A picaresque journey through time, space, and popularity contests, by Kor and Andrew Dunn.

There was a small street right next to the Coudenberg palace in the heart of Brussels. No one ever came there. It was cramped and filthy, and the houses had long been abandoned as they neighboured the palace’s only toilet, which was a real curse considering the large number of retainers and courtiers as well as food and drink available inside the palace’s walls. The sudden noise of a hundred photo cameras taking pictures simultaneously, therefore, passed unnoticed, excepting a surprised couple who were trying to use the toilet for different indecent purposes. There was a pig bladder vending machine in the lavatory for a reason, after all.

In that small street, an image began to take shape – hardly visible at first, but clearer and clearer with each click of the camera. And then, out of nowhere, it was there: an exciting red-and-yellow box with an enthusiastic purple font inviting people to take their “Photo NOW!!!”
The little curtain swung open, and a stiff figure stepped out, stretching out his arms. “God, it’s cramped in there,” he complained. He pushed his hand through his unkempt hair, turned around and admired the photo box, a vague smile appearing on his face. “You’re not going to believe what it’s turned into this time!”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” said a disgruntled young man stepping out of the box. “A photo booth. Nice. Could do with some more exclamation marks and bright colours for that extra period detail. Where are we now, anyway?”
“Brussels, 1436! The court of Philip the Good.”
“Ah, great. How is this different from Dijon, 1396?”
“In every possible way. Firstly, this is forty years later, and we’re now in Brabant, not Burgundy. Brabant under the Burgundian dukes, admittedly, but –“
“It’s all Burgundian to me. May I at least pick the destination next time?”
“But we already went to Scotland once!”
"We have the whole of time and space at our disposal! For God's sake, can't we visit some different galaxies, foil intergalactic hordes bent on domination, witness the death of stars?"
"We have!" insisted the Unkempt One.
"I don't mean Elvis. Anyway, I think spiking his cheeseburgers was a little bit cold, personally." The younger one sniffed.
"You can talk. You're the one who decided to spice up our visit to Henry I's court with a surfeit of lampreys."
"Not my fault the man was a glutton. And anyway, I was bored with courtly intrigue. Intrigue's too lively a word, in fact. I still am bored with it."
The first man hushed him.
"Let's get in there and slay them. Or rather, let's not. Let's get in there and quietly observe, soaking up the atmosphere."
"God almighty. Whatever you say, Dotkor."

The Dotkor strode on confidently, Andrew following in his wake. He knew where he had to go – he had studied maps of medieval courts for much of his thus far interminably long life, and this was not limited to their entrance, an obstacle he passed simply by flashing his psychic papers in front of a somewhat surprised guard at the main gate.
“Watch out,” warned the Dotkor, “There are some traps in the corridor here. The Burgundians thought them entertaining.”
“God almighty,” complained Andrew, as water spurted up from the floor and flour fell drown from the ceiling. “Bloody courts.”
If the court was anything, it was not bloody. It was a meticulously clean place (if one looked past the water stains and flour spread out in the hallways) and it seemed certain that any filth would be cleaned up after the guests. The wide flagstones covering the floors on ground level were black-and-white, in standard chequers motif, and quality tapestries and paintings decorated the walls. The already wide corridor led out into the impressive hall, where masses of people were having dinner, or serving it.
“Look, now this is court life!”

“I still see no difference with Dijon,” said a somewhat sour Andrew, who had been dreaming again of wild adventures on the other side of the universe, taking place in the future with black holes and growling monsters and space rhinos. He regretted the dream about space rhinos.
“Their shoes are a little longer still. Is that the progress of humanity from 1396 to 1436?”
“Hush!” said the Dotkor, grabbed a seat right next to a beautiful woman and tried to convince her he could show her the best things in the universe. It earned him little more than a slap in the face and an empty chair beside him. The Dotkor sighed.
"Cheer up, you know what they say about Belgian women, eh?" smirked Andrew.
"No."
"Um... they're... bad in bed?"
"Shut up," sighed the exasperated Dotkor. Andrew cast his eyes about the long tables, which were being covered in food. Roast meat was a theme, it seemed.

"Right. Well, we might as well make the best of it. Where's the menu?"
"This is 1436. There are no menus, you pillock. Just grab the nearest whole roast pig and tuck in. And don't dare take that fork out again," the Dotkor warned him. "It was bad enough in Dijon, having to convince that poor bishop that it wasn't a pixie's war trident. Stick to the knife and your fingers, you uncivilised savage."
Andrew glared at the table. Even if there had been a menu, he thought, it wouldn't have served the Dotkor well. Poor bastard was dyslexic. A dyslexic Dutch Time Lord! Couldn't make it up. He watched the Dotkor sullenly as he pawed at a plump serving girl who deftly stepped out of the way. The Dotkor had been after every poor medieval woman he could reach, with little success. Andrew gathered that the Dotkor had been on the lookout for a female companion, but they'd been so thin on the ground that he'd been forced to take out a newspaper ad. "Single man, GSOH, burns at the heart of the universe, WLTM similar-minded people for travels c. time + space and maybe more." He'd answered the ad out of fascinated curiosity, as had a number of others, but only one of those was female and her awful Cockney accent and massive lips had put the Dotkor off, it seemed. Andrew had an inkling that the Dotkor had picked him because he was the only one who knew who the Grand Bastard of Burgundy was. He was starting to regret that knowledge.

A noblewoman squealed and Andrew turned round to see the Dotkor standing behind her, looking as angelic as it is possible to look when one has just squeezed the buttock of the Countess of Nevers's sister. Andrew sighed.
“Ah well,” said the Dotkor, who cared about Burgundian court culture almost as much as he cared about Burgundian women, “Let’s enjoy the laughs.” He sauntered over to the main table, where a court jester was performing, while waving a vague greeting to the Duke of Burgundy, who raised his eyebrows at this impudent behaviour. Andrew tugged along half a pig, the only relief in this rotten place, and concentrated on its nourishing characteristics in an attempt to ignore the weak jokes about handkerchiefs, eunuchs, servants and minstrels. Whatever had changed at court, the standard repertoire of court jester jokes certainly hadn’t.

“Hahaha, did you hear the one about the Archbishop of Cologne?” The Dotkor enthusiastically elbowed Andrew’s side.
“Yes,” said Andrew. “I heard it. Again.”
“Ahh, this is brilliant!” sighed the Dotkor.
The pork tasted excellent, thought Andrew.
“… And forsooth, said the beggar, what spy I there twixt your legs? Marry, nuncle, is it not a purse?” The court jester had now moved on to the jokes about beggars and noblemen unwilling to pay. A thousand future comedians were spinning in their future graves. They could have powered a small city.

The eyes of the court were fixed on the jester, a short man with a hunchback and a green-red fool’s cap adorning his head. He leapt from one leg to the other, which was slightly shorter, and swung wildly with his arms in an attempt to raise tension before unveiling the response of the accosted nobleman. His jumping suddenly changed in character, no longer a carefree jump but a balancing act as if he was trying not to fall into a great ravine. His face turned into one frozen by fear, and he slipped. He fell backwards, and before he could reach the ground he had disappeared, only a slight flash marking his exit.
In unison, the court gasped.
“Where is my jester?” demanded the Duke. No one could answer him.

Andrew grabbed hold of the Dotkor’s arm with hands sticky with pig grease. “What… what was that?” Whatever the Dotkor’s bad characteristics, Andrew thought, he always gave comfortingly complicated answers to life’s problems, which, even if you yourself did not understand them, gave the idea that there was at least one person in the world who did.
“I haven’t a bloody clue,” answered the Dotkor.
“What?” said Andrew, despair audible in his voice.
“I meant, the equilibrium of time and space got disturbed to such an extent that it crenulated the poor jester, effectively sucking him into the time vortex.” He looked very serious. “And if that didn’t make sense, it must be because I’m unfamiliar with the correct English terms,” he added.

Andrew stared blankly. "Um. Good. So... what now? Does this call for enthusiastic action?"
The Dotkor wrung his hands. "Um... yes." He leapt onto the nearest table, scattering garden vegetables and greasy shanks of mutton, and hailed the shocked court. "Good people! Fear not! This shall be resolved momentarily!"
With that, he jumped down, swirled his long and anachronistic coat around him, and dashed off, full of piss and vinegar. Andrew ran after him, excitement in his eyes. This was more like it! A mystery to solve, a universe in peril! Or at least a jester, anyway. There was a slight 'thump' as a trap was set off, but the Dotkor appeared untroubled. As he bounded down the hallway with Andrew in his floury wake, his companion yelled "So what's the plan?"

"You'll see!" shouted the Dotkor excitedly.
He skidded to a halt in front of Photo NOW!!!, edged the curtain aside, and slipped into the booth. Andrew stood outside and, slightly out of breath from the headlong dash, enquired as to what was going on, receiving yet another 'shush' for his pains. The Dotkor was silent within. Then he cursed in Dutch and stormed out of the booth.
"It's engaged!"

Puzzled, Andrew sidled into the booth. The time-phone on the control console was dangling by its curled cord. He picked it up and put the receiver to his ear.
"-artha are not in at the moment. We're probably out combating aliens or Satan or something daring like that. If you'd like to leave a message, please speak after the tone, and we'll get right back. BEEEE-"
He replaced the receiver. The controls on the console were flashing urgently in a script that he didn't understand, but which the Dotkor insisted was Middle Dutch. The Dotkor squeezed into the cramped interior of the time-vessel, and ran an exasperated hand through his exasperated hair, exasperatedly.

"The dials are going mental. People are disappearing throughout history, changing the entire course of existence! The knock-on effects are massive! People are disappearing, states are being rewritten! Guelders has just... disappeared! We need to replace these people. Luckily the TWADRIS has a Universal Positioning System. We'll just enter the relevant historical persons, and it'll automatically calculate the quantum intransigence of their personality matrix. It'll find the most suitable concentration of people with similar personality attributes, triangulate their temporal and spatial location within the Vortex, and take us straight there. Then, we can replace the historical personages with the most suitable equivalents. Simple."

Andrew looked on in awe.
"This... is... awesome," he breathed. "But what about the people we take? Won't their disappearance cause problems?"
"Naaah," said the Dotkor, snorting. "Nothing that we do can upset the time-space continuum. That's a rule of time-travel narratives like this, see, otherwise none of these plots would work. Do as I say, not as I do, kind of thing."
"Ah, okay. So where are we going, then?"
The Dotkor tapped a few buttons, then kicked the console. Gears clanked, screens flashed, alarms beeped. Then three simple letters appeared on the central screen.
"Tee double-you aitch. What the hell does that mean?" asked Andrew, scratching his head.
The Dotkor smirked, and threw a lever.
"Get the riot gear," he said.

[This message has been edited by Kor (edited 06-14-2007 @ 07:52 AM).]