Chapter 2
Truly and the children arrive at the farm. No, they didn’t die. Technically, the kids live on a farm with their father and grandfather and the windmill is just the laboratory that allows father to work off the grid and there were chickens and a horse, and a farm hand, who is only seen when you need to push a broken car up to the laboratory, and a mechanical dog named Tesla. “Hold on,” Loxy interrupted. “What happened to the real dog?”
“I thought the dog was named Edison,” Fersia said.
“Edison was a lying, cheating, dirty old egg sucking, stealing bastard of a dog that even Johnny cash wouldn’t sing about, and was even caught lying, cheating, and stealing, but they didn’t pull his stuff off the shelves or take his name out of the history books, and that dog was seriously mean, liked killed an elephant publically just to demonstrate electricity can kill, which was unfortunately an incredibly successful campaign playing off people’s fear of change, and anyway, we had to put him down,” Jon said. “Mechanical dogs are cheaper, non allergenic…”
“We’re not having a mechanical dog in this story,” Loxy said.
“We could make him cute, like CHOMPS,” Jon said.
“And change my name to Valerie?” Loxy asked.
“Maybe…”
“No,” Loxy said.
“We could name him BB,” Jon said.
“Disney owns that,” Loxy said. “And I don’t want to be Ray, she’s my sister…” “Since when?!” Jon asked.
“Since Disney bought all your books and made me a Disney Princess,” Loxy said.
“Since when?” Fersia asked. “Wait wait wait. Does that make me a Disney princess?” “No, but you’re the princesses pet, which is just as much fun,” Loxy said. “But anyway, no mechanical dogs in this story.”
“But I already put one in the junk yard, and since Disney owns us, we can assume they own everything, including our souls, and this story, so we should be able to use anything they own, because we’re owned?” Jon asked.
“MGM owns this one,” Loxy said.
“And who bought MGM?” Jon asked.
“Disney,” Loxy lamented. “But not yet…Real dog…”
“How come we’re real children when mom’s a cat?” Elizabeth asked.
“Go ask your mother,” Jon said.
“I am right here,” Fersia said, and she was, sitting on the couch with Loxy, who was petting her, and Keera and Lester had joined them on the couch, which had magically expanded to include them, curving in such a way to keep Jon and the children the focus. “That feels nice.” “Can we get back to the story?” Lester asked.
“Go with the real dog, father,” Eston said.
“The children and Truly brought their car to a stop and were immediately greeted by the
Shaggy DA of a dog, who went by the name Tesla,” Jon said.
“Edison!”
“Tesla,” Jon pushed, firm on this point.
“We could compromise and call him Toto,” Elizabeth offered.
“Wrong kind of dog,” Jon said.
“And why would you want name a dog after a toilet?” Keera asked.
“Only the Japanese viewers will get that joke,” Lester pointed out, and yes, he didn’t mean readers because we’re assuming you’re watching the movie version of the book that Hollywood picked up the same way they picked up ‘fifty shades of gray.’(Just as many grammatical errors. That’s all I am saying, but at least I didn’t pretend to write a story and change the names of the characters, because now that’s just crass.)
“What joke?” Keera asked. Don’t be fooled by her anime looks, and her college school girl uniform. She’s really pretty smart, and very, very pretty, and she can kick ass… And she’s actually speaking in Japanese, but I am being nice and translating for you, that and I can only not write in English.
And before you knew it, they were back in the story and Caractacus had emerged wearing a costume comparable to the Rocketeer. It was modified, of course, to look appropriate for the day and age, and perhaps a hint of an Iron Man power light on the leather jacket, and some crossover heavy plating, but overall, completely recognizable as what it was: a mark one Bobba Fett jetpack.
“Hold up,” Lester interrupted. “You can’t just appropriate anything you want and stick it into your steam punk world.” “Yes I can,” Jon said.
“Isn’t the Rocketeer Marvel?” Keera asked.
“Actually it was American Comics, which was bought out by Marvel, and who owns
Marvel?” Jon asked.
“Disney,” Loxy and Fersia said.
“It’s a really cool suit. I want a rocket pack,” Eston said.
“When you’re older,” Jon said. “There’s also a height requirement for this ride.” “Jon, you know I love you,” Loxy began.
“Is there a ‘but’ coming?” Jon asked.
“Depends on how you spelled it, anyway, stop distracting me from my point with sexual innuendoes,” Loxy said. “I love you, you look great in the Rocketeer outfit, but I don’t want you launching yourself into space.”
“You could be Jenny,” Jon said.
“No, I am the girl who comes out of the clam singing ‘Begin the Beguine,’ and I am not letting you fly a jetpack. You have not been trained, you can’t just put one on and fly it about, and I don’t want you hurt, now take it off,” Loxy said.
“What if I turned it into a Guardians of the Galaxy jetpack and I had the retractable armor, and you were Gamora,” Jon said.
“Do you have a raccoon?” Loxy asked.
“We live in Disney universe. I can stir up a raccoon,” Jon said.
“A talking raccoon?” Loxy asked.
“All raccoons talk,” Jon said.
“I want to be a raccoon when I grow up,” Elizabeth said.
“You could be. You never know which furry genes will get kicked in during puberty,” Fersia said.
“So, permissible with a raccoon sidekick?” Jon asked.
“No,” Loxy said.
“What if I get Downey Jr. to train me?” Jon asked?” “No,” Loxy said.
“Paltrow?” Jon asked.
“No!” Loxy said.
“Scarlett…”
“You get her, we’ll talk, but till then, NO!”
In the story, skipped over the craziness that might have otherwise ensued with a new invention to where Loxy… Loxy coughed… ‘Truly’ interrupted the failed power down sequence by throwing water on the jetpack, which Jon tried to tell her throwing cold water from the well onto a hot engine could have blown them all up, seriously, don’t believe me, go poor hot water on an iced over windshield in the winter, and a short argument ensued about what do you think was going to happen when you strapped fuel to your back and set it on fire, and then a scramble to rewrite the sequence where it was just steam, not actual flames, but really isn’t less deadly, and therefore throwing water on the suit was likely not going to stop the jetpack’s from functioning, except for maybe cooling the whole contraption down so the inside mechanism was no longer hot enough to make steam, just pure luck it didn’t blow up, and then there were questions if it used steam for propulsion, how do you carry enough water to go anywhere, and Jon was explaining it took water right out of the air, because there is always water in the air, even in the driest of air, even in the middle of the desert there is water in the air, if you only had the tech to remove it.
Back in the story, Caractacus removed his helmet to get another bucket full of water in the face… Not because Loxy was mad, but for comical reasons. Pies and water in the face never get old.
The kids in both stories laughed.
“Why are you laughing?” Jon asked the children. “Because it’s funny,” Elizabeth said. “She hit me in the face with water,” Jon said.
“It was an accident,” Loxy said.
“At least it wasn’t pie,” Lester said.
“Oh! I would love some cream pie,” Fersia said.
“And you said everything is permissible as long as it’s funny,” Eston pointed out. Back in the story. “Madam!” Caractacus was trying to calm down the hysterical woman who was saying, “Are you trying to get yourself killed? These kids only have you and the grandfather and you want them to be orphans?”
Caractacus stopped. “Interesting point, but I assure you, I had this well under control.”
Tesla barked.
“None the less, clearly my intent was to help you, and it appears that I was successful,” Truly said.
Caractacus removed the jetpack and began walking away, mumbling: “Could have blown us all up. Unstable, completely unstable…”
“Sir!” Truly interrupted his mumbled rant. “Did you say I am unstable?” “No,” Caractacus said. “Why are you here?” “The children,” Truly said.
“What about the children?” Caractacus asked.
“Children?!” Truly said, not mean, but appropriately stern, like a teacher, or Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music, or someone who was raised by a military man, and the two kids lined up front and center. Not.
The children approached, timidly.
“What’s going on?” Caractacus asked.
“Tell him,” Truly said.
“We gathered those things you asked for,” Jeremy said.
“That’s not what she meant,” Jemima said. “You can be so obtuse.” “No I can’t,” Jeremy said.
“Father,” Jemima said. “We didn’t go to school today.”
“Oh?” Caractacus asked. “Did you learn anything?”
“Wasps can build nest in the oddest of places and they can surprise you,” Jemima said. “That they can, well, run along kids, and wash up, it’ll be dinner time soon,” Caractacus said, and walked towards his laboratory, fiddling with his jetpack.
Truly stood dazed, having never felt so completely ignored, and she held years of practice with an expectation of a certain level of social protocol. To make matters worse, before she had collected her senses, suddenly, a man emerged from the house with a weird, sideways gate. He was dressed in formal military wear of the day and he paused uncertain.
“Madam,” he said.
“Umm,” Truly said, not sure what to make of this.
“Sergeant Potts at your service, mam,” Grandpa said, removing his hat. “Are you selling something?”
“Umm, no. You’re the grandpa?”
“I have been so characterized, yes,” grandpa said.
“But…”
“Yes,” grandpa said.
“Your son and the children are white, and you’re clearly Asian…” “Your point madam?” he said.
“Wait wait wait,” Lester said. “Did you just write me into this story?” “You’re the only one here old enough to be grandpa,” Jon said.
“And we do call you grandpa,” Eston and Elizabeth said.
“And I told you to stop that,” Lester said. “We are not blood related.” “Why do you call him grandpa in the story?” Eston asked.
“It’s just a term of affection,” Jon said.
“We’re not related!”
“You don’t have to be blood related to be family,” Fersia said. “You had sex with Loxy,
(‘a long time ago,’ Lester protested, ‘and only once,’) (‘it could have been more, and you didn’t mind when I called you daddy,’ Loxy said, and Jon asked ‘Truly?’ and Loxy assured him it was her not Truly and ‘daddy’ is a term of affection she used with most men,) and Loxy has had sex with me, and she has sex with Jon, (‘more than once,’ Loxy said, ‘and we have children, and I call you daddy,’) (‘we have children?’ Jon asked,) and since Jon slept with me and we had children, then by default, though I have not slept with you, but slept with Jon and Loxy and
Keera while you’re in the room with us, and I have even slept at the foot of your bed, (‘and I told you to stop that, you keep pouncing on my feet,’ Lester said,) but you move your feet in a teasing manner, and, anyway, it just seems reasonable to me, you’re kind of like a step grandfather, but more important, you’re part of our village, and therefore, you play a role in the lives of the children, and were appropriately designated grandpa.”
“I don’t think we should be having these sorts of conversations in front of the children,” Lester said.
“We live on a farm, we know about sex,” Elizabeth said.
“We live on a commune and there are no secrets,” Eston said.
“Which reminds me, stay out of my room!” Lester said. “Besides, secrets never hurt anyone. Just look at how well adapted the children in the story are, and they never talk about the elephant in the room.”
“Grandpa shot the elephant,” Fersia said.
“You mean, he sent him to the farm,” Keera said.
“We’re never going to finish this story if you keep interrupting me,” Jon said.
“We could turn this into a MST3k version,” Loxy said.
“You know how many knock off of that show are now on youtube?” Jon asked.
“What’s youtube?” Elizabeth asked.
“Akashic records,” Loxy said.
“Oh! So we could like watch us, watching us, watching us?” Elizabeth us.
“Don’t do that. It makes me dizzy,” Eston said.
“And you want a jetpack?” Jon asked.
“The two aren’t related,” Eston said.
“Like me in the story,” Lester said.
“Anyway, back to grandpa…”
“I am off to India to have a cup of tea with the Maharaja. Cheerio,” grandpa said, and angled off to his little tiny shack, leaving Truly truly more bewildered than before.
“Wait wait wait,” Lester said. “You’re making me a crazy grandfather, at that?” “Not crazy, magically eccentric,” Jon said.
“Crazy as loon,” Fersia translated.
“Now, wait, there is a long tradition of a very specific characters in British sitcoms of an eccentricity that includes out of body travel to faraway lands,” Jon said.
“Name one,” Lester said.
“Graham Crowden’s character in ‘Waiting for God,’” Jon said. “But if you want a real life person doing this, there’s Tesla! Tesla writes about his journey into ‘imagination,’ if you will so that it didn’t matter to him if he was in his inner workshop or the real world workshop, the results were the same.”
“Tesla wasn’t British,” Lester said.
“No, but did you ever consider that maybe going to India was a euphemism for using the toilet?” Jon asked.
“What’s a euphemism?” Eston asked.
“A way of saying something politely without saying what you’re saying,” Jon said. “Consider the workshop. It’s not a proper size workshop, unless you’re a magician and it’s bigger on the inside, which is completely possible, as your workshop could have been the first TARDIS, but more than likely, it’s just an out-house, and when you consider that the average person spends about a year and half on the toilet, then you probably were in India for about a year…”
“Well, everyone poops,” Elizabeth and Eston said. “That makes sense.”
Jon returned to the story, where Truly, not the sort to go off without a proper farewell, and also she considered the outhouse theory and completely dismissed it as, why would anyone put on formal military clothes just to visit the outhouse, and anyway having had her curiosity aroused as to whether or not the children were actually safe enough to leave alone with these
‘crackpots’ went in search of their father, Caractacus. But maybe not even for the reasons she imagined, as her curiosity about the man had been piqued, or maybe she had been subsequently triggered by his pheromones, which seriously affects people more than they imagine, which could explain her interest more than the mystery of the man. Whatever the reasons, fate, destiny, kismet, even though they just met and hadn’t kissed, Truly pursued, driven by unconscious
motivators and pure interest, and stepped into the most amazing laboratory she had ever seen since the invention of laboratories.