Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,
tick, tick RIBBET RIBBET RIBBET RIBBET RIBBET RIBBET RIBBET
RIBBET RIBBET RIBBET
A hand flashed through the early morning light and struggled
vainly with the very solid clock. It couldn't locate the lever
to silence the alarm, so it slid a finger in between the two
bells that the striking hammer was vigorously attacking.
RIBBET thwack RIBBET thwack RIBBET thwack RIBBET thwack RIBBET
thwack
Jake Morly recognized irritably that this wasn't going to work.
The hammer was now vigorously striking the bell and his finger.
Noise and pain rapidly dispelled the blanket of sleep that he was
so cozily wrapped up in. He squinched open one eye. He couldn't
see a thing. He squinched open the eye that wasn't laying
against the bed. There, that was much better.
He turned off the alarm and looked out his bedroom window, the
window that contained no glass. It was going to be a sunny day.
There wasn't a cloud in the blue sky. Light reflected its blue
rays from the walls of the house across the street. The blue man
walking down the blue street waved at him with a blue hand,
noticing through the translucent wooden walls that Jake was
looking at him.
Jake sighed and rolled out of bed. He hated blue days. He'd
much rather gray days, which were much closer to normalcy than
any other color day, but gray days were wet. He hated wet days,
as well. At least it wasn't a yellow day with its billowing fog
of brightly glowing mist that you could get lost in ten paces
from your home.
Dutifully, he performed morning rituals; brushing his face,
washing his teeth, and shaking his head from side to side until
his disarrayed hair fell into perfect alignment and looked as if
he just walked out of a barbershop. What used to be a
barbershop, he reminded himself, sharply. Melancholy took hold
for just a second, but he shook his head once more. His hair
gleamed with the look of freshly washed.
Breakfast was the next order of the day. Jake sat on the
see-through chair and gently placed his hands on the see-through
table. Do I starve today? He was never very good at it, but had
gotten progressively better. He visualized three strips of
bacon, two eggs and two pieces of toast. Then, when he was sure
he had the image perfect, he spoke the activating phrase. "I'm
hungry."
Somewhere in the city, a pig ceased to exist. It didn't even
have time for a surprised "Oink!" Other pigs who noticed the
disappearance grunted sadly and nodded their heads knowingly.
This was an unfortunate day for chickens, as well. After a
prolonged study in the art of flying, one extremely intelligent
hen had discovered
that chickens could fly. Better than hawks. There was a certain
way to position the wings, and instead of flapping with random
abandon, just gently applying a forward brushing technique. She
was a thousand feet in the air, ecstatic with her newfound
ability. She must tell the others. What a day for the chicken
kingdom! Freedom for all! She suddenly disappeared, to be
replaced with two eggs. The eggs disappeared as well.
Jake opened his watering eyes. They had been pinched tightly
shut with this bout of breakfast concentration. There before him
on the table were three strips of bacon, crisply fried, two eggs,
over easy, but no toast. Then he remembered that toast was a bad
idea and he was lucky he
hadn't been able to conjure it. He was elated he had been able
to do an almost perfect materialization on the first try this
morning until he discovered that he had forgotten the plate. And
the eating utensils.
He retrieved a concrete fork and plate out of the cupboard,
situated the food items properly on the plate, and began to eat.
While he was eating, Jake experienced another surge of
nostalgia. It touched his eyes, briefly, causing a slight
dampness to collect there.
It touched his nasal passages, causing a slight blockage there.
It touched his throat (which was at the moment trying to swallow
a mixture of crisp bacon and over easy eggs) causing a slight
choking there. This resulted with crying, sniffing and coughing
in rapid succession. The crying and sniffing didn't do anything
to alleviate the lack of air his lungs were suddenly demanding,
so Jake concentrated on clearing his throat. His success was
rewarded with food being sprayed all over the table. His
breakfast was ruined, but at least he could breathe again.
"Oh, go away," he muttered. Food, plate and eating utensils
disappeared dutifully. As did the table and chair. Sitting on
the floor, on bruised buttocks, Jake thought about how miserable
life had been for the past two years. It had all started with
the end of the world.
***
The entire office groaned at the same time. It
started as a low moan, then escalated into a louder moan, which
ended in simultaneous
exclamations of, "Oh, no!" As Jake's monitor had gone dead at
the same precise instant of the group groan (of which his own
groan had been a part), he knew immediately that the power had
gone off. It had taken him three-quarters of an hour to write
the article he had been working on, pecking at his keyboard with
the two-fingered diligence that all newspaper reporters seemed to
acquire. He had not saved his work to floppy disk, nor even had
the automatic backup turned on in the word processing program.
Irretrievably, his article was gone. Jake groaned again, which
was echoed by the stricken group throughout the office.
Apparently, he wasn't the only one who worked with the backup
function turned off.
"What the hell happened to the backup generators?" someone
yelled in the ensuing silence.
Jake's first thought was that the building engineers probably
worked with the backup function turned off, but dismissed it. He
sighed. This issue of the Daily Aberteen Chronicles was going to
be late.
There was a groaning above their heads. This was not made by
the humans on staff. Apparently, the office tower they occupied
didn't like the idea of a power shortage any more than they did.
Its groan became much louder. Jake began to shake. Actually, it
was the building that was shaking. It was groaning and shaking.
It is at this point that it must be mentioned that human beings
are inescapably intelligent when it comes to doom and gloom.
They are instantly aware when it's about to happen. However, the
intelligence required to avoid that doom and gloom somehow
escapes those same humans. This became totally clear when 14
people on the bottom floor of the twenty story building all tried
to fit through the exit door at the same time.
After a couple of tense moments of furniture falling through the
ceiling and barely missing some of them, crashing loudly, and
heightening the fear that swept through all of them, these
intelligent humans reorganized, pulled back from the exit, and
rushed forward to jam it again.
It was lucky for them that the steel doorframe had turned into a
consistency of rubber and the glass had shattered and lay like
little hot coals on the floor. The door suddenly stretched open.
They popped through in the same terrified group and fell like
dominoes, picked themselves up, and ran into the middle of the
street as fast as they could. This was not lucky for some of
them as they had rushed blindly into traffic. Careening cars and
bodies filled the air. In the meantime, the office building that
had once contained the Daily Aberteen Chronicle's offices
collapsed in on itself with a curious series of thumps, crashes,
tinkles, and ribbets. This was not lucky for the humans,
occupying the twenty floors above the main floor of the building,
who happened to be part of the collapsing. Lucky for us we
worked on the bottom floor, Jake Morly thought, who had
petitioned for office space on the higher sections of the
building because street noise from the entrance interfered with
his thinking process.
All along Street 221 buildings collapsed on both sides with that
curious mixture of thumps, crashes, tinkles and ribbets. It was
as if a demolition team had come along, planted all the proper
explosives in the proper positions, and then without warning
flicked the switch that was labeled, "Do not flick this switch
unless you really mean it." There must have been a "PS"
underneath that label that read, "If you do flick it, don't tell
anyone first." Someone had really meant it. And nobody had been
told first.
Jake watched a bus, totally out of control, swerve into a wooden
street pole. At least he thought it was a street pole. It was
completely transparent. The bus hit very hard, went "ribbet",
then bounced back at the same speed it hit the pole. Other
vehicles were doing the same sort of thing i.e. hitting objects,
bouncing away from them with that "ribbet" sound, then folding in
on themselves like suddenly deflated balloons.
Jake opened his mouth. "What the hell is going on?" someone
shouted. Jake closed his mouth. No sense repeating the man.
Instead, he looked up and down the street, taking in all that he
could see. There were no buildings left standing on either side
of the street as far as he could see. The last of the runaway
vehicles had come to a halt, quivering gelatinously in their
final positions, while their owners desperately stretched
material and clambered out. It looked like some kind of
bizarre birthing scene. A person would come out, headfirst, then
shoulders, then rest of body, to plop on the ground beside the
vehicle.
The similarity to birth became more pronounced as each one of the
escapees began to cry when they looked at the mess that used to
be their vehicle.
In the rubble of buildings there were bodies. In the streets
there were bodies. Jake watched a man shake his head, fish out a
cigarette and try to light it. His lighter wouldn't work. He
resorted to the spare packet of matches he found in another
pocket. They wouldn't light. He noticed that glass was burning
in one of the cars and held his cigarette to it until it lit. He
puffed on the business end of the
cigarette until it started to burn eagerly, took a deep
satisfying drag, blew the smoke out in a pink cloud, developed a
curious expression on his face, then keeled over. The body count
went up by one.
People other than Jake who noticed this happening immediately
took their cigarette packages out of their pockets and threw them
away with all their strength. All except one man, who snorted
derisively and lit a cigarette on the same piece of burning
glass. One pink cloud later, he joined his fellow on the
pavement. People hastily checked their pockets again just in
case they missed cigarettes on the first go-through.
There were no sirens from police cars, ambulances, fire trucks,
emergency vehicles or any other type of noise generating vehicle.
There was only the sound of rubble settling into itself.
Suddenly, everything that could be seen turned blue. Jake heard
someone scream, "It's the end of the world!" That someone was
right.
***
A month later a lot of people, along with Jake,
were starving. Most people were suffering from nicotine
withdrawal, fighting constantly with spouses, and generally being
miserable. They were starving too, but it didn't seem to matter
as much as cigarettes had. Whatever had happened, for whatever
reason, had affected everything. Electricity wouldn't work. It
didn't seem very important when they first discovered that. Man
had lived without power before Ben Franklin began flying kites.
"No problem," said the people of Earth in one mind. "We just
have to tough it out." There was no light at day's end. People
found by rubbing two pieces of glass (which had become opaque)
together, they ignited very quickly and provided heat and light.
People used anything glass in their homes, including windows, to
provide this comfort. "See, we can make do." Fridges began to
thaw, and spoiled food became more predominant than edible.
Again, lucid minds took over. "We'll just have to ration
foodstuffs from the farms. We'll help each other to survive."
The riots only really began when they discovered they couldn't
see their computer screens on their laptops and that they
wouldn't turn on.
Long-range communication (like, to the next block) was seriously
hemorrhaged. This went hand-in-hand with the electricity thing.
Nothing seemed to be able to generate a current of any kind.
Wood became a transparent, unbreakable substance. Money was
useless, as it was made out of paper, which is made out of wood.
Nobody could open their wallets to get at it. Strangely enough,
any type of insulation, especially pink fiberglass, also became
transparent. This didn't hamper people too much. They got used
to the Peeping Toms checking them out when they went to bed.
Most ignored them. Others
hung sheets over their walls. Still others, boldly and with
leering grins, provided a striptease as they readied for bed,
dancing to imaginary music.
Steel turned into rubber. This was the heartbreaker. Although
it still had its nice shiny surface, anything made out of steel
became as flexible, pliable, and downright insupportable as a
piece of rubber. Buildings and vehicles collapsed, unable to
stand under their own weight. Mechanisms refused to operate with
rubber gears. And curiously, any time a piece of metal was hit
with an object, it made a low "ribbet" sound, just like a frog.
Horses were suddenly the rage as they were the only means of
locomotion, other than walking.
Some plants, and foods, were extremely poisonous. During that
first month, people were continually asking each other, "So, what
killed Bob? What was the last thing he ate?" Or, "Try some of
this nice blueberry pie," after which they would stare diligently
at the person in question who was eating it, just to see what
happened.
Pork was all right. As a matter of fact, its flavor came close
to the legendary taste of ambrosia that was spoken about in
religious sectors.
Trade in pigs skyrocketed. Alcohol wouldn't do its job. Nobody
got drunk any more. Well, they did when they figured out that
beef had become an alternative substance that provided all the
effects that alcohol had once provided, but left no hangover in
the morning, especially if eaten raw. Trade in cow stocks
skyrocketed. This didn't mean much to the cows, as they were
generally so inebriated they didn't know much of what was going
on, anyway.
Weather patterns developed into technicolor occurrences. Blue
meant sunny, gray meant rainy, yellow meant foggy/hazy, red meant
extremely cold, green meant snowy, brown meant smoggy (at least
everyone recognized that one), white meant very, very hot (fry
eggs on the pavement type of heat). Any hue of these colors
meant a combination of weather. Black meant it was night and you
might as well stay home.
Jake remembered the egghead theory that had surfaced. They had
worked diligently to produce a theory for these bizarre and
strange effects and had schooled their friends with their theory.
They told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on. The
general theory that was produced by scientists and philosophers
(when it finally came around to Jake three weeks later) was this:
Earth's solar system was traveling through space (i.e. the
universe) at approximately 65,000 thousand miles an hour. The
universe, which was also expanding, was traveling at a different
rate. It could be faster; it could be slower. That part they
didn't know. The universe was also infinite. Any part of the
universe didn't necessarily have to agree with any other part of
the universe with the fundamentals and laws of physics.
Logically, if the laws of physics had changed, Earth was now in a
different part of the universe where the normal set of rules no
longer applied. Everyone would just have to muck along until
they discovered what the new rules were. Lynch mobs became the
rage. There was a sudden shortage of scientists and philosophers
and the theory got shelved until something better came along.
Amazingly, people began to discover how to build things. They
found out how to cut wood with a piece of glass. They just slid
it along the surface and the glass heated and separated the wood
as if they were using a knife. Glass cutters now really were
made out of glass.
Concrete became the new wonder substance. It could be cut with
a knife (made out of plastic), or any other sharp edged object
(except glass for some weird reason), but maintained its shape
and strength. The first thing made was a clock. People always
liked to know what time it was and since their little digital
watches no longer worked, (and they couldn't see the time through
the opaque covering if they had) this seemed like the best idea.
Circles made out of wood provided the faces for clocks. The
gears, intricate little pieces that provided hand movement and
clock housing were made out of concrete. The bells were made out
of steel, and were found easily on the old rubber-like clocks
found in many stores. They were made out of steel because steel
made that irritating "ribbet" frog sound, and it was reasoned
that people would wake up more quickly by irritation than by bell
tones. Besides, they couldn't find anything that would produce
bell tones. Rubber had disintegrated into powder, so they
couldn't check that for bell sounds. The only problem with the
clocks was that they were extremely heavy. Once placed on the
invisible table beside the bed, they tended to stay put.
People were making do on their new/old world. When they found
out that they could do magic, they were making do even better.
The first person who discovered how to do magic was one of the
starving masses mentioned earlier. Dreaming of porkpies, and
vividly visualizing them, he had
spoken out loud, "I'm hungry." There materialized before him a
pie, crust golden brown, steaming gently, the tantalizing smell
of pork-ambrosia wafting through the air. Immediately, the man
had seized the pie and stuffed it into his mouth as fast as he
could eat it. It was unfortunate that he had forgotten that
flour products now killed as quickly as tobacco leaf, and you
didn't even have to light it first. It was fortunate that other
people had witnessed this event. Choruses of "I'm hungry" rang
out in the night and foods of all kinds started appearing
everywhere. Interestingly enough, not one item was a pork pie.
They ate around the corpse silently. Well, they were starving,
so there were noises of teeth crunching, mouths drooling, a few
"ummms", two or three slurps, and a general cacophony of
swallows. Other than that, they ate silently. Then they saluted
the corpse with a few rounds of beef slabs, the sounds of toasts
to their now dead benefactor slapping fleshily all around.
People experimented. They discovered that by saying, "Oh, go
away," caused anything that it was directed at to vanish. Many
persons of an unlikable nature disappeared before it was also
discovered that by saying, "Well, I'm staying," neutralized the
effect forever on a personal basis. Of course, the second phrase
had to be said before the first one, but not everyone caught on
to this at once. Earth's gene pool was suddenly strongly
enhanced as the more intelligent people caught up to the dumber
ones and told them to go away before they could think about
staying.
One of the more startling effects was produced by saying
"substitution locomotion." Anything that this was directed to
became able to float on air and was subject to guidance by a
person's force of will.
Broomsticks were very uncomfortable for males (although women
generally loved them). They decided to use toboggans instead and
were, for the most part, laughed at because anybody underneath
the toboggan while it was flying could see through the wooden
frame at the scrunched up buttocks of the pilot. Man had finally
invented anti-gravity vehicles.
***
Jake shook himself out of reverie. Sitting on the
floor with no breakfast, no kitchen table and no chairs did
nothing to improve his overall disposition. That disposition
was: he didn't like it. He didn't like this new world at all.
He wanted the old one back, the one where you woke up in the
morning and the only thing yellow in a blue sky was the sun. He
wanted to use a stove that could turn on and burn your fingers
when you absent-mindedly placed your hand on the hot plate. He
wanted coffee that didn't taste like yesterday's mud pies and
gave you a really good facial if applied when freshly made.
Most of all, he wanted bells to sound like bells again.
Jake had made the personal discovery of what had happened to all
the bell sounds. One night, while strolling through Aberdeen
Central Parking, banging occasionally into invisible trees, he
heard the sound of angels singing. Tripping over invisible
roots, he was led by this sound to the edge of the lily pond.
Hundreds of bell tones, in perfect harmony with each other, sang
into the night. He sat to listen and was entranced. One frog,
bolder than the others, hopped almost directly in front of him,
opened its mouthed and emitted a perfect bell tone, octave No. 4,
on the "C" scale. Then it stretched its ugly little mouth in the
hugest grin it could without splitting its head in half, as if to
say, "See what we get out of this. Finally, no more ugly
croaking, no more ribbeting." It only had time to blink once
before Jake's foot connected and sent it hurtling with a wet
splash back into the pond. Jake hadn't been back to the park
since.
"Oh, God, please," Jake prayed, kneeling piously in his kitchen,
head down and eyes tightly shut. "I've never asked you for
anything before. Well, I have on several occasions, but you never
answered those. Just this once. I'll never ask you for anything
again. Won't you please make things normal again? Really, I
mean it, whatever you want, I'll do. I'd do anything for a
cigarette and a good cup of coffee."
For no reason other than an extremely coincidental coincidence,
on the order of one to infinity minus one, it was at that very
moment that Earth left the blanket of the space anomaly that had
covered it for just over two years and entered the normal
space-time continuum, continuing its 65,000 thousand mile an hour
journey. Three million people fell screaming to their deaths
when their thought powered vehicles suddenly became ordinary
objects, brooms and toboggans, and rediscovered gravity.
When Jake looked around and saw that his walls were no longer
invisible, he ran to the front door and threw it wide open. It
was raining people. They were quite noisy about it, too. Other
than that, sunlight streamed inside bringing normal, almost
forgotten, colors of daylight. He ran back inside, upstairs to
the bed stand, opened its now very visible drawer, and pulled
out a packet of cigarettes. He struck a match that lit with the
tantalizing aroma of sulphur and applied it rapidly to a
cigarette. Puffing blue-gray smoke leisurely, lazily, he leaned
on the sill to his bedroom window, looked up into a sky of
cloudless azure and beamed a radiant smile.
"Thanks," he said. "I owe you one."
x-x-x
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