No Parking — A Hit and Run Story
By The Ethical Hypnotist
Chapter Seven — Law and Order in the Ninth Dimension
“I never said it was impossible, dudes—I said it was illegal.”
Margot hovered in the center of the simulation, inside Dom’s mind. Dom had called Margot directly into his mind space, rather than into the hotel room. It was more difficult, but kept anyone from stumbling in. Margot was holding up the cardboard cutout again, so as not the shatter the minds of the others Dominick had brought along.
“So how could it happen?” Lola was pacing the space, mind spinning. “Aren’t there, like, Dimension Cops or something?”
Margot held up a small sign, “Shrug” printed on it. “Murder’s illegal in your dimension and mine, we’ve both got cops—but Citizens still get killed. Douchebags’ gonna douche, ya know?”
“Your implication being there’s a criminal alien somewhere in our dimension.” Violet was sitting, taking copious notes on a metaphorical legal pad. “Are they doing this themselves? What is Krystallo Orfanos’ culpability for all this?”
“No clue dudette. Almost certainly she’s making wishes. But it’s a coin toss whether she knows how they’re being fulfilled. She might know and not care, or her patron might just be lying.”
Dom sat behind Zoey, arms wrapped around her. “So what can we do to stop her? Can I pull her reconfig-a-mabob out? If I can get close enough, I can get into her head.”
“I doubt our dimensional dipshit gave it to her. If they hang onto it, they keep control of the wishes.”
“So I gotta pull this mess up by the roots. Fair enough.”
Zoey turned around, gave her husband a deeply skeptical look. “First of all, don’t say ‘I’, Nicky. We are going to pull it up by the roots. Secondly, are you crazy!? You’re going to fight one of these things?” She put a hand up to her mouth. “Oh my god, Margot, I’m so sorry!”
Margot put up a tentacle. “Peace, Mrs Dude, I know we’re cool. Also, you’re right. Dom, my man, I love you like a brother—but going mano-a-mano with a ninth dimension criminal is gonna get you squished. No, we gotta go to the law with this. We gotta call in a Judge.”
Dominick conceded the point, shrugging. “What is a Judge exactly? You say it with a capital J in your voice.”
“They’re the Main Dudes, my man—way up at the tipitty-top of the dimensional curve. They enforce the law all the way down the chain. They run the hyper-jails at the edge of reality.” Margot held up the ‘shrug’ sign again. “Frankly, they scare the shit out of me.”
Lola stepped to the center. “Alright, call in the cavalry. But how long til they show up? What do we do in the meanwhile?”
“Time… doesn’t really work for them in a way you’d understand—sorry. They’ll be here when they’re meant to be here. Til then, case the joint, search for clues, maybe free a few more Hot Girls—get as much evidence as we can for the judgment.”
Lola turned back to Violet. “Sherlock Holmes with better tits.”
Margot held up a ‘claps hands’ sign. “Why don’t you ladies get started with that? Maybe help that woman in your hotel room? She’ll still be trippin’ for real when she comes to. I need to talk to Dom for a hot minute. No biggie.”
The three women exchanged a glance, then nodded. They disappeared from the simulation.
Margot dropped the cutout, but his body language, such as it is, was deeply guilty. “So, um, I have been meaning to talk to you about some stuff, bro.”
Dom raised an eyebrow. “Okay…”
“I know which dickweed is fucking with your world.”
“That’s great.. Right, Margot?”
“Yeah, totally bro. But also… You, um… you know YouTube?”
Dom nodded, skepticism growing on his face. “What about it?”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got a kind of YouTube—Citizens of the ninth dimension, I mean. Obviously, it’s not the same, what with the multiple axes of time…”
Dominick gave Margot a ‘shush.’ “Yeah, yeah, you’re speaking in metaphor. But what does 9D YouTube have to do with all this?”
“The guy that’s fucking with your world is a YouTuber. Goes by the handle Doctor Kraken. One of those loud, annoying channels for teenagers and assholes. Moderately big, around 3.2x1015 subscribers. He’s been posting about Bacchanal Bay all week. Park tours, filming the rides, shit like that. This Krystallo chick is in most of them, talking up the place.”
“A few hours ago, he posted a video about the new Hot Girls™… and about Lola. It’s pulling down big numbers, going viral.”
Dom’s eyes filled with fury. “He’s posting videos of my wife for views? HE’S WARPED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF LIVES FOR VIEWS!? Why the fuck hasn’t he been arrested already!?”
Margot shrugged. “He’s not filming the crimes, bro! He’s a top shelf buttwipe, but he’s not that stupid. It looks like normal reconfig-a-mabob reaction footage.”
“Ok, fuck that guy for real. But this is good.” Dom started to pace. “I mean, not good, but we know who’s doing it. We can get the evidence and call in a Judge.”
Margot pulled at his metaphorical collar. “Yeah, of course… but there’s just one little complication…” Margot paused as Dom turned skeptical eyes towards him. “Because he’s posting footage of the Vasquez family, it triggered a copyright claim… My copyright claim.”
Dom stopped dead, slowly turned to face Margot. “What. The Fuck. Does that mean?”
Margot put up some tentacles defensively. “I just had a little vlog thing! Videos of my daughter, vacations, just anything interesting in my life—and meeting you was crazy interesting! I made some videos about it; I didn’t think they would take off!”
“You put videos of my family online!? DUDE!”
Margot waved that off. “NoNoNoNO—I never posted anything about Zoey or Lola or anyone else! Just you, man! The toothpaste was already out of the tube, ya know? You’re super cool! A solid dude and warlock prodigy—it’s amazing content. Our training sessions are a big deal. You’re blowing up!”
Dominick closed his eyes, rubbed his temples, took a long slow breath. “There are people in your dimension who know who I am? I’m a meme or something?”
“...There’s merch.” Margot whispered the words, sheepish.
The air was still, electric with tension. Dominick stared daggers at Margot, who tried his best to slink into a less visible dimension. Finally, Dom slumped and sighed heavily.
“I’m not gonna get mad. I’m not gonna get mad. I just… man, you shoulda told me!”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Margot shut his hundreds of eyes, ashamed. “It just kinda spiraled out of control. I didn’t know what to say.”
“Yeah… yeah, I get that.” Dom thought back to his own spiral, when he’d asked for more charges in his Reconfig-a-mabob and didn’t tell his wives. He couldn’t point fingers.
He straightened up, put a hand on Margot’s form. “Whatever man, nobody’s perfect. It’s cool.”
“We’ll deal with that shit later—but what does all this mean for us now? What do your videos have to do with Doctor Kraken’s videos?”
Margot let out his version of a sigh. “I don’t think Doctor Kraken had any idea Lola existed before. Most folks can’t distinguish between lower-dimension Citizens—no offense. She was just some hot naked human, clickbait for the thumbnail. But now she’s tied to me, and my channel is all about you, man. Won’t have taken long to find you on the security footage.”
“So he knows you’re here, he knows you’re snooping around, and he knows he’s going to hyper-jail if you get proof of what he’s done. There’s no telling how far he’ll go to stop you.”