A Bee in Her Bonnet & A Ride on the Wild Side
Chapter 15 of "Life Among the Three Dimensionals"
Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Have you skipped a few installments and lost the thread of the narrative? Are you reading this to avoid doing 'real work'? Have you slipped into a parallel universe and can't find your way out? For earlier chapters click HERE.
In the preceding chapter, Hugo and Szofia encountered a gaggle of Five Dimensional "engineers" who were preparing to continue a program of substituting gaseous intelligents for all of the world's political and business leaders. Hugo hopes to seize the chance for his exit ticket from 3D Earth while Szofia, in disgust, simply decides to exit the scene.
Hugo gets dumped, Szofia gets lost, and everyone is alone and alienated in LA. The story resumes with "A Bee in Her Bonnet & A Ride on the Wild Side," Chapter 15 of "Life Among the Three Dimensionals"...
There I was, all by myself, at Los Angeles International Airport.
I sat by the taxi bay, watching the hours tick away. I felt I had nothing to live for and it looked like I was stuck in LA. I watched as the cabs rolled in and I watched them roll away again.1
It was clear that there was no longer any point in sending reports to Pioneer Central. My study of Life Among the Three Dimensionals was a forgotten project, a vestige of another time, another culture. I was stuck in a 3D world for which I was unsuited. I was in a dimensional cul-de-sac.
It was time... 'antediluvian' was how my five dimensional compatriots had described me... to write my end-of-life memorial and seek out, as best I could, the Complete Immersion, Disintegration and Recycling in Tszũm'paáß, the universal omphalus. It was hard to believe that it had only been a few months since I had been de-cocooned and thrust as a new-born into this three dimensional world as a newly fledged scholar of quasi-intelligent anthropology. That short time period began when the true 'Hugo Nash' had been placed to chill in the mezzanine betwixt layers of the ever expanding multiverse and I had been inserted in his stead. It had led from one misadventure to another until now I was the most wanted and the most lonely fugitive on the planet.
Because my life was measured in mere months, it took just seconds to compose and record on a zippeldisk the foregoing memorial of my life and adventures among the rustic three dimensional quasi-intelligents. It would only require that I wrap up the story and send it out into the Multiverse to end up who knew where.
Deep in somber self-reflection, I did not notice the long, dark sedan with wide, high-performance, low profile tires, brilliant chrome work, diamond-studded gold spinners and blackout windows that had rolled up to the curb next to the "no stopping, no pickups, no waiting" sign. The unseen driver, ignoring the sign and the oft-repeated broadcast warning that stopped vehicles would be impounded and their drivers beaten, fined, and summarily incinerated, pulled up next to me and stopped. “What now?” I thought miserably to myself.
The passenger side window slid down a few inches. A thin plume of blue smoke curled out the window.
“Hey you! Fat head! Get in the car!”
I could barely believe my ears!
I opened the passenger door and happily got in. It was Szofia, of course, her green hair and hooded head barely poking over the steering wheel. I just managed to close the door when she jammed the accelerator to the floor. As we sped off, an artificially intelligent parking enforcement drone started its descent toward the 'no stopping' zone at the taxi stand and launched a parking infraction missile at the black cloud of burnt tire rubber where we had been just moments before.
Steering with one little finger, Szofia turned to me, grinning. She puckered and blew a marijuana smoke ring in my face, batting her eyelashes. The red blossoms growing inside her ear canals had grown larger. It looked like there were bees rummaging around inside them.
“I thought I would never see you again!” I said, my happiness barely restrained.
“Oh yeah?” said Szofia looking at me out of the corner of her eye.
“I thought you never wanted to see me again!”
“Oh yeah?” said Szofia. “You know, the thought did cross my mind.”
I felt so remorseful. “Szofia! I am so sorry! What are we going to do? 5D has completely changed. I do not recognize my own kind anymore and I am a freak of gaseous metahistory. And you are being pursued by ruthless bounty hunters from your own vegan world! What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” I was genuinely distraught and could feel my gas gauges bumping lower and lower.
Szofia was driving nearly 80 miles an hour as she entered the freeway, careening in and out of traffic, still steering with one small finger on the wheel.
“So it's back to 'we' again, is it, Hughbiedoobie? Team Szofie and Hughie, again?”
She accelerated up to 100 miles an hour. “You know, for a five dimensional airbag, Hughie, you do a pretty good imitation of a quasi-intelligent three dimensional male type.”
She looked accusingly at me while driving at breakneck speed. “So now that you've been rejected by your ass-gas buddies from 5-land, now you're sorry, huh? Okay, I'll accept that as an apology, Hughbert... at least until I want to drag up your betrayal again some time in the future, to my own advantage, of course.” She squinted at me. “Or maybe you could get your shitty little pippy to bail you out next time you get chin deep in fertilizer, eh Hughie?”
Szofia, leaning on the horn, zoomed past a slow moving Winnebago RV and flipped the driver a tattooed asparagus finger through the sun-roof.
I was non-plussed. “If you were a humanoid, Szofia, I would think you were jealous of my triploid!”
Szofia steered onto the shoulder kicking up a cloud of gravel and debris, then darted past half a dozen cars on her left before swerving back across six lanes of the Freeway at 110 miles per hour.
“Hughbie baby, thank the Big Broccoli in the sky, I am a vegetable, and not a fucking 3D bean brain of the hominid persuasion. Vegetables are way too intelligent to do the jealousy thing, you savvy?” She slammed on the brakes and slowed to 75.
“And besides, we not only grew up on different sides of the galactic railroad track, but you, amigo, are a different specie, a different phylum, a different genus, a different fork in history - in fact a whole different pitchfork in history - a different universe, and, to top it all off, you're from an entirely different set of dimensions! I mean, 20% of you is completely not there, as far as I'm concerned. And, besides, you're waaaay too young for me because I'm 78,238 human years old and, what are you, a months-old babe in the woods? 'Scuse me, padre, but you plasmoidics don't even subscribe to the same time coordinates that the rest of us do (or at least the rest of us intelligent vegetables, which is all that matters).”
Szofia accelerated to 100 and zipped past a school bus, passing it in the right lane. She turned to me and completely took her hands off the steering wheel.
"Szofia!" I exclaimed. "Pay attention to your driving!"
"It's on auto-pilot," she calmly replied. "It's supposed to be completely autonomous, so it will just drive itself." The car accelerated to 130 miles per hour and, like at a bowling alley, it started to knock over red traffic cones that marked an upcoming construction zone. Szophie snorted disparagingly, turned off the auto pilot and began again to steer with one small finger on the wheel.
“Oh, and I almost forgot" she continued to harangue me, "you're also a lousy dresser and you're too freaking boring! In sum, Huey, you're just a young fart (literally!) and you're not my type.
She accelerated to 150 mph, darting in and out of traffic.
"And, in case you're interested (which apparently you aren't... Mr. so-called five dimensional field anthropologist... my 'type' is ME, solo io, because, after all, like so many intelligent vegetables, I am self-pollinating. No sex or other halves required, comprendre? And thank the Big Broccoli for that, too, because you can't imagine how gross it is when some degenerate types of fruits and veggies pair up and roll around in their raised beds full of chicken shit fertilizing one another just like, I dunno, like the filthy, plant-eating animals that inhabit this dumb planet.”
Szofia flashed her headlights at a Ferrari that was traveling at only 90 miles an hour.
She flipped the finger to the Ferrari driver as she passed him and then drove to within inches of another car's bumper. There was a traffic jam. She abruptly slowed down and leaned on her horn while threading lanes. More bees had flown in through the sunroof and had joined the other ones buzzing about Szofia's right ear. There might have been more bees in her left ear, too, but that side of her head was turned away from me.
I thought about what Szofia had said. Because plasmoidics of my ilk can only discern and speak the truth, I concluded that everything she had said was... well, what she had said was totally ridiculous and made no sense whatsoever.
I turned to her and said so. “So, Szofia, I guess that, based on everything you have told me, does that mean that you really are jealous of my triploid?”
She screamed. “Aaaaaaaagghhhhqueeechkkkk!!!!!!”
Szofia slammed on her brakes and screeched to a complete stop in the middle of the freeway. Multiple cars behind her also slammed on their brakes, causing a chain reaction rear-ender half a mile in length. Then she sped off leaving tire rubber on the roadway and a massive traffic-jamming 300 car pile up behind us. The bees were still buzzing around her ears.
Szofia lit another reefer, turned and blew a smoke ring at me again, smiling, green eyelashes fluttering.
“So, Hughbiedoobie, what's the scoop on the itty bitty shitloid, anyway?” She accelerated to 90 mph.
I was afraid we would crash into another vehicle. I put my inverted hands on the dashboard while I answered her inquiry. “Szofia, my Trippy Pippy is a triploid, not a shitloid,” I huffed. “And if you want to know, my triploid is not what you think it is.”
“Yeah? Do tell!” Szofia slowed down to 75 miles per hour weaving back and forth between eight lanes.
I was being rocked back and forth in my seat. I was beginning to feel motion sickness. The tension between us was terrible. “Szofia, Why are you driving like that?”
“Like what?” she asked innocently. “I'm just driving defensively. Defensive driving means you drive to put everyone else on the defensive, savvy? It's safer that way. Everyone stays out of your way.” She cut in front of another driver.
“I'm making sure that other people give us plenty of room on either side and all around us, in case of an emergency caused by some crazy reckless driver. People in California just go nuts when they get behind the wheel of a car!”
She accelerated again and the speedometer registered 150 miles per hour. “So, Huey, you were telling me about the pippy pooper and why all your prevert gasbag buddies are snuggling what looks like stuffed teddy bears or hiding their triple pooper whatevers in their cell phones.”
I clenched the dashboard, digging my upside-down fingers into the padding. “Well, it is difficult to explain, Szofia, because this is such common knowledge in 5D that no one ever has to explain anything.” I thought about how to explain the situation in a manner she would understand. “You see, they may look like stuffed teddy bears, but they are not. That is just their 3D disguise, I suppose.”
“The truth,” I explained to Szofia, “goes back to the beginning of our local eruption of rapidly expanding space/time when everything was a big and undifferentiated cloud of hot plasma. The primordial gases would occasionally congeal around random imperfections and fluctuations in the five plains of our space geometry, but there was no life as we know it now, no civilization, no advances or knowledge or even reproduction. Gas was and continued to be gas, and that was that. Then, apparently, there appeared triploids...”
Szofia laughed. “Whoa! Stop, cowboy! Whaddya mean 'there appeared triploids...? They just appeared? From where? Triploids aren't plasmoidics?” Szofia ground out her reefer in the leather seat cushion and drank several gulps from the plastic water bottle in the cup holder. The 'water' in the bottle smelled like tequila and whiskey with pineapple juice.
I explained. “Szofia, nobody really knows where the triploids came from because, you know, they are not 5Ds. Triploids are six dimensional. Or, at least, that is the speculation, because they might even have higher dimensionality, like seven, eight... or even eleven. No one is really sure, and you cannot ask a triploid because nobody really can talk to them.” I pondered how I would explain this to her. “Szofia, triploids do make sounds and noises, so you can tell when they are happy or sad by the way they coo or squeal or whatever.” I began to feel weak and lonely as I described 5-life. “But we 5s are attached to our triploids. I mean that we are literally, actually attached to them while they metabolize our gases; so, conversation when you are... in love, you know, is not really possible or even necessary.”
“WHAT! Ahahahah snort ohohohohoh hic!” Szofia started laughing (and hiccuping), then slammed on the brakes, skidded 360 degrees on two wheels, recovered and resumed speed. “Your Trippy Pippy Pooper is a vampire sucking out your body gases? You must be pulling my bean poles!”
I felt embarrassed. “It is sort of true, Szofia. The triploids first appeared, apparently, as some form of extra-dimensional parasite. The conjecture is that they attached themselves to the congealed gases in our world that had formed around the accidental bubble-fluctuations in space. The triploids use our gases to energize their own functions, but they only metabolize the excess gas that we would ordinarily have to expel in order to maintain our own equilibrium. So, in a sense, it is a symbiotic relationship. We plasmoidics maintain our air pressures with the assistance of triploids that have permanently attached themselves to our plasma sacks, one triploid per plasmoidic at the moment of our un-cocooning. And they, in turn, use our excess gases to live. Neither of us can survive independently. That is why as a Pioneer, when I had to travel without my attached triploid, my Trippy Pippy, I had to use an external pack of equilibrating valves and meters. Valves and meters are all very sterile and very heavy, you know, and nothing so comfortable as a nice warm attached triploid!” I sobbed inconsolably.
Szofia flicked on the auto-pilot again and looked at me sideways with narrowed, disgusted, cynical eyebrows. I could see that, indeed, there were bees crawling around in the red blossoms in both her left and right ear canals.
“Do you mean to tell me, Hugh, that you bag boys live your whole lives with alien leeches sucking on your bodies, and you get all orgiastic about that?!?!” She laughed hysterically. “This sounds like some sort of primitive humanoid bloodletting practices to supposedly balance their body humors.” She screamed at me through an immense grin: GROSS ME OUT! And what do you get out of it except relief from the pressure-cooker of life?”
I felt myself blushing like a humanoid. “It is more than that, Szofia. It is also that the triploids allow us to... I am sorry, it is a little embarrassing to talk about this, because, like I said, plasmoidics just 'do it' and we do not talk about it in public.” I looked out the window to avoid Szofia's incredulous, laughing stare. “Szofia, we get very, uh, 'close' to our triploids because, well, they are always, always attached to us! The triploids allow us to relax and, you know, most importantly, to, uh, reproduce. Ahem. Every so often, whenever they get filled with sufficient 5D gas, they drop off for a while and just loll about 'digesting.'”
Szofia's grin grew unimaginably large. I cleared my throat and continued. “Where and how they do this digesting is unknown because, you know, they are other-dimensional and loll about to digest in private. But then, later, they reappear in 5D and reattach themselves to some other 5D passing by whose triploid has gone of to digest, and as it attaches to that fortunate gas bag, it begins the equilibrializing process all over again. Over time, the gases from the various gas bag hosts conflate inside the triploids. Like humanoid DNA, gases are for mixing and they get all mixed up inside the triploids.”
Szofia turned off the auto-pilot. She could barely restrain her amusement as she sped down the freeway. I cleared my throat again and continued. “Then, after a while, the triploids drop off again - I know this sounds very complicated, Szofia, but it is really all quite as natural and no more convoluted than life cycles in, say, this primitive 3D world. There is a deep-water species called football fish on this planet that has a somewhat similar reproductive mechanism.
"A WHAT!?"
"A football fish. One of those wide-mouthed cold water anglerfish that has a bio-luminescent lure dangling from its head. The males of the species are very tiny and parasitic and just attach themselves permanently... " I looked away in embarrassment.
Szofia was so amused her eyes were tearing up. Or, perhaps, it was the effect of what she was drinking. I continued. “So the triploids drop off again and... and... well, this part is pure conjecture, Szofia, they sort of 'pop' in their own six or seven or eleven dimensional unislices, expelling one or more highly mixed gas bubbles into our unislices. And those are the cocoons, the gas mixtures contained in very thin triploidic membranes, into which we infuse all of our pre-birth basic knowledge and from which we eventually emerge as full-fledged gaseous intelligents.”
I looked away from Szofia's amused stare. “And, by the way, our triploids do not really have a shape or sensory organs or anything other than little, very adorable sucker pads. They are just spheroids, little globules permanently clinging to us; until they drop off, that is.”
Szofia laughed so hard that I thought she might choke.
“But, Szofia, it appears that the current crop of sight-seers, tourists and, so-called 'engineers' disguise their triploids as toy stuffed animals and cell phones as a kind of 'cover,' I guess. With all the five dimensional agents that have been substituted on planet Earth, that probably explains why so many people - or, at least, those who appear to be 'people' - seem to be permanently attached to and constantly looking at their cell phones."
I sighed. “No, Szofia, I am glad I am not in 5-land anymore. This modern five dimensional life is just not my style.” I turned to her feeling utterly disconsolate. "And, honestly, that's all there is to our triploids..."
“NO WAY!!!” Szofia shouted barely able to control her laughter. “Oh my Gawd, you bag boys are... you're genuine freaking freaks!”
I felt offended. “Szofia, no, it really is not that strange. I mean, look, you have bees rummaging around in those red blossoms that have appeared in your ear canals. I do not know this for a fact, but I assume that you are growing flowers in your ears which attracts bees, which are not even the same kind of life form as intelligent vegetables, but they are necessary to pollinate you. And there you have it. Lots of different life forms live and reproduce in mutual or symbiotic relationships. Insects fertilize plants in return for nectar. Birds eat seeds and help propagate the plants whose seeds they eat. Termites colonize protozoa and microbes in their gut to help them digest food, and so do hominids. Mammals breath oxygen and expel carbon dioxide which plants use in photosynthesis expelling oxygen. And triploids have a mutually interdependent and necessary relationship with gaseous Intelligents. It's nature's way. So there you have it.”
Yes, there you had it. I felt even worse now than before explaining this to Szofia. Much worse. There I was, a lonely five dimensional intelligent plasmoidic in a barely intelligent 3D world explaining gaseous reproduction to an intelligent four dimensional vegetable with bees in her ears riding at a hundred miles an hour on a Southern California freeway in a dark speeding sedan with blacked out windows, low-rider tires and rhinestone-studded spinners... I felt worse and lonelier than I had felt during my entire time on this planetoid.
Finally, some awareness of my true situation returned to me. It finally sank in that we were driving somewhere – I didn't know where – and that we were driving very fast. “Uhhh, Szofia... where did you get the car??? Why are there flowers growing out of your ears? And, Szofia, where are we going, anyway?”
"Just hold on, Mr. Super Huper," she answered between snorts and laughter. "This is so bleeping funny I think I'm gonna barf! Wait until I can catch my breath!"
* * *
Szofia suddenly veered off the freeway at 95 miles an hour. She raced down the exit ramp, ran several traffic lights, turned left, turned right, skidded sideways, slammed on the brakes and parked the car in front of a 7-11 store.
We started walking.
Or, rather, I started walking. Before leaving the car, Szofia pulled from the back seat a hybrid skateboard with titanium trucks and gold polyurethane wheels and "Tail Devil" sparking plates on the front and back undersides of the deck.
Pushing her skateboard alongside me, Szofia offered to teach me all the tricks she could do including an airborne corkscrew, a freestyle hippie jump and 360 kick flip off a flight of stairs.
“See,” she said while pivoting on the back wheels generating a shower of sparks, “you just visualize your jump, let gravity accelerate you, time your lift-off and land with your knees bent, like this...”
No, I could not visualize myself, Ugoñaschßtenätraξo, aka Hugo Nash, lifting off on a skateboard. It was academically interesting to me to watch Szofia sliding down staircase banisters on her board or jumping the curb and scooting between cars in the road, but it would be undignified. What would be more interesting to me would be the answers to my questions.
“Szofia - you told me you would answer my queries. Now - where are we going? We seem to be heading west toward the ocean - but why? Why are there flowers growing in your ears? And where did you get the car... and the skateboard, for that matter?”
“Whaaaale,” she sighed while kicking up the skateboard and tucking it under her arm. She withdrew deeper into her sweatshirt hood and shuffled alongside me. “Hugh, let me answer your questions in reverse order.
"Where did I get the car....let's see, uhhh, where did I get the car.... whaaaaaale, you see, after I left you in deep conversation with your balloon headed friends from the fifth dimension, Yugo, I walked along, just minding my own business, whistling to myself, watching the grass grow and the faces in the clouds. I was just bopping along.
"And theeeere was this police-man standing by the curb near the drop off zone for the airport. He was looking very unhappy, very exasperated, if you know what I mean, Hugh. He had a verrrry looonnnggg face. He was a very sad man. You see, this police-man had a problem. And his problem was what to do with this car, because he was on break and he wanted to grab a cup of coffee and a doughnut and he didn't want to take the time to write a ticket for this illegally parked car while he was on his break. So this police-man just says to me, 'Honey, can you do me a big favor and take this illegally parked car and just drop it off anywhere you like, just so long as it's not near the airport?' And so I ...
I did not believe this story and told Szofia so. I asked her again, more forcefully: “Szofia, where did you get the car?”
“Okay, okay. The truth is, there was this real old lady. She walked with one of those four-wheeled walkers, you know. The skycaps were ignoring her, so, you know, I'm like a girl-scout doing a good deed. I offered to help carry her bags for her to the ticket counter. And you know, she was so grateful, she said, 'Child, here's a couple of hundred thousand dollar bills' (they've got Woodrow Wilson's picture, Hugh). Now, she told me, 'you go out and buy yourself something nice, like some ice cream or a Bugatti Chiron sports car and some hash oil...'”
I felt exasperated by her stories. “Szofia! I do not believe you!”
“Hughbert, you're starting to talk like you're my father, or something! Quit lecturing me, okay?”
“Szofia, you do not have a father! You are a vegetable, remember?”
“Hughbert,” Szofia huffed, “you are just so animal-centric. Of course vegetables have fathers. It's just that I'm self-pollinating, so I'm both my father and my mother... and my own children, too, for that matter. And I am a long line of my own ancestors. I mean, what's it to you? You got a problem with self-pollination?”
My head was spinning. “Szofia! Sometimes you talk like a real hominid teenager who you are impersonating and sometimes you talk like the 78,238 year old intelligent vegetable that you are. You keep switching personalities. It is very disconcerting!”
She jumped on her skateboard and did a pirouette. “Hughbert, I'm into method acting, can you deal with that? I act like what I look like, okay? When I look 12, then I act 12. Or not. Sometimes I feel like a nut; sometimes I don't. Mounds have real dark chocolate and... whatever. I do a good job being who I am, Hughbert, which is more than I can say for your persona, dude.”
Szofia kicked her board up in the air and caught it. She withdrew back under her sweatshirt hood like a turtle. “Dammit, Hughboo, I don't think I'm going to talk to you anymore about the car! Forget it, okay? I may be acting like a 12 year old, but you sure do a damn good impression, Hughboo, of an overbearing uncool quasi-intelligent humano-daddio. Stuff it!”
She was just putting me off. I was not going to stand for it. “Szofia! Where - did - you - get - the - car? Tell me the truth! I refuse to go any farther with you until you answer my questions!” I stopped in my tracks.
Szofia got back on her skateboard and pushed off. “Okay! Okay! You want to know the truth, Doobert? I was walking away from the airport in a funk because YOU, Mr. Hugh, are a five star idiot who was getting ready to beat it back to Gas Land and leave little Szofia hanging out to dry. And as I was walking along, kicking pebbles and spraying a little graffiti here and there, I saw a couple of upstanding gentleman who were also just hanging around, doing nothing by the side of the road, minding their own business... which was dealing drugs and God knows what else.
"They saw me, a little green-haired middle school girl wearing a hoodie who was obviously cutting class. And these upstanding fine young men in dark sunglasses and super slick dark jackets with slicked back hair and ultra polished white teeth and lots of gold and diamond bling, were seated in this very expensive, very fast, very shiny new car - the very car to which you, Mr. Hugh, have previously alluded.
"So these nice young gentlemen slid down a window and asked me with their big fat smiles if I wanted to go for a ride with them or buy a bag of a certain kind of class 1 narcotic. Well, that was obviously not very nice, but they opened the door for me, so I got in. And then I told them that they really weren't very nice people, but their car was super cool.
"I told them this as I slapped their leering faces nose down onto the dashboard and then whacked both of them with a kung fu kale karate chop upside the head laying them out cold, because, you know, I am a law-abiding, non-violent little girl, yes?
“So theeeennnnn, Hugh, I thought, well, now what do I do? I have this super fine, very expensive car that was so cute and lonely and these two unconscious lunkheads just lazing the day away, and I thought to myself, hmm, what should I do? What should I do?
“So theeeennnnnn, after I gagged and wrapped these gentlemen up with bungee cords and put them in the trunk...”
I was aghast. “Szofia! You assaulted and kidnapped two people, tied them up and put them in the trunk of the car?!?!”
“I did no such thing!” She huffed. “Pay attention, Hugh! I didn't kidnap or assault anyone! These were grown men; they were NOT kids! And I didn't use any salt on them whatsoever, just a kung fu kale karate chop to the neck... and, oh I forgot, a knee to the groin, too.
“And they were not napping, Hugh! No sir, when I put them in the trunk they were unconscious! So there were no kids and no napping and no salt! I was just keeping them safe. That's what trunks are for, to keep things safe and secure. I mean, that's probably why they kept all those little baggies of class 1 narcotics I found in the trunk, you know, to keep them safe.
"Anyhow, it did occur to me, Hugh, that these guys might be a little annoyed and all when they got out of the trunk, sooner or later, and they might want to know who had put them there. So I left Mr. and Mrs. Trevor McPfeffer's wallets and drivers' licenses with them in the trunk...”
I was doubly aghast. “You incriminated the McPfeffers?!? How could you do that Szofia? And what did you do with the car?”
She was indignant. “I did NOT incriminate the McPfeffers, Hughboo! I wouldn't do such a thing! They were not even there, so how could they be incriminated? They are probably still in custody back where they were falsely arrested before we got on the plane to fly to LA. No sir: I incriminated the two drug dealers.
“Besides, the two guys I put in the trunk had a smart phone that I used to contact the police. Not immediately, of course, but just before we dumped the car. While you're carrying on about your shitty pippies, I sent the cops a text message: the REAL Trevor and Gale McPfeffer... the accomplices of the notorious terrorists Szofia and Hugh... are not who you arrested. The REAL McPfeffers are hiding in the trunk of this flashy sports car at a 7-11 just off the freeway. And then I left the phone 'on' sitting on the drivers seat. The po-lice can track the location of all those smart phones, you do know that, don't you Hughbie?”
She cupped a hand to her ear: “Wait... are those sirens I hear in the distance? They're probably already there. Well, the police will figure it all out. They'll see that there ain't no Trevor or Gale McPfeffer in the trunk (because, you know, the McPfeffers are probably still in custody back at the airport we took off from) and they'll realize it was all a joke and return the wallets to the McPfeffers... minus the McPfeffers' cash, of course, which I put in your wallet, Mr. McHugh.
"So the po-lice will sort it all out, Hughbie. You know that. Eventually, anyway. As for the car... I mean, HUGH! Whaddya mean 'what did I do with the car?' I drove it away with you, dumb-ass!”
She stopped skating and looked me in the eye. “You know, Hugh, these guys had left the engine running, and you can't just leave a car with the motor running. Oh my God, that would be so totally un-California, so completely un-environmental. I am one conscientious, peaceable, environmentally friendly vegetable, Hughbert. So I couldn't leave it with the engine running. I took it with us!
"Even though I don't even have a drivers license, Hugh, I had to do something to protect the public! If I hadn't taken it, someone could have stolen the car! What if I hadn't taken it into my protective custody? I'm just saying! Some Californian who doesn't know how to drive... unlike me... could have stolen this very car and gotten into a very serious accident, and that might have injured those two gentlemen who I gagged and tied up with bungee cords and put in the trunk.
"No, Hugh, I couldn't let the chance of an accident happen. Besides, it's very illegal and polluting to leave a car on the side of the road with the motor running. You don't want me to break the law by leaving an unattended car with the motor running, do you, Hugh? You don't want be to pollute, do you?” She grinned. “And besides, they were very nice wheels, huh? They even had some nice weed and a little drinky-poo in the cockpit bar! And, also, look what I also found in the glove box!”
Szofia, grinning, showed me a gold-trimmed H&K 9 mm semi-automatic pistol that she pulled out of a leather holster concealed in her sweatshirt.
“Cool, huh? Suppressor ready, upper and lower Picatinny rails, super high capacity drum magazine, custom match-grade five inch six-twist threaded barrel, green laser sights, decocker and no safety, serial number sanded off, Hogue recoil absorbing grips, 125 grain jacketed hollow point frangible bullets... very tacti-cool, Hugh. You wanna try plinking a few pimp and drug dealer cars in the city?”
I was aghast! “Szofia! Get rid of that gun! We are still America's most wanted terrorists! You have broken the law everywhere we've gone. Now we really are terrorists and they are going to imprison us.”
“Naaahhh.” said Szofia re-holstering the gun. “Don't talk nonsense, Hugh. They might shoot you, but they won't even try to prosecute you. No sir, in this country, they only prosecute political dissidents, crimes against the investor class, journalists who publish the truth, college students protesting in support of Palestine, and those running for public office who are not approved by the power elites.
"Besides, Hugh, I'm just keeping this nasty pistol out of the hands of children and drug dealers and other people who don't know how to use it. It's just terrible that there are so many guns out there, Hugh! And that's why I'm doing my part to keep at least one very illegal gun off the street and safely in my pocket! I am one very concerned and civic-minded vegetable and I don't want anybody incompetent to get hurt. I mean, I simply had to take this terrible pistol away from the banditos who I had tossed into the trunk because if I hadn't, then those bozos might have accidentally hurt themselves... more than I already did, of course.
"No, Mr. McHugh, it's not the 3D 'law' that we have to worry about. I can always siphon away into 4D in a pinch and you can just burp or sneeze or hiccup, or whatever you do to cancel all these bio-electric types. It's not the humming bean-cops we've got to worry about. It's the Branch bounty hunters we've gotta look out for. And they're not tracking fast cars, but 4D butt-packs like you're carting around, Senor Hugh.”
“Besides,” she added. "I didn't really steal the car. I just took it into my temporary care and kept it safe and warm. You know, I am a nice girl. I left the keys in the ignition when we dumped it at the 7-11. So when the police let those fine young men get out of the trunk - eventually - they can drive their car away... after they post bail, of course, for possession of the McPfeffers' stolen wallets and all those bags of class 1 narcotics.”
She suddenly got an impish expression on her face. “And as for the skateboard, Hughbiedoobie... When I was at the airport just before I picked you up, I saw some kid riding goofy down the sidewalk with a really hot board, so we did a deal. I gave him a big roll of hundred dollar bills that I found underneath the front seat of that super fine, super fast car. So me and the kid did a little dealie-poo, and I put the skateboard in the backseat -- not in the trunk because, you know, there were already two nasty drug-dealers in the trunk and there wasn't room for a skateboard, too...”
“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!”
“What's with you, Hugh? You think I paid too much?” She gently patted my cheek. “I mean, really, it was kinder free, sorta like the nasty drug-dealers paid for it, so the skateboard cost me nothing. It was kinda like a gift, see?”
I was an honorable 5D scholar, a Pioneer, an ambassador of 5 dimensional civilization even though that same civilization had, apparently, morphed into something terrible. I was horrified!
“Szofia, you have committed assault. You are carrying a stolen hand gun, a gun that is certainly illegal in this state and definitely illegal for you to carry at your age. You have kidnapped. You have committed car theft, grand larceny, not-so-grand larceny and identity theft. You have trafficked stolen property. You have contributed to the delinquency of a minor, namely me. You are drinking underage. You drove faster than the speed limit probably while intoxicated. You were driving without a drivers license. You drove recklessly. You might even be guilty of littering...! Szofia, they are going to put us away for life... if the drug dealers do not shoot us first!”
“Hugh, you are such an uptight weenie and you watch too much television. Relax, Hugh. Just chill, ok? I'm looking out for youse and meese, and everything's going to be alright. You gotta believe the hype! You've gotta believe in me!”
Szofia cupped my chin in her hand, looking straight at me. “Oooh, Hugh, those sound like good song lyrics! Hugh, we've gotta put this all to music. Maybe they'll make a musical about us? An opera; a rock opera! A Wagnerian rock opera! You can wear a 5D Viking helmet with horns and I'll be a green Brunhilda.”
She suddenly broke out singing (sort of) with her arms wide apart:
“Aaaaaaaaa warble snarkne krrrraaappplesauce ahhhhhggggrreeezzzzz Zzklkerwarble snarkle darkle applesauce.....!”
“Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Szofia, I think you are intoxicated! I think I am going to burst my seams and you are going to burst my eardrums!”
She stopped singing. “Oh, and you asked about the ear flowers, Hugh... yes, those are ear flowers and, yes, those are bees. Very perceptive. You are one clever dude, Hugh. I just can't put one over on you!” She wriggled her ears and smiled. “And I am not drunk, Hugh. I am just high on life. I'm just a vegetable mother-and father-to-be, in a manner of speaking. I am 'in bloom,' so to speak, and sooner than later I'm going to bust a seed pod and spew pollen all over Southern California like no attack of hay fever they have ever seen before.” She smiled beatifically. “But... we'll talk about that later.
I looked all around me in a panic. I could see puffs of pollen issuing from Szofia's ears.
We were near the beach of the Pacific Ocean.
Strange people were doing strange things on the boardwalk.
I was in a depressed and agitated and frightened mood all at once!
“Szofia! You have told me where you got the car and the skateboard. You told me about the flowers and the bees in your ears. You have not told me yet: where are we going???”
“Oh, yeah, right. Okay. Well, this is going to be difficult, Hugh. But first, I have to stop in here.” Szofia turned to enter a tattoo parlor: Needle Me - Needle U. “So, in the short term, Hughboo, where we're going is to get a tattoo. Let me have your cash to pay the nice skin artist, okay? It helps me relax to go under the needle. You want one, Hughbie? Well, no, probably not such a good idea to etch some art onto a thin bag of volatile gas, huh? Well, Hugh, then you just wait for me out here. I'll be back soon to continue our conversation.”
Szofia and her swarm of ear-bees went into the tattoo parlor and left me alone on the boardwalk. Barely dressed roller skaters rolled past. Minimally clad and very muscular runners ran around me. All were listening to their own music through their earphones. Most of them were taking pictures of themselves doing whatever they were doing.
I felt utterly lost, utterly hopeless, just utterly five dimensional in a three-dimensional world.
There was a wooden sandwich board on the sidewalk three doors down from the tattoo parlor.
The sandwich board had a white arrow painted on it that pointed up a narrow flight of stairs to an upstairs office: Madame Fabula diFalooza, Psychic.
Her sandwich board sign said she could read palms.
She could read Tarot cards and tea leaves.
She knew the past. She could tell the future. She could cleanse people's auras.
I needed my aura cleaned. I needed my future told. I was desperate.
I went up the narrow wooden stairs.
* * *
Paraphrased lyrics from Otis Redding & Steve Cropper, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. Original monaural recording here.