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Epilogue

Brought to you by Ben Wray

“Okay, what about exceptions?”

“I need your exceptiona-” but then Kay’s rudely interrupted.

“Notimetoexplain!” Mario grabs her and spacetime rearranges itself in a flash of light. They’re just in time for the closing words.

“Omnia mutantur, nihil interit,” solmenly quotes Toe. “Death is but a door, time is but a window…”

“Is he quoting Ghostbusters 2 or 8-bit theater?” asks Jake, but Dylan kicks him, hard, and he shuts up.

Everybody’s there. Zach, Rob, Asuka’s doctor, Zaganza, Shelly, your favorite character not already mentioned… everybody.

Then Millicent’s paw thrusts triumphantly out of the ground suck it Brendan I win forever.

The Explicit

Nobody’s ever going to build you a flying car, and you wouldn’t be permitted to fly it if they did. The music on the radio still won’t be good by our fortieth birthday, but someone will make that awful rhyming joke. You’ll still have a project due in a week, and it’s kind of neat, and if you could just find a girl who understood, you could get your plans together for the first time in what seems so long–it’s May 3rd, 2021, and–

Please remember that the world is round.

Please recall that you are never on level ground.

Brendan

Brendan and Stephen ignite their jetpacks and blast away from the plummeting, burning aircraft carrier.

“Burn hard!” snaps Stephen. “If we don’t break every speed record known to man, we’ll be too late to save President McDonnell!”

“And her orphan puppy farm,” agrees Brendan grimly. “Endangered orphan puppy. N-nuns.”

Stephen sighs. “Okay, just–cut it.”

The sky flickers to flat green; winches lower them to the floor. “Look, I’m no good at action improv!” says Brendan, unbuckling his harness.

“Well,” says Stephen reluctantly, “there’s always action romance improv.”

Brendan grabs him and dips him low. “Now you’re talkin’,” he breathes.

The Jon, Brendan, David and Shaq Show

Somebody’s playing warm keyboard chords as they fade in from commercial. Probably a guitar, too.

“Boy, I’m glad it’s dinnertime,” says Jon ruefully.

David claps him on the back. “Me too… buddy.”

“The most important thing,” says Shaq, at the grill, “is that we learned about responsibility. It is not right to take on things you can not handle.”

“Yeah,” nods Brendan, taking a bite of burger. “No more adopting puppies for me. And Shaq, thanks for clearing that up!”

“It was no problem. Friends help each other.”

“We sure do!” exclaims Jon. “Hey, what’s in these burgers anyway? They’re great!

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