by Duncan Ball
‘Thank goodness you’re here,’ Hamish said to Selby. ‘Things are getting very heated.’
‘But — but, it is you!’ Selby said. ‘And you’re a talking dog, too. Have you known how to talk all along and been keeping it a secret?’
Hamish just looked at Selby.
‘Mr Mayor, will you please be serious?’ Hamish said.
‘But I have to talk to you about something important.’
‘Later. We have to talk about this leash law first.’
‘Leash law?’ Selby said. ‘Is this making us keep our pets, I mean, our people, on leashes all the time the way they do in the city?’
‘That’s right!’ a voice from the front row of the audience boomed. ‘We need a leash law!’
‘And who are you?’ Selby asked.
‘You know perfectly well who I am, Mr Mayor,’ the dog said. ‘I’m Biff, the Chief of Police.’
‘But what about Sergeant Short and Constable Long?’ Selby said.
‘Don’t you worry about them,’ Biff said. ‘I keep them on leashes whenever I take them out of the police station. And when they do their business, I clean up after them.’
‘But that’s crazy,’ Selby said. ‘I just roam around on my own and do my business wherever I want.’
The hall burst into laughter. All the dogs were laughing and pointing at Selby.
‘What’s so funny?’
Hamish leant over and whispered in Selby’s ear.
‘I think you meant to say that your people do their business wherever they want,’ he said. ‘You said that you did.’
‘Mr Mayor,’ Biff said, ‘if we could be serious for a moment, I’d just like to say that we need a leash law in this town and we need it now!’
The whole audience burst into applause.
‘Now hang on,’ Selby said. ‘I’m the mayor of this town and I’m against a leash law.’
‘And look at your people!’ Biff said, pointing to Dr and Mrs Trifle who were running back and forth at the front of the hall. ‘They’re out of control.’
‘They are not! Dr Trifle! Mrs Trifle! Stop!’ Selby said, pointing to the Trifles. The two of them stopped and looked up at Selby. ‘Now sit,’ Selby added quietly. And the Trifles sat. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘You don’t need a leash to control a person. I mean do we love our … our people? Of course we do. Do we want to keep them in prison? No, of course we don’t.’
Selby let his voice rise and fall as he spoke. He could feel the excitement of having everyone’s attention. On and on he spoke about freedom, about the rights of the person, about not picking up poo.
‘So to conclude,’ he said. ‘Do we want our people to enjoy the freedom that we have? Or do we want them to be our slaves? I rest my case.’
There was a roar of applause from everyone except the Chief of Police.
‘Now if any of you are still silly enough to want this leash law,’ Selby said. ‘Go ahead, raise your hand — I mean paw.’
A few paws went up slowly but then came down. Everyone’s except Biff’s.
‘The law is defeated,’ Selby said. ‘Meeting dismissed.’
‘That was a great speech,’ Hamish said later. ‘Now what was it you wanted to talk to me about?’
‘I’m not sure how to say this,’ Selby said. ‘But this morning I was a pet.’
‘A pet? You’re a dog not a pet. The Trifles are your pets. They’re human beings.’
‘But I’m pretty sure it used to be the other way around,’ Selby said.
‘Listen, Selby, I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure,’ Hamish said, ‘but now you’ve completely flipped.’
Selby drove the Trifles home. He reached for the Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits but then stopped.
‘You don’t want this rubbish,’ he said to the Trifles. ‘Let’s get you some yummy food. I’m in charge now. I can do anything I want.’
Selby rang The Spicy Onion Restaurant and ordered peanut prawns.
‘Shall we put this on your account, Mr Mayor?’ the voice on the other end of the phone said.
‘On my account? Yes. And send them over as soon as possible,’ Selby said. ‘I’m starving.’
Within minutes the delivery-dog from The Spicy Onion Restaurant was there with the prawns.
‘Go for your lives,’ Selby said, filling the Trifles’ bowl.
Dr and Mrs Trifle bent down and sniffed the prawns and then looked up at Selby.
‘Don’t tell me you don’t like them,’ Selby said. ‘Come on, they’re delicious. At least lick one.’
But it was no use. Selby tipped the prawns out and filled the bowl with Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits.
‘So you like those awful things,’ he said. ‘Well, I guess I get to eat all the prawns.’
Selby let the Trifles out and then turned on the TV to see Roxanna the Sorcerer.
‘Now I can just take it easy,’ he thought. ‘I don’t have to worry about getting sprung or anything. I don’t know how it happened but I love it! I’m the boss! I’m the mayor of Bogusville! I can do anything I want! I’m the king!’
The End
Author’s note: Actually it isn’t really the end.
The story continues in the next chapter.
Paw note: This is confusing because my real name isn’t ‘Selby'. The person who rang me called me by my real name but Duncan doesn’t know my real name so he had to put ‘Selby’ because that’s the name I use when I ring him. (Maybe that’s more confusing.)
S
SELBY UNFLIPS
(Continued from the previous chapter)
The TV program had just started when Selby heard a terrible row in the front yard. He opened the door to see Aunt Jetty snapping and growling at Dr and Mrs Trifle. Nearby were Willy and Billy.
‘Stop it, you!’ Selby yelled. ‘Get out of it! Hey! Shoo!’
Aunt Jetty bared her teeth and growled. Willy and Billy did the same.
‘Steady on,’ Selby said, as he backed towards the door. ‘Don’t you dare bite me.’
Dr and Mrs Trifle ran into the house. Just then Aunt Jetty and her boys lunged at Selby and he shot into the house, slamming the door behind him.
‘They could have killed me!’ Selby panted.
‘I’ll fix them.’
Selby grabbed the phone and rang the police station.
‘Is that you, Biff?’ he said.
‘Oh, so it’s you, Mr Mayor. Now what can I do for you?’
‘I’ve got a problem,’ Selby said. ‘There are three stray people in my front yard.’
‘This town is full of stray people,’ the police dog said. ‘Not much I can do about it if we don’t have a leash law.’
‘Okay, so I was wrong,’ Selby said. ‘You’ve got to help me.’
‘Well, I’d like to help,’ the police dog said, ‘but I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next open council meeting in June. Then you can give another one of those fancy speeches and see if the dogs will go for the leash laws.’
Selby looked out at Aunt Jetty and her sons who were now ripping out Mrs Trifle’s new plants.
‘But they’re destroying my yard,’ Selby said. ‘And they attacked me.’
‘Have you tried ringing their owners?’
‘They don’t have an owner ever since Crusher died.’
‘Poor old Crush,’ the police dog said. ‘He was a great bloke.’
‘Aunt Jetty just ripped out my mailbox! She’s destroying my property,’ Selby said. ‘Can’t you get the dog — I mean, people — catcher over here?’
‘You could do that yourself, Mr Mayor. The only problem is that we don’t have a people-catcher. You sacked him in your last cutbacks.’
‘I did that?’
As Willy and Billy were beating the Trifles’ car with their wizard clubs, Selby quickly said goodbye to the police dog and rang the council office.
‘This is Mayor Trifle here — Mayor Selby Trifle. Who’s this?’
‘It’s Fifi, sir,’ the voice said.
&nb
sp; ‘Okay, Fifi. Listen up and listen good. I want you to ring the people-catcher and tell him that he’s hired again. Then send him over here. I’ve got people problems.’
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Fifi said. ‘He won’t come back. He was angry because of all the other people you sacked.’
‘This is ridiculous!’ Selby said. ‘I’m the mayor and I’m the boss. Ring everyone and tell them they’ve got their jobs back.’
‘But we don’t have enough money to pay them. That’s why you let them go.’
‘Listen, Feef,’ Selby said. ‘Get some more money. Raise the rates. Put up “No Parking” signs everywhere and give people parking tickets. Sell the school. Do whatever it takes.’
‘Yes, sir!’ Fifi said. ‘By the way, I need to take tomorrow off because my boyfriend is going away and —’
‘No time off,’ Selby said. ‘And ring me when there’s some money. Goodbye.’
Click.
‘Time off,’ Selby thought. ‘If I give her time off then everyone’s going to want time off. I had no idea being the top dog was going to be this tricky. Oh, well, now to watch some more of Roxanna the Sorcerer.‘
Brrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiing.
This time someone asked him if he would give a talk to all the puppies at the Bogusville Primary School library.
‘I’d love to,’ Selby said. ‘That sounds like fun.’
And would he judge a fashion show at the Bogusville Bijou Theatre?
‘Sure, okay,’ Selby said.
And would he give the speech at the Flower Show?
‘Oh, I guess so,’ Selby sighed.
And would he lead the volunteers in picking up the rubbish along Bogusville Creek?
‘I’d love to,’ Selby said. ‘But I have a bit of a bad back.’
‘The TV cameras will be there to show how the mayor isn’t afraid to get his paws dirty,’ he was told. ‘Of course if you don’t want to get reelected …’
‘Oh, all right,’ Selby said.
The next day, Selby came home from the council exhausted. Everyone had been angry. He’d had to have the “No Parking” signs taken down and the “For Sale” sign removed from the school.
‘Can’t we just have a sausage sizzle and raise the money to run the council that way?’ he’d asked.
‘That’s a good idea,’ Fifi answered. ‘If we can sell ten thousand of them for one hundred dollars each it should get us through the next month.’
‘How did Mrs Trifle ever do this job?’ he asked.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Never mind.’
Selby came home that day with folders of papers to read and things to sign under his arms. And when he went into the lounge room to watch TV, he found the letters he’d opened the day before spread all around the floor and thoroughly chewed.
‘Oh, Dr and Mrs Trifle,’ he sighed, as the two people lay on the carpet looking up at him. ‘I do love you. I know you love me too. So why did you have to do this to me?’
Selby started gathering up the bits and pieces of paper.
‘Bills, bills, bills,’ he said. ‘I guess I’ve got to pay them or something. Where’s that chequebook the Trifles used to use? Now where is it? I wonder how it works.’
Day after day, Selby went to the council and came back exhausted, only to have to pay bills and write letters and answer the telephone. And when he wasn’t doing that he was mowing the lawn or getting the car fixed or painting the house or cleaning the leaves out of the swimming pool.
One evening he was blobbing in front of the TV again. He’d watched Roxanna but at the end he couldn’t remember what it had been about. He looked over at the Trifles, lying next to one another by the heater.
‘I don’t want to be the boss anymore,’ he said. ‘You guys have it so good when all I do is work, work, work. Why can’t I be a pet again?’
Selby was about to turn off the TV and go to bed when suddenly he saw that face — the face of the dog-genius.
‘In tonight’s program,’ the announcer said, ‘we will be speaking to Professor Barking about parallel universes. Tell us, Professor, what is a parallel universe?’
Selby took his paw off the TV controls.
‘It’s a whole other universe,’ the dog-genius said, ‘with space and time and maybe even worlds filled with green slime and two-headed monsters.’
‘Does such a thing really exist?’
‘Yes, I think so. I believe there are lots and lots of parallel universes and that some of them are right here around us but we can’t get to them or even see into them. And they can’t see into our universe. There might even be one that’s exactly like ours. Two dogs might be sitting here having this exact same discussion.’
‘Is this possible?’
‘Absolutely,’ the wise dog said. ‘Think of our universe as being just one bubble on an infinitely long string with lots of bubbles on it. All these bubbles — these universes — wobble through the eleventh dimension fluctuating in a sea of nothing.’
‘A sea of nothing,’ Selby thought. ‘Bubbles on strings. I love to listen to this stuff. I can’t understand a word of it but I just love to let the words pour over me. It’s like listening to a beautiful poem.’
‘The things that interest me,’ the professor said, ‘is that there may be a parallel universe just like ours — only slightly different.’
‘Slightly different? In what way?’
‘Well, the beings having our conversation might not be dogs. They might be human beings, for example.’
>‘Humans actually talking?!’ the announcer laughed. ‘That’s amazing!’
As the wise dog talked, Selby’s jaw dropped.
‘That’s it!’ Selby cried, waking up the Trifles. ‘I’m in a parallel universe! This isn’t the universe I used to be in at all! But how did I get here?’
Selby thought as hard as he’d ever thought before. He thought back to being in the workroom. Dr Trifle was out and Selby had hopped up on the workbench to look at the Potato Peel Replacer.
‘Hmmm,’ he remembered hmmming, ‘I wonder if it’s ready to work now?’
Selby had picked up a peeled potato and put it into the PPR. Then, before he could pull his hand out, he’d accidentally hit the ON switch.
‘Yowch!’ he had cried.
The next thing Selby knew he was on the telephone to Hamish …
‘I’ve got to see Dr Barking!’ Selby shouted. ‘Come on, Dr and Mrs Trifle, into the car. We have work to do.’
Selby drove and drove and drove, through the night and then through half the next day till he finally reached the university. He opened the boot of the car and took out the PPR.
‘Follow me,’ he said to the Trifles.
In a minute, Selby was placing the machine onto a low bench in a laboratory. A surprised Professor Barking put down the sandwich he was eating and wheeled his wheelchair around to have a better look at it.>
‘Who are you and what in heaven’s name is that?’ the dog-genius asked, wheeling his wheelchair over to Selby.
‘My name is Selby and that’s a PPR,’ Selby said. ‘A Potato Peel Replacer.’
‘A Potato Peel Replacer? What a ridiculous invention. What does it do?’
‘Do you know when you peel too many potatoes and then you wish you hadn’t? Never mind. Let me tell you what happened to me about a month ago.’
As Selby talked, he saw a smile come to the professor’s lips. In no time at all the wise dog was grinning from ear to ear.
>‘Ahah!’ the professor said, finally. ‘You flipped. That’s what you did.’
‘You bet I did,’ Selby said. ‘I thought I’d gone bonkers.’
‘No,’ the professor said. ‘You flipped out of your universe and into ours. And this PPR is what flipped you. It’s hard to believe that it was invented by a person,’ the professor said, looking over at Dr Trifle who was eating the sandwich from the professor’s desk. ‘He got the shape of the chamber just right. Then you put your paw in it and t
urned the thing on causing gammaray bursters to make a hole in the membrane of your universe which flipped you into ours.’
Selby nodded.
‘You see, according to M-Theory,’ the professor went on, ‘there are ten dimensions of space and one of time. The universe you were in is probably the quantum parallel one to ours, maybe the next higher vibration on the super-string.’
Selby nodded again.
‘Do you understand the implications of this?’ the professor said excitedly. ‘It means that Plank energy could be a constant in hyper-universes?’
Selby nodded and then shook his head.
>‘You don’t? Then why did you nod?’
‘Because I didn’t want you to think I was stupid,’ Selby explained. ‘Oh, woe, right now I just want to go back to my universe.’
‘Don’t you like it here?’
‘No. I just want to be a pet again.’
‘But you weren’t just a pet. You said that you were the only talking dog in a place called Australia and, perhaps, the world. If you were the only talking, feeling, thinking dog then maybe you didn’t belong there either. Maybe you’d already been flipped before.’
‘Professor Barking,’ Selby said, ‘I just want to go home. To Bogusville. To the Trifles. I want them to be the bosses again.’
‘Have you tried putting a potato in the PPR and then putting in your paw and turning it on again?’
‘You mean it might be that easy?’
‘It’s worth a try.’
‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ Selby said. ‘Oh, Professor, thank you so much.’
Selby peeled a potato he’d brought with him and put it in the chamber of the machine. Then he put his paw in it and held his breath as the professor turned on the machine.
No one moved for the longest time.
‘It didn’t work,’ the professor said, finally. ‘Nothing happened.’
Dr Trifle looked down at the peeled potato in the chamber.
‘That’s strange,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it worked before.’
