Amelia was adamantly opposed, suggesting that a critical situation might present itself when they would really need Anonoi’s help and he might be more inclined to pitch in if he hadn’t already been strong-armed into doing something. As the discussion continued a waitress approached their table and informed them three men were at the hostess table inquiring about whether they were in the restaurant, and if so could they have a word.
“What men?” asked Blackie. “Did they give you their names?”
“You can’t see them from here, they’re at the hostess stand,” replied the waitress. “They didn’t give us their names, but they knew yours.”
“Just one moment,” said Blackie to the waitress. “What do you think?” he asked, deferring to the group.
“I think we had better find out who they are and how they found us,” replied Nita.
“Fine, we need to spread out,” said Amelia. “Wayne, stay here with me. Blackie and Joules, take a table close by. Mark and Nita…”
“We’ll grab that booth,” replied Mark. “Everyone take your coffee cups with you.”
The waitress had a perplexed look on her face when Amelia turned to her and asked, “Could you show them in please? Wayne and I will see them.”
Moments later the waitress returned with three men.
“I’m sorry, there must be a mistake,” offered one of the men, “we were expecting six people.”
“Who is we?” asked Wayne stiffly.
“I’m Dex, this is Guzzle and that’s Joe.”
Just then Amelia heard a small quiet voice saying, “We sent them.”
“Wayne hold on,” said Amelia, who put her hands over her ears so she could hear better.
Again, she heard a quiet voice saying, “We sent them.” It was like the voice she heard on Alphus Nebulum when the Nomad was surrounded by security guards.
“Where have you been?” Amelia asked Dex immediately. “Where did you spend the night last night?”
Dex leaned close to the table and said in a low voice, “We spent the night in a cave outside of town.”
Again, Amelia heard the voice saying, “We sent them.”
“Amelia, did you hear that?” asked Blackie who looked around the room expecting to see someone throwing their voice. The Lactropodectopoi had never spoken to him outside of one of their caves.
Before Amelia could answer, Dex anticipated her next question, “We met the Lactropodectopoi in the cave yesterday just before dark. We were looking for a place to hole up until morning when we could slip into town unnoticed. They told us one of their nests on Lindone told them you were coming here to Numaria and would be in the largest hotel downtown. Sly got your message. He sent word through the lactropodectopoi for me to find you.”
“Maybe we should find a less public place to talk,” said Wayne, noticing the waitresses were watching them from the service area. He turned to Blackie and Joules and said, “We’re going upstairs.”
“Take them to your suite, Wayne. “I’ll order some food and have it sent up.”
Amelia approached their waitress and explained they had decided to have brunch upstairs in their suite. She ordered a large assortment of entrees and paid the bill, leaving a handsome tip.
“Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything else,” remarked the waitress, not taking her eyes off the receipt.
When Amelia got to the room she detected a heavy tenseness in the air. It had something to do with Dex starting their conversation by telling them they had no business planning an assault on the warehouse, and Blackie telling him if he said that again, he would take the sword Dex was hiding under his overcoat and spank him with it.
Wayne thought it was pretty ballsy to threaten a Centorian with his own sword. But Mark remembered the hundred or more times Blackie had effortlessly disarmed him while they were training with machetes in their back yard. “But I’m no Centorian,” he thought as Nita intervened.
“How about this,” offered Nita, “how about we settle down and agree to work together as a team?”
“Fine, how were you going to get in?” asked Dex.
“Cut through the door.”
“With what?”
“We have that covered,” replied Joules. She didn’t see any reason to go into details with strangers until she learned more about them.
“What about the alarm?”
“I don’t think we’ll trip the alarm – we weren’t going to remove the door, we are going to cut a hole in it.”
Nita’s suggestion to work as a team seemed to have taken hold. There was a lengthy discussion about cutting the door and if that might set off the alarm or elicit a response from the security guards.
“How about I go in first to see if anyone is inside the door and if not, I’ll signal you?”
“How are you going to get inside?”
“I have it covered,” replied Guzzle.
“If you have the security codes, there is no reason for us to cut the door,” said Joules.
“How are you planning on getting inside?” asked Blackie.
“I’ll just slip inside and check for guards,” replied Guzzle.
“Sure, just slip inside. How are you going to do that?” asked Blackie sarcastically.
“I was hoping you would ask that,” said Joe. “Skinny man, you’re up.”
Guzzle walked over and opened the suite door, then locked the handle, stepped out of the room into the hallway and shut the door behind him.
“What is he doing?” asked Joules.
“Wait for it,” Joe said with a satisfied look on his face.
To their amazement a hand followed by part of an arm came through the door seam. It reached down and unlocked the door knob, and then Guzzle opened the door and stepped back in the room, shutting the door behind him.
“I owe you an apology, Guzzle,” said Blackie immediately.
“Don’t bother,” replied Guzzle. “Who in their right mind would ever have guessed I could do something like that. I’m a genetic mess.”
“Once we cut the door open, are you going to stand guard, or are you coming in?” Mark asked Guzzle and Joe.
“We’re going with you,” said Guzzle.
“It will be dangerous inside,” replied Mark, “and besides, you don’t have a dog in this fight.”
“But we do,” replied Guzzle. “My last name is Higgins. I hold the patent on the ceramic matrix the Zin Charr are illegally using to build their new disambiguation chambers and I’m not happy about it. Joe invented the stabilized bioactive fluid they ripped off from our defense department. We both have an interest in helping Dex retrieve the innocent people in that facility. Then, we’re going to destroy the equipment.”
“So, you know why we are here, what about you?” asked Dex.
“Nita’s father is Centorian,” replied Mark, who nodded to Nita.
“His name is Warrian. He and my brother Denton are being held in that facility, and my friends offered to help me get them back.”
“Exactly how were you going to burn through the warehouse door?” asked Dex. “It’s not like you can go waltzing up there lugging an industrial grade torch.”
Blackie looked at Joules but didn’t say a word. Having listened to all that was said previously, and witnessing Guzzle’s incredible ability, she decided it was the appropriate time to demonstrate what she brought to the team.
Joules stood up and stepped away from her chair and into the center of the room. Her demeanor, coupled with her soft glow and natural beauty, suggested she was a gentle person, and she was, but those traits belied her unique ability. There was much more to Joules than a warm personality, pretty hair and a beautiful smile. But it was her gentle nature that allowed her to use and control her gift — a gift that could wreak indiscriminant havoc and destruction in the hands of the wrong sort of person.
She came to a halt at the very center of the suite and within seconds the glow in her hands began to intensify. Quickly, she was engulfed in a shroud of
spinning, gyrating light that formed a shield that was so bright it was difficult to look at directly. Joules backed away from the center of the room toward an interior wall and a beam of energy burst through the shield and protruded three quarters of the way across the room.
She focused the beam into a tight cylinder of energy that seared like a cutting torch. Joules glanced at Blackie who responded with a big smile, and instantly, like someone had closed the valve on an acetylene torch the beam and gyrating energy field vanished. Dex, Guzzle and Joe were dumbfounded.
“If we can’t come up with a security code for the door, that’s how we plan to get in,” declared Nita.
Wayne stood and pushed back the curtains that covered a sliding glass door to the balcony. Then he slid the door open to exhaust the smell of burned dust particles hanging in the air. “No sense in setting off the fire alarm,” he said.
“We only have one more problem to solve,” declared Mark. “We don’t know where the warehouse is located.”
Mark’s comment jolted Dex out of his stupor. He blinked his eyes several times to clear the ghost images from his sight and replied mechanically, “We have that covered.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THERE IS NO CLOSET
That argument that won’t go away, you know the one — which came first the chicken or the egg — how exasperating is that? I can tell you. It’s at least as annoying as listening to philosophers go on and on seemingly in perpetuity, as if by talking long enough about the chicken and the egg the answer would excuse itself from the storage closet. Don’t go looking for the storage closet — that would be foolish. Instead try to realize the truth; there is no closet. You may think there is, but I believe the little bald guy.
The exact date isn’t important, but suffice it to say that at some juncture in history it was proposed by a chickens-came-first advocate that the C in E=MC2 stood for chicken. That caused 500 years of philosophical diatribe, with learned professorial types sitting smugly on pillows at low tables, pulling on their vaporizers, positing this and positing that. There was such a ground swell of interest there weren’t enough free form jazz clubs in the universe to house all the pundits that came pouring out of the woodwork. Coincidentally, that is a wonderful idiom referring to insects that would suddenly come out from under boards in the house where they were hidden. You see the obvious connection, don’t you? Just repeat – there is no closet.
Of course, all those insane discussions of the age-old question were good for business at the jazz clubs and that wasn’t all bad. But you can see where this is going can’t you? That’s right; inevitably, some well-intending intellectual sophisticate from the eggs-came-first camp postulated that E stood for egg. The likelihood of that chewing up another 500 years of speculation was pretty good.
Put yourself in the shoes of one of the chicken or egg debaters and you will see how important this is. That was sarcasm. No really, put yourself in their shoes and when you do, if you are an egg came first supporter what else could the E in E=MC2 stand for? It’s as plain as the nose on your face, unless you’re that scary snake looking guy with slits instead of a nose. And if you are, my most humble apologies sir, I don’t want to be a newt.
As an aside, and in the spirit of complete disclosure, Tugurro planned to buy shares in an exchange traded fund focused on free form jazz clubs. There is a good chance it could double in the next 500 years barring anything to do with reality or revelation.
Now, some proponents of the chickens-came-first theory lean heavily on the occurrence of a number 2 associated with the letter C in the equation. They insist the imminent scientist that created this formula secretly encoded the answer to the 'which came first the chicken or the egg' conundrum by cleverly deriving an equation that squares the C, indicating the superiority of the chicken.
Of course, egg supporters counter with equally compelling arguments (more sarcasm) indicating that C must be squared and have the help of M, as indicated in E=MC2 (more on M later) so as to equal E, thus indicating the superiority of said E. Chicken supporters say egg supporters are putting too much emphasis on the equation, which some in their ranks now profess to be a simple meme.
When a group of well-known and highly regarded astrophysicists arrogantly appropriated the E=MC2 equation in an effort to help describe the relationship between matter and energy, both the chickens-first and eggs-first groups decried their adoption and publicly denounced the astrophysicists’ misapplication of E=MC2 as balderdash. “Get your own equation,” they would yell at astrophysicist conventions.
The egg first supporters also took to throwing eggs at the convention speakers. This is widely recognized as the origin of that delightful display of discontent. Following their lead and not wanting to be outdone, the chicken first supporters began to throw whole chickens at the speakers. But that didn’t catch on like egg throwing did and the practice of throwing chickens was relegated to a tiny footnote in the organization’s booklet titled Why Chickens Came First, which is said to be a thrilling and suspenseful dissertation that has the power to reorder the entire universe, if only someone would read it.
In spite of competition from chicken throwers, the practice of throwing eggs at people you disagree with became so popular that it began to sway public opinion in favor of the egg first theorists. Well naturally, egg throwing is the poster child for incredibly important topics you would expect an educated public opinion to embrace. If you are interested, you can find a huge assortment of other completely moronic topics they might embrace by watching any version of the “news”.
Write down the riveting subject matter so you will have the list that is vetted by entertainment professionals who displaced the news professionals to bring you the latest in absurdity. Repeat after me — there is no closet.
It looked like the egg first supporters had accidently carried the day and would prevail in the 'which came first, the chicken or the egg' dispute. After all, it’s not really about being right so much as it is having people agree with you, and they now seemed to have cartons of those folks. Any time an egg-first supporter was headed to any event (just pick one — how about a piano recital) they could just slip an egg or two in their pocket (they couldn’t do that with chickens!). The eggs were in case something preposterous happened, like the final performance of the evening being delivered by someone who had just won the city’s piano competition instead of their own little girl, who could now actually spell piano. That’s easily a two-egg discontentment.
Needless to say, the chicken first group was down, really down. But chance has a way of elevating the undeserving time and time again and keeping them there until the brutish pressure of reality exercises its dominance (see The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire). When things looked very bleak for the chicken supporters, a gentleman of some importance in the chickens first group was slaving away at his home office, trying to come up with a way of combatting the momentum enjoyed by the eggers.
His daughter, Aliss, arrived home from school and as was his custom he stopped working for a few minutes to chat with her about her day. Apparently, it had been dreadful. Her teacher had assigned teams to compete in a spelling contest and her team got Beege. Beege wasn’t so keen on the idea of spelling things correctly so having to participate was agony for him and a real bummer for the team.
To practice for the competition each member took a turn spelling a word from the assigned list. When Beege’s turn came he had to spell chicken, which he promptly spelled C-H-I-C-K-I-N. Aliss told her dad, “that was wrong, chicken has an E in it.”
He was astounded. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Of course, you see the significance immediately don’t you? There is no C in egg, but there is an E in chicken. “The E is in the Chicken” became their new slogan.
Public opinion, being exactly as I described it above, flip flopped on which came first the chicken or the egg and was now decidedly in the chickens-came-first camp. The significance of such a breakthrough was significant, and as you would
have expected there was a complete exposé of the matter as the lead story on that night’s nightly news. I mean really, how obvious is that and why did it take them so long to see it – The E is IN the C. The chickens-first group now had the eggers on the run.
Although the chicken first supporters now enjoyed their chance at the top of public opinion they fretted. In the other camp the eggers were fretting too. Both of them were worried about the exact same thing. What was M. The astrophysical explanation was discarded before it was even considered. What did that have to do with chickens and eggs, or, so as not to pick sides, eggs and chickens?
A splinter group comprised of deep thinkers from both sides of the argument (there were only a few) proposed that M was the force that caused chickens and eggs, or eggs and chickens, to spring into existence at the same time, M=E/C2, and therefore the thousand-year-old debate was in fact a moot point. Their analysis was wrong of course. But close, very close.
While public opinion was trying to get its head around the new concept, complicated by use of the exotic word 'force', the Free Form Jazz Club Association went into full damage control, and rightfully so. The absence of a chicken or egg first controversy could devastate their businesses since many self-proclaimed philosophers, who were accustomed to arguing chicken or egg at the club would simply go home after work because there was no more argument.
But as you might expect, the Free Form Jazz Club Association members ultimately decided the new M theory was way cooler than the chicken or egg thing, plus they weren’t scared off by the term 'force'. Well of course they weren’t, they were free form jazz musicians; once you do that gig nothing else comes close to being scary. The jazz clubs’ business dwindled but didn’t die. There were still enough cool people to make that scene happen.
The free form jazz club exchange traded fund went belly up (Tugurro cashed out before the crash). Even though it was a ridiculous investment to begin with, there is sure to be an aggressive class action lawsuit that will enrich the attorneys and help investors recover 1% of their money.
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