LNH: WikiLull After #4

[Adrian McClure]

WIKILULL AFTER #4
"Cheesecake Eater Lad Beyond 0D"
An Legion of Net.Heroes story by Adrian McClure

****

"Hello," said Cheesecake Eater Lad. "Hello? Is anyone there?"

There wasn't, of course. Only a vast grey emptiness that went on and
on and on. There was nothing in it--no ground and no sky, no beginning
and no end.

"So where am I, anyway?" he said, pacing around in circles. "Is this
Heaven? Hell? Some other afterlife? There sure are a lot of
afterlives. Maybe I'll get to go to Valhalla. It'd tie right in with
that movie that's coming out, right."

But there were no signs of Valkyries or angels or anything else. Just
nothing. He tapped his foot. "You know, this is being written on
Easter, right? It's a whole holiday about coming back from the dead.
It'd be a great time for me to come back. Right? Right?"

He waited. He couldn't hear anything except the sound of his own
breathing, even though there was no air. "So where is everybody? Where
is everything? Earlier on I was like... I'd lost my individuality, my
point of view. I'd transcended my existence. Or something. I was
everything, and now I'm nothing. The whole narrative just ground to a
halt."

Suddenly, he had a thought. It was a very nasty thought and he didn't
want to have it, but there was nothing else to do here. He twiddled
his thumbs and bit his lip and whistled and it wouldn't go away.
"So... what if it's actually all over? What if we lost? What if the
world ended?"

It was a sobering thought and he couldn't think of much of anything to
say to it. He stared into the distance, blinked and tapped his feet.
"Of course not. I mean, I'm here, right? So someone has to be writing
this. RACC has to still exist. There are stories after this one on the
timeline, although Liminals #1 is kind of weird because it implies
this whole storyline is about to happen even though it probably makes
the most sense to put it later, what with the LNHQ not blowing up and
stuff. So the LNH is fine as long as people keep writing it."

By now he was walking around in circles. He threw out his arms. "I
mean it's not like they're going to destroy Usenet, right? I mean, we
do have the kind of world now where all that stuff that happened in
Legion of Occult Heroes could happen. But Usenet's not going to be
affected because it's not like anyone cares about it..."

He sighed and slumped on the ground putting his hands on his cheeks.
"That's the thing. That's what I'm really scared of. The idea that
people will just stop caring. There's so much going on now, everyone's
all buried under an avalanche of bad stuff. The Medley's behind,
Flash! is behind, everything behind, because everyone has to put all
their effort into just getting up in the morning the way things are
right now. Back when this story started we all felt like we were ready
to be in the #resistance or whatever, but no one knew how exhausting
it would be just getting through the day to day grind of bad stuff."

He stood up and brushed the sweat off his brow. "Boy I wish there was
someone here around to talk to. The last time Ending was here. She was
nice. But hey, I'd even take the Ending of Rodents. Or Ralph Nadir.
Whatever happened to him, anyway? Last I heard he was a zombie." [See
the now-classic President Evil cascade]

"Wait! Wait!" He waved his arms around. "There's a footnote-y person
here! Footnote Girl? Is that you? Please help? Tell me how I'm
supposed to get out of here!"

But no footnote came.

"Damn it." He knew he was about to start crying but wanted to hold it
off as long as possible. "OK, so anyway. Ralph Nadir, right. He was
the reason I came back in the first place." [Death of Cheesecake Eater
Lad #1A] Cheesecake Eater Lad glared at the footnote, which said
nothing more. "So anyway, he came back in President Evil, which was
the last storyline about the Presidential election, and I was
wondering if this has anything to do with that. I mean, I guess that's
where Forgotten Gal came from originally. Maybe something from that
story will come back and resolve all this. I wouldn't put it past the
writers--these guys loooove their continuity."

By now he was tired of standing in one place. He picked a random
direction and started walking there. The horizon did not change, so
his movement felt unreal. He had no idea if he was actually moving or
just walking in place. "How are we gonna resolve all this, anyway?
This whole story is about a lot of complicated issues and it's hard to
figure out some way to sort out all that that doesn't feel glib. The
last time we had the Real World impinging on LNH like this, it was
9/11 [Limp Asparagus Lad #55] and--Hey footnote person! Hey!" He
jumped up and down and started waving his arms. "What's the issue that
fixes this whole mess?"
[OUT OF RANGE]

If Cheesecake Eater Lad had been the kind of person who cursed, he
would have done it, a lot. Instead he just said, "Oh phooey. Anyway,
with the 9/11 stuff we were able to just use the LNH's escapism to
drive out the Relevance, instead of letting the Realism get to us, and
back during the War on Terror that was itself a pretty powerful
statement. We were just supposed to accept all that as inevitable and
the LNH gave us a space to imagine something different. But now we've
built this whole story around that and we can't do that. Can we?"

He stopped in his tracks and rubbed his chin. "Hmmm. Hmmm. I wonder if
I can fly? I mean, there's no ground here." He jumped up in the air,
waved his arms around frantically and plopped to the floor. "Guess
not. Phooey. That doesn't seem fair."

"Hey," he said, picking himself up and brushing nonexistent dust off
himself, "I wonder if I can make a cheesecake!" He closed his eyes and
stretched his phenomenal cheesecake making powers to their utmost.
Nothing happened. "Well, OK, I guess you can't make a cheesecake out
of nothing. Next time I meet a philosopher I should tell them."

He resumed his journey from nowhere into nothing. "You know this issue
would look really neat if it were an actual comic, with panels and
stuff. There would be these really creative panel grids. Very cool and
experimental. Really."

He came to a halt. "I wish Allie were here. If I could just talk to
her, everything would be OK." That was when the crying started. He
held his hands up to his eyes and started bawling his eyes out. The
tears seemed to disappear when they hit the floor.
"Shut up."

Who was that? There wasn't anyone else here... except there was. It
was a woman floating in midair, hunched up in a ball with her knees
tucked up against her face and her arms wrapped around them. It wasn't
fair she was floating when Cheesecake Eater Lad couldn't but he didn't
care.

"Hello? Hello? Who is this?" He reached out his hand to her. "Hi, I'm
Cheesecake Eater Lad!"

"Go away. I'm just trying to be dead here."

That was when Cheesecake Eater Lad realized he knew this woman. A few
years ago, no one would have remembered her, but now, after the Dorf
invasion [LNH v2 #50], everyone did.

It was Captain LNH.


-- 
Adrian "The Dark Spaceknight" McClure, now with sig