SLIDERS: EARTH 374
 

                 Episode-9: "Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction"

                 -Colin Mallory stared into the mirror in the bar. He raised his beer
                 and began drinking from it. There was a man beside him named Ted
                 who had basically latched onto him the moment he sat down at the
                 bar. Ted was clearly drunk and had been pouring his heart out about
                 his problems to Colin for the last hour or so. Ted raised his head and
                 spoke,"So what's your story, Colin?" Colin turned to Ted and spoke,
                 "Are you sure you want to hear it?" "Yeah."

                 -Colin began to tell his tale. "I'm not from your Earth. I was born on
                 an Earth where humans lived with a race of beings known as
                 Kromaggs. There was a bloody civil war between the human and
                 kromagg factions. The world was nearly destroyed. My father
                 developed the means to travel across dimensions, he called it sliding.
                 Using this method he placed me and my brother Quinn on two
                 separate Earths, this was so the kromaggs would not be able to find
                 us. What my father failed to realize was that our nanny was working
                 with the kromaggs. She placed a tracking device on me, but wasn't
                 able to pin one on Quinn. Anyway, my father told the people he left
                 us with that he'd be back for us when the war was over." Colin
                 looked at Ted and spoke,"You don't believe a word of this do you?"
                 Ted replied,"Go ahead, man, I want to hear this."

                 -Colin continued the tale. "The people who I thought were my parents
                 were killed a few years later. I didn't have anyone. That's when the
                 kromaggs showed up. They took me into their care and began to train
                 me. They told me that my father had banished them from the
                 homeworld. They told me the war was over, so why hadn't he come
                 back for me. The hatred I began to feel for him was unreal. First, to
                 discover you aren't who you think yo are and then to find out that
                 your real parents don't want you. I was angry. I began training with
                 the maggs. They taught me about "sliding" and how it worked and
                 everything that went along with it. I became the most ruthless human
                 solider they had. All because I hated the world that had abandoned
                 me. It was during this time, we encountered a Quinn Mallory who had
                 invented sliding. He was a cocky, arrogant man who I did not care for
                 at all. The maggs tricked him, with my help, into giving them his
                 homeworld coordinates so that he could teach them more about sliding.
                 The imbecile agreed. We invaded. He was so utterly confused. Of
                 course, it didn't help when I gutted his dear wife Wade in front of his
                 eyes. He simply went mad. We let him go, his broken mind was no
                 good to us. I believe he ended up on some fog world being
                 worshipped as a god or something. Here's the funny part though, it
                 turns out that Quinn was my brother. My parents never came back
                 for him either, he just didn't know about them. We found a small
                 micro-dot that had their story on it, much like the one the maggs had
                 found at my home. It was then a plan was put into action. You see,
                 there's this thing that keeps the Kromaggs,or anyone else for that
                 matter, from sliding back to the homeworld. It's called the slidecage.
                 The thing is only the sons of Michael Mallory can deactivate the
                 slidecage. So, we needed another Quinn, seeing as how my real
                 brother was psycho now. It just so happened that the maggs
                 observed another Quinn who was sliding, with three other people.
                 They observed him for sometime and came up with a plan. They
                 would have me convince him that I was his brother and he was the
                 Quinn from the homeworld. This was going to be easier than it
                 seemed, because somehow Quinn had a kromagg tracking device in
                 his head. They didn't put it there, but somehow it was there all the
                 same. All they had to do was track him until the time was right. Are
                 you getting all of this?" Ted nodded his head.

                 -"So, Quinn and his friends were going to slide back their homeworld
                 after four years. I slid to the world they were on and tampered with
                 their timer and the timer of a man they were chasing. I erased their
                 homeworld coordinates from his timer. Even if they finally got his
                 timer they wouldn't be able to go home. To make a long story short.
                 two of his friends used the wormhole generated by that timer to slide
                 "home". Quinn was going to track them, but I had "fixed" it so he
                 couldn't. He slid for three months before he found them. By then it
                 was too late. We conquered that world and took his friends hostage.
                 One was sent to a breeder camp, the other a simple work camp. We
                 convinced his mother's double to play the role and give Quinn the
                 micro-dot that we had found. When Quinn came to rescue his friends,
                 he was caught and the plan went into effect. Once he escaped, the
                 micro-dot made him believe he was my brother and that he had to
                 find me and the homeworld (never mind the fact that his "girlfriend" is
                 in a breeder camp, but hey!). The kromaggs returned me to the world
                 they had taken me from and with the help of a little kromagg mind
                 trick, the populace believed I had never left. Quinn finds me and takes
                 me on his little trip to find the homeworld. We get to the slidecage,
                 but he doesn't want to deactivate it, doesn't want to let the maggs
                 back in. Meanwhile, all this time I'm with him I'm playing the ultimate
                 inbreed hick boy, like I don't have a clue about anything that involves
                 technology. So here he is, trying to figure away to get all of us out of
                 the slidecage while I'm convincing him to cross a couple of wires that
                 will allow me to do what I have to do. He figures out a way to get
                 everyone off of the slidecage. But the idiot fails to realize 2 things: 1)If
                 the slidecage is active we will never reach the homeworld and 2) I'm
                 actually smarter then him and implanted a virus that will shut the
                 slidecage down two weeks after we leave it. Anyway, we land on a
                 world and he gets shot and they do some x-rays. they find the
                 tracking device and remove it, and I still have no clue who put it in
                 there, suddenly all he wants to do is find Wade. He realizes I can't be
                 his brother, that couldn't have been his homeworld and about a dozen
                 or so other things. We land on the next world and he's home and
                 Wade's was rescued from the breeder camp by some other Quinn. I
                 get pissed, pull a gun on them tell them I'm with the maggs and we're
                 going to take over this world. Some guy comes barreling out from a
                 wormhole behind me and knocks me down. I grab the timer from
                 Quinn and slide off that world thinking I'll just use the coordinates in
                 the timer to give the location to the maggs. Nope, Quinn erased all the
                 coordinates and disabled the wormhole tracking feature. I slid
                 randomly for a month, then I ran into the maggs. They had began the
                 invasion of the homeworld. I joined the campaign. I loved the look on
                 my father's face when he realized this was all my fault. That was right
                 before I killed him. So anyway, now I'm a scout basically. I travel
                 from world to world seeing if they'll suit the needs of the Kromagg
                 Dynasty. Oh and occasionally, if I run into Quinn and his buddies I try
                 to kill them, or at least just screw with their heads a little bit. So, Ted,
                 that's my story. What do you think?"

                 -Ted raised his head up and began laughing hysterically. "You are one
                 funny guy, Colin. "Sliding" Kromaggs. Your brother, the whole bit, it's
                 hilarious." "Yeah it is isn't it. Want some fresh air?" "yeah, Colin that
                 sounds like a good idea." The two walked out of the bar onto the
                 sidewalk and Colin spoke,"I was telling the truth you know, And this
                 world is lucky. It gets to join the Dynasty." Colin pulled a strange
                 cube-like object from his pocket and pressed on it. A large
                 reddish-black wormhole opened and hundreds of
                 Kromaggs(Genesis/4th Season style) began coming through it. "Oh
                 and Ted. Thanks for listening." With those words, Colin turned and
                 joined the invasion fleet.
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