Various Dropped FFs of mine

This chapter is a bit edited and hopefully polished.

Today starts off like any other day.

Wake up, get out of bed, use the bathroom, wash my hands, take a shower.

Get dressed. Wake up my furry baby boys, my dogs…Harley and Deisel, make sure they've got a good and hearty breakfast, then let them outside to do their business.

Next up: the barn.

Milk the cows. Let them out to graze in the pasture. Clean the stalls. Take the tractor out to the far field with the shit spreader and lay down nature's fertilizer.

Back to the barn, throw down fresh bedding hay or chopped corn stalks, depending on the season, right now it's chopped up corn stalks, a mercy to my allergies.

Mix the feed: haylage, cornlage, soybean meal,

high-moisture ground/cracked corn, a bale of two of baled hay for some roughage, a fifteen pound bag full of minerals and vitamins.

Use the Feed Cart to dispense the feed throughout the barn, distribution done. Another mix for the dry cows and heifers. Calves fed, fences checked, cows treated.

Bring the girls in, tie them up, give them an hour or two.

Lunch break…lunch of the poor champions peanut butter on white bread.

Milking round two.

End of the day: stove on, something simmering, a half-drunk beer in hand, asleep in the recliner. Rinse, repeat.

That is…until today, It's about noon. I'm reaching to switch on the barn cleaner this giant looped chain that scrapes shit from the gutters and dumps it into the spreader

when a swirling green portal opens a foot in front of me.

"What the…" I express my voice trailing off as a man falls out of the portal, and into my arms. He crashes into me hard…he has blue spiky hair, bald spot, white lab coat.

Blood-stained shirt, riddled with bullet holes. Brown pants, cartoonishly soaked in gore.

But that's not the weirdest thing…that would be the fact that he's two-dimensional…oh he feels real alright…heavy, warm, substantial...most definitely real…just 2-D.

He coughs, I know who it is but I don't believe it, his blood splatters against my face.

"Thank-" cough "-you...for not dropping me." I stare at Rick as he puts a little bit of space between us but keeps most of his weight presses against me using his left hand that rests against my left shoulder.

"You're... Rick Sanchez…hospital, you need a hospital, not sure what they'd do for you though…" I murmur in a gasp, He coughs again, worse this time than before. "No time. Hospital's not gonna help. I'm done. But you-" He Rick says as he grips my shirt's collar, with his bloody right hand…it's trembling.

"You got something."

"Uhh…thanks?"

"Wanna stop living in this

Backwater dimension, stop living a life of mediocrity? You want more?"

"I mean." I say hesitantly. "Yeah, but I'm not smart like you."

"I can fix that." He grins a bloody wide grin…and for what I'm sure is a rare event he doesn't smell like booze.

"What's it gonna cost me?" I ask and

Rick wheezes a wet laugh.

"Everything…and nothing." He jokes and pulls out his trademarked price scanner looking portal gun with the glowing green portal fluid container on top, and USB-flashdrive shaped device with a strip of masking tape on one side.

It's a label that reads:

"KNOWLEDGE STICK" the words are written in red sharpie, with a crude drawing of a stick figure guy or maybe girl jamming it into its temple.

"Press it to your head, Rick

gasps. dump... some of my neural data into your brain. Not all. You'd fry. But... enough to learn the tech. Make things portal fluid. You'll think bigger." Rick groans and slumps against me and it takes me a moment or two to realize Rick Sanchez, a god of technology and science, has just died in my arms.

I stare at him, for a little bit longer waiting for something…nothing happens.

"Well, shit…" I mutter and continue to mutter…"I thought he'd... disintegrate or turn into a pickle or something…epicly Ricktastic…" I

sigh feeling a little disappointed, "It's too bad I slaughtered the litter of hogs yesterday…or else I'd feed them his corpse." I say and sigh again while dragging Rick's corpse over to the cutout in the floor where the shit falls into the Shit Spreader, and drop his body down the hole.

His lab coat flutters once before it's gone, sucked into the machinery and destined to fertilize next season's sweet Corn.

Standing there, holding the

portal gun and Knowledge Stick, both somehow still in my hands looking all cartoonish yet still weirdly tactile…real.

Not sure how to feel, I take a moment to think over my life, the farm, the cows, the stalls, the fields, the dogs waiting at home.

"Fuck it." I curse and raise my right hand which is holding the knowledge stick and press the nice smooth flat part with the patch of polish whatever, and press the stick to my right temple.

A chime sounds in my head, DING!

And a progress bar appears in my peripheral vision.

INSTALLING…RICK SANCHEZ

SUB-NEURAL OVERLAY…INSTALLING KNOWLEDGE PACKET ALPHA…

Below the pop-up is a warning label that reads:

[By activating this device, you agree that Rick C-137 is not liable for brain damage, dimension loss, accidental genocide, existential implosion, or cosmic venereal disease.] I chuckle and shrug off the warning label like any good ol American country boy would.

"Sounds fair enough and Rickish to me." I say with an honest hungry smile on my face.

~~ — — — — — — — — — —~~

Rick and the whole Smith/Sanchez family…yes including Space Beth…plus Jerry are sitting in the living room watching Interdimensional Cable

~~ — — — — — — — — — —~~

"Damn, Grandpa," Summer

mutters. "You just got thrown into a pile of cow shit?"

Rick cracks a beer. "Yeah Sum-Sum, I regret nothing. That guy? He's got grit."

"Ah jeez, Rick" Morty nervously fidgets. "Are you sure this is safe? I mean, what if he destroys a universe or...or like, becomes you?"

"The worst thing that happens is he wipes out his multiverse," Rick shrugs. "We're fine here in the Central Finite Curve." Rick continues for the special people and by special he means retarted.

Space Beth smirks, and asks,"Is it bad…that I think Farmer Rick is kinda hot?" Jerry whimpers. Raises a finger. Opens his mouth.

Summer cuts in: "Nope, you're right Space Mom, he's hot."

Beth downs her wine. "I married a worm." Beth mutters, and glares at Jerry before proceeding to ignore Jerry.

"I mean Jerry isn't a high bar to surpass…but even before my clone delivered the knowledge stick, he was leagues above Jerry." Rick says and pulls out his portal gun and turns a couple of dials, "You ladies want a portal to his farm? I don't mind if you three go get yourselves some Farmer Sanchez. I'll even toss in space-churned butter." Space Beth and Summer exchange glances.

"We couldn't..."

"We shouldn't.." But the sparkle in their eyes says they absolutely will, Beth glares at Jerry who is curled up in a corner sucking his thumb and rocking back and forth while sniveling.

~~ — — — — — — — — — —~~

Back to Me

~~ — — — — — — — — — —~~

I don't know how long I stood there watching that ridiculous cartoonish upload bar hover in my vision.

Maybe thirty seconds, maybe thirty minutes I just don't know and frankly don't fucking give a shit. I do know the meaning of time has gotten real loose since the moment Rick Sanchez died in my arms, and I chucked his corpse into the barn's shit system like it was a wet paper bag.

Then it hits me, not pain, not burning…not even knowledge.

No it's clarity…and that clarity crashes into me like a Mack Truck with failed air brakes…or like a heavy fog lifting…like the first beer after bailing hay all day in the hot sun…like seeing the Matrix but with more curse words and unstable isotopes.

Chemical equations? Easy.

Quantum entanglement theory? Basic.

Portal fluid formulation? I could do it with ingredients from my barn, a welding kit, and the good corn whiskey I keep behind the grain bins.

Rick wasn't joking. I wasn't smart… but now I am now and I'm gonna use these smarts Rick gifted me... probably for his entertainment.

I realize that I'm sweating, shaking…I feel like I've just mainlined every bad sci-fi idea ever.

""Fuck, fuck fuck…fuuuckkk." I groan, whilst pacing back and forth in the barn. "Rick, how do you do this every day? How'd you wake up knowing nothing matters yet still do it anyway?" I ask as I look up at the ceiling for dramatic effect, I know he…I know Rick is watching me in some universe, right now having a laugh.

I sigh, collect my shit, walk over to the hole in the floor where the shit goes, "You were a dick...Rick…but you were awesome." I say with a

smile.

"Thanks, for this man." I holster the portal gun, in my overalls, feeling my grip on reality... loosening as I walk out of the main barn and head to the shit room, hope on the tractor hooked to the shit spreader, pulling out of the shit house I drive to a field, pull a lever engaging the PTO shaft that drives the mechanisms of the spreader and watch as Rick's body gets mulched and spread across the field like the cow shit.

"May you rest in peace, and fertilize a good harvest next year, Rick whatever your designation was…I'll be sure to make some good moonshine from the corn I'll plant here in your memory." I say a soft prayer and drive to the pole barn…and take my first steps into becoming a badass multiverse traveler.

My first experiment? Upgrading the shit spreader into an interdimensional drone-launching artillery platform.

Don't ask how…but have you ever seen a cow pie shot into a pocket dimension and detonate like antimatter? You're welcome.

Then I rebuilt the tractor, gave it space flight, hover capability, an AI nav, Four redundant power cores, and the on board A.I. is both sarcastic and sexy sounding proud to say I modeled her after my ex. (She always said I'd never amount to shit. Now I'm gonna be spreading it across realities.)

Next? The barn.

You know how some people build man caves? Well I built a portal lab inside the hayloft. It took me six hours and a fusion welder. It's got everything a budding multiverse explorer needs including a mini portal fluid refinery, and an automatic nacho dispenser that plays Johnny Cash when I hit the button.

You may ask what about the cows? They're still grazing, still shitting… still the backbone of my operation.

Only now... they've been genetically modified to secrete raw portal fluid precursors. Don't judge me, Rick gave me the idea and the know how to do it…I just had to implement it.

~~ — — — — — — — — — — ~~ Meanwhile, back at the Smith household

~~ — — — — — — — — — — ~~

"Rick, seriously…we gave this lunatic portal tech, and your knowledge…and he goes ahead and makes a cow-based biofluid refinery, but keeps his beer gut and overalls?" Beth sighs, pouring herself another drink.

"I like to think of it as a social experiment," Rick belches while cruising an empty beer can against his forehead and tossing it at Jerry nailing the little bitch in the balls.

"Besides, the Farmer's already done more with that tech in a week than you, Morty, or Jerry ever did in your entire dumbass lives."

"Hey!" Jerry squeaks, then immediately backs down as Rick glares at him.

Morty fidgets. "Ahh Jeez Rick… what if he turns evil? Like, evil-er than you?"

"Then it'll be fun," Rick grins. "He's got drive, purpose…and a tractor full of weapons. He's what happens when you give a man with nothing to lose everything."

"...And he's hot," Space Beth and Summer chime in simultaneously, then glare at each other.

Rick toasts his beer toward the screen showing the MC loading a shit-drenched grenade launcher onto his interdimensional tractor.

"Cheers to Farmer Rick," Rick mutters while proudly throwing his fist in the air with a beer can wrapped in his hand. "May whoever fucks with him, fuck around and find out...you don't fuck with Farmer Rick!"