“Your favourite colour is puce? What a coincidence! My favourite colour is puce, too! I think it’s the most dramatic of the pastels…”
“What do you think it costs to keep a warehouse this size? Man, the heating bills alone must be murder!”
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t put the head of a Barbie up my nose when I was six years old! …It was a GI Joe… And, I was only five… And, it wasn’t my nose…”
“Gentlemen, if I could get your attention, please.”
“No, no, no, no, no. Start with beer, then port, then whisky. You mess the order up, and the hangover will be a hundred times worse!”
“I was considering being a lawyer, but, honestly, I don’t have the figure for robes.”
“Your favourite album is Quadraphenia? Mine is Who’s Next. Maybe that’s the way people will be able to tell us apart…”
“Hello! Everybody, I need your attention!”
“Hunh. She’s been my secretary for four years, and I had no idea she was gay. The things you learn…!”
“Oh, you’d be surprised at what you can hide with the right kind of software!”
“I love to wear socks, but I hate waking up with sweaty feet.”
“WILL YOU ALL PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
127 heads turned towards the woman at the front of the giant room who had just turned a force four bellow on them. “My name is Bruntland-Govanni, Brenda Bruntland-Govanni,” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni told them, “and I represent the Alternate Reality New Service.”
If any of the Bob Smiths were impressed by this declaration, they hid it well. Darren Clincker-Belli, easily overlooked standing next to her, being a foot shorter and otherwise generally unimposing, made a notation on the clipboard he always carried while wearing his scientist’s smock, which he always wore while on duty.
Before she confronted the Bob Smiths, Clincker-Belli had filled her in on what the team had been able to learn from them before she had arrived at the warehouse. Sixty-four were certified public accountants, 32 were regular accountants, 16 were economists, eight were bookies, four were mob accountants, two were homeless and one was a professor of international economic policy at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Sixty-two of the Bob Smiths were left-handed, 61 were left-handed and four claimed to be ambidextrous. Sixty-four were happily married with three children, 32 were happily married with two children, 16 were happily married with one child, eight were happily married without children, four were in the middle of getting a divorce, two were lifelong bachelors and one was a virgin. Interestingly (for Clincker-Belli, for Brenda Bruntland-Govanni, not so much), the distribution of marital relations among the Bob Smiths was different than the distribution of profession.
“Okay,” she stated, “You like numbers. They fascinate you. You probably masturbated thinking about the Fibonacci sequence when you were a kid. BUT WHAT THE HELL DOES IT MEAN?”
Clincker-Belli pushed his horn-rimmed glasses back up his nose and grinned. “Haven’t a clue,” he replied. “It wouldn’t be an interesting mystery if I did.”
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni growled. “Let’s go talk to them, then,” she said. “This parking lot gives me the creeps.”
“I suppose you’re wondering why you’re all here,” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni told the Bob Smiths. “Frankly, if we knew that, we could get you the hell back to where you came from, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” She was trying to be comforting.
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni didn’t really do comforting.
“The Alternate Reality News Service – are you sure none of you have heard of us?” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni asked. A lot of shaking semi-bald, graying heads later, she continued, “We have a device, a PortalTM, that allows our reporters to travel to and from alternate realities. For reasons we do not understand, the Dimensional PortalTM spit all of you back to this reality – pardon the gross metaphor.
“We’re hoping that if we learn more about you, we’ll be able to figure out why you were sent here and, maybe, figure out how to get you back to where you belong. Are there any questions?”
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni didn’t wait for an answer. “Okay. What were you doing when you appeared in our dimension?” Most of the Bob Smiths started answering the question, making it impossible to hear any of them. Clincker-Belli put the clipboard in front of his mouth and whispered something to Brenda Bruntland-Govanni. “What!” she asked, annoyed.
“Ask them one at a time,” Clincker-Belli confidentially shouted above the din.
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni nodded. “ENOUGH!” she bellowed, quieting the warehouse. “YOU!” she extended a finger and pointed at the Bob Smith nearest to her. Despite being close enough, she resisted the temptation to poke him in the nose. “What were you doing when you found yourself in this reality?”
“M…m…m…me?” the Bob Smith shrank from her attention (which, admittedly, was the posture Brenda Bruntland-Govanni felt all men should have towards her, so she was not displeased by the effect). “I was working on the DeFelipchuk return.”
“Okay.”
“We were only out by three dollars and forty-seven cents.”
“Right.”
“If the return wasn’t filed by the end of business, the company would be open to a $5,000 fine, so you can understand why –”
“I GET IT!”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Did you double check the receipts for the Miscellaneous Canine Expenses?”
“WAS I TALKING…TO YOU?”
“Right. Sorry.”
“No. Thanks for the tip.”
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni’s sigh was swallowed up by the cavernous warehouse. “Okay, how many of you came through the Dimensional PortalTM while working on the Phillip Upchuck –”
“DeFelipchuk,” the second Bob Smith corrected her. She didn’t even bother to glare at him.”
“Whatever. How many of you were working on this file when you came into this universe?”
Several of the Bob Smiths raised their hands. Clincker-Belli put his clipboard in front of his mouth and, not bothering to lower his voice, advised: “It will be easier to count them if you have the Bob Smiths who fulfill your condition by answering the question in the affirmative move to another part of the room.”
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni gave her very best “it figures” nod and told the Bob Smiths that had been working on the DeFelipchuk file when they were brought into her universe to move away from the rest of them. She repeated this process six more times, and found that, when they were called to this reality: 64 Bob Smiths had filed the DeFelipchuk return and were thinking about dinner; 32 were looking for the missing money; 16 hadn’t returned from lunch; eight were in a bar; four were on their way to see their mistress; two were at an ATM, checking to see whether they had enough money to afford to move to the Bahamas, and; one was, well, it’s kind of embarrassing, really, but, since you’re going to yell at me if I don’t come out with it, I was…masturbating while thinking of the Fibonacci sequence.
“So, what have we learned from this exercise?” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni, who had to wait until the nausea had subsided, asked Clincker-Belli, who was furiously writing on his clipboard.
“They’re all squares!” he commented.
“That’s a polite way of referring to the Bob Smiths, I suppose.”
“No, not them. I mean, sure, them, too. But, I was talking about the numbers.”
Clincker-Belli showed her what he had been writing. Minus the cursive script, it looked like this:
64 = 2 to the power of 6
32 = 2 to the power of 5
16 = 2 to the power of 4
8 = 2 to the power of 3
4 = 2 to the power of 2
2 = 2 to the power of 1
1 = 2 to the power of 0
“This is hopeless, isn’t it?” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni despaired.
“There’s no hopeless in math,” Clincker-Belli said. “Well, except for the ‘h,’ I suppose, but otherwi –”
“Okay.” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni made a motion that, with most people, would have been to pat Clincker-Belli on the shoulder. However, because of the difference in their heights, she ended up patting his head instead. “I…I’m going back to the office,” she told him. “You…keep working with the Bob Smiths, and, if you figure out what the numbers mean, let me know, okay?”
“Will do, Chief!” Clincker-Belli enthusiastically responded. Then, putting the clipboard in front of his mouth, he just as enthusiastically advised her, “You should probably say something to them before you go.”
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni turned back to the Bob Smiths, who, after randomly milling about, were no longer in any distinct groups. “Bob Smiths!” she said. “On behalf of the Alternate Reality News Service, I would like to apologize for taking you out of your normal space-time continuum, and assure you that we are doing everything in our power to return you to your proper universe. In the meantime –”
“Could we maybe get a TV or something to do in here?” one of the seedier Bob Smiths, standing over to the right of the group, asked.
“We’ll see what –” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni started.
“How about some scrapbooking materials?” one of the Bob Smiths in the back shouted. “How am I ever supposed to remember this adventure if I can’t scrapbook it?”
“That’s not our prob –” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni started once again.
“Do all our meals have to be chicken?” a Bob Smith close to the scrapbooker in the back yelled. “I’m used to cereal for breakfast, you know!”
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni threw up her hands and walked out of the warehouse. All she had intended to say was that, in the meantime, they should continue answering Clincker-Belli’s questions!