Bread

by Stephen Brown

THE JOURNAL OF ELLIOT CRIPPLESBY

  I find myself sitting in my room at the Beaver’s Teeth guest house, Calgary, where all I can do is read the papers, watch any updates on the news and wait for Geeza to return. He really is our only chance now. I can only hope and pray to whichever Gods he is currently working with that he will find something - anything - using his unusual methods that would be frowned upon by many should they ever come to light. He has never failed me yet though, so fingers crossed that his luck stays with him.

  At lunchtime three days ago, Humphries once again appeared on the television from his unknown location and told the world how he had done what he had done, thereby leaving no room for doubt that his power is almost limitless. His explanation seems utterly far fetched, ludicrous even, but as it is the only one that has been put forward...

  “People of the world,” he announced, cutting in over all other broadcasts once again. “They didn’t listen did they? By now you have all seen the consequences of Japan’s decision to try and defy me,” he leaned forward towards the camera with venom and megalomania written all across his face. “Give up!” he yelled. “You cannot resist me! You cannot defeat me! Nobody can - I am invincible!”

  In true James-Bond-Super-Villain style he then went on to explain to us all just how he was able to do it all. I don’t know why they all do that – we’ve all seen the films where the baddy has the hero tied up and chooses to reveal his master plan to him instead of just killing him and being done with it.

  “… and only by pressink zis big, red button here can it be stopped. I vill now leave you to be guarded by a complete numbskull vhile I go and stand near some extremely flammable barrels of somethink, havink taken avay all your possessions except for your special watch…”

  The thing is, world domination is just not enough for these super villain types. What they want is recognition. They want people to know what evil geniuses they are. They were probably all bullied at school.

  “You cannot hope to defeat me, people and governments of the world because I have unlocked the secrets of the Fourth Dimension! I have gained mastery over Time itself!

  “So many hours have I laboured, so many years I have spent unravelling the helicoidal threads of Chronos - but it was all worth while. All those lost years are mine again, for Time now belongs to me!”

  This Humphries is not just a mathematician it would seem, but a scientist of some note, holding doctorates and other certificates of expertise in many diverse fields. Astronomy, history, mathematics, pure mathematics, engineering, chemistry, human and environmental biology, genetics, astro-physics, nuclear physics – the list goes on. It has been said that the line between genius and madman is a thin one. Professor Alan Humphries, I fear, has not just stepped from one side to the other, but has taken a good, long leap.

  Having studied and experimented for over two decades, he claims to have built himself a Time Machine, which he knocked together all by himself in his garage over the last three years.

  “There is no period in the Past to which I have not travelled,” he declared with pompous grandeur, “no continent I have not trod upon.” A shame really that he is such an obvious loon, as this is no mean feat and would have no doubt have landed him fame and fortune enough, had he not become driven totally insane by his own power. He also explained that his machine could function as a teleportation device as well, enabling him to go anywhere in the ‘here and now’ as well as being able to flit at will between the Past and Present. He never mentioned the Future funnily enough, but I guess the future comes about due to the actions taken in the present and the past, so there would probably be not much to be gained from going there.

  Hey, ask Stephen Hawking, not me.

  “It came as no surprise when I teleported to Billy McAngus’ roof garden and found that the Japanese had decided not to pay. And I regret to inform you it was child’s play, the work of a moment to elude the clumsy Special Forces team put in place to capture me. I am a master of Time, don’t you understand? No matter what pathetic traps you set, you can do nothing to stop me!”

  He told us that he had then travelled back in time to the various shipyards of Japan and somehow managed to impregnate the ships of the Japanese fishing fleet with some form of genetically modified yeast. As a result of this chemicular tampering, way back when the ships were being constructed, he ensured that once the yeast had matured, meticulously engineered to coincide with last week, as soon as a ‘catch’ was hauled aboard any of the vessels, the fish would instantly absorb this substance from contact with the hull, or deck or whatever and quickly decompose into nothing but a pile of rotting flesh and fish bones, which themselves would eventually go the same way and disintegrate into nothing.

  A few people tried to scoff at this, but what could you do? The evidence was there for all to see aboard the titanic ships that are now drifting wraithlike, sailing silent as ghosts under the flag of the Rising Sun.

  He went on to set more and more demands and though the nations of the world have tried to stall as best they can, in the end they have all had to capitulate, giving him everything he has asked for. The effects of these demands have been wide ranging, right across the globe and are currently spread out before me in the various newspapers I have been buying which, after four days here, are covering every available surface in the room. From governments and royalty, right down to the common man and woman in the street, no one has remained unaffected.

  The Ottawa Herald gave coverage to the plight of the oil sheikhs of the Arabian Gulf, whose fortunes that had once been vast beyond belief, were now as nothing, as they were forced to hand over their Scottish currency - Kuwait, eleven pounds and four pence; Iraq, twenty-eight pounds, six shillings, and five pence; even the vast wealth of Saudi, nearly seventy-four pounds held in Scottish coins, now lay in the hands of Professor Alan Humphries.

  The hand-over routine had been the same in each and every case. The money was placed in specific, isolated locations, before being removed by the Professor. He would materialise with some strange contraption wired up to his head, grab the money and disappear again into thin air.

  I managed to find a copy of the UK’s Daily Mail at the airport, which is one of the best places to go as they have such a wide variety of international newspapers on sale there. Humphries’ third request, which particularly infuriated the Mail readers, was that the coat of arms of the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace be melted down, made as it was with Scottish gold taken from a vein deep in the soil under Cairn Crathie many centuries ago.

  They managed to lay the blame, somehow, on the European Union, waffled on for pages about the effect this was having on the Royals, and especially ‘the boys’ William and Harry and how our sovereignty was now being destroyed by Eurocracts and illegal immigrants. They’re special aren’t they? Mystifying how they consistently manage not only to grab the wrong end of the stick, but to actually get a hold of the wrong stick altogether! And their circulation runs into the millions… Good God!

  Returning to a slightly more serious newspaper, the New York Times focused on the riots now threatening to engulf the whole of Europe. The former Eastern Bloc countries, along with the various ‘Stans’ - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc - the young nations which have sprung up since the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, were already fairly turbulent for the most part and have now been thrown into further disarray by the total collapse of their fragile new economies.

  Closer to home, a regional newspaper, The Albertan, examined a different angle, talking about a local man, Geoff Flumps, who has become so impoverished by this catastrophe that he has had to sell the shirt off his own back. Having invested his family’s savings into the currency markets, which have all now plummeted due to the revelations about the way world economies actually worked, he was now destitute, left with nothing. His wife, Sandra, has taken their three kids Jaynie (14), Thomas (11) and Michelle (9) to live with her mother, blaming Geoff for the entire fiasco.

  Yet another paper I br
ought back from the airport was our very own Sun, which informed the readers that lager was expected to become so expensive - about £350 per pint - that not only would people not be able to afford it, but they wouldn’t even be able to get into the pubs themselves, having to quench their thirst (or rather their desire for beer) by looking at it through the windows. A horrifying vision of things to come, I think you’ll agree.

  So I sit here, sick to death with the sight of waffles, muffins and maple syrup (I have to admit that I have become quite taken with Poutine though. I’d better watch out otherwise I’ll be shooting off down the tattoo parlour soon to get a beautiful big maple leaf slapped across one of my buttocks), wondering what is going to happen next. I myself still have one hundred and ten pounds, thirty in Scottish money, the remnants of the compensation doled out by the hotel in Eilean Ban. Does the Professor know? And if so, what will he do about it? Is there anything I should do about it? That makes me phenomenally rich…

  And where the hell is Geeza?

  ***