ANNOUNCER: The Oxford English Dictionary, the standard of the English language, defines a 'nebbish' as 'An insignificant or ineffectual person; a nobody; a nonentity.' How right they are. The Nebbish operates behind the scenes. He is exempt, immune; for the world at large, The Nebbish does not exist. Only a select few are aware of the actions taken by the Nebbish and E.B.B., the secret organization that he works for in an attempt to halt entropy in its very tracks. The Nebbish has undergone intense training in the mountains of Tibet, and with the License to Change granted him by the yoga masters of E.B.B., he influences a world which cannot influence him.
THE NEBBISH: The universe is slowly winding down, like a music box with no key. This is inevitable; however, my charge is to slow it down. I am the Nebbish, and I must use all of the resources available to me in my quest to slow the eventual heat death of the universe! (MUSIC
ANNOUNCER: This week-- THE CONFESSION! (MUSIC)
NEBBISH: Maxwell Nefastis and I were hiking into a rustic village in the mountains to relax and get some fermented goat's milk. It had been a long day training in the secret EBB headquarters in Tibet. Max was a new recruit. When I first became an agent of E.B.B., Maxwell's father was the agent who took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. John disappeared in the jungles of the Amazon years earlier, and now it was my turn to return the favor he'd granted me all those years ago.
(SFX: WIND, FOOTSTEPS)
MAXWELL: I tell you, baby, I don't know if I'm getting the hang of this License to Change. My brainmeats can't get used to the idea that I can change anything I want.
NEBBISH: Don't beat yourself up about it, Max. You're already better than you were a month ago. It's the kind of thing where you have to learn by practicing. You've been training long enough that you might be ready to come along on a mission one of these days!
MAXWELL: Dang, baby! I'll finally clock some real time fighting evil! I'll plant the iron glove of justice right in their selfish goddamn faces!
NEBBISH: Ha, ha! I don't know if you're quite there yet, chum. You're good with your License to Change, but you need to get your imagination working overtime. Let's say that you're fighting a group of FLOW agents. In their attempt to hurry entropy and further their twisted hedonistic agenda, they've built a factory, to manufacture illegal aerosol spray cans of giggle gas-- nitrous oxide. They're selling the spray-cans on the black market, turning a tidy profit, and destroying the ozone in the process. You've infiltrated the group, and you're ready to call in the cavalry, when they suddenly discover who you are and knock you out! When you wake up, you're tied to a chair in the factory! What do you do?
MAXWELL: I concentrate, meditate, and Change the ropes into whips. Then I use the whips and my strong kung-fu to beat some FLOW ass!
NEBBISH: Ha ha! That might just work, Max, but let me tell you what your father did. He Changed the contents of those spray cans, and all the canisters in the warehouse, into helium! All of those light aluminum cans floated up to the ceiling. The supplying canisters of nitrous and aerosol started venting helium into the air like a busted fireplug on a summer day! All of the cans that were ready to be packaged floated to the ceiling as well. Your father changed his ropes, dove under a table in the confusion, and Changed the helium into water. The canisters started to flood the warehouse. The cans rained down from the ceiling onto all the FLOW agents, knocking most of them unconscious. John took on the last few in hand-to-hand combat and then called in EBB to clean up the mess. All of it done quickly and easily, and leaving the ozone as intact as it could get!
MAXWELL Dang! That's so clever!
NEBBISH: You're halfway there already, friend.
(BEEP)
NEBBISH: My two-way wrist radio!
(BEEP)
NEBBISH: This is the Nebbish, calling E.B.B... This is the Nebbish, calling E.B.B... come in, E.B.B.
VOICE: Please recite your agent number, today's passphrase, and your classification.
NEBBISH: Nineteen. Lemoncello. Sickle.
LADY: Message begins.
OLD MANS VOICE OVER PHONE: Nebbish! Come back to the monastery! Something terrible has just happened!
LADY: Message ends.
NEBBISH: I guess we won't be having fermented goat's milk cocktails today, Max!
(MUSIC)
OLD MAN: Nebbish, thank God youve arrived! Number six just arrived, and the poor boys in bad shape!
NUMBER SIX: (coughing)
NEBBISH: Good lord! This mans been shot!
NUMBER SIX: Not much time. (coughing) Theres a FLOW plot. I was helping Nate Unusual with his music, working on a sound collage with him. FLOW agents broke down the door to the studio and shot poor Nate in the head!
NEBBISH: Good god, man!
NUMBER SIX: They shot me too, but I got to the door before they could finish me off, used my License to change so I came out here instead of there. They were furious-- (cough) the recording has a confession-- a FLOW agent confesses to
NEBBISH: Confesses to what, Six? Confesses to what?
NUMBER SIX: Confesses to-- confesses to-- Agggh!
OLD MAN: Hes dead, old bean!
MAXWELL: What's that in his got in that death grip?
NEBBISH: It looks like-- yes! A compact disc!
(MUSIC)
NEBBISH: Now, Nate Unusual was an interesting guy. He'd been an EBB agent, but he retired to work on his music. And it was some music! Nate would always walk around carrying an audio recorder, and would turn it on whenever he heard anything interesting. Periodically, he'd gather up his samples and patch them all together into expansive sound collages. We put the disc on the stereo, anxious to hear what Nate had cooked up this time.
(SOUND COLLAGE)
NEBBISH: Wow. There's supposed to be a confession in that tape somewhere? I couldn't hear a damn thing that sounded like a confession.
OLD MAN: I am completely baffled!
MAXWELL: I dug it.I could definitely dance to that. Get a little twisty on some hard cider, dance around--
NEBBISH: Yes, but how will we ever isolate the confession from that jumbled masterpiece?
MAXWELL: I got no idea, baby!
NEBBISH: Remember your father and the hydrogen, Max?
MAXWELL: Dang, that's right! I can do any damn thing I want! Let me just concentrate here--
(SFX: POP!)
NEBBISH: What the devil is that, Maxwell?
MAXWELL: You like it, baby? I just created it! I call it the Flange-O-Vouty. It's a machine that'll isolate single tracks from recordings!
NEBBISH: How does that work?
NEBBISH: Well, I'll put the disc in here, and turn it on--
(AUDIO: TRAIN, RAIN, VOICES)
VOICE 1: It's good to see you again, Andrew. What have you been working on?
SCOTCH EGG: It's pretty hush-hush. I shouldnt talk about it.
VOICE 1: Who are you talking to, J. Edgar Hoover? Who am I going to tell?
SCOTCH EGG: Aye, but I've got to keep it under wraps. Im the head honcho for this little experiment and I really need to make sure everything goes right according to plan.
VOICE 1: Come on, you jerk, tell me.
SCOTCH EGG: All right, fine. You know who the Immortality Worm is?
VOICE 1: I think so?
SCOTCH EGG: The Immortality Worm is pretty small-time. What he does is, he bites people. When he bites them, theyre suddenly extra aware of their own mortality-- that theyre going to die, someday, like. Fills you with this sense of ennui. He did it to me once on a dare and I tell you, its real depressing. Like looking into the abyss.
VOICE 1: Wow. So he does this to people and then they become his slaves? Or he does it to people, and then he feeds off of their anguish? Or what?
SCOTCH EGG: Nah, he doesnt have that much imagination. When theyre caught up weeping in existentialist awareness, he coshes them over the head and takes their wallets.
VOICE 1: Really? That's it?
SCOTCH EGG: Like I said, small time. But this time he stumbled on something big. He just doesn't know how to use it yet. There are two parts: a machine and a chemical. The chemical is this weird bit some Germans discovered. If someone has a dream about flying, the chemical is produced by the brain and runs through your bloodstream. If you wake someone up and draw blood immediately, and centrifuge it, you can get a pure version of the chemical. The chemical by itself does nothing. He also made this machine, right? You turn it on and turn it on, and everyone in a five-mile radius who's on the drug falls asleep. But here's where it gets real weird. The Worm was running tests and accidentally took the drug himself, and when he fell asleep, he discovered that every other person who's on the drug and sleeping is in the same place-- a collective dream.
VOICE 1: Jesus!
SCOTCH EGG: Right. So he figured, whoops, whatever. When he starts putting the drug in a city's water supply, just remember to drink bottled water. The Worm was going to contaminate a city's water supply and then turn on the machine and just wander around taking people's wallets
VOICE 1: Strictly small time!
SCOTCH EGG: Aye. He did it once in this tiny town in Iowa, and it took him days to go get all the wallets. He got bored and tired of walking when he had a few grand and gave up, gave me the machine and the drug. And now, well, for the past six months, a few of the fellas and I have been sneaking it into the donut supply of a certain city called Eau Claire in a certain Wisconsin.
VOICE 1: Excellent!
SCOTCH EGG: Aye. The whole city is supplied by the same bulk food distributor. It's easy enough to put the drug in the powdered sugar. The genius is that we hit everyone at once-- Dunkin' Donuts, Crispy Crème, Donutland, you name it.
VOICE 1: Brilliant!
SCOTCH EGG: Aye. The fellas are strictly small-time. They aren't going to take the drug. They're just going to drive around the city raiding homes and wallets. Which is fine, like, they'll get plenty of scratch. But me, I'm going to take the drug. I'm going to enter the collective dream. Then I'm going to have one of the lads shoot me in the head. When my body dies, I'll be in the dream world!
VOICE 1: Does that really work?
SCOTCH EGG: Aye, I tried it with a dog. It works.
VOICE 1: I have been having dreams about a--
SCOTCH EGG: Border collie, yeah?
VOICE 1: He just wants me to feed him and play with him.
SCOTCH EGG: Now, me, when I'm in there, I'm going to rule it with an iron fist. I'll be immortal, forever, and I'll be the king of the collective unconscious!
(MUSIC SWELLS)
MAXWELL: That's where that track ends.
NEBBISH: I recognize that voice--that's the Scotch Egg!
OLD MAN: Good lord! (choke)
MAXWELL: Who?
THE NEBBISH: He's an upper level FLOW agent. No super powers, but a lot of dedication to his work.
MAXWELL: Why y'all call him the Scotch Egg?
THE NEBBISH: Because he HATES IT! Max, we don't have time for this right now-- can you tell me when that was recorded?
MAXWELL: Looks like-- last Wednesday, daddy-o!
NEBBISH: We've got no time to waste! Weve got to get to Eau Claire right now!
NEBBISH: Eau Claire's a beautiful city. Peaceful, rustic. Unfortunately, when we got there, everybody was already asleep! The machine was hidden away somewhere, as was the Scotch Egg. We searched around, finding people snoring peacefully away in front of their television sets, behind the wheels of their parked cars, even passed out in the middle of the street. We couldn't find the machine, or the Scotch Egg--the closest we ever came was seeing a group of hoodlums in ski masks carrying enormous sacks with dollar signs on them. We searched for hours, and came up completely empty-handed.
MAXWELL: Dang, I'm hungry.
NEBBISH: Me too, old chum. Let's stop and grab a bite to eat.
MAXWELL: Aw hell yeah. Lets go in here!
NEBBISH: No, old chum, stop! Dunkin' Donuts is off limits!
MAXWELL: Dang, these nasty-ass stale crullers look foul! But they'll have to do!
NEBBISH: NO!
THE NEBBISH: I was too late. Maxwell had already eaten half of the stale cruller, and fallen to the floor in a heap. At first I was horrified-- Maxwell was not equipped to enter a shared hallucination! I sat there, tapping my fingers on the counter, looking down at his peacefully sleeping form. Then I realized that maybe we'd accidentally found a way to get through our problems by entering the collective dreaming, we could go head-to-head with the Scotch Egg, and defeat him in that domain. My and Maxwell's training with the license to change gave us a leg up on inexperienced dreamers. I grabbed a maple glazed, steeled myself for the forthcoming adventure, and took a bite. (MUSIC)
(DREAM MUSIC)
MAXWELL: Where the hell are we, Paulie?
NEBBISH: When you bit into that stale cruller, you opened up the doors of perception! The German sleep chemical, Maxthe powdered sugar!
MAXWELL: (GASP) So we're-- we're IN-- the dream?
NEBBISH: I think so, Max. That would explain that Rhinoctopus!
(SFX: RHINOCTOPUS)
NEBBISH: And that god-awful vermicious Ka-nid!
(SFX: VERMICIOUS KNID)
SCOTCH EGG: You wee bastard, Nebbish!
NEBBISH: SCOTCH EGG!
SCOTCH EGG: Don't call me that, you ass! My name is Andrew!
NEBBISH: You're a bad egg, Andrew!
SCOTCH EGG: Oh, that's clever.
NEBBISH: Don't play hard-boiled with me!
SCOTCH EGG: I swear to God.
NEBBISH: What's the matter, Egg? Thin-shelled?
SCOTCH EGG: You forget, Nebbish-- in this realm, I am king! I draw power from the collective unconscious! I am lucid to the point of madness! Insult me again and you will only hasten your own bloody demise! (MUSIC)
NEBBISH: It was at this point that I realized he was right. I looked around the dreamscape, and the blighted, blasted world was worse than I could have imagined. He had the whole population of dreamers enslaved, working to fulfill his every whim! Those not in chains were passed out, exhausted! As I watched, The Scotch Egg grew a pair of dragon wings and soared into the air!
SCOTCH EGG: Nebbish, you never were the brightest tulip in the garden. Don't you get it? You couldn't stop me with all the bloody licenses to change in the universe! I've injected the dream drug straight into my brain! I'm leeching the psychic energy from my army of dreamers. Here, I rule supreme! Now sleep, you bastards! Sleep!
MAXWELL: Where are we, baby?
NEBBISH: We're in a prison of the mind, old chum. The Scotch Egg's sick, twisted, overcooked brain! I've searched the cell for a way out, but for some reason, his bricks and mortar override my license to change.
MAXWELL: Who's that guy?
PRISONER: Yeah, I'm Tom.
MAXWELL: Hi, Tom.
NEBBISH: Tom was one of the Scotch Egg's henchmen. He was the one that was supposed to shoot the Scotch Egg, kill his material body and put him here forever.
PRISONER: Yeah, I accidentally ate some donuts. He was PISSED. 'Blah blah blah, Tom, yeh let meh doon! Naih theres a voolnrabiliteh thet the nebbish can use! Blah blah blah.' What an ass.
MAXWELL: So we aren't totally lost! There's still a chance we can get out of here!
NEBBISH: I don't know, friend. If we stay here long enough, our bodies will die, and then we'll be stuck here, in this dank cell, forever.
MAXWELL: You sound like the Immortality Worm just too a big bite out you tushy, baby!
NEBBISH: I'm actually immune to the Immortality Worm. This is the real deal, Max.
MAXWELL: Wait up, daddy-o! If someone turns off the machine, we're gonna wake up in the real world!
PRISONER: Yeah, he keeps it in the basement of the courthouse. There's a generator powering it. There's enough fuel in the generator to keep it going long enough for all of us to die.
MAXWELL: Someones got to notice! I'm sure that some people in Eau Claire don't even like donuts!
NEBBISH: I appreciate your optimism, Max, but Wisconsin loves its donuts!
MAXWELL: Man, that sounds good right now. I'm so hungry! My belly's a-screamin', daddy-o! Look at my hands-- they're getting so pale from lack of nutrition! Look at this!
(SFX: POP!)
MAXWELL: Oh, snap, baby, a cream-filled long-john! Dang but that looks delicious! Mmmm.
NEBBISH: Maxwell, how did you do that?
MAXWELL: I dunno, baby, I was just looking at the back of my hand, and wishing I had a donut!
NEBBISH: Max! You're a genius.
MAXWELL: Oh yeah?
NEBBISH: Yeah! That's the old lucid-dreaming trick! Look at the back of your hand, and you can start to control your dreams! Let me try!
(SFX: POP! POP!)
PRISONER: Damn, that's a lot of donuts, guys! Can I have some?
NEBBISH: Sure!
MAXWELL: Whoa, baby, I feel funny! I feel like I could punch the moon! I feel like I could throw a Volkswagen a whole half block!
(SFX: EXPLOSION)
PRISONER: Holy crap! I just punched through this wall!
NEBBISH: Maxie, you're a double genius! Those donuts you lucid dreamed into existence were jam-packed with the German dream chemicals! Now we can take on the Scotch Egg and bring his expiration date to NOW!
SCOTCH EGG: (giving orders) PAINT MY FEET! WASH MY CLOTHES! DANCE FOR ME! Dance for poppa. Do a little dance! A little dancey dance! Thats right!
(SFX: EXPLOSION)
SCOTCH EGG: What the crap?
NEBBISH: The jig is up! It's back to the henhouse for you, Scotch Egg!
SCOTCH EGG: Jesus Christ, why do you do that?
MAXWELL: FREEZE!
NEBBISH: Max! What are you doing? Where did you get that gun?
MAXWELL: Hold still, Nebbish! I just need to shoot you in the head.
(SFX: GUNSHOT)
NEBBISH: MAX-- why? why? (cough)
SCOTCH EGG: Good on you, Maxwell! Im glad youve come around! F.L.O.W. is the way to go!
MAXWELL: Don't move, you son of a bitch! By killing him here, I sent him back there-- to turn off your infernal machine!
SCOTCH EGG: Oh, you wee bugger!
MAXWELL: Now I'm going to shoot myself in the head, and I'll go back there!
(SFX: SHOT)
(MUSIC)
(SFX: DOOR SLAMMING)
JAILOR: You're going away for a long, long time
SCOTCH EGG: I'll get you for this, Nebbish! I'll get you for this, Maxwell! I swear to all that's unholy, you havent seen the last of the Scotch Egg!
MAXWELL: Smells like sulfur-- is that a rotten egg, baby?
ALL: (LAUGHING)
(MUSIC)