But it was moments like this which separated outstanding insurance agents from the merely great.
“It’s time to roll up our sleeves, team.”
EPILOGUE
Mandatory Overtime
SEVERAL GRUELING HOURS LATER, Tom was alone on Home Office World, putting the finishing touches on the settlement paperwork and thinking about his productive workday.
Since they were so fiscally responsible, the manatees had accepted full responsibility for all the damages they had caused against all non-dolphin actors. So they’d not even needed to go to Arbitration. Because of the exchange rate between Wendell’s ultra high-tech home world and Jimmy’s relatively backward Earth, it didn’t even cost them much. The manatees repaired the Mar-a-Lago golf course for less than their daily lettuce budget.
But then it had gotten personal. The negotiations had almost broken down over the pain and suffering payouts. Both sides were proud, hard-headed negotiators, and both had been wronged. A respected neutral statesman had to be brought in from off world to mediate. Adam Baldwin was paid handsomely for his time.
Eventually, it was decided that the President of Earth #169-J-00561 would be compensated for the pain and suffering caused by his infamous typo with a one-year supply of Kentucky Fried Velociraptor Extra Crispy Taco Bowls. A settlement which Tom had to admit he was a little envious of. Carl the Secret Service Agent was able to keep his job. The Secretary of Defense declared today to have been the finest round of golf he’d ever played.
Tom had no idea what happened to Justin Trudeau, but he usually did not concern himself with world leaders from any country which did not at least have its own aircraft carrier.
Harambe the Gorilla from Earth #984-A-3256 had, in fact, been fired from his bouncer job due to the bus incident, but Tom recognized talent when he saw it. After interviewing with Muffy, it was decided the gorilla would start on Monday as their new HR manager.
The dolphin home worlds disavowed the fanatical dolphin separatists hired as mercenaries by Jeff Conundrum. They also said they had no idea what Tom was talking about when he brought up all those “offended” one-star reviews. Tom remained suspicious of their denials.
Even though his evil company merger deal had fallen apart, overall CorreiaTech Prime had been very pleased with the outcome of his Level Ten claim. He ended up making a great deal of money that afternoon selling anti-human weapon systems to the manatees and anti-manatee weapon systems to the humans, in preparation for potential future conflicts. Then he’d secretly made even more money under the table selling both types of weapons to some really vengeful dolphins. The Interdimensional Lord of Hate was kind of a dick like that.
As for rogue insurance agent Jeff Conundrum, he had been taken to the dreaded manatee black-site prison known only as Under-Gitmo. Which, despite the name, was actually beneath a lake in Minnesota.
In order to thank his rescuers and to apologize for his followers’ overly enthusiastic vigilante behavior, Wendell the Manatee had thrown a pool party and invited all the humans who had been so terribly wronged. All of the supermodels and rock stars who followed Wendell on Twitter also attended. Tom was not a fan of such frivolity, but he had excused his exhausted team to go to the celebration. What the heck? They had earned it, and it was the weekend.
Everyone had a fine time. Despite Conundrum’s best efforts, it appeared that customer satisfaction had been brought to the Multiverse once more.
Tom had briefly joined them at the Mar-a-Lago Presidential Water Slide Park. However, he was too preoccupied with work to partake in the festivities. Jimmy, on the other hand, did not have that issue. He had already declared himself Beer Pong Champion of the Multiverse, and then gotten into a drunken slap fight when he’d accused one of Wendell’s posse of “manateesplaining.” (In his defense, Jimmy had been in a bad mood because it turned out all the contestants in the wet T-shirt contest were lady sea cows). Luckily the fight had been broken up by the Swedish Bikini Team before anyone had been hurt.
Frankly, Jimmy was totally unsuited for Interdimensional Insurance. Yet, somehow, he had still managed to save the day. There was no rational or logical explanation for that. It was enough to make Tom question his earlier decision to rehire Jimmy as his intern.
But then there had been a glimmer of hope. Tom had been having a coworker-appropriate conversation with Muffy, when someone had tossed a head of cabbage to the hungry manatees loafing in the pool. Jimmy had seen this and, without hesitation, sprung into action.
“Ambassador Cabgar! NOOOO!” Jimmy leapt into the pool and begun fighting to save what he’d wrongfully assumed was a potential client. “Get your filthy snouts off him!” He tore a leaf from a manatee’s mouth. “You monsters! Spit him out.” He grabbed that manatee by the jowls and shook him. “Spit! Give it! Bad water cow! Bad!”
It was in that moment that Tom understood. Though Jimmy may have only had one heart, it was in the right place. He was terrible at quite literally everything else, but Jimmy really did care about their customers. So Tom decided then and there that he would do everything in his power to help Jimmy achieve his true insurance potential. Of course, the manatee commandos did not like having their dinner interrupted by a drunken human, so they began to kick the living crap out of poor Jimmy.
“You think maybe we should step in before they drown him, Mr. Stranger?”
“No. I think we shall consider this a teachable moment. Have a pleasant weekend, Ms. Wappler.”
“See ya Monday!” Muffy said as she wandered off to try to get Adam Baldwin’s autograph.
Then Tom had returned to Home Office World to wrap up their paperwork. Late that night, as he made an addendum to subsection 14, paragraph 4, appendix J of the claim, Tom Stranger smiled, because he knew he had the best job in the Multiverse.
I told the story about how Tom Stranger came to be in the last Target Rich Environment, but it is kind of fun how Mike Kupari gave me an idea for some really silly blog posts, and those somehow turned into a bestselling series of audiobooks narrated by a famous actor. I recently completed Tom Stranger 3, Apocalypse Cow.
One fun note, on all those bits where it said insert dolphin noise here, we used the same exact dolphin sounds for all of those dialog bits with wildly different meanings. It’s a very nuanced language.
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