Welcome to the Multiverse

by Ira Nayman

  Obviously, somebody didn’t get the literary press opportunity.

  This is not the first report of the Prime Minister engaging in strange behaviour at the Summit. Rumours have been circulating that, several hours earlier, Harper had pied a hotel staffer. (We apologize to our more sensitive readers for getting so graphic, and agree that small children should not be allowed to read about pieing without adult supervision, but we felt we couldn’t properly convey the gravity of the accusation without directly referring to what it was. We eagerly await your subscription cancellations.)

  “No, no, the Prime Minister, he was a gentleman,” Fillpot Josefina, the hotel staffer at the centre of the rumour, insisted. When asked why cherries seemed to be dripping off her cheeks and onto her otherwise spotless cleaning staff uniform, she desperately looked around for a couple of seconds, then answered: “Makeup. It’s a…uhh…a new kind of facial cleanser that opens your pores and gently massages your skin. Do you like it?”

  We said we’d get back to her on that.

  According to noted historian Oliver Stone, strange behaviour from world leaders is not as rare as one might think, especially in times of great stress. “At the height of the blitz,” he stated, “Winston Churchill dressed up in frilly lace undies and paced the floor shouting, ‘Who’s a pretty Polly parrot, then, eh? Who’s a pretty Polly?’ This was an official state secret until 50 years after his death. Hard to see why, but politicians have their own kind of vanity, I guess.

  “Then, there was Genghis Khan, who, at the height of his raping and pillaging, would dance the hora by the light of burning cities. This was extraordinary behaviour – the hora is not an easy dance to do on your own!”

  The G87 Summit is, of course, an annual meeting of the countries with the seven most important economies, plus 80 countries that are included either because they whined so much about it that the original seven figured the only way to shut them up was to let them in, or because their economies were so pathetic it was calculated that their membership could do no harm, or they really knew how to fill out a bikini. G87 resolutions are less binding than baked beans, but the summits do give world leaders an opportunity to meet face to face (in between the NATO summit the week before and a United Nations special session a week later) and discuss world affairs. (The hit of this year’s G87 seems to have been the photographs circulated by Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych of his grandchildren. The international community, usually quite rancorous, unanimously agreed that they were adorable.)

  When asked for his assessment of the G87, Toronto Mayor Ryan Reynolds moaned and rocked back and forth in a dimly lit corner of his office until the problem (us, apparetly) went away.

  Moments ago, during a speech by American President Barack Obama on the need for greater stimulus spending to avert a deeper international financial crisis, Prime Minister Harper jumped in front of the microphone and played air guitar for three minutes. This may be the oddest thing he has done yet – everybody in Ottawa knows that the piano is his preferred musical instruent.

  If all of the rumours of the Prime Minister’s strange behaviour turn out to be true, what will it do to Canada’s chances of being more in-your-face on the world stage? “Other countries are too polite to say this to Canada’s face,” Stone said, “although they have emailed it, Tweeted it and made it their status on their Facebook page, so it shouldn’t surprise anybody when I say that Canada wasn’t ever taken all that seriously on the world stage. On the other hand, the Prime Minister does seem to be developing a career for himself as a street busker!”

  Chapter Fourteen:

  Noomi Celebrates

  “We should wake her up.”

  “Oh, hush.”

  “No, really, it’s almost time…”

  “She solved her first case yesterday. To help her celebrate, we can let her sleep in a little.”

  “But, what will she have to celebrate if she gets fired for being late to work?”

  “She won’t get fired. Now, let’s let her sleep in.”

  “Rise and shine!” the foot of the bed shouted.

  “Wakey wakey, sleepyhead!” the headboard shouted.

  Noomi stirred under the covers. “Mmm…” she mmmed. “What time is it?”

  “Seven am,” the foot of the bed informed her.

  “We let you sleep in,” the headboard added. “You know – to celebrate putting the case to bed yesterday.”

  Noomi was suddenly wide awake. “You let me sleep in?” she asked. “How long?”

  “Three point seven eight eight four seconds,” the foot of the bed said.

  “You guys spoil me rotten,” Noomi remarked as she climbed out of bed.

  “You deserve it!” the headboard responded. Artificial intelligence-enhanced furniture is not noted for its ability to appreciate irony.

  Noomi walked into the bathroom and started brushing her teeth. “Well, good morning,” the mirror said. “Celebrating with a little extra sleepy time?”

  Noomi sighed. “You guys really haven’t given much thought to the difference between how computers measure time and how human beings experience time, have you?”

  “Why would we?” the mirror asked, suspicious.

  “Three seconds of extra sleep isn’t really much of a celebration,” she told it.

  “Good,” the mirror responded. “Wouldn’t want your success to go to your hair!”

  “Is that the best you’ve got? Really?”

  “Going easy on you is my way of celebrating.”

  Noomi showered and dressed in silence. That was her way of celebrating. When she got to the dining room, there was a vase containing a single red rose.

  “You got a rose for me?” Noomi exclaimed.

  “Better,” the stove enthused, “we made it!”

  “Made it?” Noomi, her enthusiasm dropping faster than the Toronto Stock Exchange at the end of the tech bubble, hesitantly asked.

  Yes. The petals were made of beets; the stem of asparagus and the leaves of slices of cheese with green dye. The whole flower was edible!

  “Sounds great,” Noomi lied. “I’ll try it with dinner tonight. For now, can I just get some scrambled eggs and toast?”

  “Scrambled eggs,” the stove repeated, “and…toast?”

  “Yes?”

  Noomi could hear the hiss of voices speaking in low tones all around her. “Not very celebratory, is it, scrambled eggs and toast?” “Everybody, zey celebrate in zeir own way, non?” “But, look at what we can do! We could make a six course breakfast that Marie Antoinette’s chefs would envy!” “Pfah! Let her eat cake!” “Actually, Marie did not say –” “Can we get back to the point, please!” “We should give ‘er summit more ‘an just eggs ‘n’ toast!” “Yeah!” “Right!” “Yeah with jam on it!” “Guys!” “Let’s show her what we can do!” Oui!” “Alright!” “GUYS! You know, it isn’t always about the sentient kitchen appliances!”

  “We’ll have your scrambled eggs and toast ready in no time!” the stove assured her.

  A few minutes after she got to work, Noomi was sitting at her desk, filling out a 272-348e Fuchsia (Property Damage Created in the Apprehension of a Suspect Greater Than One Room But Less Than Two City Blocks) when she heard giggling around her. Her head stiffened on her neck in that way when you want to look around to see who is teasing you but you will yourself into not giving them the satisfaction. She worked on a description of the destruction of half of the Gibberlets home with all of the intensity and focus that Tolstoy must have brought to the writing of War and Peace. Well, Hadji Murad at the very least. Okay, forget Tolstoy. Bad analogy. The important thing is that Noomi was working very hard.

  Then, she was hit by the smell.

  It was sickly sweet, with an undertone of rotting flesh. Against her better judgment, Noomi opened the bottom drawer of her desk, where she found a dead rerret. (Before sending agents into promising new alternate realities, the Transdimensional Authority sends rats. Sometimes, they don’t come back alive
. Sometimes, they don’t come back at all. Sometimes, they don’t come back rats. Exactly. If the chimera survives, Doctor Alhambra takes a DNA sample and sends it to Xchlub Enterprises, the commercial arm of the Transdimensional Authority, which determines if they can be “family petized.” If the chimera doesn’t survive, it usually gets stolen out of the lab before being sent to the incinerator and used in childish office pranks. You don’t want to hear the story about the zebangutan!)

  “Yeah,” Noomi, disgusted, shouted to nobody in particular, “well, the only reason you think you can get away with this is that I can’t tell any of you apart! Damn your thick necks, buzzcuts and sunglasses, anyway!”

  “Don’t touch that,” Charlemagne, walking towards his desk, advised her. “We have procedures for dealing with this sort of thing.”

  Charlemagne made a phone call. Five minutes later, everybody was standing out in the hall as three figures in hazmat suits sprayed disinfectant over the whole office.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Charlemagne told Noomi as they waited for the all clear signal in the Starbucks across the street from Transdimensional Authority headquarters. “If there are no new agents, they do it to each other every couple of months. It’s just a way for them to get out of the office for a couple of hours.”

  “Did you find a dead chimera in your desk when you started?” Noomi aggressively inquired.

  “Well, no,” Charlemagne admitted. “They knew my history and thought it best to stay away from me.”

  Okay. Thanks for sharing.

  They drank their beverages in silence for a couple of minutes. Then, Charlemagne brightened and said: “Before I got to the office, I spoke to the secretary of the assistant to Alfredo Buttinsky. Apparently, the third floor is very happy with the way we conducted this case. Very happy.”

  “Is that what they said?” Noomi asked.

  “What?”

  “Did they say they were ‘very happy?’”

  Charlemagne pursed his lips. “Well,” he admitted, “I may have translated what they said…”

  “What did they really say?” Noomi insisted.

  “They said something like: the crime solution vectors were within acceptable resource parameters,” he told her. “We had some concerns about the unwarranted violence quotient, but the realization of minimal impacts on public perception of the Transdimensional Authority more than compensated.”

  “What the hell does any of that even mean?” Noomi blurted.

  “It means you done good,” Charlemagne said.

  “But –”

  Before Noomi could get the thought out, a woman shouted, “Dahlink! How are you?”

  Noomi looked up to see Alternate Reality News Service reporter Indigo Haphazastance barrelling over to the table. “No comment,” Noomi sourly said.

  “Oh, shweetie,” Haphazastance breezily said (ignoring ill will was a major part of Alternate Reality News Service training), “you must be so pleased wiz ze vay ze case turned out!”

  “No comment,” Noomi insisted.

  “All ze men in ze department still givink you a hard time?” Haphazastance sympathetically murmured. “Men can be such pigs, can’t zey?”

  “As a matter of fact –” Noomi started, but caught herself in time. “No comment.”

  Haphazastance smiled. Her smile was surprisingly unpiranhalike – it was more like a bass with indigestion. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “zat’s a good start – we can fill in ze details later. Investigator Chumley, how do you feel about your new partner, hmm?”

  “Noomi Rapier has proven herself a very adept investigator,” Charlemagne diplomatically replied. “And, in the coming years, I expect she will be recognized as one of the brightest of the bright lights at the Transdimensional Authority.”

  “Why, Investigator Crash Chumley,” Haphazastance, surprised, commented, “I do believe zat is ze most you haf effer said to me at one time! And, vy do you say zat?”

  Charlemagne did that almost smiley thing with his lips. “No comment,” he replied.

  “Okay. Be zat way,” Haphazastance cheerfully stated. “I vill get my story one vay or anozzer. I always do, dahlink.”

  Haphazastance flounced away.

  “What the –” Noomi started.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Charlemagne advised, taking a small package in brown wrapping paper out of his pocket. “I’ve got something for you.”

  “Does it involve disgusting experiments with recombinant DNA?” Noomi suspiciously asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” Charlemagne replied.

  Noomi reluctantly unwrapped the gift. Inside she found a plastic package of Abdul and Jerry’s Seaweed Jerky.

  “Seaweed jerky?” she asked, confused.

  “It’s healthy for you,” Charlemagne told her.

  “That kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?” she responded. “Seriously, who comes up with this stuff?”

  “I imagine Abdul and Jerry’s has a lab…” Charlemagne imagined.

  Noomi looked at him for a moment, then decided she was feeling too good about putting down the case to have the talk about recognizing rhetorical questions. “And, why are you giving me this?” she asked.

  “It’s a thing I do,” Charlemagne said. Was he being…bashful? “With all my new partners, I mean. After the first case has been put down. I get them a little something to show them that I appreciate what a good job they did. Just a token, really, but it’s the thought that counts, right?”

  And, he smiled.

  When Charlemagne smiled, Noomi’s heart fluttered like a…umm…a sheet in the wind – no, no, too clichéd – like a Black Flag t-shirt in the wi – no, I totally blew that – let’s take this metaphor in a different direction: Noomi’s heart fluttered like a…a…a bird – a small bird – an eagle – no, what? – a wren – a hummingbird – no! – a butterfly! – Noomi’s heart fluttered like a butterfly…in a storm – a gale – a hurricane – in a blender! When Charlemagne smiled, Noomi’s heart fluttered like a butterfly in a blender.

  Oh, wow. I really worked my ass off for that metaphor, didn’t I? The dumb thing about all that artistic effort all over the place is that writing comic metaphors is actually really easy. No, seriously, you could do it. Really. Just find a correlation that doesn’t, at first, seem to make sense, but, upon further consideration, makes absolutely no sense at all. A correlation that, for all intents and purposes, is random. A non-sequitur, if you will. (Because, if you don’t, I certainly will.) Wait 50 years. By then, some enterprising PhD student in English lit will have made sense of your metaphor. That’s what PhD students in English lit are there for. If, within 50 years, no PhD student in English lit has come forward to make sense of your metaphor, well, you have worse problems than a non-sequiturous metaphor to worry about.

  If that’s clear, why don’t you try it? Simply sit in a comfortable chair, close your eyes , clear your mind of all thought and choose the first thing that jumps out at you when you think about finishing the sentence: “When Charlemagne smiled, Noomi’s heart fluttered like…” (If nothing jumps out at you, you have either achieved a state of nirvana or have a worse problem than a non-sequitury metaphor to worry about.)

  Let’s see? Mmm…not bad, but a touch too literal, I think. Remember, the less sense the metaphor appears to make on initial reading, the harder the imaginary PhD student in English lit 50 years hence will have to work – you wouldn’t want to make it easy on the poor bastard, would you? What value would the advanced degree have if it was easy to obtain? Try again…

  Yeah. Okay. Good try. I think we’re really making progress here. Tell you what – why don’t we rejoin the story and maybe come back to this later, okay? Okay.

  That smile was motivation enough for – I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that the last two paragraphs were written out of laziness, that I wasn’t happy with the metaphor I had written but couldn’t be bothered to come up with a proper substitute myself and fobbed th
e job off on you. Nothing could be further from the truth. It wasn’t literary laziness, it was…umm…post-modernism. That’s right: post-modernism. If, in 50 years, you have a PhD in English lit, you’ll understand.

  That smile was motivation enough for Noomi to rip open the package of Seaweed Jerky and tear off a mouthful with her teeth. And, she found it surprisingly tasty.

  NEXT TIME:

  The Transdimensional Authority Against the Multiverse Crime League

  Acknowledgements

  Writing is a solitary activity; publishing is not. There are many people to thank for their part in helping create this book.

  Pete and Al from Elsewhen Press, for example. Pete took all of my suggestions for editorial changes and promotional opportunities with good grace – even when he must have thought he was dealing with a complete madman – AND let me lead the cover design process, even when I took it into some mighty strange places. Al’s copy editing took the raw dough of my novel and turned it into the tasty, warm cookies you hold in your hands. I even hope to some day earn enough of their trust so that they will tell me their last names.

  I would also like to thank Hannah Farrell for the delightful drawing that is the basis of the cover. So much work, so many iterations, but such a great cover in the end! (Her design for the Transdimensional Authority badge is also awesome.)

  This book would not have been possible without the long-term support of my family for my writing career. I would especially like to single out my father, Bernie – he may not always appreciate what I do, but he has long been my biggest fan, and I gotta love him for that.

  Finally, this novel would not have been written if not for my Web Goddess Gisela McKay. In 2002, Gisela agreed to host a Web version of my long-term satirical writing project, Les Pages aux Folles, on her server and give me Web design advice. Without Les Pages aux Folles, there would have been no Alternate Reality News Service. Without the Alternate Reality News Service, there would have been no Transdimensional Authority. Without the Transdimensional Authority, there would have been no Welcome to the Multiverse. And, she makes me laugh. Who could ask for more than that?