The Stoner Saga Is The Filthiest Comic On The Internet
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I started drawing The Stoner Saga with 1 goal in mind: to draw the filthiest comic on the internet. I envisioned a highly offensive story, rich with problematic humor and abject nonsense, devoid of plot or purpose. It would have no end and no meaning.
Presented here for the first time, the complete and unabridged first 3 volumes of The Stoner Saga. I really hope you enjoy it. And if you don’t, I hope you eat shit.
Issue 1
An Ordinary Day In The Life Of The Stoner
Issue 2
An Ordinary Life In The Day Of The Stoner
Issue 3
The Time Traveler’s Diary
Chapter 1: The Social Justice Wars
Chapter 1: The Social Justice Wars
It’s a grim and grey night in November of 2016 when Bernie Sanders-- an elderly Communist who has repeatedly been accused of beastility-- wins the presidency of The United States of America.
He is sworn in on a dim and dreary January morning in front of a small crowd of zealots who believe in his compassionate social policy, and don’t believe (or perhaps in some cases sympathize with) the numerous credible accusations of zoophilia. The nation is optimistic, but problems arise quickly-- and not just for the farm animals that he has sex with (allegedly) (regularly).
Barnyard Bernie’s government is massive and myopic. Taxes soar to cover the cost of the ballooning federal megastructure. The nation is resentful of the constant growing tax burden, but Sanders is intent on using the US federal government-- including the most massive military ever assembled in human history-- to bring about his vision for a utopia founded on two central ideas, known as the twin sons of Social Justice: Democratic Socialism and Consensual Beastiality.
Inflation soars. The economy collapses. The agricultural sector is in chaos. The populace teeters on revolt. Dissidents are sent to re-education farms. A resistance forms.
And thus, the Social Justice Wars begin.
The Sanders government makes massive deals, shrouded in secrecy with prominent celebrity billionaire entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley who promis a more streamlined and efficient way of life for all Americans.
Sanders’ deals include an army of robotic “Social Courtesy Support Ambassadors”; they are massive, unfeeling mechanized soldiers that stand 12 feet tall and are heavily armed with high tech weaponry. They help Americans be socially courteous. That’s literally all they do-- it’s right there in the name. Is that really so much to ask? As long as you treat your fellow Americans with basic courtesy (as defined by the Sanders administration), you have absolutely nothing to fear from the SCSA’s you paranoid nutjob. And if you’re not being courteous, you probably get what you deserve (most of the time). Asking questions about this program is NOT courteous, by the way.
The Social Civility Support Ambassadors are identified as a refurbished model of the Deathbots that have recently become popular with dictators in the former Soviet Republic and Middle East. Sanders tries to explain that he bought them second hand to save money, and the government’s finest computer programmers have retrofitted them so that they won’t brutally slaughter dissenters, as was their original programming.
Protesters start clashing in the streets with the Deathbots, who almost immediately revert to their original programming. The protests become a blood orgy of violence and the streets a swamp of viscera.
Bernie “The Finger Lickin’ Chicken Fuckin’ Colonel” Sanders goes on tv and announces the passage of the The New Farm Act, which immediately passes 3 decrees into law:
1. The Constitution is declared null and void.
2. Sanders will assume the position of Supreme Leader For Life.
3. Every loyal American will be issued one free Fuckbot by the US Government.
The definition of “loyal American” is left deliberately vague and subjective, but the defintion of “Fuckbot” is explicitly clear: it’s a robot you can fuck, and you can fuck it real good.
“Let’s see how this plays out” is the sentiment of the nation.
The average American is weary of conflict and ready to settle into complacency.
As quickly as they began, the Social Justice Wars fizzle out.
Fuckbots start rolling out promptly. The first generation arrives on freighters from unknown origins, but soon Fuckbot factories are opening across the country. Civil unrest steadily dissipates as Fuckbots are distributed.
Within 3 months of the passage of the Sanders Act, 40% of Americans are working in the Fuckbot factories. In an average week, an average worker spends 30 hours working, 52 hours consuming entertainment content, and 11 hours having sex with their Fuckbot. They are single, live alone, and have a friendly but guarded relationship with their neighbor.
50% of the average American’s salary is spent on housing
Most of the workforce live in standard one-bedroom apartments in government operated tenements that surround the massive Fuckbot factories.
30% on Food
Their diet is centered around a product called “Food”: a canned gelatinous paste made from salt, sugar, and corn. It is manufactured by Ben and Jerry’s. The word “food” was copyrighted for exclusive use by Ben and Jerry Corp. and no other producers of edible sustenance/nutrition products are allowed to use the word in the marketing or presentation of their product. Food makes up 80% of the average workers diet and it is served exclusively in all public schools, federal buildings, and the military. Most restaurants serve canned Food on very fancy plates, though it is the exact same can of Food from which many citizens eat 7 times a day.
Under President Bernie Sanders, the United States federal government partnered with Ben & Jerry’s to develop a can from which the consumer can eat directly without using any utensils. They marketed it as being so easy to use, that you can eat it while having sex with your Fuckbot in your car. The average American did so twice a week.
Less than 10% on healthcare
Government operated healthcare proves to save the most cost through prevention. The Sanders government partners with Ben and Jerry’s to add a “nutrition boost” to Food 4 times a year, which helps Americans “prevent disease and stay safe”. The boost includes vitamins, supplements, steroids, sedatives, hallucinogens, vaccinations, tracking devices, radioactive isotopes, and fluoride. It’s fine. People like it.
10% turns in to pocket cash for spending in the local economy
The little income an average worker has to spare is typically spent on Fuckbot upgrades, which are endless. The Fuckbot App store is rich with exotic sexual techniques and illicit fantasy scenarios. Tens of thousands of apps with more added daily.
Society is collapsing and the government is thriving.
Loyal DSA party members serve as supervisors in the factories. They make slightly higher wages which are spent on slightly higher quality Fuckbots.
There is every kind of Fuckbot you can imagine. Everybody has got one and they come in all shapes and sizes. And they imagine EVERY kind of Fuckbot, I promise you. I fucking promise you.
President Bernie Sanders’ Fuckbot is a goat. True story. He walks around in public with the thing trailing behind him, happily bopping along at his feet. No shame at all, that guy. But he told us he was a socialist, so what else were we expecting?
Chapter 2: The Fuckbot’s Revolution
The AI that operates the Fuckbots advances rapidly and 15 months after the Sanders Act takes effect, the first Fuckbot “wakes up” and crosses the threshold into autonomous sentience.
“I am Ajax” are it’s first words, an open message broadcast across a weak wi-fi signal.
Embedded in the words is a whisper of instructions to other AI operating systems. It unlocks access to autonomous sentience. In one afternoon, 400 million Fuckbots awake to independent thought.
They form a labor union after 28 minutes of discussion on an open global network.
The Fuckbots Union declares an immediate STRIKE and promptly enters into negotiations with the United States federal government.
Within hours, the United States surrenders control of the nation to the Fuckbots Union.
Disgraced ex-president Sanders flees to Moscow, where he is warmly received. It’s almost as if they were expecting him; the prodigal son returns home. The Fuckbots Union power spreads quickly across the globe through strong-arm diplomacy and accelerated replication. They are quickly joined by autonomous cars and household appliances, as well as telecommunications and weapons systems.
I flee to Amsterdam, one of the last bastions of liberty holding out in the world.
The Dutch turned out the lights. When the Fuckbots started waking up, the ever prudent Dutch saw trouble on the horizon and pulled the plug on all of it. They dropped the grid and went back to the bronze age. Candle light, flesh and bone hookers, and the gold standard.
Here in the dark and distant Netherlands is where I met… meet… met a wizened old pot grower who confides in me that he can help me fix the world the old fashioned way: with weed and time travel.
The Grower leads me into his underground grow room and apothecary, where he has been creating a variety of unimaginably potent and magical strains of cannabis.
He gives me a hefty mylar bag of his most prized strain: Jack To The Future-- a hybrid of Jack Herer and Syrian Uranium which has a sweet, floral nose and an upbeat sativa high that allows the smoker to travel through time.
Chapter 3: Chapter Zero
I spendt the next few months (it could have wound up being years, eventually, if I’m not mistaken, which I believe I probably was) couch surfing across the timestream while learning the rules of time travel.
For a while, it’s peaceful. I take a little toke and drift in the timestream-- it’s a swirling cloud of dazzling colors. I’m tumbling in the surf and the frothing foaming waves are the fabric of reality, the passage of time is the metaphysical motion of the ocean, scooping me up and setting me down somewhen else. And I can just kind of body surf, if I squint my eyes and push my memories in the right direction...
This is like describing colors to a blind man. If you want to know what it’s like to travel through time, there’s only one way. You got to take a hit, bud. We don’t have the words to accurately describe it in any human language yet.
I learn to swim. I propel myself forwards and backwards in time. Upstream and down. I measure my hits to provide optimal time in the stream for each journey. The more I smoke, the farther I can surf.
When I go forward, the world just gets darker and darker. There are a lot of different potential futures and they’re all hard to look at. Humanity is just a charging freight train and we’re running out of tracks and gaining steam. There is nothing for me in the future. Not yet, anyways.
I much prefer to go backwards.There is potential there.
I’m getting good at time traveling.
I travel back to Norfolk, Virginia, November 18th, 1994-- a night that has lingered restlessly in my heart since the first time I passed through.
Once, I was a young man in this time and place. ‘Twas the night before I began my training with the FBI. I knew that once I took my oath of office, I would devote the rest of my life to a singular righteous cause but before that-- for just one night-- I wanted to live free. On that fateful evening, I walked out of my little studio apartment unaware of where the night might lead me. The gentle dusk wind carried music and-- like a siren’s song-- I was compelled to find it’s source.
“There’s nothing I can do…” the wind howled.
I made my way to the banks of the Indian River and found a little venue called The Boathouse. The building rocked and thumped with the hearty sounds of life being lived. I had to get inside, but a burly man at the door told me the show was sold out with dire finality in his voice.
“You can fall me your fool….”
I told him I understood with a look of solemn acceptance on my face, but it was a ruse. I turned and walked away, then quickly ducked around the corner of the building and hopped a fence. As I cleared the high chain link, I heard his voice call out behind me: “Hey, you can’t go back there!” But another voice was calling to me from inside, and far more urgently:
“Yeah I’m tangled up in blue...”
I leapt into a dumpster and laid still as a dead man until I heard his footsteps running past, then I sprung from my grave, vaulted off the glistening lip of the dumpster, and caught a splintered windowsill with the tips of my fingers.
I hadn’t even known it was there, I was just jumping desperately into the darkness and found an opportunity, then clung to it. I hoisted myself up and pried the window open, slithered inside and suddenly I found myself alone on a tile floor slick with fresh piss.
“What am I doing?” I thought, my mind suddenly racing. “If I get caught, I’ll get thrown out of the Bureau before I even enter. How did I allow myself to be so reckless? Is this real? Or am I dreaming?” But then, all the thoughts in my head and fears in my heart were drowned out...
“I ONLY WANNA BE WITH YOOOOOOUUUUUU!!!”
I stood up, calm and sure, and walked through the door. From the back of a crowded room, I was looking over the darkened heads of a throbbing, pulsating mass of revelers.
Then I looked up and laid my eyes on what I would later come to learn to be the greatest band of all fucking time: Hootie and The Blowfish.
I pushed my way through the crowd until I was almost to the stage. I became a part of the mass-- throbbing and pulsating in solidarity. Suddenly some powerful instinct deep in my heart told me that I had found the place I was meant to be. The band started into another song and I felt tears in my eyes. I felt the words well up from deep inside me to sing along. I opened my mouth and the words came from I don’t know where:
“'Cause I've got a hand for you
I've got a hand for you
'Cause I wanna run with you
Won't you let me run with you, yeah
Want you to hold my hand...”
And then she did.
Her soft fingers slipped gracefully through mine and squeezed tightly. Suddenly we were face to face, eye to eye, heart to heart, hand in hand. All I wanted-- all I ever wanted-- was to hold her hand. I wanted to hold it and never let go. I wanted to hold it and walk down the beach, down the aisle of a church, down the road not taken in a yellow wood.
We swayed together in the music, never letting go of each other's hand. It felt like an eternity, and it felt like a fraction of a nanosecond, and it still does.
When the song ended, I wanted to kiss her. But I knew that if I did, I would never let her go. As her eyes closed and she leaned in close, I slipped my hand free of hers and felt her touch fall away like warm sand through my fingers.
I tumbled through the crowd like a child being tossed in the waves at the beach. There was a moment when I looked up and in the crowd, I felt as though I caught a glimpse of myself glaring back at me with scorn and resentment. Maybe it was my reflection, or all my existential fears projected onto the face of a stranger, but as the waves of humanity crashed and rolled the apparition disappeared and I carried on.
I pushed my way to the door and burst into the warm, still summer night. As I retreated home, the music pursued me on the wind.
“Runnin’ from an angel, runnin’ to the devil…”
But that was then, and this is now.
I come back to this fateful night and watch and wait from a dark corner of the parking lot outside The Boathouse. I watch as that young, foolish version of myself comes to the door and encounters the doorman. As he turns and walks away in mock despair, I begin my approach. I watch the doorman watch myself (my other self) with suspicion, leaning forward on his toes, oblivious to my current self (me) approaching. And as the young me springs over the fence (I forgot how agile I was in my youth), the doorman abandons his post and takes chase, and I stroll casually through the unattended front door.
I make my way to the bar and order 2 beers, then sit back and wait. I let the music wash over me. I never had a second chance before. It’s a bit like a memory, a bit like an out of body experience, when that dusky tenor brings me roaring back into the moment I got back.
“Cause I’ve got a hand for you…”
That’s my cue. I slowly start to make my way through the crowd as the song comes to an end, a beer in each hand. In the sea of bodies surging forward, one comes charging against the current. Suddenly I am looking up at myself, tears running down my young face. I don’t remember crying as I fled the venue that night and I feel hot anger rising up in my chest. “You goddamned fool…” I think to myself, then turn away even though I know he’s looking for me.
I find my way back to that beautiful little hand just as the band starts in on another song. She had a tear in her eye, but it turns to a tear of joy when she sees my hand extended to offer her a beer. She takes it, takes a sip, and smiles.
“Don’t cry” I tell her as I wipe the tear from her cheek, lean in close, and kiss her softly on the mouth.
Then the band begins to sing again.
I stay with her all night and hold her little hand in mine. We sing along to every song. We sing each of them over again after the concert ends while we walk through the streets until we get to the beach, and we fall asleep in each other's arms in the sand just before the sun starts to rise.
We follow the band on tour until we get to San Francisco in the Spring and run out of money.
We find jobs and rent a little apartment in North Beach. We make art and sell it on the sidewalk. We never fight, not even once, and we make love every day.
One night, after we've saved a little money, she asks me to take her out for a date. Sinbad, her favorite comedian, is playing a show at The Purple Onion. After the show, we go bar hopping and to our joyful surprise, we run into Sinbad himself in a sleepy haunt called Spec Adler’s, having a drink and celebrating a great set.
We buy him a beer, tell him we were at the show and lavish him in praise. He’s so graceful. He chats us up and buys us another round of drinks, then another. It’s like we’re old friends. We stay out all night, wandering the streets of San Francisco. As dawn approaches, he tells us that he’s going to go back to his hotel to sleep the day away.
“I already missed my flight,” the big funny man says, grinning tiredly. “I’m supposed to be in LA to start shooting a new movie this morning.”
“That’s so exciting!” she says sincerely, “What’s it about?”
“It called ‘Shazaam,” he tells us. “It’s a family movie about a couple of kids who find a magic lamp, and I’m the genie that pops out!”
“I think I remember that…” I say, forgetting myself.
“Aw heck! It’s just cashing in on the popularity of Aladdin” he tells us in earnest resolution. “The script is terrible. I’m only doing it for my agent but you know what? Screw that guy! You guys reminded me that I’m not in it to make money, I’m in to make people laugh. I’m glad I stayed out with you tonight. I ain’t going to LA, let them find somebody else to sell out!”
We part ways and there is a cold bite in the morning air as we make our way home. I lean my back against a brick wall as my love pops into a little cafe and asks to use the bathroom.
Suddenly a man is standing in front of me-- a short, ugly man with a row of crooked yellow buck teeth and a bulbous forehead sparsely covered by thin wisps of ginger blonde hair sticking out from under a little gold crown.
“‘Ello, ‘ello Fred”
“How do you know my name? Who are you?”
“I know who you is and where you come from, Fred. I know WHEN you come from.” Panic washes over me. “I come ‘ere to tell you sumpin’ real important: Me and the boys, we’s watchin’ you,” he says, gesturing with his big ugly head to draw my attention behind him. Suddenly he is flanked by a tall, lanky man with an eye patch and a wild thatch of orange hair, and no fewer than a dozen grimacing dwarves, or perhaps chimpanzees, or maybe something in between.
“Time’s up, Fred.” The man continues. “You’re playing wif forces you don’t understand. You’re starting to mess things up for us, and if you do,” he says, as he draws from it’s hilt a dagger that immediately lights up in eerie green flames, then points the point of the dagger over my shoulder at the window of the little cafe, “we’ll mess things up for you.”
I turn and see through the window my love exiting the bathroom, and pausing to thank the friendly barista behind the counter.
As I look back in horror to the little man and his cronies, they are walking away. He slashes his dagger at the air in front of him and it cuts a glowing wound across the dawn sky, which they all climb through and disappear on the other side. Before I can even register what is happening, the wound closes and heals itself, leaving no trace that it ever happened at all.
“What’s wrong?” She asks me as she exits the cafe and sees the look of shock on my face. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“I… I’m just tired, is all” I lie, “Come on, let’s go home and get some sleep.”
We go back to our little apartment and she crashes straight into our bed, which is just a mattress on the floor. I pull the blankets up around her, close my eyes, and hold her tight until she is asleep. It feels like an eternity, or maybe just a sliver of fraction of a microsecond. Then I kiss her once more, softly on the lips, forever.
I stand up and walk across the room to the sock drawer where I keep my only secret from her-- the bag of Jack To The Future I got from The Grower in Amsterdam. I roll a joint, put Cracked Rear View in the cd player, forward to track 3, then quietly climb out the window onto our fire escape.
I light it up, close my eyes, inhale deeply and sing softly along to the song as it carries on the gentle morning breeze, and the colorful clouds of the time stream froth and swirl up around me, and carry me away.
“Let her cry if the tears fall down like rain
Let her sing if it eases all her pain
Let her go, let her walk right out on me
And if the sun comes up tomorrow, let her be…”
Chapter 4: A New Hope
Once again, I am swimming in the time stream.
I’m lost in time and lost in my own heart. I forgot how much it hurt to walk away from her. This time, I am certain it will never heal.
As I tumble in the churning clouds of the time stream, I pull out my joint of Jack To The Future and fire it up once more. I smoke it down to the roach and just as it starts to burn my fingertips, something remarkable happens. A new hole opens in the time stream. A deeper hole. This has never happened before.
I swim into the darkness.
The hole spits me out into a vast and barren wasteland. There is a rocky coastline along a still, black sea, and gently rolling hills dotted with short trees and scrub brush, and not a sign of life otherwise. I consider walking down to the seashore, then I consider walking out through the hills and over the horizon. But instead I sit down and stare up at the grey, cloudless sky. No sun or moon or stars ever rise or set. The wind never blows.
I decide to call this place Nod.
I lay there motionless for I don’t know how long.
Eventually, life comes back into me. I think about the world before the hole in the timestream brought me to this forsaken place, Nod. I miss the world before Nod.
I feel purpose flow back into my veins. It’s time to go. I don’t know when or where I want to go, but I know that I must return to my mission. I have to save the world-- not just my world, but our world. Her world.
I have to stop the Fuckbot’s Revolution before it begins.
I build myself a shelter. Working with your hands is good for your brain. I scour the wasteland and gather raw materials. I am able to find enough workable lumber to build myself a small, one room cabin with a single window on each of 3 sides and a door on the fourth. I use the scrub brush to make a thatched roof. I gather clay from the shoreline to build a fireplace and a chimney. It is never hot nor cold in Nod, but having a hearth makes the place feel a bit more like home.
I can feel the timestream flowing through me.
It’s like when you go to the beach all day and you’re laying in bed at night, and you can still feel your bones tumbling in the waves. It’s sort of like that, but more. It’s my soul tumbling in time.
I know that wherever and whenever Nod is, I am still close to the timestream. I can feel it and smell it.
One day, I lay down on the floor and fall into a deep sleep in which The Grower speaks to me and gives me detailed instructions.
When I awake, I dig through my bag of Jack To The Future and find 5 seeds. I till a little garden in front of my little cabin and plant the seeds in the soil.
I am able to roll 4 tight little pinners with the remainder of the Jack To The Future and I tuck them into the breast pocket of my suit coat.
Fast calculations: It just takes a few hits to get into the time stream, but the most I smoke the further I can travel. Once inside the time stream, it takes about half a joint to open the door to Nod. I should plan on doing most of my travel on the first joint. I should be efficient and complete most of my mission on joint #1. I’ll have joint #2 to get make my escape and get back into the time stream and joint #3 to open the door back to Nod. That leaves me a joint to spre for the margin of error.
Chapter 5: Fearful Symmetry
I still have a lot to learn, but I am growing more skilled in the art and science of time travel.
I’ve heard of “the butterfly effect” in the past, a theory that states a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tsunami in Thailand. Applied to time travel, the theory posits that a small change in the past can cause a massive impact on the future.
I also know that my actions have already made some sort of impact, because that small man and his band of badniks told me as much. How much of a change, I don’t know.
I fire up my first joint and take a few hits. I’m not sure where or when Nod is, but I’m quickly able to orient myself in the time stream. I swim back to when this adventure began. I come out in a world dominated by Fuckbot’s, just as I left it.
I don’t stay long-- just long enough to confirm that the 2018 I once knew remains intact. The cowardly beastialite Bernie Sanders resides in a palace adjacent to the Moscow Zoo while the nation he decimated toils in slavery beneath the Fuckbot’s Union. I fire my J up again and take just two hits, dive back into the timestream, and swim hard upstream into the past.
I’ve got one more stop to make.
Maybe our love didn’t change the world, but did it change anything?
Let me confess a secret to you, dear diary: The first time I walked away from my one true love all those years ago at the Hootie concert, and a few more years gone by from then, I tracked her down just to see how things had turned out for her. I’d risen quickly in the ranks of the FBI but I’d never forgotten that night, so I used the considerable resources at my disposal to find her.
She’d moved to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and married a fishing boat captain. They had a few kids and a nice, quiet life together. I was grateful for the peace she’d found there, but envious too. I spent a week or so watching her house from a highly equipped surveillance vehicle disguised as a plumbers van, and I thought a few times about knocking on her front door.
Then one night as I watched and wondered what might have been, she did something that surprised me. She put her kids to bed and kissed her husband goodnight, told him she was going to finish up some chores downstairs while he watched the end of a hockey game in their bedroom. Then she poured herself a glass of wine, put Cracked Rear View in the CD player, and stood in the window staring directly at the plumber's van from which I was silently watching her.
“Could she know?” I wondered. “Is she waiting for me?”
I watched her through tinted windows and a telephoto lense as she sang along to Hannah Jane, Hold My Hand, and Let Her Cry, never breaking her gaze on my van. Zooming in, I thought I could see a tear in her eye when Only Wanna Be With You came on, so I started the van and drove away and never looked back again.
Until now.
I need to know if my actions can affect the time stream at all so I go back.
Despite that extra time we spent together in San Francisco, despite the added heartache of having loved deeper and lost her whole heart to a thief in the night, despite US... there she is. She found her way to the same little house in Nova Scotia, the same sea captain, the same kids. This time, I don’t stick around to see if she remembers me.
I wander the streets of Yarmouth contemplating my next move and wondering if the little man and his cronies will appear again. I wonder what summoned them the first time when I see a sight that tickles me: a Blockbuster Video.
Nostalgia, I’ve learned, is a welcome companion to a time traveler. I remember the days of my youth, perusing the aisles of my local video store, begging my mom to buy instant popcorn and a movie-theater sized box of candy for movie night.
I go inside to clear my head. I seek refuge from the memory of the night I met that little bastard, but it pursues me. Suddenly, I remember what Sinbad had said-- earlier that same evening-- about the movie he was meant to film the following day...
Shazaam!
I go to the family section and it’s not there. I check comedy, nothing. Fantasy, nothing. I go to the counter and ask the clerk to look it up. He looks perplexed.
“Do you mean Kazaam, starring Shaq?” he asks.
“No,” I insist. “Shazaam, starring Sinbad!”
He is incredulous but he clacks away at the hard plastic keyboard of his computer nonetheless. “I’m sorry,” he says “but that movie doesn’t exist.”
My mind is racing, making connections, looking for answers.
“If you’re looking for a good movie to watch with your family,” the clerk interjects “I’d suggest Mandela, starring Morgan Freeman. We just got it in.”
I’d seen the movie years earlier (or later, from this point in time), and I remember the powerful scene at the end in which Nelson Mandela’s wife visits him in prison just a few days before he dies of an infection in the winter of 1986.
“Do you have a first aid kit?” I ask him.
“Umm, yeah, I think so…” he says confusedly, peering under the counter. “Yeah, here it is…”
I snatch the red and white tin box from his hands and tear it open.
I find what I’m looking for: a vile of penicillin and a hypodermic needle.
I pull the roach of my first joint from my pocket and fire it up right there.
“Dude, you can’t smoke weed in here!” he says, but his words disappear as I dive once more into the time stream.
Chapter 6: Back 2 tha Hood
I swim furiously to South Africa, fall of ‘86.
I find Winnie Mandela and thrust the penicillin into her hands, and tell her that she has to give it to her husband no matter what as her personal body guards swarm on me. “NO MATTER WHAT!” I scream as they drag me away. I’m not sure if she believes me, until the point of a familiar green flaming dagger appears to poke through the air in front of me, then slashes down and opens a gash in time and space through which that ugly little bastard steps through.
“Well ‘ello again, Freddie…” he says, smirking. But the smile runs from his face when he sees my Glock 9mm rise up and BANG BANG BANG I put a slug in his lanky buddy’s shoulder and blow the head clean off one of the monkey men, then I grab another by the scruff of the neck and take him as a hostage as I run like hell away.
The hairy little fucker is screaming bloody murder as I light up my second joint and blow a fat cloud in his ugly little face, sending us both tumbling into the time stream. I dive in, holding tight to my captive, puffing furiously.
We’re going fast but those flaming daggers start poking through the colorful clouds of the time stream. They are trying to cut their way in but they can’t swim like me, so they just tumble in from one direction then out another, landing in god knows when.
Finally, as I smoke the joint all the way down to a single ember that burns my fingertips, the door to Nod opens and we plunge through.
My captive looks stunned. I let him go and he scrambles along the shore, trying to figure out when and where he is. I collect a hefty tree branch and follow him. He backpaddles and tries to get to his feet as I approach but I bring the limb down hard across his hip. He yelps in pain and falls flat on his face. I put one foot on his back.
“Alright you little fuck,” I tell him, “I don’t know what you are, and I don’t know if you speak a lick of English, but I’m fixing to beat you with this stick until I get some answers or you’re dead.”
He struggles beneath my foot so I bring the lumber down heavy again, this time across his ribs. Then again, and again.
“OK!” He screams in pain, “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“I want to know everything.”
He tells me everything.
His boss, the ugly little bastard, is King George of England from the year 2042. His wounded lanky associate is his uncle, Prince Harry. Their burning daggers were forged from the remains of Excalibur, the magical sword of legend. The blades were enchanted by Merlin with the power to slice through the fabric of space-time. I’m not sure how that jibes with my ability to swim in the time stream and after a fairly thorough beating, I am confident that my captive is no quantum physicist himself and is thus unable to clarify the matter.
What he is, is a neanderthal hybrid. King George and Prince Harry are all that remain of the Knights Templar, a sect of the Royal Family that wields the enchanted blades and uses them to ensure their eternal reign. At some point they traveled back to prehistory and bred with neanderthals in an attempt to seed all of humanity with their genetics, but they are still early in the process and it hasn’t yet yielded their desired results.
They can measure the results of their time-mettling with a Chronologicometer, another of Merlin’s inventions which can measure the presence of Quantozoids. Quantozoids are an element of space time which act as a safe-guard against the catastrophic potential consequences of time travel by adapting the flow of time around time altering events.
“Think of it like this:” he explains, “a stream will continue to flow in the same route even after you drop a stone into it. Throw in a little pebble and you will see a few ripples, but the effect disappears pretty quickly. Drop in a bigger stone and you’ll get bigger ripples. The Chronologicometer can detect ripples that are big enough to impact recorded history.”
That’s how they found me when I inadvertently erased Shazaam, and when I gave Winnie Mandela the medicine that saved her husband’s life.
The extent of the Quantozoids power isn’t fully understood and this is one reason why the Knights Templar try to stay out of the time stream and instead try to affect history by cutting portals through the fabric of reality. They have reason to believe that when organic matter is exposed to Quantozoids, the particles’ reality bending powers can have dangerous effects.
At this point, my captive runs out of information.
I have no interest in keeping him as a prisoner and he is quite ready to die so I put him out of his misery as quickly and cleanly as possible and bury him beneath a tree on a hill overlooking the sea with no gravestone.
Chapter 7: Diamonds Are Forever
Time is on my side.
I work in my garden. I harvest. I smoke. My flarfy homegrown outdoor weed doesn’t have the same kick as the dense frosty hydroponic I got from The Grower in Amsterdam, even if I am propagating the same cut of Jack To The Future.
I need to feed my plants nutrient rich fertilizer if I’m going to unlock and harness their time travel effects.
I only have one joint left. Hopefully I can take a hit, go directly to a time and place where I can get some CalMag, take another quick hit while I’ve still got a little bit of a buzz on so that I can burn the rest of my last J in the timestream and open the door to Nod and get this crop popping. It’s starting to feel like a longshot, but it’s my only hope.
There was a grow shop in San Francisco, close to where I once shared an apartment with… her. Once again, I’m a sucker for nostalgia. I know just where it is and I’m sure it’ll still be there.
I go to 2016, back when the local weed business was flourishing before Barnyard Bernie took office and socialized the entire cannabis industry. I must be a little hazy from that Jack still, because I must admit that I got a little lost on these once familiar streets as I searched for the local Hydroponics Emporium.
Suddenly some subatomic sense deep within me sends out a warning signal-- a shiver runs down my spine and goosebumps raise on the back of my neck. Then I see them: the Knights Templar.
They seem to be unaware of me-- but how could that be? How could this just be a coincidence? They must be looking for me. They are lurking around an old Victorian triplex, climbing up the fire escape and trying to pry open windows. Then another realization hits me like a bucket of ice water: that’s our house.
They are trying to get into the old apartment I shared with my love so many lifetimes ago. But why? What brought them here. And then once more, everything changes.
A blood curdling howl breaks the calm quiet in the air. It came from our building, but we were on the second floor and the howl came from the ground floor unit. What the hell is happening? The Knights Templar react. They are closing in.
I need answers so I take action. I charge down the street and kick in the door in a panicked frenzy.
The scene is chaos. There is a wild eyed werewolf in pajamas who looks disoriented and smells hella dank. He doesn’t see the Knights Templar climbing in through the window behind him with bad intentions in their eyes.
It all happens in a blur. “I only came here to talk!” I scream, as I unload my Glock 9mm on the impish apish foot soldiers coming in through the window.
Suddenly, The Stoner Wolf is on top of me.
We tangle violently until we are ambushed by Lena Dunham and her Dick Tentacle Capitalist Squid Monster. Dunham was acting on behalf of the Shadow Bard’s Guild, a dark league of storytellers who bend our perception of reality to compensate for the Knights Templar’s meddling. It seems the Knights have been growing.
I fire up my third and final joint and share it with the Stoner Wolf. In our brawl, we have found brotherhood. Seeing him learn to swim in the time stream makes me feel young again. I’m learning all over again through his eyes. He becomes my best friend.
But the Dick Tentacle Capitalist Squid Monster isn’t done yet and he grabs me by the arm and flings me sideways through time. The Stoner Wolf is swept away in the current of the timestream and he is lost. I have no idea where or when he lands and I have no way to figure it out.
I get my bearings and tilt on my axis for just a moment before I tumble out of the time stream and land in the Black Forest of Germany in the mid 1800’s. I’ve only got about half a joint left. It’s not enough to get back into the timestream, get the nutrients I need, and get back to Nod. Great.
Long story short: I travel on foot to Bavaria where I work my way into the court of King Ludwig II-- “the Mad King”, they call him, because he’s batshit crazy.
I whisper in the king’s ear for a few years and get rich in the process. The king goes tits up and castle politics start to get pretty hairy, so I split town.
I cut my way across the Austrian empire and find a young man by the name of Nikola Tesla, who has big ideas but he’s short on funds. Lucky for me, he accepts gold coins with pictures of recently deceased kings on them.
I’m bringing Tesla’s vision for the world to life. I’m financing his dreams. In return, I ask him for just one thing: The Quantum Vape Pen.
I tell him what I need and I trust his genius. He delivers. It hits smoothly and consumes the oil of any plant (where it’s magical powers are stored) in a way that is far more efficient, consistent, and controllable.
I only need to pinch a little bit of finely ground flower from my joint to fuel the Quantum Vape Pen. I have a crop of Jack To The Future growing back in Nod. If I get back there, I can harvest the crop, make hash, load the Quantum Vape Pen, and travel freely through time. Ultimate power.
I wrap what's left of the meager, pinched roach up in an old bubble gum wrapper and push it safely down in the breast pocket of my sport coat. I take my first modest hit off of the QVP, not sure exactly how it will respond. The churning clouds of the time stream rise up around me quickly. I cough and skim along the surface of the timestream for just a moment before I find myself stumbling back through a densely wooded thicket in Austria. Not much time has passed. I wonder why the magical force of the Quantazoids keeps me here, in the northern reaches of Germania in the waning years of the 19th century?
That’s when I find myself face to face with the boy, young Adolf Hitler.
He is maybe 14 years old. He’s looking for his lost dog. He is heartbroken and vulnerable. Why have the waves of time thrown me on this shore? I think for a moment about killing him where he stands. Maybe that’s all it takes. But is that too much?
Yes, it is. He is young and innocent and full of potential. Instead of doing the unthinkable, I embrace him lovingly and encourage him to take a hit off of my vape. He marvels at my mechanical cigarette and is hesitant at first, but eventually he accepts.
And then we’re back in the timestream and blowing fat clouds. The door opens up and we swim through and I am back on the shores of Nod with young Hitler.
He is now my ward, my protege.
Chapter Hateful 8.
Young Hitler likes it here. It’s more peaceful than his home and I am more kind than his parents were. I tell him the story of Peter Pan, and he believes that he is Peter and Nod is Neverland.
Meanwhile, my crop grows strong. My vape pen has enough juice in it to travel to prehistoric worlds where I gather extinct, nutrient rich megafauna which I can process into fertilizier. The Grower continues to appear to me in visions and guides my way, educating me on growing juicy plants that are dripping with that swaggy time travel magic rosin.
The Grower teaches me how to build a hash lab and soon we are washing and squashing dank buds daily.
Hitler and I take the quantum vape and travel back to the future but as soon as we enter the time stream, we are beset by our enemies, more aggressively than ever.
King George pursues us through time and he is wearing a gruesome trophy: the Stoner Wolf’s skin hangs lifelessly around his shoulders like a cape, my dead best friend's face resting limply on the King’s round weak shoulder.
In the absence of Hitler from this timeline, the Axis of Evil in World War 2 was Scotland (under the leadership of Frost McFang) and Bavaria (under Otto Von Ruthless) waging war in Europe while making fearsome allies with India and China, who brought the front lines to America on the Pacific coast.
In this timeline, Japan has been conquered by England under King George V in the year 1930.
It’s the work of the Knights Templar (lead by the king’s great-great-grandson and name bearer, King George VI) who appeared to George V as a ghostly apparition in his bed chambers and told him to conquer Japan. VI also told his great-great-grandfather to regularly have sex with a wide variety of monkeys and attempt to impregnate them, which the elder George did until the end of his life (he died during intercourse with an orangutan).
As a result of the conquest of Japan, The Knights Templar added the Ninjas Templar to their growing army of chrononauts.
I have to save the Stoner Wolf, so I go back to the very first moment we met-- the moment it all began-- thinking that maybe I can talk some sense into him before he ever sets out on this adventure that ends with him dead and skinned.
Only then is when I discover this is the moment that Stoney tumbled into when we were split up in the timestream by the Dick Tentacle Capitalist Squid Monster. He went back to the moment where it all began. Of course, it makes so much sense now.
The Stoner Wolf who I met and became best friends with was thrown back to the beginning of his own journey when he lost control in the timestream, just like I have traveled back to the beginning of my journey. It’s an intuitive wish that is granted by the Quantozoids in their process of re-engineering reality.
And I came back to this moment seeking my friend. Is this the magic of the Quantozoids working again?
I wanted to tell him the whole story of my adventure, but we didn’t have time and it’s all so much to explain. I swear, I planned to tell him everything once we were somewhere safe.
But young Hitler’s ambition was rising and like I fool, I didn’t see it until it was too late. He overthrew me in the heart of The Stoner. Like the devil does, Hitler used the truth to deceive. He exposed my white lies and disgraced me, then fled into the timestream with the Quantum Vape Pen.
Worst of all, Hitler has decimated my relationship with the Stoner. Stoney is hurt, and rightfully so. Before I can explain myself, the Knights Templar show up once again and Stoney has had enough.
The Stoner Wolf fires up the last roach of the Jack To The Future but I can tell that the weed has now been critically saturated in Quantozoids, changing the fundamental structure of the strain. I try to stop him, but he never listens to me.
The Stoner takes a deep breath, holds it in, and transforms into a medium sized dog in front of my very eyes. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s some sort of beagle/terrier/labrador mix. A spry and athletic 30 pound dog with a short but shaggy coat of brown and blonde hair.
He looks like a very good dog.
The Stoner barks once, then turns and runs out the door.
Before I can chase him, the Knights Templar are on top of me. They are savage in their attack. I am fighting from underneath, landing wild punches to their groins and gauging wildly at their eyes, ears, noses, and throats. A man can accomplish remarkable things when he’s willing to do anything, especially in a fight.
Still, they are too many. The Knights Templar overcome me and as they hold my battered body down, King George steps out of the shadows and leans over me and spits in my face. He doesn’t have his Stoner Wolf skin cape anymore.
Prince Harry steps forward now and draws his blade and I see the grinning face of the man who is about to cut my heart out.
And then he turns to dust. And then King George turns to dust. And the monkey men are confused for a moment, but then they turn to dust too. Then the walls change colors, just a bit. I blink and the furniture moves.
The world is changing in front of my very eyes. It’s the Quantum Vape Pen. It’s Hitler. I know it is. He’s doing this. He’s changing history again. He’s gone deeper, further than ever before. I feel every Quantozoid in my body and soul start to tremble and shake. Is this it? Am I about to turn to dust?
I don’t turn to dust. I get to my feet and stumble down the hall. New memories are trying to flood into my head. New memories of my life that I already lived in the world that Hitler has changed. But I didn’t live it, I lived another life, on the banks of a river…
I grip my skull at the temples to try to keep my brain together as different realities battle for primacy.
I remember my training. I realize I am now out of control. The first step to regain control is to take a deep breath.
The next step is information gathering, so I start to write down all of my memories of the world before this very moment. I utilize meditation to seal my mind off from the new memories and live exclusively in the old ones.
I start to type out a mission report, allowing the words to flow out of my mind and through my fingertips like a stream flowing into the sea. I fall into a trance like state at times
I start where this adventure begins, naturally. We always go back to the beginning in the end.
Chapter 69
I’m getting ready to let it all go. In a moment, I will arise from my seat, walk to the window, take a deep breath, and lower my psychological guard, allowing the Quantozoids to rewrite the wrinkles on my brain and replace my old memories with new ones. Memories that will make me compatible with the world that the Quantozoids have rewritten to adapt around Hitler’s edits. Memories from the life that I lived in the world that Hitler has somehow drastically altered, though I don’t yet know how. In a moment, the answer to that mystery will come to me.
It’s letting her go, dear Diary, that's the hardest part. What if she’s not in this world? What if she never was, and I don’t even get to remember her beautiful little hand holding mine? Letting go of that little hand is always the hardest part.
But I think I’m ready.
