[Mike 5]

For many cycles of what humans percieve of as time, and over seemingly endless pointless extensions of what humans perceive as space, an alien entity has watched this precious earth planet.

Randomly disembodied yet perversely still conscious, through the vagaries of being an outcast and just too curious for his own species and place and time, he or she has wandered the lonely corridors so close and yet so far from all that is deemed to be real.

There was just one narrow window of escape, tasteless and impalatable. She or he had watched the patterns of incarnation of living plants and creatures on this planet for enough cycles and attempted to squeeze into all that process, to be born into physicality again, to feel time, to breathe space, again, and make some bid for the exit portal, but over and over had failed. The alternative was like eating vomit. To approach some living being so recklessly desperate as to be actively wishing they were dead. The surgical process would be slick and the damnation of that soul to this place of restlessness, a necessary price to pay.

In the driving rain outside the many worlds pub, Mrs Potato Head was crying inaudibly, in the cold, stinking mud, and indeed she was wishing she was dead.

The skies seemed to clear by magic, a beam of light poking through like the finger of some god to spotlight the form of Mrs Potato Head. A mutual revulsion whispered through the air, causing insects to scream out and many small creatures to run for their lives. It was over in a moment.

An observer would have seen Mrs Potato Head, with a new light in her eyes, simply get up, discard her clothing and as the beam of light carried it’s helpless soul to another realm, Mrs Potato Head washed herself, naked in the pounding rain. Without another look at the buildings around her, she set off alone and apparently very happy, into the dark night.

Inside the Many Worlds Pub. The barman suddenly got up, wretched, and vomitted in a gushing spew that projected a full seven feet across the floor. For a moment the air itself seemed frozen with an otherworldly stillness.

Calm and businesslike, with new eyes that his own mother would never recognise, the barman calmly set about cleaning the mess. By midnight that night, the bar was spotless, as never before. A wry and infectious ready smile made the barman strangely attractive in his new haircut, and uncharacteristically groomed appearance. When the rain ended he cleaned up some mess outside the pub. Stooping down for a moment, he rescued a single, cheap, plastic clip-on earring from the mud and trash he had just swept together. Hurriedly cleaning it with his own saliva, he clipped the earring onto his left ear lobe and his grin became even wider. A curiously warm yet diabolical laugh cut through the night air, but was covered by the sound of distant thunder. As the first drops of rain fell, the barman had removed all other evidence that anything odd had happened that night.

But something, maybe several things, had changed.