The Slightly Sticky Revelation

  It had been a long week for Wizard Muddlepox. Not that time really mattered, because as everyone knew, time in the S.H.I.T U. University had the consistency of slightly undercooked porridge and the punctuality of a wizard's diet plan. But still, it had felt like a long week. Mostly because of the tentacles.

  At first, Muddlepox had thought the tentacles were part of the Ascending Abyss—an eldritch entity with a flair for dramatic entrances and a fondness for alliteration. But then the tentacles turned out to be holding teacups, and that was when he got suspicious.

  “Professor Muddlepox,” said Archchancellor Weatherwax, peering over the rim of his spell-enhanced teacup, “do you happen to remember signing a lease for the multiverse?”

  “Not… precisely, sir,” Muddlepox said, trying to ignore the clingy furry creature currently licking his robe. It looked like a tribble Chat had done a hostile merger with a shag carpet.

  “Well, it appears we’ve been squatting on a Star Federation ship for the last 29 chapters,”

  Weatherwax muttered. “And these furry devils aren’t greebles or feebles or—what was it, Stibbons?”

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  No they are “Cling-ons, sir,” said Ponder Stibbons, who had been demoted to Assistant Junior Temporal Integrity Manager after the incident with the self-folding time trousers.

  “Right. Cling-ons. Bloody adorable little plague-bearers,” Weatherwax growled. “Won’t stop hugging. You throw one off, three more turn up. Like emotional fungus.”

  In truth, the USS Hemorrhoid (named after Admiral Backburner’s mother) had been lost in a wormhole incident involving overconfident engineering and a very undercooked curry. The resulting rift in space had dumped them unceremoniously into the ??world’s basement reality—something even the gods tended to avoid due to the existential mildew.

  Muddlepox was still trying to process it all.

  “So… we’re not in Ankh-MMOp.ork?”

  “No,” Stibbons said, “we’re in a malfunctioning holodeck powered by belief, literary cliché, and four hamsters on caffeine.”

  “And the plague?”

  “A holographic narrative virus. Turns everything into melodrama unless neutralized by satire or aggressively applied puns.”

  Muddlepox groaned. He hated satire. It made his eyebrows itch.

  “I think I liked it better when I thought the plague was just an ancient darkness born of forgotten magic and irresponsible necromancy.”

  “Well,” said Weatherwax, picking a cling-on off his hat, “you’d better get used to the idea.

  Because in Chapter 79, the ship’s AI becomes sentient, starts writing its own romantic subplots, and promotes the entire wizarding faculty to ‘Emotional Support Druid.’”

  “Oh bugger,” Muddlepox sighed, as a cling-on huddled .

  And somewhere deep in the engine room, the Ascending Abyss had taken up knitting new plots.