Rick was expecting a thud, or a bang, or some indicator that he’d landed when and wherever the Historotron had sent him, Bruce, and Charlie. He was not expecting an ear-splitting scream to cue the arrival.
“What the fuck!?” a girl screamed, and Rick assumed it came from someone who’d just seen three young men appear from nowhere. Then he heard the girl scream again, louder this time. “I have tits! Why do I have tits!? Where the fuck is my dick!?”
Rick turned around, and saw a woman around his age furiously pawing at her red polka-dot dress. Next to her was Bruce, dressed in jeans, a stained shirt, and a leather jacket. He too was pawing, but at his hair. It was cut short and slicked back with enough grease to make a fry cook faint. Behind them both was a diner, with a few similarly dressed occupants.
“Bruce?” Rick asked, and he nodded before returning to his hair. Rick looked over to the woman, who was now groping herself, and quickly realized what was happening. He mentally prepared himself for the beating to come, and forced himself to say, “Charlie?”
The woman, Charlie, came to a dead stop, and slowly turned her head to look at her brother. An excess of lipstick made her sneer blood-red, which did little to ease Rick’s mind. His only defense was to put on a nervous smile and apologize.
Charlie lunged before Rick could get a word out. She slammed her fist into Rick’s nose, and screamed almost as loud as he did. Apparently her female form didn’t get into nearly as many fights as modern day Charlie. She shook her hand in the air, and fought back tears as Rick recovered from the punch.
“I’m sorry!” he shouted, waving to keep Charlie from getting too close.
“What the hell happened!? Why’d I turn into a girl?”
“And why’d I lose my hair?” Bruce complained. “How come you get a suit and we get screwed over?”
Rick glanced down, and saw that he was in fact wearing a nice charcoal suit. He quickly shook off the revelation, and returned to his companions. “I don’t know what happened.” Bruce and Charlie looked unimpressed at best. “I don’t! The Historotron did this to us! It’s not like I chose to go to... the 1950s?”
Rick looked around to confirm what he’d just said. The diner and greaser fashion added to his theory. The hot rod cars parked around them and passing by on freshly tarred streets did too. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and nodded. “Okay, Yeah, we’re in the 50s. Or a simulation of them, at least.”
Charlie charged towards her brother and pushed her breasts up. “Feel these man! Do these feel like a simulation to you!?”
Rick pushed her away, trying his absolute best not to touch a breast in the process. “Stop that! It’s a simulation, no matter what it feels like. The Historotron must have put us into a complex virtual reality program with its zaps. God, I wish there was a more scientific term for ‘zaps’.”
“The point, Rick, please!” Bruce groaned. He ran a hand through his short hair, then scrunched up his face and rubbed grease on his jeans. “When do we get back to the present?”
Rick racked his brain for a moment, his expression becoming more and more annoyed by the second. Eventually he threw his hands up, and sighed. “I genuinely don’t know. My best guess is that we have to wait out the simulation. We either get to the end of the 50s, back to the moment we entered the simulation, or to the moment we die.”
“That’ll take forever!”
Charlie tugged on his eyebrows, making his eyes seem even more manic than they were. “I like this ‘until we die’ idea. Wasn’t gun control was a lot more lax back then? Or right now, I guess. Either way, I say we go down to a gun shop and shoot ourselves. Bang! We’re back in the present!”
Rick shook his head so fast it could have unscrewed itself. “Don’t do that! That’s the exact opposite of what we want to do! I don’t know what will happen if we’re killed in the simulation! Dying naturally might get us out, but blowing our heads off could screw with our real brains in a really, really bad way.
Charlie tried folding her arms, but found her breasts got in the way. She huffed and put her hands an her hips, in a way far cuter than she intended. “Fine. So if we don’t go to the gun store, where do we go?”
Rick tapped his foot and thought for a moment. “We could go into the diner,” he said. “The Historotron dropped us here, so it may want us to go inside. Maybe it’s simulated a story for us to fully experience the 50s.”
Bruce furrowed his brow. “What does that even mean?”
“The Historotron is meant to accurately simulate a time period to derive information about it. Think of Westworld, but it’s greasers instead of cowboys. Not that I didn’t program an 1870s simulation...” Rick proudly thought of his programming skills for a moment before catching himself. “Anyways,” He hurriedly continued, “maybe it wants us to do certain things to learn more about the 50s. Maybe doing them could get us out!”
Bruce wrestled with the idea for a few moments before giving up on it entirely. “I don’t like it. The Histo-thing gave us these new identities, I say we figure out who they are. Maybe playing the part will get us out. Like that movie Pleasantville! Like I have to fix cars, and you have to go to some school, and Charlie has to become a housewife!”
Charlie slapped Bruce’s arm, and hated how much easier it felt compared to punching. “I still say gun shop. It’s quick, and it’s easy, and even if I die for real, at least I won’t have to be a chick.”
Rick shook his head. “Okay, first off, Bruce, that’s the exact opposite of what Pleasantville is about. Second, no. Just no. No gun shops, ever.”
Charlie stuck out a fist. Rick reflexively jumped back and cowered. He peeked an eye open, and saw Charlie shaking her head and Bruce barely containing his laughter. “It’s rock-paper-scissors, you numbskull. We do what whoever wins wants.”
“That isn’t the most scientifically sound method—”
“Just throw your fist in.”
Rick raised his fist, putting it across from Bruce and Charlie’s. They bounced them in the air and chanted, “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”
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