...I was startled awake by the intelligent wristwatch I forgot I was wearing.

  "THE TIME IS NOW 9:26 a.m!" shouted the robot voice of the watch. "According to my callibration you have undergone the exact optimal length of rest required for experiencing your maximum levels of energy throughout the day. Every minute you choose to sleep in will amplify undesirable feelings of grouchiness."

  I tried to sleep-in, but the watch repeated the same announcement after every minute. When 10 or so announcements had gone by with no result it decided to speed up the process by giving me minor electrical shocks.

  "You will now be shocked every minute until you are out of bed," stated the watch. "The voltage will also be heightened with each successive shock."

  "Thank you," I groaned, heart skipping a beat and feeling groggy from the De-Toxifier.

  Before the day's end, I'd feel inspired enough to start writing a private journal, eventually to transform into the document you are now reading.

  My room had a picture window view of the front yard. The Universe-Interpreter beckoned me. As I walked out of my room I was greeted by thousands of books on shelves that reached as high as the ceiling. I remembered from the video that my room was connected with the LibraryCentre. On a massive round wooden table in the middle of the room I saw that a note had been left for me. It read:

  Good Morning,

  Had to leave the grounds on important business. Will return tomorrow. Here is an itinerary of tasks for you to do throughout the day. I have also included a few tips about the house that were not mentioned in the video.

  1) Transfer jellyfish from tanks into the salt-water portion of the moat. If you are stung, use vinegar not urine.

  2) Place the rye bread into one of the Cryo-Freeze Cabinets located in the StorageCentre. Any setting above 5 will result in freezer-burn.

  3) Move the remaining shopping list items into the StorageCentre. The nitrogen must go in the fridge. Keep the Ergonovine out of the sun. Also, the Matter-Rearranger must be locked in the Main Safe, next to the mold colony. The combination to the safe is 30-20-10. The remaining items can go wherever.

  4) In the LabCentre look for the room with the green door. Before you enter you must ring the doorbell 7 times and take a bite of the bagel, otherwise a jet of napalm will disintegrate your face and a sharp trip-wire will chop off your feet. The contents of this room would rank among the most coveted by Undercover Intelligence Agents, therefore it is is one of the most dangerously protected rooms in the house. After entering you will find further instructions.

  5) If you are compelled to look through the Universe-Interpreter, it is permitted, only do not make any more adjustments.

  6) Avoid any food you find in kitchens # 1, 2, 4, 9, 17, 19 and 26. In fact, ordering out is likely the wisest of choices. Meet the delivery person at the front gate. Do not open the gate for anyone under any circumstances. The Intelligence Agents are adept at costumes and trickery.

  7) If you have another injury, nearly anything can be fixed with the hospital equipment in the StorageCentre. The De-Toxifier unfortunately suffered overheating as it is prone to do when working with particularly poisoned individuals, so I have rendered it out of order...but aside from the Stitcher, there is also the Re-Organator, the Automated Brain-Surgeon Bot (prototype not for human use), the Limb-Replicator (should you fall into the moat and meet an unstable shark), the Hearing-Laser and finally the X-Ray Umbrella. Detailed directions for each machine supplied within the Main Safe.

  Signed,

  Dr. Leafhead

  P.S. Your breakfast has been left beside this note.

  P.P.S. Immediately burn this note after you have sufficiently memorized its contents.

  The "breakfast" was a glass jar containing a revolting looking bluish-orange beverage. It had the thick consistency and shimmery rainbow-hue of gourmet corn syrup mixed with a puddle full of gasoline and anti-freeze. It smelled like a dead raccoon stuffed with cloves hanging from an orchid tree in noon-day equatorial sunshine. A previously spilled drop had scorched the table like a cigarette burn. This was another of those moments where I decided to go against my own survival instinct and put faith into the inherent decency of Dr. Leafhead. I drank the nasty beverage. At first my nervous system went into a near-fatal state of shock. My stomach rumbled menacingly enough to send my wristwatch fleeing into the yard to do some unwinding. I got dizzy and laid down. I was appalled the potion was having the opposite effects I'd expected, but sure enough I soon began to feel incredibly revitalized. I could think clearer. My eyes saw everything in sharp detail. The drink was indeed what I hoped for, a supplement of nutrition so perfectly balanced as to temporarily imbue the drinker with the powers of an adequate super-hero. I read the letter once more before setting it on fire.

  The first three tasks on the list proved uncomplicated and uneventful, but it was the fourth task I was really interested in. It was the only mysterious quotient on the list. I couldn't wait to go looking for the green door in the LabCentre. It took about an hour before I finally stumbled upon an old door with chipped paint obscured by a succession of three musty bat-filled attics. I rang the bell 7 times and took a bite from the bagel (cinnamon raisin). The security system recognized me as a friendly and thus did not disintegrate my face and/or chop my feet off when I entered.

  Inside the green door was a nearly empty room made entirely of shiny silver. It was lit with such powerful fluorescence that my head ached within seconds. On the far wall was a freshly-painted red door. An astronaut's suit was laid out on a table next to another note from Leafhead, which read:

  This is the airlock room for the Mars Portal. Do not open the red door before donning the suit, for beyond this room there is no breathable atmosphere. Prepare yourself, you will actually be transported to the planet Mars. It is NOT a virtual recreation realistic enough to trick you into thinking so. I have successfully harnessed a functioning portal to Mars and hidden it within my house. I have learned much about the planetary surface in my years of exploration. Near to the portal on the other side you will find a garden of alien plants. The fertilization system requires daily attention, which is why I need for you to make the journey while I am away. The fertilizer is regulated through a sprinkler system. All you need to do is re-boot the timer every 20 hours. The experiments of the garden range in innocence from mild cooking spices to dangerous psychotropics. The main reason to hide this from the Intelligence Agents would be my dabbling with Martian herbs that cause a state of total submission within the human mind. Do not burn this note inside the airlock. Take it with you to Mars and bury it under a rock or something.

  P.S. The portal can only function for a few hours at a time before crashing from exhaustion and not returning for at least 24 hours. Do not lose track of time on Mars or else you will be stuck there until the portal resets.

  I decided to go looking for my watch (still missing from its exit at breakfast) before I opened the red door. Just as I had this thought, the watch scurried into the room and leapt onto my arm.

  I was ready to go until I realized using a space-suit was actually an intricate process about which I knew nothing. The house, having been prompted to anticipate this, lowered a small television screen from above the roof. A 30-minute instructional video played to my educational bemusement.

  The watch began a countdown from 2 hours and 43 minutes as I opened the red door.

  It was shocking how different Mars really was compared to the fake popular image we had been led to believe in. The first thing I noticed were Leafhead's garden beds of alien herbs and vegetables. But the second thing I noticed, just past the gardens, was the enormous lake of fresh water. Mind-blowing as that was, it was totally outdone by the third thing I noticed...the ancient ruins of a city scattered all the way around the perimeter of the lake. Most of the red bricks and pillars (once the foundation of a buzzing Martian Metropolis) were now crumbled into piles of fine gravel, but every so often a house-like structure stood triumphantly intact against thousands of years of pressure from the natural forces.

  It was midday on Mars, so the sky was a bright-orange hue. It was surreal and bizarre. When the sky reflected off the water it appeared as if the lake was filled with the entire universe's supply of Orange Soda.

  "30 minutes have passed since the activation of the portal," announced the wristwatch.

  I snapped out my reverie. I looked behind me and saw that I'd only taken one step through the door before freezing in amazement. I had the revelation that I wasn't just watching a scene in a movie. I was in the movie. I could go exploring. Except as much as I wanted to go exploring, I realized I was starving. I decided to save Mars for later and go locate something to eat.

  I looked in some of the kitchens, but Leafhead was right when he said it was probably best to order out. Of the food I did find, it was impossible to differentiate between the items that were actually food and the items that were experimental pranks.

  I made my way to the foyer, the only place where I had so far spotted a telephone. A small side table and a stool sat beside the front door. On the table was a telephone and a few notepads. As strange and exciting as things were in the foyer, I realized it was actually the forgettable image of a house-phone on a table that jumped out and caught the attention. Its normalcy was very out-of-place.

  There were no phone-books on the table, but I did find one single take-out menu. It was for an interesting sounding restaurant called Obscurity Sandwich. I flipped through the pages. The names of nearly all the dishes were unknown to me. There was a complete lack of description of what exactly one would be eating, so I just dialed the number.

  "Hello," said the simultaneously friendly and creepy voice on the other end of the phone. "Thank you for calling Obscurity Sandwich, bringing you the worlds rarest food since 1980."

  "Hi," I replied. "I want to order something for delivery, but I have no idea what anything is. Could you explain some of the dishes to me?"

  "Of course. Where to start?"

  "What is Sannakji?" I asked.

  "Ah, excellent eye. Sannakji is a dish consisting of live baby octopus tentacles. The disembodied tentacles continue to aggressively writhe on the plate after they have been cleaved and served. A lovely dipping sauce is provided. Customers who order Sannakji are advised to be highly aware of the choking hazard involved when eating the suction cups of animated tentacles."

  "Ok," I said. "How about Casu Marzu?"

  "Another excellent suggestion," replied the take-out operator. "Casu Marzu is a Sardinian delicacy. Once illegal, for a time it could only be attained at exorbitant prices from the black market. However Obscurity Sandwich is now proud to offer this rare gourmet dish. It is a soft cheese that has had its fat putrified from an enzyme caused by the presence of hundreds of live maggot larvae. The delicious gooey consistency of Casu Marzu is attained by leaving it to ferment in the sun while being infested by the attraction of cheese-flies--"

  "Moving right along," I interjected. "What is Hufu?"

  "Hufu is one of our more popular dishes. The names refers to it being a type of Human-Flavoured Tofu. Hufu is said to simulate the texture and flavor of human flesh while satisfying the palette of even the most demanding cannibal. Hufu is particularly appealing for students of anthropology who are eager to experience cannibalism but are deterred by the legal, logistical and moral obstacles."

  "Never mind," I said. "I'll just take a turducken." It was the one thing on the menu I recognized. I was pretty sure it wasn't even remotely alive, filled with maggots or borderline-cannibalistic.

  "One turducken?" asked the operator.

  "Right," I confirmed.

  "An admirable choice! Not terribly obscure though. One of our least obscure, in fact. But still worthy. Will you be needing a beverage as well?"

  "What is there?" I asked.

  "We have Baby Mice Wine, Chica de Jora, Cannabis Soda and the Hot Chocolate."

  "Hot chocolate sounds good," I replied.

  "Excellent."

  I began to notice that everything was excellent to this person. I wished they would spend some time reading a thesaurus.

  "Going by our call-display, you are ordering from Chateau Leafhead, correct?"

  "That's correct."

  "Will this be charged to the Leafhead Incorporated account?"

  "Yes."

  "Excellent," concluded the operator. "You can expect the delivery-mobile in about 9 hours. Goodbye."

  Click.

  I was annoyed to learn I'd ordered something that takes 9 hours to prepare. By the time the Obscurity-Mobile arrived I was psychotically famished and covered with red paint (having attempted to eat a Perogy-Bomb that I foolishly believed was real as if I were a madman castaway convincing himself that sea-water will surely quench his thirst). When Dr. Leafhead returned he was pleased to announce that no other intern had made such rapid progress with the dirtying of their new lab-coat.

  Over nine hours later a bell rang inside every room of the house. It was the front gate system. I peered outside and saw a van parked on the other side of the fence. The Obscurity Sandwich logo was stencilled on the side in white paint. At a quick glance it merely looked like the van for an upscale catering company. I walked to the end of the driveway. A closer look revealed many subtle divergences from such false prestige. Choking plumes of black smoke were being hacked up by the exhaust pipe. The logo was typo-ridden and crooked, while the paint sketchily dripped. The windows were blacked out. Finally the driver got out, he was a menacing persona with a half-bald crew-cut and several unsettling scars interrupting his face in a manner that seemed to say I was once severely attacked by a machete-wielding maniac, deal with it. I realized the restaurant was likely a cover for those undercover agents. The guy walked around to the alternate side door and retrieved the turducken and the hot chocolate.

  "Here is your order," he said. "One turducken and one hot chocolate."

  I took the items and the receipt. "This has already been charged to Leafhead Incorporated, right?"

  "Indeed. The total is at the bottom of the receipt, for your records. $26,000 even, I think."

  "Huh?"

  "$26,000."

  "Twenty-six thousand dollars?"

  "That is the amount when spelled out in letters, yes."

  "For a turducken and a hot chocolate?"

  "The prices are all laid our for you," he said, pointing at the receipt. "$85 for one turducken. $25,000 for one hot chocolate. Plus our reasonable $915 delivery fee."

  "They didn't tell me the hot chocolate costs $25,000."

  "Did you ask? We assume our customers realize they are going to pay the highest of prices, considering they are eating the rarest and most obscure food in the world."

  "Well I've never ordered from you before."

  "In your defense, you did accidentally order what is by far the most expensive item on the menu. Our hot chocolate is shipped in specially from New York City. It is actually the most expensive beverage in the world."

  "I don't want it," I said, sniffing the gold and jewel-encrusted whipped cream. "I'm allergic to truffles that cost over two thousand dollars a pound."

  "You'll have to take that up with the office," he replied. "You can file a complaint that might result in a refund. But there can be no immediate refunds. You understand."

  I decided not to argue. When Leafhead got home I would just have to fess up to having wasted thousands of dollars of his money.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  "Ok, fine." I said, turning around to leave.

  "By the way," he added, "I included a pamphlet for the upcoming screening of a new film co-produced by Obscurity Sandwich. Check it out. Half price for regular customers."

  "Thanks."

  As soon as the van had disappeared from sight I intended on crumpling the pamphlet, but at the last second I decided to see what it was all about before throwing it away. It was very clearly a superhero type movie. The absurd title was: RED CAPE MAN AND THE PURPLE-ROBED FREAK vs. THE MAD SCIENTIST. The picture showed a red-caped superhero standing beside a sidekick who was undoubtedly what you would call a "purple-robed freak." The two of them were seen flying through the air while fighting off a Mad Scientist character and his robot-warrior minions. The villain partly resembled Leafhead. I thought he would get a kick out of it so I saved the pamphlet for later.

  After returning to the house I first went to the StorageCentre and put the Hot Chocolate under Cryo-Freeze. I figured the refund policy might require the actual returning of the untouched beverage.

  I then took the turducken to the LabCentre and sent it through a cycle in the Ingredient-Analyzer. I was worried about it having been laced with something by undercover agents. The results contained nothing inedible or out of the ordinary.

  It was as I sat in the dining hall and ate the turducken that I made my first journal entry.

  Journal Entry #1:

  I am only just finishing my second day at the Chateau and already I feel as if everything I thought I understood about the world has been thrown out the window. There are things in this house that most people would never believe exist in reality. Dr. Leafhead is the strangest, most brilliant person I have ever met. Part of me wants to believe he is an Alien or something not-quite-human (his functioning portal to Mars backs that up), however I know this is not the case. I still haven't figured out if he has a very bizarre sense of humor, or if he is just a little psychotic... but he says the most insane things as if they were perfectly commonplace. I spent all of today on my own. Leafhead had to leave the grounds on undisclosed business. He made a point of stressing how dangerous the house can be to the uninitiated (and indeed I did nearly die on my first night), yet he decided leaving me alone for the whole day was a good idea. I don't really think he had to leave on business... it was probably a test to see if I could survive the house. Tomorrow I hope to learn more about the Universe-Interpreter, a fascinating telescope-like device located in the front yard. Leafhead says that if ---

  I was suddenly so overwhelmed with tiredness (having eaten as much turkey, duck and chicken as I did) that I nodded off before realizing I hadn't reset the fertilizer switch while on Mars.

  One painfully craned neck later I was still slumped over the dining table, my open journal nearby. Leafhead woke me up by loudly playing a triangle. I noticed he was clutching the menu from Obscurity Sandwich.

  "Did you order that from Obscurity Sandwich?" he asked with urgency, throwing the triangle to the ground and pointing at the turducken remains.

  "Yeah," I said groggily. "I charged it to your account. I hope that's ok. It was a bit more expensive than I thought it would be. Maybe you should sit down while I tell you about it. There was this hot chocolate, you see--"

  "Never mind that now. How long ago did you eat that turducken?"

  "I don't know, an hour or so before I passed out last night."

  "Hmm," said Leafhead. "Hmm."

  I recall feeling as if something smashed me on the back of the head. Then there was an incredible coldness. I woke up an undetermined amount of time later.

  "Sorry about that," said Leafhead. "You've been out for another 17 hours. I had to put you through the De-Toxifier again."

  "What for?"

  "That turducken was laced with microscopic robots. They are capable of exerting a number of evil effects on the body. Among their talents are acting as a tracking device, expelling fatal poison into the bloodstream and sometimes controlling one's movements in a comical puppet-like manner. Everyone at Obscurity Sandwich is part of the vast conspiracy to seize my house and steal my inventions and revelations. I should have warned you earlier. Sometimes fake take-out menus find their way into the house. I'm not sure how, but I suspect hamsters or other tiny animals are trained to bring them in through some sort of unseen tunneling system."

  "But I ran the turducken through the Ingredient-Analyzer," I argued. "The results said nothing was out of the ordinary."

  "Yes," said Leafhead. "Unfortunately Obscurity Sandwich has been learning to evade even some of my best defense-machines. Concerning the electrified perimeter fence, thankfully, they have proved themselves completely ineffectual time and time again."

  "Couldn't they just land a few helicopters on the front lawn?" I asked,

  "No," replied Leafhead simply.

  "Why not?"

  "There's invisible mines hovering above the house, yard and fence. Any air-traffic over Chateau Leafhead will not end well for those in the sky."

  "Oh."

  "You might notice the pile of wreckage gathered near the pond. Keeping them away from the house is as imperative as resetting the fertilizer switch for the Mars Gardens," stated Leafhead.

  "Oh," I said again. "About that. I think I might have forgotten to reset the switch."

  Leafhead said nothing. He immediately fled the room. Three musty bat-filled attics later he was on Mars. Some of the plants had already begun to be devoured by Martian microbes at that point. That was the main function of the "fertilizer," to repel alien bugs. A time-lapse shot of the gardens without the repellent would have showed the plants quickly withering. Eventually they would be completely enveloped by a slug-like slime. But it was not too late. Leafhead hit the switch.

  "Is this yours as well?" asked Leafhead upon returning, holding out the pamphlet for Red Cape Man. He said nothing about Mars.

  "Yeah, it came with the food. The guy said it was a new movie funded by Obscurity Sandwich."

  "Who was the delivery-person? The man with the scarred face?"

  "That's right."

  "I knew it."

  "Who is it?"

  "Only my arch nemesis, that's who."

  "The movie looks ridiculous, doesn't it?" I asked, changing gears.

  "It's scandalous propaganda is what it is!" blurted Leafhead suddenly.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "These Intel Agents have stolen my likeness and character and placed it in the context of this superhero movie. It's happened many times before in many different mediums...animated shorts, radio serials, comics, novelizations...but never on the scale of a live-action feature film. In order to vilify me to the public, I am always portrayed as the archetype-baddy who cruelly thwarts the hero. My stories are actually very well-known in popular-culture. You've never heard of Dr. Greenskull or Red Cape Man?"

  "I don't think so, but I'm definitely curious to see this movie," I said. "You know that screening is tonight, right?"

  "Yes, I am also curious," agreed Leafhead. "However I don't plan on wandering into their trap. Nothing could get me past their scanners and sensors. You, on the other hand... you're new. They don't know you very well. Your DNA is assuredly not yet on file with the enemy, considering the turducken was their first attempt to harvest a sample."

  "What's your plan?" I asked.

  "I have methods of disguising you," said Leafhead. "Did you ever see Mission: Impossible?"

  "The show or the movie?"

  "Doesn't matter. What does matter is that my disguises are so realistic they make one of their masks look like a plastic Halloween costume made for financially disinclined children from the 1930s. To the Incognito Room!"

  The Incognito Room quickly became one of my favorite places in the house. The greatest costume department in Hollywood would have been jealous with rage had they seen the skills at Leafhead's disposal. Anyone could be transformed into anything within a matter of minutes. Actors who had been spending 8 hours a day in a chair having prosthetics painstakingly attached to their faces had simply been wasting massive portions of their life.

  "This is the Face-Replicator," said Leafhead. "Get in."

  "It looks like an ordinary photo-booth," I said.

  "That's what it was when I stole it from Coney Island fourteen years ago. Now it's a Face-Replicator. Get in."

  I got in. Some sort of noxious gas suddenly filled the booth. Just as I was about to express annoyance about how many times Leafhead has thus far caused me to pass out, I passed out. I awakened as a completely different person.

  "Check it out," said Leafhead, holding up a mirror to my face.

  I looked at least 80 years old.

  "You'll have to act your age if we're to fool them," said Leafhead. "Hunch your back and try this cane."

  He handed me a bamboo walking stick from out of a well-stocked prop cabinet. I immediately toppled to the ground once I tried to put pressure down on the cane.

  "Whoops, that was my comedic Chaplin-esque bendy-cane," said Leafhead. "Sorry about that."

  "That's okay," I croaked, picking myself up and rubbing the soon-to-be epic bruise on my lower back. "I'm starting to learn that physical abuse is just a necessary part of living in this house."

  "Indeed it is. Let's try another one," he said, handing me a white marble cane. "This one will make you look like a rich mobster not to be messed with. It's also one of those sword-canes."

  "Why would I need a sword-cane?"

  "In case you get into a brawl, of course. Why else would you need a sword-cane? Hunting for game? Slicing grapefruits on the go?"

  I limped around the room for a minute.

  "Very good," said Leafhead. "You're a passable actor. Now practice your old-voice."

  "How does this sound?" I asked.

  "Not bad, but try a little less Burns and a little more Matthau."

  "Like this?"

  "Perfect."

  We left the Incognito Room and made our way to the library. Sitting down at the round table, I produced my tape-recorder.

  "On a side note," I began, "I've been hoping I could use my tape-recorder to capture an official Q & A interview. I'm thinking about writing a book about my time here. If you're ok with that, of course."

  "By book you mean a document that reveals all the knowledge of my inventions that I have fought for years to keep from getting into the wrong hands?"

  "Yeah. But when you put it like that--"

  "Actually, I think it's a great idea," Leafhead surprisingly exclaimed. "But you have to make one deal: You won't show the book to anyone until I say so. Even if such a time doesn't come for years after the book is completed. This includes sending a copy to even the most trustworthy of mothers and/or grandmothers."

  "I can agree to that," I said as I began setting up the tape-recorder.

  "Oh... not right now," said Leafhead. "Plenty of time for a Q & A later. You've only got an hour before you gotta leave. Stay in here and keep practicing your old-voice and hunched walking. I'll be on Mars if there's trouble."

  I put away the tape-recorder for now. I perused through the thousands of books, covering just about every topic on Earth. After nearly an hour Leafhead returned.

  "Alright," he said, checking his watch. "It's time."

  "It's playing at The Palace downtown," I said. "How am I going to get there? Drive my truck?"

  "No," replied Leafhead. "They'll recognize your truck. Besides, a truck is an extraordinary waste of time and money when you're in the company of someone with the technological know-how of crafting teleportals to any location on Earth."

  "You can teleport anywhere?" I asked incredulously.

  "Well... nearly anywhere. Baffin Island is a little tricky. Also the specific type of heat associated with the Australian desert has been known to cause abnormalities in the brain. So I avoid those places."

  "Interesting. Have you ever been to Antarctica?"

  "A few times. The position of the stars annoyingly didn't match human memory. For unexplained reason I was nearly killed. I will never return."

  "What about the River of Five Colors?"

  "Once. I accidentally went in March, so there were no colors. You have to go in October, you know."

  "How about--"

  "Forget that for now," interjected Leafhead, pressing a button on his lapel that caused a Teleportal to be conjured across the room. It wasn't like a vortex-portal from a movie (a disturbingly unstable doorway made of streaked blue lights and hurricane-force winds that force characters to shout at each other while tea-cups shatter and picture-frames fly off the wall like frisbees) but was a portal of controlled finesse... like a mellow wall of watery glass on Star Trek. I had no reservations about stepping into the unknown.

  "You will appear behind a dumpster in an alley," assured Leafhead as I walked across the room. "Remember you're 89 years old and your name is Rivernik T. Bongotrip."

  "Haha, what?" I asked, and then stepped through the portal before he replied. I quickly forgot the name he'd assigned me.

  As planned I appeared behind a dumpster in rat-central. The sensation of the portal was practically non-existent, as if merely walking through a doorway into the next room of a house. Not teleporting exactly... there was no disassembling/reassembling of the bodily cells. The link between the starting point and the destination is created by the temporary negation of any in-between land, space or water. But even this doesn't really happen either, for the whole thing is actually a Hypnosis-Computer that merely tricks the brain into believing that any land, space or water between where you are and where you want to be has vanished, and so for this time such a strong placebo-effect is placed over the mind that one realizes one can in fact step over this gap instantaneously in reality, if you will, and does.

  With my sword-cane I hobbled out of downtown's armpit towards the golden lobby of The Palace.

  The Palace was one of those epic single-screen movie-houses that are often seen being tragically boarded up in smallish cities at alarming rates. It was like walking into a kingdom of infinite imagination.

  Leafhead's arch nemesis was acting as the first usher.

  "Your name?" he uttered as I reached the velvet rope.

  "My name?... That would be Dr. Christopheros Agapetus."

  "Doctor?" asked Scar-face. "Of what?"

  "Jellyfish."

  "You're a doctor of Jellyfish?"

  "That's right. I devote my life to the study of jellyfish... and the radical, controversial, discredited yet entirely plausible theory that certain jellyfish membranes contain a hidden chemical capable of slowing down the human aging process to what could only be described as a grinding halt."

  "Interesting," said Scar-face.

  Looking back, it was stupid of me to say something that strange, for it obviously tipped him off as to the fact that I was working with Dr. Leafhead. Not only strange, it was also the exact sort of dangerous power that Scar-face's people were hoping to attain.

  "For important doctors, we have important seats," explained Scar-face as he handed me a ticket. "In the front row."

  "I don't like the front row."

  "Nonsense. It's great for the neck. Take the ticket."

  I wanted the conversation to end so I took the ticket. Scar-face unclasped the velvet rope and I stepped into the heart of the theater.

  "Can we get you any popcorn?" he asked.

  "No," I answered. "Don't care much for popcorn. I once had an bad experience when I decided to see if I could get popcorn to pop while inside my stomach by swallowing a bunch of unpopped kernels and then rapidly drinking a cup of scalding water. An X-Ray later revealed my stomach lining to look like swiss cheese and dead flowers."

  I could hear my random rambling but couldn't seem to do anything about it. I realized my costumed transformation into Christopheros Agapetus (or Rivernik T. Bongotrip) was for whatever reason causing me to speak and act exactly like Dr. Leafhead. It was the worst possible thing for staying under the radar.

  "Only a few minutes until starting time," said Scar-face ominously, ignoring the insane popcorn comment.

  I don't know what I expected when I walked into the final doors, maybe a few scattered loners who were actually undercover agents waiting around for Leafhead's spy, but I found myself in the middle of a big-scale movie premiere. At this point nearly every seat was filled with excited chatters munching down on junk-food and sugary-drinks. Most of them were in costumes and carried props, as if the film had already developed a cult following before it had even been released. Then I remembered Leafhead claimed the story of Red Cape Man had been around for awhile as different mediums. The whole scene was that of a loud, fun party. I quickly sat down in the first empty seat.

  "Great costume!" shouted the stranger beside me, who was dressed as Red Cape Man.

  "Huh?" I asked.

  "Great costume!" he repeated. "You're dressed as Spacefreak Ferngrove, aren't you?"

  "Who?"

  "You know, Ferngrove... Dr. Greenskull's mentor? You look just like him."

  "This is just how I normally look."

  "If you aren't a liar, that's an impossibly bizarre coincidence," stated the fan. "You've even got Ferngrove's trademark white-cane."

  "You know a lot about this stuff, eh?"

  "I grew up with Red Cape Man!"

  "How'd you get into it?"

  "My grandparents introduced me to it when I was a kid. They were big fans of the original radio series. I then became obsessed with the comic-book version."

  "Your grandparents? How far back does this thing date?" I asked.

  "The first episode of the radio drama aired in the early 40s."

  "That's weird."

  "Why is that weird?"

  "I'm not sure," I said.

  "Then the comics started up in the mid-70s," continued the fan. "We've been waiting decades for the movie to finally get made."

  "Hmm."

  "You really don't know anything about the RCM Universe?" asked the baffled fan.

  "Not really," I replied.

  "Did a friend loan you the costume?"

  "No, I told you this is how I normally look."

  "I will admit that your makeup is indistinguishable from reality," conceded the fan. "So what'd you, just like, walk in randomly off the street or something?"

  "Pretty much."

  "I can't believe you were able to get a ticket. I pre-ordered mine online like 8 months ago. I even had some friends who camped outside for 3 nights in a particularly dangerous neighbourhood just in hopes of maybe getting to stand in the lobby and listen to the muffled audio through the wall."

  "Just lucky, I guess."

  "You must be rich."

  Suddenly I noticed Scar-face walking down the aisle to the front of the crowd.

  "Welcome to the world premiere of Red Cape Man!" he shouted, with no microphone. The crowd went insane with cheering and clapping.

  "Congratulations on being the first group ever to see the long-awaited movie adaptation of your favorite fantasy franchise!"

  More cheering and clapping.

  "Before we start the movie I just wanted to give our thanks to The Palace theater and staff. As well as to ask you to help support the cause to save this historic building from demolition next year. With no further delay... I give you Red Cape Man!"

  A door closed. A curtain rose. Lights slowly turned off. The movie had started.

  The funny thing about the movie was that it was pretty good. From the objective movie-goers point-of-view it was a perfectly entertaining thrill-ride. From Leafhead's point-of-view I understood the frustration about having autobiographical stories of your life stolen and placed in the context of a big-budget popcorn movie in which you're portrayed as an evil villain... all without ever seeing a penny of due royalties.

  It seemed as if the agents had clues about Leafhead's inventions but were still unclear about what exactly he was up to most of the time. I got the impression that certain details hadn't been purposefully changed but were instead a guess as to what they thought was actually going on at the house. In the movie Leafhead frequently looked through a telescope that had clearly been inspired by images of the Universe-Interpreter, only in the movie it enabled one to see into the future... a power I was sure had nothing to do with the real machine. Instead of a portal to Mars there was a spaceship that Greenskull intended on taking to Saturn (this was being saved for the sequel) in order to steal a Fountain of Youth. Dr. Greenskull also had at his disposal entire squadrons of robot slaves that I had yet to lay eyes on, minus the wristwatches and the harmless robot arms.

  Other details were blatantly altered for the purpose of vilifying Leafhead. His lair was not a country mansion with a thriving terrarium but rather a dank cavern system occupied by any number of ghouls, goblins, trolls, zombies, swamp-creatures and basically every other type of movie monster you could think of thrown together in one nutty location. Near the end of the film Red Cape Man and the Purple Robed Freak find themselves lost in the labyrinthine horror-house, with only minutes to locate a bomb-timer set to unleash a cloud of lobotomizing chemicals over a prominent Metropolis. One can be sure they save the city and escape to fight another day, but I'd hate to spoil the exact details of how they manage to do such a thing... so that is all I will say about that for now.

  I made a beeline for the exit door as soon as the first credit appeared. Scar-face immediately stepped in my path.

  "Give a message to your boss," he said. "You can't hold us off forever. Plans are underway."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I replied. "I don't have a boss. I've been my own employer for the last 61 years... ever since I quit my job cleaning up classrooms destroyed from botched chemistry experiments. One can only inhale toxic fumes for so long before starting to wonder if whether or not one's health is worth exchanging for minimum wage without benefits."

  "Just give him our warning," said Scar-face.

  "Sorry," I said, "but the number 12 bus only stops around here every few hours. If I miss it I'll have to walk home. Have you ever tried to walk home from this part of downtown? I'll be lucky if I don't get lost and have to eat for dinner some sort of stale, dried-out, vending-machine egg-salad sandwich while drinking unclear water and listening to a complete stranger talk about how when they work the graveyard shift at the warehouse they sometimes have hallucinations about toys that come alive and write uniquely philosophical screenplays. They'll say I can buy one of these sure-to-sell scripts for only 20 bucks. I'll decide to take a chance and shell out the cash, but when I get home I'll realize I've been totally duped and that the script really has no philosophical aspects at all but is only a mistaken-identity thriller that I end up selling to a lame studio for a bag of cashews. Also at some point either a bird will shit on my head or a bus will soak me with puddle-water, or both, depending on if I walk down one of the tougher cross-avenues."

  I pushed my way past Scar-face, ready to use the sword-cane if necessary. Opening the exit door into the alley I realized I was the only one leaving the theater this way, as the rest of the crowd had gone towards the lobby for a Q & A with some of the film crew. When the door slammed shut I saw one of Leafhead's portals appear, hovering silently beside the familiar rat-infested dumpster.

  "Hurry up!" shouted Leafhead from through the gateway. A disembodied robot hand appeared and made frantic motioning gestures.

  I jumped through, back to the house. Scar-face raced into the alley, just managing to catch a glimpse of the portal before it closed.

  "You were right," he spoke into an earpiece.