"Bob" Dobbs rubbed his sore eyes. The thirty-inch screen of the Slack-o-meter was dialed in to Dallas. The Slack field around Dallas seemed normal, but it pays to be vigilant. One gym teacher in the wrong place at the wrong time could throw the whole thing out of whack. As usual, the worst sumps in the Dallas slack plane were around the DMV, a constant battleground of anti-Slack. Today had been bad. A new clerk with a really bad haircut. A Pink is as dangerous as they hate themselves, "Bob" thought sadly. Playing the Slack-o-meter console like a pipe organ, "Bob" had hacked one of the CIA's array of mind-control satellites and overridden it's program (it was just beaming a Pepsi commercial anyway) and brought the psychotronic mind beams to play, planting the suggestion in a nearby squad of cheerleaders that the DMV parking lot would be a really good place to do deep stretching exercises after a quick run through the sprinklers to cool their t-shirts off. The Slack field balanced and relaxed.

Ready to knock off for the evening, "Bob" spun the range knob on the Slack-o-meter wide, pulling up a national Slack field view.

"MONKEY SPIT!", "Bob" hissed, nearly falling out of his chair. The Slack plane looked like it had been NUKED. Blossoming out like a dark spider from southern California, a gigantic anti-Slack vortex was forming, and quickly, and sucking everything into it's maw. It was HUGE. And powerful, not a glimmer of slack appeared anywhere in the stricken zone.

He quickly zeroed in to the epicenter of the event, feeding the spread pattern into an ancient Amiga 4000 computer he had picked up from NASA. Stang kept bugging him to get a real computer but "Bob" had never been a really eager computer hack. Somebody else always seemed to take care of that stuff when it needed to get done.

The computer began cranking out the epicenter coordinates ... 90210 ... the Golden Globe Awards ... Beverly Hills.

"Connie's Tongue!", "Bob" swore. Merv Griffin was on the loose.

Normally Merv Griffin was surrounded at all times by a circle of hippies "Bob" recruited for the task at a Phish concert. Merv shrunk from the sight of a hippy the way vampires shrink from the sight of a cross, thus keeping him contained at all times.

Merv was that most dangerous of conspiracy tools, a false "Bob". On the surface he looked like a true Slack Master; the self-effacing mumble, the urbane prattle, the pixy grin all combined to give the impression of somebody with the deep, rich-toned harmono-slack of a Slack Master. He had, like all false "Bob's", all the parts that go to make up a real "Bob". Or seemed to.

But where the true Slack Master is 100% red-blooded with the soul of a Yeti, a false "Bob" has no blood at all, it is all replaced by an oily sweet-smelling elixir (the same mysterious compound used by the Vatican to reanimate dead popes). And an anti-"Bob" has NO SOUL.

A false "Bob" can't generate true Slack, only false Slack. You may be taken in by the fake "Bob's" groveling fawning attention, but the next thing you know, you will be waking up in the Merv Griffin's Beverly hotel in Beverly Hills, paying $5000 a night to stay in a place with babydoll-pink stucco walls, trapped in a lounge stuffed with blue-haired, botox-grotesque old ladies humming 'Volaré', terrified that if you say something which isn't banal enough they'll be offended. And the next thing you know, you are asking the oily lizard lounge singer to do 'Volaré' ... just one more time.

And then your soul just flickers out, like a match in a sudden gust of wind.

All the while, congratulating yourself on finding such a haven of perfect Slack.

This is the evil truth of Merv Griffin, the most evil "human" since Stalin. And now he was running loose.

Something had gone very, very wrong here, "Bob" thought. It was normal for one or two of the Phish hippies to wander off randomly, but as long as three or four of them remained, the Merv-containment field would be secure.

Nothing natural could explain all of them disappearing at once. Unless they found somewhere that hippies can score weed in Beverly HIlls. "Bob" chuckled at the thought.

There was foul play at work here. Somebody was playing rough. He would need a heavy hitter.

"Bob" dialed the number of the heaviest hitter there is.

"Flaming Carrot? It's 'Bob'".

"Merv Griffin?", the Flaming Carrot replied instantly.

"Bob" marveled at his friend's uncanny instincts.

"Look F.C., this one is bad. Real bad. There are dire forces at work, we will be in great danger. I just want you to know what you're getting yourself into"

"Ut! They will have more to fear from me than I! I will be whirling typhoon of anger, smiting them wherever they lurk! Foes of Slack find waking nightmare in me!

Can we stop for pizza on the way? Not eat all day"

One quick pizza stop, a quick morale-building session at "Hooter's" and a short plane ride later and they were in the eye of the cyclone.

BEVERLY HILLS

The Slacklessness was absolute, so much so that "Bob's" unquenchable Slack field glowed visibly as a constant rain of anti-Slack particles annihilated with the Slack particles he emitted.

They had to walk from the airport. The traffic lights were all shut off and poodles had been assigned to directing traffic. The poodles just yipped at all cars in all directions, which the Beverly Hillites had been instructed meant "stop", so traffic was at a complete dead halt city-wide. Trapped in their cars, the only radio stations which would transmit through the anti-Slack field were one on AM playing "A Very Elvis Christmas", over and over again, and one on FM playing nothing but "Freebird". Not the whole song "Freebird", but just the part where he says "I'm as free as a bird now ..." in a loop, over and over again. Forever.

Restaurants and grocery stores were shut down across the city and only one Denny's remained open, tragically understaffed to feed a whole city, with just one irritable waitress named Mabel, who looked like it. One bar was open, serving only a new bubble-gum flavored beer and playing the "Very Elvis Christmas" station at high volume. Cute chicks were forbidden entry and accompanied off the streets by police poodles.

"Welcome to a world without Slack", "Bob" said grimly.

"Is good I brought my own supplies", said the Carrot cheerfully. "See?" He opened the large duffel bag he had been dragging behind him since the airport. In a side pocket were dozens of Fun-Size boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal and a spoon.

"And the little toys inside may come in handy." He held up a book of rub-on tattoos he had gotten from the last box.

"Good thinking, Carrot!", said "Bob". "Hold on to the empty boxes, I think we can get a deposit for them if we need cash."

They were now in sight of Merv's hellish stucco fortress. "Bob" opened his mystical "third nostril", the astral organ of otherworldly sense which Subgeniuses develop ... and gasped at the choking thick fog of anti-Slack, like a fetid swamp of it.

"What is it?", the Carrot asked.

"I tried to whiff-read the place. Nothing subtle here. They might as well put up a 20-foot neon sign saying 'International Evil Conspiracy Here, Please Wipe Your Feet'", said "Bob".

"What does it smell like?"

"Just like 'Teen Spirit', actually."

Flaming Carrot rummaged through the duffel bag and began assembling parts.

"I thought if this is as dangerous as you say, need a special weapon. Designed this baby myself", the Carrot beamed.

In the end he had a ten-foot pole, with a paddle-ball game suspended from the end of it.

"What uh ... how does it work?", "Bob" asked.

"I use the pole to dangle the paddle-ball game behind them. When they turn around to grab the paddle-ball game, I run up and kick them as hard as I can", Flaming Carrot grinned.

"Bob" stared. "What if they don't like paddle-ball?"

Flaming Carrot scoffed. "EVERYBODY likes paddle-ball."

Dobbs and the Flaming Carrot crept through the shadows into the parking lot of the Merv Griffin's Beverly. The Carrot set his head-flame to 'stealth' mode. They made their way to the central elevator shaft, which would take them to Merv's inner sanctum.

A hulking thug in a guard uniform was watching the doors.

"Stay back, 'Bob'", the Carrot whispered. "Use special weapon."

F.C. leapt out of hiding. "Ut!" he cried. He dangled the pole over the guard's shoulder. "Look! Paddle-ball!", the Flaming Carrot said, pointing at the paddle-ball game.

The guard turned to grab the paddle-ball game and the Carrot rushed at him like a striking tiger.

Unfortunately since the Carrot was still holding the pole, the paddle-ball game rushed away from the guard as fast as F.C. could rush at him, and as the guard ran after it F.C. could get no closer.

Eleven laps around the parking lot later, the guard finally collapsed from exhaustion.

"Overlooked flaw in design phase", the Carrot panted, exhausted himself.

"This will be tricky without the special weapon. We should adopt disguises", the Carrot said, his keen mind ever at work.

Splitting the rub-on tattoos between them, they applied them cunningly to their face and carrot masks, obscuring their features completely behind a bewildering hieroglyphic of butterflies, funny moose heads, cartoon characters and rainbows.

Unrecognizable in their rub-on tattoos, they strode boldly through the lobby, opting for the direct attack. Two guards were stationed at the elevator which connected to Merv's office, watching the crowd warily.

"We are here to see Merv", said the Carrot in a disguised voice.

"Why are you talking in a squeaky, high-pitched voice?", the guard asked.

"Brain is allergic", the Carrot answered quickly.

"We're here to fix his radio, it will only play 'Freebird'", "Bob" said.

"Oh, yeah. He's been waiting for you. Right this way sir", the guard ushered them through politely.

The stench of anti-Slack was almost choking to "Bob" as he neared Merv.

"Bob" and Merv actually went way back. In his early days, "Bob" had helped Merv's career, and thought he had the makings of a Subgenius. "Bob" had even introduced him to the Sex Goddesses and Merv wrote a song about it, violating "Bob's" trust. In hindsight, "Bob" wondered if it might have been a better idea if he had warned Merv that he was going to be kidnapped and raped savagely for three weeks by aliens. Some people just have no sense of humor, "Bob" mused.

But the long years of an almost-was singing career and the soul-numbing grind of the most banal, slackless occupation in the universe, talk-show host (although on planets with no atmosphere, weather announcer is judged by some to be worse) had cracked Griffin, somewhere.

So he had let them take his SOUL. And lived on as a zombie. And because he had been so close to true "Bob-dom", he had become a powerful false "Bob".

The elevator doors opened on Merv Griffin's inner sanctum. Anti-Slack waves roiled and burned thickly through the air, lights gave off glowing darkness, snapping teeth warped and twisted from sofa cushions, a set of happy hotel art had refigured itself into hellish scenes of despair and torture. The corpses of a dozen maids who had come in to straighten up hung from the ceiling where they had been overwhelmed by the soul-destroying miasma and committed suicide.

"Griffin!", "Bob" hissed.

Merv chuckled; a slow, metronomic evil syllable. He had been doing so since long before "Bob" and the Carrot came in, in fact he spent long hours doing nothing but chuckle and mumble gibberish when he wasn't on-camera. He had no soul. Lacking an audience, he ran on like a wind-up toy.

"You were nearly Subgenius once, Merv!", "Bob" shouted accusingly at Griffin. "How could you throw that away ... how could you sell out to THEM?"

Merv's face was a mask. He lifted his right index finger; a guttural, eerie voice came from Merv's mouth, as if from a great distance, as if echoing up from Limbo. As he talked, the FINGER twitched, as if the FINGER talked and controlled Merv like a jerking puppet.

"Merv isn't here now, Mr. Dobbs", Merv ... or SOMETHING ELSE ... croaked inhumanly.

"Oh COME ON!", Flaming Carrot cried incredulously.

"what?", Merv said back defensively, forgetting to do the finger thing.

"The FINGER THING? That's the best possessed-by-evil thing you have? The FINGER THING?" The Flaming Carrot howled with laughter.

"Gee Merv, I guess none of us ever saw 'The Shining', ya think?", "Bob" taunted, also falling apart with laughter.

Flaming Carrot made a show of trying to hold back his left hand with his right hand, wiggling the pinky threateningly. "'Bob', 'Bob', help me, my pinky is trying to eat me! BWAHAHAHA!"

"Hey Carrot, I can sure see why Merv's career is going so great, with original material like this!", "Bob" rolled his eyes, laughing so hard he was starting to retch.

The Carrot was on his back, the pinky had the upper hand. "Father Karras, Father Karras, Satan is in my daughter's pinky!" he cried.

"Fuck you guys! The voice was pretty good!", Merv said angrily.

"Hey Merv, do you have evil guards cut out of construction paper, too?", "Bob" howled.

"BLUE construction paper!", the Carrot rejoined, following some train of thought known only to himself.

Merv was getting really pissed.

"REDRUM, REDRUM!" the Carrot croaked, waggling his pinky at Merv evilly.

"I've HAD it with you CLOWNS!", an angry, somehow familiar voice boomed from the doorway to an adjoining room.

"WILLIAM SHATNER!", "Bob" and the Carrot cried in unison.

Shatner glared at "Bob" and the Carrot.

"You FLEER! And you SCORN! But what GOOD! Have you DONE!

What GOOD! Have you! DONE!"

"Bob" beamed at the Carrot. "I love the way he talks."

"And YOU!", Shatner said, wheeling on Griffin.

"You were HUMAN once! FILLED with a human's FRAILTIES! And COMPASSION! Do you think you're a GOD now! You're no GOD!", he sneered. He waved his arm around the nightmare room. "You're a WARPED and TWISTED MAN, driven MAD by POWER!"

"Bob" clapped.

"ON YOUR KNEES, CAPTAIN KIRK!" Merv rumbled in his gutteral voice, waggling the evil finger at Shatner.

"UNGH!", Shatner grunted, thrown to his knees in a horribly-overacted struggle against Merv's power.

"Dude, he's just doing the finger thing", said the Carrot.

"UNGH!", Shatner grunted, twisting his body as if Merv's power had just hit him from a slightly different angle.

The Carrot sighed. "I guess all those years of overacting to cheesy special effects kind of did a number on him", he said to "Bob".

"QUICK!", grunted Shatner, "WHILE! HE'S! DISTRACTED!"

"UNGH!", grunted Shatner, as if Merv's power had lifted him, thrown him across the room, and laid him out flat on his back.

Evidently Merv's unseen powers were a judo expert.

Flaming Carrot walked up to Merv and kicked him as hard as he could.

"UNGH!", grunted Merv, as his testicles lodged momentarily in his glottis.

Merv fell down.

"'Bob', while he's stunned!", shouted the Carrot.

Quickly "Bob" whipped a pair of the Panties of Sister Decadence out of his pocket and threw them over Merv's head. The one barrier which no force of anti-Slack can pass. Merv fell limp, his evil powers completely neutralized.

The desperate battle ended, "Bob" and the Carrot sat down to take a breather and the room began shifting back to normal.

"UNGH!", grunted Shatner, as if Merv's unseen powers had jerked him cruelly up to his knees again, toying with him.

The Carrot and "Bob" looked at each other and blinked.

The Carrot put his arm around Shatner's shoulder and said in a gentle voice "bad Mr. Finger go bye-bye, can't hurt you any more".

"UNGH!", Shatner grunted again, battling mightily against the unseen force.

"I think he's stuck that way", Flaming Carrot said to "Bob".

"Bob" noticed lights flickering from an adjoining doorway and went to investigate.

Inside, all the Phish hippies were gathered around a video-game console, enraptured.

"Dude, he had SEGA", one of them said finally.

Flaming Carrot set the liberated Merv-containment field up with paddle-ball games to keep them entertained, which went over big with them.

Slack flowed through Beverly Hills again, at least as much so as ever.

"UNGH!", Shatner grunted, now alone in a broom closet where Merv's baffled gaurds had eventually put him to muffle the grunts.

"Guys?", he peeped, finally noticing the scene was over.

"Don't I get to take my shirt off in this one?"

(apologies to Sister Dec for using her underwear as a deadly weapon. I was stuck for a way to end that tableau and it popped into my head.)

Zapanas
Grand Master of the Satanic Conspiracy
http://joecosby.com/
Doctor: Who told you you are Napoleon Bonaparte?
Patient: God did.
Voice from next cell: I DID NOT!