Dear yononan34,Chapter Five:
Noomi Plays House
A couple of days later, Noomi ran out of paperwork to keep herself busy. She could either play double dare in the air everywhere solitaire (you thought we had run out of variations on the game? You need to have more faith in human ingenuity!) on her computer, or watch the… (dramatic stab) orientation video. Noomi looked around to see if lightning had struck anybody in the office, but it was just her imagination. Tough break.
Noomi opened the (dramatic stab) orientation video and pressed play. Even before the Transdimensional Authority logo faded into the FBI warning against pirating the video, Noomi could feel he eyes glaze over (and she didn’t even like eating donuts!). Before she had lost her capacity to speak, Investigator Chumley got off the phone and said, “Noomi, we have an appointment in the lab.”
Noomi gratefully hit the pause button. “Thang aww,” she said. Well, before she had completely lost her capacity to speak.
Investigator Chumley led Noomi to a smallish white room on the second level of the basement. There were many tables with Bunsen burner thingies, electron-microscope whatsits and other equipment that defied cutification. Standing amid the science was a tall, thin besmocked man wearing a bow tie and serious manner. He looked like what the child of Bill Nye and Morticia Addams would have looked like if one or more of them hadn’t been fictional.
“Noomi Rapier,” Investigator Chumley introduced them, “This is Doctor Alhambra. Doctor, this is Noomi Rapier.”
Doctor Alhambra picked a clipboard off a table and, with a gentle grunt, made a mark on it. Putting down the clipboard, he smiled grimly and said, “We have programmed the modifications to your…device. If you will just…” He motioned to Investigator Chumley, who took TOM out of his pocket.
“Thanks,” TOM said. “It was getting stuffy in…hey, wait a minute! What are we doing in a lab? And – hey! – who are you calling a device?”
“Hello!” a voice shouted from a screen in the background. The screen was divided into three squares. The largest square showed a man, a little overweight with long, shaggy greying hair, who could have been mistaken for Jerry Garcia – his smock was tie-dyed, or, had a really big ketchup and mustard stain. He wore a general air of befuddlement, as if life was a problem in chaos theory with uncertain variable parameters. (As if it isn’t!) Above him were two smaller squares. One contained an image of a puppy in a cage; curiously, it had no hair on its head, but it did have a long, pink scar. The other was an image of an empty lab; the perspective on this image moved in time with the puppy’s head movements.
“That’s Doctor Richardson,” Doctor Alhambra stated. “He’s working on something else.”
“What are you working on?” TOM, concern dripping from every phoneme, asked.
“We are going to make you stronger,” Doctor Alhambra replied.
“Nothing you do will affect my personality, will it?” TOM said. “Cause, right now, I am a chick magnet – you hear me? Babes adore me! And, I don’t want anything interfering with that!”
“If the operation did change your personality,” Doctor Alhambra mused, “how would you know the difference?”
“WHOA!” TOM responded. “Okay, I’m out of – Crash, get me out of here! Crash! Get me – Crash?”
Investigator Chumley’s attention was on the screen where a puff of smoke had come out of the puppy’s head. “What, exactly, is Doctor Richardson doing?” he asked.
“He put a chip in the subject’s head,” Doctor Alhambra, who didn’t appear to be especially interested, stated as he walked over to a table with a laptop computer on it. “The idea is that if we could tap into an animal’s visual cortex, we could send it to spy on suspects in other dimensions.”
“That’s crazy!” Noomi exclaimed.
Doctor Alhambra made a noise that could, if interpreted generously, have been a sigh. “It’s a military contract,” he stated as he pressed a button on the keyboard. “They are very lucrative.”
“Can we please get back to what’s really important here?” TOM insisted. “ME?!”
Another puff of smoke wafted out of the puppy’s head. The image of the empty lab got fuzzy and wavy. “How could you get the puppy to go where you needed it to go?” Investigator Chumley wanted to know. “You might be interested in something on a table in a locked room in a heavily guarded corporate headquarters, and the dog might be out in the parking lot chasing squirrels.”
“The Pentagon thinks electric shocks would work,” Doctor Alhambra told him. “Stimulate the pain centres as a negative incentive when the subject is on the wrong path, stimulate the pleasure centres as a positive incentive when the subject is on the correct path.”
“That’s crazy,” Investigator Chumley concernedly commented.
Doctor Alhambra shrugged. “Everybody knows we’re at least a decade away from a workable prototype,” he admitted, “but, what the hell? It’s their money.”
“That’s not –” Investigator Chumley started. He stopped because smoke had started to emanate from the puppy’s head in a steady stream. The image of the empty lab went black.
“OH! MY! GOD!” Noomi shouted.
“No need to worry,” Doctor Alhambra assured her, “we haven’t gotten to the electric shocks yet – that is the second phase of the research project.”
The other two images went black.
“WHAT ABOUT ME?!” TOM screamed.
“You?” Doctor Alhambra dismissed him with a wave of his hand, “You’re done.”
“Done? DONE! What do you mean, done?” TOM anxiously asked.
“Didn’t you see me hit the computer key?” Doctor Alhambra stated with the equanimity of science.
“That’s all?” TOM, much more calmly, wanted to know.
“You can now trace signals from between universes that are three magnitudes weaker than you used to be able to,” Doctor Alhambra told him.
“And, my personality?” TOM insisted.
“Untouched,” Doctor Alhambra assured him.
The main screen came on. Doctor Richardson was giving the thumbs up.
“But, how would I…ohhh…” TOM petered out.
“So, the puppy was saved?” Noomi asked.
“No,” Doctor Alhambra answered. “Why would the Pentagon pay big bucks to save puppies in labs when they could just go to the nearest pound and adopt a bunch of them? I mean, seriously, where’s the science in that? No – it was the chip – the computer chip was saved!”
Noomi looked disgusted. “Are we done here?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Doctor Alhambra stated.
Noomi walked out of the lab. Investigator Chumley pocketed TOM and went after her.
“You could have thanked me,” Doctor Alhambra muttered. Then, he brightened, happy in the knowledge that science is its own reward.
* * *
Two days later, Noomi was sitting at her desk, staring into the middle distance. She was thinking something about…something…something important…or…something…
“Hey, Noomi,” Bobbo Bruit shouted. “what’s your favourite colour?”
“Erg oo and ah orse oo ode in on!” Noomi replied, to much laughter in the bullpen.
After the incident where TOM received his upgrade, Noomi went straight down to her desk and watched the orientation video. She was hoping for complete oblivion, but she was happy to settle for an inability to articulate the rage she felt.
Investigator Chumley walked in. “Data Collection and Interpretation think they have a lead,” he told Noomi. Among its many tasks, Data Collection and Interpretation monitored the space between universes for unauthorized traffic. When it discovered energy that shouldn’t be there, it sent the information to the Investigations unit.
“Hey, Noomi!” Brett Blurp shouted, “How do you like working with a guy named ‘Crash?’” The detectives in the room laughed again.
“Hey, Brett,” Investigator Chumley kidded him in the time honoured tradition of male bonding, “my partner only watched the video two days ago, and she has most of her speech skills back. I seem to recall that it took you a week and a half just to get your higher intellectual faculties back!”
The detectives laughed even harder. Blurp’s face, ruddy to begin with, noticeably reddened.
“Come on,” Investigator Chumley advised. “Let’s get out of here before he thinks of a comeback.”
As they walked to the elevators, Noomi said, “Anks, Invedigator Chubley.”
“Why don’t you call me Crash?” he replied.
“Anks, Crash.”
“Don’t mention it,” he told her. “I…I’m stuck between two different codes of masculine behaviour. On the one hand, there’s the guy code: you stick with the guys against the girl. On the other hand, there’s the cop code: you always have your partner’s back. Tricky, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.”
Noomi noticed that they stopped on the main floor instead of the basement. “Whurr are we gung?” she asked.
“To get my car,” Investigator Chumley answered.
“Yer car?”
“It’s fitted with a Transdimensional Drive™,” he explained. “We could hardly drive into a locked room, but, for the most part, we should be able to drive to where we need to go in other realities.”
Investigator Chumley led Noomi out to the parking lot. When he pressed a button, the lights of a sleek, cobalt grey car went on and it honked for attention.
“Whoa,” Noomi said. The sight of the car had clearly speeded up the return of her facility with language.
“Indeed,” Investigator Chumley agreed, putting his hand on the handle of the door. Noomi grabbed the door handle on her side of the car and pulled, but nothing happened. She looked at it for a moment and tried again. Nothing.
“What the ferk?” Noomi asked, looking up.
Investigator Chumley almost smiled. “The doors open up,” he advised her. Noomi applied her efforts in a different direction, and, sure enough, she found that they did. She and Investigator Chumley climbed in. Inside, Noomi saw a control panel the size and complexity of which rivalled that of the bridge of the star ship Enterprise. She was sure half the lights on the panel were not actually connected to anything and just blinked at random intervals. More than half.
“Welcome to the Dimensional Delorean™,” said Investigator Chumley. “It’s a modified version of a very rare car. The Dimensional Delorean™ gets 100 miles to the gallon on the highway, 75 miles to the gallon in the city and 1,000 minutes to the gallon between universes. Are you ready for the better way for transdimensional travel?”
“You’ve practiced that speech, haven’t you?” Noomi asked, smiling.
“If I had,” Investigator Chumley diffidently responded, “would it make any difference to your desire to get going?”
“Absolutely none,” Noomi admitted. “Let’s head.”
Investigator Chumley put the key in the ignition and his foot on the accelerator. The Dimensional Delorean™ shimmied and popped out of existence.
* * *
Yo, GamR Mom,
Love the blog. Big fan.
I play a lot of Bloody Death Match to the Death IV – the characters are involving and the 3-D barometric perspective is visually stunning. And you get to rip people’s spines out! Anyway, I usually play Lord Gimcracku cause, hey, he’s the coolest kick-ass character in the whole shebang, I mean, he’s got the moves, he’s the man, he’s the shit, he’s [insert empty macho cliché here]! But, I can never seem to get past The Velvet Bonecrusher, you know? I finally figured out my character’s killer move: chest bash, chest bash, chest bash, low leg sweep, high leg kick, chest bash, chest bash, spinal lunge and capture. I used it to work my way up the ranks: I’m now at Asskicking Level 27. But, whenever I face The Velvet Bonecrusher, I get my ass handed to me. Literally. Great piece of animation, but, as I’m sure you can appreciate, not one I really want to see. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?
yononan34
Dear yononan34,
Thank you for your kind words. I’m glad you enjoy the blog.
Killer moves are called killer moves for a reason (they’re moves that kill), but that doesn’t mean that they are useful against every opponent. Sometimes, it pays to reach back into your repertoire and use a slightly older set of moves. In this case, try: chest bash, chest bash, chest bash, low leg sweep, high leg kick, chest bash, chest bash, boxed ears head crusher. I think you will find the results quite satisfying.
The GamR Mom
Hi, GamR Mommy,
I love you.
My name is Derrick. I am six years old. I play Drawer Duck and the Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. I like to make pictures. I played the whole game, and I played the whole game and I played the whole game and I played the whole game and I played the whole game and I like it, I like it, I like it, I like it, but I want a new game. This game is getting poopie. Is there another Drawer Duck game I can play?
shivas81closet
Dear Derrick,
Thank you for your kind words. I’m glad you enjoy the blog.
Drawer Duck is a series of educational games tailored to specific age groups. The game you play, for example, is targeted at six year and half a month-olds to six year, seven months, one week, four day and seven hour-olds. I mean, they are really tailored to very specific age groups. So, all you have to do is wait until you’re old enough, and you’ll be able to play the next game in the series, which I believe is called Drawer Duck’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
The GamR Mom
Hey, Mrs. GamR Mom Dude,
How’s it going? Your blog is the first thing I read when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I read before I go to sleep at night. It’s good shit.
For the last six months, I’ve been playing Microsoft Office Simulator 2026. In one sense, it’s a brilliant simulation: it has just the right mix of boring paperwork, boring meetings and boring socializing with boring people you wouldn’t socialize with if you weren’t stuck in such a boring place together for 10 hours a day. On the other hand, the game has a major weakness: just the right mix of boring paperwork, boring meetings and boring socializing with boring people you wouldn’t socialize with if you weren’t stuck in such a boring place together for 10 hours a day. You understand what I’m saying? I already work in this environment, why would I want to play a simulation of it?
Is there anything I can do to, you know, liven the game up a little?
Tyrone Slothrop
Dear Tyrone,
Thank you for your kind words. I’m glad you enjoy the blog.
You do know that the target audience for the Microsoft Office Simulator series is made up of race car drivers, astronauts, Lindsay Lohan bodyguards and other people who have very dangerous professions, do you not? Keeping this in mind, the best way to enhance your enjoyment of the game would probably be to change your career.
The GamR Mom
ATTENTION: The GamR Mom
My five year-old son Grandin has been convinced by his friends at school that he should play a game called Drawer Duck and the Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Now, the only things I know about computer games I learned from Fox News, so, of course, I told him that I would never allow it. But, he simply refuses to take no for an answer. Would you say that Drawer Duck and the Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby was too violent for my baby?
Harold Smith
Dear Harold,
Thank you for your kind words. I’m glad you – oh, wait, you didn’t – okay, never mind.
You (and, I suppose, Fox News) are absolutely right. Drawer Duck and the Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby is one of those violent computer games that everybody has heard about but nobody has actually played. Good catch – you certainly wouldn’t want your child to play that!
If your son must have a computer game, I would suggest Bloody Death Match to the Death IV. The game is so soothing, that I would recommend you allow him to play it just before he goes to sleep.
The GamR Mom
* * *
Noomi Rapier-Dewall looked at the words on the screen, all 904 of them. She was 96 words short. Asskicker12, the editor of the GamR Boyz Web site for which she blogged, would let her get away with being 10 maybe 20 words short on her daily posts, but this was too much. It’s not that he intimidated her: Noomi had tried many times to get him to change his online name, which implied that there were 11 people who were better at kicking ass than he was. No matter how hard she tried, though, he wouldn’t budge, saying that the name Asskicker12 had ‘sentimental value’ for him. It’s that she loved her job. Go figure.
With a sigh, Noomi opened DevilsHotmail (‘For people who find regular Hotmail too mild!’) and looked for another question. Before she got very far into it, though, the computer said, “I hate to interrupt, Noomi, but it is 15 minutes to noon, and if you want to make lunch for the boys, you should probably get started.”
“Okay,” Noomi agreed. She could finish after lunch. “Could you read for a minute for me before I go?”
“Must I?” the computer asked.
“I’d really appreciate it,” Noomi insisted.
“Very well,” the computer, trying to contain its exasperation, stated. “Where shall I begin?”
“Where you always begin,” Noomi told it: “where you left off last time.”
The computer artificially cleared its non-existent throat and recited: “Mondo Moda Ladies Fashion & Children’s Wear Inc. 2522 Finch Avenue West. North York. M9M 2G3. Mondo Slacks. 136 Tycos Drive. North York. M6B 1W8. Mondrow, William H., Chartered Accountant. 273 Sheppard Avenue West. North York. M2N 1N4. There. That was 60 seconds. Are you happy, now, woman?”
“Thanks,” Noomi smiled.
Oh, did I mention that she had bought the voice chip enhancement that made Noomi’s computer sound like Alan Rickman?
Noomi made her way down from her study to the kitchen. She buttered some bread, slapped some cheese between slices and popped them in the toaster oven. (When they were first married, Dev had wanted to buy her a smart kitchen with the latest artificial intelligence enhancements. She told him that if an electric can opener ever gave her grief about the way she cut tomatoes, she would burn the kitchen to the ground. That effectively ended the discussion.)
With lunch preparations well in hand, Noomi was left with approximately 13 and a half minutes to fill before noon. She thought about her sons, Oliver and Lawrence. Oliver, a tall, lean 7 year-old with a thoughtful gaze, liked to have a bedtime story before he went to sleep, only the story had to be a collaborative effort between him and his parents. They had been working on the latest story for over three months:
The Monster Under the Wheelchair Ramp
There was once a boy named – [“Mooooom,” Oliver interrupted, “that’s not how you start a story!”] Okay, okay. Sorry. Once upon a time there was a boy named Jonathan Leonard Quigley Wilson McWhirther-Rossiter. His friends just called him Bob. If your name was Jonathan Leonard Quigley Wilson McWhirther-Rossiter, you would probably prefer to be called Bob, too.
Bob was a noticer. He noticed things that other people were too busy or too distracted or too silly to notice. For instance, he noticed that Auntie Mame was no longer wearing her wedding ring; he didn’t understand why his mother, Grace Matilda Regina Bostrom McWhirther-Rossiter (aka: Lydia), made such a big fuss about it when he told her, but he noticed. He noticed that all of the cartoons he watched on Saturday morning were the same as toys in the stores; this was a problem for his dad, Reginald Dwight Francis Arruga McWhirther-Rossiter (whom people called Jeb), who had to explain to his son why he couldn’t buy all the toys that his son saw on TV. “I get it, mom,” Oliver assured his mother.
Bob was a noticer. So, of course, he noticed the big green, scaly arm that shot out of the darkness under the wheelchair ramp at his school, Piltdown Elementary, and grabbed the squirrel.
At first, he told Principal Joe. But, Principal Joe had to deal with mandatory student testing and funding cuts and somebody who kept spraying the anarchist logo on the doors to the girls’ gym and stuff, so he never noticed the big green, scaly arm. Then, Bob told Lydia and Jeb, but they didn’t notice the big green, scaly arm. Worse, they talked about whether they should be worried about Bob. Dad thought he just had a healthy imagination; Mom worried that there was something darker at work. They hadn’t noticed that Bob was a noticer.
Then, Mister and Misses Fischer-Pryce’s cat Niblets went missing. Bob knew that the monster under the wheelchair ramp was probably responsible for the cat’s disappearance, but couldn’t convince any adult to even look into it. So, he did what any self-respecting seven year-old would do under these circumstances: one day after school, he went to the wheelchair ramp to confront the monster.
“I know you’re in there,” Bob said. There was no response.
“I know you took Niblets,” Bob said. Still, there was no response.
“If you don’t talk to me, I’m going to tell an adult,” Bob said. Yes, he told a fib; he had already told the adults, and they didn’t believe him. Fibbing is wrong, and you should never do it under any circumstances, even if they involve monsters. “Mom, can we please keep the life lessons to a minimum!” Oliver moaned. “They’re getting in the way of the story!” But, Bob was frustrated by the silence, and he said anything that he could think of to get the monster to talk to him.
And, it worked. “Don’t do that,” a deep voice rumbled out of the darkness under the wheelchair ramp.
“Did you grab a cat?” Bob asked.
“I was hungry!” the monster told him.
Bob thought about this. It made sense: monsters under wheelchair ramps got hungry just like everybody else. Still, Bob couldn’t let him just grab people’s cats when he got hungry; people would miss their cats and be sad. So, Bob thought and thought and thought until he came up with a smart idea.
“If I feed you, will you stop grabbing people’s animals?” Bob asked.
The monster thought for a few seconds. Even its thoughts rumbled, Bob noticed. Then, it answered: “It depends. What have you got?”
So, Bob started feeding the monster under the wheelchair ramp at his school. It liked: chicken, tuna and Kraft Dinner. It didn’t like: lobster, crabs or extra creamy Kraft Dinner. Bob figured that the monster had probably come from the ocean – what with its scales and all – and may, eating seafood, have felt like a cannibal. He could come up with no theory about extra creamy Kraft Dinner.
Mom and Dad rarely noticed Bob’s trips out of the house after dinner, but, when they did notice and asked him what he was doing, he told them that he was going to the library. And, Mom and Dad were proud of how smart he was. After a couple of weeks, Mom noticed that their grocery bills were a little higher – adults always notice anything related to money. (Maybe that’s why they don’t notice other, more important things.) She just assumed it was because Bob was a growing boy, so he was eating more.
When he brought the food to the monster under the wheelchair ramp, the two of them started to talk. And, Bob learned many things. He learned that the monster was named Grumpy Periquinckle. He learned that Grumpy Periquinckle’s all time favourite food was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with dill pickles and ketchup. Eww. He learned that Grumpy Periquinckle was a bridge troll, but all of the bridges were taken, so he had to work wherever he could. Trolling doesn’t require many skills, but it does require some, and trolls can get rusty if they don’t keep their skills up. He learned that Grumpy Periquinckle was on a waiting list for a bridge, but, because trolls lived very long lives and there were now so many of them, he didn’t think he would get a bridge for a very long time. He learned that there was an annual convention of wheelchair ramp monsters in a city called Las Vegas, where they compared experiences, shared best practices and developed lobbying strategies for getting better locations. “You’ll understand that last bit when you’re older,” Noomi assured Oliver.
And, that’s all of the story Noomi and Oliver had come up with so far. Noomi thought that that was the perfect place to end the story: friendship overcoming the need to eat family pets. Oliver thought that it needed to be continued, that Grumpy Periquinckle should come under pressure from the other wheelchair ramp monsters to start eating cats again, not because he needed to when he was hungry, but because that is what wheelchair ramp monsters did. In this, Oliver was better attuned to life on the elementary school playground than his mother.
Noomi wasn’t sure where the story would go tonight, but she was looking forward to it.
Lawrence, the baby at five years old, had a round, open brown face with big eyes. When he was younger, he got used to falling asleep during storms. At some point, he couldn’t fall asleep without the sounds, so Noomi and Dev had to spend five or 10 minutes waggling cardboard next to his bed every night to help him. After a few months, they found that he could no longer fall asleep when a real storm hit, so they had to wait until it died down so they could make the cardboard noises.
Noomi loved all her men fiercely. Funny how things go. For Noomi, motherhood was a bewildering set of vaguely second best choices. But, in a good way.
As she took the finished sandwiches out of the toaster oven and popped a couple more in, she thought back to the family’s trip to Calgary to see Dev’s parents. Oliver spent the whole trip playing games and texting his friend on his Blackberry. Lawrence listened to his iPod. It was so quiet in the back seat, it got to the point where she wanted them to roughhouse or otherwise annoy each other just so she could be reassured that they were there. Come to think of it, the kids never asked “Are we there, yet?” (all they had to do was look up the destination using a GPS app, which would not only tell them if they were there yet, but how long they had to travel if they weren’t). They didn’t even have to ask for a rest stop; they just Instant Messaged the car with their request, and it pulled in at the next gas station, usually giving the driver a few seconds notice.
The more she thought about it, the closer Noomi came to the conclusion that technology was destroying family outings! (Didn’t Marshall McLuhan say something about that? If he didn’t, his disciples would claim that he did. Anyway, when she had a free moment, Noomi preferred the Random McLuhan Aphorism Generator, which she found made much more sense than any of McLuhan’s actual writings.)
Oliver walked into the kitchen. “Mmm,” he commented, “grilled cheese. You make the best sandwiches.”
“The trick,” Noomi told him, “is in choosing the right cheese.”
“I’m sure there’s a life lesson in there, somewhere,” Oliver gently chided his mother. Noomi smiled.
“Hey, Mom,” Lawrence shouted from the front of the house, “there’s a strange car pulling into the driveway!”
“What’s strange about it?” Noomi loudly asked.
“The doors open up,” Lawrence said. “There are two…oh…Mom!”
Noomi didn’t like the sound of that, so she told Oliver to watch the sandwiches and briskly walked out to the door. She got there just as the bell rang. Opening the door, she found a man and a woman standing on her porch.
“Hello,” Investigator Chumley greeted her, “We’re from the Transdimensional Authority and we’re here…umm…” He trailed off when he took in who she was.
The woman who was with him could have been Noomi’s double, except for the strange mess on top of her head that Noomi guessed was the woman’s hair. Seriously: it was like looking in the mirror. The woman who stood on the porch just outside the door wore the same expression of shock and wonder as the woman standing just inside the door, except, for the wonder, substitute more shock.
Noomi stared at Noomi.
Noomi stared back at Noomi.
“I –” Noomi started.
“Who?” Noomi asked.
“What?” Noomi asked.
“Why…? Noomi asked.
“Great! Two more Ws and we’ll have a journalism class!” TOM sneered. He seemed to stick out his tongue, despite the fact that he was a sphere held in a hand at a man’s side. TOM was just full of tricks.
Noomi looked at Noomi some more.
Noomi looked at Noomi looking at her some more.
Noomi awkwardly ran a hand through her hair.
Noomi began blinking rapidly.
I got totally confused about who was doing and saying what, so I decided to call them “Noomi 1” and Noomi 2.” Then, I realized that that implied a hierarchical relationship between them that I did not intend to convey; although they were not equally represented in the present story, they had equally valid existences. So, I scrapped that idea. I quickly rejected “the first Noomi” and “the second Noomi” for the same reason. I seriously considered referring to the pair as “the Noomi with the rat’s nest on top of her head” and “the Noomi with sensible hair (the one who clearly used Ma Fleckner’s Hair Straightener),” but, after going with it for a couple of pages, I realized that this method of identifying the two characters was too cumbersome (and, in any case, I have other uses for Noomi’s hair)… I settled on calling the Noomi in the new universe by her last name, Rapier-Dewall. The Noomi who has been at the heart of the story – yes, our Noomi – will…continue to be called Noomi. Note, however, that, unlike usual usage, the use of the first name does not denote informality or greater comfort with that character, nor does the use of the surname denote greater respect for that character; they are just a literary convenience.
Investigator Chumley cleared his throat. “Umm, yeah, hi,” he said, “we’re investigators with the Transdimensional Authority. My name is Crash Chumley and my partner is, umm, well, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” Rapier-Dewall harshly insisted.
“The signal is coming from her,” TOM said. “Tracing now.”
“Signal?” Rapier-Dewall asked. “What signal?”
“Could you explain, Noomi?” Investigator Chumley suggested.
“I would if I knew what was going on!” Rapier-Dewall complained.
“My Noomi,” Investigator Chumley told her. “I mean –”
Oliver walked out of the kitchen towards them “Mommy, the sandwiches are rea…dy…” Noticing Noomi and Investigator Chumley, he said: “Whoa! There are two of you!”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Rapier-Dewall told him.
“Actually, it’s kind of neat,” Oliver assured her. Lawrence didn’t seem to agree: he was hiding behind his mother’s legs, looking at Noomi and Investigator Chumley like they were monsters under a wheelchair ramp. (Consider it brotherly osmosis.)
“May we come in?” Investigator Chumley asked.
Rapier-Dewall considered for a moment. “Oliver, take your brother into the kitchen and have lunch,” she commanded.
“Idon’twannago,” Lawrence exhaled, clutching more tightly to her legs.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Rapier-Dewall cooed at him, slowly prying his fingers off her legs. “These good people are police officers. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
Oliver took his brother by the hand and led him, reluctant, to the kitchen. Rapier-Dewall knew that there would have to be a lot more waggling of cardboard than usual tonight. Turning on the investigators, she harshly said, “I’d like to see some ID.”
Noomi and Investigator Chumley took out their ID cards and showed them to her. She had always thought it was ridiculous whenever somebody asked to see Jack Ryan’s ID card, and, now that it had happened to her, she felt the absurdity of it more keenly: how would anybody who had never dealt with the TA know what their ID cards looked like? It’s not like people hung samples of the official identifications of the various police forces they might come into contact with in their bathrooms so that they could study them while doing their business. For all this woman knew, Noomi and Investigator Chumley were showing her IDs they got by sending money to an address they found in an ad in the back of a comic book! Seriously. If the IDs had been written in crayons, she wouldn’t really have had a right to challenge them: for all she knew, the Transdimensional Authority style was to create IDs with crayons! Special crayons that had been designed to project the TA logo under ultraviolet light! Crayons that would self-destruct if touched by a child. Crayons that would…that would…that…
Under the circumstances, Rapier-Dewall was too freaked out to express any of this. She handed them back their IDs and coldly said, “Okay. We’ll talk in my study.”
Rapier-Dewall’s study was small, but inviting, with lots of wood, natural colours and images of her family everywhere. Rapier-Dewall settled into the chair behind her desk. There was only one chair on the opposite side of the desk, so the two strangers chose to stand.
Investigator Chumley started to explain why they were there. After a couple of minutes, Rapier-Dewall noticed that one of the other Noomi’s hands was slowly making its way towards her shoulder. This seemed like quite the liberty, so Rapier-Dewall gently swatted the woman’s hand away.
This is what actually happened:
“We’re from an organization called the Transdimensional Authority,” Investigator Chumley began to explain.
“I’ve heard of it,” Rapier-Dewall coolly responded.
Noomi, looking around the room, wondered if all of the family pictures were there in case the other Noomi forgot what her family looked like; after all, she would be instantly reminded no matter what direction she looked in.
“We’re investigating a death,” Investigator Chumley stated. “It may have been a murder – we’re still not clear about that. What is clear however, is that it involved interdimensional communication of some sort.”
“What does this have to do with me?” Rapier-Dewall asked.
Noomi wondered what would happen if she touched a version of herself from another universe. Would they explode, leaving no trace but two photons moving in opposite directions forever? And, how big would the explosion be? Big enough to destroy the house? Big enough to destroy the whole neighbourhood? Big enough to destroy the whole suburb? The city? The world? The solar system? The universe? Trembling slightly with the potential power, she inched her hand ever so slowly towards her counterpart’s shoulder.
“We believe that we have isolated a signal that could lead us to the perpetrator,” Investigator Chumley said.
“A signal?” Rapier-Dewall repeated.
Closer.
“That’s right,” Investigator Chumley stated.
“At the risk of repeating myself,” Rapier-Dewall repeated herself, “what does this have to do with me?”
Closer.
Investigator Chumley shifted uncomfortably. “The signal currently seems to be…running into…you.”
Just as contact was about to be made, Rapier-Dewall noticed what Noomi was doing and gently swatted her hand away. Despite that physical contact, the house, the suburbs and the universe were still there.
Well, that was disappointing, Noomi thought.
Rapier-Dewall was not happy with this news. Not happy at all. “What is this…signal doing to me?” she aggressively asked.
“TOM?” Investigator Chumley prompted.
“You want me to reassure a lead?” TOM responded. “Seriously? Boy, have you got the wrong artificially enhanced device!”
“What was that?” Rapier-Dewall anxiously asked.
Investigator Chumley placed TOM on the desk. “It’s just a device that helps us in our investigations,” Investigator Chumley assured her. “And, it has assured me that, although there is a signal running to you, it does not seem to be affecting you in any way.”
“Jack Ryan never had anything like that!” Rapier-Dewall exclaimed.
Noomi looked at Rapier-Dewall with newfound interest. “Crash, could you leave us alone for a couple of minutes?”
Investigator Chumley looked at her. When she nodded that it would be okay, he said, “I’ll leave you to it, ladies,” and walked out of the room.
Noomi sat opposite Rapier-Dewall. “You were a fan of Jack Ryan, Transdimensional Authority Police?” she asked.
“Was I?” Rapier-Dewall gushed. “I was the biggest fan of Jack Ryan, Transdimensional Authority Police! When I was a kid, I begged my parents to get me the Super Secret Jack Ryan Spy Detector Kit that came with a one-time payment of $10 and four Crunchy Calorye Counters Cereal box tops!”
“Me, too!” Noomi enthused. “Pretty disappointing, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, totally,” Rapier-Dewall agreed. “But, that didn’t stop me from playing with it for that whole summer!”
The two women laughed.
Meanwhile, Investigator Chumley, standing outside the door, looked at his watch. There was no good reason to look at his watch; he and Noomi would have to stay there for as long as there was a signal to trace. But, it was either look at his watch or futilely try – yet again – to decipher the final shot of Inception. It made his brain hurt. So, look at his watch he did.
Lawrence walked towards him down the hall. “Hey, mister,” the boy said.
“Yes?” the man replied.
“Is this what people mean when they say that they have two mothers?” Lawrence asked.
Investigator Chumley could be awkward talking to adults. But, talking to adults, he appeared to be a regular Abraham Lincoln compared to when he was talking to children. “Oh, ah, I’m not really the right person to be asking that question…”
Lawrence nodded thoughtfully, like he had just received great wisdom. Then, he noticed something. “Are they – is that…singing?”
Investigator Chumley strained to hear through the door, finding that the boy was right. The women in the room were singing –
“…eeking out those with bad intentions
Across the Multiverse’s dimensions!
He is the greatest hero of all time
Always working to save Earth Prime!
Jack Ryan! Jack Ryan! Jack Ryan!”
The women laughed joyously.
“Jack Ryan is the reason I joined the Transdimensional Authority,” Noomi confided.
“Oh, I know,” Rapier-Dewall told her. “I felt exactly the same way.”
“But, you didn’t,” Noomi stated. “Join, I mean.”
Rapier-Dewall shrugged. “I didn’t get the scholarship,” she responded. “so I couldn’t go.”
“I didn’t get the scholarship, either,” Noomi said. “I went anyway. I worked my way through the first year and got the scholarship in second year.”
“Hunh,” Rapier-Dewall remarked, a touch of wist entering her voice. “I always imagined what my life would have been like if I had been able to join. Is it as exciting as it looked?”
“Well, this is only my first case,” Noomi admitted, “but, yeah, it’s been pretty exciting so far. And, you?”
“My life,” Rapier-Dewall, banishing the wist from her voice, declared, “has been a fulfilment of the old adage: Sikh and ye shall find.”
“Uhh, how so?” Noomi, who aspired to be a professional noticer, asked.
Rapier-Dewall pointed to a framed photograph on her desk that featured her, her two sons and an attractive man in a turban. “My husband,” she said, “Dev Dewall. Between him and our two sons, I have no time to be unhappy.”
Noomi looked at the photo for a few seconds. She felt wist rising in her. She hunted it down and killed it. “So,” she cheerfully asked, “how do you get your hair to –”
“Oh, here we go!” TOM moaned. “I knew if this estrogen-induced lovefest would go on long enough, it would end in a discussion of personal grooming!”
“You always this cheery?” Rapier-Dewall asked.
“Pretty much, yeah,” TOM answered. “The guy who programmed my personality killed himself three weeks after he finished.”
“I…should probably get back to the kitchen,” Rapier-Dewall said. “Check up on the boys.”
“Can I bring TOM along?” Noomi asked. “He’s tracing the signal inside you back to its source.”
Rapier-Dewall looked at the device dubiously. “If you must,” she said.
As they got to the kitchen, they heard Investigator Chumley dramatically saying, “…but, what they didn’t realize was that I had removed the ice pick from the lizard’s intestines while they weren’t looking!”
“Wow!” Lawrence exclaimed.
“And, that’s how you were able to pick the locks?” Oliver, excited, asked.
“Not quite,” Investigator Chumley allowed. “But – oh hi,” he noticed the two Noomis entering the room.
“Crash was just telling us about some of his adventures!” Lawrence said.
“Pretty amazing,” Oliver, damping down his excitement because, well, as the oldest he wanted to set a good example for his brother, said.
“I want to be a Transfismensional Authority agent when I grow up!” Lawrence shouted.
Rapier-Dewall gave Noomi a sardonic look. “Okay,” she said, “but, first, I want you to eat all of your sandwiches.” Rapier-Dewall retrieved the final grilled cheeses from the toaster oven, perfectly browned because this is, after all, a fairy tale, and set the plates before her children, who wolfed them down.
“Can I get either of you two anything?” she asked Noomi and Investigator Chumley.
“Well, since you asked so politely,” Noomi emoted.
“The drink that we drink nightly,” Investigator Chumley crooned.
“The drink we find so delightly,” Noomi, getting a haunted look in her eyes again, crooned back.
“The drink that we like best,” the pair sang, “Burpsi Cola – fizzier than the rest!”
As Noomi hummed in the background, Investigator Chumley orated, “Mothers, have you heard that soda rots your children’s teeth, just like it eats through the cabinet of a 747 jumbo jet? Then, you’ll especially want to look for new Burpsi Astringent! Not only does new Burpsi Astringent have no calories, it actually sucks calories out of you while you drink it!”
“Drink the drink that we like best,” the pair reprised, “Burpsi Cola – colaier than the rest!”
“Yeah!” Noomi added.
Nobody knew what to do for a few seconds, then the children burst out in applause.
“I’m sorry,” Rapier-Dewall said, not sounding sorry in the least, “but I don’t keep Burpsi Cola in the house. When a drop rotted through one of the magnets at CERN and caused the flashforward, well, I figured this was not something I wanted my children to drink!”
“It’s okay,” Investigator Chumley responded.
“No problem,” Noomi replied.
“Do, uhh, Transdimensional Authority agents always do that?” Rapier-Dewall asked.
“Nope,” Investigator Chumley responded.
“Never,” Noomi replied.
“You…just like Burpsi Cola a lot?” Rapier-Dewall asked.
“I can’t stand it,” Investigator Chumley responded.
“When I have tried it in the past, I broke out in hives,” Noomi replied.
“So, what was that all about?” Rapier-Dewall asked.
“No idea why it happened,” Investigator Chumley responded.
“The Multiverse is inscrutable that way,” Noomi replied.
A couple of hours passed. Lawrence and Oliver spent it listening to Investigator Chumley talk about his past cases, and the cases of other investigators he had known. Rapier-Dewall and Noomi spent it comparing their lives. Sometimes the differences were striking: Noomi lost her virginity at a Vegan Trombones concert, while Rapier-Dewall didn’t lose her virginity until she attended a Neiman-Marcus Overdrive concert a week later. Sometimes the differences were slight: Noomi was so repelled by the event that she didn’t have sex again for just over two years, while Rapier-Dewall was so repelled by the event that she didn’t have sex again for just under two years. Sometimes the similarities were scary: the second time was much better for both of them. Oh, and, they both collected plush dolls, ceramic figures and other kitschy representations of tsetse flies until they were 15.
Then, just as everybody was getting comfortable with everybody else, TOM said: “The signal’s gone dead.”
When they pulled Investigator Chumley away from the children, he asked the device, “What does that mean?”
“There’s…no…signal,” TOM said as if speaking to a 12 year-old.
“Oh, I am glad your personality wasn’t affected by the power boost,” Noomi told it.
“Why isn’t there a signal?” Investigator Chumley asked, trying very hard not to respond to the taunt.
“I would imagine it is because whoever was sending the signal decided to stop,” TOM stated, adding in exasperation, “Amateurs!”
The group chewed on that for a moment. Surprisingly, it was Rapier-Dewall who asked, “So, do you know where the signal came from?”
“I got a fix on the universe,” TOM answered, defensiveness creeping into its voice. “Considering that we started with an infinite number of possible universes, I think narrowing it down to one is pretty good for a couple hours of work.”
“And, the universe was…” Investigator Chumley prompted.
“The signal is coming from Earth Prime 0-0-0-0-0-1 dash delta.”
“The universe three doors down from Earth Prime?” Noomi asked.
“That is an imprecise formulation,” TOM quickly corrected her. “The various dimensions of the Multiverse exist on top of a single superstrate of space-time. Still…uhh…I suppose that’s precise enough for you guys.”
Investigator Chumley asked: “If we pick up the signal again, will you be able to trace it from there?”
“Yes,” TOM sighed. “You would have known that if you had read the manual…”
Investigator Chumley pocketed TOM. “Mrs. Rapier-Dewall, we’d like to thank you for your cooperation,” he said.
“That’s it?” Rapier-Dewall asked, sort of, kind of, a little…well, disappointed.
“Yes, thank you.” Investigator Chumley nodded towards the door, Noomi followed him out. When they got to the driveway, they found that a hamburger wrapper and drink had been dropped on the roof of the Dimensional Delorean™. Shading their eyes, they looked up, to see a pair of witches flying through a restaurant hovering hundreds of feet above them. A fast food fly-through window. Very clever. You gotta love life in the suburbs.
Investigator Chumley picked the trash off the roof and chucked it into a bag next to the driver’s seat. When he and Noomi were strapped in and the doors closed, the Dimensional Delorean™ shimmied and disappeared.
The Rapier-Dewall family went back to its normal lives. By which I mean that Oliver and Lawrence spent the rest of the afternoon looking for and watching old Jack Ryan, Transdimensional Authority Police episodes on YouTube and Rapier-Dewall scrapped that day’s column and, instead, wrote a warm remembrance of the hours she killed as a teenager playing Jack Ryan, Transdimensional Authority Police: The Game. Yeah, the creativity that had been put into the title was a pretty good indication of the creativity that had been put into making the game. Still, add a little imagination of your own, and even a poorly designed game can be enchanting. And, readers must have agreed: that article got the third most hits of any GamR Boyz article that fortnight.
That evening, after the boys had been put to sleep, Rapier-Dewall and Dev lay in bed talking. They had, as was their wont, set the bedroom to “mellow.”
“How was your day?” Rapier-Dewall asked.
“Mmmm….mellow,” Dev answered. “How are you doing?”
“Mellow,” Rapier-Dewall said. “You know, I really think we should ask each other that question before we turn on the room Vibe™.”
They giggled. One of them always made that suggestion and they never seemed to act on it. Decisions made when the room Vibe™ was sending out sound waves that you couldn’t hear but that affected your mood (on the mellow setting it smoothed out the alpha waves in your brain, calming you down) were notorious for not being acted upon. Except for decisions made while it was on the “psychotic” setting, but the Vibe™ came with a warning against using that setting that was several pages long.
“It must be weird to see yourself like that,” Dev stated.
“You said it,” Rapier-Dewall mellowly agreed. “I mean, I was a huge fan of Jack Ryan, Transdimensional Authority Police when I was a kid, so it’s not like I wasn’t aware that there must be other versions of me out there. Somewhere. But, I never really gave it much thought.”
Deep. Well, as deep as you get when you’re mellow.
“So, what did you think of yourself?”
Rapier-Dewall thought for a moment. “We share a lot in common – there was no way that we couldn’t like each other,” she said. “Still, there was something about the Noomi from another dimension, a hardness that I’m glad isn’t in me.”
“So, you think you made the right choice?”
Rapier-Dewall snuggled up to Dev. “Oh, yeah, babe. I made the right choice.”
They started kissing. And, kissing led to fondling. And, before they knew it, they were making passionately mellow love. And, it was waaaaaaaaaay better than Rapier-Dewall’s first time.
* * *
The Dimensional Delorean™ was zipping through the space between the universes. And, when I say zipping, I really mean the Pollackness moved around them slower than molasses. Does “speed” even mean anything between universes, anyway? Noomi preferred traveling in the vehicle than without it, but it was the difference between being hit between the eyes by a sledgehammer and being hit between the eyes by an ordinary hammer.
They never showed this on Jack Ryan, Transdimensional Authority Police!
“You okay?” Investigator Chumley quietly asked.
“A bit shaken,” Noomi admitted. “I…I skipped the lecture at the Academy on what to do if you meet yourself in another dimension. I thought, How hard can it be? Wow. Now I know. Of all the lectures I skipped out on, that’s the one I would most like to have back.”
“I remember the first time I met a version of myself from a different universe,” Investigator Chumley told her. “I couldn’t bring myself to comb my hair for three weeks.” Noomi gave him a questioning look. Investigator Chumley shrugged. “Everybody reacts differently.”
They traveled in silence for a bit.
Eventually, Investigator Chumley asked: “So, what did you think of yourself?”
Noomi considered this question for a moment. “We share a lot in common – there was no way that we couldn’t like each other,” she said. “Still, there was something about the Noomi from another universe, a softness that I’m glad isn’t in me.”
“So, you think you made the right decision?”
Noomi hugged herself. “Oh, hell, yes!”
They spent the rest of the journey in silence.