Curioddity

by Paul Jenkins

  “SARA, can you break into his system?” said Wil, eyeing his phone with a nervous look. “Or break us out for that matter. Can you find us any way out of here?”

  “Calculating…,” replied SARA, mischievously. “Please remain calm.”

  Wil assessed the situation: while he and Lucy had reached the goal of securing the fabled electric bill Mr. Dinsdale so coveted, the fact could not be ignored that only half the battle was won. In truth, an exit from the Castle Towers seemed of equal importance to its access. He moved over to Lucy, just to see how she was doing. At the door, Lucy was pondering. Wil took her by the hand and looked into her eyes.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” he said in a grave voice. “I mean I know we’ve only started dating recently—”

  “Tonight, actually.”

  “Right. Tonight. And I’ve already led you into all this trouble.”

  “Are you kidding?” she replied. “This is amazing! It’s interstellar! I love it!”

  “Really?”

  “Sure! What other boyfriend would lead his groovy assistant on a wild goose chase into the midst of certain death while attempting to rescue an old man’s dream from the clutches of an evil maniac with overly white teeth?”

  “Well, probably a more sensible boyfriend, I would say. One that had saved money and held down a steady job as a chartered accountant.”

  “Exactly! And where would be the fun in that?”

  “So you’re not angry with me?”

  “When we get out of here, remind me to give you a big kiss at the first opportunity, you twerp.” Lucy thought for a moment. “You know what? Why don’t we just get that over with right now?” She reached out, pulled Wil into her, and kissed him full on the lips. “By my count, that’s three times I’ve kissed you first,” she said. “That makes us even for me hitting you over the head with a book.”

  Wil would have gladly taken a few more lumps of Tolstoy’s greatest work in exchange for extras. If he and Lucy were unable to find a means of escape then he might at least try to abscond by floating away on cloud nine. His moment of triumph, however, would prove to be short-lived.

  Suddenly, one entire section of the wall slid upward to reveal Marcus James standing against what seemed to be a thick panel of bulletproof glass, amid the chaotic scene of the television studio behind him. The little man did not seem to be at all amused, though he did appear to be in complete control of the situation. Behind him, a large number of suspicious-looking producers conferred in whatever shadows were provided to them. Meanwhile, the looped infomercial continued, unabated.

  Marcus moved directly to the edge of the glass. He flashed his brilliant white teeth. “Well, well,” he snickered. “If it isn’t the redoubtable Mr. Morgan. I see you’ve brought your friend with you. You should be aware, Mr. Morgan, that you have interrupted a live broadcast. The police have been alerted, and they are now on their way. And I will be suing you for tortious interference with a business enterprise.”

  “Is that right, Mr. James?” said Wil, rising to the bait. “And do you plan on having your friends back there act as material witnesses to whatever crime you’re going to accuse me of?” Back in the shadows, the group of “producers” huddled nervously in response and took a farther step back into the shadows in unison. Wil smiled, sweetly. “Right back atcha.”

  “It won’t make much of a difference either way,” replied Marcus. “You’re trespassing on private property.”

  “I am? I was just in my office building and I think I took a wrong turn.”

  “Across the rooftop?”

  “I’m very directionally challenged. Ask anyone.”

  “Give it up, Mr. Morgan. You’re surrounded, and the automated security lockdown systems are working perfectly. There’s no way out of here.”

  “I rather think, Mr. James,” said Wil, pressing his nose against the glass, “that if you were in control of your security systems, you would already have come in and gotten me.”

  “Open the door.”

  “Why don’t you come in and get me?” Lucy and Wil exchanged a high five. “Lucy, would you please do me a favor and entertain Mr. James while I check in on SARA?” he said.

  “Why, I’d be delighted!” said Lucy, rising to the challenge. She approached a now-seething Marcus at the bulletproof barrier and smiled her most innocent-yet-mischievous smile. “I must say, Mr. James,” she said, as inoffensively as possible, “you have the most impossibly white teeth. Are they fake?”

  * * *

  WHILE LUCY got under Marcus James’ impossibly tanned skin, Wil sidled over to the laptop computer to check in on SARA’s progress, though he had little to no idea what she was progressing toward.

  “Leave that computer alone!” yelled Marcus James. “I’m warning you, Morgan! That is private property!”

  At Marcus’s office desk, SARA was glowing with enjoyment as she rifled through all of Marcus’s personal files. “Greetings, Wil Morgan,” she said in her most proud metallic tone. “All security systems are under lockdown. Would you like to check the stock reports in Nicaragua?”

  “Um. Not right now, thank you—”

  On the computer screen, the stock reports for Nicaragua were instantly displayed. “I have found numerous examples of stock manipulation involving companies belonging to the owner of the Castle Towers. In all, there are seventy-six occurrences that cross-reference suspicious behavior in Monaco, Pakistan, and Korea. All relevant information is currently being downloaded into multiple secure files and disseminated across the Internet.”

  Wil chuckled. “Remind me never to cross you, SARA,” he said. “Any chance we’re getting out of here?”

  “Calculating…,” said SARA, and went back to her glowing.

  Wil checked the old document he’d retrieved from inside Marcus James’s safe. The ink had faded to the point that the electricity bill was very difficult to read. Nevertheless, Wil felt he could make out some numbers at the bottom of the page. There was an official stamp in the center of the bill that could barely be read—perhaps in better light, he hoped. He held the bill up to SARA’s screen. “SARA, I don’t want to disturb what you’re doing in there, but do you have any idea what it says at the bottom of this page? If I’m not mistaken it says ‘paid in full.’”

  SARA’s camera function activated, creating a little flash. An image of the electricity bill now appeared on Marcus James’s laptop computer.

  “This is outrageous!” yelled Marcus, trying to reinforce his importance but simply reinforcing his impotence instead. “You have no right to interfere with a legitimate business dealing! I’ll own you for this!”

  “You know, Mr. James, I think you need to chill out a little bit,” said Lucy with a grin. “I think you’re going to have a hernia out there. Maybe you should try chamomile tea.”

  “Lemon’s pretty good for constipation, I think,” offered Wil.

  “Chai tea is also beneficial to the human nervous system,” continued SARA, getting in on the joke.

  “You have until the count of twenty to open the door, Morgan!” shrieked Marcus. “I’m warning you!”

  “Greetings, Marcus James,” countered SARA. “It has been approximately six years since you manipulated the financial earnings reports of the Lemon Corporation and bankrupted the entire company. Please direct your attention to the various high-definition screens located inside the upper floors of this building.”

  Marcus’s jaw suddenly dropped to the point where had it gone any lower, he might have accidentally kicked it. Wil chuckled, sensing that Marcus had just encountered a woman scorned.

  * * *

  SUDDENLY, EVERY single screen inside the building began to show the same screen image as Marcus’s laptop computer. At the bottom of each screen ran the word BROADCASTING in large letters. Aghast, Marcus turned to his otherworldly television crew and began barking orders.

  “Shut it down! Shut the broadcast down! The entire thing! Now!”

  The various grip
s, camera operators, and producers moved away from their stations and huddled even farther back against the far wall. Horrified, Marcus ran toward any nearby camera or electronic device he could find and began kicking and punching at them in a vain attempt to end the broadcast. Up on screen, things were getting interesting.

  The smarmy face of none other than Marcus James himself appeared, as seen just a couple of days previously from Wil’s very close point of view, through the lens of SARA’s smartphone camera. Clearly, SARA had recorded the conversation between Wil and Marcus in the museum lobby. “Let me tell you how it’s going to work,” the televised, two-day-old version of Marcus James seemed to be saying. “You’re going to complain for two years, and I’m going to keep sending you threatening letters and adding surcharges that you can’t keep track of, until you lose interest in standing up to me.”

  “Turn it off!” bellowed the current-day version of Marcus. “For God’s sake, somebody cut the feed!”

  “I’ll have my debt collectors take you to court,” continued two-day-old Marcus. And I will own you, as I own all of my so-called customers.”

  “No! Somebody stop him! Please!”

  “Because I make money the old-fashioned way: I steal it.”

  * * *

  THERE WAS silence as Marcus James’s face now froze on the screen, and the real-life, current-day Marcus slumped to the base of the glass. Silent sobs now emanated from his hunched shoulders.

  “That was an epic fail of epic proportions,” said Lucy, appreciatively. “Can we run that again?”

  “An exit strategy has now been determined, Wil Morgan and Lucy Price,” said SARA. “As an added bonus, we are now broadcasting to the entire Shopping Network from my inbuilt camera. You will have approximately fifteen seconds of live broadcast before shutdown occurs. Please break a leg. Thank you.”

  Lucy moved to the camera and began waving inanely at it. “Hi, everyone!” she said, happily. “Hi Mom! Hi Dad! Is this thing on?” She motioned off-camera for Wil to join her. Thinking quickly, he grabbed the bag of kit and caboodle and moved to the camera to rescue the good people of television land from any more of Lucy’s dead space.

  “That’s it!” screamed Marcus James from outside the glass. “You’ve really done it now!”

  Quite what “it” was, Wil couldn’t be sure. Behind Marcus, the television studio was now completely empty. The producers had bolted. Wil moved in front of the smartphone camera, where Lucy was in full swing. Apparently this was an opportunity she’d been working toward for quite some time, and she had arrived with a fully conceived manifesto.

  “Everyone out there in TV land! Be nice to each other!” Lucy happily burbled in the direction of SARA’s camera. “Be nice to animals! Read books!”

  Wil grabbed the camera as quickly as he could. A countdown at the bottom of the screen indicated there were five seconds remaining. He quickly produced the wooden Sequitur from inside his plastic bag and dangled it in front of the camera. “You all need to look at things the right way!” he said, abruptly. “Don’t believe everything that people tell you! Your eyes only see what your mind lets you believe!”

  “Stay in school!” yelled Lucy.

  And with that, the broadcast shut off. And Wil and Lucy were to be allowed less than one second to bask in their moment of triumph before the resentful universe outside the bulletproof glass began to blast its way in.

  * * *

  THE FIRST blast sounded like the kind of explosion one might hear in, say, a quartz mine after accidentally dropping a lit stick of dynamite in a shed marked DANGER: EXPLOSIVES. The sound was so incredibly loud—and packed such a concussive force—that Wil and Lucy staggered to stay upright.

  Over at the bulletproof glass, Marcus James had taken a step or two backward. In his place, a simply enormous automaton armed with what appeared to be an industrial sledgehammer attacked the bulletproof glass with great gusto. Beyond, a second automaton approached, armed with a blowtorch. For the life of him, Wil could not understand why each of the massive machines wore what appeared to be headbands with some kind of sun symbol on them.

  A few paces back from the door, Marcus James gloated. “You may think you have won this battle,” he said in the manner of a nineteenth-century landlord building up to deliver his best cliché, “but I intend to win the war. Once my ninja-bots have pierced the outer glass casing, I am quite within my rights to have them rip you both to shreds.”

  Wil and Lucy looked at each other. “Ninja-bots,” she said. “I told you so.”

  “What do you want, a prize?”

  “Sure. What’s on offer?”

  “Well, if the ninja-bots get in here, not much, I’m afraid.”

  “Then I guess we’d better hurry up and find a way out.”

  Wil moved back to the computer screen, where SARA was wrapping up her evening festivities by transmitting embarrassing childhood photos of Marcus James that she’d found in a hidden folder. These photos were currently being uploaded to all of his social media accounts. “SARA!” he called to the smartphone. “Things are about to get a little heated in here!”

  As if in response, the bulletproof glass suddenly cracked across its entire length, and one corner of it melted slightly as the blowtorch took effect.

  “I have calculated all parameters for an escape route,” said SARA. “Please follow all instructions exactly as directed. You will need to activate the device currently resting in your pocket.”

  Wil produced the Whatsit, which beeped on cue. “What does it do?” he asked. “Are there any instructions with this thing?”

  “The Whatsit is a theoretical device that reacts to the user’s intuition and randomizes a solution to any problem. The user must not think directly of the solution. Instead, if the user acts intuitively, the Whatsit will take care of the rest.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I think it means you’re supposed to make a wish,” said Lucy, taking an interest in proceedings. “But you’re just not supposed to say it out loud. It’s like a genie in a bottle, only in reverse.”

  “Okay, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard all week. And it has been a week.”

  “Lucy Price’s summation is essentially accurate,” said SARA. “The user must silently intuit a solution to any problem. To do this, the user must concentrate hard to achieve a state of relaxation.”

  “But that’s impossible.… Wait a minute.” Wil placed the Whatsit on the floor, moved sharply to the rows of brand-new Air-Max 4000 golf clubs, and selected the one that looked most suited to his height. “That’s it!” he yelled. “Concentrate on relaxing!”

  “Leave those alone!” yelled Marcus from outside the melting and cracking glass. “Those are brand-new! They’re not for the public!”

  Ignoring Marcus James’s cries of protest, Wil now settled in by the wall and began to whack imaginary golf balls, pretending he was hitting them high into the night sky over the adjacent rooftops. As long and straight as the pros.

  “What are you doing?” shouted Lucy above the ever-increasing din.

  “Ssh! I’m trying to concentrate!”

  “Concentrate? By practicing your golf swing?”

  “I don’t have a golf swing! I need to concentrate on relaxing! You’re not helping!”

  “Oh! Sorry!”

  Wil swished the club a few more times, feeling the shaft whipping around him. He tried to pretend he’d just split a nice, green fairway to the polite applause of an adoring public. A few days ago he’d had a dream of finishing second in a long drive competition. This time he would reset his expectations and finish first.

  “Wil Morgan,” interrupted SARA. “A structural breach will occur in approximately seventeen seconds.”

  Looking toward the glass, Wil could now see that a small legion of angry ninja-bot foot soldiers was gathering along the far wall. The two larger ninja-bots were making headway, and one side of the cracking wall was now almost completely melted.
“Lucy!” he yelled. “Grab SARA and stand back!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I have no idea!”

  He moved toward the little Whatsit device, which continued to make plaintive beeps from its position in the center of the office floor. With the Air-Max 4000 in his right hand, he wet the index finger of his left hand and checked the imaginary wind direction. Satisfied, he lowered the golf club so that it rested against the Whatsit, and aimed in the direction of the glass wall.

  Over at the office desk, Lucy removed SARA’s charging cord from Marcus James’s laptop computer. Seeing Wil address the Whatsit with the driver, she squeaked with fear and took cover behind the desk.

  Wil closed his eyes, and concentrated. He thought of Nikola Tesla and marshmallows, and Lucy’s oh-so-cute ankle bracelet. And his mom. And the Perpetual Penny.

  And he swung with all his might.

  * * *

  THE WHATSIT device seemed to freeze time at the very moment the head of the Air-Max 4000 made impact. In that split second, Wil imagined a lot of things. He imagined he could see the look of utter horror on Marcus James’s face as the Whatsit came flying toward the bulletproof glass. He imagined his imaginary golf ball splitting the fairway, and landing at a distance roughly equal to the pros. He imagined himself kissing Lucy, and buying SARA a spiffy new carrying case. He imagined Mr. Dinsdale’s beaming face as he presented the coveted electric bill that would prove the old man’s ownership of the museum property, and Mary Gold’s grudging look of admiration. He imagined his mother, in every atom around him. Living inside every electron. He imagined his dad ruffling his hair.

  The Whatsit flew off the face of the golf club like a bat exiting the underworld. It had time to beep just once before it impacted with the surface of the bulletproof glass and turned it into a sheet of liquid. The Whatsit then took a quick left turn and clattered into the torch-wielding ninja-bot, turning the automaton into a small pile of plastic coat hangers and thereby rendering it completely ineffective as a weapon of mass destruction. Lucy chanced a peek over the top of the desk, and Wil opened one eye. The Whatsit caromed off the first ninja-bot and clattered to a stop in front of the second bot armed with the sledgehammer. There was a moment of silence. Wil closed his eyes again. And when he opened them, the ninja-bot’s hammer had somehow turned into a banana, much to the surprise of the confused automaton.