La Dolce Basco by Paradox Fish

Brian Basco was having a terrible day. First his beloved girlfriend, Gina, fell into a hole and died.
Then, the tool that he needed to use to solve a puzzle fell into a trough with mud in it. It felt like
everything was against him!

Had this been the old, pre-Gina, Basco, he would have stopped at nothing to studiously come
up with solutions to all of these problems. Hell, he could have worked out some sort of a
machine or gizmo that could bring Gina from the dead, had he so desired. This would
necessarily be a simultaneously pre-Gina and post-Gina Basco, of course, which, though
impossible, is hopefully not beyond the realms of hypothetical imagining, dear reader.
It wouldn't have been easy, but with a brain (not to mention a pair of glasses) like he had, he
could've worked out anything!

However, something within Basco had changed. No more was his drive to collect books for
university! No longer did he feel compelled to approach matters with an analytical attitude even
bordering on the scientific! And, no, no no, absolutely no more time for glasses-wearing had he
(except sunglasses, obviously)!

No. This Basco was new. Brian had learned, after hitting that lounge singer cum stripper with his
car, that there were more important joys in life. Having sex, taking drugs, that sort of thing. His
penis revved like a motorbike just thinking about it.

"This town is a mess! I'm leaving," he said, impactfully, and finally. Douglasville may hold the
secrets of whatever the hell this conspiracy he had gotten himself into was, but it was severely
lacking in other thrills. He considered playing his cards (sexually) with Sushi, but, having already
made his mind up to leave, left.

"New York City, here I come," he said, suavely, to his taxi driver. The taxi driver drove
understandingly.

"Let's clear out my pockets! I don't need all this stuff!" cried Brian, after stepping out the taxi
into the wonderful glowing streets of the aforementioned N.Y.C. He deposited on the ground one
brush, one bowl, one crucifix, one amber, five logs, one pliers, one oilcan, and some other stuff
that he really could not give a single care about. He then proceeded into the nearest bar in order
to seduce some ladies.

He sat next to a particularly beautiful lady at the bar. Her hair was blonde or something.
Attractive figure, revealing clothing, that kind of thing.

"What's your zodiac star sign?" he asked suggestively.

"Gemini, my name's Genovefa" she replied. Genovefa lent back, and took a sip of her drink,
which was a mixture of vodka, lemon juice, tomato juice, with a bit of Worcesthesitrhire sauce
and Tabasco in it.

"Nice! My name's Brian" replied Brian. "Bartender, I'd like a Bloody Mary too please." The
bartender got his drink for him and handed him his change, a crispy one dollar bill.
Genovefa, who had previously been chilling cooly, lost her cool, and arose from her relaxed in
impressed alarm. "Wow, you knew what I was drinking?" she asked, genuinely amazed.
"My name's Brian and I know all the alcohol mixtures. I used to be a bit of a nerd but I'm better
now" replied Brian.

Genovefa's face paled to the white of a piece of ice, like the kind of thing one could find in a
cocktail. Only too often did she encounter men who were proper nerds, geeks, more interested
in physics and studying than in drugs and sex. But this man seemed… different? Her face paled
further in arousal.

Uncertain as to whether this palor was a good sign or a bad sign, Brian intervened. "Hey lady!
You're not looking so good! Should I call a doctor?"

Genovefa realised her error and unpaled her face into the healthy red of a Bloody Mary. "No, I'm
fine. It's just… I've never met a man so unnerdlike. I can barely believe it! By any chance, are you
seeing anyone?"

Brian thought for a second. Gina had fallen into a hole and died, so single he was, undoubtedly.
Would it have really mattered if he wasn't? Sexual propriety seemed like such an old Basco
quality.

"No. I'm not seeing anyone right now. But if I was, I don't think it would make a difference!"
replied Basco.

This kind of explanation would usually be defined as a "red flag", in that it could be cause for
alarm. But, in her awe of Basco, Genovefa didn't notice. In fact, it is dubious that she even heard
Basco's words at all, which is a shame considering how sexily spoken he is. But I digress.
"Would you like to come back to my place?" asked Genovefa flirtily.

"Sure! Sounds great" replied Basco.

As the two of them headed towards the exit of the bar, easily found, even in drunkenness, by
way of the large sign marked "EXIT", they both heard a large crash from outside.

Neither of them thought to care, until they stepped outside and found out that it was Genovefa's
car that had been smashed to pieces with a crow bar.

Genovefa screamed. "My car! Who could have done this!"

Basco couldn't help but feel sympathy with the culprit, however illegal his actions may have
been. "Whoever it was, they don't look to have hung around with crow bar in sight! But, you
know, I think we shouldn't be too hard on the guy. Some of my dearest memories are from
smashing my uncle's motorbike to pieces with a crow bar."

Genovefa had pictured the destroyer of her car as some kind of nerd, more pencil than cologne.
But picturing Basco doing this had an air of the sexy that caught her off guard. In her distraction,
she accidentally dropped her set of car keys, which promptly fell through the drainage grill she
was standing on top of.

"Damn!" she cried, instantly sobering up (if she was drunk beforehand), "There go my bloody
keys! Well, it's not like I could've used them to open this car anyway, I guess. How could this
blooming day get any worse?" she asked rhetorically, but then the sky started raining and rained
all the car fragments down the drain too.

Something about the rain, be it the effect of the pitter patter upon his psyche, or some chemical
process from the water itself, awakened something that had long lay dormant in Basco.
"Not to worry Geno!" Basco replied eagerly, with a baseball bat of a smile across his face. "I
know a way around this"

Basco looked around, and saw that the rain had caused most people to file themselves away
indoors, with the exception of Genovefa and one other individual, wearing a dark hoodie
concealing their face.

Basco looked at the other individual but saw nothing he wanted to take. Then he went back to
the manhole cover.

"You know, I bet I could lift this, if only I had the right kind of tool!" he said, turning to face some
invisible sky presence, possibly God. "I wonder…".

Brian returned to the ominous figure, and looked at them closely. He saw nothing he wanted to
take, so he went back.

"Genovefa, do you have any ideas of what kind of tool could open the drain?" asked Brian,
getting more and more soaked.

Through the rain, there was a sudden flash of lightning that struck beneath the drain and,
unbeknownst to Basco at the time, fused all the pieces of the car back together, which would of
course turn out to be a big help later – though he still had to get down there!

"I hear those grills can be lifted with a manhole cover opener or a crow bar or something"
replied Genovefa.

"Great! Now I know what kind of tool opens a drain grill" repeated Basco, again facing the sky
gods.

Basco went over and looked at the hooded figure again. Their hood covered their face and they
were carrying a large crow bar.

"Hey! I bet I could use that crow bar to open the drain" said Basco, as he approached the figure.
"What's up? My name's Brian. Could I borrow your crow bar?" asked Brian.

"Beat it. This crow bar's mine. Get your own." Replied the figure, lowering their hood to reveal
the face of a very scary bearded thug.

Since Basco was certainly not gay, and probably also not bisexual or similar, he felt no interest
in entering a speedy and shallow sexual relationship with this previously unseen figure now,
despite his love for that general sort of thing. Just wasn't his cup of tea, like it would have been if
it turned out they were, in fact, a sexy woman.

"Is there anything I could do to make you change your mind? I really need that crow bar!"
explained Basco. There was no implication here of anything improper (i.e. romantic) due to what
has just been explained.

The hooded figure (he had raised his hood again due to the pouring rain) thought for a second
and replied. "I'm kinda short on money right now. If you can pay me a small sum, say, one
hundred thousand dollars, it would be a great help!"

Basco checked his pockets. Having gotten rid of all that useless junk after leaving Douglasville,
all he had was that one dollar bill he got as change for his drink, and the drink itself, but after
seeing it he inspected it in his pocket and drunk it so he just had the glass now.

Basco walked over to Genovefa.

"Geno! Do you have any money!"

"Sorry, Basco. All I have on me right now is my red lip stick."

"Can I have it?"

"Uh, sure, I guess."

Genovefa gave Basco her red lip stick. Basco thought for a bit, then used the lip stick to make
several circles after the one on the one dollar bill so it said one hundred thousand dollars; the
exact figure requested!

"Something about this still doesn't look right. I think it's the way that the red doesn't look like the
green on the bill and it stands out!"

Basco approached the man with the crow bar again.

"Hi there. I have the money you wanted! Here!". Basco handed over the bill.

"Do you think I'm stupid or something?! This is just a one dollar bill with a bunch of zeroes
written on it! Those zeroes add nothing!"

"Darn!" said Basco to sky god, "I'm going to need to come up with something else."

To cut a long story short, and a long story it was, Basco went back into the bar, and found some
people who weren't there earlier, in fact only having just arrived the second he showed the crow
bar man that bill. These were dealers in drugs, drug dealers, and had some newfangled hip
psychedelic substance. Very illegal, naturally. Basco made a deal with one of them through
certain means (let's just say Basco found out, in what was admittedly a bit moment that we are
skimming over, that he wasn't as heterosexual as he had thought. This revelation was
accompanied by the clouds making their way out of the sun's line of fire a tad, though with the
rain still coming down, in such a way that the sun shown boldly down upon the world and a
bright and bold rainbow appearing). These drugs had a side effect of causing the taker to
become irreversibly colour blind after taking them, which is not at all desirable and so one
would expect that, despite the fact it would be tremendously unwise to paint illegal drugs in a
positive light, it's not so bad here since:

1. They have bad side effects
2. They're not even being used as, like, fun drugs for good party times or anything, it's really
genuinely the only way around a puzzle, to get around a particularly nasty situation
For those reasons, and probably many more not listed, it's not so bad that Basco did this or
what he did next.

We rejoin Basco after he and the crow bar man that he was not in love with are under the
influence of this drug.

"Hi there. I have the money you wanted! Here!". Basco handed over the bill.

"Looks good to me" said the now colour blind crow bar man. "Take it!"

The colour blind crow bar man threw the crow bar which missed Basco and almost went down
the drain but fortunately it didn't so everything was ok. Basco picked it up and used it on the
drain.

"Yuck! I hate going to sewers! Well, I guess I have no choice" he explained to the sky god, leaving
the sky god and all others in no doubt that he wasn't doing this because he wanted to, but rather
because he had to.

Basco started climbing down the ladder but sadly slipped and fell the last couple of rungs,
breaking every inventory item in his pocket. The crowbar had been used up in opening the drain,
so all that remained was the glass he took from the bar.

"Sheesh! Now I have two pieces of glass."

Cut though they were from the same glass, one of the pieces was curvey and refractory, the
other was more just a bit of glass whose form had no conceivable use.

Basco continued through the drain sewer a bit.

"Hey! Looks like the car is in one piece down here!" he said, as if to the sky god, except the
sewer blocked off almost all view to the sky, except for the drain cover itself, from which the
rainbow could still be seen (though, alas, not anywhere near as beautifully as it was back when
Basco wasn't colour blind).

"Now all I need to do is find those car keys, and this car, with a touch of chauffeuring, should
drive itself right out of this place!"

Basco searched the ground beneath the drain closely, then found, to his horror, that the keys
were not there. An indentation in a patch of mud revealed their former location, but they must
have been washed away by a blast of rain to the even more unpleasant depths of the sewer.
Most people would have given up here, but as the sun and rain burned and flooded through the
open drain entrance, Basco was struck with inspiration.

"I'll just put this here" he said loudly (as always) as he placed the shapeless piece of glass into
the indentation left by the car keys, words reverberating down the sewers.

"And now… if I hold this, like this…!" he said, holding the curved part between the sun's sturdy
beam and the previously placed piece of glass, focusing the intensity on a single point. Basco
had come up with a means by which a replica key could be produced!

Regrettably, glass is, naturally, good at letting light through, so the shapeless glass in the groove
remained unphased by this attack.

"Not great! Looks like I'll need something to stop the light from passing straight through it!"
Basco looked up at the entrance to the sewers, which seemed to be getting further and further
away.

"Geno!" he shouted.

Genovefa came to the entrance.

"What's up, Basco?" she asked.

"Do you have any more lip stick? I need it to make this glass opaque so it holds the heat and
melts itself! I used up all the last one writing all those zeroes!"

"Sure, but it's both my last set of lipstick, and the last item on my person, I'm afraid. After this, I
can't help you. I hope you know what you're doing! Catch!"

She dropped the lip stick into Basco's grasping, ready hands.

"Thank you Geno! We'll have your car back in no time, and then we can go back to your place!"
Basco applied lip stick generously to the formless glass, giving it, in its final moments, a hint of
beauty that, in shape alone, it had lacked.

"Now,,, let's burn it!!" announced Basco, and he focussed intensely on targeting the beam into
this ugly-duckling-turned-glass-with-lipstick like he had never focussed so hard on anything in
his life before, excepting physics and other nerd stuff he was so, so, so far past now.
The glass began to sizzle.

"It's working Geno! It's working!"

"Good work Brasco! Keep it going!"

"These keys- almost- almost!!"

As great as the intensity of the sun was, the rain, however, had not stopped, which seriously
threw a wrench in the trough. As the other glass heated the lip sticked glass up, the rain, cooled
it down. Worse still, the lip stick was starting to run. At this rate--!!

"Geno, it's not working! What can I do!" cried Basco.

"Keep trying Brian! You can do it!"

"I- I- I can't!" admitted Basco.

Basco, in all his life, was unaccustomed to failure. Be it with physics in early life, or with women
in the past 8 or so hours since he adopted that interest, he had never, apart from that book he
forgot to take for university, or that girl who fell into the hole, known anything other than purest
success.

How could it be? The glass still wasn't melting. Very little lip stick remained, and he had used it
all up.

"Geno! I've failed! It's over! The keys… the lip stick… it's not working, and it never will. I've lost!"
Basco looked up and the entrance to the sewers looked impossibly far away.

"Brian! Don't give up! Brian! Are you ok down there! Brian!"

The rain poured thicker and thicker upon Basco, as his consciousness faded outuo dedaf
ssensuoi—

Basco had awoken!!

"Brian! Can you hear me!"

"Gina?"

That was impossible. Gina was dead.

"Brian?"

"Gina!"

Suddenly Brian remembered. Gina hadn't died. She had fallen a long way, but she hadn't died.
Together, they had reunited. Then what?

It was all coming back to him now. On the way out, Basco himself had fallen into the same hole
that had taken Gina's leg's unbrokenness. Now he was at the bottom of the pit.

Basco's head hurt like hell, but he was inclined to think that his trip through the dreaming wasn't
all bad. Perhaps the mind needs a bit of downtime to process the changes that Basco was going
through, casting out the last sludgy remnants of nerd. And, what's more, Basco had
successfully fallen without breaking any bones, which was cool.

The water, which Basco now realised had been, and still in fact was being, poured down by Gina
to wake him up, had helped him to come to his senses instantly with no ill effects and he was
very happy and very very healthy.

"I'm on my way up" he called and climbed up out of there like few humans can, which all went
to show just how reinvigorated he felt.

"You met me at a very strange time in my life" said Basco, "but now, I think I have mentally
settled. I know w-" Basco then froze and fell back into the pit but got helped out again.
"What's wrong, Brian? What happened?" asked Gina caringly.

Obviously, her motivations were entirely benevolent. But could Basco trust her?

Basco had remembered two things that had come to pass while unconscious, as well as, at that
instant, discovering a third.

Fortunately, he could dismiss the first of these, as he realised he had not, in fact, become
colour blind. Things still looked the same as ever. That was a relief.

The second, however, was not so easy. Could he afford to let even Gina know, who he would
surely trust with anything else? Even when he was a nerd, Brian was, as far as anyone (himself
included) knew, completely straight. He just didn't have those kinds of feelings about other
men. He wasn't homophobic to others or anything, unless it was particularly convenient at a
given moment, but he'd never entertained or even felt such feelings. But this dream had taught
him that not all was as it had seemed. Awake, and sober in both mind and heart, he now saw
that that part of the dream was no mere illusion.

And with it, came a new discovery. One that there was no going on from. To think he'd once
considered trying to date Sushi! To think he, even now, was actually dating Gina! No, this wasn't
how it should be. He shook his head. Pleasant though it was, this wasn't true love. As a bisexual,
he could love women, but in these cases it was more about enhancing his own image, a pair of
sunglasses to his soul. That wasn't what he, or his partner, would want!

No, his heart belonged to another. But this other had gone, gone far away. While he had fallen
down in the hole, his love had risen up to the heavens. How, now, could he confess his feelings?
The love (and a not too unhealthy amount of lust) ached through his heart right down to his
intestines. Physics! Had he gone so wrong, strayed so far from his fated path? Was it too late for
him to put his skills to good use, make a rocket, not for nerd of physics, but for uniting lovers?
Basco looked to the sky god. In his heart, he now knew this was no sky god he was addressing,
this was Joshua in the heavenly realms he had been taken to.

The nerd life. The party life. He was now well aware that nerding is no life, and he should show a
bit of maturity and follow his true calling. But circumstances temporarily demanded otherwise.
This was it. Time for a final descent into the depths of nerd, build a rocket, rescue Joshua, and
return to Earth, and live the sweet life. What could possibly go wrong?

"Brian, I'm so glad you're safe. Let's go! We've got what we came for. It's party time!"

But it wasn't.

"There isn't going to be any party. Yet. This is just the beginning."

Basco picked up a textbook from his inventory, opened it, and began reading.

To Be Continued