“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“I think so, Jack. Take your leave at once.”

“But he’ll go for you, sir – he’s a vicious little bastard.”

“Language,” said Eddie’s other self. “Eddie needs to know and it is right that he should know. Bears have a code of honour, don’t they, Eddie?”

“Noted for it,” said Eddie. “Along with their sexual prowess. And their bravery, of course. Bears are as noble as. Everyone knows that.”

“And so if I ask you to swear upon all that means anything to you that you will make no attempt to harm me during the time that I am explaining everything to you, I can rely on you to honour this oath?”

“Absolutely,” said Eddie Bear.

“Because you see, Jack,” said the other Eddie, “bears can’t cross their fingers behind their backs, so when they swear they have to stick to what they’ve sworn.”

The other Jack made non-committal sounds.

“So clear off,” the other Eddie told him.

And, grumbling somewhat, that is what he did.

“Care to take a little trip?” asked Eddie’s other self.

Eddie Bear did shruggings. “Is my Jack all right?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about your Jack. Would you care to take a little trip?”

“It depends where to.”

“I could just kill you,” said Eddie’s other self.

“I’d love to take a little trip,” said Eddie. “Teddy bears’ picnic, is it?”

“In a manner of speaking. Step a little closer to the desk, that’s it. Now, let me join you.” And Eddie and his other self now stood next to each other. “And if I just press this.”

And then.

The horrible chicken-poo-carpeted floor fell away.

Eddie and his other self hovered in the air, borne by a silver disc that, it seemed, shunned the force of gravity.

And this disc, with these two standing upon it, slowly drifted downwards.

Eddie peered fearfully over the rim of the disc. “What is happening here?” he asked in a rather shaky voice.

“Fear not, my friend, fear not. I am going to take you on a tour of this establishment. You will see how everything works and why it does. We shall chat along the way.”

“Hm,” went Eddie. And that was all.

And the slim disc drifted down.

“The technology that drives this,” explained the other Eddie, “is years ahead, centuries ahead, of the technology that exists upon this particular world. And the denizens of this particular world will never catch up with such technology. That will not be allowed to happen.”

“The chickens from space,” said Eddie Bear.

“Well, hardly from space, but in a way you’re right. There are many, many worlds, Eddie Bear, many, many inhabited worlds. But they are not out in space somewhere. They are all here, all next to each other, as the world of Toy City is next to the world of Hollywood, separated by a curtain, as it were, that only those in the know are capable of penetrating.”

The flying disc dropped low now, over a vast industrial complex, great machines attended to by many, many workers.

“And what is this?” asked Eddie.

“Chicken production,” his other self explained. “Humankind has this thing about eating chickens. But as logic would dictate to anyone who sat down and thought about it for five minutes, it is simply impossible to produce the vast quantity of chickens required for human consumption every day. It would require chicken-breeding farms covering approximately a quarter of this world’s surface. So all the chickens that are eaten in the USA are produced here. They are artificial, Eddie, cloned from a single chicken. The pilot of a chicken scout ship that crashed here ten years ago. Soulless clones – they are not real chickens.”

“From space?”

“No, not from space. Do try to pay attention. Recall if you will the various religions that predominate in Toy City. You have The Church of Mechanology, followed by clockwork toys who believe that the universe is powered by a clockwork motor. The cult of Big Box Fella, He Come, a Jack-in-the-Box cult that believes that the universe is a big box containing numerous other boxes. There is more than a hint of truth to their beliefs. But what I am saying is this: all these religions have a tiny piece of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle. The chickens just happen to have a far larger piece.”

“Yes, well,” said Eddie, “everyone is entitled to believe whatever they want to believe, in my opinion, as long as it causes no hurt to others. I happen to be an elder in an exclusive teddy bear sect, The Midnight Growlers.”

“You are its one and only member,” said the other Eddie as the flying disc flew on over the seemingly endless faux-chicken production plant. “My point is this. All religions are correct in one or other respect. All religions possess a little part of the whole. The followers of Big Box Fella are about the closest. All life in the entire Universe exists right here, upon this planet. But this planet is not, as such, a planet. It is the centre of everything. The centre of production, as it were. There are countless worlds, all next to each other, each unaware of the existence of the world next door. Sometimes beings from one world become capable of penetrating to the world next door. And do you know what happens when they do?”

“Bad things,” said Eddie. “That would be my guess.”

“Well, there have been some bad things, I grant you. But I will tell you what the beings from the world next door discover when they enter a new world. They discover that, but for a few subtle differences of belief and appearance, things are exactly the same. There are the many who toil and the privileged few who control their toiling and profit from their toil. This is a universal truth.”

“And so you and whoever or whatever you represent are going to do something about this injustice?” asked Eddie.

“You are seeking to be ironic, I suppose?”

“Very much so,” said Eddie.

“And not without good cause. It is not possible to change the status quo with anything less than force of arms. You tried, Eddie, when you were mayor. You tried to put your world to rights. And what came of your good intentions?”

“Bad things,” said Eddie, sadly. “Hence the loss of my hands.”

“Exactly. You tried, but you failed. But it was the fact that you were trying that drew our attention to you. One of our craft penetrated the world Beyond The Second Big O. To your side of it. And we observed your efforts. And we thought to ourselves, things could work out in this world. Things could be better. And so I was created, to replace you, so that smoothly and without incident I could be substituted for you and run your world for our own ends.”

“You thorough-going swine,” said Eddie. “And I mean that offensively, as some of my best friends are pigs.”

“But after all the effort of creating the perfect facsimile of you, what happened? As I was on the point of eliminating you in order to take your place, you made such a foul-up of being mayor, because in your naivety you thought that things could be changed in a nice way, that you were kicked out of office. Leaving me redundant.”

“Poor old you,” said Eddie.

“It was touch and go,” said his other self. “They were all for melting me down, me and the Jack they’d created to substitute for your Jack. But I had a plan.”

“I often have a plan,” said Eddie, sadly.

“Of course you do, which is one of the things I like about you – we have so much in common.” And the other Eddie patted Eddie on the shoulder.

And Eddie considered just how easy it would be to push him right off the flying disc.

But then there just might be a problem getting off that disc himself.

And there was the matter of the bears’ code of honour.

“So I came up with this plan,” said Eddie’s other self. “Why not clear out Toy City? It could become a decent environment, with a lick of paint and a bit of rebuilding. And what with the ever-expanding population of Chicken World –”