Prequel 3: The Hangover.
Agent 22 + 1 clawed her way out of sleep and experimentally waved her hands in front of her eyes to see if hands and eyes were functioning. They were, but very badly. She felt peculiar. She had a splitting headache and felt like she had swallowed half a litre of petrol and thrown a match down afterwards. This was because she had. Whoops.
She also felt strange in an undescribable way. This was until she realised she had shrunk to the size of a Tim Tam atom. (Tim Tam, symbol Tt, has an atomic number of 402 and an atomic weight of 612.34. It is the only known non metal with an atomic number above 215. The Powers That Be in Chemistry know of seven isotopes. Surprisingly, isotope 614 has a half life of 60 years and miraculously the rare isotope 601 is stable. Isotope 601 is only found in Orange Tim Tams. No one knows why this is. No one cares.)
Agent 2 2 + 1 summoned her weakened powers from the deep recesses of her mind and resized herself before quantum effects seriously disrupted her metabolism. She then curled up into a ball, moaned unhappily, swallowed sixteen Panadols and fell into a coma.
Sometime later, the Agent who had resumed her daytime identity of Hyperbolia was walking along outside Pizza Hut, when she encountered Spike Boy trying equally unsuccessfully to combat a massive hangover. He had adopted the method of trying to thrust his head through his gutter, in the hope that the pain would distract him from his other pains. Wrong. He kept trying anyway.
Hyperbolia gently pulled him away, tied him up and continued walking. She had to think. There was a chink in the armour of the Mathia now. The fearsome Mutilator had been taken from Ellipsia and Möbiusa. How could she use this to break their stranglehold on the former utopia of Orange? She could restore Orange to peace and prosperity, to happiness and bliss. Maths would be distributed far and wide, like manna for the masses. And then, when everyone was a hopeless addict... Hyperbolia would take control.
Meanwhile, Wet Willie was once again in search of a man. She had acquired herself a job as a travelling encyclopaedia and semi-automatic saleswoman and had made her way to Molong. She came upon a innocuous Treehouse. A joyful song drifted down from the trees. Wet Willie sighed. Obviously she had come upon a fountain of purity. She snorted and climbed up, followed by Win Tin Tin.
She was met at the top by a Real Man hugging a stuffed dog, followed by a six fingered girl, an anaemic vegetarian, and a well maintained and polished mode of transport. Within a week of knowing Wet Willie, the Girl From Molong had acknowledged her true home, The Anaemic had become The Vampire, the GrumbleBum started making 'A-ha, a-ha, a-ha...' noises and the Real Man became the Complex Father. The Club For People With Too Many Brains, And Who Can't Think of Anything Better To Do With Them Than IQ Tests had become the Wet Willie Glee Club.
While Wet Willie single handedly made Utopia's newspapers more interesting, things were not going well for the Mathia. TANGENT had arrived in force, on the basis of Hyperbolia's evidence from the previous night and had arrested the Mathia. Ellipsia and Möbiusa had been stretched, pinched, poked at and finally had undergone a complete mindscan. They were so evil that the MindScanner had been forced to try to divide every number in its memory banks by zero and simultaneously by infinity, thus blowing out its circuits, and also, fortuitously, both Ellipsia's and Möbiusa's personalities and memories. No mind reading has been conducted in the negative dimension since, otherwise Spike Boy would have been locked up after Episode 5.
Mind writers still existed and the MindMaker was used to plant the personalities and memories of sweet little nuns into their brains. Mother Derivative and Sister Gradient were released on an unsuspecting dimension, and the Wet Willie Glee Club were now the baddest guys in business.
Meanwhile, Hyperbolia had stumbled away from Pizza Hut dragging Spike Boy, trussed like a chicken, behind her. She stumbled up to Red Rooster and was halted by the fact that the 70-ft Woman had fallen into a coma on the road. Hyperbolia sighed ponderously. She didn't think of anything to do, so she sighed ponderously again. And again. At this point two strange figures had climbed over the 70-ft Woman's head, each wearing a bright yellow bike helmet. It was Parallel Line-us, who could never meet himself/ves. Both figures faced in the same direction at all times and walked precisely 1.62 metres apart at all times.
Hyperbolia had just said hello to her old friend when the 70-ft Woman woke up and stared at Parallel Line-us with bloodshot eyes. She promptly picked him/them up and threw him half way to Mudgee. Medical opinion currently theorises that, had it not been for the fluoro yellow bike helmet, the 70-ft Woman couldn't have seen Parallel Line-us with that bad a hangover. This is why no one intelligent wears a helmet in the negative dimension.
The 70-ft Woman felt rather better. Being 70 feet tall had spread the Maths toxins out, and her hangover faded out slowly. She has preferred 70 feet ever since, despite pleas from nuclear physicists to investigate further the quantum flux at the Plank length. (She once, however, while under the influence, shrunk to the size where spacetime has eleven dimensions. She has refused completely to talk about this experience, except to say that she felt shallow.)
She was about to open her mouth when Sensai Garden Gnome arrived in an awful hurry, with a watering can stuck on his head. 'I sense a trans-dimensional crossover via the uncertainty principle from the zeroth dimension,' he panted.
'Nonsense,' cried Hyperbolia. 'That can now only be attempted via the sewage works. No one would dare try.'
'You don't know the Dotlanders,' Sensai Garden Gnome informed her ominously.
He was right. At that moment Prince Full-Stop of Dotland was making his way through the interdimensional sewage system and was approaching the negative dimension.
Soon even Hyperbolia, whose quasi-transcendental-multidimensional powers were a bit hazy, could sense it. (Note: Good quasi-transcendental-multidimensional powers can only be developed by a visit to the eleventh dimensional regions or by very close association with watering cans. Thus the 70-ft Woman and Sensai Garden Gnome are the only citizens of the negative dimension who possess decent quasi-transcendental-multidimensional powers.)
Hyperbolia and Sensai Garden Gnome quickly decided that the only thing to do was welcome the transdimensional immigrant. They had to hide the recent history of Orange from any visitor, in case the Powers That Be discovered what a worthless shithole the Negative Dimension was and shut it down. For good. The pair quickly took Spike Boy back to the Pizza Hut gutter and left him there with instructions to make friends with the newcomer. Sensai Garden Gnome would later pretend to be a sage and guide the immigrant into combat with the relatively harmless Wet Willie Glee Club. He would be safe enough as a Super-Zero. On no account was he to discover the festering evil that lurked in the collective subconscious of this region.
Hyperbolia would be the aloof temptress. Sensai Garden Gnome would be the bungling leader. Spike Boy would be the adhesive friend (a role he was thoroughly absorbed by very quickly). It was done. Hyperbolia and Sensai Garden walked off.
If they had turned around they would have seen a very sad and sorry figure stumble into the Pizza Hut carpark and collapse in an exhausted heap crying for his mummy.
Discriminant Boy had arrived.