“An excellent question,” his uncle answered. “Creaturedom merely refers to any place where creatures live—usually in secret, of course—like here in the Creature Department of DENKi-3000. You only need to look around this room to see there are many different kinds of creatures in the world. We humans live in many different cities and countries, all with different customs, but there are certain elemental aspects of our nature that bind us all together. The very same goes for creatures too.”
“So creaturedom for creatures,” Leslie suggested, “is a bit like humanity for humans.”
“Precisely,” said the professor, raising his head to look toward the ceiling. “You’re looking at the collective memories of creaturedom.”
The memories of their youth were soon supplanted by new images, showing the old mansion itself, long before it had fallen to ruin. None of the glass and steel of the DENKi-3000 office towers were there. Instead, the mansion was a sprawling old house in the middle of empty fields. Creatures frolicked on the grass out front, something that seemed impossible to imagine now.
“You two beginnin’ to get it?” asked Patti. “Them pictures of the past intensify our good sense of friendship, and that intensifies the flavor of the food. Just like ol’ Freddy said.”
At the other end of the table, Famous Freddy nodded. “If only I could get one of these in my restaurant. Then we’d be packed every night!”
In an odd way, the cafetarium had a certain logic to it. But even still, with or without the friendship and nostalgia of the cafetarium, Famous Freddy’s food was delicious! Elliot would have to convince his parents to review the restaurant for the Bickleburgh Bugle.
New photographs appeared on the ceiling. There was Patti, dressed in a fluffy housecoat with a huge towel wrapped around her seaweed hair. She was lounging on a divan in what appeared to be a health spa (if they built health spas outside, in the middle of a swamp).
There was a photograph of Gügor, high in the mountains. He leapt between rocks while a huge gorge yawned below him. There was also a photograph of Jean-Remy, perched on a church spire, overlooking an ancient European city.
“That’s Paris, isn’t it?” asked Leslie.
“Mais bien sûr!” said Jean-Remy. “My beloved home!”
There was even a picture of Colonel-Admiral Reginald T. Pusslegut, the bombastadon who had caused such pandemonium the day before. When his photograph appeared, a number of the creatures pointed and giggled. But neither Elliot nor Leslie could understand why.
In the photograph, Reggie was standing on the edge of an ice cliff. He had one leg raised on an outcrop of ice, surveying the empty land below him. Everything about him—his uniform, his posture, even the expression on his face—seemed noble and regal and quite commanding.
“Where is Reggie, anyway?” asked Leslie, looking around the cafetarium. “Doesn’t he eat with you?”
“He must be nearby,” said the professor, “if the cafetarium is picking up his memories.”
“Probably hibernating,” Harrumphrey grumbled.
Just as he spoke, there was an image of Harrumphrey himself. Even Elliot and Leslie laughed when they saw that one. It clearly came from a time when Harrumphrey was a baby: a big burbling head, swaddled in a plump white diaper.
Harrumphrey blushed. “Aw, why’s it gotta go and pick up on that one?”
“You know we can’t help what it picks up on,” said the professor. “You know that on occasion, it even picks up on—”
He stopped.
The chatter in the room stopped too. That’s because a new series of images was scrolling silently above them. Images of war, of burning buildings, of creatures running in panic from strange shadowy figures that pursued them in hoards.
As soon as these first dire images appeared, there were instantly more. And more. They popped up and multiplied like a terrifying, unstoppable virus.
The professor pressed a button and the ceiling went blank.
“What was that?” asked Elliot.
Professor von Doppler took a deep breath. “That’s the problem with the cafetarium,” he said. “I was hoping I could present it to the shareholders as our latest invention. Unfortunately, we can’t filter out the bad memories.”
“Bad memories of what?” asked Leslie. She looked to her grandfather, but he only shook his head.
Professor von Doppler pushed out his chair. “Speaking of the shareholders . . .” He rose to his feet and checked his watch, effectively cutting off any more questions. “They’ve been called in for an emergency meeting—and it starts in just a few minutes, so I’d better get up there.” He took a deep breath and turned to Elliot and Leslie. “As soon as I’m back, I have a job for both of you.”
With that, he turned and stalked hastily to the exit.
CHAPTER 9
In which expectations aren’t what you might expect
Guess we’d better go watch,” Harrumphrey said.
“Be my guest,” said Patti. “I can’t stomach it. Just hearin’ that word—shareholders—brings me out in hives. See?” She held out her arm and showed how her scales were shimmering a blotchy red.
“Gügor doesn’t want to go either,” said Gügor. “Those meetings make Gügor want to live up to Gügor’s name.” He flexed his enormous fists. “Make Gügor want to crumple something.”
“What about us?” Elliot asked.
“Can we come with you?” Leslie stood up. “Maybe the professor could use our help.”
Harrumphrey shook his head. “We can’t actually go into the meeting, of course. It’s for DENKi-3000 executives and shareholders only. But . . .” A rare smile appeared on his face. “That doesn’t mean we can’t watch.”
Jean-Remy began fluttering away. “Come along, and we will show you.”
They followed him down a twisting corridor. Circular doorways had been carved out of the walls in all different sizes. In many of them, spiraling staircases coiled off in all directions.
Other doorways led to rooms full of cramped bunk beds. Elliot and Leslie realized these were the creatures’ sleeping quarters. Some were lumped with slumbering figures, but there was no sign of Reggie.
“Look at them in there,” Harrumphrey harrumphed. “Lazy lugs! No wonder this place hasn’t produced anything worthwhile in ages!”
“Non non non! Zey do not sleep out of laziness,” said Jean-Remy. “They sleep because of such a good meal. And zat is because of you, mademoiselle, and your grandfather, with such wonderful cooking.”
At the end of the corridor were the silver sliding doors of an elevator. As they got closer, Elliot and Leslie noticed something very peculiar about the buttons. They weren’t buttons.
“They’re fingers,” said Elliot.
“But of course,” said Jean-Remy. “How else would you call an expectavator?”
“An expecta-what?”
“You’ll see when it gets here,” said Harrumphrey.
Elliot and Leslie peered at the panel. Instead of the two buttons you might expect on a conventional elevator, the wall panel beside the door featured a pair of fingers. They poked out of two holes in the wall, precisely where the buttons should have been. To make matters worse (or rather creepier), both fingers were a sickly green color and tipped with a long, yellow claw.
Leslie pointed at them (they pointed right back at her). “What are those supposed to be?” she asked.
“Knottubs,” Harrumphrey told her (as if the answer was obvious). “The opposite of buttons.”
“Oh, I get it,” said Elliot. “Nottub is button, but spelled backward.”
Harrumphrey blinked at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. Knottub starts with a K.”
“Um, sure . . .” Elliot responded (there was little else to say when faced with this sort of bizarre creature reasoning).
Leslie leaned closer to the knottubs. They both looked alarmi
ngly real. “So, how do these things work?”
“Are you kidding?” Harrumphrey harrumphed. “Knottubs are the opposite of buttons, right? And since you push buttons . . .”
Leslie winced. “Oh, no, please don’t tell me.”
“Yep.” With his tail, Harrumphrey pointed to the panel. “Pull the finger.”
Leslie reached up and (very reluctantly) gripped the top finger. Disturbingly, it was warm and soft—almost as if it were alive.
She pulled it.
There was a noise like a tiny fart and the doors slid open, making a sound like someone saying “aaaaaah!”
Leslie released the finger and leapt backward. “That. Is. Disgusting!”
Jean-Remy bowed to her. “Mademoiselle, I quite agree with zis appraisal. Ze mechanism, it is repellent! Buuut . . . since it is ze Creature Department, I must admit: It also seems a little bit appropriate.”
“Excuse me,” said a dull, monotonous voice from inside the elevator. “Are you coming in or not?”
Elliot and Leslie peeked into the elevator. They saw a tall, incredibly skinny creature. He resembled a soft brown flagpole (with a potbelly). Two dim, unblinking eyes sat atop the tube-like creature, while its mouth was almost two feet below them, a horizontal opening without lips or any expression whatsoever.
“You may now enter,” the creature intoned in a half-dead voice. “Places to go, creatures to see.”
“Meet Gabe,” said Harrumphrey. “He runs the expectavator.”
Indeed, that was precisely what was written on the creature’s ID badge:
Gabe
Expectavator Operator
“Sounds like a tongue twister,” said Leslie.
“No,” droned Gabe. “Just my job.”
Elliot leaned in close to Gabe’s ID badge. “Anyone want to tell us what an ex-pec-ta-vator is?”
“What’re you two, blind?” Harrumphrey scoffed, slapping his tail on the floor. “This is it! You’re in one!”
“Looks like a plain old elevator to me.”
Harrumphrey chuckled to himself. “An elevator?! Where are we now, the nineteenth century? You want some steam-powered underpants with that?”
“Actually,” said Leslie, “we’re in the twenty-first century, and elevators are quite common.”
“Not around here they aren’t.” Harrumphrey waddled through the doors and the others followed him. “All an elevator can do is go up and down, up and down. That’s ’cuz it’s connected to pulleys and cables and all that stuff. But an expectavator is different. It can go in any direction it wants.”
“How does it move?” asked Elliot. “What’s powering it?”
“Hope,” said Harrumphrey as the doors slid silently shut.
“That’s impossible,” said Elliot.
“Wait and see.”
Gabe, the beanpole of a creature, sat slumped on a stool in the corner. “Where to?” he asked glumly.
Jean-Remy flapped over to the control panel (thankfully equipped with a great many buttons, rather than knottubs). Instead of the usual numbers, referring to the floors in a building, however, each button was crammed with tiny words:
Secret Door Behind the Stationary Supplies Closet in the Accounting Department
or
Second-to-Last Ceiling Tile Above the Mezzanine Security Desk
or
Exhaust Vent Beside the Corner Window in Human (AND ONLY HUMAN!) Resources
“Here we are,” said Jean-Remy, after a moment of perusing the options. “Ze ventilation shaft on ze west wall of ze North Tower Executive Boardroom.”
“Okay,” said Gabe. He reached up with a limp arm and pushed the appropriate button.
The moment the button illuminated, speakers mounted in the walls played soothing (but inescapably cheesy) bossa nova music. Everyone waited in silence.
And waited . . .
And waited . . .
Elliot and Leslie looked at each other.
“Are we even moving?” Elliot asked.
“Of course we are,” said Harrumphrey, looking a bit offended. “I designed this thing myself.”
They listened some more but heard (and felt) nothing.
“No way,” said Leslie. “This is silly. We’re just standing in a box. You can’t run an elevator on hope.”
“Expectavator,” Harrumphrey corrected. “And yes, you can.”
Jean-Remy flew to hover in the dead center of the expectavator. “I am afraid what he says is true, mademoiselle. Do you not realize—hope, it is a powerful zing, non?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“It is one of ze most powerful things in all ze universe! It is something we creatures, we have always understood. But you humans . . . well, not so much.”
“My uncle understands,” said Elliot.
“Well, ze professor—he is very special, you know?”
Meanwhile, Leslie was looking nervously at the ceiling and walls of the expectavator. “So you mean, right now, there’s nothing holding us up except for . . .”
“Hope,” said Harrumphrey.
“But what does that mean?”
“Well, the physics is a bit complicated, of course, but the expectavator adheres to the basic principles of all creature technology—which basically states that all things, even machines, have an essence. If you can isolate that essence and refine it, it becomes not only the machine’s power source but—literally—the secret ingredient to getting something to work. Get it?”
“Sort of,” said Elliot.
“Ditto,” said Leslie.
“And the essence of an expectavator is, of course, hope. Right now, the components are monitoring how hopeful we are, measuring the weight of our expectations, the strength of our optimism—and using that energy to send us where we need to be.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” asked Elliot.
“I would never joke about one of my inventions.”
“But that’s amazing,” cried Leslie. If what Harrumphrey was saying was true, the expectavator would be one of the greatest inventions in history. “I don’t get it. How come these things aren’t all over the world? Why isn’t the professor presenting this to the shareholders right now? It could save the company.”
Harrumphrey tilted his huge head sideways and sucked his teeth. “Weeell . . . the truth is, in spite of their name, expectavators don’t always work the way you expect them to. They can be a little unpredictable.”
To Elliot and Leslie, this sounded extremely ominous.
“Wait,” said Elliot. “You mean, like . . . they can fall?”
Harrumphrey shook his head quite emphatically. “Oh, no, we’re completely safe. That’s the beauty of an expectavator. It won’t ever fall, not completely. There’ll always be something to hold us up because, let’s face it. No situation is entirely hopeless.”
“That’s what you say,” said Gabe, slumping even lower. He looked like a potbellied question mark.
“You’ll have to excuse Gabe,” Harrumphrey told them. “He has a medical condition: born with overly low expectations.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said Elliot.
“Meh,” said Gabe.
“That’s another problem with the expectavator,” Harrum-phrey went on. “You need to bring along someone like Gabe. Otherwise, there’s a chance we’d shoot straight through the roof.”
Gabe nodded gloomily. “Just doing my job.”
Again, they stood in silence, listening to the lilting tones of Brazilian bossa nova. Leslie and Elliot were beginning (once again) to doubt they were moving when there was the ding of a bell and the music stopped.
“We’re here,” said Harrumphrey.
Elliot shook his head. “It never once felt like we were moving.”
“Sure we were! Open up, Gabe, we’ll s
how ’em.”
Gabe pressed a button and the doors juddered apart. Leslie saw she was wrong: They had moved. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like a very hospitable destination. In fact, the doors had opened on a smooth cement wall.
“Is that where we’re supposed to be?” asked Elliot.
Harrumphrey shook his head. “See what I mean? Unpredictable.”
Leslie tapped on the cement. It was perfectly solid. “Now what?”
“We’ve come a bit too far,” Harrumphrey explained. “We’ll have to lower our expectations. Gabe?”
“All right,” said Gabe, slumping a bit lower on his stool. “I’ll try to think about my divorce. That usually helps.” He shut his eyes and sighed deeply. As he did this, the expectavator dropped a few inches.
“It’s working,” said Elliot. He pointed to a gap of space that had appeared at the bottom of the doorway.
Gabe sighed again and again, but it was no use. They were still trapped inside.
“Sorry,” said Gabe. “That’s the best I’ve got. You’re obviously quite an optimistic bunch.”
“Yes, it is ze children,” said Jean-Remy. “In my experience, zey are quite optimistic.”
“Okay, you two,” Harrumphrey said to them. “Looks like we’re gonna need to get about twelve feet lower, so I’d say if there’s anything you guys worry about, now’s the time to worry about it.”
Elliot and Leslie looked at each other.
“Well,” said Elliot hesitantly, “I guess I worry that I’m not as smart as Uncle Archie. I want to grow up to be like him, but I worry that my parents have other plans. I’m sure they wouldn’t like the idea of me working with a bunch of crazy creatures all day long.”
“‘Crazy’?” asked Harrumphrey.
“I mean cool. Cool creatures. But I really don’t know if I’m smart enough, and besides, now it seems like the whole company might shut down and then . . . and then . . .”
He couldn’t even finish, but it was okay. Saying all of that out loud had certainly thrown a sucker punch into his hopes for the future. Accordingly, the expectavator had descended a few feet. It wasn’t enough for them to squeeze through, but it was something.
The Creature Department Page 7