Reality
Anthony finds he has transferred to another reality where his Zapbots were never created.
Synopsis
Anthony wakes up to find himself in completely unfamiliar settings with an individual named Mikey telling him he has to go to class at a local art college. Unsure of what is going on, he sets off to determine what happened to his life as he finds he has reverted back to being fully human.
Through some discovery, he discovers he has switched realities and the Ancient Zapbot spaceship carrying the Matrix of Leadership never landed in his back yard. Thus in this reality, he went onto High School and subsequently college where he discovered new friends and relationships. However, it appears one particular individual has a severe hatred for him by the name of Scott.
During lunch at the college, a fire breaks out in a nearby building, and Anthony although without his powers still maintaining his Zapbot knowledge, uses it to rescue a human from the building. This immediately makes him a hero which he chooses to downplay as not to mess up the timeline if the original Anthony should return.
As Anthony reached out to his online friend Jon M. via a Bulletin Board system, he discovers that the Zapbot Spaceship burned up in orbit around Earth in this reality. After a confrontation with Scott where he pulls a gun, Anthony sees a car resembling Speedy in a parking lot. Using a secret prefix code, he takes Speedy over forcing him to reveal that the Zapbots are present in this reality.
Speedy takes him to Duplaflex where the Zapbots interrogate Anthony as they are hidden in this reality from humans. Anthony finds that Boaty was destroyed in battle. Scan does some research and discovers that Anthony had swapped realities during transport through a specific temporal riff in space. The Zapbots take Anthony back to the specific point in time to mend the temporal riff and return him to his own reality.
Back in his own reality, Anthony makes an effort to reach out to his newly discovered friends in the alternate reality. During the mission, the Gongos stage an attack and Matt E. is killed. Although Anthony has acquired new friends, he is distraught from the loss of his friend Matt E.. He experiences a dream where Matt E. reaches out to him and wakes up just before Boaty messages him.
Grieving Anthony visits the gravesite of Matt E. to express his condolences in a poem, as he tries to move on.
Featured characters
| Zapbots | Humans | Enemies | Planets |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Quotes
"I’M DORKATRON!"
- Mikey B. talking to Anthony in the alternate reality.
Notes
Versions
- First Version: 1995 (new story added to revised saga)
- Second Version: 2021
Production notes
- In the process of rewriting my Zapbots stories back around 1995/96 I decided to try and find a way to incorporate my new friends from college and various other parts of life into the stories. As I wanted to make sure all my friends that I cared about were well aware of what they meant to me. Inspired by a few Star Trek episodes I came up with this idea to help bridge the gap and bring my newfound friends into the Zapbot universe.
- (I believe) this is the first appearance of Tiremarks, Tiretracks, Poppin, Terrain.
- Third pass to provide extra details and upgrades happened in 2021.
Continuity notes
Real-life references
Oh boy so many here...
- Columbus Ohio, duh!
- Columbus College of Art and Design - my alma matter.
- Cleveland, Ohio - my hometown
- Russell Ohio, near my hometown of Chesterland, Ohio
- Rocky River, where my Bulletin Board friends lived.
Continuity and plotting errors
- This was particularly funny to my roommate Michael Barnard who found the various commentary here hilarious as he helped me work on what I would say in the particulars of the situation. With his help I crafted this story to present my new group of friends to the Zapbot Universe. Mike has now since gone onto greater fame as one of the most wanted illustrators in California. He was the one who coined me with the nickname ‘Gump’ in college after my old roommate Chris kept repeating the line from the Forest Gump movie, and Mike picked up on it. Anyone from my college days still remembers me as Gump.
- In the original saga, I had my friend Matt E. all the way up to the very late stages of the saga when our friendship dissolved I had him ahem… killed off. In the rewrites I moved this up to this story as at the time I didn’t want to relive the stories I had written for him as he was no longer a part of my life. This started the trend of using the fictional character of Mike Quartz for my hidden/romatic love interest.
- Also after writing this my friendship with Alan began to deteriorate as living with a Jehovah Witness did not seem compatible with a gay man’s life. However, this did provide a great writing point for the Zapbot plots of which you will find out in later stories. Out of respect for him though I did change his last name.
- The person labeled as ‘'Scott’' in this story was not actually named Scott after all, as I have adjusted him name to protect who he was (although anyone who knew me at the time would automatically know who he was.) Funny enough, many years on Facebook this individual reached out to me to make amends and it was nice to get to know him again. The rhetoric will remain the same here as it was close to arguments we had at the time while our friendship was toxic.
Other trivia
- Preface to this story has various tidbits of who are people I still talk to today.
