Afternoon.

I normally did not want a foreward to any of the chapters here, but this time it seems appropriate.

Since I LOVE dream sequences more than my own mother, I have added one here, in this chapter.

Now, there's going to be a few things that may not make complete sense if you do not remember reading Chapter III in the past few months, or at all.

So, enclosed is a link to Chapter III:

http://bboard.scifi.com/bboard/browse.cgi/1/5/545/27437

Also, this chapter is LONG. So, in the event that it will not all completely fit, I shall split it, and reply to this post with the remainder.

And as always, some feedback would be nice.

I am after all, ending a series many people took part in. And in fact, if you DID write something, chances are that you are in this chapter.

The final chapter will be posted Friday, provided I can get this damn crick out of my neck.

And for those of you a tad pissed at having a little longer to wait for the end?

Just look at it like an extra chapter that was not originally in the story. A bonus deleted scene in the DvD.

-darkslider
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I was dreaming again. It was the same dream I'd had about three thousand times before, without any variation.

Which would not have been that bad had the drugs that were slowly being dumped into me to remove the pain in my head not followed me into the dream world. Creating a dream world would have looked like the damn Mushroom Kingdom. Lord knows that I could have used another magical mystery tour into a land full of talking smiley clouds and magic mushrooms that made you huge and where your biggest threat was a flame spouting tortoise that could only move forward three steps and jump.

This time, though the twists WOULD be different...and I'll be damned if the medication did not have something to do with it.

At least that's what I hope, as the dream was odder than your burial rituals here.

And a lot more horrific.

My dream world became one filled with anguish. A place full of sorrowful screams and wails. A world of blood and pain.

And a place where I no longer referred all of us in this damn mix as WE, like some militant beat generation poet.

In the dream, I run...ha.

...ha.

Anyway, I run toward a young woman no older than twenty three. Her eyes doe-like and almond shaped. Her hair flowing like one of those Herbal Essence commercials, albeit without the gay workmen.

She waved to me. I, in turn, waved back.

With that good natured wave, I begin to speed up. Same as always. Same bat channel. Same bat time. Only this time, I remember that this is merely a dream, like completing High School Equivalency Exams for you people.

This time, instead of running in place forever with her just out of my reach, I stop in the middle of the field.

I touched the tall grass with my splayed fingers, letting each stalk slip through the gaps. I looked around, enjoying the simple act of standing on the meat stilts that somehow will no longer listen to their master in the real world.

I felt the wind gush around me, and the sun's rays hugged me like a lover. I smelled the air and smiled for the first time since Crème World, as the aforementioned green grass caressed my legs. The waves of wind were measured by the shine that the grass made as it bent to the will of its power. Only Home could be so peaceful. So beautiful, so....magical.

I embraced that feeling and began to run toward the waving girl in a black dress that matched her hair to the nine.

And as I ran...

Ran.

Me.

Running.

Ha.

What a cruel place the dream realm is. It takes the one thing that you desire above all else, and gives it to you, allowing you time to bask in it's presence, just long enough for you to get acquainted with it. Then, after the comfort and overall well being you get from it, you wake up.

Alone.

Without a damn thing. You let out an anguished cry and scream endlessly as if the item had been stolen. You damn precious taken by some midget with hairy feet, hiding just outside your grasp.

Even in my most wild dream, here...I knew for a goddamn fact that the only running I'd ever do was with urine as my bladder released and my body, without the ability to control it, would let it run down my leg like an elderly man.

Even still, I ran. I knew my legs were now as active as the 50% of you out there on the Gubment's dime and cheese, watching the antics of Jerry Springer's proof that evolution in humans was not possible, as most of what scientists would call the missing link are sleeping with their sisters and grandmothers in Alabama.

The girl before me waved ever more furiously, willing my arrival by hailing an unseen taxi behind me. Arm bobbing like Blinquer's head not too long ago.

I arrived at her in a short amount of time, and she smiled. It shone like the sun above us. And wiped those previous thoughts away.

"It's about time. Jeezus, you'd think you were paraplegic with the way you run." She laughed and spoke as if we'd just been talking a minute before and had just begun a playful race in the field right at the middle of the conversation.

"What...? Hey....I..." I said, choking back the tears that had run down my face every day since I awoke without the ability to walk.

Ouch.

She looked aside as she shook her head at my words, as if hearing something I could not. Whatever she heard upset her a great deal, because she began to sob outwardly what I was fighting inside.

A shadow passed over the spot where we were standing, leaving us in a place far colder than Antarctica, your beds when the cows are in heat, or a tomb.

"You need to follow that path," she pointed to a little trail behind her, and wiped a tear away. "You'll find all you need in that tree over there."

Uh-huh.

Right, bag lady. RIGHT. That information could only have been sent by the earwax gnomes.

And a tree?

"Have you been smoking some of the leaves from that tree there, sweets? 'Cause the only answer I am going to get there is why most dendraphiliac's tender parts don't last long in that fetish."

She cracked a smile that was sadder than the previous sob and motioned.

Me, being on dream legs and having less control over them than my real ones, followed her command.

Although as I past, I looked at her again.

She was now roughly four years old, in a dress too big.

"Disposi—"

She shot a look over at me. "Don't call me that!! That's not my name!!"

I nodded.

Fine.

I reached the tree that was nearly ten feet away in two steps. As I did someone popped out behind the tree, in full costumed glory that was the Scarecrow from Oz.

TemporalFlux danced around, laughing like the village idiot, spinning our broken timer on his finger, and then shoving it in his mouth as he finished his rendition of ‘If I only had a brain."

What the....

"Tf? Are you all right?"

TemporalFlux giggled and did a mild jig in response. Slapping his thighs and doing the hambone to some odd tune that only school children know, or something you people hum at the Ho-Downs you have.

I was going to get as much information out of him as I was from a VCR programming booklet. "Tf can you tell me why exactly –"

"Nope, nope nope!" He sang, slapping the tree in tune to the ‘nopes'.

Interesting. At least this Tf had rhythm.

He ended the Q and A by ending the beat on my forehead with a smack and tugged at my arm, urging me go with him down the path that appeared from nowhere.

Fine.

I walked with Cool-Mo-Dee in a straw hat for a while, until I came upon a cowering HunterD in the rattiest lion costume I have ever seen.

He meekly looked up and smiled. Tf began a new beat, similar to one played by Bugs Bunny's Theme Music while on stage in that cane and hat.

Each beat seemed to make Hunter desire to make himself smaller and smaller. He cowered in the grass.

"Dude, get up. It's okay. There's no one here but us." I said softly.

"BADA BUM BUM!" Tf loudly finished the song by first slapping me and then Hunter on the head with each BUM. Hunter screamed and dove into the tall grass surrounding the path we were on.

"ENOUGH!" I yelled at them.

At the trees.

At the path.

At the damn sky.

"Yeah. All right." I yelled behind me, releasing my frustration at the situation and yelling at God knows who. " I UNDERSTAND THE THIRD GRADE ANALOGY. The Wizard of Oz. A GIRL'S JOURNEY HOME WITH PEOPLE WHO NEED COMPLETION. TemporalFlux's pride in intellect was his flaw in our journey. Hunter's courage lead to his misunderstanding and miscalculation in times of need in many worlds. Hell, I half expect –"

I looked down. My legs looked like something out of a Mega Man video game.

"Yep. Tin Man. I get it. CLEVER. My caring took each scenario's reality and distorted it." I kicked the dust, startling The HunterLionKing in the grass. He hid beneath his enormously large paws.

"What's next," I asked "darkslider in a dress?"

As if on cue, someone in a dress did appear from just over the next ridge of the hill in front of us. But it wasn't darkslider. It was Her again. Little as she was the last time I saw her.

She laughed and pointed as she walked toward us.

"Look at you. So sill-E."

"Where's Toto, Dorothy?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

A large black wolf/dog appeared from behind her, moving to her side and staring intently at me.

TemporalFlux signaled his arrival with a BUM BUM BUM BUUUUMMMM....

And Hunter whimpered.

Dorothy, however, seemed to hardly notice him at all and addressed me.

"There's not a lot of time, you see. I don't have the ability to sit here and tutor you in what's going on. All I can do is take you through yourself and to Him so that maybe you can talk...and fix this." Dorothy said, her little voice punctuating the words in ways that no adult could.

"Now, if you can get Hunter to get up, we can all go...it's not far."

Hunter got up with newfound courage at her words. The dog nodded at her.

Jesus, the drugs I was on. I half expected a cow and crow with white Mickey Mouse Gloves to fall from the sky and begin dancing by moving up and down to Tf's beat.

"And Lassie here...is...?" I asked. She looked over into the general direction of the dog, but it seemed that she couldn't quite see him. Yet, she answered anyway.

"Your representation of....whatever you wish it to be." She responded and turned, taking Hunter's hand.

Right. This was all my idea, which told me a great deal. Not about the whole Oz thing, mind you...but the whole Judy Garland undertone told me a few things.

Namely, that I should really check into Bath Houses and beef up my collection of Show Tunes.

And yet I followed anyway. What else could I have done? It was, after all, only a dream.

Lil' Judy was right. In no time we reached the Emerald City, only instead of made up midgets greeting us, behind the large doors, an alley showed itself. And in the cobble stoned French alley there was a small party.

Complete with people I knew.

Nobuyuki sat at an iron rod table, talking with HurriKain drinking coffee. SpaceTime and Sabre_Edge idly chatted while looking through a window.

Dorothy had chosen to vanish as we entered to the small soiree. Not that any of us noticed, because Tf was too busy singing and Hunter was trying to hide behind the six inch flower pot next to us. This soon stopped though because the guests began to move, and did something completely unexpected.

Each person at the party stood and applauded our arrival.

Even with our ridiculous outfits.

Or maybe because of them. Such horrid lapses in fashion judgment deserve some sort of reward. Even if it is applause simply for bravery.

The black dog however, seemed non-plussed at this little display as he smelled something and ran off to get whatever it was.

Some protector.

Stupid dogs. I could have done better with a damn goldfish OUT of the water than I could with that damn dog.

I watched it as it ran into a store at the end of the alley. I turned to tell my companions about this, before realizing that I was hanging out with a catatonic lion and a singing loon in a scarecrow outfit. My forgetfulness was rewarded with a ‘BUM BA DUM" and a slap to the forehead by said scarecrow.

"Okay, that's the LAST TIME," I yelled at TemporalFlux.

Not that he noticed. He was already being lead away by HurriKain.

With that, the party settled in and began to look as it did when we arrived, save that different people talked to each of the three of us separately.

SpaceTime and Sabre took Hunter and began to talk with him. HurriKain was still speaking to Tf, leaving me to my own devices.

I began to walk up and down the street we were in, looking into the occasional window, and listening to the clank of metal that my metal legs made on the floor. All of them lead into what appeared to be another landscape, or world. One shop window held the beach within, another the sky. Another seemed to hold a mountain range within its grasp. I kept walking until I hit a shop that held a stormy sea cliff landscape. A landscape that seemed to be moving.

I looked back. Everyone was talking idly and paying zero attention to me.

I turned back to the window and leaned in to look at the sea cliff when I fell. Sideways.

And suddenly I was on the sea cliff. Dark clouds above. The sea raging below.

Jesus, I've had some crazy dreams, but this one takes the cake.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" a voice answered from behind me.

I turned. It was Nobuyuki. Sitting on a rock and staring serenely toward the waves.

"Sure, if you like Banshees and Death," I retorted and turned back toward the waves.

Nobuyuki seemed to ponder my words, and seemed to choose his own even more carefully.

"Which is why I am here," Noby said. "This place is a perfect image of your travels thus far, is it not?"

"Yeah, sure. Stormy, oddly interesting, and completely without end," I answered.

"MMmhhmmm..." Noby said. "You seem to understand, yet you do not comprehend."

"Thanks Noby, but I think I get the gist of my own subconscious more than you, an obvious fragment of it."

"shhhh...." He laughed. "Always talking, never listening. Seeing. Or being. Can't you just look at this and enjoy it?"

"I can enjoy this whenever I want. This is a dream. My dream, so I imagine I have seen this before in my life somewhere," I snipped. "Just as I can end this whenever I want."

"Is that so?" he asked laughing at some unknown joke. "You think this is your dream, your words, or even your thoughts about all of what you are seeing?"

"Aren't all dreams that way, Laughing Boy?" I asked, turning and looking into his eyes. "I am the center here, and all of this is some sort of message from me TO me."

"Maybe...."

"Maybe?!" I yelled, anger building for no reason. "Who the hell are YOU to tell me what is and what is NOT? What're you, my father?!"

He smiled. "As a matter of fact...I am."

"Is that so?"

"Yes," he answered assuredly. "You, Tf, and the original Hunter are all my creations. My children, if you will."

Right. And darkslider was my auntie.

I scoffed and looked toward the ocean.

"Okay, Dad. And tell me...why then was I made?"

"You were made to explore new worlds and tales. Help others explore the depths of characters. Pick up where the Others left off. And even to complete the story they initially screwed up."

The waves sound on the rocks made more sense than this horseshit.

"The others? I dunno if Mom would want to know about your infidelity products, Pop." I joked.

"No, no. Not , my creations. The Others were those that came First. Sliders was named for them." Noby said.

"So, let me see if I understand this. You MADE me." Noby nodded. "You then DIRECTED my life in order to finish the exploits of ACTORS in a TELEVISION SHOW, and now, you wish to tell me all of this in an effort to get my thanks?"

Noby merely looked at me.

Right. Somehow, no matter how much morphine I have in me, there's NO WAY I was going to buy that.

It was my turn to laugh. I looked over at him, cackling like a loon.

"Right. And who's my momma? Informant? Lord. At least I got YOUR looks."

Even HE had to laugh at that. Yet, he didn't.

Damn. I thought it was funny.

He simply sighed and continued.

"Look, I just want to apologize. Your journey was never meant to become this. Ever. I wanted you to get home and be happy at the end of the Tale. I never would have created this had I known your fate."

"You? Who're you?"

"I am the Creator here. I made all of this...and even you." He sighed. "Weren't you listening to me?"

"Ohh...kay. Someone else has been hitting the oregano a little too hard. I have parents. A life. I existed long before I even knew you, Noby. So, no offense, but I think you have some control issues."

He laughed again. The man must have had an unending supply of nitric oxide that turned on at odd times. I make a hilarious joke and get nothing. I call him mentally unstable and it's the damn joke of the century.

"S, I am sorry...to you and your companions. I saw that there was potential in your story...nothing more. YOU as a character could have grown and changed from your birth. But you have not. TemporalFlux, is just a shadow of what he even started out as. And Hunter? Well, he's dead, so it really doesn't matter anymore. I feel to blame, and am sick to my stomach when I see what will be. The others, they made the adventure happy. Peaceful. This one, well, he ends it."

I listened and looked out again at the ocean. The clouds were getting angrier. The storm was coming.

"Who is going to end it?"

"Your Shiva. The Destroyer."

"Huh?" I asked, more confused than ever, "Some dad you turned out to be, you can't even stop someone from killing me."

He, like many dads of the late 20th century, ignored what I said and continued on with his own thoughts.

"And now, your End is out my hands. I wish I could change the inevitable, but I cannot. All I can change is the consciousness in you, hoping to give you another kind of life, and tell you goodbye."

"Dude, for the last TIME, you could not have controlled..."

My words fell from my lips as I turned. He was gone...right before my eyes. And like that, I was back in the street.

I looked around. Noby had left the room.

I walked on, shaking my head.....