by Ira Nayman
The Ten Demandments
1 It isn’t an alternate reality. It isn’t their universe. It is their home. Respect it. Remember: in other universes, you live in the alternate reality!
2 Alien species have a right to develop their own laws, customs and hair grooming technologies. Do not under any circumstances interfere with the development of alien cultures. Unless circumstances force you to, in which case, go for it.
3 Information is sacred. Not, we hasten to add, in a way that would threaten anybody’s deistic beliefs; more in the sense that it is the lifeblood of the organization. Not, we hasten to add, in a way that would threaten anybody’s medicalistic beliefs, either. Look, we’re trying to tell you that information is really, really, really, really, really important, and that’s five reallys, so you know we’re serious. Treat information with five reallys of respect.
4 Towels? Really? Towels are for Alternauts who have no tolerance for proper bed linens!
5 Moonlighting is discouraged. Transdimensional Authority investigators who do moonlight must get to the scene of a crime within 30 minutes of taking the call, or the pizza is free.
6 When interfacing with the public in an official capacity, identify yourself as an agent of the Transdimensional Authority. When not, don’t. To take just one example where the boundary seems to have blurred: do not write at the bottom of your tax return: “I am a ferking member of the Transdimensional Authority, jerkwad! If you do not accept the cleaning bill for getting Antropian camgoose spit out of a leather jacket as a business expense, I will make life miserable for you across 27 dimensions!” Not only is such behaviour against Transdimensional Authority rules, but it’s really tacky.
7 The Transdimensional Authority is a quasi-arm’s length public-private-porcupine enterprise whose purpose is to maintain orderly transdimensional traffic. You may be tempted to enter into an economic treaty with a new species. Resist this temptation! That would leave diplomats with nothing to do, and they will get jealous. Trust us, nobody wants to deal with an emotional diplomat protecting his turf.
8 Write reports of your activities in a timely fashion. Nobody likes to write reports; well, nobody with a life likes to write reports. Yes, we’re looking at you, Buford Buffalonitz! Still, a record of Transdimensional Authority activities will both give your descendents something to talk about and remind payroll that you exist. If you do not fill out the proper forms on time, you will have to fill out forms explaining why you didn’t fill out the first forms. If you do not fill out this second set of forms in a timely fashion, you will have to fill out a third set of forms. Many a good Transdimensional Authority agent has been lost in this Eternally Recursive Paperwork Loop – don’t let this happen to you!
9 The first rule of Transdimensional Authority is that you never talk about Transdimensional Authority. The Second Rule of Transdimensional Authority is that you never talk about Transdimensional Authority. When you embarrass the Transdimensional Authority, you embarrass yourself. The Transdimensional Authority is a big boy – it can take it. Can you?
10 Eat lots of fruit. You’ll thank us for this one later.
Excerpt from The Field Manual for Transdimensional Authority Employees, Fifth Edition, Karl Rorschach, ed.
* * *
The layout on the fourth floor (Investigations) was very different from that on the seventh floor (Go Back A Few Pages If You Have Already Forgotten). Where there were dividers on the seventh floor to isolate people in order to get the maximum amount of work out of them, the fourth floor had an ‘open air’ design that seemed to exist to get the maximum amount of horseplay out of the people who worked there. This immediately ceased when the elevator doors opened and Investigator Chumley walked out with Noomi.
Noomi, aware that all eyes were upon her, quietly asked, “Is it usually this quiet in here?”
“There hasn’t been a female investigator in a couple of years,” Investigator Chumley told her. “I’m not sure they remember what species you are.”
Noomi didn’t give this a second thought. After all, she was just so gosh-darned happy to be there.
“Let me make some introductions,” Investigator Chumley told Noomi. Clearing his throat, he loudly said, “Everybody, this is the latest addition to our team, Noomi Rapier. She will be working with me. Noomi, over there is Bert Battson.”
“Hey, Noomi,” a voice belonging to a fire hydrant with limbs, dark glasses and a buzzcut said from the other side of the room.
“Hey, Bert,” Noomi responded.
“This is Barack Boatswain,” Investigator Chumley pointed to a man sitting closer to them.
“Welcome to the monkey house,” another fire hydrant with limbs, dark glasses and a buzzcut said.
“Oh, ah, thanks,” Noomi replied.
“Then, we have Brett Blurp,” Investigator Chumley stated.
“Oh, I know Noomi Rapier,” Blurp said with a nasty laugh. At the Alternaut Academy, Blurp had put a VasGenDric Delusionary Scorpion in Noomi’s bed; it took doctors three days to convince her that she wasn’t the king of generic medication.
“Good to see you made it,” Noomi cheerfully told him. Blurp, not expecting that reaction, coughed up his coffee with its custom-made blend of 27 different herbs and spices.
Investigator Chumley, noticing the interplay, continued, “You probably know Barry Butts?”
Oh, Noomi knew Barry Butts. He had hacked into her Facebook account and posted pictures of a teenaged Barbara Brundtland-Govanni in a blue-bottomed bikini that he had found on the Wayback Machine. That caused much consternation at the Alternaut Academy for several days, and put a slight dent in Noomi’s relationship with her mentor, until the truth had been uncovered. Unfortunately, Butts was a legacy student – his father, Babalonium Butts, was Ambassador to the Gackle Substrate of Earth Prime 5-8-3-7-2-4 dash theta – so his discipline consisted of attending 20 hours of seminars on “Gender construction in the novels of Louisa May Alcott and Brett Easton Ellis.”
“Hi, Barry. Looking good,” Noomi enthusiastically told him.
“Uhh, yeah, Noomi” Butts warily responded, almost blushing behind his dark glasses. “Thanks.”
“Others are out working cases,” Investigator Chumley told Noomi. “We can do more introductions when they’re around.”
Noomi beamed. What a swell bunch of guys!
“So,” Investigator Chumley said after everybody went back to their business, “We have this orientation video –”
“I’ve seen it,” Noomi, still beaming, said.
Uneasy with this unexpected ray of sunshine, Investigator Chumley continued, “Each department has its own orientation video.”
“Oh,” Noomi said, her beam not faltering at all. “Do I…have to watch it?”
“I could, uhh, give you a DVD,” Investigator Chumley allowed. “You could watch it at your leisure – as long as your leisure occurs within the next 48 hours.”
“Sure,” Noomi agreed.
Investigator Chumley led Noomi to her desk. She beamed at it. “So, what now?” she asked. “Do we track down Hibernian glouck pelt smugglers? Maybe bust a counterfeit Smurfs operation?”
Investigator Chumley almost smiled. Somebody had watched too much Jack Ryan, Transdimensional Authority Police when she was a youngster! He said, “Now, we grab a coffee and wait for an assignment.”
“We grab a coffee?” Noomi asked.
“Hey!” Barry Butts shouted. “If you’re going for a coffee, can you get me one?”
“And, me!” Brett Blurp shouted.
“Well, if you’re already going…” Bert Battson, who didn’t know Noomi at the Alternaut Academy, politely shouted.
“Yeah, sure,” Noomi responded. “Let me get a pen and paper.” She decided that she could afford to be a good sport about the coffee. After all, she…she was just so gosh-darned glad to be there! Right?
Chapter Three:
Noomi’s First Case
Four days later, Noomi’s enthusiasm for the coffee ru
n had pretty much run its course.
“Hey, Noomi, when –” one of the fire hydrants with limbs, dark glasses and a buzzcut started. It didn’t even matter which one.
“Suck cane toads and die,” Noomi responded.
“Aaah…I’ll come back later,” the fire hydrant with limbs, dark glasses and a buzzcut retreated to a far corner of the room.
Investigator Chumley sat at his desk, Sphinx-like, reading the Egypt News and Camembert Report. Noomi looked at her own desk. The only personalization that she had so far managed to add was the arguably adorable – and getting less so by the second – kitchen fridge magnet. Thanks to the open air layout of the room, she didn’t have a wall to tape it to. Because her computer had a flat screen monitor, she couldn’t hang it on that, either. It just sat on the desk next to her keyboard, useless. Sensing the imminent encroachment of an unwanted metaphor on the rapidly diminishing joy she felt at getting her dream job, Noomi swept the fridge magnet into the trash can next to her desk.
The phone on Investigator Chumley’s desk rang. Noomi assumed that it was his bookie calling to beg him to make a bet, of any size on anything. Which elephant would win this year’s Triple Crown. The year the first Zepbtarian-American would become President. The actual moment of the heat death of the universe. Anything. She had heard Investigator Chumley calmly explain that gambling was part of a life he no longer felt connected to at least eight times since she had gotten her green vest. Imagine her surprise, therefore, when, after hanging up the phone, Investigator Chumley turned to her and said, “Mrs. Peel, we’re needed.”
After a moment’s blank stare, Investigator Chumley, vaguely disappointed, said, “We’ve caught a case. I have to pick up a piece of equipment – I’ll meet you at the Dimensional Portal™ in 20 minutes.”
“Okay!” Noomi said. But, she thought, Who is Mrs. Peel?
* * *
The Transdimensional Authority technical laboratories and salad bar take up three floors under the ground. This is because:
a) if anything went wrong with the Chrono-Spatial Gewgaw Inhibitor™, the ground would absorb the temporal disturbance. In theory.
b) if anything went wrong with the Astrophysical Psycho-Social Auto-Correction Dispensator™, the ground would absurd the bad vibes. In theory.
c) when the Transdimensional Authority was founded, nobody in upper management wanted to be seen anywhere near a salad bar.
Noomi stood in a hallway, the 23rd person in line for a Dimensional Portal™. She stood under a faux wooden sign with line drawings of cacti and letters in a font that looked like a branding iron that read: “seven Dimensional Portal™s, no waiting!” She had called up the WikiMultiverse entry on the world she was going to, Earth Prime 5-8-9-1-0-4 dash epsilon, on her PDA. She wanted to get a sense of the difference between that and the Earth she grew up on in order to help her investigation.
What she found was that on Earth Prime 5-8-9-1-0-4 dash epsilon: tiger fish were actually a species of mammal that lived in southern parts of Africa; Nicolas Cage was a barber; the War of 1812 happened in 1797; nobody had ever coined the phrase “happy as a badger in the Vice President’s office;” the memex had been built and caught on in the 1950s, but, when modern circuits were created, computers ended up developing along more or less the same path as they did in our universe; the Death of the Author was greatly exaggerated; Martin Scorsese directed Gold Diggers of 1932; Warren Buffet ran a fast foot joint in South Carolina, Nebraska; nothing had ever been the new black except black; t-rex dinosaurs were cuddly and took extinction badly; when Hilary Clinton became President, nothing much changed, much to the chagrin of sexists at home and abroad; June had 37 days, and all the other months were jealous; “What, Me Worry?” was printed on the back of every Euro; pink polka dots were always in fashion…for men; Golconda was declared the State Surrealist Artwork of West Virginia; Hugh Hefner opened a series of daycare centres for swingers in the 1960s (and died a virgin); Dubya was a verb (just don’t ask what it means); and The Cat in the Hat won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.
“Cramming?” Investigator Chumley asked.
Noomi started. “Creep up on people much?” she angrily asked.
“Only the ones I like,” Investigator Chumley told her, almost smiling.
“Yeah, well,” Noomi told him, “I learned at the Academy that it pays to know the world you travel t – hey! What are you doing?”
Investigator Chumley was closing the file on her PDA. “There’s a difference between what they teach you at the Academy and what you need to know in real life.”
“Oh! – did you just cliché me?” Noomi couldn’t believe her ea – I mean, responded in disbelie – I mean, well, obviously, she was – you know, sometimes it’s damn near impossible to avoid a cliché.
“Clichés often have an element of truth in them,” Investigator Chumley told her. “They wouldn’t escape the garburetor of time if they didn’t.”
“Hunh! – another one! I mean, okay, ‘garburetor of time’ was a nice touch, but still!”
“Look,” Investigator Chumley indulgently explained, “most of the realities we travel to are close to our own – they have to be. Any worlds that were too alien probably couldn’t sustain human life, and going there would be way beyond our pay grade. If something jumps out at you within the first few lines of a report on another universe, fine. Use it. But, you could waste hours looking and not find anything, and those are hours we could be spending investigating a crime.”
Noomi was about to protest when they found themselves at the front of the line. A pimple faced kid who was six foot six but looked like he was about 13 years old stood next to a ticket box in front of a door. He was chewing gum; Noomi caught a faint whiff of talcum powder. He wore a white apron over his yellow vest; although his black pants and white shirt appeared to be crisp, they still seemed to exude oiliness. On his chest was a sticker that read: “Hi! My name is Chet.”
I wonder what carnival they snatched him from. Noomi thought.
“Requisition form?” Chet asked, his voice cracking just a little.
Investigator Chumley handed Chet a piece of paper. Chet looked it over for several seconds, then, pointing to something on the paper, asked, “Is that a seven or a one?”
Investigator Chumley looked where Chet was pointing. “It’s a…one…I think.”
“You think?” Chet scoffed. “YOU THINK? The difference between a one and a seven is the difference between ending up in a business class suite at a Stuyvesant mud spa or staring down the business end of a Bovarian tank turret in the sulphur pits of the Imbroglio Archipelago! So, ARE YOU SURE IT’S A ONE?”
“Yes,” Investigator Chumley uncertainly answered, “I’m sure it’s a one.”
“Alright, then,” Chet said, amiably enough – he appeared to be glad to have gotten that exercise of petty authority behind him. He took a stamp off the top of the ticket box and slammed it down on the requisition form. “Take this to the technician at Dimensional Portal™ three and have a nice trip.”
Noomi started to thank Chet, but Investigator Chumley hustled her through the door. “People are waiting,” he explained as they stepped into the biggest room Noomi had ever been in. It was three stories high and two football fields, a hockey rink and 27 Toyota Chicken Hawks long (plus or minus three Chicken Hawks 19 times out of 20). The Dimensional Portal™s were arrayed along the walls; they were two and a half story tall ovals, and appeared to be made of some alien rock (although they were actually made of plastic – the Transdimensional Authority had paid H. R. Giger a small fortune to design them).
“Which Dimensional Portal™, please?” a pleasantly perky older woman standing on the other side of the door asked them. She was wearing a pink hat. To Noomi, she looked like an airline stewardess who had been drummed out of service for becoming too friendly with the passengers, too friendly with a specific passenger, if you catch my meaning, and was using what she had learned about applied perkiness in her new job.
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br /> “Three,” Investigator Chumley answered.
“Follow the Nile green line on the floor,” the woman said. “Thank you.”
Noomi looked at the floor. There were, indeed, seven lines painted on the floor, but they all seemed to be shades of green.
“How are we supposed to –” Noomi started, but Investigator Chumley cut her off.
“I know the way,” he told her. “Follow me.”
In moments, they were standing in front of Dimensional Portal™ three. As a woman in a lab coat was looking over the requisition form and punching coordinates and other data into a computer console, Noomi noticed that the big buttons on the machine were blue. She asked Investigator Chumley why they weren’t red.
“The Alternate Reality News Service’s big buttons are red,” he explained to her. “Ours are blue so that people can tell the difference. Besides, our blue buttons lessen the effect.”
“The – what effect?” Noomi saw the woman in the lab coat push the big blue button. “WHAT EFFECT?” she loudly demanded. Before anybody could answer, she was pushed through the energy field at the centre of Dimensional Portal™ three.
* * *
LOCATION: Earth Prime 5-8-9-1-0-4 dash epsilon
TIME: now MST
Noomi was doubled over, gasping for breath. Investigator Chumley laid a friendly hand gently on her back.
“You okay?” he asked.
