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Fun with time paradoxes! What more can a man want? Warning!: May cause headaches in case of mishandling, contrary to popular conception, time paradoxes are not made to be understood.



"Time is big medicine of all illness"
--JU-JA-Buing, great philosopher of the fourth millenium (language devolved a little bit by then)


Monsieur Scrúje was resting in his maison, near a fireplace stocked with various near-extinct types of wood from all over the globe, burning. Contrary to what his detractors said, Scrúje was not tight-fisted. Not in the least. He appreciated the good things in life, like being the sole owner of various magnificent works of art only to keep them locked up and not allowing anyone but him to see them. Or buying various species of animals on the brink of extinction only to train his aim by letting them free and hunting them for sport.

Because Scrúje loved himself, and thus wanted to demonstrate the deep infatuation he held for every tiny little perfect bit of his body by buying himself presents. Presents only for himself, because he despised people. Filthy little people, the poor ones couldn't rise above their petty misery and envy, the rich ones couldn't rise above their backstabbing greed. And then there were the little ones. Oh, Scrúje didn't want to start with the little ones.

He did like Christmas, mostly. People came in bands, in swarms and took money in his bank, money that they would give back him, with interest, lovely interest. They would use that money to buy and buy and buy as tradition mandated. To buy, especially for the little ones. Scrúje hated the little ones. That's what he hated most about Christmas. That and that he had to close the bank.

He tried to keep the bank open in his first year, but the employees entered a strike. Of course, they were poor. Lazy, miserable envious poor, sucking the money out of his pocket, his hard-earned money, but putting nothing back in. Sucking up and gobbling up the world's wealth and leaving almost nothing to the true hard workers. Scrúje learned his lesson, and the bank only had three other strikes since then. Of course, he raised the interest rates, out of spite. Lovely interest.

Scrúje loved the interest, the way his money multiplied. The way he made money out of money. He laughed at people that sold jewels, food, or even drugs, thinking that they would get-rich-quick with that. No. Scrúje sold...no, rented money, with interest. Lots of interest. He blessed his already long-gone parents that left a wealthy legacy to him. Money. Lots of it. He managed to multiply many times the sum over the years, but he would be nothing without initial capital. He loved his parents.

He looked out of his large window, made of Amazon wood and Saharan glass, by French artisans. The employees were leaving the bank early for their paid days of laziness. The scum. Scurrying back to their lairs, to their clans of he didn't know how many dozens of little ones. Annoying filthy disgusting little ones. Then he heard a faint sound coming from somewhere else in the maison.

The servantes had already left the home, having finished their jobs long ago, and Scrúje had no majordome. A thief, probably. He took his revolver from the headboard and went to check the noise.

The noise was coming from his study, the whole room was a lovely piece of work with the floor made of hardwood, the walls covered in dark-blue wallpapers, and a large painting of himself made by a nice Spanish portrait-painter. But the room seemed eerily gloomy. And his painting, terrifying in its enormity.

"Ah, yes, just like me!" Scrúje heard a voice behind him, and a man in a seemingly expensive blue suit, blue tie, blue shoes. Blue was Scrúje's favourite colour.

"Who are you!?" Scrúje yelled, momentarily forgetting his revolver, and stepping back, startled. The man approached him, he sported a large, probably cumbersome bracelet on his right wrist, and he was about fifty years old. He was quite handsome though, and the grey of his hair was like a frame around his thin face. He had green eyes. He also had a small, nearly imperceptible cut on his neck. He was so very handsome, Scrúje thought, right before his conscious mind realized the truth.

"What you mean? Never saw a mirror in your life? I am you, tomorrow," was the revelation that followed.

Scrúje was momentarily shocked, and let his revolver fall to the floor, "But...how..."

"No time to explain!" the other said, pacing around the room, "This night you'll be visited by three versions of you. You from 1999 B.C., you from the distant Gollygolly galaxy, and you from...the future! They will try to show you the error of your ways, try to make you a better person, you know the routine. Don't let them. If you don't let them, you'll leave this night with this," he motioned to his wrist.

Taking a closer look at the bracelet, he noticed it was a strange machine full of blinking lights and whirring sounds and screens and antennas. Like every good scientifillic-looking machine. "It's the 'TARDIS'," Scrúje was going to interrupt him, but he quickly explained, "Yeah, I know. Our self from 1999 B.C. told that an English guy got him drunk at a party before he went to 1999 B.C.. It's pitiful when people can't even come up with their own Sci-Fi sounding names."

A long silence followed, a silence only broken by the future Monsieur Scrúje.

"Well, now I need to make myself scarce and prepare for when you'll need me again. Remember! No matter what we tell ourselves, just ignore it. Otherwise you'll never get the TARDIS, and I would never exist. And believe me, you want me to exist so that you can be in my shoes and see what I saw. It's great," he said, with a smile, then he pulled some things in his bracelet and pushed a large blue button and in the next second, a medium-to-loud sound sounded, a sound Scrúje never heard before, and the other him was no longer there, not a sign existed that he ever was.

Scrúje had been thrown off balance, so he sat on one of the mahogany chairs, and stared at his portrait. He shook his head. If it wasn't himself, he would've thought it as a hallucination, but he knew that he would never hallucinate like this, he was perfectly sane, much saner than the average, and he couldn't help but trust himself. He was so persuasive and trustworthy and intelligent. How could Scrúje even doubt that he was real?

Lost in his musings, he almost didn't notice another sound, coming from behind him, a sound much a like the first one. He got up from his chair and turned around and faced himself in an unusual attire. Something rather crude, different from the fine cloth he usually wore, and cut in a preposterous way, showing too much thing, and on his head there was that silly thing Ancient Egyptians wore on their heads that Scrúje couldn't, for the love of him, ever remember what was called.

It was reassuring, however, that even in that strange set of clothes, he kept his composure intact. "Oh, hello there," he said, somewhat nervous, and scratched his left arm, "I'm sorry, it's not my first time meeting myself, but you probably don't know anything about how it works, so..."

"Will you give me the TARDIS now?" Scrúje asked himself.

The other one took a little time to answer, visibly uncomfortable with the situation, "Well, it seems I ended up coming too late, he already found you, huh? Oh well, might as well try anyway. Man, it brings back memories," he scratched his left arm again, it was in a unhealthy colour between purple and yellow that Scrúje didn't know the name.

"What happened to your..." Scrúje started asking but shut himself up before he could finish. Momentarily angry at himself, he waited for the answer that surely was coming his way.

"I'd better not tell you and risk messing the timeline, you know how those things go, if it didn't happen to me, I'd better not do it or I'll cease to exist. But you'll know, don't worry," was the only ominous answer. "So," he said, changing subject, "Ready for some time and space travelling?"

Scrúje raised his eyebrows, "Don't I need one of these to travel?" he asked, pointing at the bracelet.

"No, I can travel with more than one person, or even animals and inanimate things, as long as the total mass doesn't exceed 6000 kgs, and the total volume doesn't exceed 1045..." but Scrúje was the one that interrupted him this time.

"I could care less about the scientific specifics, I guess. But probably not much. So, care to just do what you want with me so I can get my own TARDIS?" was the quick, sharp, interruption. A new light was lit in the eyes of the unusually dressed Monsieur Scrúje, and he restored his pride, smiled, scratched his arm and said.

"I see I was still sharp back in my young days," he complimented.

"And a tough bargainer," the other added.

"And had a... tremendous force of will."

"And smart, don't you forget smart."

"Never," the Scrúje from 1999 B.C. said, and pulled some levers, pressed some buttons, and touched some screens, "Time for some childhood regressions," and they, smiling at their own sharp wit and smart use of puns, departed.

It was a short trip. Scrúje expected blue flashes, swirling purple fogs and particularly bright colourful lights. There was none of this. If he didn't look around only to see he was in a completely different place, he would not have noticed anything. There was no movement, no sounds, no visual clues. Time travelling was kind of boring.

"Yeah, I know. I was disappointed my first time too, I sometimes watch this series that I...er...inspired, and even back in the sixties it had a better time travel effect. I got drunk in a party and mentioned the TARDIS...er... in passing...anyways, turns out there was a man listening a little too intently, and he stole the whole dammed thing," Scrúje explained.

Scrúje looked around, he was in a middle-to-high class apartment, the room he was in seemed to be a bathroom, and it was empty. It was all covered with porcelain tiles, and the door was open, which otherwise would have led him to mistake this middle-to-high class apartment for the home of very stylistically impaired alien beings.

"For someone with the power to travel anywhere anywhen, you have a very narrow mind. This is our childhood home," Scrúje said, prompting the other one to scratch his left arm impatiently.

"We're not travelling for fun, I'm here to show you the error of your ways so that you become a better person before..." for a moment, Scrúje expected the other to finish that sentence, but that moment passed, and the expectation disappeared.

"Come," he said, after another moment of silence. They left the bathroom, Scrúje saw his mother, and she was like back when she was younger, and had some old meat over her old bones. Nowadays, she only had the bones. She didn't seem to be noticing the both of them, which was strange, due to the fact that she was lying down on the sofa, breathing quickly, in short breaths.

"This is when she dies, remember? She was very kind to you, and always gave what you wanted, in Christmas, she would always give you a large present with red wrappings and a purple ribbon, those were her favourite colours, and they became yours too," the Scrúje in weird clothing said.

"No. My favourite colour is blue," Scrúje pointed out.

"Uh...I guess I forgot, whatever, the point is that she'll die."

"So?" was the answer. Her short breaths were becoming shorter.

"Oh, I don't knooow, Mr Smartypants! Maybe, just maybe, it was her death that transformed you into a heartless miser?"

"No. Remember, we poisoned her. She didn't want us to fool around with the neighbours daughter. Besides, she never would let us ride the roller-coaster, even though we were tall enough," the short breaths were taking longer to come, her face was becoming blue.

"Oh...I had...er... forgotten that," he commented, scratching his left arm.

"So, why doesn't she notice us?" Scrúje asked, while his mother put her own hands around her neck, as if she needed to make it more clear that she was gasping for breath.

"Oh, we're on a slightly different spatial J coordinates than her. Notice the subtle kabjum light shimmering around blue coloured objects?"

"Kabjum?" Scrúje asked, while his mother started shaking her head back and forth faster and faster.

"It's a colour between Orange and Jejbut," the other answered matter-of-factly, "People discovered new colours with long-range telescopes around the thirty-first century. Strangely enough, most J spatial effects of time-space dissonance are easily recognizable thanks to these colours," he continued blabbing about while Scrúje gave up on asking about J coordinates.

"So, are we done here? I really would like a trying out this TARDIS thing," apparently his words brought the oddly dressed one out of his reverie.

"Oh, yeah, sure...uh...where was I?" he asked, apparently to no one, while his mother drew her last breath, "Oh yes, come," he motioned to a closed door that Scrúje recognized as being his father's room.

A scream of "Ride that pony Scrújete!" was heard from inside. It brought back memories. Really bizarre memories.

"Oh, yes, I know what you're thinking. Yes, that's your sick paedophile of a father, forcing you to rape your sister, the same sister that you loved like a...brother, and that every Christmas would give you a present in pink wraps, pink was her favourite colour, and soon it became yours, too. She committed suicide after more three months of this. Three painful, painful months."

"My favourite colour is BLUE!" Scrúje reminded the other again.

"Oh...yeah, that. I've seen so much sometimes it gets messed up. When you've heard Aristotle, Darwin, Descartes, Nietzsche and JU-JA-Buing from the twenty-fifth century talking personally, the rest loses some of that importance. At any rate, have you seen the errors of your ways now?" he asked.

"Look, I wanted to rape her for a long time, but I needed an authority figure to back me up, so I manipulated my father into 'forcing' me to do that. And, in all modesty, he said I was the best thirteen years old that he ever saw..."

"Okay, okay," the other interrupted him, "I get the idea. I guess I forgot that too...okay...so next I'll show you...er..."

"Look, what happened to my memory? Did I hit my head on a rock too often? I mean, my doctor said that three times a day was okay," Scrúje pointed out.

"No! No, nothing like that. It's just that you're only fifty years old, and I'm...er...one hundred twenty...I think."

"One hundred twenty? Hah! I knew lots of vitamin C was a valid lifetime enhancing therapy." was all that Scrúje said.

"No! No. Nothing like that, I mean, they invented clinical immortality in the fortieth century, so I just went there and...I mean...sorry, can't tell you how I did it, or I'll mess up the timeline. At any rate, I'll give up this childhood shit, let's go somewhen else," he mentioned while messing with some levers and buttons of the TARDIS, as their father yelled some incredibly lewd thing again, but I'd better not mention it or any reader that actually managed to read up to this point will certainly give up.

At any rate, when the once again anti-climactic time travelling was finished, Scrúje could see only desert, desert all around. A white-hot desert, white sand, white sun, and a blue sky above him. There was no longer a Kabjum light shimmering around the blue. There was no longer the distant sounds of babies crying and people yelling that Scrúje heard in his apartment, in the city. And there was also a mastaba towering beside him.

"Here we are! 1999 B.C.!" said the Scrúje with the least weird clothes for the time period they were in, with his arms spread wide, in a pose that would be recognized as clichéd in any time period. "This is where I was before I decided to try and save you from...er...so, anyway I was convincing people that building those pyramids is a good idea, and came here every generation or two, as a mysterious tomb designer to show them where to build, this way I'll make a pattern that will essentially be a big 'invade here' sign for when the Gurytpeds come around, so they can trigger the big diaspora of 4056, so I can..."

"Okay, I get it. I mean, it sounds incredibly good, but I want to be able to do it myself, so can you give me the TARDIS now?" Scrúje said, trying another strategy. This didn't work as expected, it only made the other to remember what he was doing.

"No. I came here to do something and I'm doing it. Er...what was...oh yes! Caham. Okay, since the Freud approach didn't work, I want to explain to you why we don't have the right to be so incredibly successful. You see, this mastaba belonged to our ancestor, a vizier to the pharaoh."

"Impressive. I bet he used his mystical dream-decryptographing powers to get the position."

"No, actually he killed every single political enemy of the pharaoh, and threatened to kill him too if he wasn't appointed to the position. But that is beyond the point, he was only the first of a long line of Egyptian aristocrats, that went to Greece and then Rome when Egypt was conquered, bringing all their State-stolen wealth with them. With it, they bought great tracts of land and slaves, until the middle ages, when they kept only the tracts of lands, and levied overly heavy taxes from the peasants. The fortune of our family was built upon the overworked carcasses of our fellow human beings, and we owe these human beings the..."

"Wait," Scrúje interrupted the long-winded rant, "You mean I have blue blood? And here I always thought I was noveau-riche. Wait until I tell the other fellows at the jockey club about it," he said, smiling. This whole trip to the past was making him feel really good about himself. First fond memories of childhood, then the discovery that he had blue blood and was a famous designer of pyramids...or would be...at some point...in the past! To think that only a few hours ago he thought he couldn't think more highly of himself.

The other Scrúje, momentarily frozen with sheer unbelievingness, could do nothing but blink, and say "What...? Look, that's not the point, the point is that we don't deserve all this luckiness and happiness and richness, and you need to learn to treat your fellow human beings better, believe me, if I recall, it won't be long until...something... happens to your timeline, something bad," he said, his finger wagging at Scrúje, sternly, in about the same way a teacher would act with a particularly stubborn student. It reminded Scrúje faintly of something.

"If you told me what it was, maybe I'd take you more seriously. By the way, maybe we could go to whenever you got clinical immorta..." he interrupted himself mid-sentence. With the curiosity piqued, his interlocutor turned around, to some point behind them, where two people could be seen. One of them had a moveable chunk of metal for an arm.

The one with the arm yelled something to them, something Scrúje didn't understand, probably in Ancient Egyptian, because his partner with the weird clothes yelled back. The two silhouettes ran down the dune they were on and came nearby the two Scrújes.

"Holy...I forgot I had come here. The Gurytpeds' invasion, right? Good simple times," said the Scrúje with the metal arm, "He's a newbie," he explained, motioning to the Scrúje beside him, noticeably anxious, "I'm teaching him the basics, you know. I see your arm hasn't fallen off yet."

The Scrúje with Egyptian clothes scratched his left arm, "Oh, I'm with a noob too. Very first time, actually...Er...fall off?"

"You didn't know? Damm...sorry about that, my memories of the time before my grafting are a little foggy. They invented better prosthetics at the fortieth-five century, seems they only truly felt the need to do that after clinical immortality. At any rate, get yourself a computer grafted in your brain, too. Helps with the memory. I'm trying to get enough currency to exchange it for even better prosthetics from the Hulligans, but I'm not being very succesful. Their language is weird and all."

"Oh, I see. I haven't done much space-travelling, only lots of time-travelling, getting to know the various time periods. And trying to convince this one to start giving something back to the world," the awfully clothed Scrúje said, "So, how is this galaxy like?"

While the more seasoned Scrújes talked, Scrúje tried to strike conversation with the other newbie, "So, for how long you got your TARDIS?" which prompted the other to make a motion with his head that Scrúje couldn't interpret very well.

"You know, for a while, did he tell you the rules already?"

"No...what kind of rules?" Scrúje asked, very interested, so there were rules, maybe he could find out a way to get the TARDIS with them.

"Well, you know. Like you can't kill Hitler, for instance, which is kinda obvious, of course," he said, with a face that made clear that he discovered it by experience, "Sure, Kennedy is okay, but not Hitler."

Scrúje heard his voice from behind him, "Oh yeah, I remember when I killed Kennedy, first I came from the future to warn me that he was going to start a World War because he wanted to impress the chicks," the voice said, "'Sure, the chicks do dig that,' me from the future said, which I, having started World War Four, can say, is true, 'but we needed to stop him from doing that or humanity will never invent LCD screens before World War Three'. So he gave me some assassin training and some briefing and sent me to do the job, then he told me to go...back...and do the...same...to my past...damm, I forgot that!" having said that, the Egyptian clothed Scrúje fiddled with his TARDIS and disappeared.

"So...any other rules I should know?" Scrúje asked his anxious version that spent much of his time looking around the desertic landscape, while the cyborg-armed one waited patiently for the return of the other.

"Well, you'll find out for yourself eventually. Everytime you do something you shouldn't, a future version of you'll come and tell you not to, then he'll tell you to go back and warn yourself the same way. It's like a system we have," about three seconds before he had finished talking, the Scrúje that had gone time/space travelling came back.

"Well...I guess there isn't much of a point, look you two, I'll get the new one back to T day, you wait for me here or ask directions to the locals," he said, moving towards Scrúje.

"Oh no!" the one with the cyborg arm said, "I'd rather not trust these people."

"Stupid half-blind confused people," the anxious one said.

"Simple-minded lazy dumb people," the one with the cyborg arm continued, with a smirk.

"And the little ones..." Scrúje started saying, smiling.

"Oh, don't get started with the little ones!" the one wearing Egyptian clothes interrupted him, but he was smiling, "Okay, we should get back. If you get the TARDIS, remember to not kill Hitler, in fact, keep the pre-TARDIS timeline untouched, and, of course not interfere too much with your own life before TARDIS. After is okay, before...only if you're well disguised, like I was when I pretended to be our History teacher in High School to make it sure we knew what we needed to."

He fiddled with the TARDIS, brought them back to Scrúje's mansion, waved, and disappeared again. Scrúje sat on one of the chairs again, getting used to the high amounts of instantaneous travel he was experiencing. It was not wholly a bad sensation, but it was disorienting. However, it cheered him up that his future selves apparently didn't suffer from it.

Which brought him to another point, his future selves met one another, and by their reaction, it wasn't that uncommon. In fact, from what the Egyptian-clothed Scrúje said, he could infer that going into the past and teaching yourself skills and sharing information was common. He mused for some moments about what he would do with the TARDIS. He could go back and three times in a row and have a bar conversation with himself, or make an army of selves and conquer...China? South Africa? The United States?

His musings were interrupted when an incredibly cool, calm, and obviously belonging to a wise veteran of many adventures voice said, "Hmm...may I ask you what you are doing all by yourself over there, pal?", from behind him. Scrúje turned his head around and saw him. It was a man wearing what seemed to be a long grey poncho that completely covered both of his arms and most of his torso over a ragged old shirt, originally black, brown buckled-up boots that went all the way to his knee, fine leather pants, and a hat, an old leathery hat that covered his face almost completely. On top of it all, there was a a large necklace with teeth of various sizes, colours and forms around his neck.

For a second, Scrúje thought one of those BMGS freaks had entered his mansion somehow, and looked around for his revolver, but then the stranger lifted his head and Scrúje could see his face. It was beardier, and the hair was greyer, and there were some scars, and he was smoking a cigar, and the whole figure seemed wiser and older, and smarter, and stronger. But Scrúje would never mistake that face.

"I assume the Egyptian one came by already, eh, buddy? He didn't have much luck changing your heart, I can see. Well, I guess I'll just give it a try then, pal," he said, lifting his hat with the pointer-finger, and breathing out smoke.

"I assume you'll show me how I'm evil with my employees and should do better, eh? I can tell you already, it won't work," Scrúje said, with a smile. NOW he wanted the TARDIS thing even more, if it meant a chance of becoming like that guy.

He snickered, and with a smirk, said, "You think you got the whole routine figured, eh pal? That the river's got only old water to go by. That an old dog can't teach you a trick or two. Well, I got news for ya, we won't be seeing your employees, I don't care about them, and know you don't either. I'll try a different approach, and show you some stuff. In a far, far away place. Now come, pal, I have things to do and people to see."

He quickly operated the device on his right wrist with a glistening metal hand, after a few seconds of fiddling, he grabbed Scrúje's arm. When Scrúje looked around, he could see streets, buildings, street lamps, and signs, many signs. He could've mistaken the place he was in for an Earthen city, if not for the fact that everything was made of weird metal and super technological hijinks so strange that Scrúje could barely guess their function. Turning around, he saw a sign that stated simply, in slightly luminous, letters, "Scrúje's".

A bearded man with a hat passed them by on the pavement, rising his bionic arm in greeting, "Hey pal, nice...trench coat. I should get one of those before meeting myself, buddy," he said, and kept going. Scrúje glanced at himself from the distant Gollygolly galaxy.

"We are on Scrúje III, on the Cyan arm of the Gollygolly galaxy. We used the TARDIS to bring various atmosphere conversion modules and other terraforming measures here in the distant past, then we kept going back and forth, building houses, streets, taking care of bars and whatnot. This is a hub for various versions of us, where we can rest and compare notes between travels. Come, let's have a drink."

They entered the bar, it was filled with smoke and tables. Almost every table was occupied by s group of Scrújes, some making wide gestures, some whispering, some drinking and singing, Scrúje noticed one wearing Egyptian style clothing, he was talking to another Scrúje, something about sharpshooting, "...worry, you just get to the grassy knoll and there'll be a rifle there, already loaded with a single Hazzian biodegradable bullet, so..."

Without thinking twice, Scrúje extended his hand and told the Egyptian clothed one, "Hey! So this is where you went then!"

Confused, the other one shook his hand, "Huh? What you mean?"

"You said you forgot to teach yourself, and then you left, so I was somewhat worried if I was ever going back," Scrúje explained.

"So...you're telling me you're the one I left back in 1999 b.c.?"

"Yes, that is correct."

"I guess there's no point in trying to change it then...if you're here, this means I'll fail...oh well, maybe you will have better luck," he told Scrúje's companion, "At any rate, I've gotta to finish explaining things to this one, wish you luck!" he said, scratching his left arm.

Leaving the Scrúje wearing Egyptian clothes, the other two went to the counter, "Two Cyan Blues, bartender!" one of them said, slapping the counter. The other one's attention was captured by a Scrúje with a large purple eye, scratches and blue splotches all over his face. His long hair was tied in a ponytail, and his organic arm was covered in some sort of green stuff, with a consistence that constantly varied between liquid, solid, and both at the same time.

"Nanoranicreplicoid substance. Looks weird and feels weird, but it's the greatest thing the people from the fifth Earthen millennium ever invented," he clarified, noticing Scrúje's stare, "You're on your first trip, right?" he asked.

"Third, actually," Scrúje answered, in a tone that made apparent the pride he felt about his extensive time travelling experience.

"Sorry. I'm usually very good about remembering things, thanks to some thousand terabytes of memory, but stuff before the surgery is a bit foggy. Anyway, good luck in your future," but Scrúje didn't quite hear the last part because another Scrúje decided that this was a good time to yell the punchline of a joke he was telling for the past twenty minutes, a punchline that, although terribly funny, is, without the proper context provided by the previous twenty minutes, impossible to properly understand. Nevertheless, it is recorded here in the interests of objectivity, "The ancient Anglandimorious are, in fact, a member of the Kalameres genus!"

Hearing that, the Scrúje with the purple eye suddenly tensed up, "I-I gotta go...sorry...I'm really sorry but that means..." and fled out of the bar, without a word more, leaving a startled Scrúje behind.

Before he could recover, another Scrúje entered the bar, and all the others became silent. The newcomer wore a ragged hood, dyed in a colour between green and red, and carried a short club in his right hand, the club glowed with a faint blue light. He wore the TARDIS, but both his arms seemed organic, his head was bald, and covered in wounds.

"Uh oh," said Scrúje's companion, "I remember this, pal," and, after a second of silence, he whispered in a wicked voice, "Sinners and blasphemers! Enjoy your..."

But the sound of his whispers were silenced by the newcomer's voice, that sounded just as wicked, "Sinners and blasphemers! Enjoy your last moments in existence! You may have thwarted me more than once, but next time I cannot fail!"

Scrúje's eyes widened as his companion's mouth started whispering once again, "You! I searched far and wide for a moment when I could confront..."

But Scrúje's attention was attracted by the sudden appearance of another one in the bar, his long grey hair tied in a ponytail, that was dressed in what could only be described as a kung fu costume, if kung fu costumes were sold in costume shops, "You! I searched far and wide for a moment when I could confront you with certainty!"

The Scrúje with a poncho whispered something, but Scrúje didn't pay attention, "Ah," said the Scrúje wearing a hood, an evil grin on his lips, "I see my actions will not go unpunished, huh? You will make me pay? You may have stopped my ploy, but do not think you have the skill necessary to actually defeat me in combat."

"Your foul deeds cannot go unavenged, you have strayed from your path, from your ideas of what was wrong and right," after a moment of silence, he added, "...which, admittedly, weren't all that ethically correct to begin with, but that is quite beyond the point."

"Man, I was very dramatic at the time, eh, pal?" Scrúje's companion said, "...Any foulness of my part..."

"Any foulness of my part shall be redeemed when my mission is accomplished, any foulness of all our parts!" the Scrúje said loudly, to all the Scrújes in the bar.

"You killed our grandfather! How can that be redeemed?" asked the Scrúje in kung fu clothes, opening his arms dramatically.

"I killed the grandfather of no one! I killed our grandmother's husband, but he isn't our grandfather...right, Scrúje? With all your talk of my foul deeds, you forget details such as these," while finishing the last sentence, he raised his hood and covered his face.

"Well, what can I say, I went there to bodyguard my grandfather against this guy, but our grandmother wasn't bad looking in her youth. Get my drift, buddy?" the Scrúje in the poncho said, answering Scrúje's inquisitive stares.

"Enough! I shall avenge my grandfather, and all the people you murdered, lied to, or otherwise annoyed with your fanatical nihilistic speeches! YAAAA!!!" and with that last yell, the Scrúje in kung fu clothes ran toward the hooded Scrúje, and then jumped into a flying kick.

But the kick didn't hit, because its target had disappeared in thin air, after fiddling with the mechanism of his bracelet. He quickly got up from the floor, looking around, scared.

He didn't have time to defend against the fist that hit his left eye, less than a second after a figure in a hood appeared right beside him. This time, even before he hit the floor, he disappeared, fiddling with the TARDIS, and not one, but six of him appeared around the hooded Scrúje, moving in for a kill.

"Hey, this is actually interesting. Where did we learn karate?" asked Scrúje to his companion.

"Well, pal, it's not karate, after he killed our grandfather, we planned to train under various martial artists in the history of Earth, and a few other planets, in order to create our own style of martial arts," was his answer, "Of course, after a few weeks of that we got bored and settled to train with Bruce Lee."

The six Scrújes attacked at the same time, but were easily shoved away, two of them disappeared and three more Scrújes appeared, proceeding to launch flying kicks at the hooded one. Two more hooded Scrúje's appeared out of nowhere, and the three hooded ones had their legs grabbed and were thrown on the floor.

The three hooded Scrújes proceeded to kick arses, and elbow faces, and punch stomachs. One by one, the kung fu costumed Scrújes fiddled with their bracelets and disappeared, and no more appeared. The last one was pinned to the floor by two hooded Scrújes while the third grabbed his right arm with his left arm.

"Unfortunately, I cannot allow myself to cease to exist before my mission is completed, so I cannot kill you. Nevertheless, do you know how much strength this new prosthetic can exert?", and, saying that, the hooded Scrúje bended the arm of the fallen Scrúje in a weird angle.

He left the other Scrúje on the floor, defeated, leaving the bar through the front door. A few seconds later, the defeated Scrúje disappeared with the TARDIS.

"Well, friend, what you think about that?" asked Scrúje's companion, holding the soft hat up with his pointer-finger.

"What happened to us?" asked Scrúje, still wide eyed.

"Well, it's a bit sketchy, but as far as I know, sometime in the future he went through a bad moment in his life, and the monks of the Sacred Order of the Big Blue Cosmic Light brought him into their fold. They indoctrinated him and train his physical body and moral fibre, constantly testing him, through the years. He became their holy knight, destroying every threat to the order until they conquered the System where they lived,

"Unfortunately, with all his physical and moral training they forgot his psychological well-being. He became...overzealous, and murdered every last one of the monks, because they didn't obey the teachings of the Big Blue Cosmic Light to the letter, they only prayed seventeen times a day instead of nineteen, as per the Gungardian translation of the third book of the Lighty Prophet, you know, this kind of thing," at this point, he paused, for dramatic effect.

"And after he was done, he meditated for twenty eight days and twenty nine nights, in a fit of introspection, and examined all the things he he did up until then, and examined the dead bodies of the monks. He realized that, as per his strict life philosophy, he had to die. But, instead of merely committing suicide, he decided to use the TARDIS to stop his past selves from committing particularly egregious bad deeds," he cleaned his throat, and coughed, and cleaned his throat again.

Before he could continue, Scrúje asked, "Well, one thing I can say about ourselves, we must fight really well to defeat an entire monastery of kung fu monks. Also, we're not hypocrites."

"Yeah, but he apparently lost out enviable persuasive skills, he couldn't convince us to not start WWIV or launching a ship full of Ionic Bombs into a planet inhabited by tiny super intelligent fish, thus draining the water and starting our successful interstellar mining enterprise. It's understandable, we had so much to gain, and so little to lose...anyways, he then decided we were beyond redemption, and started to try to kill us. He failed. So he tried killing our grandfather, and succeeded...technically, as you could see. Now," at this he made another dramatic pause, much more dramatic than the first one.

"He'll try one last time to convince you to be a better person, and if he can't, he'll kill you."

Scrúje was taken back by his words, "So this is the third Christmas spiri...er... third 'version of me' that I warned myself about?"

"That's right, buddy. But, of course, you could always adopt a life-changing philosophy and try to be less morally questionable right now, which would change the future and, thus, spare you of an encounter with him," explained the Scrúje with a hat, finally taking a sip from his previously untouched glass. The Scrúje serving as bartender pressed a few buttons on the TARDIS and teleported away, only to be substituted three seconds later by another Scrúje.

After a few moments of consideration, Scrúje answered, "If you're alive, and you are me in the future, then this means the hooded one can't kill me, even if he tried," Scrúje concluded with a smile, "I'll survive, and I'll get the TARDIS. I told you I wanted the TARDIS, didn't I? Maybe I'll think about this morality thing after I have a bionic arm, a computer in my brain, and unlimited lifespan."

The Scrúje in the poncho snickered, and then he chuckled, and then he laughed. After a few seconds of this, he said, smiling, "Well, I had to try. I see I was a genius in the making even before the computer grafting. The logic of your argument is undebatable, and you have a strength of will that could rival even mine. I see I cannot convince you."

"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself, you are clearly the superior man, having reached the limits of the unrivalled potential that exists within us."

"Indeed, pal, in fact, if the nazis ever met us, they would have to reconsider the top five master race ranking to include a certain race of one."

"Indeed. heh. Indeed. After I get the TARDIS I should go see Goebbels and work this out with him. Hell, I might even bribe Darwin to put in a good word for me. Completely unnecessary, of course, when he gets a look at this living proof that his theories apply even to the human race."

"Unfortunately not," a Scrúje in a nearby table said, "I have to disagree with that, the...people of the third millennium and beyond are just as stupid obnoxious and ugly as before."

"Lazy avaricious greedy people," said a Scrúje wearing a turban.

"Brain-dead indecisive weak people," said the Scrúje with a poncho and hat.

"Deceiving dishonest dumb people," said a Scrúje holding a bright stony ball.

"And the little ones..." Scrúje started saying.

"Oh, don't get me started with the little ones," said most of the Scrújes in the room at once.

A hearty laugh echoed all around the room, Scrúje's companion fidgeted with the TARDIS and lightly put his hand on his back.

The next second, they were back at Scrúje's maison, Scrúje slowly walked to a chair and sat down, putting his right arm on the table and slowly letting the air out of his lungs.

"Well, I guess that's it, pal. Wish you luck, and hope you didn't stumble into a unstable loop," said the Scrúje with the poncho, tapping his hat, before fidgeting with the TARDIS.

"Uh...unstable loop?" asked Scrúje.

"That's right, buddy, somehow the loop that allowed everything that happened to me to happen to you could be unsustainable and things will happen differently in your case. Say, maybe you'll die soon, and then the timeline will fork out, the changed timeline will go on, while the timeline where you don't die will quickly degenerate and implode, ceasing to exist. It's the very basics of extremely incredibly advanced space time based quantum history bio chemical psy physics. Well, see ya, pal!" and, saying that, he was gone.

Scrúje didn't sit on the chair. What his companion said worried him. So his survival wasn't a sure thing as he previously thought. A shiver ran through him as the realization dawned on him.

Exactly 3586 miliseconds later, a hooded figure materialized into the large room. It was obvious to Scrúje that, below the heavy clothing there was the husk of what once was the universe's greatest example of the pinnacle of human achievement. Himself.

The figure motioned him to come closer. He hesitated. He really did want the TARDIS, and if he could trust himself from tomorrow, this was the way to get it. But himself from tomorrow possibly wasn't as familiar with the mechanics of time as he would've hoped. Still, he decided that if he trusted anyone, that was himself, and touched the hooded man's shoulder.

Seconds later, they were in the middle of the destroyed ruins of what once was possibly a big city. fallen buildings blocked the streets, and useless cars, in various stages of disrepair, stood there, motionless, as if suddenly abandoned in an emergency. Which, considering the craters and the smoke and the littered corpses, was probably an accurate analysis of what happened.

"W-where are we? ...when are we?" asked Scrúje, he wasn't familiar with the streets, nor with the architecture, but this was almost certainly Earth. All around him walls were covered in weird symbols and what were probably half-literate messages written in spray paint, but he wasn't familiar with the language, though the letters, strangely stylized, were, without a doubt, those he was familiar with.

The hooded figure stood silent, and slowly rose his right hand, pointing toward a nearby wall. Those weren't letters he was familiar with. They looked like Arabic writing, but more blocky, and squarish. "I don't understand what you mean," he told the figure.

The figure, ever slowly, ever silently, took a small club from within the folds of his clothes, a small bright club, the same Scrúje saw in the bar. The figure touched the club on his forehead (revealing glimpses of his face, bathed in blue light), and then pointed the club at Scrúje. A thin ray of blue light went from the club to Scrúje's forehead.

The club, Scrúje now knew, was the pinnacle of Binagohhgian crystal technology, capable of transferring knowledge from a brain to the other, invented seconds before the entire Binagohhg civilization was obliterated by a supernova. But Scrúje had used the TARDIS to take it, and use it to explain everything to Scrúje. To change Scrúje's sinful ways.

Scrúje also noted he could understand Gazzanian perfectly. Gazzanian was the name of the global language that started after the Palestinians conquered the world and decided illegalize every language but one, back in 3275, bringing upon the world many years of never before seen prosperity, which culminated in the 134th great collapse of Capitalism, just last year. What year was last year, Scrúje didn't know.

The message on the wall read "JU-JA-BUING WUZ HERRE".

"Okay, so now I know when we are, but where are we? Why everything's destroyed?" asked Scrúje.

The figure slowly moved by the landscape, and motioned Scrúje to follow him. But when he did that, he was distracted for a few very important seconds, and tripped on something that was on the ground, and fell on the ground. "Fuck!" he yelled, "Ouch! Shit!" he yelled some more, before realizing what he was doing and becoming silent again.

Five seconds of silence later, he slowly lifted himself from the ground, and this time he motioned for Scrúje to follow before starting walking.

The two of them walked silently through the empty streets full of craters, Scrúje looked around, there was plenty of smoke, and the small fires suggested he got there only moments after whatever destroyed the city did its job. Indeed, the only illumination came from the buildings on fires, and Scrúje would bet that if the power was still on, he would hear the alarm sirens.

Scrúje heard voices, and his companion quickly grabbed his arm, Scrúje had forgotten he was capable of moving in a way that wasn't silent and slow. seconds later, Scrúje saw a blue glow coming from inside his right sleeve, and started to notice the subtle kabjum light shimmering around blue coloured objects, and observed as a group of people with torches, laughing out loud, as if in a party.

Except they were carrying guns. Big guns.

"Fucked burghees! Fucked Caps! Tired am of this shit! Gonna burn and burn! Burn! Power to prollies!" they yelled as they ran around without any real goal. After they were gone, Scríje's companion led him to the proper spatial J-coordinates.

"What...the hell...was that?" asked Scrúje, utterly confused, those...people were insane, surely. The figure motioned him to follow again, and he did.

They stopped in front of a strange machine on the pavement. The figure pressed a blue button, and a bundle of paper-like material Scrúje assumed was a newspaper got out of the machine. The figure pointed to the bundle, and Scrúje took it.

It was indeed a newspaper, the date, however, was written in a way Scrúje could not understand, "1543-96745/LACU/á_Und_2314," it said. He skipped that and read out loud a headline that seemed interesting, it was a column written by a JU-JA-BUING, philosopher, "JU-JA-BUING SEZ: 'It's iuseles loking fer Enswer to Misteri of lyfe, it's probabily writenn in greec nyways. Fucked greecs!"

The figure motioned Scrúje to stop, and raised his right hand, along with three fingers. Scrúje didn't understand what that meant. The figure motioned again.

"I don't know what that means."

"Read page three, you moron!" the figure said, "You really need a computer grafted in your...! Er..." he fell in silence before finishing. And motioned again.

Scrúje read page three, unwilling to argue with himself, "About big last colapse, Regional Govner seid on TeeVee, 'Fuck this shit! I'm gonna get me an AK-47 and start a revollution, evrione is free to joim me! Glory to prollies!' peeps evriwhere liked that and joined him. BUT! Centrall Govt's gonna bomb us now! Flee! Flee or die! AAAHHH!!! Oops, I don't think they let me write onomatopeia in here."

Scrúje's eyes slowly unwidened themselves, as he calmed down from the shock, "Well, at least those loonies won't threaten anyone else."

The hooded figure stood there, silent. Slowly, he lifted his right arm, and lowered his hood. Scrúje stared at his own face. And the face started laughing manically, "MWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!" the now hoodless Scrúje said, "You fool! Stare at the now unveiled face of yourself! The neomarxist revolution actually succeeded! Or will succeed, as soon as JU-JA-BUING and his followers lead the revolt. I came from the future with the incredible technology of time travelling to show you that your mindless greed and egotism will lead to your downfall!"

"I knew you were me already, three versions of me already visited me today. Also, I am not downfalled, I'll have the TARDIS when this is over," Scrúje pointed out when he had sobered up.

His companion was momentarily taken off balance. "Hmph...well, I didn't expect that. At any rate...YOU ARE WRONG! Your downfall indeed has come to pass!" he forcefully grabbed Scrúje's right wrist, and soon, they were somewhere else entirely. Scrúje let his newspaper fall to the ground as his awe caused him to suddenly lose control of some very important bodily functions. Functions that I do not wish to list in detail.

They were in front of his bank. The architecture was slightly different, as if someone tried to build something more modern over the old structure. Also, it was on flames. The blackest smoke Scrúje had ever seen rose from the fires. He ran toward his beloved money factory, but stopped only a few centimetres from the edge of a large hole on the ground. There was a corpse at the bottom of the hole.

"AAAHH! Spirit, is the man that lays there me!? Please, make it not be so! Spirit, what must I do for it not to be so!?" begged Scrúje hysterically.

The companion was slightly confused at being addressed as "Spirit", but still, he jumped at his chance of finally redeeming himself, "You must study the holy writings of the prophets of the Big Blue Cosmical Light! You must leave your sinful ways and you must renounce the TARDIS! For this demonic artefact shall otherwise be the enabler of your doom!" he preached, motioning wildly all around.

Scrúje was prepared to kneel and say humbly "Good Spirit! Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!"

But before he did that, he noticed the mangled body in the hole wasn't his. And remembered another bit of information, "How come I'm still the owner of the bank two thousand years later?" Scrúje asked.

The Scrúje in black rags stood there, silently. But not in threatening silence as before. This silence was filled with fear. "You aren't," he said finally, "You could, theoretically, but it would be illegal. And strange questions of immortal men and vampires and whatnot would be raised. This is a descendant of yours...But that's no reason to abandon redemption! You must give up your ways and become something greater!"

Scrúje stared hard at his companions eyes, his confidence returned, "I'd rather have the TARDIS now."

His companion relaxed, and smiled, "I feared it would come to this," he said, "But still, a sinful existence cannot be justified. I'd rather cease it. I gave you plenty of chances, and you denied them all. So be it."

The man in rags adopted a crazed expressions and started screaming and running towards Scrúje. But moments before the collision, Scrúje was pushed off the way, by someone. The crazed Scrúje couldn't stop in time. He tripped and fell down the hole. Something that sounded like some important bone of the body breaking was heard (maybe a neck, or even a cranium, he didn't really know the difference).

A terribly handsome man in a blue suit helped him back on his feet, "Okay, I shouldn't stay here for long. Good job stalling him until I got here. My resourcefulness always impressed me," the Scrúje in the blue suit, visibly one day older, said, taking a weird pen out of his inner jacket pocket, looking at some symbols on his left arm, he copied them to Scrúje's left arm, "This is the code for the safe holding the Killogan Perma-Permanent Marker, you must go there get it and come here save yourself and scribble the code on his arm, like I just did."

"Why don't you just give me it?" Scrúje asked.

"I can't, it would create an unstable loop, as the Perma-Permanent Marker would get older and with less ink every time the loop happened. The only safe thing to pass along is the TARDIS, it isn't affected by the timestream...by the way..." he hesitantly fidgeted with the controls of the TARDIS, it was obvious he hadn't learned how to operate it well enough.

He disappeared, and appeared again a second later, a second after that, another Scrúje appeared inside the hole, wearing the same clothes he was, "Woah, I hope that doesn't happen again. Nuclear holocaust isn't as nice looking as they make it seem on the TV," he commented, while picking the TARDIS up and disappearing. The same TARDIS was in the hands of the other blue suited Scrúje.

He helped Scrúje to put it on his right wrist, and pressed a blue button, "Okay, now this thing is permanently affixed on your arm, the only way to get rid of it is cutting the arm or dying, as our friend there found out."

Scrúje was still confused, "You killed us!" he said, in a tone that made apparent his disapproval.

"I din't have a choice. Besides, I more or less put us out of our misery, we weren't exactly leading a healthy life...and, after all, we were thousands of years old, we've lived enough."

"But you killed us! I mean...this means we'll kill ourselves in the future."

"Yes, that's true. But you now have the TARDIS and'll be able to do things you would only dream about otherwise. If for that we have to kill ourselves thousands of years in the future, I think it's worth it...besides, there's always the chance that the next generation'll break the loop," the Scrúje in the blue suit argued, mostly to himself.

"And this?" Scrúje motioned to the destroyed ruins of Paris, "I think I'd better use the TARDIS to stop it from happening."

"Actually it's better not. The destruction of society was necessary for the neomarxists to get into power, which will lead to a new era of scientific development. Instead of focusing on the exploration of space, like they did before, colonizing Mars and all, the scientists will develop clinical immortality and techniques of grafting computers in brains, which'll be useful for us," Scrújes companion explained.

"He should've known that was coming, why didn't he?" Scrúje asked.

"Oh, his memories from before the grafting are cloudy at best. You should know," he was answered, while the other Scrúje rubbed the dirt and the ashes from his blue suit, then he hesitantly fidgeted with the mechanisms of the TARDIS, and touched Scrúje's arm.

Soon they were back in Scrúje's large study. Scrúje sat on the chair, thinking, "I'll do my best to break the loop. There must be a way."

"Yeah, I'm studying it too, there must be one, and I'm going to find it...I'm making some progress, even. Well, I guess that's it, see you around," he said, pulling levers and pushing buttons.

"Yeah..." Scrúje said, then he looked at the symbols written on his left arm, "Are you sure the ink of this Perma-Permanent Marker isn't toxic?"

The other Scrúje paused midmovement for a second, as his eyes widened, but he didn't answer, he just scratched his left arm, pushed a green button on the TARDIS, and in the next moment, he was gone.

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