Episode 16: Unrest In the Negative Dimension.

The Vampire sighed, consuming yet another litre of fresh AB+ blood, which, being rare, was by far the most expensive and chic of all the blood types. In an extraordinary step for a young, healthy Vampire, she was too full of blood to have another drop.

Win Tin Tin growled pitifully and yelped. She then commenced chasing her tail around and around. And around and around and... you see the point. Total power over a whole world is mind numbingly, pitifully boring. There's no challenge to causing suffering any more. You can wave your hands and condemn every enemy to the salt mines until the end of time. It's also not much fun when some of your enemies are actually immortal, because they develop a tolerance to suffering. They also can wait for ages and can take their revenge at any point. Just for the record, the immortal characters in this saga are: Discriminant Boy, Sensai Garden Gnome (Maths being the elixir of youth), The GrumbleBum (strangely enough), Mandelbrot and The Vampire. The 70-ft Woman overcame her immortality by a visit to the quantum level, which now means she has a half life of 2.372 x 10^16 years. The others will eventually succumb, but are proving remarkably resistant to date, the record being held by Wet Willie, who is currently three times as old as the Universe, and has now got 15 000 Pensioner's Cards, not counting the one she stole from some Irish sucker.

However, you don't have to rule the world to be a bored good-for-nothing. Spike Boy has been carving stuff into gutters with his teeth since Episode 5 . Hyperbolia, despite her utter distaste for Discriminant Boy, has been hanging around since Episode 2 for lack of anything better to do. Sensai Garden Gnome waters his plants and solves simultaneous equations for kicks. The Complex Father plays (well, I use the word loosely) chess. The nuns pray and recite mathematical mantra. Come to think of it, Mandelbrot is probably the most interesting character of the lot.

But at this particular time, The Wet Willie Glee Club is shockingly bored. They divide their time between Molong and the gutter beside Pizza Hut. When in Molong, they sit around and whinge about what a hole it is. When at Pizza Hut, they sit around and boast about how superior they are to The Good Ones, and how much more competent in a food fight. But there are some hints of change in this routine. Firstly, two of their members are ruling the world, and aren't returning any favours to some old buddies. Secondly, the nuns have set up a mission near their gutter, and are so irritatingly, consistently good, that The Girl From Molong almost longs for their old, evil identities of Ellipsia and Möbiusa. Almost.

Partly to get away from the nuns, but mostly to acquire some wealth, they went to visit their ex-members in all their glory, and of course, were justifiably refused entry, due to the distaste of the leaders, and also their valid fear of The Really Bad Thing, which was second only to The Really Really Really Bad Thing, which was what Win Tin Tin faced for deserting the Mathia.

The Wet Willie Glee Club was no more suited to seizing control of the world than The Good Ones were a few episodes back, and had to crawl home in disgrace.

But it was a significant moment. Ultimately, a regime such as that controlled by the Vampire can only be successful with the support of the populace and/or the utter fear of the populace. Certainly, it wouldn't have the first, and a former member of The Wet Willie Glee Club can never inspire utter fear effectively. They were doomed, although they didn't know it yet. The lesser powers were combining against them and the greater powers were returning from a long amnesia...

Quite frankly, The Wet Willie Glee Club were very angry with The Vampire and Win Tin Tin. Their hatred overcame their distaste for the Good Ones, which was mostly due to their basic stance as the Zeros of this Saga, and partly due to their inferior IQs (except for Hyperbolia, who clocked a damn fair 170).

They sought an alliance with them, which The Good Ones, being Zeros not Heros, accepted, despite the fact that they really ought to have fought wickedness in all its forms, without help from opposing wickedness. If this story had a decent moral this act would have spelt The Good Ones' doom, but it's only morals are quite amoral, and the only thing you really need in the Negative Dimension is a taste for chocolate and/or Mathematics, anyway. A sense of decency and right gets in the way of the story.

It was at this time too, that Mother Derivative began to have some quite disturbing, and very un-sweet-little-nun-like dreams, involving power, control, some very good parties, Maths in its hallucinogen form and unadulterated malice. This was, of course, the subconscious remanets of Ellipsia returning.

The Vampire and Win Tin Tin no longer had just ordinary rebellion to cope with. The subconscious powers of evil were beginning to call their owners back to the pursuit of Ultimate Power.