Tevun-Krus #20 - WattPunk

Smith & Jones

"Why is everything orange?"

"Because, erm..."

"Kris?

"Yeah, erm..."

"My good woman, you are supposed to be the fount of all knowledge. My compatriate and I rely upon your wisdom and experience in these matters."

"I get that, Jones, so calm the hell down," Kris replied, sighing heavily. "Fact of the matter is, this is a new one on me."

"What do you mean?" asked Smith as the sudden desire to smoke a pipe came over him.

"I mean, Smith," said Kris, slowly. "That I don't think this sub-genre has been around for very long. Doesn't it feel sort of, hashed together? Can't you feel it straining to come apart at the seams? There's anarchy herein..."

"All I feel is that I really, really need to..."

Jones never finished that sentence or at least, if he did none of his companions heard it because before the words were even out of his mouth he found himself encased within a 1990s Glastonbury Festival portaloo.

"Rather him than me," said Kris, chuckling. "Festival kazis are bad enough in my time, let alone the 1990s!"

"So," said Smith, as a pipe filled with peach tobacco appeared in his hand. "Any ideas? What about you, H'ver, my mechanical compadre?"

"This sub-genre does not compute," the robot replied. "I have no record of it in my databanks."

"Well," said Kris. "That bodes well."

Without warning, several thousand books tumbled from the orange sky, encasing the portaloo in a mountain of literature.

"Gah!" came Jones' muffled cry. "I only wanted a magazine to read!"

"This is an incredibly odd place," said Kris, though of course, such a thing really did not require voicing. "Ever get the feeling that the words you're using aren't your own? Like, we're all a tiny, minuscule part of some much bigger scene?"

"I'm sure I have no idea quite what you're talking about, Milady," H'ver [shit, not H'ver] Smith, replied. "Would anyone like a crumpet?"

"What?!"

"Sorry," he replied. "It does appear that something has scrambled my voice recognition unicycle..."

"Well, now do you see what I mean?" asked Kris, her eyebrow raised. "There's no way you would have said that unless someone had quite literally put the words in your mouth, Smith. I mean, do you even know what a unicycle is?"

"Well, logic would dictate that it is, indeed, a bicycle that has only one wheel."

"Point proven," Kris said. "Though why you're spouting lines from Red Dwarf, I'll never know..."

"Because... Wait, what?"

"I said, though why you're spouting lines from Red Dwarf, I'll never know..."

"Yes, I thought that's..."

Now it was Smith's turn to cut himself off in the middle of a sentence, although in fairness he only did so in order to allow the mountain of books to parade by. He shrugged as Kris stooped and retrieved a book from the single-file line, entitled 'Smith & Jones: Adventures in the Sub-Genre-iverse.'

She flicked through it and found that it was not even half full, the majority of the pages being blank. Then, upon further inspection, she discovered that the final page that had any writing upon was actually...

"This can't be right," she said, quietly, as she began to sense the oncoming brilliantly bright white light. "This book's being written as I speak!"