So he stood up and set off for the Dead Donkey University Economics Department.
Chapter 10
After he filled out a few quick forms, so as not to fall behind on his paperwork for this trip, Brian agreed to drive Nathan to Dead Donkey University.
“If all I need to do is communicate with the living, I don’t see why you can’t do that for me,” Nathan said.
“Because I don’t want to, because I hate you,” Brian said. “Also, I don’t know how to obtain you another body. You need to locate a psychic because they will probably be able to advise you about how to do that.”
After putting the car into gear, Brian started to drive away from the park and frowned.
“By now, I would have expected Director Fulcher to make a move against you, but there is no sign of any bureaucratic interference anywhere. I have not been instructed to take any action against you. Overdirector Powell put considerable pressure on Fulcher, and Fulcher is not one to ignore statutory obligations. I wonder why he hasn’t sent anyone to try to lure you back to the afterlife yet.”
“Maybe he decided that I’m too smart for him,” Nathan said.
“You are a ghost with serious mental problems who just tried to keep a pelican that you believed to be a duck as a pet.”
“Yes, I did,” Nathan agreed emphatically.
Brian stopped at the first traffic light, adjacent to the park. He guessed the combination of four different colored lights, one of which was blinking black and white, probably meant that he shouldn’t go through the intersection. Two pedestrians crossed in front of the car - Brian recognized them as the men who had been playing basketball.
“I won,” Vincent said, obviously exuberant. “I finally won!”
“You only won by one point,” the second man objected.
“But it was with that buzzer beater at the last minute. Did you see that?”
“You bribed the referee.”
“Pow, three points, come from behind win, last second of the game.”
“Your opponents were all children.”
“They were all very good at the game.”
“I think some of them were blind.”
“Hey, they struck like cobras-”
“The ones who weren’t blind were epileptic.”
“A win’s a win.”
“You kicked them in the shins when they tried to guard you.”
“I slipped.”
“You told them they were going to play tennis.”
“Honest mistake-”
“Some of them brought rackets.”
“That’s their fault.”
“You lowered your basket to five feet and raised theirs to twenty.”
“I deserved a handicap.”
“You made them play with two men down.”
“Hey, I beat them, didn’t I?”
“Your team was all college players.”
The two pedestrians drifted away. Brian watched them suspiciously.
“You have a mauve light,” Nathan reminded him.
Brian remembered he was driving and stepped on the accelerator.
“Yes, so I was saying that Director Fulcher hasn’t sent anyone after you yet. When I eavesdropped on his conversation with Overdirector Powell, I heard him say he intended to wait for you to acquire a new body, then have you die and return to the afterlife, where he would trap you. He may have decided to speed up the process. I would prefer it if he failed.”
“Oh,” Nathan said. “Why’s that?”
“Because I don’t like him any more than I like you. He refused to let me change my name. Now, pay attention. There are three ways Director Fulcher could try to accelerate the process. First, he could try to get you a new body faster. I doubt he will do that unless he has to, because being forced to help you would wound his pride. Second, he could try to kill you after you get a new body, or otherwise induce you to kill yourself faster than you otherwise would. Third, he could try to return you to the afterlife while you are still a ghost. The last time you were causing him trouble, he haphazardly sent a lot of bureaucrats to try to stop you and it didn’t work, remember? Since he hasn’t tried yet this time, I can only assume he’s planning something more clever. Now, how do I get to Dead Donkey University? I don’t know the streets here.”
“Turn here,” Nathan said. “Don’t go straight. There’s always a traffic jam on Arnie Street.”
Brian shrugged and turned. He did not ask, but simply assumed that the traffic jam on Arnie Street must be because it was a major thoroughfare and this was commute hour or something similar. The truth was very different. Arnie Street was the only road out of Dead Donkey, and the traffic jam that had formed on the Street was entering its sixth decade, with many of the occupants of the cars now second or third generation descendants of the original drivers who had tried to escape the city by road.
There are only three possible reasons for not leaving Dead Donkey: 1) sheer stubbornness, 2) insanity, and 3) some sort of impediment physically stopping you from leaving the city. People stuck in the Great Dead Donkey traffic jam fell into the final category. Now, many people believe that traffic jams such as the Great Dead Donkey traffic jam start because too many cars try to use the same road, and since only so many cars can fit on a given road and only so many cars can exit the road at a given speed, if too many people try to use the road then there will inevitably be a traffic jam. This reasoning is much akin to the thinking of the ancients when they looked up at the sky and reasoned the Sun must circle the Earth rather than the other way around: it is naive, and it is wrong.
All traffic jams in the entire world are started by the influence of a single malicious man. He is an impish, balding man named Ivan Fedelmid. Many years ago, his fiancé was seduced and stolen from him by the global automative industry, and now he lives to take revenge on them by starting traffic jams worldwide. Using the vast, traffic jam-based empire he has created and his considerable personal fortune, he flies around the world each day, from Europe to the Americas to China to Japan, stopping off in Russia and India before hitting the rest of Asia and Africa and then moving back to Europe. He creates traffic jams by blocking roads, deliberately driving too slowly in the vast, ever-changing fleets of second-hand cars that he has purchased for this purpose, and manipulating the police into making well-placed traffic stops that distract everyone else who drives past them. Fedelmid has hired thousands of surrogate drivers and tens of thousands of accomplices more who relentlessly patrol the world, acting out elaborately staged roadside dramas to look like traffic accidents to entice drivers into forming massive jams.
In his exceptionally long career of creating traffic jams, Fedelmid has two accomplishments he is extremely proud of: first, creating a traffic jam near McMurdo Station in Antarctica, along the Trans-Antarctic Highway (which is particularly impressive when you realize there are only about three cars that use that highway), and second, the Great Dead Donkey Traffic Jam. He created it when he visited Dead Donkey some sixty years ago. It grows larger every time someone tries to escape Dead Donkey, which is pretty much every day, and the number of abandoned cars along the road and conflict of interest with the local government (who are determined to see people stay in the city) guarantees that the traffic jam will never be cleared.
Brian made the turns that Nathan had indicated but suddenly found himself facing an immense wall of traffic, thousands upon thousands of cars long, passing along a narrow street and then stretching off into the desert beyond. He couldn’t see where it ended, but apparently it began here.
“Whoops,” Nathan said cheerily. “I guess we should have gone straight and not turned. Sorry. I was concentrating on not falling through the seat and out of the car.”
Brian scowled and began to fill out a Form 847022 - Notice Of Entrapment In Traffic Jam of Exceptional Magnitude. When he had finished, he turned to notice that more cars had arrived and boxed him in from behind.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
&n
bsp; “I guess we’ll just have to walk to the university,” Nathan said.
“Again, you can’t walk,” Brian said. “You float.”
Nathan ignored him. The two men got out of the car. Brian was no longer willing to rely on Nathan’s navigation abilities. He knew from a previous visit that the tallest building in the city was the university spire. He quickly located it in the sprawling skyline and set off in that direction, with Nathan floating not far behind him. They passed an old-fashioned phone box on one corner with the phone ringing. Nathan stopped to pick up the receiver.
“Hello?” he asked chirpily.
There was a pause. His smile abruptly fell into a frown.
“No, I don’t want to buy a dog riding an elephant,” he said angrily. “Stop calling me.”
And with that he slammed the receiver down.
Chapter 11
Mr. Big was very important. He knew this because he said so, and logically anything he said must be true because of how important he was. Owing to his great personal importance, he owned a large, important-looking car, and a huge, well-furnished, important, and very, very expensive house in one of the nicest parts of Dead Donkey, where the arsonists hardly ever came by at all. He filled the big, expensive house with important objects to match his own importance. These objects were of great intellectual, cultural, and artistic importance, like copies of portraits from important and famous painters, and artifacts from important archaeological digs. He had never gotten married because he could only marry a woman who was as important as he was, and of course no one could ever be as important as Mr. Big was, so he lived alone.
Every morning, Mr. Big got up and sauntered into his bathroom and looked at his own important face in the mirror. Because of how important he was, it was very important that he looked important, so he took great care in tending to his personal appearance. He had a thick crop of luxurious brown hair, sharp brown eyes, and a large, important-looking mustache, vaguely reminiscent of a certain someone’s who he could never quite seem to put his finger on. His cologne gave him a powerful, authoritative musk that caused everyone he met to bend over backwards to please him, although many would claim they’d simply been repulsed by the smell. His kitchen was filled with food worthy of an important person such as himself, like rich, rare caviars, leftovers from the fine French restaurants he ate at, and expensive, important wines that could not be found anywhere in Dead Donkey because of the terms-of-trade crisis that had cut off almost all non-vodka alcohols to the city. After he refined his appearance adequately, he ate his important breakfast in his important kitchen, groomed his appearance in his important bathroom, then put on his important suit and sped off in his important car to his critically important job. That was just a standard day in the life of Mr. Big, the most important man in Dead Donkey.
Today was different. Mr. Big got halfway through his morning routine (after the part where he ate his breakfast and put on his suit but before speeding away), when something very strange happened. He was walking down his hallway when suddenly the keys to his car jerked themselves out of his pocket and started to float off on their own. Mr. Big grabbed at them since, given how important he was, he couldn’t possibly allow a rebellion of this nature from his own car keys. However, they quickly slid out of his grasp. Mr. Big, who was a large, heavy man, jogged down after the floating keys and tried to catch them, but they seemed to be moving much faster than he was. They were bobbing up and down in the air rhythmically, almost as if an invisible someone was spiriting them away and out of his grasp. Near the end of the hall, Mr. Big jumped at them but missed and smashed, headfirst, into one of his very important archaeological vases. Amidst the shards of glass, he slumped down onto his rug, unconscious, and started bleeding importantly.
Nathan looked at him curiously for a second, and then shouted out to Brian.
“I got the keys!”
They had seen Mr. Big’s car outside and decided that stealing his was a superior alternative to walking the rest of the way to the university. Nathan had been searching the bathroom while Brian checked the kitchen for the house’s inhabitants.
At Nathan’s call, Brian sauntered curiously out of the kitchen and down the hallway. He turned his nose up at the decorations in the hallway, which mainly consisted of cheap, touristy vases and low-quality prints of art pieces. The wallpaper was peeling.
“What a dump!” Brian exclaimed. “I’ve seen a lot of bad houses in this city, but this is one of the worst. And look at this guy!” He kicked Mr. Big with his toe. “What’s wrong with his face? He looks like he tries to scratch his chin with an angle grinder. The rest of his face is hideous, too. Someone gave him a few too many whacks with the ugly stick. No wonder he lives alone.”
Nathan sniffed at the air.
“He smells bad. What’s that scent?”
“It smells like he’s been dabbing rotten eggs underneath his chin,” Brian said. “Let’s get away from this man. I shudder to think of all the paperwork I have to fill out just to look at someone this ugly.”
They retreated outside and put distance between them and Mr. Big’s squalid, ugly house as fast as they could.
“Did you find any food in the kitchen?” Nathan asked, remembering he had asked Brian for a bite to eat.
“I keep telling you: you are a ghost. You do not need to eat. And yes, I did find food in the kitchen, but all he had was sardines, French bread, and a few dozen bottles of Mad Dog 20/20. Who was that guy, anyway?”
They approached his car, which was an old Eastern Bloc jalopy. Nathan, who did not need the key to phase through the door, slipped inside and found a business card in the glove compartment.
“It says his name is Mr. Big and he’s an assistant janitor.”
Brian snorted, opened the door, and climbed right through Nathan and into the driver’s seat.
Nathan carefully lowered himself into the passenger seat and buckled his seat belt.
“This car’s in pretty bad shape, too,” Brian added, squinting at the windshield, which was criss-crossed by a web of spidery cracks.
Meanwhile, Nathan was still looking at the business card.
“It actually says he’s training to be an assistant janitor,” Nathan clarified.
Brian shrugged and filled out a short form notifying his superiors that he had encountered an ugly assistant janitor in training, then started up the car. He put it into gear and, without further delay, drove away.
Some people just don’t appreciate importance.
They made it to the outskirts of Dead Donkey University without further incident, except that the car’s novelty horn had a very prolonged, unusual report that sounded like, “I’m important, get out of my way!” whenever Brian pressed it, which was fairly often. They pulled into the university parking lot and stopped. Brian hopped out of one side of the car, while Nathan floated through the other.
Almost immediately, Brian was beset by a young salesman.
“Would you like to buy an advent calendar?” the salesman asked. “All proceeds go to the University to raise money to make the spire pointier.”
“Why do you want to make the spire pointier?” Brian asked.
“Because it’s there,” the salesman insisted.
Indeed, it is only human nature to want something better than you already have. That is why we are constantly striving to build a smaller microchip, a taller skyscraper, a faster car. In much the same way, Dead Donkey University was forever trying to build a pointier spire, not for any actual value that a pointy spire might possess, but simply for the sake of the craft itself. Brian was a bureaucrat and therefore had no appreciation for progress. He did not understand. However, by this point he knew better than to ask for further explanation unless he wanted to find himself so far down the rabbit hole that the Red Queen was serving him an eviction notice. Instead, he mentally ran through the list of all of the holidays of which he was aware. None of them were imminent.
Brian pointed to the advent calendar, which
was dull gray except for the little cardboard square doors that covered it.
“What holiday is this advent calendar for?”
“Why, the Festival of the Symbol, of course,” the salesman said with surprise. “It’s right around the corner.”
“What symbol?”
“Don’t you know, stranger? The Symbol!”
“It’s the Festival of the Symbol,” Nathan agreed. “It’ll be here soon. Maybe we should buy the advent calendar so we’ll be prepared.”
Brian ignored him.
“I am not buying an advent calendar this afternoon,” he informed the salesman tersely.
The salesman shrugged.
“Suit yourself, but don’t blame me when someone builds a pointier spire.”
He wandered off.
“I wonder if he had the appropriate permits to be selling advent calendars,” Brian asked aloud.
Nathan, meanwhile, had floated over to a nearby campus map to try to find the economics department. The map, which was painted onto a little billboard-like object, was sadly written in the incomprehensible language of the Voynich manuscript, which rendered it slightly more readable than most maps but still essentially inscrutable. After a while, Nathan found a building that he decided must be the Economics Department and started to float towards it. Brian slowly moved to pursue him.
Their course took them around a bend and into the center of a large university field, where there was something of a fair going on. Thousands of people had crowded onto the green grass to inspect dozens of little booths and tents, but three massive displays overpowered all of the rest of their tiny competitors. A huge banner strung over the field informed Nathan that this was the University Religion Fair, and each of the little booths, tents, and displays represented a religious denomination that was trying to attract followers from the student body.
This was surprising to Nathan for several reasons. Due to the staggeringly massive rate of attrition to atheism, all major mainstream churches, temples, mosques, and pagodas had pulled out of Dead Donkey. There were now only three religious beliefs with any meaningful presence in the city. They were, in order of size: 1) atheism, 2) the Cult of Cthulu, and 3) religions made up by local wackos, of whom there were many.
You Are a Ghost. (Sign Here Please) Page 8
