Shrieveport, Yesterday. I have long wondered about the inadvertent catastrophe. The apocalypse brought on by bumbling.
Not the insane machismo of men who’d bring down the world like General Jack T. Ripper of Dr. Strangelove, or George W. Bush of the current administration.
But rather the accidental disaster. Think of Gerald Ford, for example. Here we have an example of the President of the United States who was such a klutz that his tripping down a flight of stairs created a legend.
What if he had tripped over the Big Red Button of Doom? Huh? You tell me that, sucka!
So, all I have to say is that we must always be careful about the accidental apocalypse.
Like this next story. This one is about Time Travel Delays, and what it’s like to be caught at a waystation beyond time.
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It all started tomorrow...
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Ichabod T. Thunderbird (his friends (if he had any) call him Icky (thus, not so many friends)) got a communiqué from his superiors.
“Icky!” screeched the little buzzing Annoy-o-Mat. It was about the size of a fly, and had buzzing wings like one, but in the center were a tiny camera and a speaker the diameter of a pencil eraser.
“Icky!” screeched the speaker again.
Icky was at that moment facedown, asleep in a pool of his own vomit. At the sound of the fly, he burbled a little into the goo, rolling his head over to the side. Unfortunately for him, that meant rolling right into the center of the puddle of puke.
“Mphlupmnhlm” he murmured into the vomitus.
“You little shit! Wake up!” buzzed the electric fly.
One of Icky’s eyes opened. This time he was lucky. It was the one that wasn’t submerged in bile.
“What?” he asked.
The fly buzzed. “You’re late. Get up. Look at yourself. You look like shit.”
Icky sat up slowly. Running his hands through his chestnut brown wild tangled hair, he finally faced the fly.
“What do you want?” he asked finally.
“You need to report to your superiors. There’s a situation.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
Icky smiled. “Good.”
With a quick swat of his hand, he squashed the fly.
Under his palm a weak buzzing sound could be heard for a moment, and then it fell silent.
He smiled. Then he looked down at his hand, frowned, and then turned it over.
“I’ll get yuuu…..zzz brffzz.” It exploded with a tiny puff of smoke.
Chapter 2
John Q. Bublic, Icky’s boss, stared down at the pneumatic dossier in front of him.
“I think” he finally spoke “that this has something to do with Neptune.”
Icky stood on the carpet in front of Bublic’s desk. Bublic was a huge burly man, with the largest temporal lobes you’ve ever seen. They called him a Bubblehead his forehead was so enlarged. It was from the treatments at the Institute of Evolution. Only the very richest could afford such treatments.
“Oh?” Icky finally replied.
“Yes. Neptune.”
Icky thought about it a minute.
“Well, I’ve been out that way before. Years ago. There’s not much out that far. It’s pretty cold.”
“Yes. And the predatory Zebraks that roam the plains of Neptune don’t help either. As I recall you had a nasty encounter with a Zebrak once.”
Icky looked away. “Yes. Maybe. Once. But that was in an earlier lifetime.”
“In any case, I need you out there. Now. Here’s the dossier.”
Icky took the folder in his hand, and glanced down at the title.
Computer Glitch Causes Time Travel Delays.
Oh Great!, he thought. It was going to be another one of those days.
Chapter 3
On board Flight 9874362 Outbound to Neptune’s Kraken City.
Icky flipped through the dossier in his lap, as the limitless view of the solar system flew by banally in the viewport next to him.
The dossier spoke directly into the implants in Icky’s mind.
“So you know all about Neptunian society?” asked the pleasant grandfatherly voice emanating from the dossier silently into Icky’s brain.
“Remind me,” Icky subvocalized, picked up by implants in his brain and throat.
“It is owned by a private corporation which colonized and then claimed independence from Earth. Once independent, it merely extended shares of stock to all the original workers that had fought with them. No separate governmental apparatus was ever created, as the corporation simply took over all such operations as a part of its own corporate structure.
“While the Corporation claims ownership of all real estate, in fact, some land has been purchased from them, and there are some independent settlements. There are also squatters on land owned by the Corporation, which cleans them out every so often.
“The Corporation is not evil, per se. It merely isn’t good. There is no free press. No political parties. No elections. But many own stock, so they have a small say in things. But those that own no stock are disenfranchised.”
Just then an ad came on the overhead Advertarium:
“Radioactive cream. For a new you!”
The Advertarium showed a picture of some people rubbing a lightly glowing cream on their scalp, followed by a graphic of their brains growing.
What Babies Want, a feature length documentary that I produced, co-wrote and edited, won the Documentary Special Recognition Award at the Boston International Film Festival this past weekend.
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