LNH: Hungry, Hungry Sabertooths #INFINITY: "The Waste of Time"

[Drew Nilium]

On 11/25/20 12:15 AM, Jeanne Morningstar wrote:
> HUNGRY, HUNGRY SABERTOOTHS!
> Issue #INFINITY: "The Wastes of Time"

GASP

> When the lockdown started, Time Waster Lad wasn't too worried.

OF COURSE

> Wasting enough time 
> to get to the lockdown was over would be trivial.

DUN DUN DUNNNN

> He could try and write 
> the Great American Novel, or maybe make a GPT-3 script that could do that for 
> him. 

X3

> He could... what was he doing again? Oh yes. He could list out all the 
> things that he could do during while he waited for the lockdown to be over. He 
> could organize all his rubber bands by color. He could... what was he doing again?

Oh dear, *big* ADHD feels
> Usually, once he'd wasted time enough time, something would pull him back. Like 
> aliens invading, or a cheesecake coming to life and rampaging across the LNH 
> cafeteria. Usually he didn't have to waste time *all the time.*

Ohhhhhhhh god, BIG feels now

> His mind felt like a smear on a pair of glasses.

THIS IS SUCH A GOOD LINE

> He tried to rub his eyes but 
> suddenly felt he had no eyes to rub and no hands to rub them with. He was 
> floating outside his own body, drifting through the walls, floating outside the 
> LNHQ.

ooooooooh

> There was a huge battle of different net.heroes, net.villains, kiwis, sheep and 
> other that bursted out of the HQ and violently meandered its way toward the 
> Net.ropolis Bandshell. "Oooh," said Time Waster Lad. Giant robots and monsters 
> lumbered across the city and fought in sped-up, herky-jerky motion.

Love it, love it

> More heroes showed up, more battles broke out over and 
> over again all over the city. Gradually, things started to change. Buildings 
> were torn down and replaced by sleek metallic monstrosities.

Yessssss, sped-up-view-of-decades-passing is my favorite visual time travel 
trope. The 2002 Time Machine movie is good basically just for that.

> It was always 
> night now, because of Drama.

Another extremely good line.

> The LNHQ itself was still there, though, now a museum which people walked into 
> and out of every day. And Time Waster Lad still waited.
> 
> "Man, I wonder if Supernatural ever ended," he said to himself. "I forgot to 
> check."

X3

> A group of anthropomorphic animals milled about the city 
> and soon moved in, their small huts turning into a larger civilization built on 
> top of the old city. They left the LNHQ alone, though some stopped by to leave 
> offerings.
> 
> "Huh. Furries," said Time Waster Lad.

X3 And here we see the Kamandi time period...

> Then new spaceships came down from the sky. The furries were gone; it wasn't 
> clear where. The humans had come back to the city, rebuilding all the ruined 
> towers into shiny sleek vaguely future-y edifices. More spaceships came, 
> bringing aliens from everywhere, converging as one onto the LNHQ.

The LSH time period...

> There were 
> other heroes, some of which Time Waster Lad recognized as alternate future 
> heroes from adventures past [such as the LNH3k possibly?--FG]

That's only like one generation in the future. This would be more like the guys 
from Flame Wars Final that I don't feel like looking up their name.

> Then the sky turned red again, spaceships began to explode and their flaming 
> pieces fell down and wrecked the new towers.

Very Gundam-y.

> New heroes flew through the sky, including a pyramid-like being that Time 
> Waster Lad immediately recognized as Usenet Prime of the Agents of the 
> Intergalactic Network [see Flame Wars Final--FG],

Yeah, those guys! :D So I guess those other guys would be... something else!

> The towers transformed into cathedral-like buildings covered in 
> gargoyles. Dragons began to fly through the air along with robed figures bearing 
> staffs and spellbooks. A world of science had become one of magic, or 
> science-magic or magic-science.

Ahhhhh, yes, of course, the magic-science time period.

> There was a kind of spiritual humidity, a sense of a powerful 
> energy that was slowly dying.

Another incredibly good line.

> The light of the world began to darken. The sky slowly turned red. The towers 
> began to decay. The magic that the battling sorcerers flung at each other had a 
> baneful air.

Yessssss.

> Gradually, there were less and less people, and then there were 
> none. The towers gradually crumbled away, leaving a plain of red sand.
> 
> The LNHQ was still there.

Daaaaaaaaaaamn :D :D :D

> Surrounding it were a ring of stone statues, each as large as one of the old 
> towers, that glowed a sickly green. Their forms seemed to slowly (even in this 
> sped-up time) shift and twist.

Ohhhhhhh that's so good. :o Lovecraftian!

> These were the Chaos Gods of the Deep 
> Omnilooniverse, probably, or something like that.

oooooooooh yes :3 :3 :3

> Time Waster Lad wasn't really 
> up on his presbytertheology. [pseudo-Greek for 'study of Elder Gods'--FG]

X3

> "Shit," said Time Waster Lad. "Well, I guess I can't stop now. I'll have to ride 
> this out to the end, whatever that is."

 >:D Yesssssss

> The sun grew larger and larger and the Earth began to crumble. A wall of red 
> fire advanced on him, growing steadily larger and larger, and then swallowed up 
> everything. Then it subsided and faded away, leaving a dim light that faded to 
> nothing. The Earth was gone.
> 
> The LNHQ was still there.

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN

> With the Earth gone, the sub-basements were now 
> exposed to open air, a huge structure that seemed to shift like a hypercube. 

Yesssssss

> Time Waster Lad wondered if his body was still in there somewhere, or if even 
> the dust had crumbled away into dust.

SO GOOD.

> He waited a very, very long time. He saw a floating rock flash by with a Time 
> Crapper talking to an ethereal figure and a group of young net.heroes [Ultimate 
> Mercenary #7--FG]

X3

> And then--
> 
> His nonexistent nostrils were hit by a distinctive horrible stench. He was in 
> the Rear-End of Time, a time when space itself seemed to be rotting away. And 
> there was a fortress in the shape of an outhouse with the symbol of a moon on 
> it, the Time Crapper's citadel--which had once been the LNHQ.

OH THAT'S SO INCREDIBLY GOOD. :D :D :D

> He wondered what would happen next. There were a number of theories of how the 
> universe would end and, because of the nature of Hypertext-Time, all of them 
> were true. He wondered which one he would end up with.

yesssssssss that's extremely good.

> He had his answer. The remains of space rushed back together. There was light.
> 
> Time Waster Lad saw, for the second time, the creation of the universe.

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D I LOVE THIS.

> He wondered if he'd entered into an entirely new universe and was about to 
> become some kind of Galactus analogue, but then he caught a glimpse of him and 
> his teammates fighting the Anti-Drizzt [FWII again] and realized that this was 
> one of those stories where time loops back in on itself in a kind of Nietzschean 
> way.

Aha X3 <3

> He waited. From the glowing cloud of creation stars and planets began to 
> congeal, the Earth itself formed, and he gradually drifted back down into it 
> until he found himself in his own body in the present.
> 
> He rubbed his eyes, finally, and looked at the time on his laptop. One minute 
> had passed.
> 
> "Oh come on," said Time Waster Lad.

XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD
This is such a good punchline. <3 <3 <3

> It went on like that for a while. 
> He'd managed to stabilize himself after the first burst of time-wasting, 
> especially when he started playing more games and interacting more with other 
> people, but every so often the time-wasting acceleration would hit him again, 
> giving him a somewhat different future each time but always ending up in the 
> same place.

Holy cow. That's so much @- at v

> It wasn't *all* bad, though. The third time he ended up in the Rear-End of Time, 
> he heard a voice calling to him: "Hi, cutie!"
> 
> He looked up and saw, wearing the Time Crapper's robes, the familiar face of 
> Tamela. "Oh hi!" he said. "What are you doing here?"

Ooooooh! Nice nice! :D Did not expect that.

> "Well," she said, "that was the final outcome after the Time Crapper and I were 
> split. He erased himself from history, in the end, and I took his place."

:o *Fascinating*. Would this be after Retcon Hour, or a different Hypertext 
Timeline...

> "Just like the original Time Trapper and Glorith, I guess," said Time Waster 
> Lad, clearly being written by a writer who had never let go of referencing 
> arcane comics plots.

:3 :3 :3

> "I wonder if he ever really existed apart from me, in a sense. Maybe he created 
> me, as a result of his initial experiments with time, as the person he always 
> wanted to be."

Trans gotta trans.

> They talked for a while, about everything and nothing. Time Waster Lad now had 
> those conversations with the Time Crapper who was Tamela (he had no idea which 
> number she was) when he reached the Rear-End of Time.

Awwwwwwww. <3 That's very good.

> Still, he was getting a 
> little tired of it, and after the seventh time he witnessed the death and 
> rebirth of the universe he decided to talk to someone about it.

Legit. X3

> "Hi," he said. "Listen, I've been going through some stuff..."
> 
> "Me too." Bad Timing Boy laughed. Time Waster Lad wanted to talk, but he 
> coudln't even begin to put it into words.

Yeah. @-@

> "Listen," said Bad Timing Boy. "I know things have been tough lately, but they 
> could be worse. At least we're safe..."
> 
> The alarm went off. The LNHQ was under attack.,

GASP. :D

> Well I primarily blame William Hope Hodgson's House of the Borderland for this. 
> Also reading Drew's wonderful recent arc on Burst Beetle Twenseveny.

Awwwwwww gosh. ^#^ I feel very appreciated.

Drew "I am fascinated and delighted by this" Nilium