December Delirium by Mike Bozart - HTML preview

It was a leisurely, albeit quite smoky, teenage drive with future Agent 107 (the late, great Frank N. Peck). We were in his 1975 burnt orange Ford Maverick, driving northwest into Charlotte from Matthews (NC) on US 74 in December of 1981. But, as he slowed down for a red traffic light, we advanced thirty-four years in just 3.4 seconds. Yes, it was suddenly December 2015, and our driver Frank is now just a serene, ashen-faced ghost.

“That department store was over there, Frank. Yes, on that very corner. Buick Drive at Independence Boulevard. Or, was it Electra Lane? Oh well, you know; it’s not important now, I guess.”

Frank just nodded. Then, the saddest smile overtook his ethereal countenance.

I continued with my east Charlotte geography update and recollections. “Notice the overpass they recently built. Conference Drive. Yeah, the retail outfit over there was called Service Merchandise. Such an odd combination of nouns. Yep, I remember it.”

“Are you sure?” a holographic Frank asked in a whisper from my left, sensing my flickering (and faltering?) memory. His neural circuits are going, but old Mike doesn’t realize it yet.

“Oh, yeah; that was where it was. Maybe it closed before you guys got down here in ’79, or shortly thereafter. I remember the LED watches in their one-inch-thick catalog. Remember those store catalogs? They mailed them out to the surrounding neighborhoods.” I chuckled for a second.

Frank just murmured, “L-E-D.”

“Yeah, Frank, LED watches were a relatively new thing then. And, they weren’t cheap. Some models were well over $100. One hundred 1981 dollars, that is, Frank. Oh, Pulsar was the daddy brand. We all wanted one. And, get this, all the LED watches were set to 11:49 in the catalog. Don’t ask me why I remembered this.” Were they set to 11:49 in the store, too?

“AM or PM?” the Frank apparition quickly asked much more clearly. Why in the weird world did he ask that?

“Not sure on that, Frank. However, I often wondered if the 11:49 display time was to show off as many LED segments as possible. But, as I thought it out in my mind, that hunch would prove to be wrong, as the numbers 6 and 9 have six segments each. The number 5 has five, and the number 4 has four. I realized this after waking up at 6:54 one Saturday morning in June.” Yeah, I’m sure, dude.

“So, you think that 6:59 or 9:56 would display the most LED segments, is that right?” Frank asked with a lost-in-thought, Earth-is-now-so-trite look.

“Well, let’s see, Frank. There are seventeen LED segments in 6:59 and 9:56. There are only fourteen in 11:49. Thus, be careful. Your bane isn’t totally braked yet, Frank.” The bane of cold rain in Spain.

“Bane braked? Now, listen to you, Mike. You have got to be the word murderer of the century. Pure linguistic poison, you spout. Yeah, my old friend, your brain is just toxic letter-shaped linguine.” Letter-shaped linguine? Where do you buy that pasta?

“Maybe so, maybe sew. Hey, what about 12:59?”

“What about it?” the phantom Frank quipped.

“I count eighteen segments in that time. Looks like I win.”

“Eighteen segments in that time. Sounds like the title to a novel, Mike van Tryke. [my nickname and later visual art name] Yeah, your addition is correct: Eighteen LED segmentations it is. Perhaps you got me this time.”

“You can post 12:56 and we’ll call it a draw, Frank.”

“Will you let me post 12:99 in overtime?”

“Only if I can post 12:66,” I retorted. Still a draw.

“Well, if we’re going that far off the conventional clock, I’ll post 99:99. That’s a total of twenty-four segments for that 24-karat gold medal.” Fool’s gold.

“You haven’t taken the gold medal yet, Frank. 12:99 equates to 1:39.”

“Equates to 1:39? What temporal nonsense you speak!”

“Yeah. Sure. 12:00 plus 99 minutes equals 1:39.  AM or PM: It’s your choice. Therefore, my eternally stoned comrade, your LED segment total is only thirteen.”

“Thirteen?”

“Yep. That’s it. Number 1 has two segments; number 3 has five segments; number 9 has six segments. Two plus five plus six yields thirteen.” Yields?

“And, what about your time?” My time while still alive?

“My time of 12:66 equals 1:06. There are fourteen segments in that LED time.” LED, Life Externalizing Diversion.

Frank was quiet for a few seconds, scratching his dark brown beard with his right hand. He was cranking through possible digits in his head. A THC-fueled numerical analysis was in progress. I wonder what his mind will stumble upon.

“Ready to throw in the towel and buy me a frozen yoghurt to ameliorate my scorched throat?” I finally asked with glee. Tryke’s got a big surprise coming.

“12:58,” he suddenly blurted. Damn, that might be the gold-medal winner.

“Darn, how many segments are in that diode time?” I asked knowing that the answer was probably higher than eighteen.

“Nineteen. You can’t get any more than that with a legal twelve-hour time. It’s the absolute max. Looks like you’ll be buying again, sport.” Darn, how did I overlook the seven-segment number 8? It’s the equivalent of the letter Q in Scrabble.

“Maybe we can amend the rules to make it more interesting,” I ruefully suggested.

“Take your loss gracefully, pal. Don’t dig a deeper grave.”

“The hours are numbered 1 to 12, Frank, just like the months of the year. So …”

“So, so, so. No, no, no. However you are trying to extend this match of wits – just forget it.”

“Don’t you want to hear me out, meta-real one?”

“The minutes go up to 59, whereas the days in a month only go up to 31 in the longest ones. No correlation. So, I don’t see how you extend this, Tryke. Accept your certain defeat.”

I brooded for a few minutes and took another drag on Frank’s chrome peace pipe. The hash was cross-hatching my neurons. I was clawing for a clever thought, and sliding further into insipidity. Finally, I thought about December dates. I realized that today was the 8th. Eureka!

“That Moody Blues concert was a week ago tonight. So, what is today’s date, Frank?”

“Uh, let me think … December 8th.” 

“And December 8th is commonly shortened to what series of numbers in America?”

“12-08,” Frank said in a cautious, measured tone. I can tell that he senses a reversal of fortune. This is going to be sweet. So sweet.

“At 12:08 PM tomorrow, you can buy me a mushroom and onion pizza at Godfather’s on Albemarle Road.” Damn, 12:08 has twenty freaking segments! Is that the most? Is that the absolute winning LED-segmented time? / I got him good.

“Hold on,” Frank then muttered. “Let me have a few minutes to run some more numbers.” He’s doomed. He’s wallowing in neural quicksand. I’ll let him flounder in his inevitable loss for a while before declaring outright victory.

“The clock has started. Start renumerating. [sic] You’ve got two minutes. And not a second more.” He sounds just like a referee.

Frank was looking down. Then, after twenty-two seconds and one mighty drag on his Winston cigarette followed by a quick pipe inhalation, he looked up at his stereo’s display in the middle of the dashboard and pointed to it. The time was 10:08. Oh, dear. Trouble in red-clay city.

“You see what time it is, Tryke?” Frank asked as he exhaled a huge plume of grayish smoke with a big championship-winning, ready-for-the-trophy grin on his face. Has he really found a time that tops 12:08? A time with more than twenty LED segments? No way.

I looked at the time on the stereo’s faceplate. Damn. 10:08. Two plus six plus six plus seven. That’s twenty-one segments. I bet nothing tops that time for number of LED bars. Yep, that fawker [sic] got me!

Twenty-one little light-emitting diodes, pal. Yes, it’s time for you to buy me twenty-one slices of pepperoni pizza. But, not all at once; I’ll take it on an installment plan. Three weeks of Italian pie courtesy of my friend who finished in second place in a contest of two.” Damn!

“Very funny, Frank. Very, very funny. Hardy-har-har-har. Hey, it’s not over yet, Frank!”

“Oh, it’s very much over, Tryke. In fact, we are driving to the pizza parlor right now.” Oh, jeez. How much money do I have on me? Where’s my wallet?!

I then felt a nudge on my left shoulder.

“Honey, who are you talking to?”

Agent 107 circa 2010