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CHAPTER 2

  CONFUSION, FAST CARS, AND HOT WOMEN

  Get the facts first. You can distort them later.

  - Mark Twain

  A confused and anxious Dr. Narbando T. Bates sat quietly in his office, trying unsuccessfully to make sense of his morning meeting with Barns and Twig. His office was an accurate reflection of the man: colorful furniture, lava lamps and rubber chickens accented a sea of worthless trash and junk. The man himself relaxed comfortably on a well-worn recliner next to the motley mountain of old books, magazines, and papers that cleverly hid his ponderous, dull grey, standard issue DOD desk.

  At the far end of his office a large space was cleared from his collection of old office furniture and accumulated trash in order to accommodate his experimental equipment, the MX-84, which consisted of a table and two equipment racks full of unrecognizable electronic boxes and wires, plus a wheeled tripod that carried a co-focused array of parabolic shaped emitters and antennas. The arbitrarily designed fire-hazardous ensemble was completed by a heavy-duly power cord that wound its way through junk furniture and trash to fed the power-hungry MX-84.

  Now that Bates was back in more familiar and comfortable surroundings, the earlier strange encounter with Barns and Twig seemed less and less real. Traditionally the actions of management could only rarely be understood on any level by anyone, and this was certainly no exception. The prospect of being made Head of DOD just didn't make any sense at all. Why him? Other than the fact that both he and Barns had the same middle name, Bates could think of no reason whatsoever. After all most, or perhaps even all of his coworkers on the Base were higher ranking and/or more capable.

  For example, what about Frank Melberg? Melberg was the Deputy DOD Head and in principle Barn's second in command, even though at times, like Renson, he seemed really to work primarily for Twig. What would his reaction be if Dr. N. T. Bates really was made Head of DOD? Bates smiled. He'd love to see old prune faced Melberg get that news; it would drive the man bonkers!

  As he sat in his office recliner pondering events from this angle and then that, Bates feared more and more that he was suffering from hallucinations or worse. Narbando T. Bates as Head of DOD? Any way that he looked at it, this simply couldn't be happening. He decided that he needed to calm down, study, and resolve the entire issue logically. He was after all a scientist; he had the ability, need, and responsibility to look at things that happened in this universe and make some sense of them. He took another deep breath and tried to get his bearings.

  Could it all be an elaborate hoax? Had Barns and Twig both suddenly developed a sense of humor? That seemed highly doubtful; despite his recent astonishing observation that both of them were capable of smiling. Being too lazy to abandon his comfy recliner to use the marker-board on his wall, Bates found an unbroken pencil with some lead showing and began to methodically sketch out some of the more realistic hypotheses on the scrap paper that profusely littered the mound of paper products that buried his nearby desk.

  (1) Had he, Narbando T. Bates, gone totally crazy? At the moment, this seemed highly plausible. Indeed, it wasn't altogether uncommon for folks to declare him crazy. Was he simply imagining things to be the way that he wanted them to be? He was of course prone to normal daydreams about becoming rich or getting laid, but why the hell would he ever imagine that he was being made Head of DOD? What would be the point in it?

  Still, perhaps he had somehow been psychologically pushed into this oddball notion. Maybe there was something that his long dead parents had done to him as a child, something that was suppressed and buried so deep in his subconscious that he didn't even know about it. Perhaps he really was being canned, and had hallucinated the rest as a defensive mechanism. He doodled a plump, pathetic, quivering little smiley face character on his paper, poised on a wood plank suspended above a dark pool full of big mouthed, sharp toothed shark-creatures. However, if he really was crazy, then he couldn't reliably conclude anything at all, could he? As this line of thought had unfortunately led to a logical loop or dead end, he went on to hypotheses #2.

  (2) Was Dr. Barns crazy? This was certainly a more attractive hypothesis to Bates from a personal viewpoint. If so, who would be better as Head of DOD, a crazy Barns, or Narbando Bates? Bates wasn't at all sure, as even a loony Dr. Barns was probably still much more qualified than himself. And what about Twig? She had always treated him with utter disdain. How could she have possibly supported his promotion to become Head of the DOD?

  Just what was the joint probability of both Barns and Twig going crackers on the same Monday morning, and both coming up with Narbando Bates as the ideal new Department Head? Vanishingly small, he supposed. As it was more dramatic than using scientific notation, he doodled a decimal point followed by zero after zero on his scrap paper, with no non-zero integer in sight, then added Twig and Barns eyes, noses, fishing hats, and glasses onto some of the zeroes. For the sake of completeness he drew a little line above the last zero to indicate that the zeroes continued infinitely.

  Then of course, if he hadn't actually hallucinated the Little Cuddles/Lamby Pie business, maybe love was the explanation. After all, people certainly did do some goofy things when they were in love, and that whole love and sex business was incomprehensible to begin with. But the love hypothesis still wouldn't explain why Narbando Bates was the couples’ particular choice to become the new Head of DOD! Besides, was love really such a destructive and chaotic force in the Universe? Bates certainly preferred not to think so. Love was incomprehensible and probably unobtainable, but hopefully not blatantly destructive. Hopelessly mired again, Bates moved on to hypotheses number three.

  (3) Were they all crazy? This could certainly explain everything and anything from a purely logical viewpoint, but to any scientist worth his salt it simply didn't qualify as a viable hypothesis. He might just as well try to blame everything that happened in the universe on witchcraft, the commies, the KKK, fluoridated water, right-wing nut-jobs, left-winged-nut-jobs, lunar cycles, PMS, invading space aliens, etc. Bates steadfastly refused to be party to such intellectually bankrupt theories. After all, he still had his scientific principles, and clearly hypothesis number three abandoned those to chaos, madness, and despair. Besides, if they were all crazy, then he too was crazy, which seemed to lead him back to hypothesis number one, which had resulted in the conclusion that no conclusion at all could be concluded because he lacked the mental capability needed to reliably conclude conclusions. On his papers he tried hopelessly to capture all this muddled reasoning with logic diagrams that branched, looped, and go-to-ed far too much for human comprehension.

  Thus his thoughts cycled impotently, potentially ad infinitum, until a half an hour and several pages of worthless logic diagrams and doodles later, he was interrupted by the timely appearance of his good friend Dr. Mel Guthery. On Mel's small thin frame hung a tattered, jelly stained, plaid flannel shirt, with buttons paired randomly to button holes. Perhaps by some fortuitous quirk of fate, the predominately blue shirt appeared to be color coordinated with the faded, patched blue jeans into which it was partially tucked. A pair of well-worn Indian moccasins completed Mel's workplace wardrobe.

  In other words, at first glance, Mel appeared perfectly normal. To and from work Mel wore a formal gray three-piece suit, white shirt, bland solid colored tie, and black leather dress shoes, placed carefully on him by his wife Jane. She dressed the man for IBM in the seventies.

  At work, Mel wore what he wanted. As Mel once explained to Bates, at a very early age he adopted what he called the Mr. Rogers Philosophy of Work Attire, though he had extrapolated the principle somewhat beyond sweaters and sneakers. The result was an informal appearance that probably didn't even meet lax Civil Service standards.

  However even Barns and Melberg didn’t dare say a word to Mel about his informal wardrobe. Being Dr. Melvin P. Guthery, world famous Nobel Prize winning physicist, had its privileges even in a stodgy outfit like the Federal Government. Of course, if his wife Jane ever found
out, Mel was a dead man.

  On closer inspection however, Bates could see that Mel was upset. His usual smile had been replaced by a deep frown, and behind thick eyeglasses, the usually intense, deep, brown, sparkling eyes were red and teary.

  Mel sat down facing Bates in one of his two functioning, trash-free guest chairs. "I'm sorry Narbando, the news is all over the Base!” said the distraught, almost blubbery Mel.

  So, thought Bates, the word was out, confirming that he truly was being canned! He circled the number 'one' on a logic diagram and sat smiling for a few moments, actually pleased with himself for solving a logic problem, until he realized that this particular solution implied that he was crazy, as well as fired. But then that meant that this whole business still could be nonsense, since if he really was crazy, he couldn't very well conclude anything, despite what he thought that Mel just told him, including concluding that he was crazy.

  Regardless of the failed, twisted logic though, it felt as if he had just been slipped a mickey and punched in the gut, and Bates collapsed limply further back into the suddenly inadequate comfort of his old recliner.

  Meanwhile, Mel continued. "And they did it even after I told Barns how valuable you have been to my work here."

  He was valuable to Mel's work? Mel's theories of the universe were well beyond Bates' own limited understanding. Bates had gone into experimental physics instead of theoretical physics in recognition of his serious limitations in that regard. But then again, now that Bates thought about it, he realized that in a sense he did contribute to Mel's work, though certainly more through emotional and social support than through scientific insight. He wandered if Mel had told Barns that he had originally introduced Jane, later to become Mrs. Mel Guthery, to Mel.

  In fact, over the last ten years, three women, after too briefly dating Bates, had each married one of his coworkers. So what if he was a poor scientist; he was a damn good match maker! That should have counted for something with love stricken Little Cuddles and Lamby Pie, thought Bates.

  "What exactly did you tell him, Mel?" asked Bates, sitting up now, revived by curiosity. "Did you mention Jane?”

  "Hah?" asked Mel, clearly puzzled. "Why on Earth would I mention Jane? I believe that my main point with Barns was that you are more an average sort of guy than some of the rest of us are.” Mel smiled as he said this, clearly feeling that he had done his best to cast his friend in a positive light, though just being 'average' didn't sound awfully complementary to Bates. "I told him that you weren't so involved in your work that you didn't know about other things going on around you."

  Oh great, thought Bates, Mel told the boss that he is just an average guy, not a very hard worker, and a nosy busy-body to boot! No wonder he was being canned!

  "I told Barns that you weren't really so much a nerd; that you were a very nicely rounded individual," finished Mel, as he reached out to playfully pat Bates' well-rounded tummy.

  Bates now really felt hurt. Not a nerd? Had his years of practiced eccentricity totally gone to waste? He knew he wasn't much of a scientist, but he thought that he at least acted like one pretty good.

  Bates felt certain that Barns had negatively interpreted everything that Mel had told him. He would certainly not suggest this to Mel though; he couldn't let his friend feel even more upset. It bothered Bates greatly to see Mel so distraught. He tried to re-focus his friend's mind on something else. "How's your research coming?" he asked Mel. "Make any progress over the weekend?"

  Mel looked confused for just a moment, but then actually smiled. "Well, my latest grand unified theory or theory of everything for the universe is about to be published. Wait until you see it, it's a real doozy of a GUT/TOE. It will shake the scientific community, what's left of it, to the very core. I think it will straighten up our understanding of quarks, cosmic strings, black holes, the big bang, dark matter and energy, and lots of other awfully confusing stuff. The string theory and loop quantum gravity folks had some good ideas, but not radical enough. Plus, I've been working on my technology transfer projects."

  Base scientists were mandated to write papers that had actual practical applicability to society, 'transferring' technology to the public as part of the Base close-down process. Since Mel's field dealt with impractical things like the fundamental nature of the universe, he had to come up with unrelated side projects that could benefit mankind, including even stingy tax payers.

  "Shed any light on the missing socks phenomenon yet?" asked Bates.

  "Not a clue yet," confessed Mel, "though at least I have plenty of clean socks as a result of my empirical efforts. Not too many actual matching pairs of socks, of course."

  "Of course not," agreed Bates. It was one of the reasons he had given up on socks himself. The damned things were always disappearing. Rather than claiming the phenomenon to be experimental evidence of black holes, Mel sought a more conventional explanation. If Mel ever cracked the missing socks mystery, he'd be a national hero. "What about spaghetti?"

  "Trivial, at least in the preliminary stages, compared to the missing sock phenomenon. Early empirical results indicate that one mass unit of dried spaghetti cooks up to about 2.4 mass units of cooked spaghetti.”

  “Valuable information for spaghetti cooking folks, for sure,” commented Bates.

  “Absolutely! Of much more practical value than my grand unified theories, certainly. A gut theory instead of a G-U-T theory. Next I'll vary cooking times, spaghetti diameters, and so on. I may gain a little weight as a result, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for science.”

  “Thought much about quantum mechanics lately?”

  “Oh! I just sent another refutation of the multi-universe interpretation of quantum mechanics to one of the science magazines again this morning. That should stir things up nicely!”

  “That’s always fun, though maybe things would be more interesting if there actually were a multiverse.”

  “There is a multiverse, but not so much through quantum mechanics. In fact I strongly suspect it to be the other way around: quantum mechanics is a result of the multiverse. Quantum mechanical uncertainty reflects how the multiverse constantly looks for and finds math solutions. The solutions that are picked make up the always emerging reality that we experience; a 'now' place where time and negative time come together.”

  “But you think that there are other realities?”

  “Yes, but they differ radically from ours, with different laws of nature corresponding to different cohesive sets of mathematics. The quantum-driven multiverse idea would have us think that as well as radically different math-system-based universes there are untold trillions of worlds just like ours except for perhaps some less than subtle differences in history. For example in some of them Kennedy didn’t get elected to a second term as president and end the Cold War. That would be both absurd and disquieting.”

  “Or maybe there are worlds where Mozart got sick and died young instead of living to be almost a hundred and writing over a thousand symphonies,” Bates conjectured, getting into the spirit of what Mel was explaining. “I wouldn’t have liked that. Mozart is my favorite, especially his final hundred or so symphonies.”

  “Or where Ralph Nader never founded a third political party and took power away from the nasty right-wing Republicans and weak-kneed Democrats and pushed through his consumer and green agendas. Or where VISICOMs were never invented and we still used simple telephones. Or where umbrella hats never completely replaced umbrellas. Or where they stopped making Twinkies or the New Coke or plastic bags with twist-ties, and so-forth. It could be a terrible nightmare,” concluded Mel.

  “And what if Star Trek had been cancelled after only a few seasons instead of lasting for five decades?" Bates ventured. "The possible horrors are endless! On the plus side though, those kinds of multiple universes would offer lots of science-fiction writer opportunities."

  Mel shook his head, dismissing the absurdity. "For better or worse we're stuck in reality, Narb, not som
e goofy parallel universe fantasy."

  "What are you working on right now, Mel? Are you making progress this morning?”

  “Not a stitch. I haven’t done any real work on anything at all today once I heard about your problem. The news about you has thrown my research all out of kilter."

  Anger arose in Bates. Mel's time was simply too valuable to science to waste this way. Not that society as a whole paid much attention to basic research anymore, but the hell with society! Mel Guthery was probably the greatest living scientist of his generation, and his dear friend, and both science and friendship still meant a lot to Bates. He probably would have been perfectly happy to sit cowering in his office all morning merely thinking about what might have really happened earlier, but now that he saw that this whole thing was really hurting his friend Mel, he knew that something had to be done immediately.

  He had to confirm once and for all what was really going on. He couldn't wait until his 1300 meeting with Barns, if indeed he had one. "Mel, don't worry about me, I'm just fine," Bates lied.

  After further consoling Mel, Bates left him and headed for the Head Office again. He walked with steely strength and purpose now, with no thought to the exposure of ankles, sneakers, or even his missing belt.

  As he passed Margaret's counter, Bates saw that his friend Oscar Oscomb was there and that he and she were talking in hushed tones that stopped awkwardly when they saw his approach.

  "Chin up Bates!" boomed the huge, hairy, boisterous biologist. "They can boot the man out of the lab, but they can't knock the lab out of the man.” Like probably everything else about Oscomb, his voice was simply tremendous. Oscomb gave Bates an affectionate pat on the back that the physicist would probably feel painfully for the rest of the day. "By the way, Bates," asked Oscar, in an uncharacteristically quiet tone, "do you have the data disk?”

  It took a few moments for Bates to realize that Oscar was asking for the data recording from his Nitro. The previous Friday, when Mel and Oscar had finished the engine modifications, they had rigged sensors and a disk unit in the Nitro to record engine performance data on a standard VISICOM disk.

  Bates had taken several uninhibited Premium Fuel aided romps in the Nitro over the weekend, in addition to the brief but adventurous drive to work that very morning. The resulting performance data was recorded on the data disk that he now remembered putting into the pocket of his overcoat: which Margaret still had, along with his briefcase. "Sure Oscar, it's in my coat pocket. Get my disk for him, would you Margaret?"

  Margaret Crane reached under the counter to Bates' overcoat and retrieved the disk. Glancing at the title on the disk case as she handed it to Oscar, her eyes widened and she smiled in surprise. "Why, I didn't know that you guys were into Counter-Earth Reactionary Correctness!” she bubbled.

  With puzzled looks on their faces, Oscar and Bates both looked at the disk case. On the cover was the photo of a stern, statuesque young blonde-haired woman wearing a semitransparent, skin tight, plastic motorcycle outfit. She leaned provocatively against a huge ancient Harley Davidson motorcycle that was apparently consuming massive amounts of irreplaceable hydrocarbons and shamelessly spewing filth into the atmosphere. In her arms she lovingly embraced a transparent plastic hydrocarbon guitar, from which brilliant, energy wasting, ozone-causing sparks appeared to emanate.

  Many of the fiery sparks seemed to cascade fetchingly around her shapely right leg and into the ears of the head that was under her right foot. The head belonged to a man, well dressed in a conventional recycled business suit. He was groveling at her feet with a wild-eyed look of pain and ecstasy on his face. In the background, a logging scene showed huge ancient trees being cut down with smoking chain saws, while power plant smoke stacks blackened the horizon. The title was Waste It, by a group called The Fuming Right.

  Bates and Oscomb looked at each other, speechless. What it all meant, they really had no idea, other than the blonde on the cover looked really hot. The 7-Eleven had simply been out of blank data disks, and Bates had picked out that one at random to be used to record the test data, while never considering any political or social implications.

  "I should have guessed that from your car, hah!” said Margaret. “It's a gas sucking carb-burner, right? Is it really fast?” She smiled, looked at Bates, and licked her lips slowly in a way that canceled out any of his remaining rational thought process. "Could I borrow the disk sometime?" she purred. "I'm kinda interested in counter culture."

  "Ah, oh sure," replied Bates. He would have to remember to buy another disk though, since this one was now hopefully filled with engine performance data, and not The Fuming Right. Though the thought that Margret might be a radical-right activist disturbed him, this was the most promising discussion that he ever had with her; too bad this breakthrough came at a time when he was on his way to the Head Office to confirm that he was both jobless and crazy.

  Having reminded himself of what he was doing in this part of the building, though still reeling a bit from the enticing exchange with Margaret, Bates turned to go.

  "Where are you headed, Narb?" asked Oscomb, as the big man pocketed the disk.

  "Oh, I've got to settle a few things with the Head Office,” Bates replied, marching off determinedly down the hall, leaving his astonished friends staring in wonder.

  "What a guy," muttered Oscomb. "He's going to have it out with the top brass. GO GET-UM NARB!" he implored loudly, smashing a massive clutched fist thunderously onto Margaret's poor counter top.

  "Fuming radical!" echoed Margaret.

  Booming noise from Oscar's blow to the counter reverberated through the building. Oscar was a true force of nature. No doubt if he hadn't become a world famous biologist, he would have been an offensive tackle for some football team, if any team could find a uniform that was large enough for him. Turning to Margaret, Oscar asked her if anyone had made arrangements for the ceremony.

  "Not that I have heard," replied Margaret, who was inspecting the counter for damage, and glancing appraisingly at Oscomb's massive frame with new interest, now that she suspected that the big man had a rebellious side.

  "Leave it to me then," said Oscomb, as he rushed away. "A buddy like Bates deserves a good send-off.”

  Margaret went back to watching her morning soap on her desk VISICOM.

  Arriving at his destination, Bates found the Head Office Lobby in disarray. Twig had apparently been cleaning out her desk!

  Bates, eyes bulging and jaw hanging open like an ape that had just discovered a giant bunch of ripe bananas, walked to the nearest labeled box, and poked it and looked at it from several angles. It seemed real enough, and the words 'Mrs. Sally Barns' were written on it clearly in magic marker!

  Sally Barns? But this was incredible! This was objective proof that the morning meeting with Barns and Twig hadn't been hallucination after all! It was all real! He looked around the lobby, and there at a rear window stood the lucky bride herself, staring out towards the long deserted Base air strip.

  "Did you hear a sonic boom just now Bates?" she asked, once again wearing her stern Crab persona.

  "Huh? Why no," he responded, deciding not to mention Oscomb's counter-smashing blow. The Crab already knew far too much about everyone.

  She turned her full attention to Bates, but this time she was not gloating over him like a drill sergeant. She seemed to be treating him almost as an equal, or at least someone that for some reason she no longer cared to crush under-foot. "Come to check on your new office, have you?” She nodded towards the Head Office. Motioning him to follow, she crab-walked towards it.

  'DR. BATES, HEAD OF DOD' was already painted on the half open office door! Through the doorway, Bates could see that the office had already been vacated by Barns! On the walls were several rectangular clean areas where now removed pictures of presidents had heroically protected the wall from dust and light. In fact, with the exception of a frog lure that lay smashed on the floor, nothing remained in the room but the huge mah
ogany desk and several massive steel safes. Bates wondered if the smashed frog lore had at last hooked Twig after all, and paid the ultimate price.

  There was no further evidence of Barns himself. Of course, the man was so psychotically neat that he probably had very few belongings to prepare; he could have easily packed up and carted away all his stuff in ten minutes.

  Bates stood in a daze, as the implications continued to sink in slowly. He actually WAS becoming the Head of the DOD! THEY were nuts, not him! Elated, he suddenly jumped up into the air and yelled "FUDGE WINKIES!”

  Un-perturbed by the odd jumping and shouting, as she had been around scientists for several years, Twig/Mrs. Barns/The Crab/Little Cuddles returned to packing. After Bates' head stopped spinning, he managed to compose himself enough to finally answer Twig's question about why he was there. "I'm just here to check on some things," he explained vaguely.

  "Well," she said, "as you can see, Dr. Barns has nearly finished moving out. Renson has been helping. I'm nearly through packing myself. You can start moving in now, if you like.” She turned back to stare him in the eye again. Twig’s eyes suddenly seemed unnaturally huge and unblinking, with big black pupils that seemed to bore into his own. Whenever she stared at him like that, Bates felt paralyzed, as if he were a small bird being stared down by a cobra. "I'm moving to Annex 3, and Renson is also,” she explained. “Renson probably won't move everything today; but he'll get it all out by the end of the week. So don't panic when things continue to disappear after I'm gone. Everything is labeled.” She went back to work on her boxes.

  "Sure, but what are you going to do in Annex 3?” Bates didn't think anyone even worked there anymore.

  She stopped writing her new name on a box and slowly turned towards him again. For just a moment she looked angry, as if his questioning anything was a resented surprise, but then her expression quickly neutralized. "Oh, Dr. Barns thought I'd like to get away from the bustle of the front office. He suggested that I work on sorting and archiving some old project data filed away in that big safe in your new office. He made the assignment as sort of a wedding gift, really. Boring work to some people, I suppose, but I don't really mind. So you will need a replacement for me here. A suggestion: perhaps Miss Crane would be suitable?” The hint of a smile formed on her thin lips.

  The thought astounded Bates. Margaret as his own private secretary! He grinned, as unbidden, visions of Margaret in a semitransparent, plastic, Fuming Right motorcycle riding outfit flashed before him, although the effect was tempered somewhat by the actual sight of The Crab.

  "Of course," Twig continued, "you will be our new boss; would you rather that Renson and I stay here with you instead?” She again flashed her closed-mouth smile.

  Keep The Crab and Renson as his office staff instead of Margaret? Walking briskly two miles every other day a few years ago probably saved Bates from having a coronary on the spot. "No, no, no! It will be tough, but I'm sure that Margaret and I will get along together somehow," he managed to stammer. "Besides, you, err, certainly deserve a rest.”

  "Very well then," she said, returning to her packing. "We'll see you this afternoon.” Clearly dismissed, and certainly well pleased with the confirmed status of things, Bates exited quickly.

  This was turning out to be a truly remarkable day! He really was to become Head of DOD! There was a possible breakthrough with Margaret! Barns would indeed retire, and The Crab would vacate her lair! Many times in the past he doubted it but he had obviously been wrong; life was truly wonderful! What could possibly go wrong?

  Margaret wasn't at her counter when he passed it, but he retrieved his coat and briefcase. Both items were old, cruddy, and beat up, he noticed for the first time; maybe he'd better stop by the K-Mart and buy flashy new ones that better matched his new VIP status.

  When he got back to his office, Bates was so excited that he decided to start moving into his new front office at once, and he began to pack in earnest. He rapidly worked to divide his things between stuff to move and trash to throw out, though it was very difficult to decide which was which. He decided to ruthlessly throw out most things, as sorting through them carefully would be far too much work. Despite his hoarder tendencies, he was soon generating bag after bag of trash, which he dragged outside through a back door and tossed unceremoniously into a dumpster.

  More than an hour went by as he worked, and his mood continued to improve. He resolved to turn that foreboding front office into a warm, welcoming haven right away by putting up a few posters and further dressing up the place with his lava lamps and a few rubber chickens, for starters.

  By the time Mel and Oscar arrived, they found Bates merrily singing and dancing as he tossed office items into boxes and trash bags. "Narb, are you all right?" asked Mel. Mel and Oscar both stared at Bates in astonishment. They had expected to find a broken man, not a grinning, dancing one.

  "We've seen this one before," Mel confided to Oscar.

  "Right," agreed Oscar. "That's his funky-chicken dance. But I don't understand! He only does that when he's really happy!”

  Bates danced over to Mel and Oscar, squawking and flapping his arms wildly. "Great news guys," he shouted, amid clucks and squawks, "instead of firing me, they decided to make me Head of DOD! Top dog! Emperor supreme! Tsar! El primo boss! High poombah!” He ended the dance with a flourish and an ear whacking chicken squawk.

  The news didn't bring the expected response; Mel and Oscar continued to gape at their friend with shocked expressions on their faces. Oscar was first to recover. "Sure Narb, of course! After all, what else could they possibly do?” He turned to Mel and winked.

  "Oh sure; right, Narb," said Mel, trying to hide the new worry that he felt for his friend. Maybe poor Bates really had lost a few more bearings, and he certainly didn't have any extra ones to spare. "Do we continue with what we came for?" he asked Oscar, quietly.

  "I think that we have to," whispered Oscar, in return.

  Bates didn't resume dancing; he was out of steam anyway. Adrenalin could only take a man so far. Besides, he was a little piqued that his monumental news was being taken so casually by his friends. Could they have even bigger news? "OK you guys, so what's up?" he asked them.

  Oscar turned to Bates, and spoke seriously in unusually quiet tones: "Sorry to bug you at a time like this my friend, but we need to talk in private about your Nitro, Narb.”

  "Sure," said Bates. He was puzzled. Given everything else that was happening, why on Earth would they want to talk with him about his car? He plopped back down into his recliner to recover from his chicken antics and packing. He wasn't used to such intense physical activity. Mel and Oscar remained standing in the doorway to his office; neither friend moved to join him. Oscar looked uncomfortable when he again spoke quietly. "No, not here Narb, we need to talk with you in private!”

  Bates sat up and looked around. He still only saw the three of them. The closest neighboring office still occupied was Mel's, and that was at least fifty meters away. “Isn't this private enough?”

  "Just come with us Narb," said Mel, as he and Oscar each took Bates by an arm, rudely hoisted him out of his comfortable recliner, and marched him out of his office and down the hall.

  "Sure guys," said Bates. "But is this any way to treat your future boss?”

  Again the delusion! Mel and Oscar looked at each other and shook their heads sadly, but said nothing. Joke or psychosis, there was nothing they could do about it right now anyway.

  They took him down several hallways and stairways to a vault door with several security locks that Oscar opened with his back to Bates. Bates didn't remember ever being in this part of the building before. If he had, he would not have paid any attention to the vault door; there were dozens of such doorways scattered around the Base. Each led to a 'secure classified facility’ once used by above-Top Secret DOD projects. The massive steel door at last opened into a smallish room with a table and several chairs. Sitting there, to his surprise, was Hank th
e gate guard, still in his Santa Suit and prominently displaying a 9MM automatic pistol.

  "Glad to finally meet with your acquaintance formal-like, Doc," said Hank, rising from his chair and shaking Bates' hand vigorously.

  "Glad to finally meet you, Santa," returned Bates, smiling. "I've been a good boy and expect a very big promotion and a knock-out personal secretary for Christmas."

  Hank, not cracking a smile, turned to Oscar and Mel. "This here is some serious business. You fellas sure he's up to it?”

  "He has to be," said Oscar, with a shrug. "We have to straighten out our project business with Bates today, before he leaves."

  In the meantime, Hank produced from his Santa Sack some sort of hand-held electronic device that he used to examine Bates as well as Oscar, Mel, and himself, by passing it slowly over them. He had Bates hand-over his VISICOM, which he turned off and placed into a metal cabinet before he resumed his electronic search of Bates. Apparently satisfied with the results, he returned the instrument to his sack. Bates glimpsed several assault weapons in the Santa Sack while Hank was doing this, mixed in with candy canes and other Santa gear.

  "OK boys," sighed Hank. "No bugs or other prohibited gear; so let’s get this over with. I got me a gate to guard.” He handed several forms to Bates. "Bates, read these here forms and sign-um."

  The forms were the standard oaths of secrecy required by the Government when one joined a super-Top Secret project. Bates was amazed. He hadn't thought that any of these projects still existed. It had been several years since he had worked on one himself. Personally, Bates had never been too wild about super-secret projects. They seemed to run directly counter to basic requirements of science for open inquiry. Besides that, there was all that sneaking about and winking between fellow in-the-know workers that had to be put up with. It was a lot like joining the Masons or some other secret, exclusive, silly club, he figured.

  Bates would rather keep everything in the open and above-board, but he decided that he had better join their little group and get this business over with, whatever it was. He didn't bother to read the ten pages of legalese, but simply checked-off 'no' in all the boxes and signed all the forms. He knew from prior experience that the forms were basically oaths of secrecy, that he had certified that he wasn’t a drunkard, druggy, communist, murderous suicidal Muslim jihadist, evangelical Christian jihadist, or other far-left or far-right anti-Government conspirator, and that he had just promised to stay away from foreigners and to not tell anyone outside the project anything about the project, including its very existence.

  "OK partner, you're in!” said Hank, with a gap-toothed smile. The three of them shook Bates' hand and smiled, behaving as if being made a member of their silly project was actually a good thing. Then Mel and Oscar led Bates through another vault door into the next room, while Santa escaped out the front vault door with his sack of deadly goodies to return to his guard post.

  The second room that the three friends entered was much larger. Filled with all manner of equipment, it seemed to be primarily a lab, but there was also a small conference area. Seated with her broad back towards them at the conference table was a robust, rotund woman of medium height and years: Norma Carbuncle, the famous inventor. Bates knew her, but had never worked directly with her on any projects.

  She had always seemed a bit too intense and preoccupied with her work to suit Bates. Even now, she had headphones on and was staring at some sort of graphs that were displayed on a large viewing screen. As he watched, the graph evolved into complex curves and spikes. The graphs meant absolutely nothing to Bates, but Mel and Oscar were soon studying them intently, shaking their heads, and frowning. They must have also meant something bad to Norma, because she was cursing loudly, and darned creatively, Bates noticed.

  Well, Bates wasn't too happy either. Even signing the security forms had seemed to him to be part of an elaborate gag. Until he saw Norma and her data he had still hoped that his friends were spiriting him away to a private rendezvous with a hidden bottle of scotch or a pizza or something else useful. It was very disappointing to find that this was apparently a real project.

  Oscar cleared his throat to get Norma's attention. The rumbling sound echoed through the vault, but Norma remained entranced with the graphs. Finally the big biologist tapped her shoulder firmly.

  Noticing them all at last, Carbuncle turned from the equipment to face Bates with a scowl. "What the hell did you do to our data, Bates?" she demanded!

  "What the hell data are we talking about?" returned Bates hotly, instantly on the defensive. On this project for less than a minute, and they were yelling at him already!

  "OK, OK," intervened Oscar. "Calm down Norma. First we have to brief Bates a little on what we're doing."

  Norma had Bates sit down at the conference table in the chair opposite hers. The others sat in the remaining chairs. Then Norma began to more civilly explain things to Bates. "First of all, Bates, the less you know the better. After we conclude our business with you today we are going to swear you to secrecy and read you out of this project anyway, since you’re being canned.”

  Bates had to struggle a bit to suppress a smile. By that afternoon, as DOD Head he would be officially in change of this silly project, whatever it was.

  "A few weeks ago," continued Norma, "we decided that we needed a test vehicle for this program, which, as you must have already surmised, has to do with engines and fuels."

  No, Bates hadn't surmised anything; he was as confused and ignorant as ever.

  Norma continued. "Funding being what it is nowadays, we decided it would have to be a car privately owned by one of the project team members, but none of ours were suitable. Then Mel here mentioned your Chevy. That obsolete junk heap of yours has a big old engine, heavy duty drive train, lots of room under the hood, and other nifty obsolete features that make it simply ideal!” Norma smiled broadly as she said this.

  Bates smiled too; he was not above a little pride of ownership. At least the woman appreciated a good American car.

  "So, we contrived to put our prototype equipment into your car.” She glanced at Mel and Oscar, who sat quietly with guilty looks on their faces. "Everything was going OK, but then came the bombshell this morning when we found out that you are being fired.” Bates was about to point out that he didn't feel that being promoted to Head of DOD was quite the same thing as being fired, but he was distracted by Norma's next statement. "So Bates, now we need to take possession of your car.”

  "You need to WHAT?" exclaimed Bates! ”No frigging way! I like that car! Anyway, I keep all my cars until they're just a pile of rust on my driveway surrounded by a set of worn-out old tires. It's a matter of principle.”

  Mel broke into apologies to Bates for getting him involved, but Norma persisted. "Now Bates, we would prefer to simply buy the car from you. That way we avoid paperwork that we would rather not bother with. But if we need to, we will impound your car for reasons of national security. All I need is one more signature on this paper and it's ours.” She showed him the paper. Apparently all it still needed was the signature of the Head of DOD.

  Bates smiled. Impound his car for reasons of national security? These people needed a reality check. He’d set them straight after he was made boss. “Tell you what. Give me until 2:30 PM today to decide. If by then I still haven't agreed to sell, go ahead and get the signature you need from the Head of DOD."

  Norma didn't appear to be entirely pleased with his position, but was willing to accept it. "OK Bates, we'll leave it your way for now. But we'll have to settle up on the car this afternoon before you leave. Now let's talk about this data."

  She turned the equipment back on. "We hoped that the data you gave us this morning would be enough to conclude this phase of the project. But Bates, the data contains too much noise! We've filtered out most of the engine noise, but some sort of rhythmic contamination still remains. What it could be, we're not sure."

  Carbuncle began fiddling with dia
ls on the equipment, which resulted in the display of data on the monitor, accompanied by odd sounds. "Oscomb told me you didn't even bother to use a new disk, but recorded it over some freaky rock music crap!” With distaste she pointed to the cassette cover on the table before her. Sure enough, there was his 'Waste It', by "The Fuming Right', now with additional labels on it that identified it as being 'Top Secret'.

  Norma turned to Bates. She held up a second, identical 'Waste It' diskette in front of his face. "So we ran out and got this second disk, on the theory that some of the original sound track remains and has corrupted our data. For the last hour I've been comparing it with your data disk.” Anger contorted her face. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO LISTEN TO THIS CRAP FOR AN HOUR!” She slammed the disk face down on the table. Bates would have responded that he didn't know what that was like, since he had never even heard of The Fuming Right until that very morning, but Norma continued. "It did no good. The disks don't correlate statistically. I've verified that there is no detectable trace of the original recording left on it. So the problem is caused by something else. The contamination is rhythmic, like music. It couldn't be a radio, could it Bates?” She turned to Mel and Oscar. "I thought that you two disabled his car radio!”

  So that explained his radio problems lately! Bates felt betrayed, violated even, as he angrily confronted his friends in astonishment. "YOU DISABLED MY RADIO?” Mel simply looked down in shame, while Oscar made some lame excuse about it being in the line of duty.

  This really crossed the line. Bates didn't really mind being part of some silly secret project mumbo-jumbo if it was responsible for improving his car's performance, but to deny a person their car radio was simply unforgivable. He wasn't sure if there was a Constitutional Amendment that covered it explicitly, but he felt certain that a car radio must be at least an implied basic right, like coffee in the morning.

  Norma was still focused on the data problem, but she seemed defeated. "Well, if it’s not the radio, I'm stumped," she said with a sigh. Her obvious disappointment quickly deflated Bates' anger.

  "Wait a minute; could this interference be simply sound, and not something hooked up to the car electrical system?" Bates asked.

  "Sure," responded Norma. "It's simply a matter of the sound coupling with the vibrational Eigen frequencies of the cheap analog recording equipment that we jury rigged into your car. That's one of the reasons why the radio had to be disabled."

  "Besides the potential for electrical interference, of course," added Mel unnecessarily.

  Bates looked thoughtful. "Could you play me back that data as audio in real time?” Norma worked with the equipment. Soon the room was filled with odd sounds that for the most part represented engine performance metrics. But in back of that sound was something else that mixed in with the engine data. Bates recognized it right away. "Mozart’s thousandth symphony second movement is my all-time favorite tune, but that’s Mr. Base Man," he said.

  "WHAT?” responded Norma.

  "You know," said Bates, "that moldy oldie song from the 1950's or 1960's or whenever.” He started singing along with the disk. "Bah, bup-bup-bah, bup-bup-bah, ba-bah ba-bah.” His voice was loud and terrible but the match with the recorded data was obvious.

  Norma looked at Bates in shock. "You mean you were SINGING as you performed our experiments?”

  "Of course," said Bates. "What else would anyone do without a radio? I normally listen to the all-Mozart station, but without a functioning radio Mozart wasn’t available, and I didn’t have earphones for my hand-held VISICOM.”

  "Sounds perfectly reasonable to me," boomed Oscar. Oscar was well known to have his operatic moments in the hallways on Base.

  Norma looked thoughtful. "Bates, can you sing again for us everything that you sang in the car?”

  "Sure," replied Bates. Norma smiled for the first time. Unlike Twig, her teeth were obvious.

  Over the next hour Bates identified and sang nine tunes that were apparently obscuring engine data on the disk. They ranged from still popular 20th century 'oldies', to classic opera, all sung horribly. Norma was ecstatic. She was confident that she could now save most of the engine test data by subtracting out the super-imposed singing. At one point she even joined in with Narb and Oscar to produce a stirring rendition of 'God Bless America'. Her robust voice, as well as her rotund physical appearance, reminded Bates of the legendary Kate Smith.

  It was nearly eleven-thirty before they escaped the confines of the vault. Bates was the hero of the moment, as well as a pitied RIF victim. The others all wanted to take him out to lunch, but Bates refused, saying that he had packing to complete. Turning down a free lunch was so totally out of character for Bates or any other Civil Servant that once again Mel and Oscar worried about the mental health of their friend. However, since he obviously wanted to be left alone for now, they decided to go along with it. After the dreaded RIF ceremony with Barns that afternoon, they would again try to cheer him up.

  Right now, to their astonishment, Bates was already cheerful. For one thing, he had managed to acquire a reward for his efforts. At his request, they gave him the second Fuming Right disk that Oscar had purchased, the one that still contained the far-right anti- environment 'Waste It' stuff. He would lend it to Margaret and see what happened from there.

  Bates rushed back towards his office, actually too excited to eat lunch, something that almost never happened. Swiping a push-cart that he found in a hallway, he began to enthusiastically haul his belongings to the Head Office. It never occurred to him that as the new big boss, he could have someone else do it for him.

  Because it was lunchtime he saw almost no one, and he made trip after unnoticed trip to transfer his belongings to the Head Office. Since the cafeteria had closed three years earlier, most people left the Base for a long lunch. Those few people that he did encounter assumed that the doomed man was taking some personal stuff home. Many would miss him, but most were thankful that it was him being laid off, and not them. None realized that they were looking at the next Head of DOD.

  ****