We stood in a semi-circle, looking at the free-standing illuminated sign.

YOU ARE HERE, it read. There was a floorplan of the mall, with a red X in the absolute centre, not far from Pete’s Pints and Deconstructed Burgers.

“It’s the middle of the mall,” Mell pointed out, “which is the middle of the slo-time or the Gnang or whatever you call it.”

“I thought you stopped listening after ‘it was all a dream’,” I accused.

She shrugged. “I did,” she said, “but I’m also not an idiot.”

“What does it mean?” Creepy pondered.

“Why does it have to mean anything?” I asked. “You keep on wondering that, and the universe keeps on being random and pointless.”

The seven Creepies looked at one another.

“Someone’s in denial,” Mister C of 9 said in a low voice.

“And what does it have to do with the Chris Mess?” the Drake asked.

“Christmas,” I said, “and nothing. Christmas was yesterday. Nothing happened. This was just a random series of meaningless events, and then they stopped happening, and…” I gestured at the sign, “and here we are. Can’t be much clearer than that.”

“Bit of an anticlimax though, isn’t it?” Creepy said plaintively.

“That’s the natural order,” I shrugged. “You can’t expect closure and narrative structure from a universe. You get what you pay for. And any cosmos that starts with a big bang is going to end with an anticlimax. Don’t say it,” I warned Mister C of 9 as he grinned and opened his mouth.

“Man,” Mister C of 9 kicked unhappily at a stray chip packet. “I’m not even allowed to do an innuendo?”

“Not on my watch.”

“I can’t imagine my cliché-craft teachers of old would approve,” Winona grumbled. “Evidently Xix runs a bit of a tighter ship than this place.”

“Maybe we should do Christmas there next year,” Creepy suggested brightly.

“I’ll ask,” Winona hedged.

“So this is it?” Carla said. Her eyes were suspiciously narrowed, but she often looked like that so it was hard to say whether it was additional suspicion. “A couple of cheap shopping mall jokes dressed up in false profundity, you are here, ooooh, you get what you pay for, wow, and then what, nothing actually happens and nothing gets answered or solved? And that’s it?”

“Sounds about right,” I agreed.

“So what do we do now?” she demanded.

I looked at Creepy.

“We could all go back to our place and eat leftovers?” I suggested.

So we did.

THE END

Winona, blessedly, reappeared as we entered the mall. He stepped out from behind the vending machines, which as it turned out were not as tall as his huge green hat with the iron spike. Disappearing behind them had actually been no mean feat, now I thought about it.

“I was looking for Creepy and Mister C of 9,” he explained. “I didn’t find them, although I did find Mister C of 9’s sword,” he held it up gingerly by one of its crossguards. “He’d stabbed the glowing box with it.”

“It’s a vending machine,” I said, then explained with a flash of inspiration, “which is sort of like a street vendor, only it’s just a box with food and drinks in it, and you give it money and it gives you the food.”

“What happens to the street vendor that is replaced by the glowing box?” Winona asked.

“I – not sure, actually,” I admitted. “I think … would the answer ‘starves to death a hundred and fifty years ago’ be too depressing?”

“It’s sad, certainly, but these things happen.”

“Then I’ll go with that,” I decided. “Of course, street vendors are still around, they sell mostly cooked food provided they have a special license for it, and these machines are owned by corporations that mass-produce preservative-laden snacks that don’t need to be heated up or stored in any particular way, except for the ones that do, and those vending machines have special gases in them that-”

“We may be incriminating ourselves just by listening to you,” the Drake said. “Oh look, there’s Creepy.”

“There you are,” I said as Creepy sauntered back towards us. “Where did you go? And where’s Mister C of 9?”

“He was escorted away by security,” he said, “but then they screamed and ran off when he removed his sunglasses.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“Are you sure? It feels like it did.”

“Perhaps we should make for the gastropub you were talking about,” Winona suggested. “Just in case Mister C of 9 decides to head straight there and slay the monstrous Pete.”

“I’m pretty sure Pete’s not actually monstrous, and probably doesn’t even exist,” I said, “but that’s still not a bad idea. You vanished pretty tidily yourself just now,” I congratulated the Xixian as we started through the mall.

“I was a Mysterious Disappearer Third Grade before being granted a place in the court,” he said modestly. “After I’d safely abdicated from the throne, of course.”

“What’s a Mysterious Disappearer?” I asked.

“I always assumed they were assassins who made inconvenient people disappear,” Creepy remarked.

“No, no. It’s a branch of the Guild of Quest Givers, Clue Sharers and First Act Arc Finishers,” Winona explained. “I specialised in making fleeting eye contact with an adventurer or lead member of a band of ragtag heroes across a crowded marketplace, and then vanishing when a knot of bickering merchants or a cart laden with yams went past. It’s a lot of training, a lot of very undignified scrambling and getting your feet run over by wagons at the start,” he laughed fondly. “I still remember my old instructor, Camulon the Extant,” he said, and suddenly barked, “I can still see the edge of your robe behind that stack of chicken cages, Bunklet! Bloody pathetic!”

“‘Camulon the Extant’?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Camulon tore up the book, back in his day,” Winona said wistfully. “His thing was just being there the entire time, and having the same conversation with anyone who came past. Rain, hail or shine, he was an immovable object. Most of his friends were killed in the NPC massacres following my … father’s … rise to power,” he glanced at Creepy. “Camulon survived, but he spent the rest of his life teaching elementary cliché-craft to pimply teenagers. Some people whispered that it was his penance, for surviving.”

We found Mister C of 9 standing outside Pete’s Pints and Deconstructed Burgers, looking rather forlorn. He brightened up when he saw us.

“You found Stormbringer Sting Snaga Sikanda Scalpel Sorrow Sihill Swordy McSwordface,” he said happily, as Winona handed over the dead black blade.

“That’s the name you gave your sword?” I blinked.

“Yes, it is,” he tucked Stormbringer Sting Snaga Sikanda Scalpel Sorrow Sihill Swordy McSwordface away and drew his black garb around himself with dignity. “But I can change it to ‘Bob’ if it’s too confusing…”

“So what about this place?” Carla stepped up. “Hopefully you’ve seen by now that, despite what the Drake said about war crimes, this is just a regular pub restaurant and is not in fact run by a monster. And either way, it looks like it’s closed for the holidays…”

“Over here,” Mell called. “I’ve found it.”

“The Shopping Centre of the Universe Mall and Gastropub,” Doctor Cratch read the sign with profound, abiding disgust. “You were right, Hatboy. I don’t like it.”

“I hate it,” Carla agreed.

Doctor Cratch pointed at her. “Me too,” I said. “I hate it, Hatboy. I hate it.”

I shrugged. “It’s the middle of the shrinking circle of Wasteland and slo-time,” I said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“What is a Gastropub?” Winona asked.

“Malicious Gastropub Franchisery was declared a human rights violation by the Commercial War Crimes Commission of the late Twenty-Third Century,” the Drake said helpfully.

“It’s a tavern that charges as much for its food as a restaurant does,” I explained to the puzzled Xixian.

“Hm. And what is a restaurant?”

“It’s a tavern that serves expensive food and…” I thought about it for a moment, “…doesn’t rent rooms to people?”

“I see.”

“I think the one in this mall is called Pete’s Pints and Deconstructed Burgers,” I added.

“Food Deconstruction was classified as a form of torture as early as 2220,” the Drake said disapprovingly. “This Pete is clearly one of history’s greatest monsters.”

“Maybe killing him will break the curse,” Mell suggested.

“What curse?” I demanded.

“I don’t know, I stopped listening after ‘it was all a dream’,” she admitted. “I just assumed there was a curse and we have to break it to clean up the Chris Mess.”

“That’s not-”

“Creepy and Mister C of 9 already went in,” Winona piped up from the back of the group.

I turned – Creepy and Mister C of 9 had been standing right beside me – and sighed. Sure enough, they were gone. I heard the raised voice of one of them – how many litres do you get for that price? What? How much of a litre? – from the row of vending machines inside the main entrance.

“Alright,” I said, “let’s go in. Everybody stay together, I think their public announcement desk is run by a hungry ghoul so if anyone goes missing we can’t-” I turned back again, and sighed. Now Winona was gone as well. I’d only looked away from him for a second, but a small group of shoppers had passed between us on their way into the mall and he’d vanished along with them. “Just try to keep the Drake in your line of sight,” I said, waving the towering figure to precede me. The Drake obligingly raised an elongated arm in the air and spread her pallid, tapering fingers. From the expressions on the faces of nearby Shopping Centre of the Universe patrons, the Creepies were the only ones who weren’t going to be keeping the Drake in their line of sight for the foreseeable future.

“What are we even looking for?” Carla asked.

“As of this moment, Winona and Creepy and Mister C of 9,” I muttered, looking around.

“Because unless you do something, they’re probably going to kill the hapless innocent day manager at that gastropub you were talking about,” Carla warned.

“Unless I do something?” I objected. “Why me?” Carla looked at me flatly. “Fine,” I threw up my hands in exasperation.

We headed into the Shopping Centre of the Universe Mall and Gastropub.

“Okay,” Mell spoke up, “this is all a dream. First thing any of you have said that makes sense. What are we supposed to do to wake up?”

“It may not be that sort of dream,” Doctor Cratch said, “especially if we are actually participating in a Dreamscape. If a dream is just the subconscious sorting and processing of individual first-person sensory data and memory, and this is an unquantified dream-construct perhaps originating from one of us, or all of us, or someone else entirely, then that is the subconscious we are dealing with – not necessarily our own.”

“Have you done this before, Doctor Cratch?” Winona asked.

“Me? No,” Doctor Cratch said with a wave of his hand. “No, but I’ve studied it, in my own modest way. And I’ve failed to do it, which is far closer to succeeding than never trying to do it in the first place is.”

“So what did that teach you?” the Drake pressed.

“That you don’t want to wind up in the Gnang,” Doctor Creepy replied firmly. “This slo-time thing. It’s bad.”

“We know that already,” Carla snapped.

“And we’ve been out in it,” I said. “Several times. Kind of. Carl is actually studying it,” Doctor Cratch looked at Carla. “No no, that’s Carla,” I went on. “See, Carl is an associate of ours whose name is actually Ana-Lennox Medianu, her nickname was Lenny but her other nickname was Carl, a few years back she helped us save Christmas, except the entire cultural concept of ‘Christmas’ was actually a parasitic ur-meme sub-universe that-”

“Now you’re just padding it,” Mister C of 9 accused.

“Fine,” I said, “so what do we do?”

“Usually,” Doctor Cratch said, “the best way to find the key to a Dreamscape is to look in its direct centre.”

“The centre of this house?” I asked.

“The centre of our couch?” Creepy added.

“Been there.”

“Think a bit bigger,” Doctor Cratch advised.

“Listen Doc, if you’d seen the inside of our couch-”

“I’m talking about the centre of this universe,” he said, spreading his arms grandly. For a moment he looked like a very weird Hawaiian-bellied albino bat.

“The centre of the universe?” I frowned.

“You mean Planet Zero?” Creepy said in despair. “But it’s so boring there! It’s just gift shops and museums, and it’s windy all the time, and there’s no sugar.”

“No, not – okay,” Doctor Cratch was evidently not experienced at dealing with super-sidekick minds. “Maybe Planet, um, Zero was it? Maybe that can be kept in the back pocket for now-”

“That’s where Professor Zero keeps it,” I agreed.

“Oh.”

“Can we stay on topic?” Carla pleaded.

“What I mean is, if this slo-time is encroaching on your … environment … then what we should do is outline its inner borders,” Doctor Cratch said. “That way, ideally, we’ll end up with a circle on a map, and the centre of that circle will be the centre of this Dreamscape.”

“Oh, I did that already,” I said.

“You did?” Creepy blinked at me.

“When?” Carla demanded.

“Ages ago. I was actually tracking the growth of the Wasteland,” I said, “but that’s really just, like, a symptom of this slo-time encroachment thing. If you go into the Wasteland far enough, even the nothingness stops,” the Myconet had told me about the phenomenon, but I definitely wasn’t going to mention strange talking mushrooms to anyone in this conversation.

“That sounds like it fits the bill,” Doctor Cratch was saying. “Did you make a circle on a map and find the last place, right in the centre, that the slo-time will overrun?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but you’re not going to like it.”