It was a cold and rainy day. Heavyweight Zed rolled out of bed. “Another day of bullshit,” he thought as he slipped on his boxers and stumbled into the bathroom. It was his turn to look after Mattie Herman. To make sure the bad boy of pinball was sober enough to make it to their 9:00 am check in of the Liverpool Cup. Zed and the golden boy John J Damberg took turns babysitting their over-indulging teamate now days, and both were getting sick of Herman’s shannigans.

 

But the P. street Dreds were a team.

 

“It wasn’t always this,” thought Zed. He remembered back as he sqeezed out an enermous shit into the toilet bowl of his five star suite. Back then he would have been refused at an upscale hotel like this one on account of his reputation as a young and out of control pinball superstar...

 

“Well fuck you and your motherfucking chamber maid!” Zed screamed. It was four in the morning as he stood naked before the owner of the small inn at which the Dreds staying. He had just entered the young maid’s room in a fog of drug induced confusion and proceeded to vomit on everthing in the room, including the maid.

 

“I’m the fucking Zed, you silly ass!” Zed yelled as the owner tried to explain that it really was necessary for Zed and the fucking freakshow he travelled with to leave at this point.

 

“Listen buddy. We try to run a nice quiet inn. You and your friends have been creating one hell of a disruption tonight.”

 

“Fuck you and your motherfucking inn...” Zed growled as he whipped out his cock proceeded to pee on the floor.

 

“You need to stop that,” were the last words Zed heard as he passed out, spent from the generous amounts of pharmacutical drugs he had consumed with Dreds’ after they had won their first major tournament, the Quaker Oats Challenge....

 

Zed remembers that day some long thirteen years ago. “Some many of the days,” he thought as he flushed the toilet. He remembered waking up with some 15 year old groupie in some run down hotel. His nose caked with exotic and expensive drugs like Mindtech Series 5a and Southwestern Brain Enveloper SeriesII. Those were crazy days; he had thought he was happy, but he had no idea what true happiness was. Not until he discovered Zen-Wowism...

 

Mattie Herman rolled over in his sagging bed. It was 8:05 AM. He knew that Zed would be arriving shortly. He pulled himself over to the rickety nightstand and lit what was left of an extremely large joint. “Time for a quick spliffy,” he thought as he looked down at the young woman who lay sleeping soundly next to him in bed. Her mother was in the shower already.

 

“What a fucked up time those two had been. Even Zed might find some humor in this,” he thought with a twinge of irration. In the old days, Zed would have stayed here at the Route 66 Inn. He would have been in the shower right now with the mother instead of pampering himself in a five star hotel.

 

Jonny J stood neverously in the same lobby. Chillis had just staggard in and had promptly disappeared with several representatives from one of the Dred’s sponsors: The Golden Hashtray, a coffee shop in Rotterdam. Before Chillis had evaporated with the reps. for ‘contract talks,’ he had time to tell Jonny that he and Matty had gone to several clubs last night.

 

“The flithy bastard left with this mother and daughter, a couple of really freaky puppies, and he must have done like 8 or 9 blasts of Neoural inhibitor before we even left the hotel,” croaked Chillis.

 

“I need this tourney,” Jonny thought. “If those two fuckers fuck it up I’ll kill them.” The truth was Jay was in debt. Not content like the others to simply live high on the hog, Jay had undertaken a series of high risk investments in a couple of visual reality gaming companies. He had envisioned himself as some sort of savior. “These games are the next evolution from pinball and will provide a safe alternative to the Mindgame Control format,” he had preached to other members of the Dreds incessantly day in and day out for about a year now. Unfornately for Jonny he was wrong, and now he was up to his assballs in debt.