Down thread in Ian's compilation of the Moderator Saga, the link to Chapter 5 (The round robin issue) was missing a fair chunk of the story.

That was bugging me - so I fixed it. Here is the complete chapter with the missing bits added and the authors indicated.

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The Moderator Saga #5: Lord and Master of All He Surveyed

By Visionary Al B. Harper Killer Shrike Hatman CSFB! and The Hooded Hood


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The thunder rumbled ominously across a sepia sky as The Moderator schemed his evil scheme. Because the sky was sepia, everything else was reflected in shades of art-deco - Lair Legion Tower, the blimp in the sky, the car the Moderator was driving. Even the Moderator himself, in his familiar black suit and fedora hat with purple band, suited the scene.

"Now...it is time," he calmly stated to himself.

He parked his car and exited to stand outside Lair Legion Tower on Parodiopolis Main Street, all awash in marshmallow and pistachio.

"Evening, Mr. Moderator Sir" said Jay Boaz, better known to the public as DoorMan, as he hurried to open the Tower's glass entry for the most important man in this Parodyverse.

"It is as I willed it," The Moderator agreed, before casting a critical eye about the assorted riff raff that waited in the crowded lobby, no doubt waiting for him. No doubt wanting something, "Where is Functionary?" he demanded the status of his possibly synthetic steward.

CalmSereneFlunkeyBoy... dutifully responded to his master in a dull monotone. "He sends his apologies, my lord, but his ward has yet again frozen him to a signpost. We are currently trying to free the canines who had the misfortune of licking him and found their tongues trapped."

"Release the fire-breathing grizzlies to thaw them out!" the Moderator ordered his Halcyon Henchman, "And then bring Functionary to the throne room; burned or freezerburned, it is of no consequence to me!"

The Moderator kept the populace of this Earth pacified with his henchmen, Content Filter, who censored dissent in the news media, and LOL INTERNET, who produced mind-numbing, distracting entertainment. Dissent was by definition evil, of course, since The Moderator was the savior of all mankind and therefore loved by every right thinking individual. Mind-numbing, distracting entertainment was perhaps an evil as well, but rather on the scale of the useful, lesser evils... one that could easily be overlooked for the greater good, much like bingo night down at Holy Mercy. It turned out that running a peaceful world required the careful coordination of many lesser but useful evils, which is where Functionary came in... Literally and figuratively.

"Er..." A dripping man in a green coat interrupted carefully. "I'm here! There's no need, sir... for the grizzlies, I mean. At least in this instance. I'm sure there's some very good reasons for fire-breathing grizzlies in general." He assured the room. "I can't think why God or geneticists never thought to make them before. Honest."

"Well, Zhe Doctor zhat created me, she had some plans..." a three foot tall, talking, bipedal pig chimed in from behind the Functionary's dripping coat with a noticably French accent. "Although in zhe testing phase, eet did not go quite as planned... Eet turned out zhe fire did not come so much with their breath as, how you say, with their..."

"Not now, Brap" Functionary hissed nervously. "A-heh. Um... you wanted to see me? Sir?"

"Hardly" The Moderator noted icily. "What are these citizens doing cluttering up the lobby?"

"Oh, right... Um... I know this one..." Functionary assured. "This is Mr. Mac Fleetwood. He and these others are residents of Hell's Bathroom, specifically the neighborhood that was, um... kind of trashed... in last week's fight between the Lair Legion and the Yurt."

"Don't you mean "demolished as part of a long-planned Urban Renewal Project"..." the leader of the Lair Legion suggested dangerously. "Or can't you even be bothered to watch the broadcasts you oversee?"

"We don't need your propaganda to tell us what happens in our own neighborhood!" Mr. Fleetwood pointed out.

"Er... well..." Functionary explained. "They do kind of have a point, though... don't they? I mean, the Yurt is pretty hard to miss, and not the kind of thing you forget. And the Legion *did* kind of defeat him by dropping much of Hell's Bathroom on his head, one structure at a time..."

"Fight buildings with buildings, I always say!" Scarlet Lawnmower snickered from his place leaning against the doors of the glass elevator that led to the Lair Levels of the Tower. "Anyway, we saved their lives... What do they want us to do about it now?"

"Pay for damages!" a voice in the crowd yelled. "Help us rebuild!" another chimed in.

"These people were left homeless..." Mac argued. "The city's shelters are already overfilled. There's no place for many to go..."

"I can tell 'em where to go" Lawnmower suggested.

"Well, now... hold on..." Functionary said.

"We have videotape of what really happened!" Mr. Fleetwood argued. "And we'll take it to the real press if you won't help us. You have responsibilities!"

"Indeed" The Moderator said. "And Great Power. Which means you no longer have any videotape." He waved his hands and suddenly the angry crowd vanished completely from the lobby. "Thank you for making sure this matter came to my attention, Functionary. There are only two types of people who get jobs like yours, you know... the ambitious and the incompetent. I knew I chose just the right type."

"You... you did just send them home, right?" Functionary asked. "I mean... naturally without the video tape. And, um... without homes... but you did just send them somewhere..."

"You should be proud... it's an important job, making sure the Legion isn't distracted by the little things" The Moderator assured him as he, Scarlet Lawnmower and the other true Legionnaires entered the elevator. "It's how the rest of the team is able to do great things" he added before the doors closed and the group ascended.

Functionary exchanged worried glances with DoorMan.

"You know, eet wasn't so much zhat zhe grizzlies themselves were bad" Brap explained absently. "I just wish zhe doctor had invested in zhe flame-retardant pooper-scooper zhat I requested..."


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And The Moderator was pleased, for all was as it should be....save for one small apartment in the suburbs of Upper Wuthering Heights, GMY, where a small boy turned off his computer and said

“Cor blimey, something odd is ‘appening!”

He is Salieri Meng, seventh smartest boy genius in the Parodyverse, and he knows what the Lair Legion has done with his hero. Now Meng must come up with a plan to rescue him: to save the Manga Shoggoth.

"This would be easier if I could find the 6 'smarter' boy geniuses of the world," he was forced to admit to himself. He looked at the cover of "Timely" magazine that proclaimed his genius ranking and shook his fist. "I was robbed," he muttered as he resumed planning.

"I know what I have to do," Meng says to himself. He throws a warn duffle-bag onto his bed, and hunts around his room for various items which he places in the bag a torch, a small pick, a length of rope, a small compact keyboard with a usb port that he refers to as his “datajack”, a whistle, and a jar of sticky black liquid.

“Right, all set.” He looks like an urban commando, black cargo-pants billowing out but tied in close at the feet like a Japanese carpenter would wear, a bulky black jacket that is somewhat reminiscent of a straight-jacket with its belts and ties and seems to also have numerous pockets.

His hair is jet black, and flops over half his face, almost Emo, except he has not bothered to style it, he is beyond Emo.

“Now, the first challenge,” he gulps as he grabs the duffle-bag and cautiously opens the bedroom door.

“Salieri,” comes the whimsical sing-song voice of a woman somewhere else in the home. “Dinner is ready!”

“I just have to sneak past Mum,” he says to himself.

Begging out of dinner by claiming he was heading to the Zero Street Mission for a Naruto Fan Club Meeting, Salieri Meng left the house and boarded the GMY Trolley.

Once aboard, he used his Blackberry to replay the SPUD security camera footage he had managed to pirate. It showed the New Lair Legion binding the Manga Shoggoth in (to quote the Search Engineer) "ever mutable theoretical geometric rune based algorithm," then forcing the Eldrtich Horror into a "extra-terrestrial transport pod" then sending him to the "Outermost Rim of Narrative Space."

"You're just too dangerous to have around, you suppurative carbuncle!" were the Moderator's last words to the Shoggoth before hitting the launch button that would send Salieri's hero to the edge of the known Parodyverse.

"Having this video is not enough!" Meng exposited while flipping his hair, "No media outlet will run it. I need to bring the Shoggoth back."

To that end he began making a list of what he would require to do so:
A method of hyper-dimensional transport
A method of translating the runes that formed the equations that bound the Shoggoth
A method of mathematically solving the equation that bound the Shoggoth.

In his mind, there was only one place to go for such aid.

Luckily, that place was the very next stop.

"Sixways, Sixways," monotoned the robotic voice system of the trolley.

Salieri jumped from his seat, and exited hastily. A light drizzle was falling in the early evening light as he stepped down onto the pavement.

He made his way across a pedestrian crossing to a two storey red-brick building with an oversized garage door. The old Sixways Firehouse.

“The secret home of the EEE!” the young genius breathed to himself in awe. He gingerly approached the main door.

"The seventh smartest pre-adolescent on the planet should not be reduced to locating then seeking aid from some kind of back-street laundry," complained Salieri as he stepped over piles of wet linen in a musty old doorway.

"Well, someone had to do the washing around here, it was getting out of hand," said a female voice. Salieri looked up and saw that the speaker was a twenty-something brunette wearing a grease-stained pair of old overalls.

“Who are you?” the boy genius asked the woman, blushing somewhat as his mind decided she was wearing nothing at all under the overalls.

“The question is who are you kid?” came the gruff voice of a man behind him. Salieri jumped and turned to face a stocky built man with blond top knot. He was wearing a black domino face mask and a pair of Tweety Bird boxer shorts. Luckily, Salieri was too young to wonder if he was interrupting anything.

“I’m Salieri Meng, and I’m here to see Professor Harper. Only he can design the hyper-dimensional transport needed to restore my hero, the Manga Shoggoth, and thus the world, to its rightful state.

The woman’s face darkens, “Oh! I’m sorry Salieri. Professor Harper...that is...he’s missing,” she chokes.

“He didn’t return from the geek convention he attended last Thursday,” the man added, “Ever since the Moderator banned all scientific experimentation, we knew Harper would be in danger.”

“We now fear that the SPAM Control have got him,” the woman whispers.

Salieri shudders at the name, the infamous SPAM Control. The Moderator’s right hand men and women who enforce his laws with a fanatical dominance. This was the world they all lived in now. And only Salieri seemed to know that it was not right.

The woman notices the boy shudder and puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It will be alright,” she says, though it seems as though she is saying it to herself as much as to Salieri. “I’m Amy by the way, let me get this load of washing on and then you can tell me all about the Manga Shoggoth?” she smiles at Salieri. “And KS, I will get to wash those shorts too!” she adds, turning to face the top-knotted man, but he had stealthy evaded her yet again and was no longer there.

The Moderator, though lord and master of all he surveyed, was not as pleased as he would have liked.

"I know he is up to something. He seeks to test me, to trick me" the man in the black fedora said.

Scarlet Lawnmower hit the pause button on his massage recliner, "Uh, who, boss?"

"The Hooded Hood," Moderator hissed back.

"Isn't he dead?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" the leader of the New Lair Legion mused, as he absently spun the globe that stood next to his own throne.

Scarlet Lawnmower watched the man who plucked him from oblivion, then shrugged, "Nothing. I guess. I just think you need to relax a little. Enjoy the fruits of our victory, as it were."

"Oh, really?" The Moderator used his power to delete his underling's chair right out from under him, "What victory? What have we truly earned?!"

Rubbing his backside, the Lawnmower slowly rose to his feet, "Well, we beat the Lair Legion. Made them all into our peons. Er, your peons, that is. Boss."

"Hm," The Moderator considered this, "Link!"

Over the intercomm the New Lair Legion's sole female member answered, "Yes, sir?"

"Bring me Dr. Bellums from SPAM Control."

There was a flash of light, and the director of SPAM's Unethical Science Division materialized.

"Mr. Moderator," the little man in the surgical smock said as kowtowingly as he could, "I was just about to call you."

"With good news, I hope."

"Of course, of course," Bellums wiped his significant forehead with his sleeve, "The operation was a success."

"So it is functional?"

"Yes, sir. I successfully grafted together Harper's and Framlicker's left brain hemispheres."

"Whose body are they stored in?" The Moderator inquired.

Bellums pushed his spectacles up his nose, "Framlicker's, sir. It was more advantageous, from a surgical standpoint."

"I bet," Scarlet Lawnmower snickered. He'd seen the woman's centerfold.

"The end result is an organic computing system with a processing capacity that only she, er, it, can quantify," Dr. Bellums said, "Its all very exciting."

"My only concern, doctor, is if it can do the required task: predict and counter any obstacles to my rule," The Moderator rose ominously, "Can it?"

"Of course, of course. The Al 362436 is yours to command."

"Splendid," Moderator chuckled.

Continued in Chapter 6

The Official Committee has looked into this to see how such an outrage might have been committed.

It appears that the HH archive site at http://www.chillwater.org.uk/HH/archive/others/2008// contained two versions of the same story. The older one was linked. Young Al B.s version was overlooked. We have now arranged for Old Al B's present offering to replace the earlier incarnations. It turns out the fault for this error was spiffy's.

This concludes the investigation. Thank you for drawing this atrocity to our attention. Comments should be made upon form CH-24473b in the usual manner.

That's funny, I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon going back through the actual source material round robin replies in the archives here, cut and pasting from there, then reformatting it in colour and removing the weirdness that is apostrophes in the archives, and now you're telling me I'd done it all before way back when anyway!

Oh well, at least I know my old brain still thinks along the same lines as the young brain, so there's that.

A quick check of the links shows that the problem is with the missing chapter #20 and "The Moderator Saga #21: Visiting Time by the Manga Shoggoth"... the link to #21 is broken, and seems to have been intended to go to the missing chapter #20 by me and located here:
http://www.chillwater.org.uk/HH/archive/others/2008/moderator%2020%20-%20visionary.htm
which should be followed by the Shoggoth's chapter, located here:
http://www.chillwater.org.uk/HH/archive/others/2008/moderator%2021%20-%20shoggoth.htm


The link to the new chapter #5 works, but it comes up with formatting issues on my computer. It has a white background, which makes the yellow font near impossible to read, and every line is center justified rather than on the left margin. No idea why this might be.

And this is largely unrelated, but on your Homepage of Doom the link to 2008 on this page actually goes to 2009:
http://www.chillwater.org.uk/HH/archive/others/

That one baffled me for two minutes, because when I edited the page the links were there! But I eventually spotted the missing speech marks to close one link and suddenly all was well.




Yes, it is baffling me too. I have referred the question to Jason.




That one at least is fixed.