... and like a perverse underture to all the events that followed, memories I knew as my own collided in a cacophonous blur with ones I didn't recognize, bulging and poking at my brain like a coked-out badger in a balloon, until a pulsing light and the sound of a respirator made me reluctantly peel my eyes open. I was in a white room, lying on some type of healing slab. The curved walls of the room were formed from thickly intertwining birch branches and seemed to extend upward as far as I could see, like the vat in which I'd been trapped seemingly minutes before. It was like something out of a bloated epic fantasy trilogy. One thing was certain: there was no bacon in this place, and I'd be damned if I was waking up without it. Before I could jump to my feet and search for a refrigerator in this mystical elven healing temple, an insanely tall, white-robed figure with long, straight white hair and an epic beard strode smoothly into the room. The beggar from the street outside my office?! I stared at him aghast, memories stretching and pulling, a name on the tip of my tongue. "Gan..." was all I could stutter before he murmured something about memories and pressed a bony, disproportionately long index finger against my forehead.

I woke up again with a start. My filthy apartment, smelly sheets, the alarm clock beeping, sunlight streaming through curtains. I'd woken up in strange places so many times in the past few hours that I was beginning to feel like a character in an overproduced, career-destroying, self-indulgent concept album, but here I was, back at home, terrible anthem rock pouring out of the transistor radio. I breathed a sigh of relief and got up, fixed myself a vodka tonic, lit a cigarette, and felt refleshed as I sat down to pore over my latest research into the Multi-Mouth case. A ring kept popping up in the story, an ancient symbol tied with whatever data I had on Multi-Mouth, and it wasn't long before I connected the bots - they were being used as some sort of vessels for his sick plans, robots imbued with the spirits of his misshapen slaves from another world. That's why the clown led me to robo-hood, that's why some of the robots didn't go gangster on me the night of the drive-by - they were still holding on to their original computational circuitry, or however that nerd stuff worked. Memories of a ring bouncing around in my brain, it was time to get some intel via funky ruckus at the robobar.

Of course, things went south. The robobar patrons were in a tizzy, and it wasn't long before the wise guy human robo-pimp I was dealing with got too saucy and I had to give him the one-two. When things got too messy, I popped that joint like a firecracker and ran through the robo-hood, trying to figure out where to head next. It was time for a switch-case-break, like the nerd types down at the station used to say - had to narrow down the options and figure out which one fit. But something pulled at me: a voice. A female voice. I could feel it tugging at my mind, two memories at once - the spiffy dame who brought me the case, and the same face in a golden wood, with pointed ears and a voice like melted butter. That voice pulled me through robo-hood, getting louder and louder until I wound up outside a giant warehouse with a tattered, faded sign that read "Shesha's Webhouse of Discount Destruction".

I stepped inside the parted warehouse doors and felt like I'd walked into a cavernous haunted house. Giant, elephant-trapping spider webs were everywhere, and the light from outside seemed to stop behind me. I'd been here before. The memories bubbled. In what light there was, I could see her: the minx that brought me into all this, her face barely visible among the webs. She spoke, and it felt like hairy, tendril-like spider legs probing inside my ears. I shuddered and tried to figure out what to do as she droned about how she used to be beautiful, how the world had changed, how she'd lost hope and fallen into shadow. But when she dropped the name "Galadriel", something inside me sparked. I suddenly had a feeling this dame was old, older than the world, older than time, and as I watched her deceptively young face, she suddenly moved forward. My whole body went cold. A giant, bulbous, spider's body extended behind her head, clicking and twitching, and she kept repeating that the world had grown too full, like she was about to take care of that problem. Her mouth opened seemingly wider than her skull, emitting a shriek that was like needles piercing every cell in my body.

I ran. Whether she was in it with Multi-Mouth and had brought me into this as a trap, I couldn't say, but she had to be put down. I threw one of my weapons guys' remote-activated Expando-bombs against the wall of the warehouse and hopped in a parked car, jetting out of there like a cat being chased by a flamethrower. Some crazy pandemonium was going down on a bridge not far from the hood, and I skidded to a stop, popped open my computer-briefcase-device, and sent a quick command to the Expando-bomb, stepping out of the car just in time to see the webhouse explode in the distance. There were questions, but that amount of evil made answers unnecessary. No more Shesha. Shëspløde.

Only one thing could clear my head and get me back on my game: a training montage. Back at the station, I was on fire, switching from obstacle courses to punching bags, fighting an entire army of holo-bots and leaving them soaking in pools of their own digital oil. It focused my thoughts onto one thing: if Multi-Mouth was behind all of this, what were the dreams and visions that kept assaulting me, almost like a defense against his wily wiles? I was so wrapped up in unwrapping the mystery that I failed to see the broken step on the staircase leading out of the training hall.

Because the next thing I knew, I was strapped in a chair, facing a giant pulsating void, a blackness so deep that it made the light around it seems like a sun when I tried to look away. Two spindly black arms extended out of it, holding a giant leather tome, and a distended, cracked mouth read from it in a surprisingly pleasant voice - a children's story called "Storytime with Dark Lord Sauron". What was with this creep? Why couldn't I move or look away? Was this a dream? Suddenly the voice turned threatening, and the words it spoke battered against the unbidden memories in my head, distorting them into a despicable gibe - a "hobbit", a ring again. The mouth opened into a scream that shook the inky void, made me scream myself as my eardrums burst and the arms reached out to bore ringless fingers straight through my eyes...

I woke up again with a start. My filthy apartment, smelly sheets, the alarm clock beeping... dammit! I'd had enough with this waking up jazz. It was time to get to work and not pass out again. I headed straight back to the robo-hood and the intersection of the drive-by, which seemed like years ago already. Sure enough, those same bots who'd dropped their weapons after seeing me take down the drive-by baddie had stuck to their algorithms and hung around. I rattled off the "encased germ type" I'd read that day at the mailbox, and they all nodded in unison: they were the Artificial Intelligence of the Cybernetic Resistance Anti-Multimouth Party. Nailed it.

"Please come with us," they intoned as they began to lead me through the streets of robo-hood. A floating robo-guide approved or disapproved their every move, like a billion boolean bouillon companion unit testing every possible path. I could hear a distant chaos drawing nearer, like a drunken carnival. Surely the twisted refugees from Multi-Mouth's carnival couldn't be wandering all the way out here in robo-hood?

As we rounded the corner near the source of the commotion, a beat-up sedan whizzed by and smashed into the side of a building, leaving a giant, unexpectedly dank hole like an open wound in the red brick. I stared, shaken, but then looked around and realized the streets were swarming with... beings. I couldn't explain it. Short, stunted halflings with furry feet; tall, slender, haughty-looking jerks with pointed ears and hair like streaming gold; round, bearded, smelly guys who looked like small, two-legged wooly mammoths covered in armor. They were all drunk, weaving about, singing songs, being sick in the street. What the hell was happening? I watched the insane scene for a few moments before seeing it: the chalupa, Rastanefarious' chalupa, lying there on the street right where I left it, a shimmering portal extending out of it from which these bonkers fantasy creatures emerged. It was the chalupa vortex, left open for refugees from another world, travelers fresh off the chalupa boat. I smashed a fist into my other hand, furious. Had this been Rastanefarious' plan all along, and I'd just been the key to open the door?

I looked back at the beat-up sedan. The driver was nowhere to be found, and the hole in the brick building seemed to extend inside forever. This had been no coincidence - on the crumbling brick next to the dank hole was a battered sign: "MMM, D.D.S. (appts. only)". Without even thinking, without trying to analyze how I'd missed this telltale sign that night with the chalupa, I jumped into the still-running sedan and punched the gas, straight into the darkness. Blue Moon played from tinny speakers as I plunged through the sudden night, anger and determination overcoming any rationality.

Then I saw him. The darkness had opened up into an impossible cavern deep within the bowels of whatever interdimensional place I'd found myself, and in it, like a giant, spouting tower of vomit, was Multi-Mouth. Jets of fluid spewed from the gurgling orifices all over his body, himself a nearly shapeless, standing mass of pestilent goo. I swung out of the car, the rage of what this monster had done to my world burning through any caution.

"You think you can defeat my master?" Multi-Mouth's booming voice emanated ominously from all of his volcanic, spurting mouths. "You thought so once before. Don't you remember?"

"IMO BRUSH ALL YO TEEF!" I shrieked in an uncontrollable frenzy as the memories flooded my mind. A giant sword, bursting with blue light, appeared in my hand as I bolted through the air like a winged mystical avatar of justice. With an epic battle cry, I brought the sword down onto Multi-Mouth's spewing, gelatinous form, tearing clean through his screaming, quivering body.

And just like that, it was over. I was standing in a pool of slowly seeping jelly, the sword's light fading in my hand, the dim light of the cavern shimmering in the sudden stillness. I stood with my eyes closed, panting, the words my nemesis had spoken moments ago finally sinking in. His master? I shook my head in disbelief. Multi-Mouth had been a pawn all along. It was all a set-up - get me to enter the chalupa vortex, awaken the sleeping demon within, and drag him out into this world so he could wreak havoc and find hosts for his interdimensional conquest. Multi-Mouth was the bait, I'd stepped right into it, thinking I was solving some poor dame's case, only to bring about the destruction of the universe. In the meantime, the vortex stood open across dimensions and worlds I couldn't even fathom, all prone to this demon's diabolical plans.

This had to end now. I jumped back in the sedan, sped my way back into the light of day, a giant sword lying next to me in the passenger seat, a sword that had appeared out of nowhere like the travelers through the chalupa vortex. It had a name, I knew. S... St... but I was beyond questioning now. It was time to act. Looking up at the sky, the clouds formed the shape of a ring, a ring of power, a ring I knew I'd once carried. I didn't question. If it was a convenient plot railroad, so be it, as long as it got me where I needed to go. I burned rubber through the streets of robo-hood, through the steamy streets of the seedy city I knew so well, out past its borders, on and on, towards the ring of clouds. It was like I was in a trashy movie, an inconceivable Fast and Furious 42: Dark Lord Pursuit. The road went so far out, I didn't think land could exist anymore, and still I drove, until... I looked up, and the clouds were directly above me. I slammed on the brakes and rolled out of the car with my sword just as the vehicle exploded upwards in a fireball of narrowly-avoided death. I didn't care. The flaming wreckage crackled behind me, and I walked.

And walked. I knew now what I must do. Whatever sacrifice I had to make to rid the world of this dark lord and banish him back to the realm of infinitesimal nothingness, I'd make it. Through the grass ahead, far from the road, I saw an artificial stone wall surrounding a black hole of emptiness leading down into the earth. The ring of clouds rotated far above me. I didn't question. I descended into the tunnel.

My patent leather shoes echoed against the smooth walls of the dark corridor, leading down, down. This place brought the memories back into my head, smashing against the sides of my skull like a pinball the size of a planet. Robo-hood, the robots of C.R.A.M.P., the mysterious storytime dream, the training session gone wrong, the spider-witch Shesha and the fight at the robobar, Multi-Mouth's emissary inside the chalupa vortex, Rastanefarious, the drive-by, the carnival and Clown Nein, Shesha's human form, the bum on the street. And suddenly, the memories even further back were clear, memories of a life I'd lived beyond what I'd considered time, my life in another dimension. The ring getting the finger in Mount Doom, the long journey avoiding Mordor Florists, Shesha née Galadriel, the bum née Gandalf, my glorious space saga, getting down with the elves in the Rivelhizzy, memories going all the way back to dear old uncle Invisibilbo. I was a hard-boiled detective, fired for insubordination, chasing shadows in a dirty, run-down town, and my name was Baggins. The memories were all there, complete. I had ascended to the enlightened plane of Asskickagon.

And Sauron. He's like a translucent cloud all around me, a seeping darkness that's impossible to see, much less fight, but I fought, and I still do. He was suddenly here when my memories become complete. He welcomed me and said he'd been expecting me, said my name. I knew who I was, knew I'd transcended dimensions just like he had and possessed just enough mystical power to take him on. He taunted me, thinking those cheesy diabolical threats would still have some impact, but I'd lived through the slime and grit of the city I'd just left, and I could take that jazz and slap it right back in his amorphous face. We sparred. To fight me, he had to materialize some kind of physical form and even summoned some of the dark riders my friends and I had so easily dispatched in the other dimension. They didn't last long, and I countered the dark lord's spiny jabs and deep, crushing hammer blows until we were both worn out. We panted in exhaustion, and I knew what I had to do, waiting until the moment was right. Rastanefarious had spliced something into me, a carrier for the chalupa vortex, and Sauron's ridiculous plan of embedding me with the power to open a transdimensional wormhole was going to be his own undoing, and my own. We rose against each other again, his physical hammer form launching out of the shapeless void above me. I closed my eyes, feeling the chalupa vortex burst from my chest with a simultaneous contracting and expanding sound, like all the air in the world had contracted and exploded outward with a deep "ketwehhhhh" sound. I grabbed the dark lord's screaming physical form as he plunged through the vortex. We both tumbled into oblivion, fighting and clutching at each other in a balance of power that was to keep the universe in balance forever. He realized his mistake. His rage shook the fabric of reality. The epic Battle of Æverwar had begun, kids.

What else is there to say, now that a time-based story has run out of time? I remember the concept of time, but I don't feel it here. I remember having a physical form, but I don't have it here. It's an eternal struggle, almost what it used to feel like to have conflicted thoughts back on Earth, or Middle-Earth, or whatever you want to call the physical plane. It's an eternal vigil, something as natural as thinking, or as unnatural as making yourself not think. That's what the battle feels like, trapped here in this extradimensional bubble of pwn and/or fail. It's never going to end, there's no concept of ending here, unless somehow I can make contact again with the physical plane and leave Sauron here. I don't even know if it's possible. But that's why I'm sending out this message. Whatever hold I have over the chalupa vortex, it still must be some kind of portal back to the reality I knew, and through it, I'm sending this message. I've been sending it forever, and it will continue forever, a version of my story that some sentient being in the physical plane could interpret.

If someone finds this, whoever you are, however small, human, non-human, single-celled, sentient, whether you have an epidermis, whether you're able to penetrate the barrier into the infinite transdimensional space-time continuum, I hope you've heard my story, and can find a way to help me... help me...