A/N: Yeah, I know, I'm super-late to the party, as usual. BUT GUESS WHAT I BROUGHT?

...tacos!

(gets assassinated by the cookie enthusiasts)

Anyhoo. In this chapter Thomas shares his life story! YAY!

(dead body gets shot again)

Pointless Agent Insanity! Part XVI: Born on the Bayou (AKA The Kurt Vonnegut Chapter)

"That," said Simon Cowell, "was the worst thing I have ever heard."

Thomas stood on the stage of "The X Factor" wearing a sombrero the size of New Mexico. Fuzzy gold balls dangling off the brim smacked three hundred thousand people in the face every time he turned half an inch to the left. He stood on his flaming unicycle clutching his maracas and musical squids with a confused, sad look in his eyes.

"I have heard a slew of atrocities in my time," the critic continued, twirling his pencil between his fingers, "but nothing—and I mean nothing—has ever made me hate the sense of hearing more than what you have just done here. I cannot adequately describe, in any human language, just how much hatred and rage you have stimulated inside me from that one performance alone. It makes me want to rip my own scalp out and harvest it for a stupider brain. It makes me want to round up every single instrument on this earth that could generate a pattern of sound and destroy it, so that we may never hear such farce again. It makes me want to perform a double van Gogh on myself, and perhaps on everyone else in this very room, as we all have been infected with your auditory blight and must be sterilized."

Silence met the panel.

"Where do I sign?" Thomas said.

A few hours later, Trinity, Morpheus, and Thomas were running around the hull, cleaning up—which, in Morpheus' opinion, was simply wiping off dust with rags made out of more dust—in preparation for the interviewers who were supposed to come in to question Thomas about his great musical achievement. Tank, who had been a good boy and cleaned his room already, was sitting in a chair in the corner, playing a Game Boy. He had resumed his duty as operator soon after Link resigned, after sustaining fatal injury button-mashing an illegal PC port of Mortal Kombat—

"What?" Tank said, pausing the game. "No, I was on sick leave, I just caught a really bad col—"

—broke both thumbs off—

Slowly, Tank wiggled his thumbs, then lifted his incredulous gaze to the camera and stared into the lens.

"The hell are you on, lady?"

—was put into cryogenic storage and resurrected after a team of doctors sewed them back on—

"And can I have some?"

—then caught a cold after eating a sneezed-on taco and died.

"Da FUQ?"

Again.

"Seriously guys, who the fuck is writing this?"

Who the fuck is Tank?

"Who the fuck are you?" Tank called out to the empty air as suddenly The Who's "Who Are You?" began to play. He whirled around to the three flitting figures of his friends. "Damn it, how come none of you guys are hearing this? ...Neo? ...Morpheus? ...Trinity? ...Lolcat desktop?" He wept as he saw his adorable desktop darken into sleep mode, and banged his fists feverishly against the keyboard. "Lolcat desktop! No! Speak to me! Say something! Anything! Answer me, Lolcat desktop! Oh, you MONSTER! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY FRIENDS?"

What if I said that you, puny human, are naught but an ant beneath my fifth-grade magnifying glass? That one displeasing word and I can burn you like the insignificance you are—that is, till Mom comes home and bitches at me about the gory mess I made on the sidewalk. Then I'll have to get out the broom and dustpan, and I'll be all like, "Man, this sucks," since she never lets me use the vacuum cleaner after I used it to suck in all the water from the bathtub that one time and blew out, like, three city blocks of power and she had to work her corners in the dark—how was I supposed to know vacuums blow-dried themselves clean?

"I'll be good?" Tank squeaked, his face pale and his voice very small as his eyes flicked across the room.

Yes. Yes you will.

Tank curled up in the corner and sucked on his thumb.

"Neo!" Morpheus called, slinging his dust-rag over his shoulder. "They'll be here any minute now! Have you finished sweeping up that pile of trash in your room and stuffing it suspiciously into the closet, and then closing the closet door half-assedly, and then shoving your dresser against that fucking pathetic attempt at shutting the closet door all the way to hold all that junk in, because if the world knew how much stuff you hoarded the FBI would burn your house down, like I told you to?"

"No!" Thomas said. "I just swept it and stuffed it into the closet and closed the closet door half-assedly and shoved my dresser against that fucking pathetic attempt at shutting the closet door all the way to hold all that junk in because since the world knows how much stuff I hoarded the CIA burned my house down!"

"That's no good, Neo! They'll be here any minute now and OH MY STINKING SHIT THEY'RE ALREADY HERE!" He dove for cover as a random doorbell rung. When he came back out he looked like June Cleaver, his cheeks bloody from being stapled in a perpetual smile. Yanking the knob to the hull, he opened the door and waved the interviewers, which were small robots, inside.

The crew sat quietly as the robots set up their microphones. Except for Tank. Who wouldn't shut up about how adorable they looked.

Wall-E swiveled his head around, blinked, and bared fangs so venomous that every Sentinel in a ten thousand mile radius passed out from sheer fright.

"Ooooh, yoo ish sho kawaii!" Tank shrilled, suddenly donning a Sailor Moon outfit.

Japan lifted a giant volcanic hand from the Pacific Ocean and facepalmed itself.

The robots gave Thomas the microphone, and asked him a question in binary, the likes of which took ten hours to process through the Neb's interface feed.

Thomas squinted at the screen. "Well, my momma, she didn't have no money, see? She and the old man, they din't got squat," he said sadly, having suddenly developed a thick country accent. "We was poorer than church mices... I only had an Xbox 360, a PS4, thirty laptops, seventeen emulators, two Samsung Galaxy tablets, fourteen Wiis, a Corvair, a Mustang, a '57 Ford, a Toyota Avalon, six hundred bass guitars, a tour bus, a beach house in Malibu, a jet plane on reserve in an airstrip in Jamaica, the Medicare corporation, a one-thousand and eight inch plasma screen TV that had access to HD, 3D, 4D, 5D, and the spiritual dimension, a library of old .45 records, CDs, and mp3 files that no one had ever heard of, every comic book ever produced, seven thousand pieces of unseen original artwork by Leonardo da Vinci, fifty Jacuzzis and hot tubs, water so clear and pure it came out like diamonds, crystal-encrusted toilets and bathtubs, fur coats in every hide, including elephant, caviar for dinner, five-star rare steak for breakfast, twenty thousand servants, and a stockroom full of solid silver, platinum and gold bars."

"Gee." Trinity yawned, propping her chin in her hand. "How did you ever walk away."

"Because I wanted a better life," Thomas said wistfully, looking up at the ceiling. "I wanted a life in which I could sit in a cockroach-infested apartment in a dangerous, dirty city and eat rotting Thai noodles and hear the neighbors have loud unsatisfying sex through paper-thin walls that threaten to crumble at any moment because my landlady is a selfish bitch who uses my rent money to give herself a manicure 'because she deserves it' instead of repairing the locks on our doors after burglars steal all of our meager supplies for the fourteenth time that hour, including our air, which they force from our mouths at gunpoint and put into glass bottles. Because Medicare don't cover for air resources, I hear."

Trinity began to shake, at first with rage, but then with all the emotions a human being could experience, wrapped up into a giant violent ball of motion and mass. Her eyes glazed over.

"I wanted better for myself than the squalor of having servants wipe my ass with diamond-encrusted satin. I was determined to make it out there, to make something of myself. And I did. I made myself into the man I always wanted to be: a man whose dead-end job is so stressful and unfulfilling it causes him to have schizophrenic episodes in which he believes he is being abducted into the 'real world' and taught 'the truth' by a bunch of black-suited cult people, shows such poor judgment he is willing to risk death or mutilation in exchange for some scant information, gets drugged and dragged away, presumably to get stuffed in a tub of ice while the black-suited cult people harvest his kidneys for profit, and in this schizoid dream-world he experiences a fulfillment fantasy in which only he can save the world from itself, and everything he needs to learn to do this is given to him, by everyone, unquestioningly, because he is Jesus come to earth. He does everything he needs to without any conscious effort, only half-assed proddings from his peers to 'Just be y'self, y'know?' because he is perfect and nothing he can do is ever wrong because it is what Fate decrees. He doesn't need to think or act for himself, because it is his Destiny to do whatever the fuck he wants, and also because the father figure believes in him and therefore encourages him to commit felony and murder and thoughtless genocide." And when Morpheus looked blankly at him, added: "Also droppin' some phat beats, yo." He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew some surprisingly rhythmic, but still fail-worthy, raspberries.

"Okay, Neo." Morpheus laid a gentle hand to Thomas', lowering them. "That's enough."

Thomas crossed his arms. "I just hope all this shit gets recorded," he said. "If this podcast gets cut off in the middle of my shower tonight I'm gonna be so freakin' pissed—"

"You listen to your own podcasts in the shower?"

"I do more than just listen." And Thomas grinned.

They stared at him until he forgot what he was grinning for and began to examine his ear wax for signs of alien parasites.

The robots turned to Morpheus, microphones extended.

"How did I first learn of the One?" he guessed, from their clicks and beeps. He mused, rubbing his chin. "Well, it wasn't easy—the Oracle had to be consulted numerous ti—"

"BORING!" Thomas screamed. He threw the microphone at Trinity, which hit her in the head, effectively disrupting her Super-Saiyan transformation. "Your turn, crazy lady!"

Trinity leaned into the microphone.

"All Trinity has got to say is," she said softly, "RAP IS FUCKING SHIT."

The interviewer bots, having heard that terrible admission, exploded.

Looking in on from a large television screen, a caped figure sat back in his high leather chair, raised one heavily-ringed hand, and stroked his fluffy white kitty-cat. He watched the tapes of the Zionite leaning into the microphone, uttering that... damnable... utterance... and then his bots exploding.

Simon Cowell's evil mustache fell off as he laughed maniacally at the screen. "You fools have no idea! I was all the way in India directing a Bollywood musical when your man performed that vile piece! And now that you've fallen into my trap, I can use you to perpetuate my brand of generic pop singers not only throughout the Matrix, but throughout the entire world! MWA HA HA HA—" And then he fell out of his chair choking, for in the process of laughing like a Disney villain he had accidentally inhaled his stuffed animal kitty-cat.

The crew finished sweeping the smoking remains of the robots under the rug.

"Good going, Trinity," Tank said, turning away, "not only did you destroy the kawaii robots, now Neo won't ever be a celebrity, and I won't ever get to fulfill my dream of mooching off of someone famous and then sobbing like a bitch over his death when E! films the half-true saccharine biopic!"

Trinity flipped him off. Morpheus frowned, an action of which caused the staples in his cheeks to go flying around the room. One of them caused a short in a light panel.

"MY LIMELIGHT!" Thomas shrieked as the lights went out, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOkay then," as the generator kicked in, casting a crimson glow over everything.

Morpheus flicked on his flashlight, using it to examine the fuse box in the ceiling. "Crap," he said, "we forgot to pay the utility." He sighed as he flicked it off. "My check don't come in till tomorrow. We're in the dark till then."

Thomas whimpered. He was afraid of the dark. Sometimes the dark stuffed him into one of the lockers at school and didn't let him out. And no one believed him when he said the dark wedgied him on the school flagpole, and blew spitballs at his head, and said mean things to him in the lunch room, and pushed his face into the toilet, and tripped him when he went up to bat during gym, and tore up his notebooks, and stomped on his glasses, and made him watch the last season of Heroes—

"I say we tell ghost stories," Tank said. "I'll go first. Once upon a time, there was a girl with a sweater..."

Five hours later, sitting in a circle around the operator's chair while a random fire crackled in the middle, the three other members of the Nebuchadnezzar were either weeping, shaking with fright, or, in Morpheus' case, listening to "Walking on Sunshine" on repeat in his own head.

"...and the sweater never saw the girl again," Tank finished. "The end."

Morpheus burst into tears.

"I'm w-walking on s-sunshine," he blubbered, as snot ran down his nose, "whoa-oh, I'm walking on s-sunshine," —a sniff— "whoa-oh-oh, I-I'm w-walking on s-sunshine, whoa-oh-oh, AND DON'T IT FEEL GOO-HOO-HOO-HOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAH GOD IT'S JUST SO SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!"

He clutched Thomas like a teddy bear.

Having administered CPR on himself, Simon Cowell rose from the floor.

"A minor distraction!" he screeched. "Now it's time to enact my real plan!" Then, just as he began to launch another generic villain rant, he stepped on the stuffed animal kitty-cat he had spat up, which was drenched with saliva, tripped, and fell down the stairwell of the Space Needle.

"...and after Rhineheart fired him he was so afraid to surf TV Tropes again that whenever anybody referred to a trope by name, he screamed bloody murder right in their faces." Thomas concluded his scary story by making ghostly noises and wiggling his fingers.

"Hey Neo," Trinity said.

"What?"

"Cool Story Bro."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH—"

A bored cameraman walked across the set, stepped in front of the camera, and snapped a clapperboard that said CRAZY GUY TAKES OVER THE WORLD, TAKE THREE.

Simon Cowell stood up, having miraculously survived a two-inch drop from his bedroom window. He turned around, ready to carry out his evil plan, but then saw that his cape had sustained critical injury—a thorn from a nearby rose bush had brushed against his cape and made a microscopic tear in the fabric, one so small that not even ion lasers could detect it.

Simon Cowell burst into tears.

"...I'm walking on sunshine," Morpheus whispered in the creepiest voice possible as he held his flashlight under his chin. "Whoaaaaaa-ohhhhhh... I'm walking on sunshine... whoaaaaaaa-ohhhhhhh..."

The listeners' hearts were pounding in their chests. Beads of sweat glittered their brows. Thomas could even feel a bit of pee welling up in his bladder. That or the 52-ounce Slurpie he was sucking on.

"...I'm walking on sunnnnnnnnshine..."

Thomas bit his Slurpie's straw to a plastic nub.

"...whoaaaaaa-ohhhhhhhh-ohhhhhhhhh..."

Trinity and Tank rocked back and forth in their places, white and trembling.

Morpheus popped his eyes open.

"...and don't it feel GOOD!"

Tank puked.

After burying his beloved cape beside a pile of dog dung, Simon Cowell stuck his shovel into the shallow grave and ran off to complete his evil plan.

"Oh," said the pile of dog dung indignantly, who had just performed the cape's beautiful two-hour service, "what am I then, chopped liver?"

A slice of chopped liver, hearing this diss, cocked back the hammer of its Glock and shot the pile of dog dung in a bloody drive-by. The chopped liver, now donning a black bandana, black sunglasses, heavy silver chains and chest-covering tattoos, leaned out the window and fired nine more rounds into the air, scattering everybody. "Yo, this be Liva-Chop, sayin' we more badass than those Dog Dung Piles!" it screamed. "And don't y'all forget it, 'less you wanna cap in yo' bitch-ass!" It then cackled as its partner slammed down on the gas pedal and smashed their car straight into a deli. And the poor, poor reporters who were assigned to broadcast this bit of news died choking of hysterical laughter.

"...and that was the time Trinity fought the law," Trinity said. "Let's just say the law's not kickin' any time soon."

Everybody fell over laughing.

"His wife was really upset when she heard the news."

Thomas spat out his drink.

"His kids swore vengeance on Trinity for the rest of their lives."

Tank turned purple.

"And then they found out he had no life insurance, leaving them impoverished and living in cardboard boxes forevermore."

One of Morpheus' lungs collapsed.

The critic looked left. Right.

He ran into a radio station, bust open the door as a DJ for an alternative station was sitting there playing the same three Silversun Pickup songs, pushed him over and jammed his thumb on the "record" button.

"PEOPLE OF EARTH!" Simon Cowell screeched. "MY NAME IS SIMON MOTHAFUCKING COWELL! I AM THE BIGGEST SHIT ALIVE! YOU MAY HAVE SEEN ME ON TELEVISION, OR MAYBE ON THE RADIO... LIKE RIGHT NOW... BUT RADIOS DON'T HAVE EYES BUT WHATEVER! YOU GET THE POINT..."

Sitting at the kitchen table while Jones flipped pancakes, Smith flicked open the morning paper, whose headline read GANG SHOOTING DOWNTOWN: CHOPPED LIVER TO BLAME? DOG DUNG SUING FOR EMOTIONAL TRAUMA. Without taking his eyes off the paper, he patted Brown on the head as Brown, squatting, dropped the week's grocery ads from his mouth onto the floor. Brown barked and scampered off on all fours to go scratch up a random threshold that neither Agent paid much attention to and would get suddenly huffy over once it was scratched, as if it were the fricking answer to the universe.

Jones turned up the radio to drown out the sound of Brown's stumpy nails dragging across the wood.

"FOR FAR TOO LONG WE HAVE HAD TO SUFFER THE EVULZ OF RHYTHM AND SOUND!" The voice of Simon Cowell leaked through the crackling speakers. "FOR FAR TOO LONG WE HAVE HAD TO STRUGGLE IN THE SHADOWS OF MUSIC'S DISTINCT GENRES, SUCH AS ROCK, RAP, HIP-HOP, METAL, GRUNGE, NEW WAVE, COUNTRY, BLUEGRASS, POP, JAZZ, REGGAE, BLUES, R&B, CLASSICAL, OPERA, ALTERNATIVE, TECHNO, DANCE, RAVE, TRADITIONAL, ADULT, MALT-SHOP, DOO-WOP, DUBSTEP, PARODY, AND THAT ONE CORNER OF K-MART THAT YOU'RE NOT REALLY SURE ABOUT BECAUSE EVERYTHING'S LIKE SMUSHED TOGETHER IN THE ELECTRONICS AISLE BECAUSE THAT TEENAGED BITCH WHO STOCKS EVERYTHING DOESN'T HAVE THE PATIENCE TO SORT THE CSI DVDS FROM THE BON JOVI CDS, SO WHEN YOU GO HOME YOU OPEN UP "SLIPPERY WHEN WET" EXPECTING SOME WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE OR LIVIN' ON A PRAYER OR SOME SHIT BUT IT'S ACTUALLY THE FIRST EPISODE OF CSI MIAMI AND IT RUINS THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR COMPUTER BECAUSE LINUX DOESN'T SUPPORT THAT MUCH EPIC!"

Smith and Jones looked at one another.

Smith's eyes narrowed.

"Are those flapjacks or pancakes?" said Smith.

"BUT NOW I HAVE A SOLUTION! IT WILL FREE US ALL FROM THE AGONY OF MAKING OUR OWN MUSICAL CHOICES!" Simon Cowell continued. "I WILL FREE YOU ALL! ONCE YOU BUY MY LINE OF CDS, YOU WILL NEVER DOWNLOAD ANYTHING TO YOUR IPODS AGAIN! NEVERMORE WILL YOU BOW TO THE SUPREMACY OF DIVERSITY! NEVERMORE WILL YOU HAVE TASTES FOR YOURSELF! NEVERMORE WILL YOU HAVE TO USE YOUR OWN BRAIN TO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU DO AND DO NOT LIKE! NEVER EVER EVERMORE!"

And Edgar Allen Poe, having heard that gross abuse of his most famous line, died.

"BUY MY CDS! ONLY ZERO DOLLARS AND ZERO CENTS..." And the commercial products announcer who came after him said, in rapid-fire: "Shipping and handling two hundred million dollars. Comes with complimentary set of gasoline and incense if you call within the next point two seconds. Lines are open a limited time, so call now! Void where prohibited. See rules and regulations for details. We are not liable for any injuries sustained during the shipping process, including any four-hour boners you may experience while waiting in sheer anticipation. Please contact your doctor if your boner lasts for more than four hours or if small children start to hang their winter coats on it."

Jones looked meekly at Smith.

"F...flapjacks," he stammered, clutching the rim of his frying pan.

Smith took a step forward, ready to kill—then, realizing killing Jones would mean no one to change Brown's litter box, stopped, sank back in his chair, and started shoveling the... abomination that his cohorts called pancakes into his mouth, swearing vengeance between each vile bite.

Jones picked up the day's grocery ads from the floor.

"Oh, look," Jones said, perhaps a little too cheerfully, "they have chopped liver on sale!"

And Smith killed Jones.

Thomas, now bored, turned on the radio, and heard his performance blast through the speakers.

"Hey!" he called. "Guys, c'mere and take a listen! They're playing my song! From the show!"

The others rushed over. After a minute of listening, Trinity lifted an eyebrow.

"Born on the Bayou?"

"Yeah," Thomas said. And then he screeched the eponymous song so loudly that, somewhere, John Fogherty sat up in bed, placed one hand over his heart, and shed a single manly tear for the beauty of rock-'n'-roll.

Tears welled in their eyes.

...It was the most beautiful song they'd ever heard.

His plan worked. Oh, his beautiful plan worked... his evil, beautiful plan—

Simon Cowell awoke with a jolt in his hotel bed.

He looked up.

Down.

"So that's what happened to all my mescaline," he said.

THA END.

Stay tuned for "Pointless Agent Insanity! Part XVII: The Cuteness War"!