“I’m back?” the tall, lean middle aged gentleman with the regal bearing and scar across his left check in the shape of Martha Stewart asked. “I really made it back?”
“Yes,” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni assured Elmore Teradonovich, the Alternate Reality News Service’s film writer. “You really are home.”
Teradonovich looked around the lab, satisfied. Unlike some of the other ARNS reporters who, having been cut off from their home universe for the better part of two days, kissed the ground when they returned, Teradonovich retained his dignity by shedding a single tear. (A couple of reporters who were unclear as to why they were being recalled were disappointed that they didn’t receive a free meal, but c’est le guerre.)
“Okay. I’m ready to go back to work,” Teradonovich said, and, turning smartly on his heel, walked back through the Dimensional PortalTM. Flo pressed the red button, and, within seconds, he was gone. In his place were 17 laptops and a case of cherry soda.
“Our calculations,” Flo said.
“May be a,” Eddy said.
“Little off,” Flo said.
“At first,” Eddy said.
“But Pops,” Flo said.
“Kahunga assured us,” Eddy said.
“That the multiverse,” Flo said.
“Forgives minor,” Eddy said.
“Discrepancies,” Flo said.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni, happy that the Service was up and running again, said, almost cheerfully, not feeling the overwhelming need to humiliate them. Sensing that her largesse wouldn’t last, Flo and Eddy quickly and quietly went back to work.
Getting the Dimensional PortalTM up and running again (once Flo and Eddy had put all the pieces back together at 7:12:23 in the morning – almost two hours before deadline) had been a breeze. As Pops Kahunga had rightly stated, some kind of transuniversal equilibrium had been found, and no more Bob Smiths were forthcoming. Returning the 127 Bob Smiths she did have to their own universes proved to be a much more challenging task.
They wouldn’t come out of the warehouse unless Darren Clincker-Belli came with them. It took over two hours of wheedling to get him to agree to come out of the closet, although, frankly, the air in there had become quite stale, and Brenda Bruntland-Govanni suspected that, had she held out for a few more minutes, she wouldn’t have had to offer him danger pay to convince him to come out. Unfortunately, she didn’t feel she had the time to wait him out, and, what the hell, it was Mikhail’s dime. She looked forward to winning that costly argument with her boss.
That having been dealt with, transportation became the next problem. They couldn’t fit all 127 Bob Smiths into a single bus, but no Bob Smith was willing to go on the bus that didn’t contain Darren Clincker-Belli. When Brenda Bruntland-Govanni explained that it was only temporary, the Bob Smiths covered their ears and started loudly shouting passages from the tax code. As interesting as listening to monotonal recitations of deductions for toe nail clippers and the amortization of arthritis medications was, Brenda Bruntland-Govanni had to come up with a different plan. So, she did.
She had all of the Bob Smiths line up single file behind Darren Clincker-Belli. All 127 of them. Then, they walked down Yonge Street, across Queen Street and into the Alternate Reality News Service’s headquarters. The whole trip took several hours and garnered a tremendous amount of attention. Brenda Bruntland-Govanni made sure that members of her promotions team were there to explain what the Alternate Reality News Service was and that no Bob Smiths were harmed in the making of the promotion. A photograph of the entourage, momentarily stopped at a red light, with the caption, “They come from all over the multiverse to read our news,” was part of ARNS advertising for the next couple of years. For a while, Internet groups devoted to detailing the minute physical differences between the Bob Smiths flourished, as did online parodies of the image.
All that was left was getting the Bob Smiths to their home universes.
“We may,” Flo said.
“Have come up,” Eddy said.
“With a clever,” Flo said.
“Kludge for,” Eddy said.
“That problem,” Flo said.
Because they now knew that the Bob Smiths must have come from the universes that had ARNS reporters, they could use those universes as their base. From the information gathered by Darren Clincker-Belli, it appeared that each Bob Smith had at least one unique characteristic that he didn’t share with any of the other Bob Smiths. Comparing this to the base universes, they could find out which Bob Smith belonged where. It was slow, painstakingly detailed work, but, one by one, with Darren Clincker-Belli’s help, they returned each of the Bob Smiths to their home universes until none was left.
“Good riddance,” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni muttered.
“My children have grown up,” Darren Clincker-Belli sniffed, holding back a tear.
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni was grateful that she didn’t have to use her fallback plan: trying to integrate the 127 Bob Smiths into the world. The previous night she had had a Spike Jonze inspired nightmare where she had to fight with her insurance company about a claim on the hovercraft, which, after a slight traffic mishap, refused to make anything other than strawberry vanilla chai lattes. The voice on the phone was Bob Smith. The man’s supervisor on the phone was also Bob Smith. When she went into the offices to complain, the receptionist who told her to wait was Bob Smith. All of the other customers in the waiting room were Bob Smiths, young and old, male and female, plausible and not so much. The claims adjustor who finally agreed to see her was Bob Smith. His superior was –
“Of course,” Darren Clincker-Belli, his moment of emotional vulnerability now mercifully over, “if you didn’t get the Bob Smiths to sign release forms, we still could be in a lot of trouble.”
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni shuddered, and the bad dream went away. “What?” she said.
“If the government ever found out what really happened,” Darren Clincker-Belli explained., “there could still be a fan-hitting shitstorm. We essentially kidnapped 127 people and held them captive for two days. We would certainly lose our licence to travel between dimensions, and some of us could be looking at serious jail time.”
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni loomed over him. “I guess we’ll have to make sure that nobody in the government ever finds out, then, won’t we?” she quietly menaced him.
“I…I…I wouldn’t -” Darren Clincker-Belli stammered. “I was just, you know, just saying. If. I – I’m going back to my office, now.”
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni smiled to herself as she watched him scurry off. She still had it!
“I wouldn’t -” Mabel started, but Brenda Bruntland-Govanni just breezed past her and into her office.
She found a little old lady holding a schnoodle with one hand and feeding it chocolates from a bowl in the shape of a skull on Brenda Bruntland-Govanni’s desk with the other. “Don’t you know that chocolate is poisonous to dogs?” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni shouted, although, to be honest, she was angrier about losing precious chocolates – a gift from the Emperor of the planet Fungo that were irreplaceable – than she was about the fate of the unknown dog.
“Oh, Mister Pussifer has been a naughty boy, hasn’t he?” the little old lady said. “That’s right. He has. Maybe this will teach him not to go on mommy’s 17th century Afghan rug again. Naughty, naughty boy!”
Brenda Bruntland-Govanni slumped into the chair behind her desk, the joy of having weathered the crisis rapidly dissipating in the mundanity of her day to day existence. “Who are you?” she wearily asked, “And, what are you doing in my office?”
The little old lady haughtily brought herself up to her full five foot one inch height. “I,” she said with no little self-importance, “am a subscriber to the Alternate Reality News Service. I am here to complain that you seem to be rerunning articles.”
“Have you been here all night?” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni asked, the slightest hint of fear creeping around the edges of her voice.
“Your couch is very comfortable,” the little old lady said. Brenda Bruntland-Govanni made a mental note to have it fumigated as soon as the woman had been dealt with. “Now, what about this rerunning articles business?”
“Are you familiar,” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles but not missing a beat, asked the woman, “with Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence?”
“Whosie whatsis?” the little old lady, so achingly adorable Brenda Bruntland-Govanni wanted to slap her on general principle, replied.
“There is a finite amount of material in the universe,” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni explained, “but the universe itself goes on forever. That means that the same patterns repeat themselves forever.”
“I see,” the little old lady said. After a long pause, she added: “So, you didn’t reprint stories -“
“The universe just caught up with the old ones.”
“I see,” the little old lady repeated. After another long pause, she added: “I must be older than I realized.” After an even longer pause, she added further: “Maybe next time around, I won’t get a schnoodle until after I’ve put the 17th century Afghan rug into storage.”
“It would be wise,” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni humoured her. Not insulting the customers wasn’t merely company policy; it was several paragraphs in Brenda Bruntland-Govanni’s contract.
“Thank you for clearing that up young man,” the little old said. Although Mister Pussifer was starting to look a little queasy, the little old lady plucked a chocolate out of the skull bowl and, in a sweet voice asked, “One for the road?”
“Knock yourself out,” Brenda Bruntland-Govanni unenthusiastically answered.
Life was back to normal. Brenda Bruntland-Govanni wondered why she had ever imagined that was a good thing.