Chapter Four:
Noomi Is Not In This Chapter

“MOOOOM!” daughter Jessica Cornflake screamed. “Bart is saying mean things about me on Facebook again!”

“I AM NOT!” son Bart Finkleheimer shouted. “And, anyway, every word of it is true!”

Mom sighed. Practically before she had conceived her children, she conceived of having children as being a form of penance for sins that weren’t necessarily all that sinful, to her way of thinking, which wasn’t that different from most people’s ways of thinking, she believed, except for certain impulses that she had managed to keep under control, so they could hardly be considered sins, and, anyway, what the hell, such sins might, in fact, be virtues in another, more just reality; but the universe, this universe, the universe she was stuck in, had its own reasons for why things happen and worked on its own inscrutable moral timetable, a timetable you couldn’t get at the bus depot even if you could conceive of it and, being a mere mortal, you probably couldn’t even conceive of it, so what are you going to do?

“Alright, you two,” Mom said, “what is it this time?”

Jessica Cornflake looked up from her PDA and said, “Bart just posted a note that says that I don’t know what a Fourier transform is!”

“Bart, is that true?” Mom demanded.

“Geez, Mom,” Bart Finkleheimer, slowing his typing on his laptop’s keyboard but not looking up, responded, “how can anybody be expected to calculate the frequency domain representation of a function for signal processing when they think that a Fourier transform means wearing a new mink stole!”

Mom frowned. “Jess, is that true?” she asked.

Jessica Cornflake shrugged. Kids these days!

“Bart, don’t make fun of your sister on Facebook,” Mom commanded. “Jessica, try not to live your life as a series of bad puns that only science geeks will truly appreciate. And, both of you, finish your Noggos™!”

 

<culinary digression>

Noggos™ are a brand of breakfast food in the FDA ignored category of suppressive waffles. They contain drugs that ensure that you won’t be hungry for the rest of the day! Stories of people fainting while jogging, bicycling or using heavy farm machinery were deemed by Kellogg’s, the company that made them, apocryphal and, anyway, a small price to pay for the first serious attempt to deal with the nation’s obesity problem using nourishmeceuticals. A grateful nation ignored them.

</culinary digression>

 

Jessica Cornflake, 13 years old, had neon blue hair and a wore t-shirt that read, “I don’t know who you are, but you suck!” Pre-emptive aggression was all the rage among teenagers – kids these days! (Although she probably was not aware of it, Mom had a quota of kids these days! thoughts that she had to think if she was to sleep soundly at night. Please bear with her – it’s a phase she’s going through.) While feeding off her social network’s energy, Jessica Cornflake was listening to the clean rock band Close Cap Before Replacing’s current hit, “Always Squeeze From the Bottom of the Tube.”

Bart Finkleheimer was a year younger than his sister. He had the spiked hair and horn-rimmed glasses of the nerd punks of his generation. (For them, chess club was an opportunity to play a full body contact sport, and if you didn’t come out of math club with some sort of permanent facial scar, you were a loser!) There was something about the intensity of his gaze that kept even Aunt Sophie Auktaukluk, whose freedom with other people’s bodies was legendary, from pinching his cheeks.

Mom stood by the toaster oven, waiting for the next batch of Noggos™ to unfreeze. The first thing she did when she got the toaster oven home a couple of years ago was disable its personality implant and override all of its automatic functions – Mom was surprisingly handy with pliers and soldering irons, which would have impressed anybody in her family had they chosen to notice – which, of course, they hadn’t – she was not going to be dictated to by her kitchen appliances! Over the counter that divided the kitchen area from the dining area, she watched her children sitting at the table physically next to each other but conceptually in different universes.

“Morning, everybody,” Dad said as he walked into the dining room. He was tall and thin, with thinning curly brown hair: although he had the look and demeanour of a hawk that was desperate to break the diet its spouse had put it on with a quick rat snack, he had a voice that suggested he sucked on one too many helium balloons when he was a kid and, just like his mother had warned him, his voice had gotten permanently stuck that way. This made Dad, at best, a confusing authority figure.

“Sit down, hon,” Mom told him. “Another batch of Noggos™ is on its way.”

As he sat at the table, Dad complained, “Aww, hon, I can’t have any Noggos™ today! You know I have a brunch with Sid Adelman, and if I don’t eat anything, he will take it as a personal insult and decide not to buy into our takeover of Endonniedarko Industries! I’m sorry, but I cannot jeopardize our family’s future just to ensure I get my daily not recommended by the FDA dose of nourishmeceuticals!”

Actually, Mom thought to herself, I didn’t know that you had a brunch with Sid Adelman, you self-absorbed cretin. You may have told me three weeks ago that you had an important meeting today, but it’s not like you gave me any details, because you never talk about your work, or the latest research on the health risks of nourishmeceuticals, or which politician has been caught with his hypocritical hand up which starlet’s pay-or-play contract or, or, or anything, really, because you think it will upset some delicate thing inside me that exists only in your sexist imagination and, oh, if you only knew, if you only knew, that condescending smile would be wiped off your face faster than…something really fast…really, really, really, really, really fast – and, that’s five reallys, so you know it’s serious – because…because…because…

“How about an omelet?” Mom asked.

“Just eggs?” Dad asked.

“Maybe just a little bit of caffeine,” Mom coyly admitted. “We’ve run out of decaffeinated eggs.”

“You’ll have to pick some up the next time you do a shop,” Dad told her, a hint of sternness creeping into his balloon voice.

“Yes, dear,” she meekly responded as she got the eggs out of the fridge.

“Too much caffeine makes me edgy,” Dad continued. “I almost lost the Frippingler Account because I had had too much caffeine and scrunched a magic marker on a whiteboard. I didn’t even know magic markers could be scrunched. Not the sort of thing you want to learn in a crucial meeting where the fate of the Frippingler Account hangs in the balance, let me tell you! Hunh. Still, if that’s all we’ve got, I suppose that’s what I’ll have.”

After she made the eggs, Mom watched her family eating breakfast. The kids were focused on their devices while Dad was reading the latest issue of The Alternate Reality News Service. She idly wondered if there were any original jokes left about the nuclear family.

“Okay, kids,” Mom said as they finished their waffles, “time to strap into your virtual reality harnesses so you can spend the day at Camp Winniminnibagotonka.”

“Aww, Mom, do I have to go?” Bart Finkleheimer whined.

“Is there a problem, son?” Dad, setting the paper aside on the table, asked.

“Nobody wants to spend any time in the environments he creates,” Jessica Cornflake stated. “They’re too weird.”

“They’re conceptual!” Bart Finkleheimer shouted.

“Now, son,” Dad admonished. (Think: Ward Cleaver played by Mickey Mouse.) “We’ve talked about this before. If you want to get along with the other children at camp, you’ll have to give them something realistic that they can hold onto.”

“Representation is dead!” Bart Finkleheimer loudly insisted. “I hate it! Hate it! Hate it!”

“Don’t worry,” Mom gently told him. “I know this time of your life is difficult, but, when you’re older, you will find people who understand you and the environments you create for them.”

Dad shot her a ‘not helping’ look. Mom looked down at the hands that were folded in front of her apron. “Son,” Dad stated, “human beings are, by nature, social creatures. If you want to get ahead you have to go along. There is no ‘I’ in team. The lone inventor doesn’t catch the big IPO. You don’t want to end up like your Uncle Ira, do you?”

Mom looked like she was about to protest, so Dad shook his head at her.

“I guess not,” Bart Finkleheimer reluctantly allowed.

“Of course you don’t!” Dad roared. His voice is not something you can describe – you really have to hear it to believe it. “Now, if you two scamps have finished breakfast, I want you to go upstairs, strap into your VR harnesses and learn how to conform!”

“Yes, sir!” Jessica Cornflake saluted and rushed out of the room.

“Yes, sir,” Bart Finkleheimer, resigned, said, and walked out of the room.

“They’re good kids,” Mom observed.

“Hopefully, they won’t need too much expensive therapy when they’re older,” Dad responded. Finishing his decaf cup of coffee, he rose from the table. Mom came to his side. “Have a good day,” he stiffly said and kissed her awkwardly on the cheek.

“Thanks,” Mom replied. “You, too.”

As she walked him to the door, Dad told her: “Oh, I left you the Alternate Reality News Service. There’s an article on fashions on Earth Prime 4-8-3-6-2-5 dash beta that might give you some ideas.”

After he left, Mom cleared off the table. Fashions! she thought. Distractions for the feeble-minded – shear the sheep so you can shear the she…no, that kind of social criticism is too easy, and, anyway, why bother? Remember: you chose this life, after all; of all the things you could have done, all of the people you could have been, this is the one you chose – you needed to be middle class, and now you are middle class…with a vengeance, a dark, cruel vengeance that haunts your dreams by night and suffocates you by day, but a vengeance that does give you a kind of protection, an invisibility that any comic book super character would envy and...

Mom picked up the Alternate Reality News Service with the intention of throwing it into the recycling incinerator, when a headline on the cover caught her eye.

* * *

Murder Most…Ambiguous

by HAL MOUNTSAUERKRAUTEN, Alternate Reality News Service Crime Writer

 

It turns out that Gauguin di Presto’s safe room wasn’t so safe.

The dead body of the 88 year-old retired used shoe personality implant salesman was found locked into his safe room. Ordinarily, we would simply have assumed that his body had given out like a razor strop that had been used to hone sharp edges once too often. But, broken razor strops don’t usually attract the attention of the Transdimensional Authority.

“Yeah,” said Police Chief Randy Hammocker-Flemmer. “As soon as we saw…well, we can’t tell you what we saw until the TA has finished its investigation. But, as soon as we saw…the object that we can’t tell you about, we knew that we were out of our depth and called in TA investigators.”

“Oh, and, by the way,” he added, “there’s no dash in my name. It’s Hammocker Flemmer, not Hammocker-Flemmer. I’m sure you regret the error.”

Maybe some day. For now, Crash Chumley, lead Transdimensional Authority Investigator on the case, had no comment.

Why would the TA be called in for a simple locked room mystery? Hercule Chan, Miss Jane Warshawski or any of a number of other local detectives could have solved the case. Our first assumption was that somebody from another dimension had entered di Presto’s safe room, murdered him, and returned to their home dimension.

Investigator Chumley had no comment. But, he scratched his nose while saying so, which we interpreted as encouragement.

Through means that were only partially nefarious – barely even misdemeanours, really – the Alternate Reality News Service obtained a copy of the coroner’s report on di Presto’s death. It turns out that he had died of a cerebral haemorrhage, a fancy medical way of saying his brain started leaking and didn’t stop until he did.

Okay, okay, our first theory was shot down in formaldehyde flames. That’s fine: we’ve got plenty of them.

Our second theory was that di Presto was using his Home Universe Generator™ to spy on the personality implant designs of his company’s competitors; by watching their meetings in other universes, he could find out what they were planning. He might even have stolen their designs and given them to his company. Sure, sure. Used shoe personality implant sales is a cutthroat business! Okay, he had been retired for over 20 years, but that just made him an even better criminal perpetrator in our books, since he would be the last person anybody would suspect of industrial espionage, and didn’t the last person you would suspect of being the culprit always end up being the culprit in crime literature? If only he had been a butler, it would have been perfect, but, of course, real life is never as satisfying as a good detective novel.

Investigator Chumley had no comment. But, we detected a slight trembling in his voice when he told us, which we interpreted as encouragement.

“Naah, that’s not it,” Police Chief Hammocker Flemmer said. “Sole Survivor, di Presto’s old firm, merged with Shoes You Can Abuse over a decade ago. Remember the famous footwear personality implant bubble? Yeah, a lot of good people got walked all over in that one. So, anyway, there was no company for di Presto to spy on.”

“By the way,” he continued, “you’ve got my name almost right, but not quite. It’s not Hammocker Flemmer, it’s Hammocker Flemmer– there’s a single space between the two parts of the name, not a tab. Thanks.”

We could have told him he was welcome, but we had already moved on to another theory about what had happened in di Presto’s safe room. We were originally told that the TA had been called in because of an object found next to di Presto’s body. What object could possibly interest the Transdimensional Authority? A jumbo jet that folded up into a suitcase? A vial of the DNA of an elephant crossed with a cantaloupe? A pair of zircon encrusted tweezers?

The answer was staring us in the face: a Dimensional Portal™!

Sure. You have to have a licence to run a Dimensional Portal™, and individuals are never given licences. But, the plans are easily available on the Internet. di Presto had had years, decades to jury-rig something in his safe room.

Investigator Chumley had no comment. But, it was the way he asked us to stop asking him for a comment that suggested to us that –

“Oh, why don’t you give it a rest?” noted historian Oliver Stone interjected. “Right now, there is no information on the death of Gauguin di Presto. Seriously. Nothing. There is less information here than there is supporting the existence of UFOs or…or a conspiracy in the death of JFK! This isn’t journalism – it’s bizarre flights of fancy masquerading as journalism! Why don’t you stop until you have something real to report on?”

Because we are the Alternate Reality News Service, sir. We were created to report the news, and we won’t let anything like a dearth of facts stand in our way!

* * *

Okay, now that was interesting, Mom thought to herself. Absently playing with the empty space where her left earlobe should have been, Mom went down to the basement, happy in the knowledge that she was free to enjoy a little “me time.”