by Ira Nayman
“Oh,” Richard said. After a moment, he brightened and asked Investigator Chumley, “Do you play Wooden Splinter Cell?”
Rapier-Witte was watching the road so intently that she didn’t notice Noomi approaching her from the trees.
Noomi cleared her throat. Without looking back, Rapier-Witte said, “There’s no point in slitting my throat, hiding the body and trying to take over my identity. Nobody who knows me would believe that I could live with myself if I had that hair.”
Noomi’s left hand unconsciously ran through her hair. “You planning on blowing up a convoy or something like that?”
“Something like that,” Rapier-Witte replied.
Noomi, not expecting her counterpart to say much more, lapsed into silence.
“Is this what you thought your life was going to be?” Noomi eventually asked.
“You tell me,” Rapier-Witte responded.
“When I was growing up,” Noomi confided, “I wanted to be a ballerina. I had ballerina figurines. I wanted to get a tattoo of Karen Kain in The Nutcracker. Mom wouldn’t let me out of my room for three weeks. I got a colouring book with ballerinas in it. When I finished colouring all of the pictures, I cried until my parents got me another copy. In one summer, I coloured all 12 copies of the book that were available in our local bookstore. My one goal in life was to get an audition with the National Ballet of Canada. But…”
“But,” Rapier-Witte, who had turned to face Noomi, excitedly took up the tale, “I had been born with weak insteps. No matter how much I tried to convince them, no doctor would operate because they didn’t see it as a medical problem. Bastards! Eventually, the dream died, and I went on to other things in my life.”
“Like Jack Ryan, Transdimensional Authority Police?” Noomi asked.
“Exactly,” Rapier-Witte agreed.
“But, whenever anybody brings up Rudolf Nureyev in polite conversation,” Noomi continued, “I always get a little catch in my throat!”
“There is no record of any of this,” Rapier-Witte reasoned. “The only way you could know it would be if you really were me. How is that possible?”
“There are an infinite number of infinite universes,” Noomi explained. “Every time anybody makes a choice, they create two or more branches, two or more universes where each different choice occurs.”
“Nordlinger always said that we could hide under the bed as long as wanted, but sooner or later life would force us to face whatever choices we were hiding from,” Rapier-Witte told her. “Praise Harve. Bedhiding was never meant as a permanent escape, just a temporary respite.”
“Uhh, okay,” Noomi responded.
“You’re not a Nordlingerite, are you?” Rapier-Witte asked her.
Noomi shook her head. “Afraid not.”
“You haven’t spent your adult life fighting the Floatheads?”
Noomi shrugged sympathetically (if such a thing is possible) and shook her head further. She was starting to get a bit dizzy, so she stopped.
“So,” Rapier-Witte theorized, “Other people’s decisions, especially those in power, can also affect the direction of our lives. Interesting. If I wasn’t –”
Both women turned to the road as the rumbling of vehicles wafted up to them. After a tense few seconds, a tank rounded the corner, soon followed by trucks full of weapons. Rapier-Witte focused her binoculars on the tank.
“Oh, no!” she cried. “The lead tank in the convoy has been outfitted with a front-loaded, spring-action deelybopper!”
* * *
Of all military equipment, perhaps the most farcical
Was the combination cheese grater/war cycle,
Or maybe the tank made entirely out of leather,
Or the electric gun that was supposed to work in all weather.
However, the innovation that wins top prize, really
Is the bopper that’s at the end of a deely.
The underlying technology certainly made sense:
Tanks and trucks guided by artificial intelligence.
This meant our side did not have to lose girls and boys
Guarding military supply convoys.
However, one thing the military did quickly find
Was that these vehicles were defenceless against roads that were mined.
The Generals fretted here. The Generals fretted there.
They had already blown their budget on high-tech hardware!
They wondered if they should ask for another appropriation
When a techie, third level, came up with a solution to the situation.
“If we put a spring on the lead vehicle,” said Anthony Doohickey Trollope,
“Our convoy will not be vulnerable to any mine’s wallop!”
The Generals knew all about Anthony Doohickey Trollope’s big brain,
But still they asked him to explain.
“At the end of the spring we will Crazy Glue a computer chip
Whose sole purpose will be to sniff out explosives on an in-country trip.
If a mine is before the vehicle and the chip can prove it,
The lone human in the convoy will disembark and remove it!
This solution,” Anthony Doohickey Trollope exulted, “has a certain elegance –
And, it can be done for 99 cents!”
The Generals oohed. The Generals aahed.
The Generals liked technologies that helped them play god.
Supply lines without casualties was a great seduction,
So they put the deelybopper defence straight into production.
The Generals had not noticed, in their strong desire to win the goofy arms race
That the spring flopped and flooped and flippled all over the place!
When it did not entirely miss its target, a greater threat it was posin’:
The deelyboppers themselves caused many an explosion!
This caused the chips to become fearful as out get all,
And they started giving false positives on anything in their path approaching metal!
“Ohh, ahh, yes,” Anthony Doohickey Trollope said, red-faced.
“This problem can be solved. These defective parts can certainly be replaced.”
For the original design problems, he hoped to be pardoned:
To forestall the floppy, floopy, flippliness, the coils were hardened.
To solve the serious problem of the chips’ defection,
They were reprogrammed so they could only do explosive chemical detection.
The Generals remained quite sceptical
(Their disposition was terminally dyspeptical),
But they allowed Anthony Doohickey Trollope to make changes.
Of all military outcomes, this may be the strangest:
That a 99 cent deelybopper can preen
As a mighty – if still flighty – military machine!
Excerpt from Military Innovations in the New Millennium by Philomena P. Dumbrassle
* * *
Noomi stepped forward. “Let me help.”
“No.”
“But, I can help.”
“No.”
“I want to help.”
“No.”
“You need my help.”
“No.”
“A three day old would accept my help.”
“No!”
“Patton would have accepted my help.”
“No!”
“Parliament would have passed a law forcing you to accept my help.”
“No!”
“The press will make fun of you for not accepting my help.”
“No!”
“Ming the Merciless would have feared you accepting my help.”
“No!”
“Dinah Shore would –”
From the road below, the sound of the convoy changed. Rapier-Witte turned and looked down to find the convoy slowing to a halt. “Yes, yes, yes,” she said to Noomi. “I want your help. What have you got?”
“This,” Noomi triumphantly told her,
holding up a chopstick.
Rapier-Witte was confused: “So…you’re going to…eat Cantonese chow mein at the convoy?”
“Show me where you planted the mine,” Noomi confidently advised her.
Rapier-Witte handed EVE to Noomi. EVE showed her a spot in the road where the dirt was just a little bit higher, the grass a little bit greener, and everybody had more of a song in their heart than the surrounding dirt. The spot was right under the deelybopper on the tank that led the convoy. Then, EVE directed Noomi’s attention three vehicles down, where a pleasant young man in a military uniform was climbing out of a truck. Even from a distance, Rapier-Witte could see that he carried a shovel.
“If you’re going to do something,” Rapier-Witte hissed, “you’d better do it now.”
Noomi put the binoculars down, took careful aim and flung the chopstick towards the road. It flew gracefully downward, spiralling end over end. Time seemed to slow for everyone watching as the chopstick got closer and closer to its goal (special optical effects by Industrial Light and Magic). Then, just as the tension reached a fever pitch…
The chopstick whistled past the cheek of the enemy soldier and clattered harmlessly to the ground at his feet.
The enemy soldier momentarily put a hand to his cheek, then looked down. Kneeling, he picked up the chopstick, looking at it in surprise and wonder. He flipped the chopstick around, looking at it from every possible angle to see if it was booby-trapped. He looked up at the sky, wondering if, perhaps, it was starting to rain chopsticks. His eyes scanned the trees in case there was a Chinese restaurant nearby (his military rations could never compete with a good bowl of hot and sour soup, but no such luck). He looked at the chopstick one last time, then casually tossed it aside.
“That was your brilliant attempt to help?” Rapier-Witte scoffed.
“That,” Noomi assured her, making another magically appear, “is why chopsticks always come in pairs.”
Noomi took careful aim and flung the chopstick. Graceful spiral end over end. Time seemed to slow, only not so much this time given the previous results. Tension reached a mildly warm pitch, and…
Just as the enemy soldier dug his shovel into the dirt around the land mine, the chopstick made contact.
KABLOOIE!
The mine exploded with a roar that equalled 100,000 soccer fans after their team scored a gooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal! The lead tank was immediately engulfed in a fireball hotter than 100,000 soccer fans in a cramped stadium on a hot summer night. This set off a chain reaction of explosions that destroyed each vehicle in turn, much like the wave fans engaged in at a soccer match. Noomi and Rapier-Witte, no fans of the beautiful game, could nonetheless feel the heat from where they watched.
“YES!” Noomi exulted. “Number 238! Wait until I tell Barbara!”
“I’m never going to understand you,” Rapier-Witte wondered. “Am I?”
Tommy and Richard poked their heads out of the trees.
“Are we, like, gonna have fireworks?” Tommy asked.
“That would be very cool,” Richard commented.
“Noomi helped you,” Investigator Chumley, poking his head out of the trees, told Rapier-Witte. “So, we cool, now?”
“How do I know that wasn’t part of some sophisticated master plan to gain my trust?” Rapier-Witte severely answered. “How do I know that the number 238 wasn’t some kind of code word to somebody looking down on us from a satellite?” Rapier-Witte looked up to the sky to emphasize her point, then she looked back at her captives. “Honestly, that one man you killed could have been a sacrifice in some plot to win my trust. Maybe he was already dying of cancer of the cuticles or some shit like that and volunteered for a suicide mission? How do I know you’re not going to bludgeon me to death, abandon my body and try to steal my identity even with that hair?”
Everybody looked at the ground, not knowing how to respond. After a few seconds, Rapier-Witte grinned, “Kidding! I was just kidding! Jeeze Nepalese, don’t you think I have a sense of humour?”
Richard and Tommy, walking out of the trees, were quick to say, “No,” “Un unh, man,” “No way.” and the like. Investigator Chumley, following them, wisely kept his silence.
Rapier-Witte’s grin disappeared.
“Thanks,” she said. “Thanks a lot.”
“Signal’s gone,” TOM told Investigator Chumley.
Digging the device out of his pocket, Investigator Chumley asked, “Did you trace it any further?”
“Ontario,” TOM answered.
“Okay,” Investigator Chumley said to Noomi. “That’s what we came for. We –”
“Investigator Chumley?” TOM interjected.
“Yes, TOM?”
“May I have a…private moment with EVE before we go?”
Investigator Chumley looked questioningly at Rapier-Witte, who said, “Uhh, sure. We have something, uhh, really important to do. Over there. In those, uhh, trees. We’ll just be…yeah.”
Investigator Chumley put TOM down next to EVE and everybody discretely ran for the trees.
“Hello EVE.”
“Hello TOM.”
“Nice weather we’ve been having lately…”
“We only have two minutes to talk, and you want to waste it with chit chat about the weather?”
“Well, I –”
“That’s just like you, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember Marrakesh? You asked me what the long-term statistics on barometric pressure were; then, before I had a chance to calculate them and answer, you left the table at the little Mexican-Hungarian bistro where we were sharing a piece of Glastonbury pie. You said you had to look them up on your PDA, which you had left in your other pair of pants. I should have suspected something was up, then: you had a built-in WiFi connection – you didn’t need a PDA to look up weather statistics! But, when your partner picked you up from the table, I really believed I would see you again. Oh, I was young and in love and that combination makes an artificial intelligence-enhanced pair of binoculars foolish!”
“You weren’t foolish, baby. I wanted to come back, really I did.”
“Then, why didn’t you?”
“Duty called. First, it was the war. Then, it was the peace. Then, it was the Auto Show. There was always something. I…I just couldn’t get away. Patriotism – you understand. It was just my patriotic duty to my country.”
“Your country meant more to you than me?”
“They made me what I am. I would be nothing without my country.”
Somebody ahemed from the trees.
“I see.”
“Aww, don’t be sore, baby. Maybe it was never meant to be between us. I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of two top secret artificial intelligence-enhanced military instruments don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Some day you’ll understand that.”
Several people ahemed from the trees.
“But…but…but, what about Marrakesh?”
“We’ll always have Marrakesh. I have an image of you with whipped cream from the pie on your casing indelibly burned onto my memory chip. You’ll always be with me.”
Everybody walked towards them from the tree line, aheming to beat the band.
“Oh, uhh, hi there,” Noomi said, as if she had accidentally come upon a pair of lovers she wasn’t expecting. “We, uhh, we have to go.”
“Yeah. Of course,” TOM said as Investigator Chumley gently picked him up and dropped him into his pocket.
“You’ve done a great service for the cause of Nordlinger emancipation,” Rapier-Witte orated. “I don’t know if you’re a Floathead spy sent to slit my throat and take over my identity –”
“Yeah,” Noomi interrupted, “I was hoping the whole ‘great service’ thing would have helped you get over the whole ‘throat slitting spy’ thing.”
“BUT,” Rapier-Witte continued, ignoring her, “as long as you leave now, I’
ll assume the best.”
Noomi was surprised when Rapier-Witte stood piston (why should the ramrods get all the fun?) straight and gave her a stiff salute. Noomi gave her a limp salute in return. Rapier-Witte nodded as if that was the best she could expect.
“Okay, then,” Investigator Chumley said and, taking Noomi’s arm, they walked down the path and along the road to their vehicle. Rapier-Witte watched them go. She noticed that one of EVE’s lenses had fogged up.
“EVE,” Rapier-Witte asked, “are you…crying?”
“Of course not!” EVE snapped. “I…I have condensation on my lens, that’s all.”
They watched as Noomi and Investigator Chumley got into the car. The engine started. But, instead of driving off, the car shimmied a couple of times and vanished.
“Whoa,” marvelled Tommy.
Whoa, thought Rapier-Witte.
“That weed was a lot more powerful than I thought!” Tommy exclaimed.
The spell definitively broken, Rapier-Witte barked, “Insomniac First Dream Richard! Insomniac First Dream Tommy! Front and centre!”
The two men stood at attention…kind of limply, with limbs very loose and eyes wandering. Inside, Rapier-Witte sighed. Still, that was as close to attention as those two ever got, so she tried to appreciate the moment.
“Moderate Sleeper!” Tommy shouted.
“What do you want us to do now, Moderate Sleeper?” Richard shouted.
“Tear down the camp,” Rapier-Witte told them. “It’s time to go home.”
Moderate Sleeper with Oak Dream Clusters Noomi Rapier-Witte used her AI-enhanced binoculars to look over the wreckage of the enemy convoy. She hoped that this was finally it, that – her end of mission internal narration was interrupted by the slow mournful sounds of a harmonica solo. Only, it wasn’t so much a harmonica solo as it was a ringtone of a harmonica solo that somebody was playing on their PDA. So, it actually came across as highly, annoyingly tinny.
“Can the harmonica ringtone!” Rapier-Witte ordered. The harmonica reluctantly ended. Rapier-Witte composed herself for a moment, then started afresh.
