“Correct. And I created Dr Ann O’Malley,” laughed the writer, “Just a pun on the word Anomaly. Look, normally I wouldn’t have time to humour a fan who stalks me through my window, but since you’ve somehow turned into a real Captain Miniature, what can I say? Maybe we can scratch each other’s backs in some way.”

“Are you on something?” said Captain Miniature, “What do you mean YOU created Ann?”

“I thought up the character, just like I did Bryce Banta,” said Rhymescribe.

“You mean you just imagined her?” said Captain Miniature, “And you know my identity too.”

“Well it was my idea. I was having lunch at Taronga Zoo, and thinking about what I’d learned about the Australian film industry developing the way it did back in the ‘60s. I thought it’d be funny to make the kangaroo the discarded sidekick who got the series canned, instead of the lead star. Hence the short lived Captain Marsupial gag. Did I end up using that name in the poem?”

“No, you didn’t,” said Bryce.

“I couldn’t make it scan on the verse, now that I remember it,” said Rhymescribe.

“Yet you thought it up, and only shared it with me now. That really was the name of the trained kangaroo sidekick the networks tried to force on me. That’s why Ann and I walked from the show,” said Bryce.

“Wait a minute,” said Jacoby, “Did you say Taronga Zoo?”

“Yes,” said Rhymescribe.

“Where is it?” asked Jacoby.

“Where the Mosman bush meets the water,” said Rhymescribe.

“But it’s not called that. It’s called the Romper Zoo, just as you named it in your poem,” said Bryce.

“I was just hunting for a new name for fictional purposes,” said Rhymescribe.

“I know what’s going on now,” said Jacoby, picking the Slipper Cycle off the windowsill, “This bike allows me to cross the dimensions when I’m at tiny size. This really is Captain Miniature. We’re both from a parallel earth. I didn’t know that this one existed. That dimensional storm we passed through must have enabled us to access a previously undiscovered earth, where we exist only as characters in your fictional poetry.”

“That’s so surreal,” said Rhymescribe, “You mean those earths in my ‘Chelmsford Girls’ draft are all out there: Lewis Rickland’s earth, and the two earths with larger and much larger people that he teleported to in the later chapters?”

“I guess his earth is ours,” said Jacoby.

“At least it will be,” said Rhymescribe, “The ideas were just drafts in note point form. I haven’t even written those poems yet. I was going to wait until the giantess gobbling subplots might be accepted by society. As far as I know, I’m the only person who likes that sort of thing.”

“Trust me. On my world it’s catching on,” said Captain Miniature, “You will write that one out in full and publish it, I’m sure. I’m sorry I came in here so steamed up. I guess, if I don’t exist on this world, there’s no harm in people knowing all about me, as merely a fictional concept.”