“It ain’t cigarettes,” Mabel said into the telephone, shaking her hennaed head in disgust. “I was born with this voice.” Only, she pronounced it “bawn.” A childhood diet of Woody Allen movies will have that affect on a person.
The tiny receptionist with the giant presence explained, for the umpteenth time (umpteen = at least 11) that morning that MS. Bruntland-Govanni was in meetings all day and could she take a message? because that’s the best you’re gonna get. Her tone of voice suggested that she would rather eat glass than actually take the message, and most callers were sufficiently intimidated (it was the giant presence thing) that they said they’d call back and quickly hung up.
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni was in the glass boardroom. The windows that gave onto the offices of the sixth floor of the Gerlentner Building on Queen West had been rendered opaque, giving the room a hall of mirrors effect that most people found disconcerting. This only happened when something bad was going down. Really bad. In the six years that she had been the Editrix-in-Chief of the Alternate Reality News Service, bad things had gone down so often that Brenda Bruntland-Govanni had long stopped noticing the reflected images of herself trailing off into angry infinity.
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni was meeting with two of the company’s engineers, Flo and Eddy. Well, shouting at them might be a more accurate way of describing it. And, considering that she was six foot six even before she put on the cockroach killers and her voice was a deep, thundering rumble, it was like listening to Moses express his displeasure at carrying those heavy tablets down that big, big mountain and THAT was the thanks god’s chosen people gave him?
This is what caused Brenda Bruntland-Govanni’s Old Testament unhappiness: three days earlier, the Dimensional PortalTM was shut down. All of the Alternate Reality News Service’s reporters had to be recalled before this could be done, which meant that nobody was filing new articles, which meant that subscribers were getting pissed (at least, those who could see through “blast from the past” and “one from the vaults” and all the other weaselly attempts at trying to convince them that giving them old news was business as usual for the Service), which meant the potential for lost revenue, which meant that ARNS CEO Mikhail Lo-Fi had rained Old Testament fire on her to find a solution to the problem.
The problem? The 127 Bob Smiths.
Three days ago, a man named Bob Smith made an unscheduled appearance at the Dimensional PortalTM. He was short, with a bald spot that was sometimes described as “cute” by a certain kind of woman, owlish glasses (not that he looked like he could take them off an owl in a fair fight) and a nervous tic in his left eye. He wasn’t an Alternate Reality News Service reporter, and nobody could understand why he walked out of the Dimensional PortalTM and into the ARNS lab.
Before anybody could even begin to formulate the question (73 seconds later, not that anybody was counting), a second Bob Smith walked through the Dimensional PortalTM. He had a little more hair, and his tic was in his right eye, but, otherwise, he was the same man. As the technicians tried to figure out what was happening (73 seconds later, not that I’m anal about counting or anything), a third Bob Smith appeared. He was half an inch taller and had a little less hair, but, again, was of the same basic type as the first.
In the time it took to make Brenda Bruntland-Govanni aware that there was a problem, six more Bob Smiths appeared. Each was different in some respects from the others, but they were all clearly the same person. In the time it took her to get to the lab, three more Bob Smiths appeared. It was starting to get a bit crowded in there, and Bob Smiths had started spilling out into the hallway. For the most part, they didn’t seem interested in each other, although a couple in one corner of the lab were comparing photos of their two daughters, Miranda and Cicatryx.
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni would have shut down the Dimensional PortalTM then and there, but the Alternate Reality News Service had policies to deal with such situations. Forms had to be filled out and executives had to be consulted. Even using the emergency provisions in the Service’s charter, 115 more Bob Smiths appeared before the Dimensional PortalTM could be shut down with the approval of the company’s lawyers.
That many Bob Smiths couldn’t be allowed to remain in the offices, disrupting Alternate Reality News Service business. Brenda Bruntland-Govanni rented buses and had them hauled off to a company warehouse in North York (“The suburb where smiles go to die”). Cots were set up and food was brought to them until she could figure out what had happened and what to do about it.
The expense did not endear her to Mikhail Lo-Fi, although the secrecy did.
Flo and Eddy sat through Brenda Bruntland-Govanni’s tirade with bland expressions. Flo and Eddy were twins born of different sets of parents. With their piercings, tattoos and pear-shaped bodies, they were like a Goth Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Eventually, Brenda Bruntland-Govanni’s anger abated to mere mortal proportions, and when she asked, “Why didn’t you just send them back to the reality they came from?” the engineers saw their opportunity to speak.
“It wasn’t,” Flo said.
“Possible,” Eddy said.
“They came,” Flo said.
“Through the portal,” Eddy said.
“Without any markers,” Flo said.
“Indicating which reality,” Eddy said.
“They had come from,” Flo said.
They talked like that.
“But, it,” Eddy said.
“Wouldn’t have mattered,” Flo said.
“If they had,” Eddy said.
“Why not?” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni asked.
“It takes,” Flo said.
“Two and a half,” Eddy said.
“Minutes to,” Flo said.
“Set up,” Eddy said.
“The portal,” Flo said.
“To reset,” Eddy said.
“The dimensional,” Flo said.
“Coordinates and,” Eddy said.
“Push the,” Flo said.
“Big red button,” Eddy said.
“But, the Bob,” Flo said.
“Smiths were,” Eddy said.
“Coming every,” Flo said.
“Seventy-three seconds,’ Eddy said.
“This means -” Flo started.
“They were coming in faster than we could return them to their home dimensions,” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni impatiently cut him off.
“Yes,” Eddy said.
“Exactly,” Flo said.
A couple of seconds passed. It appeared that Brenda Bruntland-Govanni was starting to build another bout of righteous anger when her body went stiff, her eyes becoming unfocused and her jaw slack. Staff members who had seen this referred to it as ‘the eye of the needle of the storm. (They were evenly split on which metaphor to use; “Pops” Kahunga, the senior member of the janitorial staff, decided to merge the two metaphors rather than cause bad feelings among the staff. Wise old bird, that Pops Kahunga.) Programmers who had seen Brenda Bruntland-Govanni act like this said she put her body on pause to give her mind extra cycles to calculate with. (By tradition, programmers never went to Alternate Reality News Service staff meetings.)
You might think that Brenda Bruntland-Govanni was thinking about the problem of the 127 Bob Smiths, but you would be wrong. She was actually wondering, not for the first time this week, how she had gotten herself into this position. When she graduated from Ryerson Journalism, she had every intention of working for the corporate media. She had hoped that interning at The National Post would have led to a permanent job there. However, a chance meeting at a performance at the 27th revival of Mamma Mia with Jerry Patronus, the visionary creator of the Dimensional PortalTM had led her to sign on as the first Alternate Reality News Service Medicine and Literary Reporter. (The Alternate Reality News Service beats were, like its house writing style, unique and precious.) Twenty-one years later, Patronus was gone, disappeared in the Interregnum Incident, and she was in charge.
The light came back on in Brenda Bruntland-Govanni’s eyes and her body relaxed. She wiped a thin stream of drool off her cheek in a swift motion that her staff realized was probably unconscious and, therefore, never mentioned in her presence. She looked around the room, sizing up where she was, and said:
“Okay. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to tear strips off the two of you until you were nothing but animate skeletons, but that wouldn’t solve the problem. The Alternate Reality News Service is losing readers – accounting tells me we have three, maybe four days before a stampede that will bankrupt us, and I never argue with an accountant. We have to get a handle on what’s happening, and we have to do it now. I’m going out to the warehouse to talk to the Bob Smiths – maybe one of them has some information that will help us solve this problem. You two: get down to the lab and find out all you can about the problem with the Dimensional PortalTM.”
Flo and Eddy scampered out of the room. Yes, scampered. With more measured steps, Brenda Bruntland-Govanni walked to the elevators that took her to the parking lot where her hybrid hovercraft/coffee maker awaited and drove off to the suburbs. You do not want to know what she had to say to the drivers who made the mistake of getting in her path.