There was something beautiful about the moment Ken stepped out of the elevator with a gun in his hand, in the same way an unbelievably messy room or an abandoned building can seem surprisingly lovely. It is one part appreciation for complexity and one part morbid human obsession with disasters. There’s just something about seeing a whole pot of cooked spaghetti scattered across the floor, walls, and ceiling with a man covered head to toe in tomato sauce sitting in the corner, sobbing. It’s the elegance of entropy. And it’s also just really fucking funny sometimes.

That is also exactly how Todd felt when Ken read out his lines and pointed the gun at the professor.

He understood logically that this was a very grim situation that was quite likely about to evolve into a full-blown gun fight, and yet he could not force himself to be serious. He looked around at the cave; he thought about everything that had happened so far, and everything that Dirk was claiming had happened even earlier. He took a few seconds to appreciate the sheer absurdity of what exactly was happening now… and then he started laughing.

It was very quiet at first - just a snicker, really - and he tried to cover his mouth with his hand to stop it going any further. Unfortunately it only made matters worse, and the next laugh to come out of his hand-covered mouth was not silenced as intended, but actually amplified. And soon enough he was just bending over laughing, unable to stop or breathe or do anything else but to laugh.

“Sorry am I interrupting something?” Ken asked, lowering the gun for a second and turning towards Todd. “Share with the class, maybe we all want a laugh.”

Todd, very aware that Ken’s gun was seconds from being pointed directly at his head, tried his best to calm down by pinching himself repeatedly, then broke down laughing again.

“Sorry,” he finally managed to say through debilitating bouts of giggles, “sorry, please don’t shoot me.”

“I wasn’t going to shoot you.”

“I’m just…” Todd continued. “I mean… this!” and he made a broad gesture with his hand. “I guess I should have gotten used to it a long time ago but maybe you can’t get used to this. Seriously though, you? I mean, who the fuck are you even?!”

“Thank you Todd,” Dirk said, immediately stepping closer to Todd just in case, “that was a tremendously helpful remark. Did you get your negotiating with terrorists skills from youtube videos?”

“Shut up both of you,” Ken dismissed, “you do not concern me right now. And I don’t want to shoot anyone, I am here only for Prometheus.”

And he pointed the gun back at Roger.

“You’re late,” Todd commented, “you missed Dirk’s big speech. If you hadn’t missed it, you’d know you’re pointing the gun at the wrong person. God,” he snickered again, “I’m sorry, I can’t, this is just too funny. The only way this could get any funnier is if another person teleported here out of nowhere.”

And that is exactly what happened next, because no other rule of physics is as consistent as the rule of comedic timing - not even the rules of general relativity.

Next thing Todd knew, time had stopped.

He knew this because every single person around him had stopped moving; whether in the middle of a word, a blink, or a breath, they simply froze on the spot, everyone in the cave. Everyone, except for Amanda.

“Holy shit dude,” she breathed out, looking around herself in awe. “Am I having a new type of vision?”

“Guess I’m inside your vision then,” Todd called out from the other part of the cave.

“Todd?” she said, getting through the crowd of frozen people to walk up to him, “why are you inside my vision?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “has that ever happened before? Like, has anyone been inside your visions lately?”

“Yeah this guy who used to work for Black Wing. That was just a few days ago!” And she turned around on the spot, as if searching for him.

At that very moment, Friedkin was indeed standing very close to Amanda, and stomping his ghostly foot in frustration. It was pretty clear to him that they were not seeing him, but he of yet had not a single clue as to why it was occurring.

“Are the aliens doing this?” Amanda speculated, making some cautious steps around the cave.

“Whoever is doing it, vicious cool,” Todd smiled. “Hey, let me try a thing.” With that remark, he walked up to Ken, grabbed his gun and tried to maneuver it out of his fingers. It did not work. “Huh,” Todd stepped away and scratched his eyebrow. “Not how this worked in those X-men movies.”

“Well if this is a vision,” Amanda continued, “it’s kind of a garbage vision. Is anything going to happen?” she asked to the ceiling. “Cause we haven’t got all day.”

Meanwhile Friedkin was yelling, jumping up and down, clapping next to their ears and generally doing everything imaginable to attract their attention - yet remained an invisible ghost.

“Come on then,” Friedkin thought, “I need to concentrate…”

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, pooling all of his attention into his corporeal form. He concentrated so hard that it made his ears pop and produced a few drops of ethereal saliva that ended up on his chin. He concentrated until he felt like he was about to develop a hernia, and finally something clicked in his head, and suddenly he could feel his hands and touch the walls and actually stomp his foot.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Immediately, he walked up to Amanda and poked her in the shoulder.

“Aargh!” Amanda yelled, turning on the spot at once. “Jesus, dude, what the hell are you doing here?!”

“Return visit,” Friedkin grinned. “Listen, I don’t think I have a lot of time…”

“Aren’t you the one who stopped it?” Todd asked.

“Well, yeah, possibly, but I wasn’t trying to?” Friedkin replied. “I just really need to talk to her,” he pointed at Amanda, “I’ve no idea why everyone is like that or why you didn’t freeze as well. Guess you two come as a package.”

“Say your thing then!” Amanda urged.

“Yes. Right. So a lot of horrible stuff is about to happen,” Friedkin said, “and it’s like, very important that you prevent it, cause not only will a bunch of you be like very dead otherwise, but it will also totally mess with the structure of the Universe and trust me you don’t want that.”

“Fine,” Amanda nodded as if these were perfectly normal statements in a normal conversation, “so how do we prevent it?”

“Yeah so here’s the catch,” Friedkin continued, “I don’t really know? I just wanted to warn you and stuff.”

“Wow that was very helpful,” Todd muttered.

“Hey, I was very brave to come here!” Friedkin disagreed. “And I’m sorry that I can’t solve your problems for you but at least I gave you some time to think.”

As he said the last words, he felt a strange feeling in his stomach, as if he was being dragged slowly up by a thousand tiny strings attached to his body.

“I think I’m going back,” Friedkin managed to say, “good luck with everything!”

And with that, he was gone - and time began to move normally again.

*

There was a lot of shouting immediately following the pressing of the universal play button - a lot of shouting, and confusion, and pointing guns which really did not help with the shouting and confusion. Amanda did not even try to understand any of it. Instead, she hid as well as possible in one of the corners, sat down on the ground and began to think.

“Any ideas so far?” Todd asked literally three seconds after that.

“Not if you block my flow with the universal consciousness.”

“You gotta be making that up,” he chuckled.

She returned his gaze with a cold stare of death itself. “You don’t want to find out.”

He nodded cautiously at her and turned his head towards the crowd. Currently, Farah and Ken were engaged in some sort of absurd staring contest, watching each other’s guns for the smallest sign of movement. Lilly stood in front of Roger, shielding him from view, and was trying to explain something. Judging by Ken’s face, he was deliberately making an effort to not comprehend a single word.

“Anything?” Todd returned to Amanda. “The bosses seem tense. I think they’re waiting for this to sort itself out. No idea what they will do otherwise and really don’t want to find it out.”

“Shut up Todd,” she hissed, “I’m… ugh, I’m… I don’t know,” she gave up. “There’ll be a shooting. There’ll be a big horrible shooting and I can’t do anything!”

“Hey,” Todd muttered, lowering himself to the ground near her, “aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What am I forgetting?”

“Look at your hand,” he replied.

She did, and instinctively unclasped her fingers as she looked, making the magic wand drop to the ground.

“Use that maybe somehow?” Todd suggested.

“Yeah,” she agreed, taking the wand from the floor. “I can do this,” she told herself and Todd, only failing to mention that she never dared to even try use the wand ever since she brought it back from Wendimoor.

Now, the bloody wand… what was she supposed to do with it? She clutched the thing in her hands, slowly pointing it from one object to another. She focused on the slight tingling feeling in her fingers as she did so, and silenced her mind, letting in any whisper of the universe. For a little bit, nothing at all happened. Then, something flipped in her brain.

Suddenly she saw the cave as it was - a messed tangle of paths, possibilities and outcomes; a dense nest of chances, teaming with energy and information. It was clear and beautiful in her mind, like looking at a picture for a thousandth time and finally grasping the hidden meaning behind all the colourful splashes. She did not need the wand! She saw the reality and she could affect it. Just with her hand, just with her mind.

Amanda closed her eyes for a second, then opened them again. She was now looking at a small collapsible table on which two glasses and a piece of alien equipment rested, and on top of the alien equipment rested a black cat.

“Todd?” Amanda called out as quietly as she could, hoping not to attract the attention of either Lilly, Ken, or the Bosses. “That cat… what’s up with the cat?”

“The… cat?” he repeated, desperately trying to keep track of everything going on in the cave at the same time. “Ah that one,” he realized, following Amanda’s pointed finger with his eyes. “That’s just a cat! Lilly brought him with her.”

“Does it have a name?”

“Is that important right now?!”

“I feel like it is. Right,” she gestured for Todd to leave and returned her gaze to the table. “Is it just me, cat,” she said to herself, “or are you watching me too?”

The cat shifted lazily on the table, moved its tail a bit, then blinked at Amanda. She blinked back at the cat. The cat tilted its head slightly to the side and blinked again. Amanda copied the movement and blinked back at the cat, slowly. When she blinked again, she kept her eyes closed, and suddenly, she felt like she was talking to the cat… and the cat was ready to listen.

*

Naturally, this was quite shocking for Amanda, as strange as her life had already been up to that point. It was less disturbing for the cat, since he had an even richer record of extraordinary experience.

For one, he was not born a cat at all, but a hammerhead shark at the Seattle Aquarium, and spent his childhood swimming from one wall of the tank to another along with two of his sisters. The tank is where he grew, and ate a lot of fish, and was looked at a lot as well, and grew some more, and eventually became convinced that eating and growing and being stared at was all that life entailed. He was almost ready to come to terms with a life of comfortable confinement, when people came to his tank, took him out, and made him into a cat without asking his opinion.

Being a cat was not much different from being a shark as far as he was concerned. He still spent most of his time eating and growing, except this time the tank was considerably bigger and changed drastically every now and then.

He was also sometimes taken to different places and thrown at people. He tried eating the people he was thrown at, but discovered that all his ethereal shark body could do outside of the cat shell was take one or two bites at most before being thrown back into the cat. Then a lot of things happened; he moved houses a lot, became friends with a human, bit into some more people, and eventually wandered off in some forest, where he spent the next six months of his life: hunting, playing, eating, and growing.

Cat wasn’t sure how he ended up on the Cooltown University campus one day; he did not give it much thought. By that time, he was fully grown, and had adjusted perfectly to being a cat. The life of precarious freedom was altogether more suitable for him than the life of an aquarium exhibit, and he preferred the company of other cats (and occasionally some humans) to the company of sharks.

In fact, he was now quite proud of being a cat. He did not remember the last time his ethereal entity had broken free. He felt that it had integrated fully with his body, became one with it, became at home. He also did not think about some poor cat soul swimming from one wall of a tank to another far away from this campus. He was the cat now. And he was happy.

So when the human looked at him and pleaded with him to do something, anything, to be the magical wand that will make the situation turn a hundred and eighty degrees, Erwin the cat did the most cattest thing he could think of - moved on the table, put his paw on whatever piece of equipment was in front of him now, and pushed it off.

It fell to the floor with a surprisingly loud bang.