by Ira Nayman
The phone went dead.
“What was that about?” Charlemagne asked, sitting at his desk opposite her.
“Nothing!” Noomi fumed, and went back to reading through reports.
Albert Einstein’s legacy has been reduced to a few small tropes, such as the formula e=mc2 and an old man with crazy grey hair sticking his tongue out at the camera. In fact, Einstein had a rich life that encompassed much more than what is now publicly known about him. Did you know, for instance, that he had an extensive collection of ceramic giraffes? Of course not – you were probably too busy trying to figure out the ramifications of space and time being a single unit! Were you aware that, when he went to Hollywood, Einstein went on pub crawls with Groucho Marx? The stories that the Octopus Arms could tell!
One of the ideas that Einstein had been working on at the time of his death was the lesser known Theory of Literary Relativity; it was his attempt to tie time and space on the written page into a single unit, page/time. Einstein had developed a mathematical formula to demonstrate the concept: b = td2 where b is the number of blank characters on a page, t is the passage of time in the narrative being depicted and d is the speed of lunch squared. In other words, the amount of space left blank in a work of fiction can be determined by the amount of time the blank space is meant to represent multiplied by the speed of lunch, a constant throughout the universe (and parts of France).
For example:
Five and a half hours later, Charlemagne got off the phone. “I just had an interesting conversation with Xenia in Data Collection and Interpretation and Technical Support,” he told Noomi. “She says she has some information that could be important to our case, but that she won’t give it to us until you tell her that her department runs the Transdimensional Authority.”
“So?” Noomi defiantly challenged him.
“So, I admire your perseverance,” Charlemagne said, not rising to the bait. “When she gave me that challenge, I caved in less than three hours. Holding out for over five hours must be some kind of record.”
“She does this to everybody?” Noomi asked.
“It’s another rite of passage,” Charlemagne replied. “Look: fun is fun, but this is a long time to stand on principle when we have a case to put down. Please make the call so we can find out what they’ve discovered on the seventh floor.”
Noomi picked up the receiver and dialled the number for Data Collection and Interpretation and Technical Support.
“Data Collection and Interpretation and Technical Support, Xenia Zaifman speaking,” a bubbly voice bubbled. “Who is calling and what is your business?”
“Xenia,” Noomi, trying to contain herself, said, “you have call display – you know it’s me, and you know why I’m calling.”
“Oh, hi, Noomi,” Xenia ignored her. “Nice weather we’ve been having, isn’t it?”
“Xenia, it’s raining,” Noomi groused.
“Oh, but it’s been great for me,” Xenia assured her.
“Okay, Xenia, look…”
“Yes…?”
Noomi stuffed her pride in a box and shoved it to the back of the attic in her mind. “You were right. Data Collection and Interpretation and Technical Support really does run the Transdimensional Authority.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“Mmm hmm? That’s it?’
“That’s one.”
Noomi thought about it for a moment, then, taking a deep breath and mentally moving to another city to be as far away from the box in her attack as possible, she said: “I was really wrong about this, and you were really right. I am really sorry, and would really like to know what information you have for me.”
“Could you possibly put a couple of those reallys together?” Xenia genially suggested.
“I would really, really, really like to know what information you have for me,” Noomi darkly told her.
“We think we know what the dead guy was doing to his Home Universe Generator™,” Xenia, not missing a beat, stated.
Noomi’s mood immediately brightened. “Really?”
“Oh, thank you for that,” Xenia replied. “It really isn’t necessary to –”
“What was that guy doing with his Home Universe Generator™?” Noomi stopped her with the all-important question.
“Doctor Alhambra has set up a little demonstration,” Xenia informed her. “If you can be in Lab 237e in five minutes, he’ll show you.”
“Thanks!” Noomi enthused. “I really appreciate this!”
“Flatterer.”
* * *
“Would it be too much to ask for popcorn?” Noomi asked.
“Hush,” Charlemagne gently admonished her.
They were sitting in an observation room one wall of which was a window that looked down on a lab. The room had television sets mounted over the doors on either side. It seated six comfortably (or nine uncomfortably or 12 with everybody being fairly miserable). Around the lab sat all the good, good scientist equipment that we’ve come to expect from television: the electron microscopes; the Bunsen burners; the machines that go “PING!” Doctor Alhambra was standing next to a Home Universe Generator™ whose back plate had been removed; it had wires sticking out at bizarre angles, unnatural angles.
“…the rictus potentiometer had been connected to the diorama frumfuzzle,” Doctor Alhambra droned. “This made no sense to us, because, of course, it would interfere with Horst-Bucholtz transdimensional matter occluder, which, as every first year physics student knows, will make the Occam razor transfer very painful. If you look it up on the Byronowitz energy/doesn’t matter converter chart, you will see very clearly a Kretzmer Junction needs to be placed in the coaxial cranium slot for anything to happen at all! Obviously, this puzzled us for some considerable amount of time…”
Noomi’s phone vibrated in her breast pocket. Ignoring what it was doing to her nipple, she looked at it and saw that she had a text message that read: “The porcupine knows the cost of every thong but the value of oregano.” She assumed the message was Spam and deleted it. Before she could return to Doctor Alhambra’s scientific sedative, however, it occurred to Noomi that it could have been a message from Barbara Brundtland-Govanni. She had a fetish for secret communications ever since that period of her life that nobody is allowed to talk about. Noomi cursed herself for premature erasulation. What was the message? The porcupine wears a thong at midnight? The quill will season the soup with oregano? How sharper than a serpent’s soup?
In frustration, Noomi returned to the beginning of the previous paragraph and found the message: “The porcupine knows the cost of every thong but the value of oregano.” Yes! It was a message from Barbara! Translated, it read: meet tonight at the usual place and time. If you spoke the language. Noomi returned to the story already in progress.
“…ow, consider the Peltenham Paradox, which states that time, matter and/or peanut butter cannot be spread across multiple realities without a serious attitude adjustment. This would have required the input/output Oakes capacitor to be hooked up to the irresolute manifold, but the computer programme that runs the Home Universe Generator™ was not created for simultaneous multiple diacron extraction. I’m sure you can appreciate the dilemma we faced. Fortunately, I am trained in transmogrificatory tai chi, so I immediately recognized that the rictus potentiometer could actually have been used as the null Aleph Alpha of the closed third circuit! I’m sure you understand what a breakthrough this realization was. I immediate –”
“Sure. Listen, Doctor Alhambra,” Charlemagne finally interjected, “Can you please cut to the chase and explain that in layman’s terms?”
“It’s been two and a half months since we last spoke,” Doctor Alhambra groused. “Have you learned no science in the interim?”
“Does the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow count?” Charlemagne asked.
“Certainly not!” Doctor Alhambra exclaimed.
“
Then, ah, no,” Charlemagne admitted.
“Why do people even bother living?” Doctor Alhambra muttered to himself. “Okay, look. It’s very simple. The modifications to this device would allow its users to control people’s minds.”
“In this universe?” Noomi asked.
“No,” Doctor Alhambra, as if talking to a child, said. “From this universe, this one here, you see, to other universes in the Multiverse. Out there. Not this one. That’s why whoever is responsible was using a Home Universe Generator™ thingie…” Doctor Alhambra pointed in the direction of the Home Universe Generator™ in the lab. “That gray, metally looking thing over there.”
“Got it,” Noomi said, sinking into her not especially plush chair.
“Ingenious little thing, really,” Doctor Alhambra said, returning to his normal, superior scientist’s voice. “The whole point is to cause a subtle shift in the brain of the person on which you have trained the device. It’s such a simple thing that it requires next to no transdimensional energy – that’s why TOM had so much difficulty tracing the signal. With your indulgence, I would like to conduct a little demonstration.”
Doctor Alhambra typed some characters into his laptop. A series of eight squiggly lines moved across the screens in the observation room.
“That somebody’s EEG?” Charlemagne asked.
“What?” Doctor Alhambra exclaimed. He looked closely at the monitor on his laptop. “Oh. Sorry about that. Those are actually the tracks for a song by my 17 year-old daughter’s garage band. ‘Sashimi Ladybug.’ It’s quite catchy, actually, but, uhh, that’s probably best left for another occasion.”
Doctor Alhambra typed something else into his laptop, and an image of an identical lab (without the modified Home Universe Generator™) appeared. Doctor Richardson contentedly stood in the room. Next to him was a table on which could be found a kitten that lay sleeping and a laser pistol.
“Oh, this cannot end well!” Noomi moaned, shifting forward in her seat.
“Doctor Alhambra wouldn’t dare let anything happen after our last experience,” Charlemagne told her, although distress had crept into his voice and was building a nest there.
“Doctor Richardson is in our lab on Earth Prime 8-3-4-3-0-1 dash omicron,” Doctor Alhambra told them. “Hi, Rich!”
Doctor Richardson waved to the camera. “Hi, everybody!” he said, grinning.
Typing into his laptop, Doctor Alhambra said, “Now, Rich, you want to quack like a duck.”
Doctor Richardson quacked like a duck.
Still typing into his laptop, Doctor Alhambra said, “Thank you, Rich. Now, you want to walk around the lab like Groucho Marx.”
Doctor Richardson bent over, placed one arm behind his back and, flicking imaginary ashes with his free hand, started pacing around the room.
Continuing to type into his laptop, Doctor Alhambra said, “That will be enough of that, Rich. Thank you. Now, I want you to pick up the gun and shoot Sir Purr Civil.”
“WHOA!” Noomi, jumping out of her chair, screamed.
“No!” Charlemagne shouted. “No, Doctor Richardson, you do not want to do that!”
Doctor Alhambra stopped typing on his laptop, looked benignly up at them and said, “There’s nothing to worry about. The laser pistol has no charge.”
“Are you sure about that?” Noomi loudly insisted.
“Rich,” Doctor Alhambra commanded, “please tell our visitors that the gun contains no charge.”
“The gun contains no charge,” Doctor Richardson assured them.
“Look,” Doctor Alhambra explained, “What we’re about to do is like Schroedinger’s thought experiment about the cat in the box, but with more thought and less box. Perfectly harmless. Unlike hypnosis, where the common wisdom is that you cannot get a subject to do something against his will, you can get somebody to do anything with this technique because the desire to act comes from within their own brains. Watch.” Without waiting for their reply, he resumed typing on his laptop and said, “Rich, please pick up the gun and shoot Sir Purr Civil.”
Doctor Richardson picked up the laser gun, pointed it at the adorable little kitten and pulled the trigger.
“Ah,” Doctor Alhambra finally commented, “I now understand what people mean when they talk about watching the fur fly.”
“You…you…you…” Noomi sputtered.
“You killed Sir Purr Civil!” Charlemagne shouted.
“When Sir Purr Civil gets to kitty heaven,” Doctor Alhambra responded, not without a certain degree of aplomb, “she will be able to say that she gave her life…for science!”†
† The Inhumane Society monitored the author’s bedroom and can report that no animals were harmed in the production of this book that didn’t thoroughly deserve it.
You may not believe this, having just witnessed the brutal death of an adorable little kitten. What would your reaction have been, though, if you knew that the kitten was actually an agent of the Krurg Empomerate, from Earth Prime 1-0-6-6-0-1 dash rho, who had been sent here to scout out our planetary defenses? What would you think if you knew that when that kitten wasn’t adorably lapping at a bowl of milk or playing with a squeaky mouse toy, it was transmitting the results of its investigations to the Krurg Ministry of Extreme Defense to help it determine the best time to invade our reality? Still horrified? What if I upped the ante and portrayed the kitten as being just hours away from giving the ‘all clear’ signal that would have started the invasion of our planet? That kitten ain’t so adorable any more, ain it?
This is, of course, purest speculation on my part. Who really knows what that kitten was up to? What any kitten is up to? Still…uhh…two human beings died in this book, and you didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. Two thinking, sentient beings, beings with families that relied on them and…and mothers who loved them. At some points in their lives. Probably. But, whose death do you get all soft and mushy and compassionate about? A kitten!
Our species has strange priorities…
Feeling their incoherent rage, Doctor Alhambra turned to the screen of his laptop and asked, “Rich, did you recharge the laser pistol?”
“No,” Doctor Richardson replied.
“Then, how did the laser pistol get recharged?”
“I got an intern to do it.”
“Ah. The scientific method is a wondrous thing in action.”
“Thank you.”
“Still, the question must be asked: if you knew that the gun had been recharged, why did you tell us it hadn’t been?”
“I…I don’t know…”
“Because,” Charlemagne, disgusted, stated, “you told him to tell us that the gun wasn’t loaded, and his brain interpreted it as a command.”
Doctor Alhambra thought for a moment, then clapped his hands in delight. “Nicely reasoned!” he responded.
“Yeah, thanks,” Charlemagne remained unimpressed. “So, why set something like this up? What value is it to be able to control somebody in another universe?”
They still ask idiotic questions, Doctor Alhambra thought to himself. Still, they have just been through what they consider to be a traumatic experience, so perhaps I should humour them. “The dead man you found a couple of months ago was rejigging his Home Universe Generator™ in order to be able to control the mind of somebody in another universe. He was doing this under the direction of somebody in another universe. What does this suggest to you?”
“A relay!” Charlemagne exclaimed. And, as soon as he said it, Noomi understood it, too.
“You order somebody in another universe to make the same modifications to the Home Universe Generator™ that you have made,” Noomi exclaimed, “then order them to use it to control somebody in your universe! Wow!”
Doctor Alhambra smiled indulgently. Maybe there was hope for these non-scientists yet.
* * *
Across the river in Hull, there is a restaurant called Kayak Jackboots. The restaurant has an aeronautical disasters theme. The restaurant had onc
e been given a one and a half star review by Alternate Reality News Service Food and Drink Writer Marcella Carborundurem-Mcvortvort, who called it “a misguided attempt at combining cordon bleu with blood red,” but her criticism just seemed to raise the cachet of the joint. Noomi would have preferred to have met Barbara in the room devoted to the 1950 Air India crash that killed 48 people; she had always had a soft spot for butter chicken. But, Barbara insisted on meeting in the Hindenburg room; the German zeppelin’s destruction came, of course, with New Jersey fare. (Oh, just Google it if you want to know why!)
A perky young waitress came to take their order. Barbara had what she always had: a chilli dog with a side of nachos. Noomi marvelled, not for the first time, at how the 73 year-old woman could look so good when she ate so poorly. Noomi was half-convinced that Barbara could consciously control her metabolism. Noomi had a bowl of potato soup and plate of cannoli.
“And, would either of you like a Burpsi Cola with that?” the waitress asked.
“Naah,” Noomi answered.
“Not really, thanks,” Barbara answered.
“Okay, then,” the waitress said, and walked off.
“So,” Barbara politely asked, “how have you been?”
“Uhh….not bad,” Noomi replied.
“Oh, dear. Tell Barb all about it.”
“Well, “ Noomi started. Before she could say anything else, the waitress appeared at the table again.
“Sorry. Just to be clear,” she said, “you wanted two Burpsi Colas?”
“No,” Noomi, through clenched teeth, stated. “We don’t want any Burpsi Colas. We’re fine with water.”
“Oh,” the waitress looked stricken. “I didn’t – okay.” She left again.
“What the hell was that about?” Noomi irritably asked.
“Product placement,” Barbara told her.
“What?”
“Have you found yourself bursting into commercial jingles for no good reason?” Barbara asked. Noomi nodded. “And, singing the praises of products you wouldn’t in a million years use yourself?”
