John stood up slowly, his mouth agape in astonishment.
“Well this is not what I expected,” he said calmly over the noise of the monkeys.
One dropped off the ceiling and landed in Perla’s hair. She screeched and clawed at her head, and Kaia could see that Clyde was watching his mother like a hawk.
Then, Quin’s voice boomed over the madness: “QUIET.”
It was an order which felt as if it was not for her or the monkeys or anyone in particular, but for the universe as a whole. Kaia was certain that all living things everywhere were closing their mouths, muffling their strings, or turning down the volume of whatever they used to communicate. The monkeys chattered for a moment, but slowly the room fell into a deadly silence, and the writhing mass of fur became still.
Then, from the crowd rose one monkey that was slightly larger than the rest. He was hovering in the air, which Kaia found very odd and a little disturbing.
“I am Emperor Tamarin,” the monkey proclaimed. “And I am here to take over Earth!” He began to laugh horrifically, a sound that reminded Kaia of a spoon in a blender.
“Well, I hate to disappoint you,” John replied. “But this is not Earth, and we can definitely take you if you’re in the mood for a fight.”
The monkey laughed harder. “You know not our strength! If you repent of your arrogance now, we might spare your life.”
John turned to the woman with brown hair. “Pardon me if I’m stepping on your toes,” he said quietly, and then turned back to the monkey and stated clearly: “Two seven one one eight zero seven bravo.”
The monkey’s eyes widened. “No,” it whispered. “No... no...” BEEP.
Its head tilted forward and it appeared to go to sleep. The next moment, all of the other monkeys in the room did the same. It was a strange scene, Kaia thought. Hundreds of sleeping – robot? – monkeys, with heads tilted down and eyes closed, alive, and yet not alive.
“An override?” the woman asked, shocked.
John shrugged. “As it turns out, Lake Oliphant programmed overrides into all of his robots, but decided not to tell anyone.”
“How do you know, then?” she demanded.
“If I tell you, will you promise not to rat me out?”
The woman gave him a look that could melt a steel planet floating in a time lock and surrounded by the meanest robot aliens in the universe.
“Okay, okay,” he said sheepishly, running his fingers through his hair and straightening his tie. “I stole his journal from a private collection. But I put it back, I promise! And I will write the override down for you before you leave.”
Kaia glanced around the room, feeling confused. It appeared she was not the only one. Perla stood with her arms crossed and hair mussed from the robot monkey attack, looking annoyed; Maxwell was sitting waist deep in monkeys with a confused expression; Quin looked as if he was wound as tightly as a spring; and John was grinning like it was his birthday.
“Now that we’ve gotten that sorted out,” he said, “why don’t we see if we can figure out what’s going on here?”
Hazel was stunned. What had just happened? Her shop, swarming with an infestation of robot monkeys, had suddenly materialized around the man she had been remembering, who had essentially ordered the monkeys to shut down. And they had shut down. Just like that. Now she was surrounded by a sea of strangers and dead robots. She closed her eyes and pinched herself, but she didn’t wake up.
“Hazel,” John said, turning to face her. “I’m really sorry to drag you into this, but it’s so good to see you!” He air kissed around her cheeks. “And Holland!” He turned to face the Admiral. “I’m sorry about our awkward meeting, but you are a legend and I consider it an honor to have met you! My name is John. When is it in your timeline?”
“I just woke up,” Holland replied stonily, probably still irritated about not knowing the override code for her own shipbot. “What is going on here?”
“Well, I have to admit, I am a bit surprised that Hazel ended up on your ship, and I’m really sorry about that. Right now we’re just in the middle of a hostage situation and I needed the element of surprise… which, I must say, you provided quite well.”
“What is the meaning of this?” a woman in a black dress screamed, stomping forward. “Where is my Door?”
“Why, you’re standing in it, Perla,” John replied. “Look around you! Unfortunately, for it to work I will have to recalibrate it to your frequency, so I’m afraid you’ll have to give me just a few more minutes.”
“Bad Face,” Perla shouted.
A lump in the middle of the monkeys stirred and then fell quiet.
“Lord J,” she said a little more quietly. No one answered. Hazel looked around but didn’t see anyone move.
“Maxwell,” Perla said, after a pregnant pause.
From the corner, a loud hum began to sound, increasing in volume until it became a shriek. Then, from a heap of monkeys, a figure barreled towards Holland. She put up her hands to defend herself, but his momentum was too much and they toppled over and disappeared under the monkeys.
“Quin,” John stated, almost as if he were making an unspoken request.
A huge black man stepped forward, put one hand into the squirming blanket of fur, and pulled out a wriggling, writhing little man whose face was angry. He lashed out, but the black man was too strong and had him quickly subdued.
“You!” the man shouted. “It’s you!”
“What are you talking about?” Holland asked, picking herself up off the ground and dusting off her clothes. “What about me?”
“You’re the one in the picture! You’re her! You’re the one that ruined my life! If it weren’t for you, he never would have picked him over me!” The man spit in John’s direction.
“Okay, Maxwell,” John said, holding up his hands. “I’d like to pause everything right now and figure out what exactly is going on in your head. You’ve been stalking me for years – don’t think I haven’t noticed. And now, out of the blue, you break into my office to steal what?”
“The pencil,” Maxwell hissed. “The only reason you succeeded and I failed – unfair favouritism!”
“You really think that’s the reason you weren’t successful?” John asked.
Quin cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow. Hazel thought that must be a message of some sort – maybe, ‘please explain.’
John nodded an acknowledgement to Quin. “Okay,” he said, “so when we were kids in the orphanage, we got called up for a meet and greet. This gentleman called me cute and said I reminded him of his son. Then he gave me a pencil, told me it was magic, and told me to work hard and be successful. Then he donated a bunch of money and left.”
“And I,” Maxwell growled, “what did I get? Nothing! My whole life, all I wanted was to touch the pencil, to hold it, to learn to wield its power!”
“Don’t you think you’re too old for magic pencils?” John asked.
“Never!” Maxwell roared. “Maddy—” he pointed at John, “—get him!”
“Maxwell,” Perla interjected harshly. “Maddy isn’t real. She never was, never has been, never will be.”
Hazel frowned. She felt like she had been dumped in the middle of a story, with no clue which direction was the beginning and which was the end. Clearly there was a much bigger issue going on here – but how had she ended up in the middle of it?
Maxwell began to thrash and spit in Perla’s direction. “How dare you! How dare you say such things about my Maddy! She is the most beautiful, intelligent—” Quin dropped him and he took off towards Perla. “—wonderful, amazing, sweet, funny—”
Then everything was a haze of fur and limbs and hate as Maxwell kicked and clawed his way through the sea of monkeys towards his half-sister.
Clyde watched with a dazed indifference as everything went to hell and came back again, and then took a return trip. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to tell the story of his first day at work because no one would bel
ieve him. The strangest part was that no matter how strange and chaotic everything was, all he could see was his mother. She was in the center of the commotion, making a fuss, demanding things be her way – and he realized that she had always been this way. In restaurants, the food was never good enough. At playgrounds, the other kids were always the ones being naughty. At school, it was unacceptable for teachers to give him anything lower than a B. And now, he was seeing this same behavior, but on a much larger scale. She was no longer an over-protective mother ensuring that life was perfect for her son. She was now an over-protective mother who was also a thief, a liar, and possibly a murderer.
He watched as Quin dropped Uncle Max, who immediately made a beeline for his mother. It was Ivanna the Bard who had said, “Your parent is she who gave you life and he who kept you going. In all you do honor this gift.” He nodded. It was as if he could hear the great teacher speaking directly to him, through all the noise, chaos, and insanity that surrounded him.
Without another moment’s hesitation he stepped forward and plowed one fist through Maxwell’s nose. Maxwell’s rapid momentum was interrupted and he fell sideways, clutching at his nose and crying profusely.
“You hurt Maddy!” he yelled and then broke into sobs.
“Oh, Clyde!” his mother gasped, turning to look at him. “You are a wonderful son.”
Clyde turned towards Quin and held up his hand; Quin tossed him a pair of handcuffs.
“You’re under arrest, Mom,” he said quietly. “Everything you say can and will be used against you, and even though I’m not a licensed police officer, I will testify against you in court.”
Her mouth dropped open as he snapped on the handcuffs and guided her through the quagmire of monkeys towards the Door.
“Uh, wait a second,” John called. “I think we’ve moved again.”
Clyde looked out the window of the little tourist shop. He saw metal walls, a sign proclaiming that only authorized personnel were allowed outside, and not a whole lot else.
John turned to look at the red-haired woman he called Hazel.
Hazel muttered in a foreign language.
“Don’t apologize, Hazel,” John said kindly.
Hazel said something else.
“Let me see it!” John reached out and took the monkey that she had been holding around her neck. He fiddled with it for a moment and then it began to beep.
“Sorry,” it said. “My translation monkey doesn’t work anymore.”
“Bit of a delayed reaction,” John said. “But that should help.”
“Thanks!” the monkey repeated after Hazel.
“You should probably get out of the shop,” John said to Holland. “Then we’ll deal with this so you can get back to dealing with your lost passengers.” A serious look crossed his features. “I am very sorry for your loss.”
“How did you know about that?” she demanded.
John only shrugged.
“Well, if you won’t tell me that, at least tell me what that man over there has got against me. I’ve been asleep for six hundred years!”
“Ah, yes! I believe your late husband, Johann, donated money to various orphanages all over Sagitta, including mine. He was the one that gave me the magic pencil.”
Holland still had a confused expression on her face, and Clyde agreed with it.
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s a madman.” John shrugged. “He thought magic was real. He thought the magic pencil made me successful. He’s been trying to get that pencil from me since we were kids. I just didn’t realize that the pencil was still the issue – I thought he had something else that he was mad at me about.”
Holland was nodding. “So my husband gave you a pencil… was it because you were named John?”
John nodded.
“Yeah, that was our son’s name. He gave you a pencil and told you it was magic. That sounds like him.” Holland reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears. “So let me get this straight. My husband gave you this ‘magic’ pencil, and this gentleman, Maxwell, saw him give it to you, thought it was really magic, and has been tracking it down ever since.” Her face took on an expression of disbelief.
“That’s about it,” John replied, a grin spreading across his features. “I should probably just give it to him.”
“He stole it,” Quin said.
“Oh, the one in the frame? That’s not the real one. I hid the real one in my sentimental box. That one was just to remind me that someone else paid for my education. Although I guess all that matters is that he believes it was the real one.”
A muffled moan came from the huddled, bleeding heap named Maxwell.
“Well, Admiral Holland Hawkings,” John said in a tone of finality. “It has been a pleasure to meet you.”
“And you, sir,” she replied, reaching out to shake his hand. “I will take just Squeak – or Emperor Tamarin, as he apparently likes to be called – since he is our real shipbot. I will have a technician run virus software and he should be fine. The rest of the monkeys are all yours. I hope you enjoy them.” She turned to face Hazel. “It was a strange meeting.”
Hazel nodded. “It was,” the monotone voice of the monkey said.
“Please, if you can avoid it, don’t bring your ship back to mine. It causes electrical problems.”
“I won’t.” Hazel reached out her hand.
Holland shook it and then turned and left the shop.
“Take us home,” John said, “or, I mean, back to the Globe if you please. Just think ‘Globe’ and ‘Pomegranate City.’“
Without so much a sensation of movement, Clyde looked out the windows of the shop, and there they were: home.
He reached down unceremoniously, grasped his mother’s arm, and led her from the shop.
Kaia’s brain went wild as soon as John said, “Admiral Holland Hawkings.” She knew who that was – the famous Admiral who led the Lonely Whelk, as the tales went, through a storm of alien fighter ships and emerged on the other side, alive. She had lost a large percentage of her passengers, but the ship survived due to the diligence of her brother. Then she rose from a deep slumber and piloted the ship, her crew, and her passengers to the Ocean Planet, where they settled down and colonized a world by hand for the first time in the history of Sagittan civilization. They created man-made islands across the waters, terraformed massive icebergs, and raised several generations of children before they lost contact.
But the most amazing part was that Kaia knew all this. She knew what was going to happen to Admiral Hawkings. Holland had said that she had just woken up, and yet... Kaia shook her head, the gears spinning faster and faster. John had done it – the crazy genius had done it! He had built a time-traveling Door! It wasn’t just a Door that moved itself through space. It wasn’t just a Door that could do amazing and incredible things. It wasn’t just a Door that seemed to defy all mathematical probability. It was real and it could travel in time.
When her thoughts calmed enough for her to realize what was going on around her, Hawkings was gone and Clyde was guiding his mother out of the shop. She knew for sure that they were back in Pomegranate City when security guards in black sunglasses began to stream into the room to escort the thieves to their new accommodations and pick up the robotic monkeys littering the floor.
She looked up at John, who was frowning at her.
“You... you...” she stuttered. “You... you...”
The biggest grin she had ever seen spread across his face and spilled out into the air around him. His mouth, his eyes, even his ears were grinning. He put one finger up to his lips.
“Shhh,” he said. “It’s a secret.”
Kaia nodded, mouth still agape, and watched as he turned away to deal with the situation at hand.
*******
The next several hours passed in a whirlwind of excitement. Kaia followed John around as things seemed to resolve themselves, if chaotically. First, Quin locked up Perla, Maxwell, Bad Face, and Lord J in the s
ecurity cells. Then he took Clyde, and the two of them set about canceling the lockdown. Rock and the police arrived, and, between them and the rest of Globe security, they had the entire building cordoned off in a matter of minutes, labeling it a crime scene.
Kaia was questioned, but she barely heard what they asked her. The bright lights, loud noises, and utter chaos were impacting her ability to process information, until finally the police officer said she could answer the questions tomorrow. John was bouncing around as if it were his birthday, but this seemed to be his typical reaction to life in general, and Kaia figured she had probably better get used to it. Hazel walked around in a daze with the monkey around her neck. She got questioned too, but John told them she was just a bystander and then the police left her alone.
Clearly, John wanted to keep this new Door a secret. Apparently the world wasn’t ready for time travel. She imagined it was for this reason that she found herself being carefully tucked away by John in a closet with Hazel.
“Hi,” she said quietly. The darkness of the closet was comforting, and it was good to get away from all of those people, but she still wished she could be alone.
“Hi,” Hazel replied – or at least that was how the monkey interpreted it. “What’s happening?” she asked.
“John doesn’t want them to ask us questions,” Kaia answered, “I guess because we know too much.”
Hazel nodded. “What was your name?”
“I’m Kaia, John’s intern. How can you understand what I’m saying when the monkey doesn’t repeat it?”
“John gave me translation stones that I put in my ears.” Hazel gestured towards one of her ears, but Kaia couldn’t see anything.
“I didn’t know that technology existed,” Kaia said.
“I didn’t either.” Hazel grinned. “So can I ask – what exactly do I know too much about?”
“Your ship can travel in time,” Kaia replied. Hazel’s eyes widened until they were so big that Kaia thought she could see all the way to Hazel’s optic nerve and sclera if she had the right kind of light.
The Lonely Whelk Page 17
