Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  “But, you’re –“

  “Dead. I know. You can say it. It’s not a four-letter –“ she stopped and corrected herself, “well, I guess it is a four-letter word, but you can still say it. I’m used to it.”

  There was an awkward silence. Hesitantly, in a soft voice, Avis asked, “What – what was it like? Dying, I mean.”

  Mom got a soft, sympathetic look I’d only seen a few times before, like when her own father died in the early stages of the OOPS, the pandemic sweep of Offensive Obstruction that started this whole mess. “It wasn’t too bad, really.” She perched on the edge of the bed, but the mattress didn’t shift downward and the covers showed no new wrinkles. “I remember getting hit. It felt like a bowling ball at high speed, but I don’t really remember anything after that.”

  “You fell into Grandpa’s grave,” I told her. “It was flooded from the rain, and I jumped in to save you. I held your head up out of the water, but you were already…I knew you were gone.” My mind had gone back to the cemetery and my words drifted. It was surreal explaining the situation to her.

  “I’m sorry, Billings. I’m so sorry. Will it help to know I’m okay now?” She got up and came around to my side of the bed. Without thinking about it, I stood up to meet her. It didn’t matter anymore that I was only in boxer shorts. “The pain was only for an instant. Then there was nothing. I wasn’t cold. I wasn’t wet.” Suddenly, we were face to face and her eyes spun a little crazily as she grabbed at my shoulders and failed to make contact, “I didn’t have to pee, Billings! Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

  I stared at her. “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  I pointed to my face and then at hers. I’m six foot three and she is, was, five foot two-ish. I hadn’t been eye to eye with her since I was twelve unless she was two steps above me on the stairs. Looking down, I noticed that her legs had stretched unnaturally long.

  She looked down, too. “Oh my.” She shrunk back down again, as if she’d made an unforgivable error by violating the laws of physics. “Wait.” Her brow furrowed as she concentrated, and then she got taller again. She smiled broadly, beaming with pure joy. “Hey!” She started shrinking and stretching like she was a rubber band being tested for tolerance, getting taller and taller with each stretch. “Wheeeee!” Just when I thought her head would bump into the ceiling, it disappeared into it instead. This time, when she came back down she stayed at her normal height. “Did you know there’s a squirrel family in the attic?”

  “I’ll mention it to Knobby,” I told her, still kind of in shock. Knobby is the caretaker. Since we were often away on missions, Knobby took care of household repairs and upkeep for our headquarters and the two other houses for the other teams which were all located in the tri-state area. He wasn’t on-site just then, but I could leave a note for him on the refrigerator.

  “Gee, all I have to do is think about something and it happens. I thought about you and I came here, Billings. Why, I bet I could go all the way to the Androm-.” Just like that, she was gone. No bright light. No puff of smoke. No musical cue or popping sound.

  I exchanged a look with Avis and Agnes and I think we were about to agree that it had all been a hallucination when Mom came back the same way she left. Suddenly, silently. “Whoa,” she said. “I’m going to have to be really careful what I think about.”

  I stepped forward along the side of the bed. “You mean, you were just --. You went to --?”

  “It was really weird. I’d rather not think about it, okay? I’m focusing on you right now. Are you okay?”

  Another wave of surrealism washed over me. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I miss you. God, Mom. I—.” My mouth worked but no more sound came out of it. I didn’t know what to say. I just looked at her, drinking in her image like someone in the desert finding an oasis.

  “I suppose Grandma took it pretty hard. I debated visiting her, too, but you know she’s in her heart attack years. Probably a bad idea.”

  I agreed. “She’s adjusting pretty well, considering.”

  “Television cozy?” She asked.

  Grandma likes to crochet, especially when she’s stressed, and her favorite things to make are cozies. She’ll cozy the house itself someday. “Coffee table,” I replied. “She was starting the side table when we left.”

  “Buy stock in a yarn company, Billings. Good investment. I promise. Grandma’s not the only one who crochets.” She wasn’t wrong. Roxy Dubois, the legal counsel on our team had taken up crochet after meeting my grandmother. Her projects were smaller, and her attention to detail less precise. But she’d only just started a couple months ago. She printed out patterns but wasn’t good at keeping them organized. I would have helped her if I could, but I saw a few pages once. It looked like she had fed e.e. cummings through a box fan and then taped the pieces back together blindfolded.

  Mom sat on the foot of the bed again, this time facing us and crossing her legs, like she was settling in for a slumber party. My knees felt wobbly, so I sat on the edge, intensely aware of the mattress responding to my weight. “So, tell me about my funeral. I didn’t see it. Am I buried by Grandpa?”

  The twins had brought their knees up and were each hugging their own set. “Heavens no,” said Agnes on the opposite end of the bed from me. Avis was in the middle. “Your ashes are in an urn on his dresser downstairs. That’s what was in your final wishes. Remember?”

  CURDS is a dangerous job, even though the full name sounds like a weird version of the Post Office. When you accept a position, one of the things you have to do is fill out final wishes in case something happens to you. It’s Form 687B-D9, I think. Roxy would be able to quote you the paragraph notation and text from the CURDS Charter. It’s filed and mostly forgotten about, until something happens, of course. It had been several years since Mom did hers, so it was possible she didn’t remember the details.

  Mom turned her head toward me. “If you went by my final wishes, why am I in an urn, Billings? It would have told you what I wanted done with my cremains.”

  “I haven’t had time to finish that part. I’m not sure I can.”

  Her head tilted. “Aw, you don’t have to worry. Don’t be upset.”

  “It’s not that,” I told her. She thought I was being sentimental, that I would have a hard time parting with her ashes. She wasn’t exactly wrong. It’s not like the idea was easy. But I was pretty sure I could get through it. “I don’t think it’s entirely legal.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s final wishes. People always make exceptions. And it’s not that weird either. There’s been weirder. Napoleon had his friends shave his head and divide up his hair. Elizabeth Taylor insisted she be fashionably late to her funeral. Tupac Shakur had his friends mix his ashes with marijuana and smoke it. And there was the Pringles guy who had his ashes buried in a Pringles can. And a comic book guy whose ashes were in the ink used to print his comic books.”

  “None of those required their loved ones to trespass on private property.”

  She leaned forward, her torso stretching unnaturally toward me. “I checked with Roxy. You just have to ask. If he says it’s okay you can do it, and I think there’s a good chance he will. He likes fans.”

  I put my head in my hands. “Mom, I really don’t want to ask permission to sprinkle you all over Chris Pine’s garden.”

  Her spectral body sprung back into normal shape. “I’ll haunt you.”

  “Please do,” I responded. “I miss you.” My eyes were misting as I reminded myself that she wasn’t really here and I was talking to her spirit. “Ow!” There was a pain in my arm and for a moment I thought Avis had pinched me again. When I turned to chastise her, she and Agnes were both rubbing their arms, having suppressed the verbal expression of pain.

  “Duty calls,” Avis said. The twins got out of bed quickly and began to fumble for clothing.

  I stood up and grabbed my jeans. “Sorry, Mom.” Mom was still sitting cross-legged on the bed, look
ing sadly at her own arm. She had to feel left out. The subcutaneous tracking device, or STD, was an internal warning system that alerted us to an impending message from Miss Chiff, our Director. “It had to be removed before…you know. That, and the screws holding your ribs together.” Her ribs had healed, but the screws had remained in place. Until she was going to be cremated and all metal had to be surgically removed. I even had to sign a release for the procedure. As I spoke I pulled a clean t-shirt over my head that I grabbed blindly from my dresser drawer. It said “I’m lactose intolerant. Ask me how.”

  “Catch you later,” she said with fake cheer, and she disappeared.

  The twins and I dressed hurriedly and headed down the stairs. We were on the top floor of a four story house and it took a while to descend. The twins were ahead of me, but stopped on the third floor landing. “What do we tell the others?” Avis asked quietly.

  I could see Roxy, our legal counsel, as usual dressed to the nines in a mint green gown with a split skirt and a sweetheart neckline, using one finger to slip on her left high-heel shoe as she hopped toward us, her curly red hair bobbing against her cheek. I spoke quickly, but just as quietly. “Nothing.” With both of them giving me incredulous looks, I shot back, “Do you want to be grounded for a psych eval?” Nitro, our medical officer, would have no choice. Even if he believed us when we told him we had just talked to my dead mother, he’d have to protect his own credibility and put the story into our permanent records.

  We proceeded down the stairs, picking up others along the way. First Roxy, now running her fingers through the many red curls on her head, followed by Sylvia, our strategy advisor who had a knack for looking outside the box despite having only one good eye. You couldn’t really tell now that she had graduated from the eye patch to an artificial eye. Both are several shades greener than Roxy’s dress. On the second floor we ran into Sir Haughty, our extremely English cheese expert just tucking in his teal cravat, and Badger our communications tech, dangerously trying to tie a shoe on his way down the stairs, using his shoulder against the bannister to steady himself. Nitro, whose room is on the first floor off the kitchen, was already in the living room, sitting on one of the three mismatched couches arranged in a U-shape facing the large screen television. He had one arm resting on the back of the couch as if he’d been there for hours waiting for us.

  Everyone found a seat. Badger grabbed the remote from the coffee table and pushed the button to accept the call. A moment later the extra-large head of Director Chiff appeared on the screen. She is in her mid-70s, with silver hair tied up in a tight bun and half-frame eyeglasses perched low on her nose. She was calling us from her office in downtown D.C. In the video you could see part of her desktop, which was littered with papers and manila folders. She’d had a very difficult week, too. We were dealing with the loss of our coordinator and my mother, but she was handling the loss of one-third of her field staff. Two-thirds, if you count us being off-duty a full week for the funeral. Trying to make headway on the global presence of Uber with only one active team could not have been easy.

  “Hello, Team A. It’s very nice to have you back,” she said, folding her hands for a moment on top of the pile of paperwork on her desk. “Mr. Montana, my condolences once again. I trust you are ready for duty?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “I do have a mission for you, of course. Fortunately, it is not time-sensitive. Before I give you the details, I wanted to make sure you heard the presidential address that is about to be broadcast.”

  Badger raised an eyebrow. “It’s not the State of the Union address, Miss Chiff? February is a little late but not entirely unheard of.” He directed another sentence to the rest of us. “Damn, I think we missed it.” It was only barely February, though it occurred to me that we’d also missed Groundhog Day. Now I’d never know if we were getting six more weeks of winter.

  “You are correct, Mr. Collins.” Badger’s real name is Gerrold Collins. We call him Badger partly because he’s the information digger and partly as a truncated version of Big Bad Gerrold. He is so skilled at finding information he could locate the nearest junction box at Yankee Stadium while you’re standing in center field. “The SOTU address took place while you were in the Congo and out of communication range. I’m sure you can find a replay of it. No, this is different.” She was being evasive. There was something about this speech she didn’t want to tell us. “Please tune to any major channel and then come back to this one after she’s finished speaking.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” said Badger, who still had the remote in his hand. “See you shortly.” He tuned to a network channel that already showed a podium and the usual bouquet of microphones, with a long hallway behind partially covered in red carpet runner. A crawl at the bottom of the screen said that the President was expected to speak very shortly.

  We couldn’t resist a little bit of speculation. “I suppose she’s just telling the nation about what happened in the DRC,” Nitro said, using the shorter form of Democratic Republic of the Congo.

  I contradicted him. “There’s got to be more to it. Miss Chiff wouldn’t be making sure we watched if that’s all it was. She wouldn’t be so cruel as to make us relive last week for nothing.” I had to believe that. Miss Chiff was strict, but not unkind. Avis, sitting next to me with her conjoined sister on the other side, squeezed my hand. Even if the speech were about something else, the events of the past week might be mentioned, and I wanted to prepare myself.

  A few minutes later, President Sequoia Glenarrow and her Vice President, Warren Lade, appeared at the end of the hallway and began the long walk toward the podium. She is a Native American of average height and sleight build, with dark hair that she often wore in a single braid, currently draped over her shoulder. She wore a well-tailored gray suit and slacks. Lade is of Asian descent, a mix of largely Vietnamese and Cambodian. During President Glenarrow’s re-election campaign, the slogan was Vote Glenarrow and Get Lade. Conveniently, her opponent that year was Jeremiah Scrude, who spent the majority of his time trying to convince people that the “E” on the end of his name was not silent.

  Glenarrow reached the podium and put her hands on each side. “Hello, everyone. I will try to make my remarks brief. There will be no questions at this time.” Light bulbs flashed and shutters clicked in unison, but she was so used to it she didn’t blink an eye.

  “As you’ve probably heard, the CURDS organization suffered a serious setback last week. It seems that the forces of Uber have grown quite strong, despite several years of struggle to contain them. Something more needs to be done. My advisors and I have been discussing it since the news broke about what happened in the jungle outside of Kinshasa. The lure of a potential windfall dealing in contraband such as Uber is clearly too much for certain segments of society to resist.”

  “Oh my God, she’s decriminalizing Uber,” I whispered to Avis. She shushed me.

  “Our allies in Europe will continue to use their own law enforcement and Chembassy personnel to confiscate and destroy as much tainted cheese as they can while promoting their robust clean cheese industries. After careful consideration, I’ve decided to try something else. After several years of what is clearly a failed fight against the infiltration of Uber, I can no longer condone continuing the same tactic.” The president shifted her weight, gripping the podium a little tighter. “I considered decriminalizing Uber.”

  There was an uproar from the crowd. More lightbulbs flashed, catching her briefly with one hand up to silence the press corps audience. “Such a move would drive down the price of Uber and remove the incentive of the black market, at least in the United States.”

  The uproar continued, with reporters shouting objections to the idea and offering questions they’d been told would not be answered. “What about the dangers of another OOPS?” OOPS was the acronym for the pandemic that swept the globe before Uber was identified. “What’s the timeframe of the Colonic Pacemaker?” referred to an experimental treatment for the
effects of Uber that would at least make it far less lethal. But the CP was still in animal trials and would take years to reach the market. It might even fail and we’d be back to square one. I even heard one reporter commenting to another, “she’ll be impeached for sure.” Vice President Lade remained steadfastly behind her and to our left, with his hands clasped in front of his crotch.

  “People, please! I am NOT decriminalizing Uber,” President Glenarrow insisted. “I rejected that idea for many of the same reasons you’ve just voiced. Given that we cannot keep doing the same thing, and we cannot decriminalize such a dangerous substance, I am therefore forced to do the opposite. I must criminalize all cheese.” The reporters went crazy again, but only for a moment, quieting themselves as they waited for more details. “This ban will take effect in 30 days. During the grace period, all Americans must either consume or dispose of all cheese products in their possession. Stores will begin removing such products from their shelves immediately. They will be compensated for the full value on the current market for everything turned in. I’m aware that the cheese industry, even here at home, employs hundreds of thousands of people. However, it is interconnected with the dairy industry, which will not be affected. We will subsidize to a certain extent dairy farmers and distributers to allow them to retain as many workers as possible. Displaced workers will receive very generous financial and training assistance until they can find employment elsewhere. Full details will be published on the White House website and in appropriate media.

  “It’s also true that this move will mean a larger commitment to CURDS, both in field and domestic personnel and equipment. I’ve asked Congress to prepare a bill by the beginning of next week to appropriate funds to reform our Uber defenses. I would imagine that we will not be at full strength at the time the ban begins, and it will be a rocky start to this new policy. But waiting any longer will only give the criminal element more time to gain a foothold, more time to endanger our most precious resources: our people and our children. Again, in the interest of national security, starting March 8th of this year, the ban will take full effect with one week of additional grace period after that. I’ll be instructing CURDS personnel to expand their Uber protocols to all cheese products after that date.”