From: [email-masked] (James "Kibo" Parry)

Okay, I admit it, I've seen "The Philadelphia Experiment II" and lots of
other really bad science fiction films.  I was recently moved to write
this when I was hospitalized after having jammed Mentos(R) into my ears.
For some reason I felt like writing something which would annoy Harlan
Ellison as much as possible.  If he comes over and beats me up I'll be sorry.
Also, if this story gets made into a movie, it'll be really painful to
watch.  Good.

There are some *extremely* obscure references in here, so don't be
afraid to ask John Baez to explain them to you.  In fact, some
references will only be understood by two or three people on the entire
planet.  Enjoy.

							-- K.
THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENTOS
=============================

"So if we connect the phase-flow inducer to the remodulating
transceiver... and route it into hyperspace," said LeVar Burton...
	"...then the entire battleship will turn purple!" said Gerrit Graham.
The two of them were mad scientists in this modern year of 1943, two
mad scientists fighting for right and decency for us all!
	Outside the window, the USS Millipede was sailing around Philadelphia
Bay in circles, waiting for the experiment to begin.  The USS Millipede
was to be the linchpin in a super-secret super-scientific experiment
that could determine the course of World War II!  Also, it was still 1943.
	"But one thing still puzzles me, LeVar," said Gerrit while using a
pocket comb to try to get his hair to stop sticking up, "#Why# do we
want the ship to turn purple?"
	"Well, Gerrit, as you know, it's 1943.  We're fighting World War II."
	"Gotcha!  Oh, now I see it.  You're saying that because we're at war
with the Germans, who are a nation of people so restrained by
inflexible logic, that if we paint the battleship purple, because they
know that #battleships are not purple#, to them it'll become invisible!
LeVar Burton, you're a genius!"
	LeVar smiled and popped another peppermint-flavored Mentos(R) into his
mouth, then he used the roll of Mentos(R) to flip the big red switch in
really cool style.
	Absolutely nothing happened to the USS Millipede, and it was 
still 1943.

*          *          *          *          *

	Meanwhile, in the present day, somewhere in hyperspace, an
oatmeal-raisin cookie two miles wide tumbled and hurtled through a
universe of special effects.  Harlan Ellison clung to an enormously
magnified tiny model of a building and wished he could rip the eyeballs
out of everybody in the entire world.
	"What is that enormous oatmeal doing here, in direct violation of the
square-cube lawawawawawawaw?" he said, the distortion of the
slit-scanned hyperspace making his voice echo and flange digitally.
The cookie flipped over, revealing giant locusts crawling around on the
bottom.  They were big, B. I. G.
	Of course, Harlan Ellison, being a fictional creation, isn't involved
in this story at all.  However, Spot, in the real world, looked up just
in time to see an oatmeal-raisin cookie two miles wide falling on him.
"Yap!" he screamed, before being crushed.
	Meanwhile, back in 1943, absolutely nothing was still happening to the
USS Millipede, and it was #still# 1943 there.  Spot wasn't, as the
cookie had hit him so hard he had been blasted into another universe.
And he was covered with crumbs!  Poor Spot.
	Spot looked around the other universe.  "Wow," he said aloud, "this
universe looks identical to mine in just about every way!  What a
coincidence!"  He knew he was in another universe, though, because all
the buildings had burlap doors.  "Ah!" yapped Spot, "#BURLAP DOORS!#"
Spot liked burlap doors and spent the next few minutes running in and
out of a nearby building, its dangling rectangle of burlap sliding back
and forth across Spot's sensitive face.  "#Ah!  Burrrrrlap doors!#"

*          *          *          *          *

	Back in 1943, Gerrit Graham tried to figure out why the USS Millipede
hadn't turned purple or even do something simple like go into another
universe or get hit by the tumbling Time Cookie.  Suddenly he sneezed,
spilling all his Mentos(R) directly into the phase-flow flux inducing
transitory remodulation destabilizer field coil generator loop core
zone.  Lightning bolts shot out of it, hitting both him and LeVar
Burton!  Gerrit's hair stood up straight, forming a big semicircle
around his cranium, while the shock blew LeVar's opaque contact lenses
out of his eyes.  "I can see!  I can see!" screamed LeVar.  He picked
up a book and began to read it aloud.
	The title of the book was:

		IT'S STILL THE YEAR 1943

*          *          *          *          *

	After striking Spot, the Time Cookie bounced away, skipping across the
surface of space like a stone skipping across a pond filled with
Jell-O.  Harlan Ellison clung on for dear life, expecting to never be
re-united with his prized collection of Barry B. Longyear novels,
giving up all hope of ever collaborating with Rockne S. O'Bannon on
writing the "NBC's seaQuest DSV" movie.  Now he'd never get to finish
renting all those Band Brothers movies!  He sobbed into a hankie and
clung to the tiny plastic buildings on the surface of the Time Cookie,
designed to look like enormous buildings which were half the size of
the ordinary locusts walking about on the other side.
	The cookie sailed off into the infinite unknown, passing a 40-column
ASCII graphic of a space station--the name of the place: Babylon 1.
Michael O'Hare looked out the window and waved at Harlan, then ripped
off his mask to reveal he was really Barbara Bain!  Harlan screamed and
lost his grip, falling off into the void, never to be seen again.
Somewhere else, people started erasing his name from the "Terminator 2"
credits again.

*          *          *          *          *

	Spot was getting tired of rubbing his face against hanging burlap, and
besides, it was getting dark.  He went through the burlap door and
turned on the light.  He seemed to be in someone's home.
	"Hi, little puppy," said the home's occupant, "My name is Clutch
Cargo.  Please don't be frightened by my hideously grotesque appearance
but I have a rare lip disease known as Synchro-Vox."
	Spot felt his lips twitching uncomfortably.  A strange hazy
ellipse-shaped ring began to materialize around them!  Clutch gasped.
"Oh no, doggie!  You've caught my Synchro-Vox!"
	"ARF." said the bright orange film of a pair of human lips that were
now superimposed on Spot's face.  "BARK."  Spot wanted to ask if there
was a cure for Synchro-Vox, but the evil lips had assumed control of
his face!  "WOOF."  He was unable to move his facial muscles at all!
"BOW WOW."

*          *          *          *          *

	Gerrit finished getting his hair to lie reasonably flat.  "And one
more thing that bothers me, LeVar..."
	"Yeah?"
	"It's still 1943, right?"
	"Yeah, so?"
	"But #why# is it 1943?  Oh, sure, last year was 1942, and the year
before that was 1941, but why were #those# years 1942 and 1941?  Why
isn't it, say, 1066?"
	LeVar grinned.  "Easy question, Gerrit.  It's 1943 because we're in
the middle of World War II.  If it were 1066, we'd be in the middle of
the Battle of Hastings, and as you may have noticed, we're #not#
wearing suits of armor!"
	Gerrit's hair jumped back into upright position.  "Ah, 1066, the
Battle of Hastings!  They used whattle-and-daub construction then!  In
the olden days, ruffians would steal from barrels by removing the
staves!"  He began to twirl around madly for no reason.
	LeVar couldn't believe his eyes!  He was seeing the Blezmo Effect for
himself!  Gerrit was in the grip of powerful forces first discovered by
Prof. Belrick Blezmo!  "Uh oh, Gerrit, I think this is a sign that
we've been monkeying with powers beyond our control!  You've been
bitten by the Blezmo Effect!"
	Gerrit didn't answer, as he was too busy spinning around and 
passing out.

*          *          *          *          *

	Spot ran and ran down the main street of the alternate version of his
home town, in the other universe, upset that all the other dogs were
making fun of his really fake-looking orange lips with an oval around
them!  Dogs can be so cruel, especially to other dogs who have human lips.

*          *          *          *          *

	Frantically, LeVar worked the controls of the megamodal multiphasic
periodic interositer, attempting to reverse the polarity of the neutron
flow.  He switched on S.U.S.I.E. (the Synchro Universal Sinometric
Integrated Equitensor) and rubbed a fresh roll of Mentos(R) against the
input sensor, hoping this would repair whatever damage they had
accidentally done to the space-time continuum.  He set his slide rule
to 7 and then activated the vorpal nexus of a hexagon's square root of
the fourth dimensional relativity factor.

*          *          *          *          *

	The Time Cookie swooped down and bumped into Spot, knocking his fake
lips off!  "Gee, thanks!" barked Spot as the cookie readied to make a
strafing pass.  It flew past, spitting rock-hard raisins at him, then
did a lovely Immelmann followed by a bank turn and a three-cushion
maneuver, plowing into Spot so hard that he was propelled back into his
original universe.  However, he didn't return to the present--he
returned to the past.  The past, where it was--
	NINETEEN FORTY-THREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*          *          *          *          *

	Gerrit woke up just in time to see Spot appear in mid-air before him
and fall to the ground with a soft thud.  "Hey, LeVar, what's this?
You've materialized a puppy!  Better run a Level 3 flea scan on it!"
	Spot wondered what the heck was going on.  As always, when Spot's
train of through passed the speed of spreading lichen, he began to
drool uncontrollably.  Seeing several Mentos(R) lying on the floor made
Spot's saliva into a raging torrent of spittle!  Some of it landed in
the interositer, causing S.U.S.I.E. to create a group of big gold
octahedra which floated around the room and then strangled Gerrit.
Then a giant computer-generated octopus materialized in the middle of
the room and sawed the lab in half with a laser beam, while a
badly-digitized picture of Patrick MacNee talked about how great the
Millennium Power Pack battery was.  LeVar grabbed Spot's collar and
started dragging him towards the door.  "Come on, little dog!  We have
to get out of here--now!"
	As the vast scientific complex blew up behind them, in 1943, they got
into a submarine, closed the hatch, and set out into the Atlantic at
full speed.  Unfortunately, they both died, because the submarine had
burlap doors.

						(C) 1994 James "Kibo" Parry