by Ira Nayman
After he left, Mom cleared off the table. Fashions! she thought. Distractions for the feeble-minded – shear the sheep so you can shear the she…no, that kind of social criticism is too easy, and, anyway, why bother? Remember: you chose this life, after all; of all the things you could have done, all of the people you could have been, this is the one you chose – you needed to be middle class, and now you are middle class…with a vengeance, a dark, cruel vengeance that haunts your dreams by night and suffocates you by day, but a vengeance that does give you a kind of protection, an invisibility that any comic book super character would envy and...
Mom picked up the Alternate Reality News Service with the intention of throwing it into the recycling incinerator, when a headline on the cover caught her eye.
* * *
Murder Most…Ambiguous
by HAL MOUNTSAUERKRAUTEN, Alternate Reality News Service Crime Writer
It turns out that Gauguin di Presto’s safe room wasn’t so safe.
The dead body of the 88 year-old retired used shoe personality implant salesman was found locked into his safe room. Ordinarily, we would simply have assumed that his body had given out like a razor strop that had been used to hone sharp edges once too often. But, broken razor strops don’t usually attract the attention of the Transdimensional Authority.
“Yeah,” said Police Chief Randy Hammocker-Flemmer. “As soon as we saw…well, we can’t tell you what we saw until the TA has finished its investigation. But, as soon as we saw…the object that we can’t tell you about, we knew that we were out of our depth and called in TA investigators.”
“Oh, and, by the way,” he added, “there’s no dash in my name. It’s Hammocker Flemmer, not Hammocker-Flemmer. I’m sure you regret the error.”
Maybe some day. For now, Crash Chumley, lead Transdimensional Authority Investigator on the case, had no comment.
Why would the TA be called in for a simple locked room mystery? Hercule Chan, Miss Jane Warshawski or any of a number of other local detectives could have solved the case. Our first assumption was that somebody from another dimension had entered di Presto’s safe room, murdered him, and returned to their home dimension.
Investigator Chumley had no comment. But, he scratched his nose while saying so, which we interpreted as encouragement.
Through means that were only partially nefarious – barely even misdemeanours, really – the Alternate Reality News Service obtained a copy of the coroner’s report on di Presto’s death. It turns out that he had died of a cerebral haemorrhage, a fancy medical way of saying his brain started leaking and didn’t stop until he did.
Okay, okay, our first theory was shot down in formaldehyde flames. That’s fine: we’ve got plenty of them.
Our second theory was that di Presto was using his Home Universe Generator™ to spy on the personality implant designs of his company’s competitors; by watching their meetings in other universes, he could find out what they were planning. He might even have stolen their designs and given them to his company. Sure, sure. Used shoe personality implant sales is a cutthroat business! Okay, he had been retired for over 20 years, but that just made him an even better criminal perpetrator in our books, since he would be the last person anybody would suspect of industrial espionage, and didn’t the last person you would suspect of being the culprit always end up being the culprit in crime literature? If only he had been a butler, it would have been perfect, but, of course, real life is never as satisfying as a good detective novel.
Investigator Chumley had no comment. But, we detected a slight trembling in his voice when he told us, which we interpreted as encouragement.
“Naah, that’s not it,” Police Chief Hammocker Flemmer said. “Sole Survivor, di Presto’s old firm, merged with Shoes You Can Abuse over a decade ago. Remember the famous footwear personality implant bubble? Yeah, a lot of good people got walked all over in that one. So, anyway, there was no company for di Presto to spy on.”
“By the way,” he continued, “you’ve got my name almost right, but not quite. It’s not Hammocker Flemmer, it’s Hammocker Flemmer– there’s a single space between the two parts of the name, not a tab. Thanks.”
We could have told him he was welcome, but we had already moved on to another theory about what had happened in di Presto’s safe room. We were originally told that the TA had been called in because of an object found next to di Presto’s body. What object could possibly interest the Transdimensional Authority? A jumbo jet that folded up into a suitcase? A vial of the DNA of an elephant crossed with a cantaloupe? A pair of zircon encrusted tweezers?
The answer was staring us in the face: a Dimensional Portal™!
Sure. You have to have a licence to run a Dimensional Portal™, and individuals are never given licences. But, the plans are easily available on the Internet. di Presto had had years, decades to jury-rig something in his safe room.
Investigator Chumley had no comment. But, it was the way he asked us to stop asking him for a comment that suggested to us that –
“Oh, why don’t you give it a rest?” noted historian Oliver Stone interjected. “Right now, there is no information on the death of Gauguin di Presto. Seriously. Nothing. There is less information here than there is supporting the existence of UFOs or…or a conspiracy in the death of JFK! This isn’t journalism – it’s bizarre flights of fancy masquerading as journalism! Why don’t you stop until you have something real to report on?”
Because we are the Alternate Reality News Service, sir. We were created to report the news, and we won’t let anything like a dearth of facts stand in our way!
* * *
Okay, now that was interesting, Mom thought to herself. Absently playing with the empty space where her left earlobe should have been, Mom went down to the basement, happy in the knowledge that she was free to enjoy a little “me time.”
Chapter Five:
Noomi Plays House
A couple of days later, Noomi ran out of paperwork to keep herself busy. She could either play double dare in the air everywhere solitaire (you thought we had run out of variations on the game? You need to have more faith in human ingenuity!) on her computer, or watch the… (dramatic stab) orientation video. Noomi looked around to see if lightning had struck anybody in the office, but it was just her imagination. Tough break.
Noomi opened the (dramatic stab) orientation video and pressed play. Even before the Transdimensional Authority logo faded into the FBI warning against pirating the video, Noomi could feel he eyes glaze over (and she didn’t even like eating donuts!). Before she had lost her capacity to speak, Investigator Chumley got off the phone and said, “Noomi, we have an appointment in the lab.”
Noomi gratefully hit the pause button. “Thang aww,” she said. Well, before she had completely lost her capacity to speak.
Investigator Chumley led Noomi to a smallish white room on the second level of the basement. There were many tables with Bunsen burner thingies, electron-microscope whatsits and other equipment that defied cutification. Standing amid the science was a tall, thin besmocked man wearing a bow tie and serious manner. He looked like what the child of Bill Nye and Morticia Addams would have looked like if one or more of them hadn’t been fictional.
“Noomi Rapier,” Investigator Chumley introduced them, “This is Doctor Alhambra. Doctor, this is Noomi Rapier.”
Doctor Alhambra picked a clipboard off a table and, with a gentle grunt, made a mark on it. Putting down the clipboard, he smiled grimly and said, “We have programmed the modifications to your…device. If you will just…” He motioned to Investigator Chumley, who took TOM out of his pocket.
“Thanks,” TOM said. “It was getting stuffy in…hey, wait a minute! What are we doing in a lab? And – hey! – who are you calling a device?”
“Hello!” a voice shouted from a screen in the background. The screen was divided into three squares. The largest square showed a man, a little overweight with long, shaggy greying hair, who could have been mistaken fo
r Jerry Garcia – his smock was tie-dyed, or, had a really big ketchup and mustard stain. He wore a general air of befuddlement, as if life was a problem in chaos theory with uncertain variable parameters. (As if it isn’t!) Above him were two smaller squares. One contained an image of a puppy in a cage; curiously, it had no hair on its head, but it did have a long, pink scar. The other was an image of an empty lab; the perspective on this image moved in time with the puppy’s head movements.
“That’s Doctor Richardson,” Doctor Alhambra stated. “He’s working on something else.”
“What are you working on?” TOM, concern dripping from every phoneme, asked.
“We are going to make you stronger,” Doctor Alhambra replied.
“Nothing you do will affect my personality, will it?” TOM said. “Cause, right now, I am a chick magnet – you hear me? Babes adore me! And, I don’t want anything interfering with that!”
“If the operation did change your personality,” Doctor Alhambra mused, “how would you know the difference?”
“WHOA!” TOM responded. “Okay, I’m out of – Crash, get me out of here! Crash! Get me – Crash?”
Investigator Chumley’s attention was on the screen where a puff of smoke had come out of the puppy’s head. “What, exactly, is Doctor Richardson doing?” he asked.
“He put a chip in the subject’s head,” Doctor Alhambra, who didn’t appear to be especially interested, stated as he walked over to a table with a laptop computer on it. “The idea is that if we could tap into an animal’s visual cortex, we could send it to spy on suspects in other dimensions.”
“That’s crazy!” Noomi exclaimed.
Doctor Alhambra made a noise that could, if interpreted generously, have been a sigh. “It’s a military contract,” he stated as he pressed a button on the keyboard. “They are very lucrative.”
“Can we please get back to what’s really important here?” TOM insisted. “ME?!”
Another puff of smoke wafted out of the puppy’s head. The image of the empty lab got fuzzy and wavy. “How could you get the puppy to go where you needed it to go?” Investigator Chumley wanted to know. “You might be interested in something on a table in a locked room in a heavily guarded corporate headquarters, and the dog might be out in the parking lot chasing squirrels.”
“The Pentagon thinks electric shocks would work,” Doctor Alhambra told him. “Stimulate the pain centres as a negative incentive when the subject is on the wrong path, stimulate the pleasure centres as a positive incentive when the subject is on the correct path.”
“That’s crazy,” Investigator Chumley concernedly commented.
Doctor Alhambra shrugged. “Everybody knows we’re at least a decade away from a workable prototype,” he admitted, “but, what the hell? It’s their money.”
“That’s not –” Investigator Chumley started. He stopped because smoke had started to emanate from the puppy’s head in a steady stream. The image of the empty lab went black.
“OH! MY! GOD!” Noomi shouted.
“No need to worry,” Doctor Alhambra assured her, “we haven’t gotten to the electric shocks yet – that is the second phase of the research project.”
The other two images went black.
“WHAT ABOUT ME?!” TOM screamed.
“You?” Doctor Alhambra dismissed him with a wave of his hand, “You’re done.”
“Done? DONE! What do you mean, done?” TOM anxiously asked.
“Didn’t you see me hit the computer key?” Doctor Alhambra stated with the equanimity of science.
“That’s all?” TOM, much more calmly, wanted to know.
“You can now trace signals from between universes that are three magnitudes weaker than you used to be able to,” Doctor Alhambra told him.
“And, my personality?” TOM insisted.
“Untouched,” Doctor Alhambra assured him.
The main screen came on. Doctor Richardson was giving the thumbs up.
“But, how would I…ohhh…” TOM petered out.
“So, the puppy was saved?” Noomi asked.
“No,” Doctor Alhambra answered. “Why would the Pentagon pay big bucks to save puppies in labs when they could just go to the nearest pound and adopt a bunch of them? I mean, seriously, where’s the science in that? No – it was the chip – the computer chip was saved!”
Noomi looked disgusted. “Are we done here?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Doctor Alhambra stated.
Noomi walked out of the lab. Investigator Chumley pocketed TOM and went after her.
“You could have thanked me,” Doctor Alhambra muttered. Then, he brightened, happy in the knowledge that science is its own reward.
* * *
Two days later, Noomi was sitting at her desk, staring into the middle distance. She was thinking something about…something…something important…or…something…
“Hey, Noomi,” Bobbo Bruit shouted. “what’s your favourite colour?”
“Erg oo and ah orse oo ode in on!” Noomi replied, to much laughter in the bullpen.
After the incident where TOM received his upgrade, Noomi went straight down to her desk and watched the orientation video. She was hoping for complete oblivion, but she was happy to settle for an inability to articulate the rage she felt.
Investigator Chumley walked in. “Data Collection and Interpretation think they have a lead,” he told Noomi. Among its many tasks, Data Collection and Interpretation monitored the space between universes for unauthorized traffic. When it discovered energy that shouldn’t be there, it sent the information to the Investigations unit.
“Hey, Noomi!” Brett Blurp shouted, “How do you like working with a guy named ‘Crash?’” The detectives in the room laughed again.
“Hey, Brett,” Investigator Chumley kidded him in the time honoured tradition of male bonding, “my partner only watched the video two days ago, and she has most of her speech skills back. I seem to recall that it took you a week and a half just to get your higher intellectual faculties back!”
The detectives laughed even harder. Blurp’s face, ruddy to begin with, noticeably reddened.
“Come on,” Investigator Chumley advised. “Let’s get out of here before he thinks of a comeback.”
As they walked to the elevators, Noomi said, “Anks, Invedigator Chubley.”
“Why don’t you call me Crash?” he replied.
“Anks, Crash.”
“Don’t mention it,” he told her. “I…I’m stuck between two different codes of masculine behaviour. On the one hand, there’s the guy code: you stick with the guys against the girl. On the other hand, there’s the cop code: you always have your partner’s back. Tricky, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.”
Noomi noticed that they stopped on the main floor instead of the basement. “Whurr are we gung?” she asked.
“To get my car,” Investigator Chumley answered.
“Yer car?”
“It’s fitted with a Transdimensional Drive™,” he explained. “We could hardly drive into a locked room, but, for the most part, we should be able to drive to where we need to go in other realities.”
Investigator Chumley led Noomi out to the parking lot. When he pressed a button, the lights of a sleek, cobalt grey car went on and it honked for attention.
“Whoa,” Noomi said. The sight of the car had clearly speeded up the return of her facility with language.
“Indeed,” Investigator Chumley agreed, putting his hand on the handle of the door. Noomi grabbed the door handle on her side of the car and pulled, but nothing happened. She looked at it for a moment and tried again. Nothing.
“What the ferk?” Noomi asked, looking up.
Investigator Chumley almost smiled. “The doors open up,” he advised her. Noomi applied her efforts in a different direction, and, sure enough, she found that they did. She and Investigator Chumley climbed in. Inside, Noomi saw a control panel the size and complexity of which rivalled that of the bridge of the star sh
ip Enterprise. She was sure half the lights on the panel were not actually connected to anything and just blinked at random intervals. More than half.
“Welcome to the Dimensional Delorean™,” said Investigator Chumley. “It’s a modified version of a very rare car. The Dimensional Delorean™ gets 100 miles to the gallon on the highway, 75 miles to the gallon in the city and 1,000 minutes to the gallon between universes. Are you ready for the better way for transdimensional travel?”
“You’ve practiced that speech, haven’t you?” Noomi asked, smiling.
“If I had,” Investigator Chumley diffidently responded, “would it make any difference to your desire to get going?”
“Absolutely none,” Noomi admitted. “Let’s head.”
Investigator Chumley put the key in the ignition and his foot on the accelerator. The Dimensional Delorean™ shimmied and popped out of existence.
* * *
Yo, GamR Mom,
Love the blog. Big fan.
I play a lot of Bloody Death Match to the Death IV – the characters are involving and the 3-D barometric perspective is visually stunning. And you get to rip people’s spines out! Anyway, I usually play Lord Gimcracku cause, hey, he’s the coolest kick-ass character in the whole shebang, I mean, he’s got the moves, he’s the man, he’s the shit, he’s [insert empty macho cliché here]! But, I can never seem to get past The Velvet Bonecrusher, you know? I finally figured out my character’s killer move: chest bash, chest bash, chest bash, low leg sweep, high leg kick, chest bash, chest bash, spinal lunge and capture. I used it to work my way up the ranks: I’m now at Asskicking Level 27. But, whenever I face The Velvet Bonecrusher, I get my ass handed to me. Literally. Great piece of animation, but, as I’m sure you can appreciate, not one I really want to see. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?
yononan34
Dear yononan34,