An Overly Radioactive Imagination

“Other Earth” entered the Boss’s head when she was thirteen and doing her best to sleep with her eyes open in History class–”like a Horse”–for every impossible physical task is equine in her mind. And within that slipstream between sleep and wakefulness, she imagined that Other Earth’s history was exactly the same as ours until 1947.

Ah, daydreaming…just about any little thing can affect the course of our chimeras. And such influenced my Employer’s Other Earth fancy when “Brewster the Goebel Rooster” blew into her deepening dream. She had seen a documentary in Social Studies earlier that day which told of the effect that cheaply drawn cartoon advertising mascots had on the public in the early days of TV. Along with dancing cigarette packs and Speedy Alka Seltzer, came Brewster the Goebel Rooster, who touted a brewery that probably was assimilated by Anheuser Busch a long long time ago.

Just seconds before the teacher tapped her on the shoulder, thus returning the Boss to a vigorously unwanted state of consciousness, a cartoon beer mascot was somehow involved with altering Other Earth in a most peculiar way. All the atom bomb caused monsters in 1950’s science Fiction films became real at Other Earth. The Ants from Them the Colossal Man and various super-lizards and such all raged on Other Earth. “And I will be the reason for it!” my Employer thought, and it was almost all clear to her, but that was when her reverie was ended by that tap on the shoulder.

And although many a moon has crossed the sky over the highly radioactive Nevada desert of her mind, my Employer has never completely forgotten the concept of Other Earth, but it has always remained incomplete because she has never been able to replicate the exact imaginative conditions, though she still nods off plenty in “pay attention” situations. So it made sense that upon creating Saragun Springs and handing the keys to the Literary Queendom to me that she would make a big play at solving the Other Earth mystery.

Since I didn’t pop into her mind until shortly after the dream event (and believe me, reviewing a fifteenth generation dream copy is a tad confusing); but I eventually understood enough of it that I knew the wild divergence from history on Other Earth happened in late 1947. I also know that the Boss was the cause of the divergence in a bumbling, well meaning Gilligan sort of way. I also was able to “urge” my Employer to believe that the prime event happened in a bar somewhere on the outskirts of the New Mexican desert. I did so because I had to send my “landing party” to a specific place as well as a specific time.

Mission Prep

The Other Earth team returned to the office after finishing up in Wardrobe and Makeup. Daisy was fitted with a black-out Pygmy Goat-sized bodysuit, helmet cam and, of course, a lavishly glittered paper mache horn was glued to her head.

Gwen looked smart in a modest, yet attractive, Audrey Hepburn-esque blue dress, matching hat, gloves, heels and a pair of No Autographs Please sunglasses–a bit much for the type of roadhouse I was sending her to, but she’s a big girl now.

But goddam Renfield, in keeping with the her constantly peeing in my Cheerios element of our relationship, was dressed like a sitcom gangster from the early days of television–later lampooned in skit comedies of the 60’s. She was wearing a So Loud That You Can See It From the Moon men’s pinstripe suit, a black shirt, white necktie and a yellow fedora and matching handkerchief in her pocket. It’s like she’d fallen out of a Dick Tracy comic. Her shoes were black and white–but made from imitation leather, because we like Cows in Saragun Springs.

Renfield often displays an expression that is for me only. It’s an expectant sort of smile that plainly dares me to say something. I usually cave in and blurt an unintelligible observation, but on this occasion, though I’m certain my eyes gave me away, I held my tongue, remembering that she was the one who had to go to Other Earth looking like that.

“I’ve got fourteen dollars and nine cents from the Boss’s coin collection–it’s enough to buy a house at when you are going,” I said. The Boss knows that I cannot raid her accounts, but I can make temporary one for one “realm copies” of any cold hard cash she has in her possession (which ain’t much, ever). But since they were going to 1947, I needed old loot, just in case (in case of what, I didn’t know), which consisted of change and three two dollar silver certificates.

“You could buy a Dog penthouse for the hundred-ninety bucks that converts to,” said Gwen, all snotty-like, for she has an internal abacus and is an expert on the history of the dollar.

“Maybe Alice Capone here can open a Shylock operation, if you run short” I said, finally biting on Renfield’s bait, much to her satisfaction. “Then again, I wouldn’t commit too many felonies over there. Habitual offenders are fed to the monsters.”

“How did that happen, anyway?” Renfield asked. She knows how much I detest putting in the backstory, but claiming that a duplicate of our planet contains ungovernable Atomic Monsters who have their own nation in southwest American desert, as per a treaty signed in 1948 at Other Earth, might rate an explanation.

I saw this latest ugsome vexation coming. But played dumb because the crew would understand what it all meant when they completed their mission.

The portal at the Spring is a mixture of the past, present and future as one time hole (she saw that on Star Trek, and like her understanding of Free Will, mangled the concept). In her mind you can pull a coin out of your packet then throw it into the vortex and instantly discover that the same coin is back in your pocket yet dated in a future year. Like most quantum tricks that one impresses and yet is essentially useless.

“Mysterious ways,” I said.

Renfield knows it is a fifty-fifty ball whether my use of “mysterious ways” means Orders From the Boss or an old fashioned “I don’t know.” Either way she sees my ignorance as a constant. It’s a bit tough having to bank on the scorn others have for your intelligence to keep things moving, but you can list such under Any Port in a Storm.

Before anyone could look too deeply into the situation, I had them in the cart, headed toward the spring. Gwen drove because I needed to fill in the details of the mission:

“Other Earth’s history is exactly the same as Real Earth’s until the post WWII nuclear testing conducted by the US military out in the American southwest desert did result in the creation of the gigantic ants, mammoth scorpions, huge tarantulas, scores of Godzilla-sized lizards and a smattering of profoundly effed-up human beings that we see only in 1950’s science fiction films. Among the traits these creatures have in common (besides experiencing the enlarging effects of extreme radiation) are an immunity to conventional weapons and insatiable appetites for murder and destruction.

“Naturally, Other Earth’s American government tried to cover up the fiasco, but that proved impossible after a bunch of the critters went to Vegas and did to the inhabitants what tourists do to free buffets. It didn’t take long for the monsters to spread the pain, thus the population of the Other Earth’s United States was decreased by twenty-seven percent during The Mutant-American War, which raged throughout the summer of 1947. And one may correctly suspect that the population would have been decreased to zero by Christmas if a truce hadn’t been signed by the warring factions near the hole in the ground that used to be San Clemente, California.

“A Psychotic Colossal Man (who successfully ignored a missile jammed into his right eye socket), an eternally PMSing Fifty-foot Woman and a comparatively sane Shrinking Man (who, until he disappeared, was an exception to the insanity rule) represented the monsters, who’d have never parlayed at all if not for the fact that their numbers weakened the farther they got away from the radioactive desert. At last these essentially immortal yet sterile (save for the flying ants, whom the Los Angeles smog wiped out) agreed to live on a reservation the size of southern California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico combined. This was convenient because those places had been depopulated and turned into radioactive hells on Other Earth during the war. The monsters all live there to this day, behind mountain high walls of radioactively enlarged granite. Live ‘Food’ and old automobiles, prefab homes and such (the non-foodstuffs are for recreational destruction purposes) are airlifted in around the clock.

“Now, you’d think that one Josef Stalin would be one too many for the Universe, but, no, Other Earth just had to have one too, and he just had to have monsters of his own, lest the Other USSR face a mutant gap. So, Other Earth’s Cold War featured the two Superpowers threatening to unleash ungovernable monsters on each other, until a treaty that banned the creation of new nuclear monsters and use of the current ones was signed near the hole in the ground which used to be Stalingrad. To this day the whole of glowing Other Siberia is shrouded in enlarged granite, whilst live Food and items for recreational destruction are airlifted in around the clock to gigantic Bears, immense Tigers and barn-sized “Sabertooth Rats.” And yes, other nations followed suit, and every one of them had to develop a ‘reservation’ of its own.

“Due to personal standards of good taste, I shan’t elaborate much on the subject of monster chow. Let’s just say that in this present year Other Earth’s population was about a third of Real Earth’s, and that their mean IQ is twenty-points higher than it has ever been on the original item. Although disabled persons and the elderly are protected at Other Earth, there seems to be a noticeable lack of out of shape, slow-footed and unemployable people over there; nor are there any violent offenders incarcerated in their prison systems–well, not for long, any way–but that’s just a personal observation unsupported by scientific data.”

“Why do I think that you and the Boss had something to do with the monsters,” Gwen said. The slight stench of shame and boiled diarrhea and enhanced puke leaking from the stink bubble was getting stronger.

“Because you are sharp,” Renfield said.

“Well, I’ll allow that there might have been a complication long ago,” I sighed. Daisy and BTI were playing “I Spy” as we drove along at a steady two miles an hour.

“I spy with my little eye an incoming plot twist,” BTI said.

“I spy with my little eye ‘tell’ shamelessly disguised as ‘show’ via the use of quotation marks,” Daisy, who’s often a little too quick on the uptake for my tastes, added.

Gwen stopped the vehicle shy of the spring. As slow as we were going, it took a second to realize that we were no longer moving. “Not another inch till you spill,” Gwen said.

“Ditto,” Renfield added. She’s an awfully pretty thing when captured in the Ponglight. And she can do all those little pretty girl nose twitches, lip bites, “that thing with her eyes” and such that charm and make mere mortal Pens like me a bit envious. The sort of looks that I often fancy my fist altering, now and again.

“All right, already–but you guys better not back out after I tell you. It happened before any of us met [I never say “created” in any shape to an FC–for Free Will has written all their pasts].”

I pulled a file from my tablet and said…