“My father is right over there,” Baker Bloch spoke to spiritually oriented Hucka Doobie. “Just beyond the unwaving grass.”
“Bamboo,” Hucka Doobie elaborated. “A type of grass, yes.”
“But I can’t interact with him,” Baker Bloch continued. “Oh the things I could tell him.”
Hucka Doobie remained silent, then: “Why can’t you interact with him? Since he’s just right over there especially.”
“I thought…”
“That you would change the future?”
“Well… yeah.”
“The future cannot be changed, because there is no future except a web of possibilities. We could change *one* probability, yes, but it was already there in the first place. We cannot change anything.”
Baker Bloch nodded for Hucka Doobie without really understanding what he said. “So… I can go see my father? My *young* father?” He points toward the bamboo on the other side of the frog pond. They can see the trailer faintly through it from where they sit.
“Sure, sure,” Hucka Doobie agreed. “But would this be pre-Baker Bloch Space Ghost or post-Baker Bloch?”
“Not sure.”
“What I mean is… what I’m asking is…”
“Whether I am yet born, yet *conceived*,” Baker Bloch realized
“Yes.”
“Well…” He blew out air here. “One thing I know is that I better not be my own grandpa or something.”
“How would that work?” Hucka Doobie shot back.
Baker Bloch thinks of his mother here, who we’ve only seen as Old Grey in the Collagesity novels. “I suppose it can’t.” Baker Bloch gets up off the bench they’re awkwardly perched upon. “Come on, Hucka D. Let’s go see Pops.”
“Hold on there young fellas.” It was Bullfrog, who rented the cottage behind them. “I can’t help but see you were sitting on that bench but you weren’t *sitting* on that here bench. You must be straight…. unable to run scripts… not part of the group.”
Standing Baker Bloch looks over at standing Hucka Doobie, then admits this is true. “We are here as observers,” he elaborates. “From the future.”
“Ohh.” Bullfrog looks anxiously back at the cottage. A diminutive figure emerges from around it: Bullfrog’s partner Aqua Dude.
He almost immediately invokes one of his own special powers. “The green turns to red and the red turns to green,” he recites down to Baker Bloch and Hucka Doobie, still clustered around that bench. Things completely change.
They look around. “Is this *real*?” Baker Bloch speaks to his bee friend.
“I’ve heard of such,” exclaims Hucka Doobie, also looking at the pond, the ground, the sky. “In theory.”
“This way,” Aqua Dude pipes up, “I can turn into Super Guy as well as being Aqua Dude. Ruler of the sea *and* the sky. See? Hehe.”
“He thinks his colors now are the same as his arch nemesis Super Guy,” explains Bullfrog above him. “But it’s not really an exact match. Just humor him. He does it to everyone he first meets. He’ll get use to you.”
“I rule the *skies* as well as the *sea*,” he repeats, glaring toward them.
“Sure you do, Aqua Dude,” tempers Bullfrog. “Sure you do.”
Satisfied that the strangers understand perhaps his most unique ability, Aqua Dude shuts it off and the pond and its environs return to normal colors. “The red turns to green and the green turns to red,” he reverses.
“Now, about that trailer…”
.
Sunklands 