Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #7! In the previous installment, the three girls who are currently accounted for, Erin, Mac, and Tiff, they landed in the future, which is actually the present, which is actually the past. Their future. My past. The present as this series was released! That puts us right in the summer of 2016, when everyone was still laughing that Trump wouldn’t win a presidential election! Ha ha! It’s funny that we can laugh at that now, right? Everyone? Hello?

They bump into the 40-year-old version of Erin, who is anxious and neurotic and snippy. She remembers nothing about all this time-travel she did as a 12-year-old. She only offers to help out of complete apprehension, but perks up a bit when Young Erin shows her an Apple device that seems more futuristic than 2016 technology!

She’s going to log into it with her Apple ID. If it’s anything like my Apple ID login attempts, she’ll get locked out and have to reset her password over and over again until she gives up.

Paper Girls, Issue #7 [July, 2016]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

Oh yeah, I forgot. And a girl WHO LOOKS LIKE ERIN but speaks the alien gibberish descends down to Cleveland and kills someone right away with crazy time-warp powers. That is something I want to know more about. NOW. I should’ve put this part in the intro section, but it’s here now instead because I feel like getting a little experimental with my format. Breaking out of my own mold.

“The present is not a gift”

Amen, sister. This issue begins with a young girl walking alone in the rain. She looks like Tiff with tight cornrows and a shirt that says “JUSTICE FOR TAMIR RICE AND JOHN CRAWFORD”. Both of these happened in Ohio, and no justice yet! After a now-familiar hum, she spots something hitherto unknown in the river. She snaps a photo of it with her phone. I’m sure we’ll find out in a moment what it is! Hold your horses!

A young girl who looks like Erin comes running up to the young girl who looks like Tiff speaking squiggly. Not-Tiff asks Not-Erin if she saw the same thing, but Not-Tiff can’t understand any of her crazy talk! So Not-Erin pushes a button on this cool Babel Fish collar she’s wearing and starts speaking English instead. “I was saying, you should delete that right now, or the old-timers will poison your brain until you’ve forgotten your own–”

Not-Erin is interrupted by a rather large rowboat suddenly crashing down onto the street next to where they’re standing.

Boats are falling from the sky again! Damn this hellish future we live in!

“RUUUUN!” Not-Tiff yells, ruuuuning. Not-Erin doesn’t move, she stares wistfully in the direction of where the boat had supposedly come from. Then she talks into her Star Trek wrist communicator: “Now that I’m in synch, my field shouldn’t accidentally hurt more civilians,” this Not-Erin Erin-looking Erin-impersonator says Erinly to some jerk, probably, “And, as you can tell, I’ve picked up the local dialect, so I’m definitely on the right point in the ‘line.” Ha, the kids are shortening the word “timeline” these days. I’ll have to make note of that next time I’m checking out my friends’ Facebook ‘lines. Heh.

“Unfortunately, I think I may have brought along a stowaway,” she reports, referring to the thing Not-Tiff took a photo of, which looks like it might be a giant squid? I sure hope so!

Let’s head back to the house of Single, Old, Washed-Up Erin, eh? She’s glued to a map she’s got projecting into her mind, or so she claims. The other three are less than thrilled about the 3D view of Stony Stream that Old-Erin is currently “seeing” on her 19th Generation iPod Touch, but are going along with it at any rate. For now.

Tiff wonders if the map will help them find KJ. Young Erin wonders if the map will help them find 1988. Old Erin wonders if the bottle of Xanax she’s pulling out of her pocket will help her find tranquility. Young Erin thinks she’s taking rude drugs!

Just steer clear of the Viibryd, m’kay?

Anyway, back on track here. Old Erin scopes out the “map” and finds a highlighted route leading to a dot called “The First Folding”. Sounds promising, right? You kids feel kind of folded up, right? Maybe just one folding? Let’s start there! It’s at the old mall. You kids like malls, right? Orange Julius and Mervyn’s? Mervyn’s was a thing in 1988, I know that much.

Well, Old Erin’s gonna go by herself. No point in dragging three minors to some weird “First Folding” nonsense! Here, she’ll leave some Xanax for y’all. Go nuts.

“So you’re planning to find KJ on your own? What does she even look like?” Young Erin challenges her older self to a game of “who is KJ” and young-she knows that old-she’s gonna lose! Older people are dumb.

Old Erin starts to get defensive about this. Listen, kid, this whole thing happening right here and right now may be your current present or something, but Old Erin remembers quitting that paper route almost 30 years ago and she never saw any of these kids at school, remember? Different schools? Hello? Why would she give a shit now? It’s not like any of them kept in touch or anything. Jesus. Where’s that Xanax??

Not just your asses. You’ve got six other orifices you can stick your thumbs in. Have fun!

Young Erin points out that she already made her point for her. Old Erin needs to bring her to be able to identify KJ. “If anybody asks, you can just say I’m your daughter,” she says, like anyone’s going to fucking believe that shit.

Old Erin groans as another ulcer forms, then agrees to bring Young Erin and only Young Erin. Then the other two complain, as you can see ← thataway. This is when Old Erin snaps again, tells Tiff that life’s not fair. And fuck off. Basically. Then she storms into another room, leaving the three of them stewing in an awkward silence.

“I’m so sorry, you guys,” Young Erin here trying to keep the only friends she’s made in months, “I think I grow up to be mentally insane.”
“I’m glad you said it,” Mac responds without a single sprinkle of coated sugar.

So is she fibbin’ about the map? Is this lady off her rocker? Lost her marbles? Does she need her NES cartridge blown?

Young Erin advises the other two to take the bikes out of the garage and search for someone who can actually help them. Like, maybe their older counterparts are still in town and not all messed up and batty and weird and alone and miserable. Meanwhile, the two Erins are gonna check out this Final Folding. Maybe they can get one more fold out of it!

“Plus, somebody needs to keep an eye on myself,” says Young Erin, rather dramatically.

Won’t someone think of the children?!

Let’s see what’s currently going on with the third Erin! She’s chasing down a car in the rain, hailing it like a taxi. But it isn’t a taxi, it’s one of those futuristic taxis where normal everyday people are the taxi drivers! Strange, I know.

Not-Erin, as you can see, is trying to convince this random lady to give her a ride. She is cut off by the sound of a very loud ululation! Like this: “uuuuuuuuuuuuuu”. And it’s emerging from a giant tardigrade standing in the river. Not the giant squid like I’d hoped, but a giant tardigrade is way creepier. Those things are supposed to be microscopic. This one is easily 12 stories tall. Yuck.

The Uber driver is quite paralyzed with shock, and Not-Erin insists that they need to get the hell out of there. “I imagine it’s terribly hungry,” she says, calmly enough.

But there’s another one nearby!

“OUOUOUOUOUOUOU” says the other tardigrade. It makes a good point. This tardigrade is kind of purple. The other one is blue. They probably want to do some very public tardigrade bonin’ very soon, and that won’t be good for anybody.

Nope, scratch that. The purple one starts bloodily tearing into the blue one with its crazy-long tardigrade claws.

The Uber woman has gotten out of the car to get a better look, but Not-Erin works on pushing her back in. “When that one finishes digesting its friend, I’m hoping it’ll go into cryptobiosis. If not, we don’t want to be here.”

Not-Erin sure knows a lot about tardigrades and cryptobiosis and a lot of other things that sound smart. This comic is too smart for me. I gotta go back to Nightwing.

The woman asks how this girl is so calm, but she’s not answering any questions right now. “I need you to take me about thirty minutes from here. To an establishment called Stony Gate Mall.”

I’m sensing a Triple Erin Meetup in the very near future.

The other two Erins are on their way to the closed mall. Young Erin is sad that the mall is closed; in complete disbelief that even the Waldenbooks is gone. Oh man, I’ve been there, sister! I’m still mad that Waldenbooks left my mall, and that was easily 20 years ago!

I’m telling ya, you have to keep that almanac away from Biff Tannen.

I think the closed bookstore caused Young Erin to snap just a tad too far. “This time… I think it’s all wrong,” she says quite plainly. Good luck trying to change anything, though. You can’t even find the First Folding! Let alone other foldings. Let’s keep going.

“Spencer’s Gifts is gone, but that doesn’t mean things are post-apocalyptic. You just happened to catch me at a weird time,” Old Erin tells her younger counterpart. “I can only imagine what must be going through your head. Seeing that we wind up being some fat unwed loser with a dead-end job…”

Tom (Writes About Stuff) would frankly pay a lot of money to be a fat unwed loser with a dead-end job right now. If even just temporarily. It sounds pretty sweet actually.

“You are not fat, idiot! Gross, that sounds like something Dad would say,” snaps Young Erin, still full of life and gusto and a belly no longer crawling with robot bugs. Plus, she thinks her older self has a cool haircut…and she’s wearing a nice shirt. PLUS, the unmarried part doesn’t sounds bad at all. Kinda nice actually!

So she gets a hug. Stop hugging yourself. It’s awkward. It gets awkward. She stops hugging herself. It got awkward.

It’s a good thing the inhuman wailing of a 900,000 lb tardigrade breaks the silence! Or is it something else making the “UUUUUUUU” sound? It’s coming from the mall, so it’s probably not the tardigrade. Unless it’s trying to loot what’s left of the Hot Topic or something.

Just wait until you see a Tesla. You’re going to want to take a big dump right on top of it.

Mac and Tiff are biking across town. Tiff is going ga-ga over all the futuristic stuff on the streets, like that car over there, or maybe that sign over there. Mac doesn’t give a shit. That don’t impress her much. Oh oh oh-oh.

They see a Hillary Clinton campaign sign. Tiff can’t believe her FUCKING eyes! A lady president! The future is great! Too bad this is July, 2016, and if only Tiff knew how bleak it would get in four months. Mac’s realistically cynical. I won’t go into why. I think you can picture it.

Tiff asks why Mac has to be such a jerk.
Mac asks Tiff why she has to be so cheerful.

Well, Mac, because the world still exists in 2016. “Every single paper we ever delivered was about another war or another plague or another meltdown, but it turns out everything’s going to be–”

What? Devastating? Ruinous? Disastrous? Cataclysmic? Mortifying? *checks thesaurus.com* Wretched?

“Whoa,” says Mac with dinner-plate eyes, cutting off Tiff’s train of thought, “what happened to my house?”

“It’s all…nice,” she says, trembling with intimidation. Hell no, she doesn’t want to meet her future self. Not at all. Even if Mac and Tiff agreed to try Old Mac first, fuck that shit. What if she, like, knits or something? Or has three kids? Or owns a big yoga ball? Yuck.

Taking a deep breath, Mac bites the bullet and rings the doorbell. A bald man with a goatee who probably isn’t Mac, but who knows, answers the door. “¿Puedo ayudarte?” he asks.

Tiff speaks Spanish! I don’t, but I think I can translate reasonably well: she asks him if his huevos are grande! Also, if the Coyle family lives there. The Coyle family no longer lives there. They bought the house from the previous family way back in ‘92. His huevos, though, are grande.

“Wait, they moved?” Mac asks, stunned.
“Right after their daughter passed, God bless. Leukemia, I think.”

Well that’s a fucking buzzkill, man.

Tiff looks at Mac. She’s emotionless.

“Okay then. We’ll be sure to update their subscription information,” Mac responds vaguely.

Final Thoughts

Bummer. Pretty dark shit. It must suck to go to the future as a kid and learn that you died of cancer when you were 16.

I’ll be sure not to do that.