Yes, the crowds were cheering. The gods of thunder were a choir of wordless prayers to the imaginary force of fairness. Just imagine a wave, like on a high school bleacher with a hundred people on it, but each person is about two thousand people all wearing their seating districts' browns. Such a wave actually generates a breeze that, well butterfly effect, certainly matters.

It's seismic in scale, a mega arena. With almost a million seats, and an entire city of services built around it, the Court of High Decision rocks any petty supreme court or even the sway of childish emperors, makes democracy into a dumpsterfire and the House of Lords an outhouse (by comparison to its sheer scale and the magnitude of its influence). You see, our great grand babies are all one people, cool and all, but the final choice for any new global law is decided here, in this great chamber of choice.

Would man fight man, to decide the outcome? Sometimes they do, it's called war. But when the natural law applies, it must be nature that decides. Or something like that, anyway. I wouldn't agree with the fast-and-loose definition of nature our descendants go with.

In one corner we have this creature brought back from the prehistoric times when cave bears could chew on dinosaur jerky they found thawing in the cataclysmic glaciers. It is about fifteen percent elephant and nearly seventy percent mastodon. It has killed a lot of stock mules, every day it is encouraged, well, he is encouraged, to drive the mules from his food and sometimes he catches them and kills them. He is a total brute, weighing in at seven and a half tons, we have the red bull elephant - representing the decision not to pass a law that will decriminalize crimes committed against former criminals.

Things get scary when we look into the other corner, where there's a pack of trained mules, blue jacks, genetically engineered donkey and horse hybrids with something wrong with them. They are ferocious, psychotic and murderous creatures that have trained for years to kill elephants with their bites and kicks. They work in tandem, distracting it and avoiding its tusks and getting trampled. What might have seemed an easy victory for the red bull elephant is not-so-much when we review the footage of stock mammoths getting chased, cornered and butchered by the blue jacks.

The feral donkeys represent a decision to pass a law that decriminalizes any crimes committed against former criminals. To make it worse, even if the red bull elephant somehow wins against the pack of trained elephant killers, an appeal may be applied for. There is one way out of this horror, however. Specifically, an older law governs the creation of new laws and an appeal may only be applied after a decision is reached. It's the basis for everything.

So, our would-be terrorists have devised a weapon that will disrupt the relativity of time in the mega arena. It would stop any sequence, causing the battle to be locked in a permanent stalemate. And remember, until a decision is reached, the battle ends, then no new appeal can be filed for, so this one particularly worst law of all time never happens.

It all started, for me, when I was called to the side of the park where I work. I was responding to a call for first aid, although when I got there, it was so much worse. Luckily, paramedics were already on their way. I spotted what appeared to be a Mickey Mouse-eared cap made of fur and full of strawberry jelly.

A man was sitting holding his dripping wrist in shock. I put on a tourniquet, noting his soundless gaze. Then I saw the remains of someone in the tall grass and one twitching dog leg.

I stared in surprise and then gagged in horror as I realized the dead body in the uniform of a Nazi-styled security guard outfit was only half, split right down the middle. It collapsed and became a steaming mess that made me throw up at the sight and stench of it.

"What happened?" I tried to ask the survivor.

The fear in his eyes was like a sickness, infecting my very soul. I staggered back and felt my world tumbling away from me - or me from it. I landed on the other side of some shimmering basement with corridors and luminescent lighting and wires and plumbing exposed above me where I stared at the ceiling. I got up, dazed and looked back at the survivor.

Then he was gone and there was just a brick wall. My hand found the survivor's hand holding the wet and sticky leash and I lifted it slowly and found the missing part of the severed dog. I gasped in horror and then saw the man who was cut directly in half, or the other half, that is. I groaned in horrified shock and then got to my feet, trembling. I started walking away from the carnage, totally disoriented.

I was stopped by a shouting security guard with a strange-looking white rifle pointed at me. It looked like it was made of some kind of ceramic or plastic, but the threat in his voice was clear. He aimed it at me and I put up my hands.

Then, as I stared into his surprised eyes, seeing me from outside of his known world, evidently, in my attire and presence, he asked me, inching towards me:

"What are you lost down here from some show? What's that you're wearing?" He asked me.

I was wearing my normal clothes and boots I worked in. He had the Nazi-looking security guard uniform.

"I was working, in the park, and fell in here somehow. Are we underground?" I asked.

"I'll ask the questions." He directed me to turn around against the wall.

Just then I heard a sound like a chipmunk sneezing and then it repeated twice more. I turned and looked and saw the security guard's gun had a huge glowing hole in it and his chest had two holes in it that I could see directly through. Then his head exploded right where he stood staring at me in complete surprise and shock in his eyes.

I blinked and then fell to the floor and screamed "No!" and shielded myself. I was so terrified that I closed my eyes, shielding myself with my arms over my face.

"Who're you?" A celebrity voice asked me. I looked up and saw a scantily dressed person with all sorts of colorful buttons and feathers and rainbow dreadlocks. They held a similar weapon to the one the headless guard had.

I tried to get away, crawling desperately down the corridor.

"Come on, get up. I'm not agroed or nothing. Don't you get it? I'm Chimmy, that's why this sells." The celebrity said to me with a lot of odd inflections.

"Chimmy?" I blinked, worried about the weapon the celebrity was waving around, occasionally pointing at me. "I don't know where I am. What is happening?" my voice was subdued and trembling with fear of what I had gotten into.

"This is Mega Arena Sigma, the biggest and greatest court on the planet. You must be, uh, not from around here." Chimmy spoke slowly and plainly, like someone who is trying to be easier to understand for someone with English as a second language.

"I fell in here." I stammered.

"You fell through time itself friend. One of our temporal isolation dislocating element devices, or what we call TIDED, was somehow set off too early and it also malfunctioned. Sorry, you went through it, at least you weren't standing there when it happened. That's why these guys are all shredded-bad." Chimmy gave me some exposition, which I couldn't comprehend.

"Can I go home?" I asked.

"Well, probably. I am going to try and fix the TIDED. We sorta need it." Chimmy went over to it and started working on it. While it was getting its manual diagnostic which was composed mostly of a screwdriver, but also involved a hologrammatic schematic with some kind of computer assisting in finding the problems in the device, Chimmy told me the rest.

"Well?" I asked, worried about getting trapped in the destruction of the Mega Arena that Chimmy had described to me.

"We can only use this once. If you help, you'll be transported home. Our goals align." Chimmy told me.

"This is a nightmare." I proclaimed.

"No time for dreaming." Chimmy laughed at me.

"What do I do?" I shuddered, worried about the strangeness and unknown dangers I would face.

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"You'll have to climb up to the next level and tell Skittles we're still on the countdown. Last time we could chat I had to tell everyone my position wasn't up." Chimmy told me.

I went to the hatch and opened it with trepidation. When I was climbing up, I realized what I'd gotten myself into. The ladder took me up an extensive shaft. At the top there was a functional utility chamber where I met Skittles.

"As a scientist, I can't just take your word that you time-traveled. It is theoretically impossible. We'd have to seek other possibilities before we went with time travel. That's just the mythology of Science Fiction. The real world is more a place for horror." Skittles told me.

"Never mind, that. What do I have to do next?" I asked. "If you succeed I could get back home."

"Well yes, if you were actually displaced by the initial activation of a TIDED. That's what I would expect." Skittles informed me.

"And that's coming from?" I worried.

"The world leading scientist in TIDED technology, since I invented it." Skittles grinned.

"So?" I shrugged.

"So, you'll need to go and tell everyone to continue with the countdown as planned. You can fix the same problem caused when you arrived here and the TIDED malfunctioned. We have radio silence now since Big Brother is listening for us."

"I'll do it. How many?" I asked. Skittles hesitated and then nodded and said:

"Eight more. You'll have to hurry. Harper is the next, at the northern base of the arena. You'll have to take this tunnel."

I followed the tunnel and found the priestess, Harper, and told her to keep with the countdown. She had her stopwatch going and showed me on the TIDED where an automatic trigger was set to go off a precise time, as long as the device was armed to that setting.

I got instructions to go to the school teacher, Wilt, at the top end of the mega arena, directly above her position at the base. I looked at the towering ladder and gulped in trepidation. I began to climb, sweating and my heart beating, vertigo blurring my vision when I looked down.

Near the top I stopped and nearly fell from fright. An electric arc curved up and under the dome, a powerful lightning bolt of static electricity. Another one arched off of it and continued along the wall as a visible blue wave of energy before it dissipated into a buttress the size of a skyscraper. I was nearly to Wilt's position and could see them there.

Suddenly I screamed in horror and nearly lost my grip. I had seen the flash of another bolt take Wilt and flash them so I could see the bones inside them as it strangled them in an electrocuting death where they stood. I wrapped my arms on the ladder and cried out and couldn't go on.

I held on there, looking at the empty platform. Then another arch moved along the steel girders and the ladder I was on was like a giant Jacob's Ladder and it was moving at high speed towards me. I panicked and clambered the rest of the way up the ladder to the catwalk and ran along it just as the arch hit the metal beams and threw sparks everywhere like a bright showering.

I set the TIDED to go off when it was supposed to and then I was forced to guess where I should go next. Strangely enough, I looked down at the arena below and could see the structural foundation was not a circle, but rather a diamond. I was at one tip of it. I looked across and in the distance, I could see a platform in the same elevation as mine, one at each end.

I guessed I could find my way to the mirrored positions somehow. I had no idea how massive the mega arena was, or what sort of horrors I would endure to cross it.

I reached the next position where the plague doctor wore a strange yellow dress. The aroma of vanilla and lavender permeated the air and the tattoo of the crowned wasp glowed in the dim light. The doctor was attentive to their device but drew and aimed a precaution at me, firing one shot to show quill-like needles bushed out where it was discharged.

"Wilt is gone, but the countdown continues." I told the doctor in the strange yellow dress.

"It is like we are all going to die. Have you thought of that?" the doctor asked me.

"I'm going home. You people can do whatever you want." I told them.

"Doctor Kcoh is home here, in this place, doing what is right." Dr. Kcoh told me.

Their position was compromised and the security guards in Nazi uniforms would arrive at any moment.

"The TIDED." I pointed out where Dr. Kcoh was hiding it. I went and switched it to its armed position, while Dr. Kcoh readied something of some ritual importance.

"Where there is smoke there is fire. You should get going. Tell the chef, Murrazza, that I went out in a blaze. We always share recipes." Dr. Kcoh held up a weird looking device and held it to their chest for a few seconds. It was like the room became hot, the heat coming from them.

"You're so hot." I told Dr. Kcoh

"Thanks, sweetie, now get going."

It felt hot down there, and the sound of security guards coming for us could be heard.

I fled the chamber and began another ascent up a second ladder. Below there were flames and screaming. I was crying from the awfulness of it, shaking and breathing as I went. My fear of the electric arcs kept me alert and moving until I reached the chef. I told him about what happened and to keep up the countdown.

"Take these drugs." Murazza told me. "They'll help with this."

The climb back down was almost too exhausting to bear. I took the drugs and felt my energy go back up after I reached the bottom. There I walked among a horror show of proportions.

The stench was like the farm section at the county fair, except if it were a hot summer day and the vents were all broken. I found the pilot, Libby, or what was left of her.

The four-armed green ape of environmental concerns had gotten ahold of her and broken her body to fit through the bars. The clover simian had played with her dead body until it got bored and then tossed her in a heap into one corner of its cage.

I nearly fainted when I saw all that, forgetting the mission and wanting to flee in terror. It was only the sight of the panda reaching with its prehensile tail that froze me in my tracks. It ignored me and acquired the corpse, pulling it towards its own cage. With its back to me, the panda began to eat, chewing and peeling loudly. Its tail swished oddly, the very long and powerful prehensile tail.

I found the TIDED and set it to go off on-time. I was leaving the menagerie of horror-animals when I was suddenly accosted by a handler of the creatures. I tried to get away, only to run into an override that was supposed to be tagged out, and bounced off the switch. I clambered to my feet and started climbing the utility ladder to the next platform.

The zoo attendant reached the base of the ladder and then noticed the broken tag out and the flipped switch, with a flashing red light indicating something. Suddenly out of nowhere, a machine of some kind got them. I gasped in dread, seeing them get cleaned by the unstable stable cleaner.

Along the way I found a node where someone had hacked into it and called me as I reached it on my climb. "Who are you? Where's Libby?

"I was just going to tell you to resume the countdown," I told the coach in the zebra-striped yoga suit and feather headdress. "I'm from the malfunction."

"Lucky it didn't turn you inside out. That'd be gruesome. Imagine everything in you bursting out of some split in your side and boiling out all over the place. That's a more probable outcome. So, you're lucky."

"I am. Seems luck is lite."

"Is Libby all right?"

"Libby is gone. I reset her device to go off."

"You'll have to tell Sprite and Drake. I can't call them, they aren't near nodes."

"I thought it was supposed to be radio silence." I said.

"Nobody told me that. Typical, for them to forget Asia." Asia said.

I climbed back down and went to the last base position.

There, in the lab, I found numerous dead security guards and scientists in lab coats, all with multiple cookie-cutter holes in them from one of those white guns, this one a little larger and smoother than the other two. The murderous librarian, in her kilt and Christmas sweater and steampunk goggles on her skullcap, had discarded the empty weapon on a table amidst the sizzling dead.

"Sprite?" I asked her.

She looked at me oddly and said:

"It's worse than it looks." Sprite told me. She'd rigged her TIDED under the main beam, directly over an open vat of bubbling petri stuff. She was sitting facing me where she'd gone out on a limb over that and balanced there to attach the device. Turning around, she'd gotten caught when the limb went limp and left her stranded out there. If she moved, it would collapse and drop her into the petri.

"You've got to reset the TIDED to go off on time." I told her.

She was sweating bullets of terror at her predicament.

"Know what that stuff does to a living body?" Sprite was gasping in fear.

I started feeling fear for her, second-hand.

"You're going to be fine." I told her.

"It's vibrating under me. The screws are all coming loose and wiggling." Sprite gulped.

She'd reset her device. I could do nothing for her.

"Throw me a line and you can take it up with you and secure it. I could swing across." Sprite showed she could think under pressure. It wasn't enough. Time was out.

The limb suddenly collapsed and dropped her into the ooze. She screamed and gurgled as it dissolved her alive, all the way to her bones and those like seltzer disintegrated amid foaming bubbles. I stared in horror and then I screamed in terror as some of the stuff that had splashed out had coalesced into one big blob that was quickly sliding towards me.

I felt my heart beating at a million miles an hour in nightmare fueled flight as I climbed. The stuff was trying to slither up the ladder, but as I climbed I lost it and it descended to form a puddle below me. I felt relieved and realized I had wet my pants in the terror.

I reached the last platform as it started to shake.

"The devices are going off and mine isn't!" Professor Drake exclaimed. He triggered his device, slightly out of sequence, shifting through some kind of neon landscape like the platform was a flying carpet.

The sign showed a huge cartoon character with a butt coming down on the professor, crushing him. I realized I had seen it through to the end, witnessing none of the killings by blue jacks, their abrasive whiplike tongues like cheese graters, skinning their prey alive. Nor the crushing embrace of the muscular trunk of an elephant's hug.

When I found myself again on the lawn of the park, it was moments before the man walking his dog was in the right place at the right time. I was in the clubhouse on the other side of the park just seconds earlier, and everyone who was in the room with me said they looked away at a flash and when they looked back I was gone.

I went over and asked the man if I could pet his dog and he said it was okay. So I pet the dog and there was a bit a rustling in the bush behind me as the half of a corpse arrived in our time. I knew it was there, nobody else had to see it.

"What a very nice dog." I told the nice man walking his dog and then I shook his hand and nodded and smiled.

"Well," He dismissed me and my odd behavior, "It's about that time."