A Whole Nother Story (4 page)

On a small tropical island, somewhere in the southern hemisphere, there stood a large factory nearly hidden from view by the dense jungle foliage. On a hill above that factory was a large office building, and in that building was an office belonging to a small, thin-lipped woman with long red fingernails named Ms. 4. (That is not to say her long red fingernails were named Ms. 4 but that the woman herself was named that. As of this writing, the woman had not named her fingernails.)

The phone on her desk emitted a low beep, followed by the sound of a young man’s voice saying, “Ms. 4? Mr. 6 is on line 5. I’m sorry. Correction, Mr. 5 is on line 6.”

The thin-lipped woman with the nameless red fingernails rearranged her face to look slightly annoyed, then reached out and picked up the phone on her desk.

“Hello, Mr. 5. What is the current status? Have you secured the LVR?”

“Someone must have tipped them off. We . . . lost them. Again,” said Mr. 5, swallowing his pride.

“I would advise you, Mr. 5, not to fail again,” said Ms. 4, looking out her window at the bustling factory below. “If you wish to keep your current position with the company.”

“I believe I have already demonstrated that I will do whatever it takes to get the LVR. And I will get it. Or I will die trying,” said Mr. 5, wiping his cold, moist, boney forehead with his tattooed left wrist.

“Yes. Yes, you will,” said Ms. 4 through her thin lips.

SOME MUCH NEEDED ADVICE ON TATTOOS

T
here was a time when, if you encountered someone with a tattoo, you could pretty much assume he was either a sailor or had, at one time or another, been in prison. There was something, it seemed, about men being cooped up together that made them want to draw on themselves.

But lately, it’s become more and more difficult to distinguish sailors and ex-convicts from regular folks, as everyone these days is getting a tattoo.

People who get tattoos are likely to say it is a great way to express their individuality. But before you decide to express your individuality by doing what everyone else is doing, be forewarned that tattoos are permanent.

What then if you happen to choose a tattoo that seems like a good idea at the time but one day outlives its usefulness?

For instance, I am acquainted with a young woman named Lois who was so enamored of her fiancé, Jack, that she thought it might be nice to surprise him by having the words
I love Jack
tattooed in bright red ink on her right shoulder blade.

Two days later, Jack surprised Lois by marrying someone else. And so, because tattoos are permanent, she was forced to return to the tattoo parlor and have the words
I love Jack
altered to read
I love flapjacks
.

That was some time ago. Since then Lois has gotten over Jack and is currently back on the dating scene, though she finds that all of her suitors end up taking her to dinner at the local pancake house.

This goes to show you that the only place you should ever have anyone’s name written in indelible ink is on the waistband of your underwear. And then it should be your own name, as having someone else’s name on your underwear would be both odd and highly inappropriate.

The point is that tattoos are permanent. Underwear is not.

Still, it seems that these days tattoos are outselling underwear two to one. As popular as they might be, I would advise against getting one at all costs. Because, as with my pancake-loving friend Lois, or with our sweaty, hollow-cheeked non-friend Mr. 5, there will come a day when you will most assuredly regret having it. This I absolutely guarantee or my name isn’t . . . wait a minute. This is not my underwear.

CHAPTER 4

T
he hot afternoon sun seemed to melt the horizon like a gooey grilled cheese sandwich as the white station wagon rumbled down the two-lane highway.

Mr. Cheeseman and his family had been driving for nearly seven hours now, and in that time they had driven past several hundred gas stations, several thousand telephone poles, the world’s largest hat, the world’s smallest chicken, the Table Tennis Hall of Fame, eighty-seven truck stops, Cleveland, and, just a moment ago, the National Center for Unsolicited Advice.

I could clearly see them from the window of my palatial, well-appointed office as they rumbled down the narrow highway, flanked on either side by grassy fields, which were home to hundreds of happily grazing black and white cows.

For some reason known only to himself, eight-year-old Gerard LaFontaine removed the oversized wad of bubble gum from his mouth, stuck his head out the window, circled his hands around his mouth, and yelled, “Mooooo.”

The cows, for the most part, ignored young Gerard, though one of the least intelligent of the herd did turn toward the car with a quizzical look that seemed to say “Dad? Is that you?”

Maggie turned to her younger brother and scoffed.

“Exactly what do you hope to accomplish by doing that?”

“Just making conversation,” said Gerard.

“Well, you do look kind of like a cow, gnawing away on that giant wad of goop.”

“It’s not goop, it’s bubble gum. And I have to chew it. It helps me think. I can’t concentrate without it.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Not really,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “The results of a recent study showed a thirty-five percent increase in long-and short-term memory in subjects who chewed gum.”

Gerard turned and looked at Maggie with enough smugness to make his point but not enough to get smacked across the chest.

“It also increases alertness,” continued Mr. Cheeseman. “I’ll take a piece if you can spare one, Gerard.”

“Dad, if you’re getting tired I could drive for a while,” said Jough.

It was true that Mr. Cheeseman had taught his son to drive when Jough was just twelve years old. This may seem like a highly irresponsible thing for a parent to do, but in their current situation, his father weighed the risks and thought this would be a good skill for Jough to have. That way, if anything were to happen to him, Jough would be able to drive Gerard and Maggie to safety or to get help.

“It’s okay, Jough. I’ll let you know if I need your help. But thanks anyway.”

“No problem,” said Jough, barely hiding his disappointment.

“When are we gonna get there, anyway?” asked Gerard, handing his father a piece of gum.

“It’s hard to say,” said Mr. Cheeseman, “considering the fact that I’m not sure exactly where we’re going.”

“Maybe this time we could stay long enough that I could try out for summer league baseball,” Jough said.

“That would be nice,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “I’d like to see you use that screwball I taught you.”

“I’d like to continue my archery lessons,” said Maggie.

“I’d like to join the Cub Scouts,” said Gerard.

“I’d like to get a paper route,” said Steve.

“Grrrr,” Pinky growled at the one-eyed sock puppet.

“I’m hoping we can do all those things,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “Believe me, I’m just as tired of this lifestyle as you are. But you all know why we have to live this way, so let’s just make the most of it and hope that it will all be over soon.”

To look at the handsome, bespectacled driver of the heavily loaded white station wagon, you might never guess that Ethan Cheeseman was a veritable genius and one of the greatest inventors of this or any other century.

To be fair though, none of his inventions would ever have been realized if he hadn’t been introduced to an equally brilliant scientist with long auburn hair named Olivia Lodbrok. (That is not to say her hair was named Olivia Lodrok but that the woman herself was named that. It had never occurred to the woman to name her hair.)

Olivia was a strikingly beautiful woman despite the fact that her large black-rimmed glasses covered nearly half her face. She had that rare face that could survive the addition of large black-rimmed glasses. In fact she was so beautiful that you could affix just about anything to her face—a giant squid, for instance, or a toy tractor, or a handlebar mustache—and she would still be every bit as attractive.

Olivia and Ethan fell madly in love, and the rest is history.

Truth be told, that’s only an expression and the rest is not history. Not all of it, anyway. Quite a bit of it is, in fact, biology, as several years later Ethan and Olivia were married with three young children that you now know as Jough, Maggie, and Gerard. And though these were not their names at birth, I will refer to them by these names so as not to create unnecessary confusion.

Up until two years ago, Jough, Maggie, and Gerard were three of the happiest children there ever were. They attended school and had many friends. Jough, despite his problems with balance, was able to play baseball and touch football with the other neighborhood children with the help of his specially made earmuffs. He was popular and a good student, though he was secretly very annoyed by the fact that his younger sister had skipped ahead two entire grades and now sat directly in front of him in homeroom.

Maggie, like her mother, was smart as a whip and at the top of her class in just about every subject. She had received nothing but straight As since first grade, when they first begin handing out letter grades. Before that, in kindergarten, she had received straight happy faces. In addition to being a star pupil, she was also a natural athlete, excelling in cross-country running and archery.

Gerard was a child of incredible imagination who could carry on a conversation with just about any inanimate object, from a coat rack or a toaster oven to the salt and pepper shakers at home, which he had named Alvin and Berniece.

Together they lived in a small house with a large double garage. Even though they had only one car, a beat-up white station wagon, they needed the extra room so Mr. Cheeseman could work on his many inventions while Olivia worked on the scientific formulas and computer codes that would help make those inventions work.

One of those inventions was the LVR, a device originally designed as a means for mankind to travel from Earth to other planets in faraway galaxies. This has always been thought to be impossible because, for starters, the nearest star outside our own solar system is several lightyears away.

For those who lack my extensive knowledge in the area of astronomy, allow me to explain the scientific meaning of the term “light-year.” Without getting too technical I’ll just say that a light-year is very much like a dog year with the exception that light, given the opportunity, will not drink from your toilet or growl at sock puppets. Simply put, if something is one light-year away, bring a snack because it’s a long way to go.

Not the kind of people easily deterred by conventional wisdom or the laws of physics as we know them, Ethan and Olivia continued the development of the LVR. As they moved closer and closer to perfecting the technology, something strange began to happen. Even though Ethan and Olivia told no one about their latest project, not even their own children, people began showing up at their doorstep expressing interest in the partially completed machine.

It all started early one morning while the children were at school and Ethan was working away in the garage on the LVR, which, in its partly finished state, resembled a giant egg-shaped disco ball, covered with heat-resistant reflective mirrors and prisms. The interior could best be described as a combination of an airplane cockpit and a used motor home. Ethan hoped his light-bending device would be the first spacecraft to travel to other worlds, bringing a message of peace, brotherhood, and, quite possibly, disco.

As he stood at his workbench welding two pieces of tempered steel together, sparks danced off his welding mask. The doorbell rang but Ethan did not hear it over the sound of the welding torch. However, Olivia, working on the computer code in her office just off the kitchen, did.

Pinky followed Olivia to the door as she always did when the doorbell rang, perhaps out of simple curiosity or in hope that the doorbell had been rung by a giant soup bone. Olivia opened the door to find not a giant soup bone but two men in gray suits standing on her doorstep. One was short with wide shoulders, a thin waist, and skinny legs, giving him the appearance of a kite with gray-rimmed glasses and gray hair.

The other man was tall with a wide bottom and a very narrow top. If he could somehow be convinced to put on a white suit and a red bow tie, he would bear a remarkable resemblance to a bowling pin.

The kite and the bowling pin worked for a top secret government agency in which all employees were known only by their initials, and the initials were always spelled out.

“Hello,” said the kite-shaped man in a monotone voice. “My name is Agent Aitch Dee and this is Agent El Kyoo. We work for the United States government and we’d very much like to talk to you about your . . . current project.” He used his fingers to put air quotes around “current project.”

Pinky began sniffing at their gray shoes.

“Excuse me, but how do you know about our current project?” Olivia said, mimicking the man’s finger quotes. “And how do I know you really work for the government?”

Pinky sniffed at their gray pant legs.

“He must smell my dog,” said El Kyoo in a tone every bit as expressionless as his partner’s. “I have a gray Pekinese at home.” Both men pulled a gray leather billfold from the breast pocket of their gray suit jackets and opened them to reveal official government ID.

“Well, this says you work for the government but it doesn’t say what department,” said Olivia, carefully reading the documents.

“Our department doesn’t have a name, ma’am,” said El Kyoo. “I mean, it does, but we’re not sure what it is. It’s a very top secret organization.”

“You mean like the CIA?”

The two agents looked at each other and their stony faces very nearly registered something close to amusement.

“Ma’am,” began Aitch Dee, “the Cee Eye Ay doesn’t even know we exist. But we do exist and for a very good reason. Now, if you don’t mind, we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Well, I don’t think—,” Olivia began.

“We would appreciate your cooperation,” droned El Kyoo as Aitch Dee casually put his shoe in front of the door.

“Should the LVR fall into the wrong hands, it could prove disastrous. You owe it to your country to turn the machine over to us,” said Aitch Dee.

“I’ll decide what I owe and to whom, thank you. Anyway, my husband is the one you’d want to talk to and he just happens to be away at the moment.”

“He’s in the garage,” said El Kyoo. “He’s wearing blue coveralls, yellow work gloves, and a welding mask.”

“And a wristwatch with a brown leather band,” added Aitch Dee. “He had leftover birthday cake for breakfast this morning along with two glasses of chocolate milk. You see, Mrs. Cheeseman, there’s nothing we don’t know.”

“Well, you certainly don’t know when you’ve worn out your welcome,” said Olivia, kicking Aitch Dee’s shoe out from in front of the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

Olivia, though a woman of small stature, was not someone to be intimidated easily.

“Mrs. Cheeseman,” said Aitch Dee, before she could slam the door shut, “we can offer you protection.”

“Protection? Protection from what?”

“Not from what,” said El Kyoo. “From whom. There are people who will do anything to get their hands on that device of yours. Come work for us and we’ll guarantee your safety.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” said Olivia as she quickly shut the door and locked it, then spied through the peephole, hoping the two gray-covered men would go away. She watched as they walked toward their gray car parked on the street across from the house. When they climbed inside the car, Olivia ran to the garage.

“The government?” Ethan said, lifting his welding mask to reveal his bemusement. “But how could they possibly know what we’re working on?”