No Other Story

by Dr. Cuthbert Soup

  “Look out!” he shouted. “Gorillas!”

  It was true that the two beings appeared somewhat gorilla-like. Their posture was similar, and their hairlines plunged so low on their sloped foreheads that they threatened to eclipse their eyebrows. Though it was difficult to be certain through all that facial hair, one of the creatures appeared to be male, the other female.

  Penny was aghast at what she saw, a scene right out of the museum of natural history. “Those aren’t gorillas. They’re Neanderthals.”

  “That’s right,” said Jones, rising to his feet. He nodded toward the more female looking of the two and said, “Allow me to introduce my wife, Gurda. And that dude over there is my brother-in-law, Stig.” Stig emitted a low grunt and a bob of his fuzzy head.

  “Stig?” said Teddy, with a sneer that wrinkled his nose.

  “Yes,” said Jones. “It’s a very common caveman name.”

  (See? Told you.)

  Jones turned to the furry hominids and spoke to them in a series of staccato grunts and sweeping hand gestures. They responded with a few grunts of their own, and seemed to be talking about the unexpected guests in their cave. Jones answered them by launching into what looked to be a rather elaborate game of charades. He appeared to be reenacting his encounter with the Cheesemans and their subsequent journey back to the cave. As he spoke, the two Neanderthals wandered over and began inspecting their visitors, sniffing and gently prodding them.

  Gurda took a handful of Penny’s auburn hair and studied it intently. Penny stiffened, afraid to move.

  “Don’t worry,” said Jones. “She’s just being friendly.”

  Gurda grunted out something that sounded to Penny like an angry growl.

  “She says she likes your hair,” said Jones.

  “Oh,” said Penny. “How do you say thank you in Neanderthal?”

  Jones said something that sounded like arg schnerr, but when Penny tried to repeat the phrase, it didn’t come out quite the same and resulted in a look of vast confusion from Gurda.

  “You just asked for more minestrone soup,” said Jones.

  “There’s a Neanderthal word for minestrone soup?” said Chip.

  “Well, of course,” said Jones, as if that were the most absurd question in the entire history of question asking.

  Penny looked up at Gurda and forced a smile. “I don’t really want minestrone soup,” she said.

  “I do,” said Teddy. “I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” said Gravy-Face Roy.

  Gurda smiled at Teddy and the others and seemed satisfied that there was nothing to fear from the strangers in her home. With a few final grunts, she and Stig waddled to the far end of the cave, where they promptly began smashing several large roots by placing them on a big, flat rock that seemed to serve as the kitchen table and striking them repeatedly with smaller rocks.

  “Isn’t she something?” Jones said with the smile of a man in love. “Great sense of humor too. And the world’s best cook, IMO.”

  “In your opinion?” said Penny.

  “Well, I’ll let you judge for yourselves. She makes this casserole that’s, like, out of this world. Do you guys like roots and berries?”

  “Roots?” said Teddy, who, more and more, was beginning to think that out of this world would be a good place to be.

  “They’re very good for you,” said Jones. “Lots of fiber.”

  “So … you married a Neanderthal?” asked Penny.

  “Well, we totally fell in love, so, like, why not?” said Jones, a little defensively. “I believe you should be able to marry whomever you choose, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes,” Penny agreed, though secretly she thought that Jones and Gurda were probably the strangest pairing she’d seen since the time that Pinky, a fox terrier bred for fox hunting, developed a severe crush on Digs, a little brown fox from the seventeenth century.

  Chip thought they made a rather bizarre couple too. In fact, there were a lot of strange things about this John Jones character, if that really was his last name, and Chip greatly doubted that it was. Whatever his name, Chip had a million questions for him, but they would have to wait, because the Cheesemans were about to get the first good news they’d had all day. It came when Ethan, for the first time since being buried under a mountain of snow, opened his eyes.

  “Look!” Teddy exclaimed. “It’s Dad. He’s awake!”

  Chip and Penny rose quickly from their chairs and knelt at their father’s side.

  “Dad, are you okay?” Penny asked.

  From his position flat on his back, Ethan stared up at his young inquisitor and narrowed his eyes in thought. “What is going on here?” he said.

  Chip turned to Penny to find his sister wearing the exact same look as his own. It was a look of confusion, and what caused that look was not what Mr. Cheeseman had said, but how he had said it; in a very distinct and very thick Italian accent.

  Ethan sat up and took in his surroundings with an arched eyebrow. If the eyes truly are the windows to the soul, anyone looking at Ethan’s eyes would quickly determine that he was not at home and that he now had a houseguest. “Would someone be so kind as to tell me where I am? And while we’re at it, who are you people?”

  “Why is Dad talking like that guy from the pizza commercial?” Teddy asked his older siblings.

  “I don’t know,” said Chip. “Dad? What’s wrong? Don’t you recognize us?”

  Ethan looked at Chip with bemusement, then said, in a rather indignant tone, “Young man, you obviously have me confused with someone else. My name is Rossini. Gioachino Rossini.”

  “Oh no,” said Penny.

  “He thinks he’s Rossini.”

  “He thinks he’s pasta?” exclaimed Gravy-Face Roy.

  “What? That’s rotini,” said Penny, never stopping to consider she was using precious oxygen for the purpose of correcting a gravy-stained sock. “Rossini was one of the greatest composers of classical music who ever lived.”

  “Was?” shouted Ethan, waving his hands in the air. “I will have you know I am currently working on my most important opera yet. It will be the masterpiece by which all others are measured.”

  At first, they wondered if this was their father’s idea of a prank, even though he was not one to engage in practical jokes, simply because, as a scientist, he found them to be entirely impractical.

  Ethan’s head suddenly jerked to one side and his eyes shot up and over as if he were straining to listen to a sound very far away. He began softly humming a tune, slowly increasing its volume, until soon his hands were slicing through the air like an orchestra conductor.

  “Hey, I know that song!” Teddy exclaimed. “It’s the Lone Ranger.”

  “Actually, it’s called the William Tell Overture,” whispered Professor Boxley, who happened to be a connoisseur of classical music.

  “Hmm,” said Gravy-Face Roy. “That sure is a weird name for a song about the Lone Ranger.”

  Abruptly as he began, Ethan stopped, then stood up and exclaimed, “Quick! I must have a fountain pen and paper at once!” Though none of them knew just what to make of Ethan’s strange new persona, it seemed to be unofficially agreed upon that, for the time being at least, they would go with it.

  Penny looked to Jones, who seemed thoroughly confused by the entire situation. “Do you have a pen and paper?” she asked.

  “I have some paper, but no pen. I’m sure Stig wouldn’t mind if you used some of his cave paints.”

  “Paint?” Mr. Cheeseman spouted. “I cannot compose with paint!”

  “Hmm.” Jones thought further. “I’d loan him my eyetop, but I haven’t used it in so long I totally forgot the password.”

  “Why do you need a password for a computer that’s attached to your eyeball?” asked Teddy.

  “Well, in case someone steals my eye, of course,” said Jones, as if this made perfect sense. “Don’t you have crime where you come from?”

  “Not the kind where people steal your eyeb
alls,” said Gravy-Face Roy.

  “I have a pencil,” said Professor Boxley. He removed the stubby writing instrument from his pocket and found that the point had not survived the avalanche. Luckily, he also had a small plastic sharpener.

  He handed the items to Ethan, and Jones sent Teddy to get the paper, which was sitting on a small metal shelf across the room. Teddy retrieved it, but not without a very dramatic huff. It was bad enough to be bossed around by your own family, but to be ordered about by complete strangers was something else. He returned with the paper and handed it to the person whom he had known his entire life as his father, but was now forced to refer to as Signor Gioachino Rossini.

  “Grazie,” said Ethan in perfect Italian. Up to that point, his knowledge of the language had been limited to words like spaghetti, pepperoni, and mama mia.

  “Let’s get you set up at the kitchen table, Signor Rossini,” said Jones to Mr. Cheeseman. “I’m sure Gurda won’t mind if you do a little composing while she smashes roots.” Jones spoke to Gurda in that guttural caveman language. Gurda returned a few grunts and Jones smiled. “See?” he said to the others. “I told you she had a great sense of humor, LOL.”

  Once Mr. Cheeseman, a.k.a. Signor Rossini, had taken his position at the table and had begun composing his latest opera, Chip, Penny, and the professor gathered around the fire pit to discuss the situation with Jones. Meanwhile, Teddy, sick and tired of being bossed around, wandered throughout the cave, with Pinky on his heels, snuffing and snorting at each and every corner. Teddy found the underground home much larger than it appeared at first glance.

  In two years on the run, Teddy and his family had stayed in some pretty interesting houses. There was the old white farmhouse with the creepy attic. There was the little house that smelled like damp wood, which was odd for a house made of brick. And who could forget that house with the flat roof that had been painted the color of pea soup? It featured burnt-orange carpeting throughout, which Penny and Teddy would pretend was molten lava, forcing them to make their way through the house by jumping from one piece of furniture to the next.

  But of all the houses they’d been in, this one was the strangest. There were several passages throughout the cave leading to several different rooms, all of them illuminated by the same type of tiny lights that hung across the wall of the main room.

  Some of the rooms were empty. One was heavily stocked with food and other supplies. Another appeared to be a bedroom, the floor covered with animal skins and woven blankets. A room much smaller than the rest, located near the very back, contained nothing but a small, cardboard box. Teddy could not resist. Quietly, he inched into the room, toward the mysterious container. Pinky gave the box a curious sniff, then Teddy’s curious fingers reached out slowly and pulled back the tattered flap. Cautiously, he leaned over and peered inside the box, then nearly fainted at what he saw.

  Advice for an Enjoyable Night at the Opera

  Last weekend, I went to the opera, because I am a sophisticated and refined person of impeccable taste, and because I won two free tickets in a burping contest.

  The opera was called Aida and was performed entirely in Italian, which, despite recent strides, is still considered a foreign language. In fact, most operas are performed in Italian, so, in order to make your opera-going experience a more enjoyable one, you should first attempt to familiarize yourself with a few simple Italian words and phrases. For instance, amore is one word you will hear often, as it is the Italian word for love, or for what happens when the moon hits your eye like a bigga pizza pie.

  By brushing up on my Italian before the big show, I was able to surmise that Aida is the story of an Ethiopian princess who falls in love with an Egyptian prince and is hit in the eye with some pizza. And, as if that weren’t tragic enough, in the end Aida and the prince are killed.

  Now, don’t go getting the idea that all operas are tragedies and that an evening at the opera has to be a depressing one; many of the great operas are comedies. It all depends on what you think of someone getting a face full of cheese.

  Either way, you’ll want to bring along a set of binoculars, known as opera glasses, to ensure that you get a good view of all that slapstick comedy—or, as it may be, slapstick tragedy. And, because your average opera can run upward of four hours, you can use your binoculars to stave off boredom by looking through the wide end and pretending the people sitting around you are actually very far away.

  “Hello over there!” you shout. “Would anyone like to challenge me to a burping contest?!” And, if you holler loudly enough, security will wrestle you to the ground and see to it that you never go to the opera again. This is not as bad as it sounds, because, as you will soon see, you don’t have to actually go to the opera in order for it to one day save your life.

  Chapter 6

  Ethan Cheeseman sat at the stone slab table, scribbling so furiously that his pencil broke every couple of minutes. Luckily, he was very amused by the sharpener Professor Boxley had given him, and so the frequent breakage seemed to have no ill effect on his mood or on his frantic composing. He wrote as if driven by the music in his head, his eyes transfixed on the paper, his hand stopping only to sharpen the pencil or to wipe away a bit of spattered root that landed on the page as the result of Stig and Gurda’s equally enthusiastic mashing.

  So engrossed was he in his work, he had no idea that only a few feet away, people were talking about him. “I don’t understand it,” whispered Penny. “My dad doesn’t even like classical music. He thinks it’s for old people.”

  “That’s right,” Chip agreed. “In the car, he makes us listen to classic rock, which we think is for old people.”

  “And I’m sure he’s never even heard of Rossini,” said Penny. “So what happened?”

  Jones thought for a short time. “Well, I’m no psychologist, but I’d say it’s probably like introjection, IMHO,” he said, saving an entire .3 seconds by using an abbreviation for in my humble opinion.

  “Introjection?” said Penny. This was a word even she, with her absurdly high IQ, had not heard before.

  “A theory of Freud’s,” offered Professor Boxley. “It’s the process of absorbing personality traits from an outside source.”

  “That’s right,” said Jones. “There are so many imposing historical figures in Some Times that it’s possible for outsiders to find themselves taking on a foreign psyche.”

  “By why this one?” asked Penny. “He’s a scientist, not a musician. You would think he’d be more likely to wake up thinking he’s Galileo or Sir Isaac Newton.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for that,” said Jones. “Other than to say that Some Times is one crazy place.”

  “It sure is,” said Penny. “Dinosaurs, Vikings, summer and winter, all happening at once. And how is it that you know so much about it?”

  Jones shrugged. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m an outsider, like you. But I’ve been here a very long time. Twenty-six winters, forty-two springs, thirty-nine summers, and eighteen autumns, so I’ve pretty much seen everything. But the main reason I know so much about it is that my great-grandfather discovered it.”

  This was shocking and discouraging news, especially for Chip. The only good thing about being shipwrecked in Some Times was that, if somehow they were able to make it back, he and his family would go down in history as the first to visit this mysterious world. Now they didn’t even have that to hang on to.

  “I thought we discovered it,” said Chip, unable to hide his disappointment.

  “Sorry,” said Jones, who did not seem sorry in the least. “But it was definitely my great-grandfather. It’s well documented. So what are you guys doing here in Some Times? I know you don’t work for Plexiwave.”

  Penny gasped at the very mention of the weapons manufacturing company responsible for the death of her mother. And it was now apparent why Jones had inspected their arms when he first found them: he was looking for a small tattoo worn on the left wrists of all
operatives of the evil corporation. The tattoos typically read 3VAW1X319, or, when viewed in the mirror, Plexiwave.

  “You know about Plexiwave?” asked Chip.

  Jones scoffed at the absurdity of such a question. “Do I know about the company that’s taken over the entire world? Duh.”

  What? thought Chip. Did he just say that Plexiwave had taken over the entire world? And furthermore, did he just say duh? The information hit the Cheeseman children like a sharp punch to the gut.

  “Plexiwave killed our mother,” said Penny. “And now you say they’ve taken over the world?”

  “Afraid so. Where I come from, they run everything,” said Jones. “That’s why I originally came here. To hide out. So, tell me then—why are you here?”

  “We were bounced off the Time Arc on our way back to save our mother’s life,” said Chip. “And now we’re stuck here on account of some stupid dinosaur that decided to smash …”

  He abruptly stopped talking, because his mouth suddenly stopped receiving instructions from his brain, which was, at the moment, too busy trying to process the information being sent to it by his disbelieving eyes, which were focused on Teddy, standing there, wearing an odd smile. But it wasn’t what was on his face that shocked everyone, but rather what was on his hand.

  Jones saw it too. He moved toward Teddy, and Teddy stepped back. “What are you doing with that?” Jones demanded. “What are you doing with Steve?”

  Sure enough, perched upon Teddy’s right hand was an exact replica of the sock puppet his mother had knitted for him before she passed away over two years ago. And, stranger yet, that dead and buried sock puppet named Steve and the one Teddy now held seemed to have the exact same name.

  “Steve is mine,” Teddy insisted. “My mother made him for me.”