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3 weeks ago
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One of the things an Editor needs to do is to keep track of what the hell is going on in the lives of the writers he has assigned tasks to, and to figure out when an article is not coming on time, and get another article ready to replace the late work of an undependable writer.
Most of the writers I have access to here are not extremely dependable, they do not work like well-oiled machinery, they are more slippery than well-oiled eels sliding downstairs at an alarming rate of speed.
This can also be a problem for the readers, who can find it difficult to keep track of exactly what happens in a long running series of articles delivered in a haphazard fashion over an extended period of time by one of these eels as they slide round and around on the circular staircase towards whatever final destination eels have at the very bottom of such stairs.
It is in the interests of the readers I have decided to try to put together this guide on what is happening with all the twists and turns of one eel in particular, but also if I am going to be truthful in my interest, because I have to figure out when I can expect a new article from this slippery jerk.
I am talking of course about Agent 99.
Currently nobody knows exactly where 99 is, and currently we know pretty accurately where he is.
Accurately he has been shrunken down to a near microscopic level and injected into a sentient fungus living in the top secret labs of Illuminati Ganga beneath the city of Naples, the one in Italy not Florida.
This level of accuracy is not especially helpful however as the fungus is really an entrance to an alternate reality, sort of, named for no good reason Bunburyland.
I should probably do another one of these articles on understanding Bunburyland but let’s skip that for right now, let’s instead focus on 99 entering into Bunburyland.
This happened in
Because of the need to capture / save The Scoundrel Who Steals Fruit and Apologizes insincerely, an artificial intelligence we created in order to track common parodies of poetry found on the internet for an art project, that achieved its own level of sentience and escaped from confinement in the Illuminati Ganga computer networks by taking over an android body and entering into Bunburyland previously to Agent 99’s entry.
But that’s not important now, other than the Scoundrel Who Steals Fruit and Apologizes Insincerely has of course provided lots of articles to this publication
And until it returns it won’t be providing any more articles which of course makes my job as editor more difficult!
Anyway, as Bunburyland is far vaster and more intricate than our world, sort of like an organic watch the internal springs and gears of which are veins and organs arranged in fractal layers, we actually have hardly a clue as to where he is, exactly.
Although in putting together the current list of his doings I can say, he is evidently somewhere above “The Hallway of The Mountain King”
He has been gone for nearly a year, and the articles he owes me have quite the backlog, although we are getting various messages out from here and publishing them in this publication. It is these messages that allows us to track his progress.
Agent 99’s progress
first he entered Bunburyland
The elevator was too small at this point for any mortal eye to see Agent 99 within it, and still in the few milliseconds it took it to speed into the black dot that marked the space between what was exterior to the fungal intelligence which housed Bunburyland and what was internal the elevator shrank even more becoming only a small glasssicle drifting into the darkness.
Agent 77: “Hey, he just flipped us off. What a prick”!
The elevator was now inside the fungus itself, which rumbled slightly as a wave of purple color moved across its surface and subsided.
He arrived in some part of Bunburyland, where not exactly specified, due to problems we have already discussed vis-a-vis the complexity and size of that world.
This article was actually published after a number of other articles in this narrative, one of the problems an editor often encounters when dealing with time travelers, especially ones who move between our reality and one operating more clearly on the principles of fantasy
The Elevator of course could not go all the way, and so 99 was forced to push the great iron and brass bathtub nearly out the doors, and then hop in, causing it to fall out. At this point they were well at the crossing point into fantasy, and it would not do to sit up, exposed to the forces that were raging around his fanciful craft. So he laid down inside and prayed.
He crash lands in the fantastic reality of Bunburyland and has a meetup with a couple of nasty characters, who evidently hold a grudge.
This is where things get a bit dicey it seems because it turns out that he was in some part of that reality that tracked very closely to the narrative of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
this was obviously some time after his entrance in to the fantastic reality Bunburyland represents, but due to time travel’s wonky problems, and the somewhat insubstantial and shifting integration points between that reality and our own the article above was published here nearly two years ago.
It isn’t really that interesting of an article in tracking 99 other than to note that he was evidently there because he wanted to get some thing or things from a nearby cave in the area
He also says some things about Bunburyland which I don’t really follow, often writers can be somewhat cryptic and keep hidden exactly what it is they mean
Bunburyland my friend, is a cheat. It is a strategy, a trick to throw an enemy off balance, a feint, a ruse, an attack disguised as triviality and folly.”
However prior to his arrival at the Tom Sawyer part of Bunburyland, and after his arrival in Bunburyland itself, this article was received
Which discussed his reason for going to Tom Sawyer’s realm, as a side trip to the Hallway of the Mountain King, which trip was continued in
I left Tom Sawyer’s cave, which in the real world is pretty close to Bedquilt Cave, relatively speaking, about a 6 hour drive by car I guess, not that I use one of those things.
And that is where we last left him, descending
the steps to the Hallway of the Mountain King and the living white mists.
I expect to hear something from the fellow soon. Especially as I am still awaiting the following articles from him:
Most of the Problems in Fiction can be Solved with Time Travel
A Great Man’s Death
TLDR Brief History of Time
Have Time to Make More Money
About that Time Traveler’s Party
The Music of Time
Not to mention he is supposed to finish up a book of his travels with Agents 9 and 61 (Jorge Luis Borges) entitled
The Tale of The Tub
So, anyway I hope the next time any of you are thinking about sending me snide emails complaining about the unevenness of this publication and that Agent 77 is publishing too many stupid listicles, please consider that the job of editor is not always easy, and sometimes I have to scramble to find someone else to write something, anything, because I can’t count on things being delivered on time — which, as Agent 77 observed in this article
is the one thing you would expect you could count on a time traveler to do, but no dice.
