't keep calling me that. I've told you hundreds of times, my name is Gravel Sandwich."
"You are shitting me." Jake guffawed. "One day I'll have to introduce you to Grundel Spagthorpe and the Cockrash family."
"I am aware of Grundel. He's an early version of the U473594AV series. A machine consciousness in a human body. I have no knowledge of any Cockrash's."
"That's lucky for you then. Maybe you just haven't met the wrong woman yet. Don't loose hope is all I can say. I'll bid you adieu Gravel. You've been an enormous help as well as an enormous asshole. I've been Jake Halliday. Good night."

He was still laughing as he left. Retracing his steps until that lion head turned him inside out again. Now it should only be a case of finding the street he'd arrived on. Only the first step up the sunken stairway proved to be a lot larger than he'd expected. Jake stumbled into the Port Bristol simulation.

"What the hell's up with you?" Hermes demanded. "Tripping over your own feet isn't filling me with enormous confidence. When I go on a suicide mission I'd like to go out in style. Not falling onto a sharp spike after stumbling over a tuft of grass."
Jake was still in good humor in spite of the information he'd acquired.
"I guess you could say I've had what Buddhists would call a satori my friend. I do believe it's about time we had a plan B."
"I'm liking where this is going. Do tell me."
"It's a simple idea, I'm a simple man. If we don't hear anything from Pip in the next 24 hours, we're going in and kicking some ass. There are a few preparations we have to make. Are you with me?"
"Fuck yeah. It's green across the board. Lets kick some tires and light some fires."
"You know I'm going to steal that don't you."
"Yeah but I'll let you have that one on me. I got plenty more in my database."

I would like to nominate @smallsteps and @imealien for the next round.