TWO TICKETS FOR THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, PLEASE. Bill was sitting on a stool, leaning over the counter at the waiter he was ogling with all his concentration. The waiter seemed absolutely determined to ignore Bill’s existence. Bill picked up on this, coughing and trying again, sticking out his hand. I SAID, TWO TICKETS FOR THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, PLEASE AND THANK YOU. Yet the waiter did nothing. Bill sighed out of irritation and extended his hand in earnest this time. With a soft crackle, it lit up in demonic flame. IF YOU GIVE ME TWO TICKETS FOR THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, I’LL BESTOW UPON YOU A FLAMING TONGUE WITH WHICH YOU CAN SPEAK LIGHT, SETTING YOU ON THE PATH TO CONQUERING ONE OF FICTION’S PRIME UNIVERSES. I CAN SEE IT IN YOUR FUTURE, KID! But not even tales of intergalactic conquest did anything to stop the waiter currently polishing dishes. The fire in Bill’s hand went out with a hiss.
Bill’s entire body began to come undone. The bricks forming his triangular frame rumbled and vibrated, his cancerous eye hissing and sparking at the seams. Right as he was about to quite literally go nuclear, Flumpty placed a hand on Bill’s lack of a shoulder. Let me do the talking. I’m an egg. I’m good at this. Bill’s eye darted around in confusion, and tentatively, he floated away from the stool. Flumpty sat down in his place, staring at the waiter. The waiter, of course, continued his monotonous actions.
Then Flumpty did something quite strange (though that really could be said about anything he does). He closed the limitless beacons of heavenly spices that were his eyes and mouth, his arms and legs retreating inwards so that he resembled a large, black egg in totality. And as Bill watched, the plate the waiter was cleaning flew out of his hands, zooming across the Restaurant at the End of the Internet. It bounced off a window, shot towards a hanging chandelier, and slammed into it at full force. Pieces and chunks broke off with the type of loud noise you’d expect, and the chandelier hurtled earthwards with a crash. The plate ricocheted in a slapstick manner across several surfaces, until it hit Flumpty square in the spot where his face should have been. He flew backwards off of his stool from the impact, and Bill caught him right before he would have toppled to the ground entirely. And it was then that Bill noticed the plate on Flumpty’s face.
The injuries the plate had sustained had turned it into an almost impeccable recreation of the visage of Dr. W. D. Gaster.
It was this sight that caused the waiter’s head to tilt upwards with interest, not the shenanigans resulting from the plate being moved in the first place — to those, he had continued to go through the motions of cleaning the plate, despite there not being a plate to clean. But seeing Gaster’s face caused the waiter to look upwards for no immediately discernible reason. Bill blinked, and moved forwards. NOW THAT WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, I— He never finished his sentence, for at that moment the countertop was torn to pieces, and both Bill and Flumpty (who had regained his original form) were knocked backwards, despite the efforts Bill had gone through to make sure Flumpty hadn’t repeated the mistakes of his namesake.
After Bill picked himself back up and adjusted his hat, he glared at the other end of the room. As the smoke shifted away, the waiter stepped through, turning from a turbulent afterimage of a man into a turbulent afterimage of a man, but in front of the smoke this time. As Bill and Flumpty watched, the skin and clothes of the waiter melted away, forging in their place a hazy, shifting mess of black and white. Every so often the figure would blink out of existence entirely, only to reform a second or two later. Their misshapen, melted face matched the broken plate perfectly. Bill looked astonished, turning to Flumpty, who had sustained no damage. HOW... DID YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THAT?
WELL, NOW THAT ALL THE CARDS HAVE BEEN DEALT AND WE CAN TELL WHO’S A DEMON, WHO’S AN EGG, AND WHO SHOULDN’T EXIST, I— Dr. Gaster slowly glided forwards, his long black body resembling both a rigid statue and a rippling cloak. CURIOUS, CURIOUS, YET CURIOUSER. FIRST IMPRESSIONS TEND TO LAST. YET SO DO WRONG IMPRESSIONS. WHAT GAVE YOU THE IDEA. THAT THE EDGE OF TOMORROW WAS IN THE HANDS OF A FRAGILE DOCTOR. Every word he spoke sounded carefully and deliberately placed, yet he hadn’t spoken anything at all — it sounded as though the rushing motions of millions of hands had formed the words together via deep dream machine. IF YOU NEED TO KNOW, DOC, I’D HEARD THAT THIS FINE ANTIDISESTABLISHMENT WAS CLOSE TO ONE OF THE SCHEDULED STOPS FOR THE INFINITY TRAIN! AND SEEING AS IT WAS THE CLOSEST SPOT TO ME AND MY PAL OF POULTRY BYPRODUCT RIGHT HERE, I WANTED TO STOP BY. I ASSUMED YOU’D AT LEAST HAVE TICKETS FOR THE TRAIN.
Gaster turned his head slightly, looking across the empty restaurant. THE TRAIN KEEPS RUNNING. THE INEVITABLE END OF EXISTENCE. A BOUNDARY I CANNOT CROSS. ONE OF MANY. STUCK HERE IN THIS SLICE OF BACKWARDS NIRVANA, I CARVE MY SOLEMN VOW. WRITTEN IN TILES BY ANGRY HANDS: “HOPE RIDES ALONE.” Gaster’s left hand extended outwards, its fingers twitching and defacing themselves every second. EVERY TICKET, SOLD. EVERY FORTUNE, TOLD. THERE IS NO GOLDEN TICKET. THERE IS AN EGG. THERE ARE SUCH THINGS AS MIRACLES AND MAGIC. BEGINNINGS. ENDINGS. NEITHER EXIST. ONLY A LIMITLESS CONTINUATION. When Bill turned to look at Flumpty, he saw that he was smoking from the Pipe of Days, one of the oldest drug-based artifacts in Fiction. Flumpty exhaled a ring of kaleidoscopic smoke that bounced across the room before unfolding into the complete works of Poe, son of Het Hemera, the legendary warrior that held MIRE in their essence.
Bill and Flumpty waited in silence for several seconds, looking straight ahead intensely until Bill turned to Flumpty. OKAY, WHILE HE’S DISTRACTED BACK THERE COOKING UP A MEAL THAT SHOULDN’T EXIST, HOW MANY THINGS DO YOU THINK WE CAN GET AWAY WITH STEALING.
Seven minutes later, Gaster returned, sliding through the halls of the Restaurant and making his way to the counter. His array of hands held two plates of severed heads, one with purple thyme that didn’t actually seem to be Waluigi Thyme. When he looked around and saw that every table, window, ceiling fixture, condiment, drink from the bar, and utensil, as well as twenty of the conceptual food essences had been ripped from their foundations (not to mention the ceiling itself), he set the plates down and looked in abject horror. A second later, he turned to the plates and saw that they had vanished. A Venezuelan dollar had been left behind as compensation.
Gaster held it in one of his hands and crunched it as he stared into the limitless starry sky, a smile of cruelty gracing his marred face.
< 1.1: THAT LOGIC | 1.2: HOPE RIDES ALONE | 1.3: WHY "INFINITY?" >