Paneldemonium, Part 5

by Marc Richard

An incursion of Time Travel Week

Zeke: Who?

Marc: The robots in the audience. Notice any difference from the way they looked before?

Kira: Before what? Now?

Marc: Of course, "before now." If it was "after now," it would be the future, right?

Kira: Okay, but how long before now?

Marc: A lot. I'd even go so far to say, "A long time ago, in a g--"

Zeke: Careful...no illegal Star Wars quoting here. They're the competition, remember?

Marc: That's what I'm worried about. Remember how the robots in the audience looked when our discussion started?

Kira: Sure -- like the "Snoopy-head" battle droids from "The Phantom Menace."

IJD: Good memory.

Kira: What's to remember? They're still sitting right there in front of us!

Marc: Yes, but check out the back row. Now do you see what I'm talking about?

Kira: Hey, you're right. Where did those new guys come from?

IJD: They look just like the improved "Robocop 2" battle droids from "Attack of the Clones."

Marc: Roger, roger.

Kira: But that's impossible! That means we'd have to blame hyperspace instead of subspace!

IJD: Huh?

Zeke: She means that "hyper" is to "wars" as "sub" is to "trek." The terms "space" and "star" cancel each other out because they're found on each side of the equation.

IJD: What equation? There aren't any numbers in it!

Zeke: Pfft. Don't you know anything about basic algebra? Nobody uses numbers in algebra! It's all letters and symbols!

Kira: And unknown quanties -- like my two favourite ones, "x" and "y"!

Zeke: Exactly! After all, that's how algebra is formally defined: "a generalization of arithmetic dealing with the abstract representation and computation of unknown quantities."

IJD: In English, please?

Zeke: It's the kind of math you use when you don't know what you're talking about.

(Applause.)

IJD: I'm getting more worried about those droids in the back row.

Kira: Why? They're clapping, aren't they?

IJD: No, I think they're arming their integrated wrist blasters.

Marc: Maybe they're here to prevent us from separating.

IJD: From Canada?

Marc: From the Republic.

Zeke: What did I just tell you about illegal Star Wars quoting?

Kira: Look who's talking -- you're the one who said that he wanted to be Emperor five minutes ago!

Zeke: That's not true! I want to be Emperor now, not in the past!

Kira: Would you settle for being Emperor in the future?

Zeke: It depends. How far in the future?

Kira: Five minutes.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Comments? Complaints? Contact the author, Marc Richard.

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