There was silence, nothing but silence since Roark called Mike "dad". The "kids" looked at each other, almost daring each other to explain what had just happened to them and Mercy. Finally someone spoke up, and it was Bethany.
"We're from the future." Bethany said. "Roughly 2001." She said.
"2001?" Chea asked.
"Yeah." Bethany said. "We found something in the attic of my home, and we were just kidding around but it went off. Something activated it." She said. She looked at Roark. "Show it to them."
Roark reached in into his back pocket and took out the time gadget. Everyones eyes widened.
"How did you get that?" Mike said.
"Like we told you." Roark said. "In the attic."
"In the future right?" Mike scoffed.
"Thats right." Roark said.
"How are we supposed to believe that that there is not our own time gadget?" He asked him.
"Great," Roark spat. "This is proof guys, no matter what place or time, Michael Nesmith is the same stubborn jerk..."
"Hey..." Mike said starting in on him.
"Knock it off you two." Karen said. "God, if people didnt know you, they would say you were related!" She held out her hand. "This is our time gadget. It was in the bedroom, where is always been."
"Okay." Mike said. "Give it here." He said holding his hand out slowly. Roark hesitated then handed him the device. Mike looked it over carefully.
"Its definitely ours, just a few years older." Mike said.
"Roark is your son." Bethany said deciding to break in. "Davis is Peter and Livvies son."
"That one was easy, he's almost like a clone of Peter." Micky said.
"I'm your daughter." Bethany said.
"I can see she got your good looks mate." Davy said to Micky.
"Poor girl." Micky cracked.
"Then Mercy has to be our daughter." Davy said. "Although she is a little taller and dark haired."
"She couldn’t be my daughter." Brianna said.
"Why?" Davy asked.
"Well..." She leaned into Davy. "When I was young I was real sick for a while. I almost died. I recovered all right but when I was 12 I learned through a test that I would never be able to have children." Brianna said to the rest of the group. "So its impossible for Mercy to be mine."
"Shes not." Roark said. "One of them left on the doorstep miracles." He said remembering what was said about the discovery of the baby at the time.
"Quid pro quo." Davis quoted. Everyone looked at him. "What? I learned it from mom."
"He's right. Gave you info, you give back. Who is Jonny and Bonny?" Roark asked.
"Thats a good question." Chea said. "But in order for you to know that, you're gonna have to know the truth about us, the truth and nothing but."
"What do you mean mom?" Bethany asked.
"Can you just call me Chea?" Chea asked. "I'm still getting used to the concept of being a mom." Karen nodded.
"I know how you feel."
"So whats this truth?" Roark asked casting a challenging look at his father. Mike returned the look.
"The truth is, we're from 2001 too." Chea said.
Bethany looked at her. "But thats impossible!"
"It isnt." Karen said. "We're not even from here, in fact, we're from a different 2001."
"I think we better explain." Chea said.
"You better sit down. It's quite a story." Brianna continued.
"Why can't we just show them the flashback?" Micky asked. Everyone looked at him. "Just a suggestion."
"Flashback?" Davis questioned.
"It's part of the story. Don't worry. It'll come up." Chea promised.
Everyone sat down, and prepared to hear the tale of the wild tale of the time gadget gang.
Castle Forrestor
Mercy awoke when she felt rays of sunlight trying to peek under the covers of her eyelids. She slowly sat up and rubbed her eyes. She looked around a bit. Her room was made up like a room in a barbie house, everything was pink and frilly. She almost wanted to gag.
"Wonderful." She said half expecting a guy named Ken to come in. She looked down and saw that she was wearing a pink frilly nightgown. "Oy. Not even my folks try to dress me in cutesy things. She shook her head and got out of bed. She went to change but couldnt find the outfit she was wearing when she was whisked away. She was secretly happy the 60's era outfit she was wearing was now gone, but what was she gonna wear? She couldn’t wear the nightgown forever. She laughed at herself, it was the first time she was ever worried about what she was wearing. As she thought a note caught her eye on the dresser. It was next to a package.
"Mercy, thought this outfit would be more to your liking. Mother." It read. She looked at the package hesitantly and opened it. It was a pair of black jeans with a studded cuff and a black shirt. Even though she knew nothing about this woman, this woman obviously knew about her taste in clothing. Mercy quickly ditched her nightgown and threw on the new outfit.
Mercy bounded down the stairs into the living room of what looked like a huge castle. It looked vaguely familiar to her, like something she would have seen on televison. Then it hit her, one of the friends in England was a fan of the tv series Mystery science theater 3000. Evelyn used to come over and make her watch every episode till she knew each quip and quote by heart. After a minute of lookng around she finally found the blonde couple from the night before in a kitchen.
"Darling! You're up!" She said.
"Don't call me that!" Mercy said. "I'm still not entirely sure why you think you're my mother."
"But I am." She said.
"Right, at this point Id rather have Joan Crawford for a mom."
"Oh no, you don’t want that. Watch Mommie Dearest with me sometime and you will know what I mean." She said. "I suppose we should tell you who we are."
"Duh!" Mercy countered. "Why am I here?"
"I'm Jonny." Jonny said. "And this is Bonny."
"Jonny? Bonny? You gotta be pulling my chain." Mercy said.
"Oh no thats our real names." Bonny said.
"You're not brother and sister are you?"
"No, oh no." Bonny said. "He's your dad. That would make it kinda icky and weird."
"Like it isnt already?" Mercy asked.
"We shoulda just left her with her parents." Jonny said. "They did a real good job at bringing her up. Who are your parents?"
"David and Brianna Jones." Mercy said. Jonny and Bonny looked at each other. "What?"
"This is so perfect." Bonny said.
"What is?" Mercy said sitting down at the table.
"Yeah?" Jonny asked, obviously as lost as Mercy was.
"Remember when we tried to get the time gadget? And they stopped us and those stupid FBI agents put us away." Bonny asked. Jonny shook his head. "Don't mind him, hes a little touched in the head."
"Noooo." Mercy said. "He is? What do you know about the time gadget?"
"That it can bring you into any dimension you wanted to go. But we had this thing see...we wanted to rule the world. Thats why were are here, in this Castle." Bonny said waving her hand. "But the last people here couldnt do it either. Trying to take over the world with bad movies, Bah!" Bonny laughed. "Anyway they stopped us and put us in a place where no one would find us, moving us from one bad show to the next."
"Where?" Mercy asked.
"You ever heard of the show Becker?" Jonny asked.
"No." Mercy replied a moment of thought.
"See? No one watches so no one saw us." Jonny said.
"Anyway we just escaped. We took one of the FBI agents time gadgets and ended up in the Monkee dimension."
"Monkee dimension? What are you talking about?" Mercy asked.
"Wow, I guess your folks never told you, what you think is real life is actually tv. You and your family and friends have been living on tv all your life."
"What?" Mercy said.
"Shes right." Jonny said.
"That can't be. On TV all kinds of weird stuff happens, and before yesterday...."
"...it seemed normal didnt it?" Jonny asked.
"Yes." Mercy said.
"Truth is stranger than fiction." Bonny said.
"So what do you want with me?" Mercy asked.
"Well obviously we still want to rule the world, and we want to get the other gadget. It's been going bad, but now we have such a break in you sweetie."
"Stop calling me sweetie." Mercy said.
"Fine, what would you rather be called?"
"Mercy."
"Okay Mercy Percy." Bonny said.
"You know sweetie wasn’t too bad." Mercy reasoned.
"Anyway while we were exiled we had a baby, you. But we decided that we couldnt watch you while we kept being moved so we dropped you off in a little hamlet in England when we got a chance. Little did we know we dropped you off on the doorstop of our nemesis!"
"Okay, I'm going to ask again, why me?" She asked.
"We will contact the others, we'll switch the devices they have for you. Easy." She said. "Unless."
"What?" Mercy said
"Unless you want to join us. Think about it. A mother daughter takeover of the world. You would even get your choice of worlds to go to live if you want to. You can be your own queen!" Bonny enthused. Mercy moved to answer. "Anywhere you want to go. No rules, no one telling what to do. Well maybe not, you'll still have us as parents." Bonny pointed out. "So don't answer right away. Think about it for a while." She smiled at Mercy. "What do you think?"
"I think you two are personally whacked out of your gourd!!" Mercy said. "I'm out of here."
Mercy got out of her chair and ran to the door. Jonny sighed and Bonny rolled her eyes.
"We're parents, officially." She said. "Already shes not listening to us." She hit a button on a control in her hand and vanished.
Mercy ran about for a few seconds, up and down alternating staircases, in and out of huge rooms. She finally came upon a huge door. She ran to it and pulled it open using a large handle. She stepped out a few steps then abruptly stopped. There was a huge drop beneath her feet. From what she could see there was sharp rocks and a cold looking ocean at the bottom. A flash of light appeared in back of her.
"I'm sorry dear. You're not going anywhere." Bonny said. "In a sense, you're grounded."
"You're not gonna send me to my room are you?" Mercy said to her.
"Oh no." Bonny said. "You can go to any room you want, you just can't leave."
The pad
It took a few minutes for it all to sink in. Bethany, Roark and Davis had heard the same thing that Mercy had heard from her real parents a few minutes ago, that what they thought was real life was actually a television show, and that their moms were from reality. Davis's reaction reaction was pretty laid back, albeit finding out his mom was from 1906.
"I wonder if we jumped the shark yet." Davis mused. Roark looked at him. "Sorry, its whats called when a show starts to go downhill."
"Oh." Roark said.
"So what do we do?" Bethany asked Mike. "What now?"
"What else do we do?" Davy said getting up. "We get me daughter back."
A weird beeping sound emitted from the time gadget.
"What IS that? It's like fingernails on chalkboard!" Micky whined.
"We had a messenger installed Micky, remember?" Chea said. "Who is it?"
Karen hit a button on the device, looked at it for a second and handed to Chea. "Believe it or not, its for you. And IS you."