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Charles Copeland Copyright © 2008 Charles Copeland All Rights Reserved The right of Charles Copeland to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any and all means of information storage, including but not limited to retrieval systems or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author, except for the quotation of brief passages for purposes of criticism or education of others. Any question regarding Copyright for this work should be referred to the author by email through Charles@CharlesCopeland.com. First Edition Printed in the United States of America First published in the CharlesCopeland.com. United States of America in 2008 by
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Part One
Stony von Hellemond peeked out the front door of his paper palace and strode to the edge of the shelf. “Go Red Sox!” he shouted, as if a ballgame was actually underway. It was four days until the new year; no Red Sox games would be played for another three months. The shelf on which the paper house sat was part of a bookshelf built into the wall of Nolan Dalton’s remodeled Victorian house. It was in what was supposed to be Nolan’s “writing room”, in the converted attic. There were ten levels of bookshelves in all: most held great volumes of war books; two housed a library of Stephen King novels; but the top shelf — the penthouse — was the foundation for Stony’s house, and from it stretched a great expanse of eighteen inches of plywood on which sat Alphonse Lamonda’s personal palace, his “cathedral” devoted to all things baseball. Stony spoke as if sounding a rally cry, and he stared directly at Al’s palace.
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5 “Go Red Sox!” — more as if claiming the territory below and abroad than yelling to hear his own voice. Six feet away, through windows cut in Al’s paper palace, one could see baseballs levitating in mid-air like snowballs suspended in-flight — until Stony shouted. The snowballs dropped to the palace floor. Al stepped from the doorway cut from the paper, smiling as if pleased by another Red Sox collapse in the World Series. He walked to the edge of his six foot high platform. “Yankee mystique,” he said in a voice that was, typical for him, taunting: that made you aware of his level of Yankees fandom, that made you sure he was a New Yorker. His reply was undoubting, and it was more than a rally cry … it was open defiance. “Go Red Sox,” Stony said through gritted teeth. They stood there, separated by four feet of shelf space occupied by plastic barbed wire and booby traps, as if the room below was a kingdom to be ruled. Both men were about the same height, at just over four inches tall, and both unable and unwilling to negotiate the demilitarized zone that separated them. Al waited until Stony looked ready to make his proclamation again. And then he said it again: “Yankee mystique.” Stony’s face wrinkled, disapproving — but that was how he always looked when facing off against Al. He drew in a deep breath as if yelling it louder would bring more conviction.
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6 “GO RED SOX!” He was always louder than Al. And not only louder, but also more desperate. Al paused for a moment longer, like a power pitcher intimidating a hitter before firing a ninety-eight mile-per-hour fastball. “Mystique” — without changing in tone. Revulsion tugged at the corners of Stony’s mouth. “Red Sox Nation!” This reclamation hung in the air like an eternally resounding echo — — Until it was crushed by “The House that Ruth Built,” — and then the echo faded. “The Green Monster!” “Murderer’s Row.” “Fenway Faithful!” “Mister October.” As much as they argued over it, the heated rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees would not begin until March … no matter how much yelling went on. But if Major League Baseball could ever disguise itself as tactical warfare, it would do so with the help of Stony and Al. Dante, sitting under the desk on the other side of the room, frowned at the argument. The white toy poodle, who was much more capable of humanlike actions that any other dog or human ever gave him credit for,
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7 had taken a break from writing his latest novel and was staring at his laptop, going over a list of questions asked on his website. A man from London wanted to know about his life, what made his mind tick, and what his credo was. That last part was what concerned him most. He figured he could easily answer the other stuff, though he rarely ever did on the website. How would his readers take it to know that the eleven novels published under the name “Nolan Dalton” were actually the work of a dog? And not just that, but one that had never lived the life of a family pet, but of somewhat of a human himself. By all rights, at seventeen years old — in human years — he shouldn’t even be alive at all, let alone having written eleven novels for his master to publish. But that last part: his credo. He had one, perhaps even more than one, but he’d just never given it a lot of thought. And this new but ongoing dispute over baseball did nothing to bring him any closer to any sort of answer. On the floor, in the center of the room, Maya had begun losing her patience. She was a brown plastic gorilla, almost ten inches tall, and if the room was territory over which two baseball fans would argue, which was moronic to her, Maya was the one who presided over it, under Presidential declaration of emergency wartime martial law powers. Hearing the clash between Stony and Al did not amuse her. It never did.
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8 “They do this kind of crap just to piss me off,” she mumbled to Smokin’ Joe, one of the boxers which had broken free from the Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em Robots boxing ring that Nolan had quit playing with years ago. Maya continued. “For no other reason than just to get as far under my plastic skin as they can.” “Maya?” Joe said, airing a certain level of apprehension. It had been his job for years to calm her and be the peacemaker, even though she’d always been the peace keeper. “I still don’t think they even know you’re real.” She squinted her eyes as she glared up at them. “They know. They know damn good and well that I’m real. Who do you think they always call out to when one of ‘em gets hurt after they start throwing staples and launching paperclips at one another?” A small German man named Rudolf drove around the room in a radiocontrolled Hummer, which he’d “borrowed” from one of the neighborhood boys. “Hey!” Maya shouted. “Slow that contraption down! Who in the ever livin’ hell do you think you are, Dale Earnhardt?” Rudolf pretended not to hear her and completed two more laps around the room before driving out the door. He also pretended he was an actual, honest-to-goodness human, not a created character like the rest in the room.
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9 To Maya’s right, in the corner beside the closet door, a stout, four inch tall, old man named Willard had attracted a rather sizable audience: a nine inch tall demon couple, Ben and Dawn, and two other four inch tall humans named Adam and Carrie. Willard listened to a
KISS radio with a
cellular phone refrigerator magnet at the ready, waiting for WAAF’s Daily Rock Trivia Question. If he could answer today’s question correctly, he would win a four-night stay at a bed and breakfast on Nantucket Island. He was not even the least bit interested in the prize package — Nolan and his wife, Victoria, could use a vacation anyhow — he only wanted to be able to say he’d won. But Ben glanced up at Stony, who from that angle looked much taller than he really was — almost real. “When do you think they’ll ever stop?” he whispered to Dawn, trying not to blow fire at her. She whispered back, “Whenever either one gets hurt. You know that old saying, ‘It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye”. Or is it … after someone loses an eye? I always get so confused with that one.” Generally speaking, everyone who lived in the room tried, really tried, not to get sidetracked by Stony and Al, or anything else that happened way up on that shelf, with its two houses made of filler paper. It had been that way ever since they first arrived. When Stony was first created, he’d grown out of the paper on which his character study had
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10 been written. He wore a little metal something on his head — probably a thimble, upon which he’d stuck a sticker with the Red Sox logo on it — he called it his “Sox hat”; and he had a tiny plastic baseball bat from a Cracker Jack box, which he’d often claimed had been game-used by Ted Williams in his homerun-hitting final at-bat. Al, on the other, much more abrasive hand, had never wanted to arise from his character study sheet — and was never supposed to, after having been crumpled and thrown away. But that’s what former Army soldiers from Brooklyn do when confronted with, or by, Red Sox fans, they rise up, because they have to as Yankees fans. At the bottom of Al’s character study sheet had been written a note, scrawled in a very frustrated hand: Al is too much of an asshole to get along with. Even in a work of fiction. That was as much as anyone knew about them prior to their arrival in the room. Stony’s house was small and quaint, like a cottage on Cape Cod. It was made from three copies of his character study sheet: some of the words had been scribbled out and on the outside had been written a tense, angry splashing of words … Stony, on one wall. Property of Stony! on another. Stay the hell out! by the door.
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11 And above the bedroom window, on the wall facing Al’s palace, printed in huge uppercase block letters: GO RED SOX!!! In truth, it didn’t look much like a real house. It had no shingles on its roof, no chimney, no siding, only two windows, both of which were square holes torn from the paper. No effort had even been made to draw shingles or a chimney, siding or real windows, all of the elements that would have made it more house-like by some “Home Sweet Home” illusional effect. But everyone else in the room thought of it as a house and not folded papers. Al did not intimidate Stony. He was all hot air when it came right down to it. His Jack Nicholson sneer was more likely to inspire laughing or apprehension, but never intimidation. He did worry everyone else in the room, though. And he frustrated the ever-living hell out of Nolan, the Creator, who also lived in the same house but not with everyone in the room. That’s not to say that Stony couldn’t be just as frustrating when he wanted. Nolan, who checked in on everyone in the room every other day or so, was baffled on a fairly regular basis when seeing Stony standing in the little makeshift doorway, staring up at him and declaring, “Ya know, you could get to work and create a carbon copy of Jennifer Aniston for me … smaller, of course, and maybe with bigger boobies … but you get my meaning.”
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12 Stony, of course, seemed to interpret Nolan’s expressions otherwise. As much as his Creator should have known about the mind of his creation, he did not. Where others seemed worried or frustrated or even offended, Stony saw them as being in awe of him, and perhaps a little jealous. In Stony’s mind (a place where no one else would dare to live on a voluntary basis), he was a misunderstood genius. Stony, the brains of the outfit. Stony, the thinker. Stony, the brilliant war strategist. Stony: not only the most brilliant, but also the best looking man in his whole mixed up little mind. The others tried to reckon him as little as possible. Not because they didn’t like him (because in his head everyone loved him), but when they did reckon him, he might be likely to try to recruit them into the
KISS
Army, Red Sox Nation, or, when he felt especially generous, into his own personal religion, to which he would elect himself King. Or he would often try to appropriate anything he needed from anyone else by boldly walking right up to them and claiming possession of it: “This is now my TV!” or “This is now my money!” Or, if he desired to possess something emphatically enough: “This is now Stony’s Imperial Hummer!” “Go Red Sox!” — insistent, like a pioneer claiming new territory as his own.
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13 Willard pressed his ear to the radio, and its news of the war in Iraq and the upcoming Presidential election and weather for places he had never been. Dante closed his eyes. The paragraph-long sentence he had been forming in response to the email shrank to a single word: “Patience.” Al paused just long enough to make sure his ensuing reply would get inside Stony’s head. “Yankee Mystique.” “Go Red Sox, goddammit!” Al smiled, as usual, to himself. The paper palace behind Al also had several words crossed out, but there was only one word written on the outside wall. One word — DANGER!!! All it ever really took to make him smile was to look at that word. Neatly drawn above it, beside the door, were a human skull and crossed bones. Nolan Dalton kept two fire extinguishers in his writing room, close to Al’s palace, which always seemed to be just the right place for them. If Stony could make one feel uneasy on occasion, Al could bring on bouts of full blown nervous breakdowns instantly by doing nothing more than smiling.
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14 Downstairs in the living room, Peanut and Brownie, two rubber ducklings that were pretty well inseparable, were telling Doc that Brownie had once seen Al levitating baseballs. Doc was British and spoke through a waist-deep accent, about seven inches tall when he stood up straight — which he rarely did these days, since his back began acting up a little longer than three years ago. His bushy eyebrows made it seem as if he was always squinting, though you could just make out a twinkle in his eyes when he smiled. “I love dreams,” Doc told them. “I had a dream myself once — I got locked up inside the Hershey chocolate plant when the workers had gone home for the night. When I woke up the next morning I was a tad too fat for my pants. That was a good —” Brownie shook his little rubber head. He never spoke except to whisper into Peanut’s ear. “Brownie says it wasn’t a dream.” Peanut paused. “Everyone was at breakfast and the little bucket-head came back to the writing room. Al was standing under seven baseballs that were floating.” “Well.” Doc looked at Brownie. “I did see a story on Stony’s TV once about a man who could make it look like things were levitating — a magician, they called him. Very popular in some sandbox somewhere they call Las Vegas. Perhaps Al has learned the art of illusion, as they call it.”
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15 Brownie, naïve but not stupid, looked up at Doc with perfectly sensible eyes, and then whispered something more into Peanut’s ear. “Brownie says it wasn’t an illusion. The baseballs were really floating.” Doc leaned forward and ruffled the feathers atop Brownie’s head. “Perhaps. Anything within reason is possible.” He looked over at some of the others in the kitchen, who were engaged in a game of Lick-it and Stick-it, using their hands to throw chewed gum at the screen door window. He added to his earlier comment, “Or without reason, I assume.” Back upstairs, Stony hammered away while Al lengthened his pauses to enrage his opponent even further. “Go Red Sox!” “Yankee Mystique.” “It’s just so damn aggravating,” Maya groaned. Her knuckles scraped the hardwood floor when she spoke. “How damn many times do they need to keep going through all of that?” “Maya, please,” Smokin’ Joe said. Dante typed “Patience” as a reply for a third time. Willard turned up the radio volume. His audience tried not to look up at either house. But there were two other people in the room whose attention was drawn to the duel above. Their heads swung back and forth as they shifted their attention from one house to the other — as if watching a tennis match in-play.
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16 One of them was Jay, a shy Texan who stood five inches tall. He had a long scar running down the right side of his face — healed for years but still quite visible. His eyes were open wide and he allowed his jaw to drop in order to display his surprise. He was fascinated by this exchange between Al and Stony, though he had no idea what had provoked it or what it was even all about — maybe because he had no idea. It was the expelled energy which amazed him. It was like watching the Creator, Nolan, and his wife, Victoria, when they came home from shopping each week: they’d come from the car and unload a handful of bags, and then another handful, and still another. The momentary idea that this action could be repeated to infinity was intoxicating and addictive. No matter whose territory it was, it threatened to become nothing more than two names, Red Sox and Yankees, tangling forever. To Jay, a Devil Rays fan, that possibility was utterly horrifying, and that was all the reason as to why it was so hypnotic. Exhilarating, even. Next to Jay stood a young boy — he had once been a parakeet in a long-past life. His name was Blue. This was not the first thing he’d been called, but it was what he was called now. The first thing he’d been called (by Jay, it just so happened) was “Breh,” because that was the first sound the youngster had made as a baby … aside from the crying noises. It was a momentous occasion — everyone had been there to watch as he rose up out of his character
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17 study sheet. No one in the room had ever been created as a baby before … or even “born” in any imaginable way. It had always been thought of as impossible until the day it happened. Pete, the created father (who had also once been a parakeet, but hadn’t been created as a baby) had decided, with a little help from Maya, that “Breh” wasn’t exactly a fitting name. Jay’s second choice for a name was Nolan — after Nolan Ryan, who had always been Jay’s idol. But that name was already in-use in the house, and as such was voted down as well, as it would only serve to promote confusion. The name Blue was suggested by Stevie, a blind bullfrog who was so old that he was now confined to two tied-together Matchbox cars that had been pushed over to the growing character study sheet so that, unable to see it, Stevie could listen to the event. He was the one to admit that the “birth” seemed to bring out “a case of the blues” for the baby. Hence, the name stuck. Pete liked the name. “Blue,” he’d said proudly. “Good name for someone who’d once been a parakeet.” Time confirmed the appropriateness of Stevie’s choice. Blue was treated like a member of Rock-n-Roll royalty, especially by his father. Great things were expected of him: he was a baby who’d been born, in a sense, not merely created as a grown-up. A boy who had never had to suffer the indignity of living (or dying) in one of Nolan’s novels, treated
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18 like crap, and almost always traumatized. He was a creation free of everyone else’s past. Blue was the future. And jay had formed a special relationship with the boy. He’d helped bring the baby into the world when he “invented” the robot 2-XL, a metal cylinder capped with a head that held two rolling eyes the size of marbles, and equipped with metal arms and four small wheels. He (2-XL was referred to as “Deuce,” since he was the second, more successful version of the “invention”) stood in a corner of the writing room, at attention, and for the moment facing Al and Stony. The names “Yankees” and “Red Stockings” flipped back and forth almost casually on the display screen in his cylindrical chest. Deuce was the product of sheer creative will on Jay’s part — and a great deal of assistance from Jay’s roommates (and the Sharpco computer which aided in the protection of the house). He had dreamt of 2-XL and vowed not to rest until Deuce was built. Only after Deuce’s eyes lighted with a kind of almost robotic consciousness, and he had rolled across the writing room floor on his own four wheels, was it also discovered that he possessed a shallow drawer in his cylindrical torso — a realm of creative darkness, perfect for character study “birth”. Jay, therefore, considered himself as somewhat of an uncle. He also thought of himself as Blue’s “pal”. Pete often spent the afternoons reading Stephen King novels to Stevie in the laundry room down the hall. Sometimes Blue stayed with him. At
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19 other times Blue went off with Jay … which Pete allowed only if Maya was nearby to stop them from going downstairs. Jay had always wanted to show the world to Blue: both the world he knew and the one he imagined to exist outside the house, of which he’d never been a part. What troubled Pete about letting them go off alone was that Jay had never seen the real world, and as such could not properly escort Blue through it. “The first thing you gotta see is the Grand Canyon,” Jay once told Blue. “That’s where the whole universe came from when it blew up. It was called the Huge Kaboom. Everything flew right out of the Huge Kaboom, see, and it’s all been flying around ever since. For almost thirty whole years! You look outside at night and see all those stars and planets and moons? That’s all stuff that came right outta the Grand Canyon out there! So big!” Jay was also subject to extended, highly energized meanderings for which his imagination was the only boundary. “There’s also space people out there too. Except they’re not really space people since they were shot right out of that Grand Canyon, so they’re still Earthlings who live in space, and they float around out there in space in what’s called spaceships because what else have they got to do way out there in the middle of all that space? Do you know about gravity yet? That’s what makes you pee on the ground instead of up in the air.”
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20 Not that Maya ever had any up close experiences outside the house, either, but where Jay’s imagination was light — light enough at times to float his thoughts up to the ceiling — Maya’s was heavy and drew one back down to comforting reality. About humans Maya would always say, “Morons not so far removed from the missing link. And so cruel, too! Even the ones who seem nice — don’t trust ‘em even for a second. You never know when they’ll try to lock you up in the zoo.” Or she would say, “They’re all stupid and ugly. If there was ever a stupid and ugly contest, they’d all lose. Or win. Whichever is stupider and uglier.” Maya might be a realist who sees what she sees for the way she sees it. Jay, on the other hand, well, he used to stare at the sun … a lot. And he’s been known to play with electricity on occasion. So that explains that. As for Blue, it was hard for anyone to ever guess precisely what he thought, for he was still only four years old. He was attentive and curious, and seemed to understand almost everything explained to him. But what he made it all of it no one could really say, because so far he had never so much as tried to speak a single word. Some, especially Pete, worried that Blue might not be able to speak at all. Jay simply imagined that Blue spoke Italian. Pete was always a worrier, protective of his son the way most parents are … or were, once in time … and though it was pointed out to him by
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21 his friend Smokey — an energetic ball of energy and electricity disguised as a ferret — that many children spent a long time listening before even trying to speak, Pete couldn’t help but worry. There were other people, of course, who having once learned to speak, never seemed to shut up. “Go Red Sox!” “Yankee Mystique.” “Teddy Ballgame!” “The Babe.” “GO RED SOX!” “Knock it off, you two!” Maya shouted. Nothing questioning in Maya’s tone: you heard her authority, clearly, even if you weren’t in the room. “Baseball season is three whole months away yet. I don’t want to hear another damn word about it!” “Then don’t listen,” Al said. With Al distracted, Stony took the opportunity to scream, “Red Sox! Red Sox! Rrrrrrrred Ssssssssssox!” as if shouting it more often would help win the debate. “Okay, you two want trouble?” Maya arched her back and prepared to beat on her chest. “Yup —” Al said it in a way that made it sound like both a question and an answer.
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22 Jay and Blue both turned to watch, as if a new general had been freshly minted and introduced to the war. “Well we don’t want trouble,” Joe shouted to Al. “Maybe you two could settle your differences some other way.” “Hail Red Sox Nation!” Al smirked down at the rest of the room. Maya fired back a sneer. Smokin’ Joe stepped in front of Maya. Dawn and Ben shuddered. Adam and Carrie turned away. Willard whispered, almost in a seeming chant, “Ask the damn question. Ask the damn question. Ask the damn question already.” Dante, with his laptop balanced on his curly-hair-covered legs — the only comfortable position for him — started to type with the four digits of his tiny paws: “Dear Rayven, thank you for your interest in my work. I’m not sure I can tell you anything very interesting or revealing about what I write. The books seem to write themselves sometimes —” Blue looked up at Al and shook his head. Al looked down at Blue and nodded in approval. Blue had plenty of reason to shake his head in each of the four years of his life. He shook it at the explanations of how the roomful of creations had come to be: how as novel characters they had nowhere else to go once their novels ended. Of the twenty novels to which they belonged, none were ever written as a series, where the characters might go on to
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23 live more fulfilling lives — more fulfilling, at least, than the lives they were living now. Blue shook his head quite often with those stories. He shook his head at Maya’s explanation for the deplorable behavior of people in the real world, the ones who created them and people in general. He shook his head as he watched the other creations in the writing room: playing, being read to, never trying to learn anything of any real use; watching TV for entertainment or — like the Wise Men in the wall poster by the door, who only looked wise — playing practical jokes on one another, laughing at everyone else in the room, wishing they could throw things out of the poster and into the room. But Blue never spoke a word. Maya said it was because Jay never stopped talking long enough to give him a chance to, but good old Smokey said that when Blue was ready to speak, he would. A treasure of questions followed Smokey’s assertion. Could Blue speak? Would he? And when? The others not only wanted to know, they expressed their need to know: right now, two more infant character study sheets lay in Deuce’s drawer. Could everyone expect the newborn creations to have the same capabilities and possibilities as babies born in real life … in the real world? Or perhaps even more? Blue was the future.
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24 But, for the time being, the future had to be kept secret. At that very moment, Nolan Dalton was in the living room downstairs, on the phone with Victoria, about the strange utility truck that was parked in the woods by the house. Sharpco’s security cameras had picked it up every day in the past week. Nolan had seen the truck himself, with its electric company logo on the side, but Sharpco confirmed that no electric company of the kind ever existed. “We can’t hide Blue forever,” Victoria said to Nolan. “Or the others, when they rise up,” Nolan said, glancing out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the truck again. “The others, right,” Victoria said, hesitating. “So who the hell are these people with that truck?” “No one from Con Edison, that’s for sure,” Victoria said. “I just heard about a company called Bio-Grow that just received a huge defense contract. My boss seems to think they might already know about our little engineering experiment.” “They want to know how we’re creating people?” Nolan asked. “That’d be my guess. I’ve got them tailing me into Boston right now, honey. I’m gonna park at Fenway Park and take the T-train home. Let them keep their eyes glued to my car. That will buy us some time to figure out what to do.” Nolan changed the subject.
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25 “This morning I was going through some old files in my computer. I found some old character study sheets I hadn’t completed. Maybe it’s too weird to even consider, but I could finish them and make the characters life-sized, and then I could have ‘em destroy that company and all its —” “We can’t discuss that over the phone, honey,” Victoria said. He said goodbye and went outside — just for a minute — to inspect the security system and to see if the truck had returned. Before stepping out he stopped beside Doc, who was sitting on a dollhouse chair. He was the referee in the Lick-it and Stick-it game. “I’ll only be a minute,” Nolan said. “Keep a look out, will ya?” Doc raised a hand in salute. “Fret not,” Doc said. “The world will remain well under my watch.”
In the writing room, Al and Stony continued facing off, Al still smiling, Stony still scoffing back. But for the moment, silence reigned. Echoing silence. Except for the
KISS
radio and Dante’s typing.
“There is no real grand goal with or behind my writing,” Dante typed. “I listen to a lot of music. It seems to suggest stories to me, the way rainbows suggest harmony and wallpaper patterns occasionally suggest images. The Beatles suggest some. Elvis for others. And every now and then I dabble in some of Jimi Hendrix’s mastery of genius.”
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26 “After this commercial break,” Willard heard from the radio, “we’ll throw today’s trivia question at you.” Maya cautiously unclenched her jaws. Al kept smiling, as if testing the light breeze sifting through the window above Dante’s desk, or staring out the doorway and down the stairs … or as if waiting for the precise moment to say — “Mickey Mantle.” “Lefty Grove, Cy Young, not to mention Tris Speaker, Jimmy Foxx, and Captain Carl Yastrzemski!” “Goddammit, that does it!” Maya pounded her fists against her chest. “Jay, swing the rope ladder over by Al’s ledge!” The rope ladder was just as its name suggests, and it hung from a track attached to the ceiling. It ran around the entire room and allowed the creations access to desks, chairs, shelves and everything else otherwise out of reach. Jay swung the ladder away from its current position at the window sill. “Hey!” Dawn said. “How are we supposed to know when it’s raining outside?” “You never go outside,” Maya said. “Why do you care if it’s raining?” Jay brought the ladder over to Al’s ledge. Dante typed on, paying no attention to the ruckus. “I’ve read many novels. Something about fiction’s shape, its certainty, comforted me through some very hard times.” He thought about taking that last part
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27 out. So far he had carefully avoided any reference to his life apart from his writing. But why? A wild idea gripped him then: How would it feel to finally blow the secret … to tell this fan who he really was? It hit him like a book idea. He could already hear the narrative in a storyteller’s voice. It drowned out all the other voices, even — “Lou Gehrig.” “Carlton Fisk and Bobby Doerr!” “One final warning … don’t make me have to come up there,” Maya shouted. “Please don’t go up there,” Joe whispered. “It’s Al we’re talking about.” “Oh, stop,” Maya said, approaching the rope ladder. “I’ve had it with those two.” “Baseball isn’t for three months,” Joe said to Al and Stony. “It doesn’t even matter who’s better right now.” “Joe Di Maggio.” “Dom Di Maggio!” “Don’t waste your breath.” Maya stopped at the ladder. “They’re both insane.” “They’re … they’re just playing!” Smokin’ Joe hurried to her side. “They’re only doing it to get attention.”
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28 Maya frowned at them. “Well, then they shouldn’t be arguing in front of Blue.” “Hey! Guys!” Jay ran in a circle, right around Maya and Joe. “Baseball is a game played by real people from the real world. You guys are just fans. This is our reality. I know it sucks to hear stuff like that, but it doesn’t make it any less right!” “Not just ours,” Stony said. “Many.” “Many what?” Jay, hands resting on the rope ladder, stared up at Stony. “Realities … there are many.” Jay’s jaw fell wide. “Realities?” Still holding on to the rope ladder, he took a step toward Stony’s end of the shelf. “Many realities,” Stony said. “Where are they?” Jay asked, taking another step, glancing all around. “Up here. I’ll show you.” “Cool …” Another step. “Blue, you want to see all the realities, don’t you?” Stony asked. “There are realities where you’re small enough to fit right in my pocket. Do you know what a pocket is?” Blue, hurrying along after Jay, looked up at Al. Al smiled down at him and nodded. Maya watched the rope ladder scooting slowly away from her and shouted, “Hey! Bring that back! Come here!”
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29 “Maya,” Joe said. “Please …” “Oh, shut up, blockhead!” She ran after them on all fours. “Jay! Blue!” But Jay couldn’t hear her. He was busy thinking: Different realities! The ladder slapped abruptly against the shelf. “Don’t you dare go up there!” Maya shouted. “And don’t let Blue —” But Blue had already shot past Jay and was halfway up the ladder. “Blue!” Maya gasped. “Blue, come down from there!” “Hey, Blue! Wait for me!” Jay raced up after him. Maya followed, screaming in gorilla as she shouted, “Stop him, you stupid redneck!” Smokin’ Joe trailed behind. Stony stood in the doorway to his house when Blue and Jay made it to the shelf. It was the only entrance … or exit. Blue, on his young, swift legs, slipped past Stony and into the house. “Hey, Blue! Maybe you should —” Jay stopped at the doorway. Stony had jammed most of it with an empty cigarette box. “Heyyyy! How do I get in?” “Maybe you don’t.” Stony backed into his house until he was completely within its paper walls. Jay dropped onto his belly. He squeezed his head and his hands through and got no further. Maya and Joe stood behind him. “Get Blue out of there!” Maya shouted. “Get him out of there!”
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30 “Blue? Hey, Blue!” Jay’s vision slowly adjusted to the dark interior of the house. At first he could see nothing at all. And then … the darkness filled with stars! “Whoa! Cool!” There were more stars than the clear nighttime sky. More than the screensaver on Dante’s laptop computer! There were stars and planets and galaxies and clouds of cosmic gasses growing in every direction. The universe expanded outward like a projection at the Boston Museum of Science’s planetarium show, and Jay marveled that he could see it all — stars being born, galaxies collapsing in on themselves, supernovae. In the middle of it all “stood” Stony and Blue, appearing as if floating in space. “One reality,” Stony said to Blue. “That’s so cool!” Jay shouted. “You got any spare Earthlings in there?” “No life forms exist in this particular reality,” Stony said, looking at Blue but answering Jay’s question. “I used to have other realities that were teeming with life.” “How many realities can you fit in there?” “Size and scale are relative. All realities can fit in here, within scale. In fact, all of time itself can fit in here.” Suddenly, the universe started moving backward … or perhaps inward … and everything Jay had seen moving away from him was now hurriedly approaching, like fireworks in reverse, pulling back fire,
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31 fragments and filaments. The billion-billion stars seemed to be racing right toward Jay’s head. “Aaaaaa!” he screamed. But the Big Crunch did not crush him. It pulled back to a spot in the center of the house, where for an instant it appeared to be a single fiercely brilliant star over Stony’s head, then it flickered out. “So it was, is, and will one day be again.” It sounded like something Jay had heard in radio shows he’d listened to years ago, where humans wore robes and turbans and sandals, and they wandered around temples and pyramids. With the universe gone, not much else seemed to be within Stony’s house: a few small flashlights, which might have been pulled off key chains; a pocket-sized calculator with its face removed; a one-inch square piece of some clear material, like a Plexiglass remnant; a few oddly-shaped pieces of metal, bolts and washers, to venture a guess, arranged in such a way as to form the number eight. Some paper pictures were taped to the paper walls. Jay recognized a portrait of Albert Einstein and another of a baseball player named Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown, along with newspaper photos of Gene Simmons, General Stonewall Jackson, Steven Hawking, Nikola Tesla, and Bugs Bunny. They all made perfect sense to Jay, why they were on Stony’s walls … except the photo of Bugs Bunny. “Thirteen billion years ago,” Stony said, “Al and I played a game.”
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32 “What game was it?” Jay found any mention of play interesting. An image filled one of the walls in Stony’s house: projected there. Not projected on the wall so much as in front of it. The image was of Al and Stony, sitting in a huge, dark space: like an aviation hanger or the inside of a volcano. Both of them sat before their own faceless calculator, facing one another. And then Jay felt something smack hard against his backside. “Ouch! Hey, dammit!” “What the hell is going on in there?” Maya shouted. “Move it, smartass!”
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33
Part Two
When Rudolf returned to the writing room, still driving his Hummer, he couldn’t quite see what was going on atop the bookshelf. He saw the rope ladder. He saw Maya’s tail dangling over the edge. He could hear Jay’s shout, “I’m stuck, dammit!” But it was muffled, as if his head was caught inside a paper house … what a coincidence. And from Willard’s
KISS
radio, he heard a female announcer: “Okay,
people, here’s today’s trivia question: What was the original name of the band that would later become
KISS?”
“Wicked Lester!” Willard tapped the pre-programmed number on the refrigerator magnet cell phone. “Wicked Lester! Wicked Lester! Wicked Lester! It’s — it’s so easy!” he said to his gathered friends. He had a high voice and he shouted the syllables with such enthusiasm that it sounded more like the babblings of a madman in an asylum.
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34 But Dawn, Ben, Carrie and Adam didn’t hear any of it. They were staring up at Stony’s house. Dante heard none of it, either. He was busy staring at what he’d just written: “I want to be forthcoming, for once. You are well aware that I write under a pseudonym. Rayven, my real name is Dante. Just Dante … no last name. The photograph in the back flaps of my novels is of the human who takes care of me. He is Nolan Dalton, not me. I am just …” He hesitated, his paws raised over his keyboard before finishing the sentence. “… a dog.” Al was not to be seen, but his palace was once again alive with levitations and more strange noises. Rudolf U-turned his Hummer and drove out of the writing room. He rode downstairs on the lift-chair (originally installed to hold the weight of a full grown adult — a real adult) which took the creations from one floor to another. On the first floor he drove straight to the library, where Pete was reading to Stevie, whose Matchbox car transporter had been wheeled over to the window. Smokey was with him, as were a number of other creations who enjoyed listening to Pete read. Pete read from a book entitled The Third Twin. Bandit, ferret brother of Smokey and unofficial librarian, had pulled it down from upstairs. As a
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35 ferret, he was the only one possible (other than Smokey) who could drag a book down all four flights of stairs. As Pete read about Nicholas Chilton, the secret Nazi experiment and the clones, he stopped to say, “Maybe this isn’t such a good book to be reading today. It is pretty scary.” When he got to the part with Nicholas in custody of the Department of Homeland Security, being interrogated, he said, “I’m sorry, Stevie. This book is too scary. I’ll have Bandit bring us down another book instead.” “No, keep going,” Stevie said in his rough, deep voice. “I like this boy, Nicholas … what he says about the Nazi’s: ‘The popular thing to do is not always the right thing. All one has to do is remember Germany in 1939 to realize that.’ If only Germans had known and understood that prior to the invasion of Poland … Please read on.” “Jay’s head is stuck in the doorway of Stony’s house!” Rudolf blurted. “What?” The pages of The Third Twin fluttered before Pete like a fan. Rudolf said even louder: “Jay’s head is stuck in the doorway of Stony’s house!” “Where’s Blue?” “Inside Stony’s house.” The copy of The Third Twin slipped from Pete’s footstool-podium and thudded to the floor. “But Maya —”
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36 “She’s acting like a monkey,” Rudolf said, “but she still can’t get Jay unstuck.” “This is just great!” Smokey looked upward. “We’d better get up there before Maya rips his legs clean off!” The creations who’d gathered around for the reading started to mumble and whisper. The story spun about them, from those who’d heard and those who hadn’t, inevitably altered along the way regarding a few slight details: “Jay is turning into a monkey!” And “Blue is bigger than a house!” And let’s not forget the one about “Stony stole Jay’s head!” As quickly as the story spread, the creations made their way up to the writing room to see the outcome. “Oh, Stevie, I’m so sorry,” Pete said, trying to close the book neatly on the floor as Smokey watched. “I don’t remember what page I was —” “The book can wait,” Stevie said. “Go get your boy.” “Thank you, Stevie,” Pete said. “Thank you.” “Don’t mention it. Just make sure Blue is all right.” “Al’s palace,” Rudolf told them, “is doing some strange stuff, too.” He turned the Hummer around and joined the crowd headed upstairs. “Al!” Stevie took a deep, wheezing breath. “You’d better hurry, Pete!” Pete and Smokey made their way as fast as they could, but the chair lift was already too crowded. Every creation who wasn’t already in the writing room was headed for it, except for Bandit, who stayed behind with Stevie, and the odd pair (one old, one young) of lion stickers, King
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37 and Shadow … who were captivated by an aficionado magazine devoted entirely to steak. The game of Lick-it and Stick-it was unofficially called on account of Jay’s head having blown up as big as a house. Doc trudged along and called out to the other creations, “Friends! Friends! Please clear the way for Pete and Smokey!” “Doc!” Smokey called out from the clot of creations heading up the stairs. “We’ll need your help!” “I’ll be there as soon as I can!” He grieved for once that there wasn’t a device larger than the Hummer … in which there was only one seat. Something along the lines of a radio-controlled helicopter, perhaps, would be in order. Sam, a black cat as large as Bandit, noticed Doc’s situation and picked him up in his gentle jaws. Doc climbed onto Sam’s neck. “Now,” Sam said in his typical soft tone, “you can ride in style.” “Many thanks.” Doc held onto Sam’s collar. “This is most unusual for me. I hope I’m not too heavy for you.” Sam shook his head. “Better you than Dante.” He started for the stairs and added, cryptically, “Or twenty pounds of dog food …”
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38
Part Three
Upstairs, Maya and Smokin’ Joe sat down, exhausted. They had tried pushing Jay in and pulling him out … all to no avail. “Joe,” Maya said between gasps, “this isn’t working. We’re not built for this kind of crap.” “I know,” Joe said, gasping too. “Well why didn’t you say so then?” “I … I did.” He paused. “If —” “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts … wait,” Maya said. “How does that one go again? Forget it. Hey!” She shouted to Deuce, who had rolled over to the ladder and stared at them with his giant eyes. For two simple plastic disks, Deuce’s eyes displayed a remarkable range of expression, finding every nuance between astonishment and bafflement. But Maya, so intent on scrutinizing others, was less adept ad being scrutinized herself.
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39 “No you don’t. you get away from that ladder, buster. You have babies rising inside you! Can’t have you tipping over and killing the little ones!” From where she stood, Maya couldn’t read the words displayed on Deuce’s torso screen:
WANT : TO : HELP
But it wouldn’t have made any difference to Maya anyhow. “Go on,” she said. “Everything’s under control here.” To the creations crowded in the writing room, it must not have sounded at all convincing. Maya stared down at them. “Nothing to see here. Go back to whatever the hell it was you were doing.” Pete and Smokey, having made their way up the rope ladder, were not about to go anywhere else. “Uh,” Maya said, as usual unable to hide her embarrassment … though she tried to ignore it, “Well, I didn’t mean you. As long as you’re here, you may as well make yourselves useful.” “Maya,” Pete said, “what the —” “I’M STILL STUCK!” Jay shouted. Maya whacked him hard on his backside again. “Shut up and get unstuck already!”
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40 Smokey stepped between them. “You probably shouldn’t hit him.” Maya frowned. “It’s just encouragement.”
“Okay, quiet! Quiet!” Willard shouted to everyone in the room. “I’m on the radio!” He adjusted the volume in time to hear the announcer say, “In a second we’ll get back to the phones with a voice that’s plenty familiar to most of you. That’s right. Willard is back with us again, and we’ll see if he can answer today’s trivia question —” “Wicked Lester!” Willard shouted. “Wicked Lester! Wicked Lester!” “— Right after this.”
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41
Part Four
Inside the house, Stony continued to tell his story to Blue … between Jay’s cries of “I’M STILL STUCK IN HERE!” and his endless wrestlings to extricate himself. “The game was to build realities,” Stony said, looking down at Blue. “Al and I had computers with settings to expand infinitely compressed matter infinitely in all directions. The process could be repeated an infinite number of times, with infinite results.” “Infinity,” Jay said to Blue. “That means bunches!” Blue stared at the projected image of Al and Stony with their faceless calculators, which were actually handheld computers. Two brilliant lights appeared before them, which grew into shimmering spheres. From inside each sphere grew another sphere, and from inside that one grew another. The ones closest to Al were concentric and symmetrical, like ripples from a stone dropped into a pond, but ripples in three dimensions … maybe four. They all looked like part of a brilliant light show.
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42 The spheres closest to Stony looked oblong and wobbly, misshapen and unevenly spaced. Blue watched carefully, his head turning from one set of spheres to the other. Jay tried to push, then pull, himself out. Whatever movement he’d made to squeeze so far into the house apparently could not be simply reversed. He arched his legs and tried to get some traction on the shelf’s surface, but it didn’t work. Perhaps his head had grown, expanding with the universes. “Each sphere is a universe. And each universe is a reality,” Stony said. “Al’s were mathematically perfect. Mine were not. I meant to find perfection in imperfection, because perfection itself is just too simple.” “Stony, help!” Jay shouted. “I’m still stuck! How do I get out?” Stony continued, oblivious to Jay’s predicament: “The world will understand someday that I was right. The people of the world will grieve for having told me I wasn’t.” Blue shook his head yet again. Stony didn’t notice. He stared up at his realities. “If only they’d made it,” he said.
“Smacking him isn’t going to get him out any quicker,” Smokey said. “He’s in there like a wedge,” Maya said. “Maybe if you bit him …” “Can’t we, maybe, lift the house up?” Pete asked.
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43 Maya shook her head. “Stony stapled it down to the shelf just so it couldn’t be lifted.” “We’ll have to think of something else,” Pete said. “We should go find Nolan,” Joe said. “No,” Maya said. “He’d only laugh at us, and that wouldn’t be funny. We have to figure our way out of this ourselves.” “I’m still stuck!” By this time, Doc had finally arrived. Sam had hoisted him halfway up the ladder. “Thank you, chum,” Doc said, and climbed the rest of the way. When he got to the top, he started to say, “So what’s so wrong as to cause so much commotion —” The question trailed off at the end, needing no real answer. Doc shook his head and said, “Good grief.” “What do we do?” Pete asked. “Lubrication won’t help,” Doc said, patting Jay’s shoulder. “Relax, my goofy friend. We’ll have you out of there in no time.” “Who knows what Stony’s been filling Blue’s head with …” Maya said. Doc put his ear to the side of Stony’s paper house. “Whatever he’s telling Blue, he’s not getting to the point.” “Remind me to thank you all later for a lovely weekend,” Jay said.
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44 Doc walked to the edge of the shelf, where Sam waited below to see if he could be of any further help. “Do you know where Nolan keeps the good scissors?” Sam nodded. “Scissors?” Smokey looked back at Jay, who was still struggling. “We can’t use scissors.” “I know we’re not big enough for one of us to manipulate a pair of scissors,” Doc said. “But if two of us try, it might work.” “What if we slip?” Pete asked. “It can’t be too difficult,” Doc said. “After all, it’s only paper.” “What is? Jay’s head?” Maya smiled at her quip. “We can’t do it,” Pete said. “We’d be wrecking Stony’s house. I know, it’s silly. But it’s Stony’s.” “Are you nuts?” Maya said. “Your son is in there.” “I know,” Pete said, turning to Maya. “But we can’t just go in there and wreck Stony’s house. That’s the one thing the Fourth Amendment protects against.” “Very well,” Doc said. “We won’t need the scissors, Sam. We’ll just have to find another way.”
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45
Part Five
WAAF followed their “brief” message with another one equally un-brief, followed by still another. A misleading and misguiding ad for Barak Obama for President, liquidation sales, real estate and hair-restoring over-the-counter glue … Willard heard all about it. “We gotta break for top of the hour weather and sports headlines, but as soon as we come back we’ve got Slick Willie on the horn to answer today’s trivia question. Thanks for holding, Willard.” “Wicked Lester!” Willard wrapped his hands into little fists in anticipation.
“The boy I’d been bought for went to school during the day,” Dante wrote. “I was always alone. I started drinking … mainly to kill off the intense boredom … and I read all the books on the shelf: the ‘Great Books’ and the encyclopedia. I figured, what the hell, no one else ever touched them. They were considered decorations, though they were never
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46 even dusted. But they helped a great deal when I had to do the boy’s homework for him, or to fix his bike when he broke it.”
Inside Stony’s house, the projected images of Stony’s realities were replaced with images of their decline: universes floundering, faltering, collapsing in on themselves like ice pyramids in the summer sunlight. “If only they’d made it,” Stony said to Blue. “In the few remaining realities, I visited some of the worlds, to help — out of the kindness and goodness of my heart —” Blue made a noise, like a sneeze. “I always suspected sabotage,” Stony said. Blue sneezed again, only this time the noise sounded more like a giggle. It came out two, three more times. Blue couldn’t help it. “Across a thousand realities, I was hunted by my enemies,” Stony said. “Then I lost the means to return to my own reality. So I took the form of a human, like you. Al did, too, out of guilt and worry for me.” He paused, then, “Now I have to find a way back to my own time and reality. To my true home.” Blue’s sneezes increased in number, and as they did they were joined by the first noises ever to flow from his larynx. It was laughter. And he kept laughing long after Stony had finished his long, sad tale.
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47 Outside the house, Doc gestured to Deuce, who was still watching, his display screen proclaiming,
WANT : TO : HELP
“Deuce,” Doc said. “We need your assistance, if you don’t mind.” “No you don’t,” Maya said. “That machine has our little ones in it!” “My dear Maya,” Doc said, “we need someone or something that can turn and pull Jay with a minimum of effort. Sam is far too big to fit on the shelf, but too short to reach Jay from the floor, as is Bandit. Our friends, King and Shadow, would be able to do the job if they were real lions and not mere stickers.” Doc paused, the added, “What we need, frankly, is a pair of hands, which Deuce has. Actually, Nolan also has hands. If you’d prefer, we could call for him —” “Oh shut up!” Maya said. “You win, okay? But if anything happens to those little ones in there …” “Duly noted,” Doc said. “Sam, if you could stand below the shelf in the unlikely event that Deuce loses his balance …” Sam stood below while Deuce climbed the rope ladder, legs and paws spread in a kind of baseball shortstop position. “Now, Deuce,” Doc continued, “if you could adjust your height enough to allow you a firm but gentle grip on Jay’s ankles. And Jay —” “Huh?” Jay said, from the other side of the paper wall.
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48 “Please stop kicking, if you would.” “Okay.” Deuce extended the metal tubes on which his wheels were affixed (and were usually retracted into his torso), raising his height just the few centimeters necessary to reach out straight with his metal hands and take hold of Jay’s ankles. “Now,” Doc said, “raise him just a bit and turn him this way, on his back.” Doc made a counterclockwise gesture with his hands. “Smokey, Pete, if you can get a little under him as Deuce does that, you can keep Jay from chafing.” “Hey!” Jay called out as the makeshift crew went to work. “What are you guys doing out there?” “Unscrewing your head,” Maya said. “Just like a damn light bulb!” “AAAAAAAAA!” “Not exactly, my friend,” Doc told him. “But I think I know a way to get you out. You must, however, do one thing for me, at least for a few minutes, if you can.” “Sure, Doc, what is it?” “Shut your mouth.” “I can do that … Watch!” Not that anyone but Stony and Blue could watch, nor did they, but he really did shut his mouth. “Mouth closed?” “Mmm-hmm!”
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49 “Good work!” Doc patted him again. He glanced at Deuce and said, “Now, lift! Straight up, but with a bit of an arc. Pull — just a trace. Yes! I think we’ve almost got him free!” Deuce extended his legs a little higher and lifted Jay until he was totally upside down, but nearly free. The top part of his head was still inside the house. Doc reached down and placed a hand on either side of Jay’s head. “You’ve done very well, Jay. Now all we need to do is pull your head just … a … bit … more.” Doc paused to ensure his tone would be low enough that no one else would hear him when he added, “All those years of playing Tetris are finally starting to pay off.” With Jay just a few centimeters away from freedom, Doc hardly took notice of how much louder he had to speak even to hear himself in these quiet statements. But it was more apparent when Maya nudged him over and shouted into the house, “Blue! Come out of there!” — and that was hard for him to hear — that something was intruding on the already chaotic ambiance in the room. A noise of some sort … a humming, though it could also be understood as a rapid, steady oscillation. The humming noise was accompanied by the brightening light from the ceiling fixture, which had escaped notice until it had occurred to some in
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50 the writing room that the ceiling fixture had not even been turned on, it being mid-afternoon on a pleasant January day. The littlest creations were especially aware of the light, and the hum — and most particularly of the vibrations through the floor that seemed to be coming from both. Doc looked up when he heard the crackle of delicate glass in the light fixture. Off it went. The shards of the bulb, fortunately, were contained within the fixture itself. Pete tried to say something to Doc, which he couldn’t make out. he wondered if he might be going deaf but then, as if to erase this new fear, he turned to an even greater one … across the shelf. Al’s palace was alive with intense light. It could have been a theater’s lamp or a lighthouse beacon — Doc wouldn’t have been at all surprised. The light did exhibit a sort of direction about it, like a shaft — directed across the room and through the window. The fire extinguishers, in that instant, seemed perilously inadequate. Some of the creations, understandably frightened, headed for the door, squealing.
“I lived with some homeless people for more than a year,” Dante wrote to Rayven, “sleeping under a freeway bridge. I justified my ‘keep’ by making signs they used for panhandling.”
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51 He had to squint now to read over his words. Not only was the light from Al’s palace creating a glare, but the image on the laptop screen was fading, as if the power was being drained away from the computer. “Eventually the police rounded them all up and I was taken along. That’s when I was bought by the humans with whom I live now.” He now felt clearly that revealing the truth about himself was not a good idea. The news would surely be met with disbelief. If not, he feared the reaction to his novels would be driven more by novelty than by the relative merits of his work and what he had written. Still, he wanted the chance to read over his little biography and get a feel for what it might be like to tell the world (or at least one curious fan) who he really was. For, in a sense, he wouldn’t really know the answer until he had written it.
“Okay, we’re back,” the female DJ said. But the digital signal seemed to be encountering interference. Pieces of it, like tiles on a bathroom wall, were dropping out. “— think Willard is sti__ on the line. Willard, thanks ___ waiting.” “Wicked Lester! Wicked Lester! Wicked Lester!” Willard pressed the phone tightly to his ear. “Now, ___ repeat __day’s triv__ ques____, what was the origi___ name ______ band tha_ _____ go on to be __lled
KISS?”
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52 “Wicked Lester!” Willard shouted again. “It’s Wicked Lester!”
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53
Part Six
Maya and Pete peeked into the space between Jay’s head and the door to Stony’s house to get a glimpse of Blue. Doc pulled Jay’s head out a little farther … almost there now. So far, Jay had done just what Doc had requested, kept his mouth shut and restrained himself from saying anything or making any noise. But when the same overpowering light that emanated from Al’s palace came out of Stony’s house as well — in one bright, humming flash — Jay was left with one predictable recourse: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Doc had to turn away, both temporarily blinded and deafened. He tried to signal to Deuce to bring Jay down slowly, but Deuce was motionless, as if his batteries had suddenly drained. The display screen on his torso filled with an apparently random assortment of Greek and Arabic alphabet characters.
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54 Jay, left dangling in Deuce’s firm grip, continued, somewhat more emphatically: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” With the light now shooting out of both paper buildings, some of the onlookers began applauding, much as if a fireworks display had come to a stunning finale.
“I’m sor__, __llard, ___ we couldn’t quite he__ that answer. Could you _____ turn your rad__ down, please?” “Wicked Lester! Wicked Lesterrrrrrrrrr!” “Willard? Willard?” “Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicked Lesssssssssssssster!” “Sorry, _ think we’ve lost Willard. We___ getting ____ ____ of _____ference. _____ go___ to ____ __ move on to the next call__.” “Wicked Les —” Willard’s mouth was still open, but the last syllable never seemed to come out.
The light grew even brighter. For a moment, the light was all that anyone could see … And then it was gone, and with it the infernal hum and the crackling rush of air. The writing room fell silent … or almost so. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
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55 Dante looked at his laptop screen … it was empty! Except for the single word, “SENT”, on the function display line above where his toolbar was. He felt numb and practically had to will himself to breathe. He thought: What have I done? And he closed his eyes.
“Blue? Blue?” Pete looked into Stony’s house. “Blue? You can come out now.” “Blue!” Maya pushed past Pete and poked her head through the doorway. “Hey! Time to go. Smells horrible in there!” Deuce jolted back to life. He gently lowered Jay to the shelf while his display screen clicked through a number of punctuation marks and a spasm of interference. At last he locked upon the message:
JAY : SAFE
Jay, finally out of the house, rocked from one side to the other, trying to stand up. “Relax,” Doc said, helping him up. “Slowly … you’ve been through quite a lot.” “Hey, Doc! Guys! You won’t believe it! I saw my own body like it was on the other side of the room!” “Calm down,” Doc said gently. “Are you all right? Can you see?” “Yeah, I see … spots! And they’re all shaped like Al and Stony!”
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56 “I think we’re all seeing spots,” Doc said. “Fortunately, not like that.” Doc looked across the shelf, at Al’s palace, and his jaw dropped open. “Oh … my … dear.” “Blue?” Pete looked once more into Stony’s house. “Come on outta there, kiddo.” His eyes were still clouded from the blast of light. All he could make out, faintly, in Stony’s house was Stony himself, or just his legs, in the shadows. Blue was nowhere to be seen. Doc tapped him lightly on the back. His voice faltered and sounded higher pitched than usual. “Blue … Blue’s over there!” Pete withdrew his head from the paper house. Doc was pointing across the shelf, past the barbed wire demilitarized zone, to Al’s palace … and to Blue, who had just emerged from it. Pete blinked, as if it might just be some illusion created by the light, and then looked back again. “Maya,” Pete said, as he watched Blue walk to the edge of the platform and smile over at them. “You said —” “He was!” Maya’s mouth dropped open. “I saw him run into Stony’s house myself … with my own two eyes!” “He was in there,” Jay said, pointing to Stony’s house. “Now he’s over there!” He pointed back to Blue. “That’s like … math I can’t even do!” “I don’t see this,” Maya said. “I’m not seeing this. I refuse —”
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57 “Maybe it’s just a trick,” Smokin’ Joe said. “Like the magic shows on TV.” “If so, then how?” Doc asked. “Those stage magicians have trapdoors. Where’s the trapdoor here?” “It’s in space,” Jay said, stretching to rub his neck. “Like the wormsonly holes where ya get sucked in and ya come out on Saturn.” “Jay, my friend,” Doc said, “I try never to shoot down any fairly reasonable hypothesis, but I do wish you’d be a bit more kind to my sensibilities.” “Stony!” Smokey called into the paper house. “Stony, I know you’re in there!” “I am not!” The shaken voice came from inside. “Stony, what happened?” He didn’t answer. When Smokey peered in he could make out no more than a shadow, shuddering in a corner. Pete shouted, “Blue! Stay there! I’m coming!” And he started down the rope ladder. The others followed, and as soon as they were on the floor, Sam swung the ladder over to Al’s ledge. Willard stared at the little group walking from Stony’s side of the shelf to Al’s, but really didn’t see them. The phone had dropped away from his open hand. Ben nudged him in consolation. “We know, anyhow.”
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58 “You did good,” Dawn said as Willard switched off the radio. “It doesn’t matter what they know.” “But it does,” Willard said, then corrected himself: “It did.” “Next time,” Adam said, as Carrie patted Willard on the head. “It won’t be the same question, but … next time.”
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59
Part Seven
Dante, gazing at his empty screen, resigned himself to his fate. The world would now discover the secret identity of Nolan Dalton. Or maybe Rayven, the fan, wouldn’t believe him. Or if she did, maybe no one would ever believe her. But if they did, what on Earth would happen then? He checked the “Sent” folder in his email … the message wasn’t there! It was barely possible that the message had been intercepted by something, or disintegrated in whatever strange power surge emanated from Al’s palace. Which meant that the message may never have been sent after all. He put the laptop down at his side as if snapping out of a trance, stood up, and for the first time that afternoon he looked around the writing room. Half the creations in the house seemed to be there, all staring up at Al’s ledge as if something astounding … or appalling … had just
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60 happened there. But all Dante could see was Blue, standing at the edge as his father, Smokey, Maya, Joe, Jay and Doc made their way to him. Al’s palace was dark and still.
Nolan found the mysterious “Forestry Service” truck about where he expected to find it, parked in a small clearing roughly twenty yards out past the property line and security perimeter. Nothing much about it suggested that it had anything whatsoever to do with the National Forestry Service. The only thing on or around it that even vaguely qualified as equipment was a rather long antenna affixed dead center atop the cab. He couldn’t detect any activity around the truck, and no one was visible inside or nearby it … as if it has simply been parked there and abandoned. He was about to move on and see if he could find some sign of the truck’s occupants elsewhere when he heard an odd noise, like a gust of wind and a sizzling of atmosphere, followed by a bright flash, like lightning. On a clear, cloudless afternoon in January. Still, he instinctively hit the ground. He didn’t hear anything like thunder but remained flat in the moss and cool dirt until he heard a muffled yelp and a startled expletive that sounded as if it came from the back of the truck.
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61 Nolan looked up at the truck. A white-bluish smoke escaped through the back doors. The engine started up quickly then, gunned, and the truck jolted into motion with a gear-stripping groan. As it pulled away, the truck barely missed hitting a tree head-on. The antenna bent severely as it caught in the lower branches. Nolan watched them … heard them, really … connect abruptly with the main road on the other side of the dense line of trees, and headed off with a roar. In the haze of smoke the truck left behind, he smelled something distinct from the smells of even an old, inefficient, gasburning vehicle (and the truck didn’t look that old): something more like burning plastic, or that ozone smell associated with electrical fires. He pressed a finger and thumb up to his mustache. Perhaps something in the truck had malfunctioned. But he remembered that he first heard that strange sizzling noise behind him. Nolan turned around, where he could clearly see the house. It might have been an intuitive leap or his own imagination getting the better of him, but he saw (or thought he did) a flicker of light … from that distance nothing more than a little glass bead catching the sunlight … in the writing room window. Nolan ran all the way back to the house.
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62 “Blue?” Pete gently rubbed his son’s head. “It’s time to go. I’m reading a book to Stevie downstairs. It’s called The Third Twin. Would you like to go down and listen in with us?” Blue pressed himself against Pete’s side and nodded. “I think we should be together more. It’s nice of Maya and Jay to keep an eye on you, but maybe they should have some more time for themselves. Don’t you think?” Blue shook his head. Al peaked out of his palace just as Nolan made it to the writing room, breathless, and holding his chest. “What …” Nolan said and stopped to take in a few extra breaths. He looked at the creations in front of Al’s palace, in his doorway … then he took a second look at Al. Al was wearing goggles. Tiny, Al-sized goggles. They might have been “borrowed” from a child’s action figure, but why did he need them? “What did I just, conveniently, miss?” Nolan asked Doc. Doc raised his hands and let them drop back down slowly. “Is there a chance,” he said, “that one might find a few drops, just a thimbleful, maybe, of gin in the house?” Jay whispered to Blue, as he pointed to the pair of jeans Nolan was wearing. “See that flap where Nolan’s got his hand? That’s a pocket.”
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63 Al stepped out of his palace. He smiled at Pete, who protectively stepped forward to place himself between Al and Blue. Al smiled at Blue too, but for once his smile appeared to suggest that he was sharing his private joke. He nodded to Blue. And Blue nodded back. Pete shuddered. And when he noticed that Blue was smiling very much the way Al smiled, he hurried Blue back down the ladder. “Monster!” dangerous!” “So what?” Al said. Doc and Smokin’ Joe managed to restrain Maya before any further escalation occurred. Al walked to the edge of the platform and surveyed the writing room as if he were making an assessment of it and all the rest of the great world beyond it, fixing his gaze at last upon the paper house that Stony called his home. “Go Red Sox,” was Al’s conclusion, though he did not speak the words loudly enough for anyone other than himself to hear. Nothing stirred in Stony’s house for a good two minutes, until Stony, very cautiously, poked his head out. Then Al repeated … louder this time: “Go Red Sox.” Maya barked at Al. “Demon! You are insane and
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64 Stony took a moment to digest this and then, as if swelling himself with a single great breath, returned to his serene, imperial posture. “Go Red Sox!” he said and, with order now restored to the territory, he retired to his house. Nolan stood in a spot halfway between Stony’s house and Al’s palace. He looked up at the fixture with its broken bulb, then bent down a little, as if trying to get a good view of what could be seen through the writing room window. He pressed a finger thoughtfully up to his mustache and started to ask, “Al …” then shook his head and turned to Dante. “I don’t suppose you would know —” “Sorry.” Dante shook his head. “I was a little too involved in my work to notice. It all happened pretty suddenly.” Nolan, with his eyes closed, nodded. “Of course.” He held up a finger and said, “I need to make a call. I’ll be back later to replace that bulb.” As he left, King and Shadow came running in (as well as two stickers can run), Shadow holding open a page of the steak magazine. “Nolan! Nolan!” King said. “Why can’t we have steak that looks like this?” Nolan looked down at the open page. He smiled. “Because, guys, that’s an entire side of beef. Also, you guys are only stickers, you know.” Then he turned to head out of the room. “But we’re lion stickers,” King said.
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65 “Hey,” Shadow said, looking around the room. “What the hell happened in here?” “Who knows?” Nolan said. He picked up the lion stickers and carried them out of the room.
In the middle of the room, Willard was still sitting among his companions, but they were joined now by the Wise Men, who had somehow managed to climb down out of their poster. They were singing, for Willard, something that might have sounded like Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” colliding with Boston’s “Foreplay/Long Time” simultaneously, or just the random squealings and squawks of three men, made of paper, who couldn’t carry a tune. But they were singing for Willard, and Willard was smiling.
“Hey, Dante!” Jay carried a half-sharpened pencil with an eraser over to Dante’s work station. “I brought this for you, you know, in case you need to erase anything from your computer.” “Thank you, Jay,” Dante said. “Maya said I should have my head examined.” “Maya says that to everyone,” Dante said. “Does your head hurt?” He turned his head experimentally, first right and then left. “Nope. It feels fine. My neck is a little stiff, though.”
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66 “That should go away on its own soon enough. If it doesn’t, make sure you tell Doc and Nolan about it.” “Oh, I will.” Jay stood beside Dante’s laptop, just gazing at it. “Dante?” “Yes, Jay?” “They want me to stay away from Blue. Maya said I’m dangerous.” “Well, that’s not for Maya to judge. I’m sure it’ll only be for a little while. Pete knows how you feel about Blue. He also knows you’re not really dangerous.” And Dante added, to himself, at least not intentionally. “I still have a bunch of things to teach Blue.” Jay looked down and inspected his feet, as if unable to look anywhere else. “I didn’t mean to get stuck in Stony’s doorway. And Blue is … he’s … fast!” “Jay,” Dante said, “if you’ll give me a minute or three to finish up something I’ve been writing, I’d like to hear about everything that’s happened to you and Blue, if you’d like to tell me about it.” “YES!” Jay ran in a complete circle, smiling. “Yes, Dante! My bestest friend in the whole wide room! Yes!” “Just a few more minutes is all I need.” Dante sat back down and returned his laptop to his outstretched legs. He reprised all the information about his work habits that he had already given to Rayven, but left out all of his “confession”. If she did
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67 receive the earlier message, he could easily claim it was a story he was working on that was accidentally included in the email. He looked back to find not only Jay but Deuce as well, staring at him. But their wonder and curiosity seemed much less worrying than the scrutiny of a fan. “I saw the whole universe,” Jay said. “It was small, but it wasn’t anything like a pocket.” “Just another moment,” Dante said. “I’m nearly finished.” “About my ‘philosophy’,” Dante wrote. “It’s no different, really, than any other creature’s with a sense of both good and evil, right and wrong, and some sense of a world beyond one’s internal blabberings. If anything distinguishes my personal philosophy from anyone else’s, it may be my feeling that we are all in the employ of ‘The Universe’, as Steven Hawking might put it. But I’m divided as to whether or not that energy that the universe gives us is ours or is us ...” Dante glanced at Stony’s house, then at Al’s palace. “… which is one of the great but mischievous questions, the answers of which we can only hope will one day be shown to us.” In the background Dante heard, from four less than talented voices, something that sounded very much like the chorus from “Makin’ Memories”, by Rush. “Patience,” he wrote. “That’s it in a single word. And who knows … if we’re all a little patient this summer coming, perhaps this will be a
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68 decent year for our Red Sox. The good lord knows I could stand to see a third World Series victory parade across Boston. Anyhow, thank you for your sincere interest in my work.” He read the lines over with the same sort of trepidation he felt when he finished writing his first novel … when he finished writing anything, for that matter … and hit the “SEND” button. “There,” he said to Jay. “That’s done. Now then, tell me all about everything that happened.”
Copyright © 2008 Charles Copeland – All Rights Reserved
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