by Paul Jenkins
“But he’s a goalie!” exclaimed Mr. Whatley. “A hockey goalie.”
“That’s what made that play so epic.”
* * *
BY NOW, Lucy and Wil had edged their way inside the lobby and were slowly backing toward the elevators as Wil dangled the Sequitur high above his head. Poor Mr. Whatley looked very confused as he stared transfixed at the wooden object. Things were beginning to head sideways, as they always did whenever Wil felt he was about to accomplish something positive.
“Well, I’d love to stay and chat, Mr. Whatley,” he said, “but I have to get home in time to watch the playoffs.”
Never taking her eyes off the building manager, Lucy could only smile and try to look as generally innocent as possible. “What the heck are we doing?” she hissed in Wil’s direction as they backed toward the main lobby.
“Making small talk,” hissed Wil in return. “I think his brain is filling in the missing pieces. Just keep smiling.”
Over at the door, Mr. Whatley’s brain was beginning to ask itself difficult questions, none of which it seemed to like the answer to. “Wait a minute,” he said, faltering, “didn’t we trade Wilkerson last month for a winger?”
“It’s a good job we did after last night!” said Wil, unconvincingly. “See you in the morning!”
Thankfully, he and Lucy had managed to back their way around a nearby corner. They stepped hastily to one side and were obscured by random cubicles, allowing them just enough space to check on Mr. Whatley. The confused custodian stood at the door for a few moments longer before turning and locking it. With puzzlement written across his face, he pocketed his keys, muttered something about point spreads, and headed off to his tiny office to catch up on the latest events in the playoffs. Wil supposed Mr. Whatley was in for a minor letdown.
“I feel guilty,” said Lucy, feeling guilty. “What did we just do?”
“I don’t know,” replied Wil. “But once we get out of this let’s go to a hockey game.”
“It’s a date.”
Looking around, Wil and Lucy found themselves roughly fifty feet from the elevators. But they were not alone. To Wil’s astonishment, the comb-over twins sat at their eternal chess game, lost in concentration. He pointed them out to Lucy.
“We’ll have to sneak past,” he whispered. “Just keep low. They look pretty busy.”
Lucy nodded, and took the lead. She lowered her head below the level of the nearest cubicle and headed along a roundabout route that would take them to the elevators. As Wil followed, trying to keep the Civil War periscope on his back from poking up above the level of the cubicles, his eyes strayed toward the comb-over brothers. Looking below table level, Wil could now see that neither of the twins actually possessed feet—they were attached at the knees, and this, presumably, explained why they never moved away from the lobby. This incredible sight caused Wil to trip over his bag of kit and caboodle, and he crashed to the floor in a very loud and disoriented heap.
At the sound of Wil’s nasty tumble, one of the twins looked vaguely in his direction. The man’s eyes alighted on Wil’s position, yet he seemed to look directly through Wil, as if not seeing him at all. Wil stood up, just to see if he was imagining things.
“What are you doing?” hissed Lucy. “Get down! They’ll see us!”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t think they can,” replied Wil. “Take a look.”
He motioned toward the chess game, where the two brothers were looking decidedly confused. It appeared as if they had heard the commotion Wil had made but could not perceive that Wil and Lucy were present.
Wil moved toward them, quietly. The brothers simply returned to their chess game unaware of anything, it seemed, outside their little bubble of space and time. Intrigued, Lucy followed Wil and stood at the side of the table where the brothers continued to study their board.
“What’s going on?” asked Lucy. “Who are these guys?”
“I’m not sure,” replied Wil. “I see them here every day but I’m not really sure they’re aware of me. Look.”
He waved his hand in front of one brother’s face. No response.
“Must be a pretty intense game,” concluded Lucy.
“I don’t think it’s that. Maybe it’s just a feeling but I don’t think these guys are living in the same universe that we are. I have a roommate like that. He really seems to like mushrooms.”
“Okay, that makes no sense at all.”
“Want to see something else that makes no sense? Take a look under the table.”
Lucy obliged, and emerged with her face as white as a sheet. “Okay, that was unexpected,” she said in a somewhat understated fashion. “How do they go to the bathroom?”
“Very carefully, I would imagine. Come on. We need to get to the top floor.”
Wil moved away. On a whim, Lucy considered the chessboard in front of the strange comb-over brothers and toppled over the black king, just to see what would happen. The brothers looked around them, startled. Not wishing to push her luck, Lucy quickly backed away.
As they approached the elevators, Wil could tell Lucy was having a little bit of a crisis. “This doesn’t make any sense,” she muttered. “What’s going on around here?”
“It’s the Curioddity Museum,” said Wil. “I think once you visit, you begin to see things differently. Every time I leave, it’s like I take a little piece of it with me.”
Lucy pondered this for roughly two seconds, then pressed the elevator button. “Actually, that makes a lot of sense,” she said, rapidly reversing course. “At least the museum is easier to accept than all that stuff on TV about the economy and airborne viruses.”
Wil chuckled. Lucy was the most random person he had ever met, with the possible exception of his mother and Mr. Dinsdale. She was going to do just fine.
* * *
THE ELEVATOR soon became noticeable by its extended absence, and it did not take long before Wil realized the call button had failed to illuminate. He tried it a few more times, just for good measure. The button seemed equally adept at not lighting up the third time, just as it had excelled at not responding on the first two occasions. Wil sighed with relief. Making their way up to the penthouse may well prove to be slightly more challenging, he concluded, but at least neither he nor Lucy would succumb to the toxic fumes of the elevator’s rat vomit.
“We need to find another way up,” Lucy said, disappointed. “Any ideas?”
“Not really. I’ve only ever taken the elevator.”
“What about the stairs?”
“There aren’t any. Mr. Whatley says they were removed from the bottom three floors as a safety precaution.”
“That doesn’t seem sensible.”
“And the rest of this evening does?”
“Point taken. Is there another elevator?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea which way we’re supposed to go.”
“Greetings, Wil Morgan,” came a familiar metallic voice from inside Wil’s pocket. “Would you like me to look up ‘which way am I supposed to go’ on the Internet?”
Wil removed SARA from his pocket and glared at her glowing screen. “SARA,” he said with as much patience as he could marshal, “if this involves either Lahore, Pakistan, or anywhere in Korea, I’m warning you in advance I’m going to be a little testy. Do you have any idea how Lucy and I can get up to the top floor of this building, please?” Wil flipped on the Smart Response function of SARA’s operating system and then added, hastily, “And please make sure it’s something we stand a chance of surviving.”
“Calculating…” SARA’s various symbols and widgets glowed for a few moments as she pondered the problem. Wil felt it best to keep his expectations to a minimum. “There are three possible paths to the upper floors of the Castle Towers at this time,” SARA began. “Are you equipped with a military helicopter?”
“I think you probably know the answer to that,” replied Wil, much to Lucy’s amusement. “Try again. And this time, let’s try so
mething that won’t get you thrown out of a top window once we get to the penthouse.”
“At the fourth level and above, the emergency stairs may be used to access the upper levels.”
“And yet we’re firmly entrenched on the first floor with no way to get to those levels, as I’m sure your GPS function has already told you.”
“Recalculating…,” said SARA, innocently.
“Wow,” said Lucy, impressed. “She really is brilliantly mental, isn’t she?”
“You have no idea,” replied Wil, exasperated.
“Do you have in your possession a liquid dispenser, some clay or putty, a nonconductive positioning rod, and two ordinary paper clips?” asked SARA, suddenly. Wil sensed a slight air of desperation hidden in her metallic tone, though he couldn’t be sure.
“Well, of course we don’t! Why on Earth would we—wait a minute…” Wil’s voice trailed off. If he didn’t know any better, the universe was setting him up to be the butt of some cosmic joke. He checked the contents of his plastic bag, where the requisite paper clips, surface cleaner bottle, and small lump of blue clay did their utmost to jump out and strangle his intellect by his desperately overtaxed cerebral cortex. They failed, but only as a result of the rainbow lollipop’s inertia. “Okay, I have all of those items, SARA. Is this some kind of joke?”
“Negative, Wil Morgan. A joke is the evolution of an unhealthy mind hankering after a spurious, epigrammatic turn of speech.”
“I think that’s sarcasm,” said Lucy.
“Negative,” replied SARA. “I am incapable of sarcasm. In addition to the aforementioned items, you will need—”
“A coil of copper wire and a vacuum bag?” said Wil, interrupting.
“Affirmative. Please follow the instructions on the screen for entrance to the upper floors of the Castle Towers.”
Wil studied the screen, where a series of instructions appeared on the correct procedures for rigging and reprogramming the Mark Twelve Series of Industricorp Elevators. (It did not escape his attention that the author of these valuable instructions had uploaded them from Korea, but he chose to ignore this more-than-likely-irrelevant fact.) Wil looked up at the elevator door to be greeted with Industricorp’s jaunty corporate logo, which looked suspiciously like that belonging to the people who owned Mug O’ Joe’s coffee shops. Things were beginning to come together, much like two planetoids might crash in the asteroid belt to form a loud explosion and a pile of tumbling space rocks. He dutifully placed a single paper clip inside the elevator button, and affixed it with some of the blue clay. Following this, he squirted some of the spray bottle’s contents into the crevice, and he was only mildly surprised when sparks shot up his arm and gave him a minor electric shock. Moments later, the elevator doors rolled open, and the way to the penthouse floor beckoned like a vampire floating outside the window of a blood bank. Lucy mouthed the word “wow” silently, and stepped inside. Wil rolled his eyes to the heavens and followed her.
Inside the elevator, the stench of rat vomit threatened to overwhelm the senses. Lucy blinked through tears. “What the heck is that smell?” she said, clutching at her nose.
“Hang tight,” replied Wil. “I’m told you get used to it by the time you’ve been here for twenty years or so.”
Following SARA’s instructions, Wil quickly depressed the buttons for every floor of the building, then jammed his second paper clip behind the topmost illuminated button. He wrapped the second clip with copper wire, as instructed. Then, he wrapped the wire around the nonconductive lollipop and fastened this entire contraption to the wall with more of the blue clay. The elevator doors closed, ominously. The elevator, however, remained motionless.
“It’s not working,” complained Wil. “SARA? Any ideas?”
“Please inflate the vacuum bag,” replied SARA, “then press the button for the penthouse level.”
Wil looked at the vacuum bag, not liking one little bit where this was going. “Okay, why am I doing this again?”
“Please inflate vacuum bag, as instructed.”
“Better do as she says, Wil,” said Lucy. “And please hurry. I think I’m going to faint.”
“Okay, fine. Just don’t encourage her.” Wil inflated the bag as best he could, and was thoroughly winded by the time the deed was done. Closing his watering eyes, he reached for the button to the top floor. Suddenly, a massive jolt of electricity moved through his upper arms. A Tesla-style lightning effect played around his fillings, and the vacuum bag popped, loudly. Then, silence.
And suddenly, the elevator jolted upward. Wil opened his eyes to find a slightly amused Lucy Price trying her best not to be unsupportive.
“That was pretty impressive,” said Lucy in an understated fashion. “I’m glad it wasn’t me.”
“Impressive?” said Wil, angrily. “I could have been killed!” he pulled the smartphone from his pocket to find the screen blank. “SARA, don’t you even think about hiding right now. Did you know I was going to get an electric shock?”
The smartphone seemed to ponder for a second. Then, the screen glowed.
“Apologies, Wil Morgan,” replied SARA in a carefully measured tone, “but choices were limited given your lack of a military helicopter. Your recent exposure to levity-conducting plasma ropes in the Curioddity Museum lobby lowered your risk of fatal shock by twenty-seven percent, with a two percent margin for error. Would you like me to look up ‘shock therapy’ on the Internet?”
Lucy suddenly burst into a fit of little giggles. Wil looked at her in horror. “She almost killed me!” he whined.
“Yeah, but it got us moving.”
“Aren’t you in the least bit concerned?”
“Aw, poor little soldier. You’re okay, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes.”
“Good. The quicker we get up, the quicker we can get out of this elevator. It smells like stomach acid in here.” Despite her watering eyes and against the advice of her gag reflex, Lucy looked impressed. “I guess SARA’s messages aren’t just limited to texts and voice mails.”
Wil held up the glowing screen of the phone, barely able to believe the notion that SARA had intended to make some kind of artificially intelligent point. And then, despite his better judgment, he began to stifle a chuckle, which became a giggle, and evolved into a guffaw.
And to the sound of uproarious hilarity, the Rat Vomit Comet made its way up to the penthouse floor, and almost certain death at the hands of an overzealous ninja-bot.
* * *
AT THE top of the building, ninja-bots were nowhere to be seen. Instead, a rather surprised-looking secretary lifted her head from her latest hairdressing magazine to find two slightly red-faced intruders standing in front of her, coughing and spluttering. One of them seemed to be dangling a little wooden watch for reasons the secretary could not fully understand. Neither would she understand (nor pay it any further mind) just three minutes later once she had shown the two intruders to a small storage room, and returned to her position at the front desk. Throughout the course of resulting events, the secretary would vaguely remember being intrigued by mention of a new stylist at the corner of Main Street, and by an exciting pomade product that she felt she just had to purchase online as soon as her Friday paycheck cleared. Little did she realize at the time that small talk regarding hair and makeup products was a subtle form of mental manipulation at the hands of a wooden device known as a Sequitur.
For their part, each of the two intruders resolved to visit a hairdresser at the first opportunity, assuming they were neither killed nor arrested anytime soon. For the moment, they could only huddle inside the storage room and try to formulate the next part of their completely unplanned assault.
“What now?” asked Lucy, questioning the obvious.
“We have to find Marcus James’s office. My guess is it’ll be in one of the corners.”
“Maybe we can climb around inside the air ducts like that guy did in that movie. That’d be really epic.”
; “Okay, first of all, ‘that guy in that movie’ got shot about sixty times. And second of all, we don’t need to.”
“Why not?” Lucy followed Wil’s gaze to an open window, outside of which a fire escape led to the roof above. “What good will it do us being on the roof?” she asked.
Wil held up the Civil War periscope, and widened his eyes.
* * *
MOMENTS LATER, Wil and Lucy stood atop the roof of the Castle Towers with the periscope extended upward as far as possible. From this vantage point, the floors below their feet could be seen as clear as day. Down below, there appeared to be a certain amount of confusion.
“What do you see?” asked Lucy, impatiently. “Why can’t I have a look?”
“It’s kind of bulky,” replied Wil. “You’ll just have to bear with me.”
“Well, what are they doing down there? Have you found Marcus James’s office?”
Wil had indeed found Marcus James’s office, and more besides. Inside the office, stacks of new and improved Air-Max 4000 golf clubs waited for their moment. Piled next to them, various other new and improved products such as tubes of toothpaste, fleece throw blankets, waterproof smartphone cases, and rubberized drainpipe fixers begged the question of why their manufacturer hadn’t done a better job of making a more robust product the first time around. For his part, Marcus James seemed to be having a moment. He checked his watch frequently as he paced up and down in front of his wall safe, which was protected by two tumbler-style combination locks. Every so often, Marcus would look outside his window at the obnoxious Swiss clock across from his position, and then reset his watch against it. Wil could hardly believe his eyes—surely it could not be this easy? For unless the synchronous nature of this week had all been for nothing, the safe was a virtual lock to contain the missing electricity bill that Mr. Dinsdale so coveted he was prepared to send virtual strangers to their deaths in an attempt to retrieve it. Marcus seemed to be counting down the moments, and his body language seemed to yell, I am about to be the proud owner of a brand-new wing for my bank on Upside-Down Street, formerly the Curioddity Museum. Though this was a complex choice of words, Wil supposed Marcus James’s silent statement was only natural, given the factious nature of his personality.