I just remembered I never posted the conclusion to my aborted Flash Gordon-esque story. If you’ll recall, it was never actually written, so I don’t have any actual text to show you. Instead, I’m going to tell you what I intended, in plot summary form.

When we left our heroes, Archie Grant and his granddaughter Haley had fallen out of a crashing spaceship, landing on an island called Clod, whereupon they met a mighty Dirt warrior named A’Dobi. Meanwhile, the ship crashed somewhere in the distant forest, carrying their pilot, Docian, the owner of the only key to the dimension-crossing device they need to get back home.

So, off they go to A’Dobi’s village, where the dirt people are being used as slave labor, mining, heavy lifting, and whatnot. Archie and Haley avoid the Imperial presence with A’Dobi’s help and start planning to go find Docian, either meeting him at a prearranged rendezvous point or finding the crash site. A’Dobi advises against this, as that part of the landmass is occupied by the Plant Men, the mortal enemies of the dirt people. Also, the plant men are staunch supporters of Emperor Lao and would turn them in without a second’s thought if they were captured.

While this discussion is going on, in hushed tones in a semi-private cross-species drinking establishment, a group of imperial soldiers enter. Think of the Nazis in Casablanca. Our heroes overhear them talking about how an enemy of the state was captured on the far side of the island earlier that day, and is being taken to the imperial dungeons. Docian, obviously. They need a new plan.

They decide they need to break Docian out as soon as possible, but they need help, so the first step is to go find the people Docian told them about, the leaders of his resistance cell. With some effort, they find a guy with a ship who’s willing to make the trip, and to take A’Dobi along. There’s some mutual animosity between the meat people and the dirt people.

Meanwhile, the dimension-crossing device has been uninstalled from the abandoned monastery and taken to the imperial palace. Emperor Lao has been informed of what the machine does, and begins to dream of starting an era of trans-dimensional conquest. He sets the Science Directorate to the task of reverse-engineering the machine and making it work.

Back with the heroes: they make their way to the place Docian told them about, and make contact with the resistance. They explain their situation and discover that Docian was not a respected member of the cabal. They also hear some backstory, as follows.

About sixty years ago, while Emperor Lao was still conquering everything, one of the rebel scientists came up with a brilliant, desperate idea. I think there may have been a prophecy involved too; I don’t remember anymore. Yeah, there was, because the plan revolved around the notion that a hero from beyond the universe would come to them and lead them to victory over the oppressive Lao. Or he had a doohickey that detected destinies or something. The scientist’s plan was to build a machine to go fetch this hero and get the prophecy rolling. He also invented a device to locate the “Chosen One.” The scientist did his thing, crossed over into Archie’s universe, and nabbed his friend Zeke that day in the park, as described in the Prologue. The kid got raised by the rebels and trained in war and leadership. The scientist’s young son, Docian, became the Chosen One’s adopted brother and sidekick. The Chosen One started using the name Dash Mercury.

Things went pretty well for a while, but the fact of the matter was that this kid was not the one destined to defeat Lao. A few months after he took command of the resistance, Dash was captured and presumed executed. The scientist fell into disfavor, their monastery base was overrun, and most of the resistance was captured, killed, or demoralized to the point of surrender. Only Docian, his eyes wide with hero worship for Dash Mercury, kept the faith. Which made him the dangerous kind of determined to see the mission through.

Docian spent his life going from one resistance cell to another, looking for his place in the world. No one took him or his claims of a dimension-hopping device seriously. It was a pathetic time for the Boy Spaceman. Meanwhile, Lao consolidated his power and claimed rulership over the entire known universe.

Only recently did Docian get the hero detector working again and realize what had gone wrong all those years ago. He tried to convince his current co-conspirators to help him, but they refused. So he went and fetched Archie on his own.

Around about in here, it is learned by the resistance that Lao has the machine and Docian, but only Archie and Haley immediately realize the implication that Lao has everything he needs to invade other realities, because they’re the only ones who believe it works in the first place. Haley thinks they have to do whatever they can to stop Lao, while Archie thinks the odds are really good that there are enough alternate realities out there that his homeworld would remain relatively safe. However, Archie does see the need to get the key and the machine so he can get himself and Haley home. So, while their motives are different, Archie and Haley are at least on the same page as to what to do about it.

The resistance leaders instinctively defer to Archie. Not in a, “Yes my liege,” kind of way. More sort of, “You know, he’s making a lot of sense.” So, they agree to help storm the castle.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Archie’s daughter/Haley’s mother, Maggie Grant, has become something of a media sensation. National news has picked up the story of her relatives’ disappearance, and she’s doing TV interviews, pleading to “the kidnappers” to bring back her family, and so on. It starts out sincere, but she quickly starts digging the whole being in the spotlight thing and starts milking it. She’s sort of a cross between Cindy Sheehan and the guy who was going to marry Jennifer Wilbanks (The Runaway Bride). Famewhore, basically.

Archie comes up with a plan to get into the imperial palace dungeons. He doesn’t believe in any of this Chosen One crap, but he’s willing to use it if other people do. Also, remember, he is the Chosen One. By now the reader should get that. All the flashbacks to his life that have peppered the text to this point have been showing that he has the skills and talents needed to pull off exactly this kind of thing. The only reason his life sucked was that it wasn’t the one he was supposed to live.

Order of events gets a little more nebulous here. Archie and Haley lead a squad of guys up from underneath the floating island that the imperial palace rests on. Actually, there’s so much palace dug into and through the island that there’s hardly any mass of rock left. Anyway, they get in. Meanwhile, the Science Directorate has figured out how the dimension-hopping machine works, and has come up with a large-scale version, meant for sending parade ground-fuls of troops to other worlds. Testing is about to commence in preparation for their first invasion.

Somewhere along the line, the heroes get split up. Haley meets up with Effulgia, and they have it out. Archie meets Marla Virago, Emperor Lao’s wife.

Remember how, in the old Republic serials, whenever the bad guy got his hands on the hero’s love interest, he would immediately start planning to marry her? And how the hero would then have to come rescue her at the last moment? It was all a metaphor for rape, I suppose. Anyway, in this case, the hero wasn’t around to stop the wedding. The wedding went through without a hitch (that sounds backwards). Marla has spent all these years married to Lao, and has turned into a shrill harpy of a woman.

Of course, when she sees Archie, she instantly falls in love with him, because that was her destiny. But she’s so screwed up now that it’s not really a romantic kind of thing anymore. It’s clingy and creepy. And Archie feels the shade of an attraction too, but it gets overwhelmed almost instantly by revulsion at what has become of her. However, he’s not above using her to get into the dungeons.

Where he finds Dash Mercury. Archie’s boyhood friend, Zeke, is still alive, an old man now, who has lived the vast majority of his life in Lao’s dungeon. Marla knew he was there the whole time, because Lao delighted in reminding her. Archie decides he has to get his friend out of there. In a callback to the Prologue, he tells Archie, “You can be Dash Mercury now.” I think it would have been a touching scene.

Archie finds Docian, and finds out that Lao has the key. Docian and Zeke reuinite. Marla reveals about the impending invasion. Zeke reveals that Lao always promised to destroy his world and everything he held dear if he ever got the chance, which he now has. Archie’s homeworld is dead in Lao’s sights.

A’Dobi is running around here somewhere too, but I don’t remember his subplot offhand.

The machine works like this: a crystal shoots out a cone of energy. At one point within the cone, you place a metal grid. At another point farther back, you place another. You apply a voltage between the two grids. Depending on which grid has the positive charge relative to the other one, everything between the grids travels either to or from the target dimension. In other words, to undo whatever the machine does, you reverse to polarity. I couldn’t resist.

Anyway, everyone manages to regroup. I don’t know whether Effulgia is dead at this point, or Haley’s girlfriend, or what. But she is still a total bitch. Yes, even if she’s dead.

There’s fighting, and somehow Archie and Emperor Lao wind up alone between the grids of the machine. I would say they’re fighting, but they’re old men who are very tired, so they may just be threatening, or Archie may be trying to reason with Lao. Somehow, the machine gets activated. Probably, this was Archie’s plan, to send Lao to a random universe, and Haley set off the machine. Archie just wasn’t intending to go along.

So, two old men wind up alone in a strange universe. They decide to knock off the animosity for a minute and get some coffee. They’re sitting together in a diner or someplace, talking about life, fate, getting everything you wanted or nothing you deserved. This is the first time Lao expresses to anyone that he hates being the ruler of everything. He much prefers being the guy struggling to conquer everything. That’s why he allows the various resistance movements to exist. They give him something to do. It turns out that both Archie’s and Lao’s lives have sucked because they weren’t there to oppose each other. They would have given each other meaning. Archie points out that it’s too late for him now; he’s too old to start a never-ending battle. Lao offers rejuvenation and his own dimension-hopping machine so he can spend the next decades chasing Lao across multiple realities. Archie refuses. Lao and Archie understand each other. Lao hits the trigger button to recall himself to his palace.

There are a few ways I could go here. One, Archie comes back with him and the battle continues. Two, Lao strands Archie on account of being evil. Three, the button doesn’t work at the moment and they have to fight for it. Not really sure how that goes.

At any rate, eventually, Lao’s forces successfully land in New York, where Maggie Grant is doing a spot on the Today Show. Like I said, it’s still kinda fuzzy in this part. I assumed I’d have worked it out as I wrote. The heroes wind up in New York too, Maggie winds up looking like an idiot when her father and daughter show up amid an alien invasion fleet. The bad guys wind up losing. The good guys save the world. Archie fulfills the prophecy he never even knew about. Lao gets sent to another random universe where he gets to start over and rebuild and re-conquer. So he gets a happy ending. He’s supposed to be sympathetic so this is okay. The Dash Mercury universe is freed. Zeke gets to come home. Haley wants to stay in Dash Mercury World, because it’s so much cooler. Some sort of inter-universe communication/trade is set up.

And they all live happily ever after.