Bottle takes a break

Has anybody seen Bottle? He's not in his office, or his other office. 

No, i thought he was with you. 

Two days ago we were listening to greatest hits albums, but i haven't seen him since then. New reviews, Skip? 

No, my inbox is empty. He shared that Ebow on Dobro thing last night, so he was near a computer, but nothing new to spellcheck. Maybe he saw a butterfly or went for a jog or something. He does seem restless lately. 

Check the Gallery. Sometimes he just paces the halls and admires his braindiwork. 

I think it's more serious than a nostalgia trip can cure. Search party. Everybody pick a hallway and always veer left. Shout if you find him. And check the electrical sockets for scorch marks. He's been casually mentioning being real again. 

Oh, that's just what he says when he's not feeling on top of everything. I wouldn't worry. Then again, that thing you're doing with your eyebrows tells me a walk would be good for my health. We'll see what C sees, so to speak. 

As she watched Skip and the Compiler amble off on their uneventfully not worth describing spiral to nowhere, Sandra stood lost in thought. Where would he go? I guess the Gallery is as good a place to start as any. 

As she rounded the corner there arose the unmistakable crunch of glass under foot. Slowly she raised her head, surveying the sparkly path until her eyes landed on a familiar pair of dingy tennis shoes and a broom head sweeping shards of broken glass into an equally dingly old snow shovel. 

Carl, have you seen Bottle? 

Which one? 

What do you mean, which one? There's only 1 Bottle. 

And if one of those bottles should happen to fall? Thousands of the little buggers, bouncing off the walls like flubber. I'm gonna be here all night. Then they swarmed and headed off into B-space. 

Thanks, Carl. Remind me to get you a new shovel for Christmas. 

Old shovel works fine. I'd take a case of Abba-Zabbas, though. Only friend a janitor needs, if you ask me. Still, I'd keep your shoes on, if i were you. 

You might be familiar with L-space, and you might be familiar with the theory that reality splits with every conscious decision, and if you put those two things together you get Backstage, B-space. It gets real hectic on the weekends. Most bands don't notice as they're passing through, but all the grisly old road warriors will tell you that all backstages are connected by poorly lit hallways. How else would you get all those one off cameos in the headliner's set? Why's the band an hour late? They lost sight of their tour manager and ended up crashing some other gig three cities over. A few bands get really lost and end up camping in vacant green rooms for the rest of their careers. Sometimes, late at night in the middle of the week, you'd swear you could hear Jim Morrison or Elvis warming up. 

This particular Tuesday night it was dead quiet. So quiet you could hear the faintest echoes of staplers pinning hand scribbled "CLOSET" signs to thick wooden doors. Profundo Paradise, as Bottle might say. As Sandra surveyed the endless hallway, she caught just the teeniest whisper of a sad little melody on the stale breeze. She took a few steps forward and listened. There it was again, miles away, but definitely something resembling singing. Too far away to walk. She bent down and felt the floor. No, not enough wax to skate, even in stockings. Nothing for it, she'd have to fly. 

Wicked Witch of the West, Bottle liked to joke. I'll make him wish i'd turned him into a newt, she thought as she suddenly clapped her hands together with the ferocity of a springing bear trap. A bright light slowly seeped out between her fingers, and she started pulling her hands apart. She pulled and pulled, making something from nothing with the energy of a thousand suns, until finally she was done, slightly out of breath and holding an anti-climactically boring looking broom. A quick glance around to make sure no one was here and she wriggled up on it and zoomed off down the corridor. 

Back in the bunker, Skip and the Compiler had finished their own look-sees. 

I take it you didn't find him either? 

Nope. I saw some pop-tart crumbs at the foot of the escalator, but that's about it.

Good. Can't say we didn't help. Sandra's problem, she'll deal with it. 

Thousands of doorways and a few startled skeletons later, Sandra could definitely hear the melody. She couldn't make out the words yet, but it seemed vaguely familiar. Not a big, flowing melody, but a littly jaunty thing on a constant loop. It might or might not be Bottle, but eventually we'll all find out. 

Closer and closer, faster and faster, louder and louder, she could almost make out the words. 

Do. Do do. Do. 

Do. Do do. Do.

And suddenly she was at a complete stop. Not like she hit a wall, but magically not moving anymore. Momentum should have propelled her another 200 yards, but clearly we've gone metaphysical. One moment she was zooming at mach 3, the next she was at a standstill, suspended mid-air like nothing had happened. Zoom the camera out a little and we see a bony hand firmly clenched around the broomstick just before the bristles. Before she could even catch her breath, a voice like a lead weight pounded in her ears. 

I'M SORRY SANDRA, BUT YOU CAN GO NO FURTHER. 

GREGORY? What are you doing here? Where's Bottle? Where are we? We're further out than even i knew about. 

TURN BACK. IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO HEAD HOME. HE IS BEING MENDED. 

What are you talking about? Who's being mended? Is that the Winnie the Pooh theme song?? 

HOW WOULD HE SAY IT? OH, YES. OUT THERE IN THE COLD, GETTING LONELY GETTING OLD...AND THE WORMS ATE INTO HIS BRAIN. BUT, THE SILLY OLD BEAR CAN BE MENDED. YOU MOST OF ALL KNOW THAT ETERNITY IS A MOEBIUS STRIP. NOW, HOME WITH YOU. 

And without any ceremony or crazy special effects, Sandra was back in her beanbag chair watching the time vortex slowly pulsate inside the isometric rendering of the Three's Company living room that Bottle had imagineered onto her west wall. No answers, no explanations, all she could do was sit, and wait. 

To be continued....

... and continue we shall, in 3, 2, 1...

As she sat staring into the swirling glow of the vortex, Sandra wondered what would happen if Bottle never came back. Who would write anything for Skip to edit? What would Compy compile in the first place? Would the escalator reverse directions and let us all go free? Not that she wanted to go anywhere in particular. Not that she was actually stuck here in the first place, but that infinite hallway irked her to no end. It hadn't registered at the time, GREGORY does tend to occupy all your brain cells at once, but they weren't in the hallway for that conversation. The memory was still fuzzy, but it was more like a cul-de-sac. 

But there isn't an end to an infitite hallway. She pulled out the world map to make sure. Right there, headed off at a diagonal with a note in some anciently gothic script: Hallway, recursive. The map can't lie, it's distilled from the universal code itself. Unless...aha!...of course! Time is a Moebius strip! But, time must exist to even have a boundary. So, the space in which time exists must be boundless but unoriented. A Klein bottle! Space is a Klein bottle. Leave it to Bottle to go back to where it all started and fall through the hole he created from the other side. 

The empty Bottle needs a refill. How droll. Of course he'll be back. So, with the faintest hint of a smirk, she settled back down for the remainder of the wait for this little pocket of eternity to pass before another adventure begins. 

Op! One more thing she wanted to do. 

Skip! Compy! Make me a list of Bottle's favorite albums. Not the ones he says are his favorite, the ones he unintentionally adored. 

She didn't need to hear a reply, the clatter of keyboard and shuffling of paper told her they got the memo.