A soft wind gently tickled leaves high in the trees, and the same wind bent the long grass around them, cool to the touch and filling the air with a gentle hum, low and ghostly. It smelled like outdoors, and that was a good sign to them, because it meant the environment should be friendly. The smell of outdoors is caused by geosmin, a natural compound that bacteria in the soil excrete. If the familiar smell had evolved to exist here, odds were it was safe enough to be outside, or if they were lucky they might even still be on Earth. Or, as we'll find out, safe enough from bacterial threats, the ever-existing threat of a predator larger than them is always an evolutionary possibility.

As their vision unblurred they saw a sparse, park-like forest around them, the plentiful long grass rolling in waves in the large gaps between trees. There was ample shade from enormous overhung branches extending from the behemoth trees, ancient looking, draped with moss, overlapping branches articulating over each other in elegant fractal patterns pleasing to the brain.

Antehero saw what resembled a fat great white shark, mouth agape, and an upside-down bat. Mojave, of course, a bat and an upside down fat shark. Neither were particularly bemused by the pareidolia, the tendency for the human brain to perceive images in clouds. They knew the brain was designed to detect objects. And they knew the clouds were moving, formed by the wind, so it seemed natural that they might mimic animal forms because those forms themselves were pushed by evolution to be aerodynamic.

It was still fun. The way cloud watching can be. Watching herds of ambiguous animals meander across the sky, or misshapen heads exist for a bit. It may be childish, but if you let it feel good it can still feel good to spot a spaceship or boat drifting in the sky, puffy and white until it disappears.

"What a shithole.” Antehero finally said, sitting up as a single tear finished its five year journey down Mojave’s cheek.

He turned, noticing the tear, “Were you at work?"

"No, wait, do not tell me it was time dilation again, how many lifetimes of suffering have you lived now, dude?” Antehero asked.

Mojave was silent for a moment as he did some mental calculations, tallying both number of sufferings and factoring in coefficients for quality and degree of suffering. He parsed eons of all-encompassing physical suffering, crushes and stretches and all manner of burns and shocks. Tortures and maimings. Minimum wage jobs, radiation sickness, the list goes on.

And he calculated mental suffering as well. Lifetimes lost for what felt like near infinite periods of time frozen in cruel worlds that left your thoughts at normal speed through horrible happenstances of physics, and even more lifetimes wandering frozen wastelands or trapped on shithole worlds that didn’t have a decent Waffle House. Did you know you can buy the coffee mugs? It's awesome. Feels cool as hell drinking out of one and they hold the heat really well so the coffee stays hot. They're not paying me I just legitimately like mine.

“By far,” Mojave replied. “At least when we’re on adventures it's just a comparatively reasonable amount of pain and suffering. Horrific, sometimes boundless pain and suffering, sure, but at least it’s reasonable given the line of work. You know, bad guys torturing us, space time events maiming our bodies and souls, typical hero shit, comes with the job.”

“These people give me deadlines before we even know the problem we’re trying to solve, dude. And I tell 'em, and they not only ignore me, they have the audacity to tell me I should already be implementing a solve. Then, instead of course correcting when what I told them was obviously going to happen ends up happening, they just rewrite history in the next meeting. And when things get bad it’s another round of swift layoffs and the guy that worked 70 hours a week is gone. Anybody that ever had a job can tell you true pain and suffering is working for a psychopath.”

“It's not normal to come home and collapse in exhaustion. We came too far for this, where is the leisure time we learned about?" Mojave almost yelled.

"I'm just clarifying for the audience, I totally believe you stood under a frozen waterfall that weighed thousands of tons and had to bear its weight for one thousand years and that you endured that suffering and are normal psychologically and all that, one hundred percent."

"Well I was bearing the fucking weight of a frozen waterfall for a thousand fucking years I'm sorry I wasn't getting a communications degree."

Antehero was already looking into the distance, "I hope they have bidets in this shithole."

“I’m pretty sure we’re not glamping,” Mojave replied. “But why do you have a purse anyway?”

“I guess the contact between my skin and the purse counted when I got my nicotine pouches,” Antehero hypothesized. "Does all contact count? Did the portal pull your buttplug in?"

Antehero looked at you and said "The fourth wall is an imaginary boundary between a story and the audience. When a character or the author speaks to the audience the wall is "broken."

“Bro,” Mojave said, “I assure you there is no end to the dumbass rules insecure men make for themselves. There’s a number, it’s a minority I’m sure, but a number of men that believe it would be emasculating to hold a bag for their wife.”

“Well how is she supposed to carry the beer if you won't help her hold her purse?” Antehero said, spreading his legs wide and adjusting his balls, "My wife carries 30-packs of Miller Lite for me all the time because the kids make me carry them in stores, it wouldn't be fair to make her hold all her stuff too. And besides, I carry a bag with me everywhere I go, and I care a lot about it. I keep two of my most prized possessions in there. What does it say about a man if he feels like less of a man because he’s helping his wife accessorize?”

“I'm picturing the caveman and cave-wife headed back to the cave after a nice day with the tribe hunting and gathering. He’s got the deer on his shoulder, she’s got the woven grass basket of grapes, cave-kids are walking along with them, having a blast riding pet mastodons or whatever."

“Suddenly, she drops her seashell hair clip. Caveman strong as fuck, wife is busy holding grapes. Caveman reach

“I’m telling you, if we ever end up in a universe with more than one Demolition Man movie, I may not come home,” Antehero said, “or I mean I’ll come get my wife and kids and her purse and shit and then go back. Hey, speaking of accessorizing, do you ever wonder about how far behind scrotum technology is?” Antehero asked.

“Like women have all this technology to shop for bras and adjust bras, measure for bras and they have backup bras. Why didn’t men ever invent a proper device to support our balls? We’re getting like bulk packs of underwear off the shelf."

"Think about it, there are stores where you go in and swing golf clubs and computers use radar to capture your swing and algorithms to analyze you and robots to make custom fit clubs. Can you imagine? People are doing the wide-step and we could be radaring our balls and walking around in the finest computer-modeled bespoke-moulded orb harnesses. Italian import with sport mode and Adaptive Sack Control. What the fuck are we even doing?” Antehero started rummaging through his wife’s purse.

-.. . ..- ... / . -..- / -- ..- ... .. -.-. .-

Mojave and Antehero walked to the storage container and stood in front of it.

“Continuing my previous thought,” Antehero said, “What the fuck are we doing here? And how do we get home, my middle kid is going to be pooping in like 30 minutes.”

“I thought we were about to game for a few hours,” Mojave said, “is your wife not home?”

“Yeah, she’s home,” Antehero replied, “but he likes to come stand in the doorway and announce to me that he’s taking a poop before he goes, if I’m not upstairs it’s going to throw off his whole poop routine. He has to prove he’s a big boy, it's a kid thing.”

“But most importantly, I’ve had one more job the entire time. I have been a janitor. And the first thing a good janitor learns is that any situation not immediately rectified can become a shitsuation. Which brings us to the present. So what are our choices here? Aliens, some weird magic stuff, maybe some evil nemesis, AI gone rogue? Have you been doing science experiments at home again?”

Mojave shook his head. “Nah, she’s got a bunch of baking stuff stacked up in the garage. I’m thinking, based on the circumstances, it is an alternate dimension.”

“Alternate earth?” Antehero said, raising his eyebrows.

“Right,” Antehero said, smacking his lips as he put his wife’s lip balm back in her purse, “Because it’s hot as fuck here? We could have little battery powered fans cooling our balls if Nikola Tesla had lived somewhere hot.”

Mojave was still staring at the sky, mulling over how fiction so often becomes reality. The hair on the back of his neck was stiff, and a he had general feeling of unease. Like forces beyond his control were at work, and something terrible might happen. Something he would be powerless to stop. You know, the same feeling anyone gets when they see police lights, “Maybe we got abducted,” he said.

“I’ve never been abducted before,” Antehero replied, “I always went willingly. Maybe we're on a mission from god?”

Mojave laughed, "What the fuck does that mean?”

"I'm pretty sure it means I just kind make up what I want to do, call it a mission and then say it's his idea.” Antehero replied.

As the computer booted up and various status and progress messages scrolled down the screen, Mojave walked further in and opened a small refrigerator, and then tossed Antehero a Red Bull as they sat down to look at a radar display on the screen. Antehero drained the can in one shot and put in a new nicotine pouch. Mojave took a deep hit off his nicotine vape with one hand and started typing in various commands on the computer with the other, running all sorts of scans and whatnot and prodding at data with advanced analytics. As he exhaled, Antehero watched.

“Did I just watch you inhale mango flavored nicotine? We look fucking stupid, dude” Antehero said through his puffed lip.

“Absolutely,” Mojave replied as he typed what looked like a differential equation, taking another giant rip off his nicotine vape. He rattled out the words rapid fire, holding his breath and speaking in short bursts, “Like a couple of mind controlled dipshits, wandering the world aimlessly like voluntary zombies paying our hard-earned money to suck on brain flavored lollipops. I see you with that pouch, don’t think I forgot when you used to do Copenhagen. Walking around like a Thai grandma with your teeth all black.”

Don’t go chasing adventures,
Please stick to the office and commute that you’re used to,
This might all be a huge waste of time,
They might not even laugh.

Why not tell a story about Karma,
But is it Karma that harm always comes to the disarmed,
Should be room for swords,
And plowshares on the farm, yeah?
Well you reap what you sow,
And for pen to paper I don’t need flow.
They say to avoid the wrath of a gentle man,
I say if you’re evil, run while you fucking can.
Life of a hero is carry on or get carried home.
Special agent shit, call me Boned, James Boned.
Does it make sense, or am I too clever?
Only the good die young, so I will live forever.
I leave you with one final lesson,
Before I serve knuckles like a delicatessen.
We’re two humble gentlemen with the struggle in ‘em,
Saving the world in our Lululemon.

“And if they want to send me some swag or free drinks that would be great. And if any sponsor wants to send me money fuck yeah I’ll put an image on the website and cash the fucking check, I’m not stupid. Red Bull, Miller Lite, Chi Mc, there are things in this world that have cultivated my loyalty because they have been there for me when I needed them most.”

"But I tell you this, I’m a quality dude, so you won’t see me mention anything I wouldn’t mention for free because I won’t mention anything unless I put it in my mouth.”

“You put Lululemon in your mouth?” Mojave asked.

“Forgot the category was more inclusive than food and drink,” Antehero muttered, “and yeah I probably have actually. You don’t have three kids unless you like to fuck. Besides, I can prove I’m not a sell out.”

“I thought that’s what this story is about,” Mojave replied, “you’re ugly as fuck.”

“Thanks man,” Antehero said, smiling and taking a wide stance, “I didn’t know you thought I was super. Fuck now that I thought about how hot my balls are I'm hyper-aware of it.”

“I think you should be supervised,” said Mojave, “and I shudder to think of where this story will go because I shudder to think of a nemesis that would be appropriate for a character such as yourself. You are unfairly assembled. You are a collection of molecules that couldn't even be fortunate enough to just be a rock. No, you had to gain sentience and now you work for somebody you fucking idiot.”

“You never even understood the concept of responsibility until you had children, and now you live every moment in terror of the inevitable. The inevitable, dude. That’s literally the dumbest fucking thing possible you could be afraid of. Why are we all afraid of it?”

“You’re the laziest underachieving piece of shit I’ve ever met. You’d rather analyze yourself writing fiction than see a therapist, and I met your mom and you need one, dude.”