In the infinite reaches of space, in the finite reaches of the Milky Way galaxy, there exists a medium-sized planet in a medium-sized solar system next to a medium-sized sun. That planet is Earth. That planet isn’t important, though, as we’re focusing on a larger planet in a larger solar system in a larger galaxy, this planet being named Plit. Even if we had focused on Earth, it would have been no doubt destroyed for a bypass anyway, so forget about it. You probably haven’t even heard of it up until now, so just eradicate it from your mind. Plit, however, is a wholly remarkable planet. On it exists several thousand species, approximately three-fourths of them serving a reptilian species known as the Koopas, while another fifth serve the fungus species known as Mushroomers. The last fifth are those who think it’s cool not to be on any one side, and so tell everyone they’re neutral. If they are really important, they say they are mysterious and enigmatic. While the rest of the universe at large believes these people are wishy-washy idiots who really just go to the winning side of battles, there are some that admire these types of people, particularly the organisms who visit a certain communication band based on the planet Googorn, but run by a certain Koopa, known as LLF. (Note: Nobody really remembers what LLF stands for anymore.) On Plit, a great deal of either worry or happiness is spent thinking about a certain pair of organisms who were created at or around the same time as each other, and who call themselves the Mario Brothers. The Koopas largely worry about these two, while the Mushroomers largely are happy about them. This story is mostly about the Koopas, especially their leader, King Bowser Koopa, and his spawn, the Koopalings. Since you no doubt reached this story from an LLF band, you probably know about them, thus rendering this entire opening paragraph useless, its only purpose being to fill up space in this story. Our tale begins as thus…
‘Twas a bright afternoon when Plit was subjected to the agony of yet another Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy imitation, otherwise known as this story. To add insult to injury, the planet was also scheduled for gassing of all life forms to be carried out the following morning. The reasons were kept strictly confidential, a word that means “If anybody found out about this, we’d have to fire somebody.” So, without further ado, the story carried on.
Ludwig von Koopa woke up with the feeling that he would regret doing that later on. He made his way to the bathroom, showered (a redundant maneuver: why shower in the morning, just before you get dirty?), brushed his teeth (also redundant: why brush your teeth before breakfast?), and made his way downstairs. He told the chief cook Goomba to make two Yoshi eggs, over easy, and wheat toast. He was halfway into his second piece of wheat toast when Ignatious Koopa, better known as Iggy, came into the kitchen. Seconds later he was followed by the Chief Security Advisor, Fun Guy Fungi, who evidently was regretting waking up as well, for he was too tired to put on his suit and tie and was in his dressing gown. Ludwig decided not to comment on this particular shameless author insertion. Fun Guy ordered bacon and eggs and sat down. None of them suspected, of course, that this was supposed to be their last meal on Plit.
Ludwig had finished his breakfast and was heading up towards the lab when he noticed a shadow moving about behind a suit of armor. Of course, the armor was purely decorative, as Koopas only wear armor if they are a soldier, the majority of which are not, and thus the armor in question has never been proved to actually fit any living organism. Nevertheless, Ludwig belched a fireball at the shadow, which turned out to be a slightly singed Iggy.
“What were you doing back there?” Ludwig queried in the first line of this prose.
“Trying to scare the pants off of you, what else?” Iggy responded.
“Well, for one, I don’t have pants, and two, it didn’t work.” Ludwig ended what was supposed to be their last argument in victory when there was a Plit-shattering noise and the window behind them exploded inward in a million tiny shards. Just like in the movies, though, the two Koopalings received no injuries whatsoever. An armor-wearing, helmeted-type creature walked through the broken window. It removed its helmet. It seemed surprisingly human-like, with a slight build, blond hair, and glasses, wearing a red polo shirt and khaki pants. This was mostly just so that you, as the reader, do not need to envision a weird alien species every time you read this, and so that you can connect with our hero alien.
“Come with me if you want to-“ it began in a deep, pseudo-macho voice before switching to a normal voice. “Ah, forget it. Just follow me.”
“Why?” Iggy inquired.
“Because the world as you know it will be utterly devoid of everything you like best, including corn flakes, if you don’t.”
“Well, I hate corn flakes, but I like moldy cheese.”
“That’ll be history if you don’t come with me.” Iggy needed no further convincing, but Ludwig was far too experienced to give in to something like that.
“How do I know you’re someone trustworthy?” In response, the stranger pointed a conical, orange device at the bathroom door. The space-time continuum got a rather rude jostling in the time department, and the Chief Security Advisor could just be seen shaving in the bathroom mirror inside with his cap off. A dollop of shaving cream on the mirror prevented Ludwig from seeing just what was on his head.
“Anybody who can do that has to be from space or from the future. Either way, I wouldn’t take the trouble of coming all that way to kill you.”
“Very well, I’ll see what’s in store.” Ludwig climbed through the window and stepped onto thin air, which thanks to a great workout program, had recently been reduced to thin air as opposed to fat air. He was saved from a watery grave in the moat by a floating bicycle with a bell. It was, as fate would have it, a three-person bike. The stranger climbed on, activated an invisible Space-o-tron™ Energy Field, and took off into the reaches of the stratosphere, which took some time since Iggy was not peddling his fair share.
“Greetings, strange things. I am named Turn Strat (with a long a), hailing from the planet Ulata Gamma, and I am here to rescue you all from a terrible fate.” Somewhere in a laboratory in Reescalph XIV, there was a study that conclusively proves that it is impossible to hear that sentence and not come up with a question. By far, the most popular one of them all is “Where’s the smoked halibut?” but as that hasn’t been recorded on any planet except Aascoot 32, the planet of The Constantly Endangered Fish-Lovers, it is generally not accepted as a valid response. The second most popular one is a tie between the short “Why?” and “What fate?” Ludwig decided to go for the former.
“Why?”
“Because I have seen that you, older one, have vitally important powers. I picked it up on the sensor array. I picked up Iggy because I couldn’t exactly leave him behind,” Turn informed.
“What fate?” Iggy asked, thus putting the tie back in place.
“Well, your planet has been scheduled for immediate gassing of all life forms, effective today.”
“WHAT?!” the two asked together.
“Well, I can’t help it.”
“But everybody I know lives on Plit!” Iggy protested.
“Plit?” Turn asked, confused.
“Yes, Plit, the planet about to be gassed!”
“But, planet Mephroosh was scheduled for… oh, silly me. This is coordinates 35, 24. I was supposed to go to 24, 35. It’s an honest mistake. Could happen to anyone.”
“Well, take us back with the utmost of haste,” Ludwig said.
“Hmm… well, I’m afraid that I can’t do that right now, as there is a year-long magnetic disturbance in the atmosphere, which our Space-o-tron™ Energy Field can’t handle. Basically, what it means is that we can’t go back. Maybe next year,” Turn sheepishly explained.
“But… but…” Iggy stammered.
“Don’t worry, um… what are your names?” This was a rather bad thing to ask at the moment, considering the importance of the conversation, but they told him nonetheless.
“So, Iggy and Ludwig, umm, well, Plit wasn’t even a great planet by most standards, so just relax and enjoy the year. We’ll have all sorts of fun.”
“Right… two more queries,” Ludwig announced. “One, why did you decide to save whoever you meant to?”
“Well, I knew whoever would have showed up on my scanner.”
“Second, what is this power?”
“Umm… well, that’s what I was supposed to find out.”
* * *
The LLF communications band is without a doubt one of the greatest bands of all time, having survived the test of time over and over. Its only main competitor is another communications band, also run off of Googorn, but run by a organism on Earth, as well as assisted by a type of fungus known as a Goomba. That, however, is not important.
The LLF members have defined Plit as follows: Delightfully quaint, but could use a new continent.
There is an extremely dedicated group of scientists working to fix this problem as we speak.
The LLF band also agrees about the story of Ludwig and Iggy in space, AKA this story:
A nice story, but gets off topic an awful lot.
* * *
“Say,” Ludwig began, “how do you speak our language, anyway?”
“Years of practice,” Turn told them, “but you’ll need something better than that if you want to tour the galaxy.”
“Please tell me we aren’t going to tour the galaxy in this bike,” Iggy called out. “I’m dieing back here!”
“Oh yes, we should be reaching my main ship soon: The Imagination.”
“The what?” Iggy asked incredulously.
“Well, some starry-eyed poet once said that imagination travels faster than light, so I decided to make a spaceship powered by imagination.” As he finished saying this, a large, dark gray ship shaped like a teardrop with fins came into view. Seeing as there is nothing to block your view in space except for the occasional galaxy, there is no possible reason that a spaceship would suddenly come into view unless it was Star Trek and cloaking devices were readily available, which they are not. Furthermore, cloaking devices have no off switch and work both ways, the general effect of which is that if you install a cloaking device, you can’t see out of your ship, and then once you park it, you’ll never find it. This, however, doesn’t matter, as The Imagination just appeared because it was handy for the plot.
Back to the subject of an imagination powered ship.
The problem with an imagination-powered ship is that not only do you have to have a computer with sophisticated enough AI that it can imagine on its own, but there is a chance that everything on it will turn out to be imaginary. This means that the plate of smoked halibut you just picked up may disappear as the computer suddenly comes back to reality.
The Koopalings boarded The Imagination, not knowing the danger they may be in. Turn led them up to the bridge, where the super powerful computer’s interface was stored (the computer itself was towards the aft [back]).
“Hello, I am Matt, the shipboard computer, and I’m rather scared,” the computer informed.
“What from?” Iggy inquired.
“From the monster over there,” the computer quaked, and a digital arrow appeared on its monitor. Iggy followed the arrow and found a coat hanger.
“Don’t mind Matt, he’s got an overactive imagination,” Turn explained.
“The AI’s advanced enough to imagine?” Ludwig asked.
“Oh, of course, Plit is really rather behind in technology,” Turn said, “although I must admit that an imaginative computer is rather annoying. You should see him at night, always complaining about the monster under his CPU carriage.” Without further ado, the ship took off at close to ten times the speed of light. Inside, the Space-o-tron™ Gyroizing Stabilizer kept the bridge as stable as if they weren’t moving. At this point, Turn completely forgot the experience of the Koopalings in space travel and asked what modern scholars have regarded as one of the few stupid questions ever asked.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Umm… back home?” Iggy asked hopefully.
“Afraid not… but there is a delightful parallel universe just off the 52 bypass. We could see if there’s a parallel Plit.”
“By the way, you mentioned a language thing. What is it?”
“Ah yes. Meet,” Turn announced, holding up a bottle of apparently nothing, “the Space-o-tron™ Insta-Translator. Any organism that puts this in their ear can instantly understand any language. There was some copyright lawsuit going on for it from Douglas Adams or somebody, but never mind.”
“Um… that’s an empty bottle,” Ludwig observed.
“It’s nanotechnology, boys,” Turn said, then shook about half of the bottle’s worth of unseen substance into their ears. As a test, he said the only line he knew in Googornian. If you had been standing there, you would have heard “Ys dkdk ieut dfh dflhuis uiodfn.” Iggy and Ludwig, however, heard “Welcome to your tree” (it loses something in translation). This was a quite remarkable invention that worked off of brainwaves that essentially got the alpha waves of the people around it, then transferred it to the organism it is in.
The lawsuit against it is immense.
* * *
In no time at all, The Imagination was traveling through dimensional seams to reach Universe # 32, which was a parallel universe by all normal means. Of course, we are in a parallel universe to the occupants of Universe #32, but that is besides the point.
The interesting thing about parallel universes is that thanks to an area of mathematics known as the butterfly effect, tiny changes in the universe can lead to astoundingly different worlds.
For example, the Plit of Universe #32 was, a few years ago, hit with an extra piece of cosmic dust. This was nothing unusual, as Plit receives over ten tons of cosmic dust a day. However, this Plit was burdened just a fraction of a milligram more, and as such, it rotated at a slightly slower rate. This slightly slower rate caused the day to last slightly longer. This accumulated until Silver Boo, who didn’t wake up until nightfall, started sleeping longer, and so had slightly more energy. This caused him to decide to go to a mortals-only party at Peach’s Castle, which caused quite a panic. This made a certain jittery guard quit his job, which means that at Peach’s Castle in Universe #32, Bowser could get in and Peach was kidnapped more times than in our universe.
Get the picture?
But before we get to that, we must get to the subject of what happened on The Imagination before they got there. Despite the speed at which they were traveling, it was still a long way between dimensional seams.
“The smoothie I was about to drink disappeared!” Ludwig yelled.
“Get used to it, this ship is like that,” Turn explained.
“What’s with this soda machine?” Iggy shouted.
“It’s imaginary,” Turn said, starting to get exasperated. With that, the vending machine disappeared, along with all the coins Iggy had been pumping into it. “Look, you guys need to realize that the only thing real on this ship is the ship itself and a smattering of furniture,” Turn told them, picking up a Space-o-tron™ News-o-Matic. Before the advent of electronic news devices, organisms relied upon an invention called the newspaper, which was essentially useless. People paid large amounts of money to get it thrown in a puddle of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom in molecule form by a young person on a bike, then picked it up and read two or three articles from it before throwing it away and waiting for it tomorrow. It was an altogether bad system. Now you only pay large amounts of money to buy it, then continue to pay large amounts of currency to keep your subscription.
Some people have raised the opinion that they were better off with a newspaper, but they are regarded as progress-blocking maroons.
The LLF communications band agrees that this book gets very off topic.
“But what about this soda and snack machine I just got stuff from for free?” Iggy asked Turn.
“Oh yeah, that’s real. I picked that up on a boring old blue planet called Earth.” During this time, trolls, a functioning kitchen sink, and a complete biography of Mel Brooks materialized on the side table next to Turn, then disappeared. Finally, they reached the end of their trip and took the bicycle down and walked onto the parallel Plit. A flying pink Yoshi with blond hair, claws, and various other traits that didn’t become a Yoshi immediately greeted them. She seemed happy enough, but immediately went into a violent mood swing that caused her to slap an innocent passerby.
“Hello, who are you?” the Yoshi asked, suddenly cheerful again.
“This is Iggy and Ludwig von Koopa. My name is Turn Strat, and thank you for the warm welcome.”
“Well, I’m Pink Yoshi. I hope you have a great time here in the Mushroom Kingdom!” With that, their first experience of life in parallel universes was complete, and Pink Yoshi walked away. Unbeknownst to them, Pink was minus one brother as a result of that pesky butterfly effect.
“Who was that?” Ludwig inquired.
“I don’t know,” Iggy responded. Having gotten through all those obligatory cameos, the threesome made their way to Castle Koopa. The butterfly effect had delivered once again, and the mountain next to the castle was gone. Ludwig remembered Bowser constantly complaining about the mountain, since the official statement of the Koopas’ real estate was as far as the eye could see, and the mountain blocked it. Thus, in a week, Mt. Koopa was gone and Plit had an extra moon. Despite this rather odd change, Iggy and Ludwig walked inside and quickly found out the biggest change: in Universe #32, there were no Koopalings. Since a Koopaling ran LLF, there was no LLF communications band either. As such, Bowser had absolutely no idea who Iggy and Ludwig were, much less a geek in a red polo shirt and glasses. Needless to say, they were shut out of their own castle. This would have started a long chain of slapstick humor in attempting to get into the castle had it been a cartoon, but as this is a semi-realistic tale, they gave up. Luckily, since they had not been born, they managed to go into Peach’s Castle without getting arrested, and just in time for the daily party. There was a certain Mushroomer who was very worried about all the mess, but never mind. They went into the party. Peach, as it happened, was running out of ideas for a party, and so she decided to make this one a rave. Fortunately, the Koopalings learned how to do this when Iggy was bored and got his hands on a few glow sticks and strobe lights.
A rave is a type of party particular to Earth, although Plitians learned how to do it when a space-time wormhole opened up and an entire party was transported to Water Land. It involves getting very inebriated on any substance you can find, although the preferred one is by far Hawaiian Punch. You then, once intoxicated, take a tube filled with various light-emitting chemicals, which you then twirl around your head in a sickening fashion. During this time, loud booms are played through speakers, which are the size of houses. The booms themselves are loud enough to shatter glass, and are commonly called “music”. This whole time, smoke of an unknown origin hangs at around head level, and flashing lights cause several cases of blindness and epileptic seizures. For those who do make it out alive, you then must find your car, and try to shake off whoever brought you here in the first place.
The LLF communications band says of raves:
Loud, noisy, and extremely easy to crash on your way home from drinking too much Hawaiian Punch. And that’s if you walk home.
Back in Peach’s Castle, Iggy was attempting to get a glow stick and a glass of Hawaiian Punch simultaneously, while Ludwig tried desperately to get out of the room and Turn was already a step ahead and was drinking the punch already. Finally the pounding music stopped as the princess clambered up to the stage, where there were several unconscious forms and a twitching lump of something unidentifiable. Something repulsive and rather green to boot fell off of the stage. Princess Toadstool got her hands on a microphone.
“Testing, testing,” she said in her sweet voice that was the penultimate in clichés for the damsel in distress. It has been noted before that Peach is the penultimate damsel in distress, and if women are to take their rightful place in the world, stupid stereotypes like her must be the first against the wall.
It has also been noted that penultimate is a really cool word.
“Is this thing on? Oh. Um, thank you all for coming to this, um, rave. Unfortunately, our janitorial service is starting to have hospital-grade conniptions, so if you would all, um, leave, please, that would be most appreciated.” This was met with equal groans and cheers as the guests slowly walked out and into trees. The remaining guests were slowly pushed out while they were still unconscious. Turn, not totally understanding it, remained, forcing the Koopalings to stay inside as well.
“Um, do I know you three?”
“Well, it depends upon which universe we’re talking about,” Turn replied, “If you’re talking about the Universe #32, then no, you don’t know-“
“Yeah, we’re new. This is Ludwig, and I’m Iggy.”
“A pleasure, Princess,” Ludwig said, all the while concealing a clenched fist behind his back.
“Yes, likewise. Um, you can leave now.” Suddenly, a bloodcurdling scream came from the kitchen. The four rushed in to find Tayce T. sprawled on the floor, out cold from high blood pressure: a victim of her own cooking. It must be noted that Tayce T. cooked everything in a frying pan. After years of eating what she cooked, she finally succumbed to her cooking. That, however, was not what was the matter. A mysterious dart labeled “Lard” was in her back. Obviously, this dart sped up the process so that she just may give up cooking forever. The princess ran over to the phone, then pushed speed dial 2. It was labeled “Enigma Guy: Private Investigator”. She then proceeded to call an ambulance. Before it could get there, the doors to the kitchen burst open.
“Somebody call an inspector?” asked a deep, suave voice. A blue Shy Guy stood in the doorway, chewing a toothpick. The trench coat he wore pooled above the ground in seas of fabric. A fedora was hung low over his head, concealing his eyes. This was without a doubt the fabled Enigma Guy.
“Thank goodness you’re here, Mr., um, Guy. Listen, somebody sped up the inevitable process of hypertension in our cook. You need to trace the origin of this,” the princess said as she held up the dart.
“Very well. It’ll cost two hundred coins a day, plus the usual expenses.”
“The last time you said that, you were out all day at the bar in a drinking contest with a Koopa from the Toad Town Tunnels, and you called it expenses!”
“This is a tough job,” Enigma Guy explained. While it was true that the private investigator job wasn’t the least stressful job in town, he really shouldn’t have been drinking with a Dark Koopa. Nevertheless, he clearly stated in his contract (size 8 font) that he decided what expenses meant.
“Listen, you need to find out where the dart came from and who shot it. I’ll pay for your drinks,” she added.
“Very well,” Enigma Guy said. He dodged the prone figures of a dog and boy on the ground . The dog had a largish nametag that said “Fang” on it, while the boy had one of those stickers that said “Hi, my name is Martin” on his back. Enigma Guy walked out the door, but as he did so, the windows burst inward. A round green object that was conspicuously missing a pin on the top crashed in through another window. Tayce T. continued to lie on the ground. A Toad guard jumped in and tackled the princess to the ground, causing a burst of gunfire to miss. Unfortunately, that burst now decided to give up on Peach and head for the three space travelers in the center of the room. This is a very creative way of saying that Peach ducked and the gunfire hit Iggy, Ludwig, and Turn instead. They screamed in terror, and suddenly found themselves in the cockpit of The Imagination.
“Bang bang, you’re dead!” Matt shouted gleefully. “Did I fool you with my imagination?”
“Matt! Which universe are we in?” Turn yelled.
“Why, Universe #11, the universe we started in. I fooled you, didn’t I?” The computer had completely made up their trip to Universe #32. That’s not to say that that universe doesn’t exist, but rather that that universe was never visited by visitors from Universe #11.
“That does it. I’m getting rid of this ship,” Turn declared.
“Mr. Strat, please examine this switch,” Ludwig said, showing Turn the switch on the interface which said, clear as day, “Turn off Excess Imagination”. How this escaped Turn before is a mystery. Ludwig proceeded to flip the switch. The ship seemed to ease for a minute, then a DVD of Star Wars, or what people have called “A testament to imagination” appeared on the interface. In reality, the excess imagination meant that the computer could no longer imagine things outside of the ship. The drawback was that imagination, which behaved suspiciously like improbability, still worked inside The Imagination. Ludwig unnecessarily observed this out loud. Turn had observed the planet Plit for about three minutes, and had looked at some old recordings on file on the Rescalphian reconnaissance station on one of Plit’s moons. This was mainly so that he could learn their language, which in a stunning coincidence was exactly the same as one of the major languages on a small backwater planet in the Milky Way. Had it not been for this stunning coincidence, the two Mario Bros. would have been completely lost when they first came to Plit. Some people have explained the coincidence by saying that when the Mario Bros. first came to the planet from Earth, the so-called “creators” wanted a nice, smooth, unrealistic story line, and said that Plit spoke what is called “English”. These are written off as people who have had a few too many Greenian Teescorns, and get laughed at. Amazingly enough, there are people who mock the reasonable people in this universe for being “in character” and having imagined the whole of the universe.
These people are particularly like this when they come out of a bar at closing time.
Back in The Imagination, the ship was approaching a smallish, inhabited red planet. It showed up on the scanners as the planet of Googorn, otherwise known as the recording planet. It happened to be the planet where the famous LLF communications band was based. There were giant towers miles high all packed with microchips, tapes, and other miscellaneous recording equipment. Considering that in most of the civilized galaxy, the amount of space needed to store the complete works of William Shakespeare and the DNA encoding of an African bullfrog to boot was about the size of a pencil eraser, that meant that Googorn had an awful lot of information. It itself was in fact inhabited by a population of 32 organisms from the Orion’s belt system and a rock with some moss on it. There was a large amount of AI on the planet, enough to build its own robots in factories and keep maintenance on all of the towers. Millions upon millions of electronic books were all stored on Googorn, where several thousand square miles were devoted to books alone. There are no seas, and the one lake that was on this planet was filled in with concrete to make room for the Mephroosh Publishing company’s complete works in one handy tower. The current problem facing the robots was where to put in a new tower, and they considered knocking down the Mephroosh tower since the planet had been recently gassed, and so the editor could sadly take no more letters. Iggy had learned this all from the handheld Space-o-tron Insta-Net kit Turn had found underneath a seat cushion in The Imagination. It had direct access to the Inter-Outer-Net, which included access to the LLF band. Using the handy Googorn search engine, he could order any electronic book from the web planet Amazorn. But anyway, Ludwig was currently inquiring why on Plit would Turn want to take them to a nearly uninhabited rock with robots on it. Turn replied that he needed to find his watch, which he dropped one time in the space-time fabric folds and had a sneaking suspicion that one of the 32 Orion creatures had taken it. He brought The Imagination in. There was no need to use the bicycle this time, for that was only useful in primitive worlds where a full-scale spaceship landing might cause a certain amount of tension. The hatch to the alien world opened, and Turn, Ludwig, and Iggy, the latter two taking this very well, stepped onto the planet that had not had visitors for the last two hundred years. At least, it is believed so. They stepped out, and saw a sight which would have melted their eyeballs, glued their brains to the back of the skulls, and imploded their craniums had the phrase “looks can kill” was accurate, which, thankfully, it is not, save to the inhabitants of Ursa Minor, in which case looks can kill them. Thankfully for our heroes, looks cannot kill them. The sight they saw was something that we’ll get to in a moment. They should have seen towering pillars of knowledge, including the fabled but never proven Tower of Foreknowledge, which according to rumor got so large and so intelligent it could know the future, and what’s more, it got so much knowledge stored in it that it created AI on its own. How this happened is still a mystery, as a machine needs AI to create AI, but nevertheless it happened, and so the Tower of Foreknowledge remained, gazing into the distant future. It towered thousands of feet above the other rather sizable towers, until finally it created its own robots. It saw in the future that there would be two human creatures that would come to Plit and defeat the current tyrant at the time. It had carelessly left a transmission open (once AI gets powerful enough, it can make human mistakes), and Kamek, the reigning master of magic at the time on Plit, was trying to get a bowl of corn flakes on a high shelf when the toaster next to him popped up a piece of toast. The toast had writing engraved into its crunchy goodness, and Kamek noticed that the legend of the Mario Brothers was engraved in it. He immediately passed it off as his own seeing, and told the reigning king, King Morton, about it. Morton, being the less than brave soul he was, sent his infant son to battle the Mario Bros., and was summarily ridiculed as his son lost to a baby on a dinosaur. Kamek never told anyone the truth in his life, and chances are he will die cold and lonely in his bed, his secret dying with him. However, this half-page long story doesn’t really apply to anything constructive with the storyline at hand, and as such, it doesn’t really matter. This was just another off-topic story, courtesy of the author.
Back on the subject of the main characters, the sight they were currently seeing was not only the Tower of Foreknowledge, but also a bolt. Or rather, a series of bolts that led to a distended robot torso, completely smashed into pieces. There were several more of these robots. All of them exhibited signs of being hit by something very large, very heavy, and very mobile, somewhat like a 50s auto from America on Earth. The trio was just starting to ponder what exactly could do something like this when an engine roared to life behind them.