by Kerrie Noor
Impressing Bunnie
Kerrie Noor
Published by Kerrie Noor, 2017.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
IMPRESSING BUNNIE
First edition. November 23, 2017.
Copyright © 2017 Kerrie Noor.
Written by Kerrie Noor.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
“Hindsight is as elusive as a decent bra and as uncomfortable as a bad one.” —Bunnie
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“Hindsight is as elusive as a decent bra and as uncomfortable as a bad one.” —Bunnie
I STARED AT THE FERRY sailing into the distance; we had missed it by minutes. The others, in fear of “fading away” during a twenty-minute journey on the Clyde, made for the Aloha Coffee Shack while I made a start on my log. Pete was sitting beside me, legs crossed and looking scarily comfortable—like a secretary.
He scribbled the date on the top of his pad and looked up. “When you’re ready, ma’am.”
“This is not going to be pleasant, Pete,” I said.
“Ma’am.”
“I am not going to mince words,” I said.
“Feel free to mince ma’am.”
“I am not sure who I am writing to or how I can even send it.”
“Mere details,” said Pete. “Best to get it off your chest while in the comfort of a limo.”
“It?” I said.
“Definitely,” said Pete.
I stared at the couple in the car in front; would they have an it on their chests?
“My pen is poised, ma’am,” said Pete.
I began with a few introductory updates about the ol’ fella and Johnny while Pete flicked through a bundle of pens like it was a selection of earrings. I flashed him one of my I thought you said you were ready looks and began . . .
“I have worked my boots off for our planet, and for what?”
“Best not to start with a question,” said Pete, “it only confuses those in the know.”
“To amble through this testosterone-pumped planet in search of a boring man who does nothing but laminates about the intricacies of a woman?”
“I think you will find that it’s laments, ma’am,” said Pete.
“A man who is short yet tall, possibly an alcoholic, who may be at the end of some pickled egg of a journey across the wilds of Scotland . . .”
“Ma’am, it is a mere twenty-minute journey, and there will be coffee and snacks.”
“. . . and thanks to those in charge—who ‘know best’—I have been sent with a piece of equipment as useless as dentures on a puppet . . .”
“If ma’am could dictate just a tad slower,” said Pete, “I may be able to get the finer details of your said . . . lament.”
“. . . a piece of equipment that grows legs, buggers off, and explodes, leaving me dictating to a robot completely up himself.”
“Android, ma’am,” muttered Pete.
“l feel betrayed, led up the patio, and tossed over the side like a used tea bag. Beryl and her promises . . . I should have known better. Beryl is the plug you stand on: useful, necessary, but, when the wrong way up, as painful as Pete and his ramblings about chest relieving.”
Pete sighed. “Perhaps ma’am is still hung over from the ol’ fella’s tablet?”
“I feel fine,” I said. “A little shaky, but alert and clear minded.”
“A sugar rush is no easy thing,” said Pete, “and coming down can be as treacherous as one of Bunnie’s Let me top up your drinks.”
Ignoring Pete, I continued . . .
THE FIRST TIME I SAW Beryl was years ago, back in the days when egg popping was at the experimental stage. I was staring at the fish aquarium on the wall, wondering if fish felt pain, when Beryl’s voice boomed from nowhere.
“We’ll call her Mex,” she said. “It’s short and to the point—just like her nose.”
No one said anything; the room was so silent you could hear a fish gulp, even though she was trying to be funny.
“She’s the first of a few,” said Beryl.
“So you keep saying,” muttered one of the many scientists, or white coats, as they were known.
“And she needs a name that is something special.”
“A name like a blender,” said the white coat, causing a few to chuckle.
“Mex is new, crisp, and easy to spell,” said Beryl.
“And blends at five different speeds.”
“Yes, well, when she goes down in the great records of history,” said Beryl, “no one will be spelling her name wrong.”
“It’s a baby,” said another white coat. “Her future is as blank as a man’s appendage.”
The scientists fell about laughing.
“Very funny. It must be absolutely fabulous to have both brains and wit,” said Beryl.
“We do our best; why not crack a joke along with a code?”
Beryl let out one of her infamous who’s in charge coughs and continued. “As you well know, Mex is from the new batch of eggs. And it’s in her genes to be great—there are no comedians in her lineage.”
A few muttered as Beryl’s pale face loomed into view like a vertical sunrise. Her blonde hair was piled up high, like scoops of ice cream in a cone, with a tiny pink bow stuck in the middle. I watched her face block out my view of the fish and wondered if the bow would fall off if I tapped it. I stretched to touch.
Beryl tugged at my finger. “You’re the first,” she smiled, “but you’re not the last.”
I grabbed her finger and clung to the warm flesh until she pulled free and moved on to the next baby capsules—another from the same batch of eggs.
“You’re special,” she muttered to one.
“Ow, that was my finger—you can go back,” she said to another.
“Really, ma’am, give her a try. It’s not even been a week.”
“She needs more work,” said Beryl.
“But work at this stage . . . is it high on the agenda?”
The room fell silent as the scientist was ushered outside.
Five of us were incubated that summer, and we were, according to Her Leadership, so special that we remained in the incubation center and were not, like every other generation, farmed out to a grandmother. Instead, we were to watch, absorb, and ask. We grew up under the eyes of women in white coats clutching test tubes and looking under microscopes. And when we were old enough, we sat on the workbenches watching, questioning, and sometimes recording as they investigated, along with cracking the odd joke.
“See this?” said one white coat, stabbing at a Petri dish containing moldy Brie. “In a few days’ time, opening this will clear the room.”
“Wonderful.”
“Well, I could empty a building for days with this piece. Just one wave—one particle.”
“Marvelous.”
“Methinks you jest.”
“Jest, me? In a white coat—how could that be possible?”
It was amusing until I was about fourteen . . .
Beryl liked to burst into the laboratory like there was a crisis somewhere. She spent her time pulling at log books and telling the ladies in white to “answer our every question, as my girls are our future.”
Beryl loved looking over our records and telling us we were all special and had a place in the scheme of things—except for me. Apparently, I had as much insight as a pizza. While the other four tugged at her jacket with questions on energy replacement and egg popping and bribed her with polished apples and smiley faces, I remained aloof. I wa
nted to kick things into oblivion, especially her bow. Over the years I had watched that pink bow grow so large it took over the front of her beehive like a giant butterfly, and I dreamed of a kick so high I could remove it in one move. Nobody in the lab had a clue about my thoughts.
Back then, in Beryl’s pink-bow days, she was a Voted In apprentice and desperate to move up. She often talked of the leader’s chair and the room with a view and how one day she would be there with her picture on the “wall of leaders.”
“A picture is just a picture: easily removed,” said one of the prodigies.
“Not mine,” said Beryl. “I’ll be running things and making all the right decisions.”
“Right decisions are only right upon reflection,” said another prodigy.
Beryl threw her a look. “One day I will be in charge, basking in my glorious leadership skills and looking at the view from the top.”
“And what’s wrong with the view here?” said one of the white coats.
We looked outside at the slag heap by the bike shed, and for the first time, no one could think of a joke.
OF COURSE, WHEN LEGLESS rebelled, it all changed.
I was standing in Beryl’s office, at the time a full-fledged teenager, explaining why learning the ropes of energy replacement didn’t really “gel” for me. Beryl, a woman who had no idea about the art of gelling, was anything but impressed.
“I don’t care if energy replacement gels or not; the whole point of your existence is to benefit the planet, to speed up the process of science. You have been programmed to get excited about equations, chemistry, and sparks plugs, not to fail every exam like a dyslexic half-wit male.”
She tossed my last exam across the desk. “You are supposed to be a prodigy.”
I stared at the pink bow in her hair, now the size of a dinner plate. Just one kick . . .
“What has happened to you?” she asked.
Nothing. I have always been like this.
“Explain yourself.”
I looked at the woman who claimed to be on my side. “Your prodigies spell like spell checkers and multiply in minutes while I’m still trying to decipher letters from numbers.”
“And?”
“I just don’t think like that.”
“It is time you started.”
“I prefer to kick and things,” I muttered.
“So I heard.”
“Ma’am,” I said, “it was but a test tube . . . destined for the recycler.”
Beryl threw me one of her looks, sighed, and then, as she always did at such moments, made for the window and stared in silence. “There are only so many times one can stretch the ‘Science and Stuff’ budget for fumigating,” she finally muttered.
“They were laughing at me,” I said. “Shouldn’t I stand up for myself?”
“All scientists laugh.”
“That is exactly my point. I don’t. I am not like them; nothing is funny to me. I paused for effect. You understand?”
Beryl turned to me. “Yes, well, kicking and things were the downfall of men—have you learned nothing?”
“But fresh air and punching help . . . you should try it.”
“Enough. You are to go back, work on your sums, and build the next great spark plug. I will hear no more.”
Beryl’s face was flushed, and her bow was bobbing excessively as she stomped about the office. I knew that I had pushed her to the limit, that I was on my last leg—although she had been telling me that for ages.
I stared at Beryl’s aquarium. It was huge, taking up most of the wall, with overfed fish loitering about the bottom and belching.
“Trying to fit in is not easy when you are the butt of jokes,” I said, “especially when you don’t ever realize it’s a joke.”
Beryl had no intention of listening. Instead, she continued on with her never-ending “if you don’t get it together” sermon, and I was just waiting for the “this is your last chance” bit when an insistent knock interrupted Beryl, mid flow.
“Ma’am, we have an incident . . .”
I watched Beryl march out of the room, thank beetroot. Soon she was shouting .
“Who the pickled egg does he think he is?”
“It is a rebellion, ma’am—of sorts. Best to take things calmly.”
“Rebellion, for what? I don’t understand—they are fed and watered. What more do they want?”
Beryl left the building soon after that, my exam results forgotten and tossed in the bin and me spared another lecture.
Later that day, Beryl took to her penthouse pad. She threw every pink belt, shoe, jacket, and hair bow over the side of her minimalist patio and, as they cascaded to the ground, she shouted, “Vengeance is very fine or Legless is a bottle of wine.” No one is sure which, as they were too busy dodging the fallout—apparently a shoe from twenty stories plus lands like a missile—but when she appeared with her hair dyed black, everyone knew she meant business and Legless was done for.
A few days later, Beryl, sporting her new black look, appeared at my bunk bed.
“I think,” she said, “your talents are better suited to boots and training.”
The other girls looked up, rubbing their eyes, and gasped. Beryl, first thing in the morning, in the bunk room?
“Ma’am?” muttered one.
Beryl held up a hand to silence her.
For the first time ever, I felt important.
“I knew you were something special,” said Beryl. “But I never thought it would be kicking and the like.”
“Kicking?” muttered another of the girls.
“Yes.” Beryl turned to her other so-called prodigies. “Some use microscopes to change the world; others, like Mex here, use”—she patted my six-pack—“brawn.”
“Anyone can do sit-ups.”
“Yes, but how many can, with the precision of one kick, remove a Petri dish lid from its dish without one crack?”
“That’s stupid.”
“Not anymore,” said Beryl. She looked at me. “Pack your things and come with me.”
“MA’AM,” SAID PETE. “I think Bunnie has arrived.”
I had already spied her in the side mirror—waltzing across the car park clutching a couple of Aloha Coffee bags, and I had decided to continue with my dictation. Bunnie’s the sort of woman who is curious, un-shock-able, and good at keeping things to herself—so she tells me—and I kind of liked the idea of her hearing about my heroic deeds.
She tapped at the window; I unwound it and she poked her head inside.
“Roll and sausage, anyone?”
Pete jumped at the chance.
“Your story is very interesting,” Bunnie said, passing a roll to Pete.
I wondered how much she had heard and if I needed to repeat myself.
“I thought there was something funny about you, but I never thought it was because you came from a different planet—where a womb is a Petri dish.”
I looked at Bunnie. “It is more complicated than that.”
“You would never know—you look just like me.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I muttered.
“So human.”
“Well, yes,” I said, “but in a much more refined sort of way.”
Bunnie slid into the front with a no-need-to-be-rude huff as I told Pete that we might as well continue . . . because, as Pete put it, “the cat had escaped the bag.”
Bunnie chuckled into her sausage as Pete, still engrossed in the white package, began to unwrap with way too many ooh and aahs for a robot. I mean, a square sausage is hardly a sight to behold.
“The others will be back soon,” I said, “and there is more on my chest, so to speak—so if you are ready?”
“Take your time,” said Bunnie. “They decided on Chinese, you have all day to refine your log.”
“Chinese?”
“Bit like Indian, ma’am, but sweeter,” said Pete.
“Indian?”
“Yes, Sheila from Bombay,” said Bunnie, “
sweeter and easier on the digestion.”
“I see,” I said. “I forgot that digestion on Earth still has its problems . . .”
I caught a look from Bunnie in the rearview mirror and continued . . .
“It seemed that I was the first and the last man spy, and the ‘kicking and punching’ gene had started and ended with me—I had a lot to live up to. Of course, Beryl continued to try and control; her sermons never stopped. She told me not to get too full of myself. “You have a position of great honor,” she said. “An honor new and elusive, which no one must know of—your name must be but a mere whisper . . .”
“Great roll,” muttered Pete. “So juicy.”
“Absolutely, Pete, nothing refined about a delicious hot sausage, each bite is squelchier than the last . . .”
“Soon,” I said, “I became the woman with a whip no one looked at, who could silence a room with a couple of flicks and, of course, a look. But now, thanks to they who must be right, my whip has been folded away—incognito as a pair of underpants—as we search for a man who thinks the internet is bugged.”
“Which it is,” said Pete.
“Really? I thought he was paranoid,” said Bunnie, wiping the corners of her mouth.
“How did you think we learned about you on Earth,” I said, “in a library?”
“Well, actually, I never thought about it, but a library sounds like a great place to start.”
I explained to Bunnie how the men destroyed the libraries years ago when they were going under—losing control. “They bombed the libraries with flour bombs,” I said, “and threw the books onto barbeques wearing plastic aprons with ‘just for a laugh’ slashed across their stomachs.”
“The plastic aprons were never proven,” said Pete.
“I thought the scientists had all the laughter genes,” said Bunnie.
“The laughter gene has spread further than that,” said Pete. “Some of us have found humor in your so-called sitcoms.”
I told Pete to not start with the sitcoms as I caught Bunnie’s eyes yet again in the rearview mirror. “We’re not big on emotion where I come from; in fact, watching a child cry is enough to turn my stomach, and as for laughter, that reminds me of the early years in the lab . . .”
