And I’ll never go home again

Place the call, feel it start

Favourite friend

Where nothing’s wrong but nothing’s true

I live in a hologram with you

This time, Stan picks a resort hotel. It’s located in the Zarkon-8 (or ‘Earth’, to the locals, and isn’t that fuckin’ weird to hear through the universal translator embedded in his left ear) version of the Mexican riviera. Which means it’s hot, bright, colourful, and willing to turn a bit of a blind eye to a guy with an obviously fake name and an even more obviously fake holo-ID, so long as his money’s real.

And the money is real. People, Stan’s learned, are the same the multiverse over. They all want to believe they’re special. That they deserve the windfall. That nothing bad could ever happen to them.

They’re all practically lining up to get fleeced.

He’ll have to move on sometime in the near future. Checking in under a fake name won’t throw Bill’s cronies off his scent for long. But Stan doesn’t need long. He just needs – he just needs a break. A little Stan time. Might as well take advantage of the best the multiverse has to offer.

After all, he’s never going home.

The sky over the pool is as even and blue as ever, even though Stan can hear distant growls of thunder out beyond the holodome. He listens carefully, and when he doesn’t hear anything that sounds like an approaching starship engine or the Henchmaniacs’ laughter, makes his way down to the deck around the pool. There’s still one human-compatible deckchair down there, and Stan intends to snag it before anybody else gets any bright ideas about sitting and sunning themselves poolside.

But his brightly-coloured towel hits the supportive yet comfortable elastic webbing of the seat at the same time as somebody else’s – labcoat?

Stan looks up, directly into the glare of what has to be the only other human (well, human like Stan, his translator keeps insisting the Zarkonites also call themselves ‘humans’) staying at the resort.

“Dibs,” Stan says, and the stranger’s eyes narrow.

“You – you – you can’t call dibs when you’re – after somebody else already took the thing. What kind of idiot are you?”

“The kind who got here first,” Stan says, leaning over the chair, getting in the stranger’s face. Most people would back off at this point, partly because Stan knows he’s an intimidating figure. If not, then his breath is usually enough to make people take a step back. But the stranger doesn’t do that. Instead, he leans in, too, until his forehead’s almost touching Stan’s.

“And I’m here now,” the stranger says, almost sneers. “What – what’re you gonna do aburrpout it?”

Stan doesn’t move for a second, a little shocked. Okay, yeah, he was just thinking about the possibilities of weaponizing his breath, but this weirdo just belched in his face. After stealing his deckchair.

And Stan knows, he realises, exactly what he’s gonna do about it.

He pulls back and, before the other guy can react, slams his forehead into the guy’s face as hard as he possibly can.

The resulting crack leaves Stan’s head smarting. The guy reels back, a hand pressed over his nose, red gushing out from between his fingers. Around the pool, people are starting to stir, starting to point and shout. Stan ignores them, scooping the guy’s white coat (and who wears a labcoat poolside, anyway?) off of his deckchair, his hand bumping against something heavy and solid tucked into a pocket –

“Ow!”

Stan drops the coat, shaking the memory of cramping tingles out of his arm. He can’t be sure through the hand and all the blood, but he thinks the guy is smirking.

“Did you fuckin’ electrify -” Stan starts, and then stops. Stupid question. Obviously the guy did, judging by the way he’s grinning and the way Stan just got friggin’ electrocuted. The only question Stan really needs an answer to right now is just how much pounding it’s gonna take to wipe that smile off this smug fucker’s face.

He jumps over the deckchair (not quite as easily as he expects, he must be getting old) and tackles the guy to the tiles. There’s a moment of confusion, during which Stan’s pretty sure he takes an elbow to the jaw and a bony knee to the gut, and then all of a sudden there’s no tile underneath him anymore.

Stan has just enough time to suck in half a breath before he and the guy both smack into the water with a resounding splash.

When Stan surfaces, sputtering, and sweeps the sodden hair out of his face, his deckchair is occupied. By a seven-foot-long slug alien who’s thoroughly slimed both the chair and his towel.

Stan glances over, sees the guy he’d been fighting with five seconds earlier, just as drenched and disgruntled as Stan is. His ridiculous blue hair is plastered down to the sides of his head instead of standing up in all directions, and he looks like a drowned rat. Stan snorts, and the guy turns to give him one of the best stinkeyes Stan’s ever seen.

It doesn’t last long, though, before one side of that narrow mouth starts to quirk up. A couple more seconds, and he rolls his eyes, turning away from Stan to haul himself out of the pool. His nose is still gushing blood, the water sending it streaking all down his skinny chest, and his swimsuit, Stan notices, is distinctly European in style. Doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination.

Stan can’t help it. He busts out laughing.

The guy gives him another glare, but this one looks a little more thoughtful. His eyes narrow as Stan hauls himself out of the pool beside him, and he stares at the dripping hand Stan holds out to shake like it’s a scorpion with its stinger raised.

“Hey, no hard feelings,” Stan says, with a smile that’s one part salesman, one part genuine. He feels about as stupid as the guy’s raised eyebrow (one-half of the guy’s unibrow?) clearly says he is, but – it’s been so long since he saw the other side of his dumb genius brother’s dumb science project. “We hairless apes gotta stick together out here, right? I’m Stan.” He waggles his outstretched hand a little awkwardly in the guy’s direction, realising a little too late that he has no idea where this guy’s from, what his dimension’s like. Maybe they don’t do handshakes there. Maybe they…bump elbows. Or kiss on the mouth. Or something.

Stan lets his hand drop.

The guy looks at it, for a moment longer than Stan’s actually comfortable with, and then, just when Stan’s starting to think it’s time to cut his losses and walk away, cracks a smile.

“Rick,” he says. “What say you – you buy me a drink and we forget all about it?”

“Already forgotten, amigo,” Stan says.

Somewhere up past the holodome, the thunder crackles and grumbles, but Stan ignores it.

…

The six-armed, stalk-eyed bartender doesn’t seem to have heard of a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, but she makes the fastest mojito Stan’s ever been served to make up for it. Whatever Rick orders is violently purple and fizzing, and just hearing him say its name makes Stan feel like his ears are trying to turn themselves inside out. Rick slams it back in one long gulp, lets out one of the most impressive belches Stan’s ever heard, and then orders another without pausing.

He doesn’t even look at Stan until he’s finished his second drink, and he takes his sweet time about it. Stan isn’t sure what to do with himself, so he carefully considers his mojito. Apparently in this dimension, it’s standard to include an eyeball on a stick as a garnish. Stan makes eye contact with it. Its iris is an acid green, and its pupil is star-shaped. It blinks at him, and Stan looks away.

“You gonna – gonna eat that?”

Stan looks up to see Rick pointing at the eyeball and staring at him. Stan shrugs, gestures open-handed at the eyeball. Rick grabs the skewer and pops the whole eyeball into his mouth. He doesn’t break eye contact with Stan as he bites down.

Stan isn’t entirely sure what’s going on, but it feels like some kind of a test. He holds Rick’s gaze until Rick swallows the masticated eyeball, and gets the feeling, somehow, that he’s passed.

Thunder cracks overhead, and Stan looks back out from under the bar’s cheerfully fake-tropical fake-raffia awning towards the pool. The holodome flickers once, a glimpse of bruise-purple, but quickly settles back into a perfect, even blue, so Stan decides not to worry about it.

Much.

When he turns back to the bar, Rick’s also staring up at the holodome. Just looking at his face makes Stan feel kind of crawly. He can’t quite explain it, but in a strange way, Rick’s expression makes him think of the way Ford had looked at that damn West Coast Tech brochure, kind of angry and wistful and sad all at once.

Stan clears his throat, loudly, into his fist, and Rick whirls around, fixing Stan with a glare to rival lasers. Stan gives him a little wave and a corny smile. “So what’s a nice biped like you doin’ in a place like this?”

Rick squints at Stan like he’s trying to make out what Stan’s got stuck in his teeth. Stan shuts his mouth, feels around in there with his tongue, but doesn’t find anything.

Rick settles back on his barstool, apparently relaxing. “S-same thing you ar-urrp-are. Enjoying the – the s-sun, sand and surf.” He gestures up at the dome just as another growl of thunder splits the air. “And getting shiiiiiiitfaced!” he finishes, signalling the bartender for another drink. “All – all-inclusive, huh?”

Stan nods agreement. Rick’s drink slides along the bar and slaps into his hand, and he raises it in a silent toast in Stan’s direction. Stan holds up his untouched mojito, as well, and then drains it.

Something snags his eye, and at first, Stan can’t tell what it was. Then he sees the red banner scrolling along the bottom of the screen mounted at the end of the bar. It’s covered in white text in some language Stan recognises from the resort’s sign, but since there’s no sound, Stan’s translator doesn’t pick it up. He has no idea what it says, but since it’s covering the scores for what looks like an alien gladiatorial deathmatch where the only weapons allowed are pool noodles, it’s probably something important.

“Hey,” Stan says, nudging Rick with his elbow. “Can you read that warning bulletin thingie?”

Rick doesn’t even look at the screen. “Says the world’s ending. You want another – gonna get another drink?”

Stan watches the incomprehensible white text scroll, then turns back to his empty mojito glass. “Yeah, alright. What’s the closest thing this dimension’s got to beer?”

Rick says another word that makes Stan’s ears vibrate, then shrugs and says, “But – but don’t order that slop. You gotta – you gotta try one of these bad boys.” He waves his own drink vaguely through the air at Stan. “It’s no Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, but it’ll get you good and fuuurrrpucked up.”

Stan eyes the fizzy purple stuff in Rick’s glass.

“You wanna order me one?” he says. “Don’t think I caught the name.”

Rick gives Stan a look. “You mean you – you know you can’t pronounce it and – and – and you don’t wanna try and end up looking like a stupid douchebag.”

“Yeah, that too,” Stan says.

Rick barks out a laugh, then snaps his fingers for the bartender.

…

Stan isn’t sure how many drinks later it is that another deckchair opens up, or how he and Rick both end up on it, head to feet and feet to head. There’s a perfect circle right in the middle of the holodome’s highest point overhead that’s gone a darker blue than the rest, and Stan can’t really tell if he’s just seeing it now because the angle’s changed, or if it’s new.

The thunder’s nearly constant overhead, a low growling rumble broken occasionally by world-shattering cracks, but there’s still no rain. Stan isn’t sure if the pool has some kind of weather shielding or something, but judging by the way every other deckchair and the pool are quickly emptying out, he’s guessing not.

Rick makes an agreeing noise, and Stan realises he’s forgotten what they were talking about. He sort of doesn’t really care. He’s content to lie here and bask in the artificial sun and the glow of whatever the hell it was he just drank.

Just for…fun? Masochistic impulse? Stan tries to imagine what he’d be doing right now if he’d just taken Ford’s stupid book, if he’d never answered Ford’s stupid postcard at all. Probably he’d be dead in a ditch somewhere. The thought gives him a little chill, as he realises just how much it’s not a joke. There’s a very real, very likely possibility that, if it hadn’t been for Ford’s stupid portal, Stan would now be dead. Or in prison. Or dead in prison. Either way, he wouldn’t be lying poolside at an all-inclusive beach resort, baking in the artificial warmth of a fake alien sun, his only problems in the world Bill Cipher’s relentless pursuit and the smell wafting off of Rick’s feet.

“Guess he did me a favour,” Stan muses, to himself. He doesn’t really expect Rick to hear, let alone chime in.

“Not that I care, but who the fu-uuck are you talking about?”

Stan blinks. It seems to take an unusual effort. He could just lie here and not move, forever. That sounds nice. The darker spot in the hologram overhead flickers purple, then back to blue. “My twin brother.”

The deckchair creaks, then rocks, Rick planting a bony elbow directly into Stan’s shin as he levers himself up. He gives Stan a long, hard look, before saying, flat, “There are two of you.”

“Nah, not really,” Stan says. “Ford’s the smart one.”

“I – I could have guessed that,” Rick says.

The thunder overhead crackles and booms. Somewhere out beyond the resort’s gates, a car alarm blares into life. Lightning flickers in the dark spot at the top of the holodome. Stan’s not sure if it’s just his imagination, or if that spot’s gotten bigger since the last time he looked.

“It’s Ford’s fault I’m here,” Stan says. “Built some…some kinda interdimensional portal. An’ then kicked my sorry ass through it.”

“I built a-an interdimensional portal,” Rick says. There’s something different about his voice, some edge that’s new. Stan isn’t sure what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

“It let out in th’ Nightmare Realm?” he asks, after a moment to chase down his thoughts where they’ve scattered to the distant corners of his mind. There are more car alarms outside, now, or maybe sirens, or maybe that’s somebody screaming. The holodome’s quiet track of waves lapping gently against shore and seabirds calling in the distance makes it hard to tell. “ ‘cause that place is no picnic.”

Rick snorts something that might be a laugh. “Oh – oh yeah. Nightmare Realm.” He rolls his eyes. “This – all of reurrrpality’s a nightmare realm, you’re gonna have to be more – be more specific.”

“Bill Cipher? Quadrangle of Qonfusion?” Stan tries.

“Not – not ringing any bells,” Rick says. “Not firing any synapses. Not -”

“Okay, okay, got it,” Stan interrupts. “Trust me, it ain’t exactly a five-star vacation destination.”

He leans back in the deckchair, tucking an arm behind his head. The dome overhead flickers, once, glitching completely out of existence for the length of a blink, and Stan sees roiling purple skies overhead, crazed with red lightning. He’s not sure if that’s a bad sign, or if it’s just normal for this planet. He hasn’t actually left the resort and its artificial blue sphere since he got here.

He blinks, and everything overhead is blue again.

“My portal – I – it took me to all kinds of other dimensions,” Rick says. “I know, no shit, Sherlock. I – I – I got a little slap-happy. Only bothered going back home the once. Then I hopped alllllll over the place.”

Stan laughs. “Hah, me too. ‘cept the part about going home.”

The loop of seabird and wave sounds slows, without warning, echoing cries warping out long and deep and distorted. There are definitely more sirens outside now. On a sudden impulse he can’t totally explain, Stan glances over at the bar. He doesn’t see the bartender, but the screen’s changed from showing the pool noodle fights to a serious-looking alien in a suit. The banner scrolling along the bottom of the screen is still there, but it’s gotten bigger. Just like the circle at the top of the holodome, which is definitely bigger now, and also turning purple in the very centre. Stan watches it pulse, dreamily, for a few moments that might be seconds or hours. The thunder overhead grumbles on.

“And then,” Rick says, waving an arm vaguely at the sky. “Then. I went back to the – the – the first dimension I visited.”

The holodome has the good dramatic timing to glitch out again, a web of lightning illuminating Rick’s face with a sinister red glare as he says, “Just in time to watch it tear itself apart.”

The holodome snaps back into place, the relaxing background track coming back up to speed, which kind of ruins the effect. Stan tries to laugh, but it gets drowned out by the abrupt, rising wail of another siren. This one’s coming from somewhere inside the pool area, and it’s loud, insistent, and annoying. Stan wishes it would shut up. It’s really making it hard to enjoy this vague, dreamy bubble of bliss he’s been floating on. He has the uncomfortable feeling he’s starting to sober up.

He glances over at the bar again, but the bartender’s nowhere to be seen. Neither are any of the other resort guests, or the staff, Stan realises, at the speed of alcohol. The screen at the end of the bar has cut from the serious-looking alien in a suit to a shot of a roiling purple sky, the colour of a bruise, split by cracks of red lightning.

“It – it didn’t even take a week,” Rick monologues on, apparently blissfully unaware of Stan’s slowly-growing unease. “My – I – the portal tore a -” He pauses to let loose another enormous belch, one that might have had Stan busting a gut laughing a few minutes ago. “- a hole in the fabric of their – of that dimension. It – it – it just spread like a piss on a sidewalk. Ripped the whole dimension apart. Nothing left but – but atoms.”

The wail of the poolside siren is drowned out in a flash of lightning so bright Stan has to throw up an arm to protect his eyes and a boom of thunder so loud and close and deep that it rattles his back teeth and every window in the resort. When the echoes die away, both the seaside sounds track and the siren have gone eerily silent. The sounds of distant alarms and the howl of a rising wind outside somewhere bleed in to fill the quiet.

“Hey, d’you think we should maybe go inside?” Stan asks, shifting in the deckchair. He’s sober enough now to be uncomfortably aware that he’s neither sober nor drunk enough to be dealing with whatever this is. He’s also pretty sure now that a decent chunk of those distant sounds are actual screams. “It’s getting kinda nasty out here.”

Rick shoots him a peevish glare. “Do – did you not pick up that I was doing a d- a dramatic monologue here?”

“Okay, okay, sheesh,” Stan says, settling back. “Excuse me for not wanting to get killed in a natural disaster.”

“It’s wayyyyy too late to worry about that now,” Rick snaps. “This dimension’s toast. It’s kaput, Stan. It is a-an ex-dimension. It’s – it’s tearing itself apart under the strain of its own existence, just like – just like every other place I ever portalled to. Can you get that through your thick skull? Do you need me to spell out the – the implications?”

Stan sits on that for a while. A shimmering line of code crackles across the surface of the holodome overhead, a line of bruise-purple dripping down the dome from the circle at the very top towards the resort gates. Another follows it, and then another, all over the dome.

“I can’t ever go home either,” Stan says, at last, and Rick seems to deflate, dropping back to lie flat against the deckchair, staring up at the violent sky.

“What-urp-ever.” He’s silent for a moment. “Hey, Stan?”

“Yeah?” Stan asks.

“Make yourself useful and – and get us some more booze,” Rick says.

Stan doesn’t. Instead, he lies there, just a little while longer, on the deckchair by the pool with what might just be the closest thing he’s got to a friend in the whole wide multiverse, watching the illusion disintegrate overhead. He thinks about cursing Rick out for getting him into this mess. About finding this portal the guy must’ve been able to carry with him, or he wouldn’t be here now. Thinks about escaping to another reality, one that isn’t coming apart at the seams.

Thinks about running, about hiding, about how long it’s been now, how long it’s been since he knew Ford wasn’t coming back for him. Thinks about Rick, and whether it’s worse to have no home left to go back to, or to have a home out there somewhere and know you’ll never see it again.

Thinks about knowing you destroyed everything good you ever had in a single blind moment of selfishness. About knowing that no matter how far or how hard you run, you drag that trail of destruction with you.

Thinks about knowing, about always having known, that one day, it’ll catch up to you.

“Yeah, okay,” Stan says, at last. “That purple fizzy shit again?”

Rick slaps his bare stomach, lets out another epic burp, aims and fires a finger gun in Stan’s direction.

“You got it,” Stan says, levering himself out of the chair with a groan. “Maybe there’s a backup generator or something around here, too. Could get that hologram running again.”