But, contrary to what you probably thought was gonna happen—let's be honest here: you thought it was gonna suck everything into his chest cavity, didn't you?—the space–time continuum in question actually expelled everything from Aintree's hole.

Have no fear, intrepid reader, for Aintree was not dead—he'd just taken in a lot of bad mojo over the years... Some real hoodoo. We're talking tumours out the ass. Literally. Aintree literally had a tumour hanging outside his asshole, and it really hurt when he wiped or sat on a hard surface.

The four buff men inhaled cancer and died.

With all of his bad mojo gone, including but by no means limited to his ass tumours and the second penis that up until that point in his life he had always had to tuck back so as not to freak any of his potential sexual conquests the fuck out, and the four buff men dead from acute cancer inhalation, Aintree jumped to his feet.

He danced, because why the fuck not? And because he could hear the music One-Eye had been talking about. Oddly though, there was no beat as such. In fact it sounded very much like a song by that shit '90s little-girl-pop band, Hanson. Oddly enough, he also distinctly heard the new single. It was both songs, but yet no song at all. You know the stuff—so tuneless and horrible you can't help but like it. Aintree felt his brains go to mush, eyes glazing over, lids growing heavy. A keen observer might even see his liquefied grey matter go leaking out his ear. He dropped to the ground and shook.

A woman came out of the alley smoking a jumbo-sized cigarette, because she was a girl who needed some horsepower in her mouth.

Upon seeing Aintree shaking like an epileptic in a strobe-lighting factory she laughed, because she thought it was funny. She also felt sorry for him though and despite the fact his mushy brains were seeping from his ears she thought he was kinda' cute.

She held the jumbo fag to his lips and waited for his body to remember what to do with a cigarette.

"Whoa..!" Aintree shot to his feet and with wide eyes he stared at the girl as nicotine coursed through his body.

"Whoa...!" he said again. "That shit is totally non-heinous! Where am I?"

"You're in

***

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***

Aintree and Judy sat on the curb, tapping their feet in irritation while they passed the smoke back and forth.

"We back?" Judy asked. "Good. As I was saying, you're on planet Earth in the year 19,500. That music you heard, the one that turned you to mush, was the only way to remove the fail-safe. Remember when you had your last prostate examination?"

"How could I forget? He prodded me 'til I sobbed into the paper sheet."

"Well, he jammed a chip up there." Judy pulled out a portable phonograph. She hit play and terrible music spewed forth.

"TURN IT UP!" yelled a commercial radio DJ who happened to be making his way from a butcher's across the street at that very moment. "THAT SHIT IS DA BOMB!"

"Mmm look at all that meat..." said Aintree, absent-mindedly. Then, because he didn't really feel comfortable with Judy thinking he was some kind of meat freak, added, "I see you've still got retards in 19,500."

"Oh yeah," she replied, nodding with no small amount of vigour. "Fuckers are everywhere."

Aintree nodded.

"So you were saying something about there being a chip jammed up my jaxi?"

She retrieved a tub of lube and jammed her finger in to get a heaping dollop.

Aintree dropped trou and bent over, awaiting insertion. "Oooh, cold!" he said, and then he started saying things that shan't be repeated in this story.

Ten minutes later, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and buckled up. "Did you get it?"

"Get what?" Judy asked, washing her hands in a puddle.

"The chip."

"Oh, that? You blew that thing out with your lung cancer, second dick, outer-asshole tumour and all the other bad mojo. I just thought you needed a good prostate massage."

Aintree didn't know how he felt though he did make a mental note that, at some point in the not-too-distant future, he was going to have to take something larger than a finger, and he vocalised as much.

"Well I do have a strap-on in the cupboard beside my bed," said Judy with the slightest of shrugs. " I mean it's normally reserved for my girlfriends and I when we have sleepovers with pillow fights and negligee, but I'm sure I can make an exception."

"Later though, eh?" Aintree smirked. "What's the chip for?"

"Well, it might be a chip, implying tech, but it's actually a life-form. It isn't alien, either. It's just a really small person, made smaller with a shrink ray."

"You're saying I had a person up my ass?"

"Indeed."

"Why?"

"In case you went rogue, Aintree—which it seems you have. I've been sent here from the future to warn you, except you started going all over the place in the timeline like some lunatic and ended up landing in my present."

"But I killed the dictator of Flatula 9! That was my job!"

"Yes, but you were also meant to protect Alvin Qwin. He was destined to save us from robotic enslavement."

Aintree sighed, heavily.

"Well you know, if someone had told me Alvin was so important then I probably wouldn't have let him huff bodily fluids from a bottle he found behind a toilet and to be fair, I probably wouldn't have let him die, either. But I'm not a fucking mind reader..."

He paused mid-rant. The look in Judy's eyes told him all he needed to know.

"All right, all right... I don't need to be able to read your mind to know you're one seriously pissed off piece of ass, so what's next?"

"Next you fix your shit, but first we've got to find you some clothes that couldn't win a Halloween costume contest for Best Zombie. I mean, Jesus. I knew you were stabbed even before I was sent here but in person it just looks like someone shot you at impossibly close range with a cannon-ball from an eighteenth-century pirate ship."

"You done?"

"Almost. Boss Hogg is not going to be impressed with your beauty routine, and trust me, you're gonna want him on your good side."

"What?" Aintree's face fell. "How the hell do you know about Piglet?"

"Duh. He sent me here. He's the one you pay in the future to save your friend Alvin in the past in order to save the future future from robotic enslavement."

"Makes sense." Aintree nodded. "Except the part after the beginning. And the one before the end. And . . . the first part."

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, let's just find a camel and a mince pie salesman from the nineteenth century..."

Now it was Aintree's turn to shoot Judy a look. It was a look that questioned and most definitely queried but above all else, it was a look that wanted to know what the fuck, exactly, she'd been smoking.

"You wanna' try that one again?" he asked, his eyebrow raised like he was the People's Champ.

"I said come on, let's just pop into that clothing store and see about finding you some suitable threads."

"You do know that's a lingerie store, right?"

"Look around, Aintree. You're in a world that doesn't give a shit if you have a dick for a nose." She indicated to a coincidentally dick-nosed man, who grinned as he delivered milk from door to door. His chin looked like a pair of nuts. She waved to him. "Hi, Richard!"

He waved back and picked his dick-nose. Aintree shuddered as it was revealed to be an uncircumcised dick-nose and Dicknose had to pull back the skin before he could jam a finger into a nostril.

"I think I'll head to the Big & Tall store," he said and went in.

When he came out - not 'came out,' because Aintree was a devout heterosexual, or at least he'd only permit one to enter his exit if she had really, really nice hair - of the store he was attired in what he considered to be suitable clothing. It doesn't matter of what, exactly, said clothing consisted, because this isn't that kinda' story. What does matter, or at least it mattered to Aintree, was the hair - so yes, it appears Aintree has a hair fetish - he procured - and yes, he paid for it - from the ginger with moderately sized breasts who finished the trim by bouncing his Bradley between said breasts. All in all, a good way to spend a nickel. Aintree thought he could get used to this surprisingly cheap time—what was it, the twenty thousandth century?

Judy sat on a Hyundai Cock-Rocket and revved the engine.

"Glad to see Hyundai is still around," Aintree said, hopping on. "Where are we going?"

"Your mother's house."

"No, really? Where?"

"Your mother's house. More specifically, the remnants of your mother's house. There are some relics we need to collect before we can continue."

"This'll be like Tomb Raider, eh? Heh."

"No," she replied, flatly. "And seriously don't EVER talk about Tomb Raider again, especially in public!"

Aintree was about to ask why though there was no need, as Judy carried on before he was able to ask.

"It was only a few years ago, after the launch of the latest and last game, the title of which I will not speak... It was totally immersive, hugely addictive. But it was also real. So real that a digitised version of Lara Croft managed to escape the game and went on a gerbil killing, raping and eating spree, in that order!"

"Well, then what'll it be like?"

They took off, ripping and roaring through the streets. Okay, maybe not "ripping" or "roaring," as the Cock-Rocket sounded more like your dad's old electric shaver on its lowest setting with its battery about to die.

Above the not-so-noisy din, Judy said in an indoor voice, despite that they were very much outdoors, "It'll be like Indiana Jones."

And what follows is a long, boring journey out of the city and through the countryside. They made many friends, many more enemies, and worked countless odd jobs to make ends meet. You don't want to read about that crap. Let's skip to the good stuff.

They arrived at Aintree's mother's house several months later, though for the purposes of this story we'll ignore that fact.

"So... these relics?" Aintree asked as he dismounted the Cock-Rocket. He waited for Judy to alight in a similar fashion, rolling his eyes and tapping his foot as he did so.

"What about them?" she asked. "Jesus, Aintree, it's really pretty fucking simple. Relics include anything that's old, or looks old, or could probably be old."

He kicked at the ground, scuffing a couple of smallish pieces of rubble in the process.

"Oooh, like these?" he asked, stopping to pick up the packet of original, still-sealed Just-Add-Water Sea-Monkeys.

"DON'T TOUCH THAT!" Judy shouted, drawing her gun and aiming it at Aintree.

He stopped and slowly backed away, not liking the way her letters went all capital like that.

"This is exactly what we came for, Aintree! Don't you see?"

He shrugged.

"These aren't actually Sea-Monkeys. The original run had a manufacturing error. Instead of Sea-Monkeys, they mistakenly put a brick of powdered JC-28 inside. This is a fifty-thousand-dollar packet of Sea-Monkeys, Aintree!"

"We're rich...?" he asked, squinting, not sure if he should jump for joy.

"No, butthole. We need this to pay Piglet."

"Right."