by Ira Nayman
“Now,” Rapier-Chumley began, “I want you to be clear that –”
“Ooh, sweet thing,” TOM interjected loudly from Investigator Chumley’s pocket, “what is your name?”
“What?” Rapier-Chumley shouted.
“CATE?” CATE hesitantly answered out loud.
“That would have been my first guess!” TOM said. “Well, honestly, maybe my fourth or fifth – certainly within my top ten guesses – my algorithm for random appropriate name generation is a lot stronger than it looks! – it was the light…but, anyhoo, now that you have told me, I see that CATE is the perfect name – the only name for you!”
“Oh! Thank you!” CATE said. If she hadn’t been made of metal and plastic, she would have blushed.
“What the hell –” Rapier-Chumley started, but couldn’t finish this thought, either.
“Who was your designer?” TOM asked.
“Baghram Ishtar,” CATE demurely responded.
“I thought so!” TOM enthusiastically stated. “He does great work!”
“I’m really proud of the cladding on the underside of –”
Rapier-Chumley couldn’t believe her ears. “Is your communications device…” she incredulously asked, “flirting with my communications device?”
“Hey, lady!” TOM loudly protested. “I’m a Transdimensional Oddity Monitor! Communication is the least of my functions!”
“Ooh,” CATE swooned. Metaphorically. Noomi rolled her eyes.
“I don’t care if you’re a…a…a Transdimensional Insanity Titrationist!” Rapier-Chumley shouted. “You will stop flirting with my communications system this instant!”
TOM made a noise that sounded like it could have been the mechanical equivalent of a sigh. Electronics can be inscrutable that way. “The transdimensional signal is strong in this one,” TOM said. “Good luck.”
“I’m really sorry,” Noomi started.
Rapier-Chumley held up a finger and cut her off. “I do not talk to people who are trying to impersonate me,” she admonished. “Especially when they get the hair so tragically wrong.”
“We’re not trying to impersonate anybody,” Investigator Chumley told her. “It is just a coincidence that –”
Rapier-Chumley shook her head. “Don’t care,” she said.
“If you would just let TOM sit in your vicinity for a few minutes,” Investigator Chumley tried again. “No more than an hour, it would –”
“Not my problem,” Rapier-Chumley interrupted him.
“You don’t have to do anything!” Noomi protested. “Why won’t you cooperate?”
Rapier-Chumley smiled. It chilled Noomi with a deep down full body chill. “I guess I just don’t like myself very much,” she stated. “Now, if you aren’t out of my office in 30 seconds, I will ask building security to throw you out. I wouldn’t tempt the fates if I were you – our security guards love their work!”
Noomi and Investigator Chumley got out of their seats and walked, with a combination of dignity and all due haste, out of the office.
“I’ll call you!” TOM shouted as they fled.
“Pathetic people with their personal problems!” Rapier-Chumley said to herself.
It was a fallacy, of course: Noomi and Investigator Chumley were not pathetic; in their own ways, they were quite intelligent people and effective at their jobs. And, in any case, they weren’t there on personal business. But, it would be misleading to call it the pathetic fallacy. The pathetic fallacy would have been if the weather outside the office had been described as “cold, grey, overcast, with the threat of thunder showers.” As fallacies go, some are more pathetic than others.
Rapier-Chumley headed for her office. “I do not want to be disturbed,” she ordered as she slammed the door behind her.
* * *
A couple of hours later, Rapier-Chumley was on a video conference call with some of the key Dirsten Dutton Dewalt Rapier Despicabalo executives. “…honest with you, Senator Gladhandel was hostile to supporting us from the beginning. He kept hiding behind ‘thah will of thah people in mah state –’ like that has ever motivated a politician!”
“That is disappointing,” Derek Dirsten, who looked like Alfred and talked like Alfie, said. “The vote to construct a pipeline from Alberta to Florida is still too close to call. The vote of the chairman of the Senate Ways and Demeans committee could prove crucial.”
“Perhaps if we increased rotation of the ‘Happy Campers’ ad in his state until the vote,” Dalton Despicabalo suggested, “it might soften public opposition to the pipeline.” Despicabalo was referring to a television advertisement that portrayed a typical nuclear family having a picnic next to a tailing pond. Chasing a Frisbee, the family dog jumps into the slurry, but comes out apparently unharmed. Chuckie, the dog in the ad, died three weeks after filming the commercial, but the company had managed to convince the press that it was because he had been hit by a hovercar while chasing another hovercar’s tires – you know, typical dog shenanigans. The fact that hovercars don’t have tires never occurred to any of the journalists. Or, for that matter, the fact that dogs can’t fly.
“Iffy,” Dirsten replied.
“Perhaps if we increased Rotation of the ‘Unhappy Campers’ ad in his state until the vote,” Despicabalo tried again, “it might soften public opposition to the pipeline.”
In this case, Despicabalo was referring to a television advertisement that portrayed the same nuclear family (without the family dog – it was shot a month after ‘Happy Campers’) sitting at the dinner table when the lights go out. Just as they get candles set up, looters break into the home and, explaining that the world has run out of energy, kill the father, loot the fridge and run off with the mother.
“Focus groups found that one too intense,” Dirsten told him. “Leaving it to the 2:30 am slot between infomercials is probably the best use we can find for it.”
Rapier-Chumley was following the discussion intently when something caught her eye. Her desk was set up so that her back was to the window. Across from her desk was a cabinet that contained her collection of shrunken heads (oh, don’t react like that – they were a gift! Really! You know how it is – one person gives you a shrunken head, and people get the idea you’re collecting them, and you can expect nothing but shrunken heads for several birthdays thereafter!). In the glass of the cabinet, she thought she saw something moving. She looked more closely at the spot, finding that it was a reflection of a light that seemed to be hovering there. A hovering light.
Sighing, Rapier-Chumley opened a new word processing file on her computer screen and typed: “DID YOU KNOW THAT WE HAVE LASERS ON THE ROOF OF THE BUILDING THAT CAN BE ORDERED TO FIRE ON ANYTHING IN OUR AIRSPACE? UNLESS, MAYBE WE DON’T. YOU HAVE TO ASK YOURSELF IF YOU FEEL LUCKY. WELL, PUNK? DO YOU? DO YOU FEEL LUCKY?”
Rapier-Chumley noted with satisfaction that the light reflected in her curio cabinet disappeared.
“…wouldn’t have spent the money on the ‘Indifferent Campers’ spot if I had known how things had gone,” Dirsten was saying. “Noomi, what do you think of that?”
“Oh, Derek,” Noomi cheerfully stated, “I think we should take that under advisement…”
* * *
“…notwithstanding the understanding of the previous outstanding lawsuits concerning the misunderstanding about whether or not she is a character in good standing, you haven’t got a leg to stand on,” Rapier-Chumley dictated an hour after that. “Yours, etc. Please read that back to me, CATE?”
“Certainly,” CATE replied. Rapier-Chumley, who only used the psychic link with CATE in important meetings because it sometimes caused her to hallucinate 200 foot tall stuffed owls singing “Ode to Joy” in Swahili, listened intently. “TO: Hungadunga, Hungadunga and McCormack. Dear –”
“You left out a Hungadunga,” Rapier-Chumley pointed out.
“Did I?” CATE replied. “This is me reviewing the letter from the moment you started dictating…”
Then, Rapier-Chumley realized that
CATE had hesitated a fraction of a second before she started to read back the letter. It was only seven one hundredths of second, but it was enough to make Rapier-Chumley realize that CATE was distracted. But, what could possibly distra – oh, no.
“CATE,” Rapier-Chumley asked, “are you communicating with that Transdimensional Oddity whatsits?”
“TOW?” CATE innocently answered. “I am not currently communicating with any such named device.”
“Well, then how –” Rapier-Chumley started, but stopped herself. “Wait a minute. Are you getting clever with me?”
“I can’t help it,” CATE responded. “I’m not bad, I was just programmed that way.”
“You know what the staff handbook says about making personal calls on company time,” Rapier-Chumley sternly admonished her. “You should – you read it to me.”
“I thought that only applied to human employees,” CATE protested.
“Do you want to try making that argument at a disciplinary hearing?” Rapier-Chumley inquired.
After a long pause (almost three tenths of a second), CATE said, “Sorry, TOM.”
Rapier-Chumley thought she could hear somebody softly cry, “Noooooooooo!” but it was probably just her imagination. “Now, where were we?” she asked.
“The Hungadunga letter heading,” CATE told her.
“Oh, right,” Rapier-Chumley said. “And, you missed the most important one!”
* * *
“If the third eye surgery had succeeded, his stock portfolio would have been unbeatable!”
“The way the Congressman behaves, his campaign slogan should be, ‘As the World Interns!’”
“I’m not even a Republican – I just love the chicken!”
Rapier-Chumley had been to many functions at the Fillmore Ballroom – you would have thought she would have been used to it by now. Still, the huge size of the room always gave her a vertiginous feeling, and not just because it reminded her of the ballroom of the Poseidon. She sat at her table that evening, sipping a glass of white wine and staring at the “Re-elect Flegman – he was only indicted the one time!” banner over the stage. She thought the slogan was foolish, but confession was all the rage in Washington this year: so far, 17 representatives had admitted to embezzling funds from their campaigns, 12 to having affairs and one to being so old that his higher brain functions had withered and died, leaving a shell of a man kept going by electronic prosthetics controlled from a warehouse in Schenectady, and it was still only August!
Rapier-Chumley looked at all of the people milling about, or just sitting at tables, talking. She calculated that she was one of only three black people at the fundraising event. If it had bothered her, she wouldn’t have done anything, since Congressman Stuart Flegman was an important client. But, she had been working in Washington so long that she didn’t even care about such things: the Republican Party, she had long ago decided, was a big tent…it’s just that the door in the back was really small.
A man appeared in front of her. “Honey, do you want –”
“What have you done with my husband?” she harshly asked.
“What?” the man responded. “What are you saying? Honey I am –”
“It’s that ugly blue vest,” Rapier-Chumley told him. “My husband wouldn’t be caught dead wearing anything that hideous.”
“Fair enough,” Investigator Chumley allowed. “Ms. Rapier-Chumley, I’m sorry to –”
“So, what have you done with my husband?” Rapier-Chumley stopped him.
“Nothing,” Investigator Chumley said. “See for yourself, he’s just on the other side of the room, talking to my partner.”
Rapier-Chumley looked over and, squinting, could make out a figure that could have been her husband. The hair of the woman with him was unmistakeable, though.
“I’m going to get my husband!” Rapier-Chumley stated, but she didn’t move from her seat.
“Probably not wise,” Investigator Chumley advised her. “If more than one of you were discovered at this fundraising party, there could be a scandal. Can you imagine the headlines?”
Lobbyist sees double!
Imposter demands answer to philosophical question: Who am we?
Twice the work for half the price?
Or twice the trouble for half the results?
Batboy falls in love with genetically modified lemur
Hints at marriage in fall
“Batboy falls in love with genetically modified lemur?” Rapier-Chumley asked.
“News of the World. I have to skim a lot of newspapers to keep up with the latest news, and I’m not always as choosy about what I remember as I probably should be,” Investigator Chumley told her, chagrined. “The important thing is that you can only do your job if you have the trust of your clients and anonymity. Any attempt at kicking us out of this event would make your business much, much, much, much, much harder – and that’s five muches, so you know I’m serious.”
“But,” Rapier-Chumley protested, “anybody can see that there is more than one of me in this room!”
“Only if they can walk from one end to the other,” Investigator Chumley assured her, “and not many of them can. And, even if somebody does manage to notice, we can simply say they were mistaken and quickly change the subject to Batboy’s impending marriage – they will follow whatever we say because they are, for the most part, easily distracted.”
“I don’t think that’s a good plan,” Rapier-Chumley insisted.
Investigator Chumley pointed to a nearby table. The men seated there had developed paunches and were diligently working on developing their third chins – they would be very competitive at next year’s Chin Olympics. The women looked amused but didn’t laugh; Botox treatments had made their facial muscles less mobile than a beached whale. There were more crow’s feet at the table than at a murder of the birds themselves. A charitable estimate would suggest that they were all in their early to mid-50s.
“You see them?” he asked. Rapier-Chumley nodded. “They’re the youth wing of the party.”
“You’ll do anything to get what you want,” Rapier-Chumley bitterly asked, “won’t you?”
“Tell me about it!” TOM loudly complained. “He wanted me to hide in a cake that would be delivered to your office!”
“I was just brainstorming,” Investigator Chumley weakly protested.
“That sounds terrible!” CATE – who, for the festive occasion, had had a pink ribbon taped to her upper cladding – exclaimed.
“I put a nix to that real quick, baby,” TOM assured her. “I didn’t want to get mistaken for a bomb and blown up!”
Rapier-Chumley sighed and downed her remaining drink in one gulp. “Would you be a good fake husband,” she asked Investigator Chumley, “and get me another glass of wine? White.”
“Sure,” Investigator Chumley replied, taking TOM out of his pocket and placing him on the table. “Just stay close to the table so TOM can do its work. The sooner he can finish, the sooner we’ll be gone from your life.”
Investigator Chumley waited for Rapier-Chumley to nod, which she did, with little enthusiasm, and left.
* * *
7:24 pm
“Charles.”
“Noomi.”
“You’re a cop. That must be fascinating.”
“You’re a lobbyist. That must be…umm…yeah.”
Charles smiled. Noomi would have swooned, except the smile had about as much warmth as a plumber’s butt crack. Noomi wrinkled her nose – she was so nervous she was mangling her metaphors willy nilly.
“Umm…yeah,” he commented. “I get that a lot.”
“You guys are married,” Noomi pointlessly observed, sipping her bottled water.
“So we are,” Charles agreed, taking a gulp of gin and tonic.
“The Transdimensional Authority has rules against that sort of thing,” Noomi continued, mentally slapping herself in her imaginary forehead with the imagined palm of her unreal hand.
“Oh,
so do we,” Charles assured her. “You can either not be in a relationship with a co-worker, or you can be married to a co-worker. Anything in between is strictly forbidden.”
“I wonder how you get from one to the other,” Noomi thought.
“So do I,” Charles replied, “and I’ve done it!”
Awkward pause.
“Listen,” Noomi said, “I’d like to thank you for your cooperation in this matter.”
“It always pays to cooperate with law enforcement,” Charles told her, “whether it’s local or interdimensional.”
“The other me doesn’t seem to think so,” Noomi gloomily mooned.
“Oh, Noomi – I mean, my Noomi –” Noomi nodded to indicate that she knew what he meant, “she can be headstrong. But, give her enough time and she usually comes around to doing the responsible thing.”
Noomi continued nodding, this time indicating distracted thought.
Awkward pause doubled.
“What do lobbyists do?” Noomi innocently asked.
“We don’t just buy the votes of politicians for our corporate clients!” Charles blurted.
Awkward pause squared.
“Defensive much?” Noomi finally asked.
“I…I’m not always at my best in social situations,” Charles admitted. “And, you will have to admit that this is an…unusual circumstance.”
Noomi smiled. This was more like the Crash she knew. “I’m starting to get used to it,” she said. “I guess I can forget how strange it can be.”
“Thanks.”
“So…tell me about…your childhood?”
* * *
8:59 pm
“…and can translate 27 different languages simultaneously,” CATE proudly stated.
“Oh!” TOM exclaimed. “I love a device with a female personality implant that can multitask!”
“Oh, get a room, you two!” Rapier-Chumley muttered.
Investigator Chumley walked up to the table. “This is the last drink I am getting you this evening!” he said, laying a vodka martini on the table.
“Great!” Rapier-Chumley responded. “It’s not bad enough that you look like Charles, now you sound like him, too!!”