The Dr. Pants Chronicles 3: Move So Slow

Dustin struggled to breathe through the mist of spray-tan. David was already unconscious. Kenneth was prostrate and prone. And now, the lights in Dustin’s eyes began to fade. He wondered, possibly a final thought: How had they gotten the drop on them?

After enjoying a brunch of donuts, the trio had returned to the Dr. Pants Medical Funk Facility, eager to begin the search for a new bassist. But something was amiss. As the doors swung open, they didn’t hear the usual soundtrack that P.A.N-T.S. would choose, but the deep thump of house music. The air was thick with...something.

“P.A.N-T.S.?” David shouted, expecting the computer’s reply.

Kenneth and Dustin looked at one another. They’d never had a problem with the Personal Android Nano-Tech System before--except for that time it went evil and kept re-mixing their albums as nu-metal. But after the last logic upgrade, it was working perfectly.

“This has to be a joke, right?” asked Dustin. “I thought we agreed not to install a personality, because that’s always what happens in the movies right before a sentient computer tries to kill everybody.”

In the shadows, they heard a giggle and the shuffle of tiny feet. They swung around, but found their bodies would barely respond.

“I’m moving so slow,” Kenneth said. “It’s like walking in molasses.”

Now the tittering came from behind them. And from the left and right. Dressed in skin-tight glittering faux-leather, the tiny orange forms of the Guido-loompas emerged and surrounded them. Their eyes, as always, were covered in sunglasses.

“Yo. Yo. Yo.”

They spoke the same syllable over and over again, as always. The Guido-loompas never said anything else, but there was menace behind the word. How long had they been trying to kill the band?

And now they had drugged them with some sort of aerosol party cocktail, no doubt to make it easier to bronzer them to death.

But just as Dustin had held on the longest, he was also the first to draw in the first sweet breaths of air after his orange shell had been cracked. He blinked and began to make out shadows in the sunlight of a figure waking his friends.

The haze cleared and he looked around. They were outside the Funk Facility, a trail of unconscious Guido-loompas leading out the front door, ending a few feet away.
“What...what...” David struggled to say.

“I came for the audition and found you guys being spray-tanned by these goofy midgets,” said the man. “I fought them off with my bass and dragged you outside before the fumes got to me. I’m Devin, by the way.”

(Written by Greg Elwell)