I'm winding my way along the Congo river. The Toyota is clipping along nicely, but I think it needs an oil change. I can travel through time, but I still have to change the oil every six thousand miles. How's that for technology?

Anyway, this Congo place is all right. No giant gorillas though. I think they're really missing out on a good tourist angle there.

I've been traveling this river for days. It's pretty, in a dark depressing sort of way. At times I feel as if I'm heading into the heart of some kind of immense blackness or something. I should copyright that before somebody steals it.

After left Nevada, I decided I had to go to Dallas. I should say, it was decided for me, and I just followed the grand design. So I kicked the Toyota up to seventy-seven miles per hour and whooshed back to 1963.

It was a nice day in November, and somebody was planning a parade. I had my lunch with me, so I found a nice grassy hillock to picnic on, and sat down to watch the floats go by.

That's when the big black cars started rolling by, and everybody just lost their shit cheering for this guy in the back of one. Must have been pretty important. I found out later he was the president, of course. I should really get out more.

Anyway, just as he was driving past my nice little hillock, some asshole decided to let off a rifle shot right over my shoulder. He killed the guy in the car, and damn near deafened me for life. It really pissed me off.

So I followed the guy around the block, and he got into a limo and drove off.

Well, never one to let an interesting story slip by without taking a sniff, I decided to jump ahead a little bit and see if I could get to the bottom of all of this once and for all.

I sorta remembered something about a big meeting in Washington to try and figure out who shot the president, so I dialed in the date and whooshed to Washington.

As soon as I arrived, I knew I had the right place. The Marines were everywhere. Like I always say, where there's Marines, there's the truth behind an international conspiracy.

So I flashed my SBN credentials to get in the door, and I found the room where all of the judges and congressmen were hanging out. Really rude guys if you ask me. I had to give them all a good zap with my ray gun so I could take a look at their "secret documents."

Secret documents my ass. Most of those guys were just doodling on legal pads, but I did a little digging, and I came up with the man responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy.

It was John F. Kennedy. Go figure? Seems he was tired of the whole national hero bit, and just wanted to get away. See, I never would have thought of that in a million years.

Oh, he went off to some quiet little place in Montana or something, and lived to be eighty-three. I'm not saying he was secretly taken away by aliens because that is absolutely not what happened. No way, no how.

So now my mission has taken me into the jungle. I'm still not really sure why, but it probably has something to do with brainwashing an army of local jungle people to do my bidding. Whatever.

I'm sure there's a method to my madness. Somewhere.

I've decided to take a break from my non-stop traveling to get a bite to eat. I consulted my travel guides to find a decent restaurant in the area, but all of the places in these fucking books have either been demolished, or turned into shopping malls.

So now I'm sitting in what some would call a "greasy spoon," but for the purpose of not sounding contrite, we'll just call it a diner. Mom's diner, as it happens. Somewhere in Nevada.

Mom herself just refilled my coffee cup for the nine thousandth time, which I guess grants her a decent service rating. I don't know. I gave up on the whole food critic thing after China.

Mom asked me what the hell I thought I was doing staring at a huge pile of mashed potatoes in the middle of my plate, and I felt compelled to tell her that it wasn't important. It doesn't mean anything. Nothing at all.

Now that she mentions it, it does look a bit like Devil's Tower, but I'm not supposed to think those kind of thoughts anymore. At least I think I'm not.

It's been a strange month.

Since I got back from Roswell, I've been driving all over God's green United States interviewing people who think they've been abducted by aliens, and convincing them that they haven't.

Because that's what I really believe now. There are no aliens, and there never have been. Except for the ones that climb up out of the Rio Grande every once in a while.

See, I'm on a mission. I know that now. A mission to spread the word to anyone who will listen. By force if necessary.

I feel like a missionary on a divine mission from somebody big. I don't remember exactly who put me on this mission, but they were pretty smart folks. Considering that they fixed my Toyota so it could traverse time and space and all.

Whoever they were, I thank them for showing me the light, but the mission is the thing. I have to wipe this nonsense about extraterrestrial beings from the minds of the people, and replace those foolish thoughts with a message of peace and subservience.

Hear me people of Earth! You are alone in the universe. You are without peer in the great plan of those whose name you will now forget. The truth is not, in fact, out there. There is no truth. Forget you ever thought of it.

Now excuse me while I finish my mound of unimportant mashed potatoes. Sometimes I feel like a snail crawling along the edge of a straight razor. I'll have to talk to my shrink about that.

SAN FRANCISCO - So I've been doing some pretty freaky shit lately. Don't know why really. If anyone had asked me at the time I would have said because I fucking feel like it, now back off before I blast your brain with my raygun.

Thankfully no one asked me at the time. Partly because I'm not too sure what a raygun would do to somebody's brain. Nor wether the term "blast" is appropriate for a device that can literally transform a collection of collected molecules into a screaming vapor.

I tried it out on a rabbit. Not pretty.

The raygun was given to me by the Calista Flockharts. Part of their plan. Self defense or something like that.

At first I was hoping they wanted me to track down a few world leaders and blast their brains, but that wasn't what they had in mind at all. No they had me slated to end up being some kind of prophet or some shit. No blasting. "Well only if necessary" is what they said.

Let's start at the beginning. Wait. That would be totally out of character. We'll start at the middle, and work our way back. Then forward if there's time.

So I'm sitting on the hood of the Toyota eating a sandwich, when this giant ball of flame comes tearing ass out of the sky and lands right in the middle of some yahoo's ranch. I'd have to check the map again, but I'm pretty sure we're near Roswell, New Mexico at this point. Get this, it's the year 1947.

A funny thing happened to me on the way home. Away from Gene, the spaceship, that is. I discovered that the Calista Flockharts had modified the Toyota for time travel. Personally I would have preferred an in-line V8 with twice pipes and a flame job, but you take what you can get.

I discovered, quite by accident, that if I managed to get the Toyota up to 77 miles per hour, I would whoosh backward (or forward) through time, and for some reason get better radio reception at the same time. Who knew?

So there I am, at Roswell, watching this streak of flame crash-land in a cow pasture. Some kind of embedded memory told me that this was what I was here to see, so I tossed the sandwich and kicked the Toyota into gear.

I'm down there way before anybody else, so I can get a good look at the thing. In fact, I remember now that I'm not supposed to let anyone see me, so I have to look at this thing then get the hell out of Dodge.

I've been told that if anyone finds me in the field they might think I'm an alien or something. Which sounds totally ludicrous to me. I've lived in new Mexico. Sure I've got a raygun and a time traveling Toyota, but these are my people.

Anyway, so I look at the damn thing like I'm supposed to, then get back in the Toyota and warp home to spread the word. Which is what I'm finally doing now, I suppose. A lot more freaky shit happened after that, and before that really, but we'll get to that part of the story later. Or sooner? Damn, I hate time travel. It really fucks with the narrative.

So people of Earth (and other places, wink wink) the word is Weather Balloon.

Stay Tuned