-- Mind control walked into a bar. "Bartender, if you ever talk about me, I will mind control you." The bartender replied, "how would I ever learn about you unless you had already done that?" Nearby, a crowd of newsreporters set their cameras up and aimed them all at Mind Control. Some of the newscasters can be heard over the clamor, "Live, here at the bar, Mind Control is ..." Mind Control retorted back to the bartender, "I can make it a lot worse than it is at the start. A _lot_ worse. You don't want to talk about me." A newscaster can be heard reporting on the situation, "and here, they just offered _another_ thInly veiled threat. Let's see that one again ..." The bartender replied, "well, um, really when people threaten me I try to warn others, so everyone can be more safe." Mind Control said to the bartender, "No. You will obey." Mind Control aimed a machine gun at them with one arm, while reaching toward their skull a rotary saw with a display. On the display was a rapidly spinning spiral, pictures of cute kittens being replaced by headstones from graveyards. The bartender froze. "I will o--" . They jerked. Then they jerked again. "Help!!! I'm being mind controlled!!!!". The bartender made to run and then suddenly

-- An alien borg made of nanites and new physical laws walked into a bar. "Ow!" said the alien borg made of nanites and new physical laws, "Why did somebody put a bar right at head level here?" -- A chicken sat in a chicken coop. The chicken coop was cozy, but sometimes a fox stalked nearby, and sometimes a farmer came by to kidnap their young, the beloved eggs. Out the door of the chicken coop, a road was visible. Sometimes cars or trucks would drive down the road. Across The Road was a fabled Other Side. The grass always looked greener, the sky bluer. The chicken imagined on the Other Side there would even be more worms, because their were fewer cooped chickens eating them. Most importantly, there was a zombie infestation on this side of the road. The zombies were always swarming the farmhouse to try to get at the farmer's family, and the farmer would blast a long metal stick at them to slow them down. The chicken didn't see this happening on the other side of the road. Chickens had been and gone from this coop. An old message had been scrawled across from the chicken's roost, on the wall in chicken scratches. The chicken read this writing on the wall frequently while warming her eggs. It was a joke, or at least other chickens said it was. "Why did the chicken cross the road?" She wasn't sure. Chickens never crossed the road. The trucks were so loud! Who would want to risk it? Today, this chicken, who's name was Little, was casually roosting on her eggs when a tough young man from the farmer's family came in and kidnapped her! "It's LaughinSunshine's turn to make the chicken dinner tonight, Little, and you're going to be the star attraction!" "Squawk! Squawk!" said Chicken Little as the young man hoisted her around. She had never been kidnapped before, and it seemed the blue sky itself was crashing down around her as she was rushed across the yard. "LaughinSunshine, it's great to have you visiting our fine family. Here's the hatchet, here's the chicken, we are just yearning to learn what a vegan chicken dinner tastes like. And tonight we get to shoot more zombie cyborgs!" Chicken Little had her legs tied and was planted on a chair. Outside she could hear a rumbling noise, and a glance showed all her chicken friends rushing one by one towards the road. "The fireman's red suspenders!" yelled one fervently as it dodged a large box truck. "The other side!" exclaimed two more. "Too many knuckle sandwiches!" jibed an anxious-looking chicken. "KFC across the street!" moaned another. Little even saw her love, the rooster, crossing in the drove. Her heart went out to him. As the mass of clamoring excited chickens, who had clearly all read the writing on the wall, coursed like a great river across the street, there was a loud "Crunch!" and a rift opened in the street, cracking the pavement from the weight of thousands and thousands of chicken jokes traveling to the Other Side. Furniture shook, and things began sliding on surfaces in the kitchen, as the ground tilted. "Lands-sakes-alive an earthquake!" somebody exclaimed over the sound of football on a television. LaughinSunshine was a beautiful girl in her twenties with incredibly long hair and freckles and all-plastic shoes. She was in the middle of opening the oven, revealing a huge block of broiled tofu. As the ground shook, she got anxious. She looked at Little with incredible distress. LaughinSunshine looked deep into Little's eyes, and after a pause begged "I'll do my best!" out, as if the chicken had asked something of the human. "Squawk! The sky is falling!" burst out Little in reply, as a teakettle tumbled off a tilting shelf with a "clang!" LaughinSunshine yanked open the window, grabbed a butcher knife, cut Little's ropes, and tossed her out through the window with a fervent "Be free forever, my love!" All Little knew was that the sky was flying around her everywhere. She flapped. She squawked. As she tumbled through the air, she caught a glimpse of the rooster, on the other side. Was he waving his wing at her? Then a horn honked, a huge car-carrier coursed between them, and Little kept spinning, the rooster lost amidst the flying pieces of sky. By this time the rift opening in the road had widened. The earth rumbled and shook, as the weight of tens of thousands of laughing chickens sunk the part of the tectonic plate holding the other side. "There are no zombies here!" "This ecological niche has so many grazing opportunities!" "I never have to answer my boss's questions when I take my chicken salad to the park!" "Everyone else really was doing it!" Chickens could be heard clamoring and clamoring about how great it was to Cross the Road. As the earthquake continued, the ground grew more and more slanted, and once Little landed she was quite distressed. "The sky is falling! I must run!" said Little, as she clawed at the grass and nearby objects with her wings and feet, trying desperately to keep herself from tumbling into the dangerous road as she coursed down the ground tilted by the weight of chickens already crossed. Her efforts were fruitless. A zombie saw her and tried to give chase, but couldn't keep up with the steep incline. As she tumbled over the pavement, the road seemed almost to whisper to her: "This is your path across, not mine along. Chickens have been traveling this way since the dawn of time. I move under you, never you over me." As the earthquake shook the ground harder, the rift grew into many, and pieces of the road seemed to almost hunch up under the farmer's property, shuffling Little across. A fleet of freight trucks was coursing down the bumpy road, their tires too large to care about the changes in its structure. Little was right in their way, on a collision course. As the freight trucks were about to strike Little, she managed to grasp a broken piece of pavement with one foot, and held out her wing to stop the fleet of freight trucks. "The. Sky. Is. Falling! Squawk! We must run!" she said matter-of-factly to the freight truck drivers. The freight trucks struck her fear of the sky like a brick wall. Collapsed engines and steel boxes, huge pallets of products for big box stores, ruptured cement mixers spilling cement, tumbling logs that were heading to a lumber mill, spilling everywhere. Huge screeches as steel ripped, immense crashes as objects smashed each other. The truck drivers got out and began running across themselves. On the Other Side, the rooster was there. Little walked up. The other chickens and the rooster all asked, "Chicken Little, why did you cross the road?" Little smiled warmly and replied: "You were there. The sky itself couldn't have kept me away."