Star Harbor Nights

A duck walked into the bar.

He waddled up to the bar, and ordered a drink.

The bartender said, "That'll be three-fifty."

So, the duck said, "Put it on my bill."

"I beg your pardon," said Johnny Dark, the head bartender in the Sands of Time Club.

"Hey, I'm good for it," the duck protested. "I'll settle up next week. There was a mix-up in payroll... I went south, my check went north. You know how it is."

"Arrrr, not that old canard," said a gruff and grizzled voice. Johnny turned to see another new face at the bar, a salty sea-dog with a shock of red hair, an eye patch, a peg-leg, and a hook in place of one hand. None of that was particularly unusual. What caught Johnny's eye was the top half of a miniature man protruding from the front of the sailor's trousers, manning what appeared to be a tiny wooden wheel. If the wee man‘s height was any indication, he‘d have to be standing atop the pirate‘s genitals. "Ye give that duck a line o' credit now and ye'll not see hide nor hair o' him 'till doomsday."

"I beg your pardon," Johnny Dark said again, this time to the seaman. "Did you know you have a tiny little man with a steering wheel in your pants?"

"Yarrr, yarr," the pirate said, nodding. "He's been drivin' me nuts all week. Do ye have any spiced rum?"

Johnny poured the man his drink, just in time to turn his attention to the approaching clopping of hooves. This did not surprise him; the bar was a popular watering hole for centaurs, who needed a place to meet the human women they needed to breed with in order to extend their race. Instead of one of his regulars, though, he found himself looking face to equine face with a large black stallion.

"What is this, some kind of joke?" the startled bartender asked.

“Should it be?” the stallion asked equably in a deep, bassy voice.

"This is the part where I am supposed to ask you, 'Why the long face?', no?"

"Who, me?" the horse asked. "Shucks, no, I don't have any worries... I'm on top of the world. If you were to ask me about my brother the dappled gray, though, well, that's..."

"I pray you do not finish that thought," Johnny said.

"...a horse of a different color," the horse said. "Apple martini?"

Johnny never thought he'd be happy to see the Reverend Jack, notorious con-man of the mystical world--and perpetual deadbeat--staggering up towards his bar, but at this point he was relieved to see anybody he recognized and knew wasn't just a set-up for a joke that was older than he was. He smiled at the reverend, who slumped heavily onto a bar stool. The shabbily dressed, unshaven man plunked his hand down on the counter, depositing a tiny brass lantern which cast a circle of light a few inches around on the counter.

"Johnny, my boy, would you be so kind as to consider trading this trinket for a tall and frosty libation?" the reverend asked. He gestured at the miniature lantern. "I would pay with money, but you see, I seem to have found myself..."

"...a little light," Johnny guessed. He swept the tiny lantern off the counter and obligingly provided the man with a glass of beer... imported, of course. What would constitute "domestic" to the Sands of Time Club was anybody's guess. He was in the process of trying to figure out what the dickens he would do with the tiny lantern when an ear-splitting scream resounded from the direction of the lavatories. A short time later, a man in wizards' robes emerged sheepishly from that area.

"Sorry for the screaming," the man explained to the bewildered stares that greeted him. "I just passed two stones in the bathroom."

"Oh, no!" Johnny called out. "I trust you are alright?"

"Alright? I'm fan-freakin'-tastic," the patron replied. "I'm sorry I couldn't contain my excitement, but I never thought I'd get Mick and Keith’s autographs, much less in the can. I didn't even know they came here!"

"I don't think that they do."

Johnny shook his head and surveyed the room, taking in the growing chaos as even the most irregular regulars were being pushed out by a growing number of increasingly silly manifestations. A clock whizzed around through the air, circling around the ceiling, pursued by a stick of butter. In the corner, there was a man dressed only in plastic wrap seeking psychological advice. Over near the entrance, a newly-arrived couple found themselves clotheslined by an aluminum pole as they walked into the bar.

Elsewhere, a stethoscope-wielding man dressed in medical white was telling another man, “It sounds like a classic case of Tom Jones Syndrome.”

"Is that rare?"

"It's not unusual," the doctor replied.

Johnny just barely managed to kill the cry of frustration that was welling up in his throat.

"Hey, Johnny.... a little bird told me you might need an extra set of hands tonight," a female voice said. He turned, almost afraid of what he would see. He had never been more relieved to see the distinctive face and form of Jolie, his part-time waitress. Unlike the flood of newcomers in the bar, there was nothing unusual about her appearance… or at least, nothing that fit the general pattern of the evening.

"Jolie, my lovely friend," Johnny said. "Forgive me for not commenting on your latest startling departure from conventional fashion and taste, but I'm afraid I'm at the end of my wits here. Please tell me the 'little bird' you spoke with is my dear Raven, and that you do not, in fact, have a spare set of disembodied appendages stowed about your person somewhere."

"Of course it was Raven," she replied. "Who else? And what're you talking about?"

"Ah, you see, we seem to be beset by a curse of word-play," Johnny said. "I would suspect this is another prank of Morgenstern's, but it seems petty even for him."

"What the me?" the redheaded rogue himself said, suddenly appearing in front of Johnny. As a contrast to his usual flashy mode of attire, he was dressed only in a dripping bath towel. "By the firmament, Dark... are you so lonely without me that you have to summon me away from my bath?"

"Summon you?" Johnny repeated. "No, I did not summon you... I had only just barely spoke of you and..."

"I appeared," Morgenstern said, frowning in concentration. "Lovely. Did that clumsy, clueless serving girl of yours break open a jar of literality?"

“Nobody’s broken anything, and I don’t think whoever you’re talking about is even working today,” Jolie said.

"I do not think it is anything of the sort,” Johnny said. “But something here must be causing this mess! Let us put together our heads and figure it out, so that we may be rid of all the unpleasant arrivals.“ He looked rather pointedly at Morgenstern as he finished the thought.

"Yes, I suppose the sooner you get things back to a more usual shade of abnormal, the sooner I can finish my damned bath," Morgenstern said, looking about the room.

"Could you take any other kind?" Johnny asked.

"Funny... but while you're heckling, you could be looking,” Morgenstern said. “What do you suppose? An incursion?”

“It seems that way.”

“What do you mean, an incursion?” Jolie asked.

“As you well know, being something of an accomplished worlds traveler yourself, there are an uncountable number of dimensions of reality,” Johnny said. “Some of which function in ways that are very similar to the dimension you and I call home… and others where the fundamental governing laws of reality are incompatible or even inimical to them. Among its other functions, the Sands of Time serves as a fortress, bolstering the walls of reality around the ‘earth-like’ dimensions in order to prevent them being compromised or corrupted by direct contact with a more exotic realm.”

 “So, are we like under attack, then?” Jolie asked.

“Not directly, no… you see, there are a series of four mystical barriers that protect the Club, arranged around the outside of it in concentric circles, if such terms can be applied,” Johnny said. “Though one, two, or even three of them at a time have been penetrated before, it is impossible for a foreign dimension to forcibly invade through the Sands unless all four walls are breached.”

“But… what would happen if the fourth wall was broken?” Jolie asked.

“Well, then, we’d hear about it tomorrow on the forum,” Morgenstern said. Johnny shot him a dirty look. “Oops,” Morgenstern said. “It must be something in the air.”

“But even though a direct attack is fruitless, sometimes an agent of the outer realms will try a somewhat stealthier approach to dimensional conquest,” Johnny said. “By co-opting the Sands of Time, where the confluence of different dimensions means that the rules are somewhat… more fluid than they are in any one of the earth realms, they hope to create a staging ground from which they may spread directly to all the worlds with which the Sands intersects.”

“So who’s doing this? Some kind of demons?” Jolie asked.

“Demons?” Morgenstern repeated, laughing. “Oh, dear me, no. What a ridiculous idea. How could… well, never mind. I guess they don’t teach transcendental dimensional structures in public schools, do they?”

“Uh, actually, I had to take two years of T.D.S.,” Jolie said. “But I got a D and a C minus.”

“Well, my dear confused creature,” Morgenstern said smoothly, “if you had been a bit more diligent in your studies, you would know that while the various infernal realms are located on a lower strata of reality than the dimensions which they, ah, service... they are however located in the same area along the axis of inner-to-outer realms, placing them inside the Sands’ protective sphere.”

“Ugh, you sound just like Mr. Mordauntilanimus,” Jolie said. “All I hear is blah, blah, blah… when am I ever going to use something like that in real life?”

“Times like now,” Johnny said. “In any event, the most pernicious and irritating infiltrators come from the Punlands, a series of dimensions similar enough to our own that they could make use of our space and our resources, but who carry with them a set of rules that are arbitrary and annoying: reality bounded not by laws of physics but by trite acts of wordplay.”

“Is that really so bad?” Jolie asked. “I think it could be kind of fun.”

“You’d be too young to remember the Punnic Wars,” Morgenstern said. “Both of you, actually. They were dark, confusing, and occasionally mildly humorous times… but horribly inconvenient for me. Some say that it was during the Wars that the concept of different languages was invented, in order to stop the affects of the infected reality from spreading. Of course, they‘re absolutely full of it, but you have to admit… it beats the Tower of Babel nonsense by a long shot.”

“Oh, will you stop editorializing and help me look?” Johnny asked.

“What are we even looking for?” Jolie asked. It was a good question. By this point, there were so many unusual things going on, even by the standards of the Sands. At one end of the bar a three-legged, scar-faced dog was demanding vengeance for the man who’d shot his paw and cut his maw. Out on the floor, an immense red-haired man in a kilt upturned a flower cart belonging to a pair of quivering monks, loudly proclaiming “Only Hugh can prevent florist friars!”

“There will be some talisman that is causing the spread of pun,” Johnny said. “Its could be anything, but its exact form will somehow reflect its function… in accordance with its punnish nature, of course.”

“Wait… is that… what I think it is?“ Morgenstern asked, pointing to a table where a large, dark-haired and dark-eyed man dressed in black sat alone. In front of him was a drink in a highball glass, as well as a small toy replica of a building. It was a castle of a fairly simple yet elegant modern design, a rectangular building with two-story stone walls capped off with a sloping and gabled roof. Conical spires capped off the four corner towers. Johnny vaguely remembered having served the man shortly before the craziness had started.

"Yes," Johnny said. "It is! Of course... this explains everything."

"What does?" Jolie asked, puzzled, but Johnny had already vaulted over the bar and was marching over to address the man.

"My pardon, but would that be a scale model of the Château d' Azay-le-Rideau?" he asked. The large man simply nodded in response.

"Out, out, out!" Johnny said sharply, pointing to the exit. "Get out of my bar, and take your castle with you!"

Without a word, the man finished his drink, wiped off his mouth, picked up the model and left, ducking under the aluminum bar. As soon as he was across the threshold of the door, the strange anomalies all over the Club vanished into nothing.

"Johnny, that was amazing," Jolie said breathlessly when Johnny came back. "What just happened? Was that man doing something to make all those things appear?"

"Mais non, not directly, Jolie. It was the model that was the cause of all the trouble. You see, the Château d' Azay-le-Rideau is a castle built and located in my own native country of France... a land whose people, in some countries, are known as 'Franks'," Johnny said. “Thus, the true identity of the pun-issuer was, in fact… a Frank castle.”