“Room for two? Mr. and... ?” The motel manager squinted as he questioned us.
I hesitated, not quite knowing what to say. Szofia saw I was tongue-tied and spoke for us. “Nash. Mr. Nash and me -- I'm his... I'm his daughter.”
The man behind the desk snickered and hacked noisily. He had a phlegmy, wheezy kind of cough, the kind that sounds like he had some horrible infectious disease. He smelled of cheap booze and old cigar snipes. Szofia's head barely reached the counter top. She snarled at the motel manager “You got a problem with children, Mister?” The manager shook his head as continued to snicker and cough.
Outside on the road, the neon motel sign flashed a peculiar and incomplete message that I could not decipher:
The neon sign flickered and agitated me. A small, old style television played in the motel office, the blue and blurry images flashing frequently as the raster scanner moved back and forth across the cathode ray tube. As everywhere else on this planet, the high and low frequency emissions were powerfully intoxicating. I had to resist the lure into complete radionarcosis. The flickering neon sign combined with the television scanner made me giggle again.
The motel manager continued to smirk at us. “You got some ID, folks?”
One of the manager's eyes was dull and bloodshot. His other eye was completely motionless. Szofia had said that we should "lie low" for a while someplace out of the way. She said that after the "heat" was off, we could figure out what to do next. This motel was certainly "out of the way;" but was this the best place for us to hide out? It reminded me of the Bates Motel from an Alfred Hitchcock movie I had watched during my cultural orientation, Psycho something? Was this the same Bates Motel and they had just changed the name? What kind of a place was this? The motel manager continued to snicker and cough. The blue television screen jumped around in the background. The neon bulbs pulsed and tickled me uncontrollably. I couldn't stop giggling.
“Hugh... I mean, Daddy... show him your driver's license already,” Szofia said as she drummed her green-tipped fingers on the counter-top.
I pulled Hugo Nash's driver's license out of my wallet and showed it to the man at the desk. He looked me over as I continued to giggle.
“Yah, sure. Hugo Nash, huh? Yeah, looks sorta like you. I guess.” He compared my face to the photograph on my drivers license. I giggled. He snickered. “OK, pardner. You're Hugo Nash as far as I care. Or the Man in the Moon. Whatever. Just sign here on the line and fill in the make and model of your car and license plate. That's twenty dollars a night. No luggage, huh? And you seem to have a hard time signing your name wearing those, what are they, red kitchen mittens, Mr. uhhh, Nash and ... daughter...? Haw haw haw!”
The manager laughed and snorted. His teeth were uneven, jagged, stained. He was missing several. One solitary tooth in front was dead and black. His one good eye squinted out of sync with the other one. Maybe one eye was false? Maybe they both were. The man looked like he hadn't shaved in several days. The hair on his head was patchy, streaked with oily strands of uneven white and brown that hung into his eyes.
“How you going to pay, Mr. Nash, cash or credit card?” The hotel manager winked his good eye slyly at Szofia. She sneered back at him.
“Cash?” I said uncertainly.
Since Sfozia and I had "high-tailed it" out of Dodge City (as she said) we had been withdrawing money from automatic cash machines that we found along the way. I didn't feel good taking all of the machines' money, but the machines gave me what they had quite gladly. I shouldn't worry about it, Szofia said, because the humans' central bank created bazillions and bazillions of digital money out of nothing all the time and they would never notice the picayune withdrawals I was making. I gave the hotel manager two brand new ten dollar bills.
The hotel manager took the money, examined it with his good eye and leered at us. “Looks like real dead presidents to me, haw haw haw.” It wasn't clear whether he was laughing or coughing or both simultaneously. He sounded like a sick, braying donkey.
"I don't have any rooms with separate beds, haw haw haw!" the hotel manager snorted.
"Actually," I replied, "we prefer a room with no bed, if you have one. I can just curl up on the floor and my, uh, my daughter, well, she will just spend the night vegetating."
"Haw haw haw," brayed the hotel manager. "You'll curl up on the floor and, uh, your daughter will spend the night, what' d you say, vegetating?? Vegetating!! Haw haw haw!"
He took down a key attached to a large red plastic disk that had been hanging from a board behind the desk. “So here's your room key, Mister Nash, haw haw haw - Room 4, haw haw haw. Next to the pool... but it's not open at this time of year, you know. Haw haw haw. Actually, that pool's not open at any time of year, haw haw haw! Oh, yea, and there's no smoking allowed in the room, haw haw haw. No smoking allowed!”
The motel manager was still laughing and coughing as we walked down to the room and opened the door.
The room smelled like mold. It also reeked of tobacco. The window had been painted shut. The wide yellowed slats of the blinds were broken and uneven. You could hear the road noise from the freeway, just beyond the parking lot and across the access road: the incessant, Doppler Wssschhhhh--UUuuuuuuuu of the cars and the gargling Hccrrrr-Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr of the trucks shifting gears as they entered from the on-ramps. A forced air heater rattled underneath the single pane window. The window faced the parking lot that was illuminated by high-intensity orange crime lights. A thick cover of waxy dust adhered to everything. There was a small desk with a creaky wood chair. The light switches felt sticky. I touched the bed even though I would never sleep in it: the mattress was lumpy and had a deep depression in the middle. The blankets were thin, moth-eaten. The wall paint was an indistinct mushy yellow-brown color.
Szofia went straight to the bathroom and lit up a joint. She poured herself a glass of water and stuck in her fingers. The tap water in her glass was tinged with rust. As she smoked, Szofia pulled out a little tracking device like all the other demi-miniatures on this planet. Sfozia had said that this was a "burner phone" that she had borrowed from one of the convenience stores that we had stopped at to buy gas. She said she would use the phone until its battery ran out, then leave it someplace for someone else to borrow. She scrolled the tracking device with her right hand while soaking the fingers of her left hand in the glass of rust-colored water. Her joint hung from her lips.
I watched Szofia take a few puffs. I reminded her about the no-smoking policy. She quietly continued scrolling her device and smoking. "Screw 'em," she finally said. She continued to smoke.
I looked around the bathroom. I thought I saw some of those little earthling tschůųpis scurrying around the tub. But I will not bathe here anymore than in Hugo Nash's house. I do not perspire. I do not flake off skin detritus like the local fauna.
I found a relatively unstained spot on the carpet in the main sleeping area. I sat down and curled myself into a meditative posture. I saw five ways at once. I was the picture of complete calm... Or was I?
I composed a brief report:
Report 4
Have experienced harrowing day in close contact with local law enforcement officers. In order to avoid "the heat" and to broaden cultural exposure, have undertaken travel to heartland of local quasi-intelligents' political homeland. Peculiar cultural practices: members of specie are "locked up" by others. Authoritarian hierarchy dominates majority of human fauna. Recreational activities remain indecipherable. Dominant specie exhibits outbreaks of intelligence, but without clear purpose or orientation. Could be random events? Due to absence of triploid, feeling extreme plasmoid pressures. Urgent: Send triploid!! Urgent Repeat: send replacement Drůkk' ąou location buttons!! While "on the lamb" and outside of the original insertion matrix, extraction specialists will not be able to identify coordinates without Drůkk' ąou location buttons!
Signed/Ugoñaschßtenätraξo aka H. Nash.
PS - URGENT, repeat: please send triploid and Drůkk' ąou location buttons!
PPS - DOUBLE URGENT, request immediate extraction from Pioneer Project on Compassion Grounds. Recommend termination of investigation due to unsafe/unhealthy radiation levels that can induce radionarcosis and/or intoxication. Pressures consistently and abnormally high.
I decided not to mention Szofia to Pioneer Central just yet. I was not sure whether it had been improper protocol to disclose my mission to a non-5D alien life form while studying the subject three dimensionals. Perhaps, in retrospect, that was a mistake. But I had made so many mistakes already, what difference would one more make?
I reached back into the 5th dimension and inserted my report into the message zippledisk in the telemetry modulator. I cranked the tandytripper and flipped the disk transversely across the infinitely stacked universes. Oh, how it made me nostalgic for home, sending a message back to where I came from. But was anybody there? Did anybody care?
I was beginning to feel very anxious. I had sent several reports now to Pioneer Central Command. No one had responded. What was wrong? My gases were quivering with worry. I badly needed to hibernate for several stellar cycles, maybe longer. I badly needed to be extricated from this crazy 3D planet in this crazy 3D universe.
Szofia came out of the bathroom licking the water dripping from her fingers. Her green hair seemed to be a little brighter. She was almost cheerful. “Hey, Hughey, let's go get some compost; I'm hungry. There's got to be a fast food restaurant near the freeway where we can get a burger.”
She didn't make sense to me. "A hamburger, Szophia? I thought you were vegetarian?”
She laughed. “I told you, Dumbo: I AM a vegetable. I don't eat vegetables. How crude! But when it comes to compost, I'm a strict carnivore. Dirt. Water. Sunshine. Meat compost. It's a complete ecocycle, you know. No vegetable life form would ever dream of composting anything except animal meat! Come on, there's gotta be a greasy spoon near this dump.”
“But I do not 'compost,'” I protested! "And don't animals eat plants and vegetables? So when you eat, or compost, animals, aren't you just composting plant life?”
Szophia thought my question was ridiculous. “Of course animals eat plants, but life's a bitch, isn't it? I mean, so what? If I eat one grass-eating animal, the world's a little safer for all veggies, right? So long as I'm not eating the vegetables directly, it's not my problem. Anyhoo, that's how we intelligent vegetables evolved: stationary photosynthesizing vegetables became mobile photosynthesizing vegetables which evolved into mobile, intelligent, predator meat-composting, occasionally photosynthesizing vegetables which evolved into ME, the highest form of intelligent vegetable life.” Szofia preened. “Pretty cool, huh? It's the evolution of the real Green Revolution.” She smiled at me. “So, Hugh, tell me: what do you five dimensional gas-bags feed on, huh?
I straightened myself and proudly explained the superior metabolism of 5D gaseous life. “5D plasmoidics absorb high and low energy radiation and petrochemical micro-particles and fumes,” I explained to her. “We absorb it directly and very efficiently. 'Eating' is completely unnecessary in highly polluted environments like the humanoids are creating on this planet.”
“Well mow my lawn, Hugh!” Szophia was completely unimpressed, but very amused. “Come along anyway. We'll start your first lessons on social integration and think about what to do about you while I compost. Also, you can protect me from the local predators and absorb the cosmic rays from some local beanery while I chow down on some rotting animal flesh and photosynthesize the moonlight. C'mon, Pappy,” she said taking one of my gloved hands. “It's time to hit the chuck wagon.”
* * *
We walked outside the motel room and pulled the door shut. Szofia rattled the door two or three times to test whether it was truly locked. It was one of those doors that could be opened with a credit card slipped between the jamb and the frame. The door also looked like it could easily be kicked in.
As we went out, we could see the motel manager slyly eyeballing us through the office window. I imagined that I heard him baying: haw haw haw!
We had parked Hugo Nash's banged-up sedan facing our room. All the other vehicles in the parking lot were large pick-up trucks. The trucks had wide tires so big that they over-topped the roof of our sedan. All the trucks had metal racks hanging in their back windows that might have been made to hold umbrellas. The rear bumpers of these trucks had stickers advertising chewing tobacco and other food products. They also bore decals with flags, messages about what schools their children attend, how much they loved their dogs or their guns, or what sports teams they liked that threw around those leather gas bags I had seen on my first day here... My first day here... it seemed like ages ago, but it had been just a few days!
A fast food restaurant was nearby. Its huge electric sign boasted that they had sold as many hamburgers as there are electrons in the Multiverse. But Szofi said: "Not there. Their grub won't compost."
Further away, we found another restaurant: Manny's Shocking Shake Shack and Fat Burgers. We went in. There was a potted plant near the entrance. Szofia approached the plant and scrutinized it, tugging at a leaf. "Great! It's artificial," she whispered. "The coast is clear."
Szofia strode up to the counter. "Gimme a triple half-pound Fat Burger," she ordered. "Give it to me straight-up and extra rare: no lettuce, no tomato, no pickle, no onions, no ketchup, no mayo, no mustard. And hold the fries... uuuh, Daddy, you want something other than to stick your paws under the heat-lamp to soak up some infrared radiation? No? Well, Daddy, pay the nice man his money..."
I paid. She took the burger on a tray back to a table where we sat down.
It was late. Other than the two of us, the restaurant was nearly empty. Szofia discarded the bun, folded up the burgers and, when she was sure no one was watching, slid them into her shoes. She wiggled her toes. “Ahhhh,” she sighed. “I can feel the nutrients being up-rooted as we sit here.” She leaned back and grinned.
"Now, Hugh, while I compost, let's talk about what to do with you. Your fourth dimensional backpack stands out like a ten story tall orange eggplant in a hay field, Hughdooski, and that ain't too good for little fugitive Szofia trying to stay out of the Branch's sights. Meanwhile, your whole manner, your speech, you know, your whole way of living just screams that you are a 100 percent, not-of-this-world weirdo alien from gawd knows where. Even after the heat dies down, Hughgo, you're never going to be able to study anything incognito, so to speak, unless you learn how to blend in with everyone else in this world. And then, mon ami, there's the problem of those big red mittens and your upside-downsie digits. I'm already working on doing something about that, but it will take a little time. So, in the meanwhile,Hughdy-doo, let's start trying to socialize you."
“But I do not need to be socialized,” I protested. I was very offended! “I speak the vernacular 3D communication language English perfectly well, Szofia! I received the highest level of pre-birth language training while in cocoon. I look and act just like any ordinary three dimensional quasi-intelligent being... don't I??”
Szofia grimaced and shook her head. “Sorry to bust your bubble, Hughdoo, but you don't sound, look or act like anybody I've ever met on this planet. As a matter of fact, you think, talk and act like you were just born a few weeks ago; which, in a manner of speaking, you kinder were, right? Anyhoo. Your diction and vocabulary and syntax may be perfect, Hugh, but the way you talk, the way you walk, the dumb things you do, it's like you dropped out of a circus a hundred years ago.
“A circus?” I thought that Szofia was intentionally insulting me and my entire five dimensional upbringing!
“Never mind,” said Szophia while she massaged her burgers with her toes. “Look, Hugh. It's bad enough that your 4D life support pod makes you stand out like a ten ton purple strawberry, as far as bounty-hunters are concerned. That's my problem, of course, but I can't hang out with you if you're just bait for the Branchers! I could just set down roots in some other town, plant myself in another school, adopt another family, and just blend in with the rest of the weeds, so to speak. But you, Hughie-Dooey, you're just a big naive baby-poo! I mean, you look like an adult, and you kinder think like one... well, some of the time... maybe... but, what did you tell me, that you're really only about one week old now since they let you out of your cocoon? And you learned everything pre-birth, isn't that what you told me? So I can't just leave you alone because you're now a refugee from the three dimensional lawman. And you know, without me to help you, Mr. Hughpino, you would end up ground up like so much wheat in a bakery and served hot from the oven! So, Hughpoo, if you always act like you're from the Middle Ages, then you'll be as easy to spot as, well, like I said, a ten ton purple strawberry.”
I felt irritated. Who gave this person the right to criticize a Pioneer field investigator? But then, I supposed, I had failed at everything so far.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe I did need to be properly “socialized,” as she put it.
I swallowed my pride. “Alright, Szophia, so what am I doing wrong?”
“Hugh, I don't have time to list EVERYTHING that's wrong about you, so let's just concentrate on the big ticket items, okay? First, when you talk, you're too god-damned LOUD, Hoodoo! You've got to take it down a few notches so you're harder to hear.”
I was perplexed. “But I thought people spoke to be heard?”
“No,” she informed me, “people speak to hear themselves talk. If anybody else hears them - let alone understand what they say - well, that's purely accidental. So try talking to me in an appropriately obscure way, Okay?
This was certainly contrary to what I had learned in my cocoon! 3D people communicated so as not to communicate? But I would try it, if it would make be blend in better with the dominant 3D species and keep me out of jail. “Alright, Szophia. What should I practice speaking?”
“Anything that comes into your gaseous mind, Hugh, so long as I can barely hear or understand you.”
“But I do not know what to say! Nothing comes to mind. Perhaps I can recite this song they sing at the beginning of baseball games...”
Szophia grinned. “Actually, Hugh, not having anything in your mind is exactly the way you want to be if you want to blend in. But, no, don't recite 'The Star Spangled Banner,' Hugh! If you do that, then people will stand up and start looking for a flag to salute. What else do you know?”
“Hamlet...?”
“HUGH! PLEASE! I'm composting, okay? Don't make me barf with that Globe Theater gar-bage! When you're 78,238 human years old like I am, you get to know a few folks. I hung around with Bill Shakespeare when he was still a kid painting graffiti on the walls of Parliament. He was such a hack back then. I told Billy that if he really wanted to become a writer, he should try doing a recipe book, like Bill’s Bully Beef Barbecue Secrets; or maybe a corset-ripping, steamy romance. You know, something he could make beaucoup bucks selling.
"But no, Billy-boy Shakespeare wanted to write sonnets and comedies and dramas and crap like that. But the guy couldn't string two coherent sentences together, Hughgert! He was such a dolt! I practically had to dictate it all to him... Maccarrot, Julius Caesar Salad, The Asparagus of Venice, Romeo and Sweet Potato, King Lime, Much Ado About Onions, The Taming of the Radicchio, A Tale of Two Radishes... "
"Wait a minute! Don't you mean A Tale of Two Cities, Szophia? And wasn't that written by Charles Dickens, not Shapespeare?"
"Hey, Hughpert, who's the literary expert here, huh? I was just getting ahead of myself, okay? Chucky-doo Dickens was another bad boy I had to take by the hand and practically spell everything out for him. A Tale of Two Radishes, was the way it started out before Chuck turned it into something else.
"No," she continued, "for now, let's stick to Bill Shakespeare, since you're the one who brought him up. Don't change the subject, okay? So I wrote nearly every flipping word of Billy-boy's goofy plays. But was that good enough for him? Nooooo... he just messed it all up and changed everything: 'A pumpkin, a pumpkin, my kingdom for a pumpkin!' and 'Fava beans or lima beans, that is the question;" I mean, by the time he screwed around with the dialog I wrote for him, you can hardly understand what on earth the guy was talking about!
"So everyone knew that Billy-boy Shakespeare didn't write his plays, but they never, ever guessed that it was really me who ghost-wrote it all... or, at least, the good parts!"
"But Sfozia," I protested, "I thought you lived in the Steppes riding with Attila the Hun!"
"Hughtoo, baby," that was way earlier! A plant's gotta keep moving, you know what I mean? Especially when there are bounty hunters out there who want to prune and trim me! I can't let moss grow on the bark, can I? But whatever. Let's not talk about me right now. Let's talk about you talking like Hugh. Pick something other than Billy Shakespeare to practice your diction, okay?"
“The Declaration of Independence?”
“Go for it!” she said and gave me a thumbs up sign.
I squared my shoulders and cleared my throat: “Ahem. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and...”
Szophia interrupted. “Okay. Enough already. That's awful. You sound like you're Thomas Jefferson doing a pod-cast. Hugh, I also knew Tom and I wrote most of that script, too. You should have seen what his crappy first draft looked like before I gave him stylistic pointers. What a doofus Tom was. But even with my help, he still didn't get it right. I told and I told him and I told him that the first line should read 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are stupid shits compared to intelligent vegetables who are endowed by photosynthesis with etc. etc. and so on. But no, Tommy couldn't get it straight even though I practically spoon-fed him what to say. He was too busy screwing around with his Sally Hemings slave-mistress in the kitchen and knocking back bottles of Madeira. Anyway, Hughper, take it down a few decibels and try again. Oh, and remember to speak rapidly and slur your words, just like the human beans do, okay?”
I tried again, speaking more softly: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that...”
“Vegetables, Hugh. All vegetables are created equal. Are you listening to me? Szophia frowned. “Hugh, let's try something else. Let's concentrate, instead on making you speak less clearly.”
“What?!?!”
“I want you to stop enunciating clearly, comprendre pardner? You're still trying to make yourself understood. Stop it.”
“But I thought the idea of communicating was to clearly...”
“Wrong wrong wrong, Hugh. Where did you learn this nonsense? In your silly cocoon that you keep yammering about? If you want to communicate, you post something on social media or on Tiktok, or make a naked selfie of yourself and send it to your friends. But, of course, you don't have any friends, so we'll have to try something different.”
Zsofie leaned into my face and stared into my eye sockets. “Hugh, if you want to sound like a genuine native... and keep yourself out of the slammer in the meantime by not attracting as much attention as a dancing pink celery... then you have to learn to think, talk, act and look like the natives.”
She paused to consider my education. “This is serious. What you want is balance, Hupo. Don't go so far that you make sense when you talk. That will mark you as either a 'foreigner' or as an 'intellectual.' Either one is really bad, Hupo, because the locals are real suspicious of 'foreigners' and smarty pants 'intellectuals,' and they're likely to call the cops, tar and feather you, shoot you on the spot or all of the above if they think you're too foreign or too smart or that you're reading 'foreign' news sites on the Web.”
She thought some more while squishing the burgers inside her shoes. “I know what we'll do, Hupie Doopie. I'll get you a cell phone. That will knock you into shape in no time. But that's gonna be later.”
Then she reached into the 4th and patted my podule. “Now here's something much more important in real time... it's about that 4D backpack, Hughper... Can we get rid of that thing? Right now, Hughper, your life support pod is flapping around in the 4th dimension and it's guaranteed fish-bait, like a worm on a hook. You're the worm, Hugh, and I'm the one they're going to hook. Me, I've got a seed pod in the fourth dimension for when I have to siphon back in. But that seed pod's just a singularity, barely a dot in an infinite plane and nothing anyone can find without 4D glasses and a map. Whatever you've been wearing in the fifth dimension doesn't matter, Hugh, because neither I nor the Branchers can see or go there. But the 4th... that's gotta go, Hugh, if I'm gonna hang with a nut-case like you, we need to fix this. What are we going to do about it, huh? Can you pull it into 3D and wear it like a some kind of cool bicycle messenger bag?”
“ Szofia,” I said. “If I pulled my survival pack out of the fourth and into the third dimension, it would weigh too much and it would leave me dangerously unbalanced. I wouldn't be able to walk. There would also be a long and fragile connection stretching between me in the third dimension and the telemetry pod in the fifth dimension. My survival pod might pass for an ordinary backpack... maybe... so long as no one looked inside or tried to make me take it off! But then there is this little socket on the bag which would seem to be just a hole that goes nowhere, but which really connects to cables and pipes stretched across two dimensions to the telemetry pack that I am wearing in the 5th."
I sighed. “Szophia,” I whispered. “It just won't work.”
Szophia nodded. It wouldn't work. "But we still have to think about this, Hughger. I mean I can't continue to hang around with you, you know, if you keep advertising your presence in the fourth dimension! We are going to have to solve that problem, pronto."
She looked around thoughtfully. “Hugh, I think we've been at this dive long enough. Let's buzz off. Vamos amigos.”
We arrived back at the motel. I saw the manager peering at us through the slats of the window blinds. He seemed to be talking to someone on the telephone.
I longed to be "back home" in Hugo Nash's house... or better yet! I longed to be extracted from this locale and returned to my Zippy Pippy back in the comfort of my real five dimensional universe! Ahhhh, the mere thought made my feet skip and my mood lighter.
* * *
[This was Chapter 8 of Life Among the Three Dimensionals, a serialized sci-fi novel. Dazed and Confused? Totally lost? Time for remedial lit 101... or the CliffsNotes? For earlier chapters click HERE.]