Tales to Astonish!

Not only was I in another time and place, but I was with another woman. Sure, she looked like Mr. Lady, what with the bazooms and the gams up to her neck, but there was something different about her, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I had a hunch it would require various stages of undress to identify with any certainty… or, perhaps, I had just been lonely for a long time*.

No matter, time was of the essence, as much of the essence as it can be when you’ve got a Chronobot sibling by your side; which is to say it’s more like pi of the essence, but that involves all kinds of complex mathematics, diagrams, and proofs, and well, I’m a simple man: she had bazooms and gams and such, and Bob’s your uncle**.

My days with the Retropolitan went way back, at least from my current vantage point in 1941 Helsinki. Starting from where I was the other day, however, sometime in 1939, I had actually just met him in the men’s room of the Sharpei Club. It was one of those Oriental gentleman’s clubs, decorated in gaudy brass gongs, faux ice crystal chandeliers, and – uh – a couple hundred Shar Pei dogs running around making all kinds of business in all kinds of places. But, hey, the dames…

…not that the men’s room was full of dames, because that would be either incredibly hot or far too creepy (or indicative that the Retropolitan and I share an inability to decipher the symbology of toilet etiquette).

Anyway, there we were, standing side by side, doing our business, when he turned to me and said “I have a bad feeling about this.”

My first thought was, “Why is someone talking to me at the urinal?” My second thought was “Poor guy, maybe he’s passing a stone. Ouch.” My third thought was “Why is the tile wall in front of me crumbling and why are tall metallic Agents of Doom parading through it?”

I gave a good shake, realizing that I could do the Lindy Hop until his baby came home and the last drop would be in m’drawers, but I had to get out of there. They didn’t seem to want me, such is the story of my life (except with a certain Chronobot and her twin), but one never wants to be around when Agents of Doom are on the prowl.

“See you around, Retro,” I said, scooting out the door, but hanging a bit behind just to see what would happen.

“See you sometime,” he replied as the clickety-clacking Agent of Doom robot hands took him away, through the disintegrated tile wall and into the darkness, disappearing with – what, admittedly was – a polite “poof!”

“Sometime.” Truer words were never spoken***.

So, here I am, Helsinki, 1941 – the Finns have given in to the Aryan Juggernaut, for whatever reason, probably something to do with a fear of Russian invasion and a lack of early support from the Western half of the Allies, but – man – that would just make me go to sleep. For whatever nefarious or made-up reasons, the Nazis are in cahoots with the Agents of Doom and the renegade Chronbots and the Girl Scouts and some old lady from the future named Mother Teresa and all for the express (or not expressed) purpose of abducting the Retropolitan from a bathroom in 1939, but dang I hope some cool alien probes were involved because they make for some neat stories, at least when you’re as lonely as I’ve been.

“I agree, we need to get into that building. I have a feeling the Retropolitan is in there,” I said to the lady who looked liked Mr. Lady but wasn’t Mr. Lady (LWLLMLBWML).

“Let’s go,” said LWLLMLBWML.

We mounted the stairs in a building across the street, climbing to the roof, and crawled across the rooftop to the raised edge that separated us from the pavement below. Peering over, we saw that the building, flanked on each side by a large Nazi flag, was – it seemed – unguarded. Whether this was due to oversight or the sheer lack of importance of anything about which we’ve written is hard to say; bottom line though – it was damned convenient.

As was my remembering to pack the Acme Fold-a-wing in my back pocket. Created for those unfortunate times when you find yourself falling from a high place, or needing to traverse a short distance with the majesty of a clumsy man with a faux wing, it had proven useful, well, never before. Ah, the irony that there’s a first time for everything, and it happened to be in the future.

OK, I’m not sure that’s really irony, per se, but it’s interesting in a literary sense, rather like a “god from the machine.”

Long story short: I put on my Acme wing, held LWLLMLBWML tightly to me (oddly, this felt familiar, and a wee bit dirty), and launched us across the chasm. We broke through an upper floor window, tumbled to the hard tile floor, a tangle of limbs, our faces inches from one another.

“This feels familiar,” I said.

“And a wee bit dirty,” she replied, leaning in toward me.

“Later,” I said, pushing her off of me. “If you’re anything like your twin, we have all the time in the world.”

We stood, dusted ourselves off, straightened our undergarments. There before us was a bar, stocked with all the fine Finnish liquor one could imagine (fine, so it amounted to 14 bottles, all the same), and – passed out at said bar – The Retropolitan.

“What do we do now?” asked LWLLMLBWML.

“We wake him up and give him a sandwich,” I said, reaching into yet another of my deceptively large pockets and pulling out the Reuben on rye she had left at the cafe earlier. “He’s going to need his strength.”

I poked him in the ribs.

The Retropolitan stirred….

* This, of course, is if we discount the little known “porpoise adventure” of 1935, which my mother wishes you would. C’mon, do it for me mum.

** No, really, he is. Ask your folks.

*** Except for the ones about “if you keep making that face, it’ll get stuck like that.” Just ask Jeremy Keens of Topeka, KS.

I cannot believe this is happening again. One minute, I’m sitting here, trying to have a quiet lunch and the next minute this guy is sitting here with me. He always seems to show up at just the wrong time.

My latest mission has me in some very hot water. I am searching for a long lost agent, one who disappeared without cause or explanation. Rumors abound as to his whereabouts, and have led me into the heart of Nazi-occupied Helsinki.

Try pretending like YOU understand Finnish. It’s no small task.

I have so far gone unnoticed. Well, I have received a few cat-calls walking down the street, but I can only imagine that no one could surmise my true purpose here–to infiltrate enemy lines and rescue my friend from what can only be a certain, untimely sort of doom. Perhaps it’s the shoes.

You can imagine my dismay when, in attempting to order my Reuben likistää väliin model after ruis, a man suddenly appeared just to my left. That’s going to raise a few eyebrows.

There was no need to ask his name. Agent Andy is infamous in our circles. A strong, determined agent who just happened to be desperately in love with my twin sister, my sister who perished so many years ago in the Abyss of Weeping Wounds. Twice before he had appeared before me, in much the same inexplicable manner only to disappear again after a shockingly passionate afternoon but before I could explain to him that I was, indeed, not who he thought I was. I have always quite enjoyed our brief encounters.

This, however, is not the time for such tom-foolery. I have a job to do. His presence here can bring nothing but trouble and complication to an already impossible rescue attempt.

“Agentti Andy”, I said cautiously, “me raivo haeskella henkilökohtainen kohta jotta juoruta.” He glanced around and in hushed tones said. “Over there, at Kauppatori. No one will suspect a pair of tourists conversing in the market.” Abandoning good sense and a very tasty sandwich, I followed him to the marketplace. To his credit, we were indeed swallowed by a sea of dialects. My worries eased a bit, I walked a bit slower and we began to talk, quietly and discreetly, close enough to each other to disguise ourselves as lovers.

“Agent, how is it that you are here with me? Were you sent to assist in the recovery of our missing agent?” His reply was flustered and confused. “I, um, er, YOU, hmmm…”

“Again”, I clarified, “you have mistaken me for someone else, and though I rather enjoy the perks of your ignorance, now is not the time for such business. We have an agent to rescue. Are you with me?”

He stopped in his tracks, took a long, hard look at me and then reached into his breast pocket. He pulled out a pair of rather scorched sunglasses and doned them. After another good, long oogling, he removed them and, with a new, more focused tone to his voice, said, “Is it the Retropolitan? I think we should start in the building behind the swastika!”

Well, that was quite the cliffhanger, huh? Nothing says “danger” and “action” and “you’re just winging it, aren’t you?” quite like ending up in Nazi-occupied Finland.

Anyway, I, one of your humble guest-bloggers, wanted to let you know that we have not forgotten you, no not at all (maybe just a wee bit). This story shall be continued and, perhaps, if we can find a way to tie it all together, someone might soon make a triumphant return.

I felt like a drowning man, engulfed by memories… or lack thereof… did I leave the iron on? Did I feed the dog this morning? It was dark when I dressed – did my socks match? I should probably check. But later. Later.

More than once in my past, when events spun out of control, when disaster loomed and death appeared certain, everything would seem to slow down, as if the man cranking the camera of my life decided to capture every detail, his hand a circular flurry*. Granted, this sensation was only remembered in hindsight, most likely some artifact of the memory imprint process, an adaptation of the dark science of evolution.

This time, though, it was different.

Time didn’t seem to slow down; it did slow down, at least in our general vicinity. Or perhaps everything around us had accelerated. Hard to tell really, but I bet there was a lot of complex gobbledygook that could have explained it. No matter, the end result was the same: someone or something was buying us time. It sounds impossible, I know, and probably strikes you as a bit of a deus ex machina, but I only speak English, Spanish, and a small bit of Finnish, so it couldn’t be that.

I had watched as Mr. Lady tore at her bodice and tugged on the encryptogram, all to no avail. As she spun on her heel, as if to leave, only to turn back toward me, her eyes vacant and distant, as if she were thinking of a time and place far away from here, from this moment, from our likely demise.

Maybe she had left her iron on too.

What were the chances? Destiny was fickle, but she also had a funnybone.

Mr. Lady’s encryptogram was still firmly wedged in her cleavage, and while this hinted at some rather saucy possibilities at a later date, we had a bomb to defuse and a mystery to solve. I couldn’t see the encryptogram clearly enough to work on it, so I opened what was left of my top-right desk drawer and pulled out my Acme X-Ray Specs. They were scorched around the rims, but when I put them to my eyes I saw what needed to be done.

I had expected to see the inner workings of the encryptogram, some clue as to how I should disarm it before Mr. Lady became a series of crimson splotches and splatters on the wall of my office. And I did see that. But beyond that I also saw something I never expected – beneath Mr. Lady’s bodice sat two temporal integration turbines**… Mr. Lady was – whether she knew it or not, I do not know – a Chronobot.

I dropped the specs, ran over to Mr. Lady, and took her in my arms. She flipped her beautiful locks back with a turn of her head and sighed. She looked at my eyes, my lips, my eyes again.

“At least we’ll die together,” she said.

“Errrr…ok, maybe,” I said. “But not today, sweetheart.”

I carried her to the remains of my desk, upon which sat the smoldering remains of my desk unit, and plunged her right hand into the still-buzzing circuitry of the power core. It was a sharp jolt, followed by a pleasant tingling all over – and then I heard the temporal integration turbines revving up to speed. The room froze, began melting away, and then all I saw was a blinding flash of fire and light, my ears filled with the roar of destruction.

Time passed. There was warmth on my skin. The sounds of birds and the bustle of bodies.

I opened my eyes and found I was sitting at a cafe table; across from me sat Mr. Lady, no longer a victim of wardrobe malfunctions or explosive encryptograms; the muffled hum of temporal integration turbines was fading away. She looked at me and shrugged. I did the same to her.

The waiter approached. “Hyvaa huomenta,” he said.

Well, that explained that we were in Finland, Helsinki by the look of the architecture, around mid-summer judging by the weather and the sun, although I had not been there since the Mysterious Lapland Adventures of 1933. None of this, however, helped to explain the Nazi swastika hanging in the cafe window.

“Heippa,” I said to the waiter. I only wished I knew enough Finnish to ask the year.

* Cranking the camera faster, you see, would expand the number of frames a series of actions were imprinted upon; thus, when played back at normal speed, the action would take considerably longer in replay than in real life. It’s almost counter-intuitive, rather like the quantum physics (whatever that is!) that drive the Chronobot’s temporal integration turbines.

** Someone should come up with a clever acronym for those things; that’s a lot to type each time.

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I knew that sound all too well. It was the sound of the end lurking a bit too close for comfort. Flustered and swelling with the fires of an old flame, I carelessly had overlooked the ticking time-bomb that was the last encryptogram and would certainly be in several smaller, more conveniece-sized pieces if not for the quick thinking of my old love. This one, however, was impossible to miss.

I knew I had mere seconds to save us both.

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Struggling to subdue my emotions, I lept out of those all-to-familiar arms and ran for the door. Clawing at my bosom, I fought to free that dreaded encryptogram from its voluptous prison, but my bodice proved too tight and my concentration too weak to rid myself of this impending doom. I stopped, turned, and looked back at the man whom I seem to share these moments with far too often.

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In that fleeting second before the blast I was taken back to that last time Andy and I stood, much like this, regarding each other for what we could only imagine would be the last time. We stood, arms-reach apart, hearts full of passion, heads full of hate, fighting the one thing we knew to be true between us.

“Deny me your heart”, I demanded of him, foolish as a school girl and equaliy as enamoured.

“I can give you no more”, was his crushing reply. “We can’t go on this way. It must end here and it must end forever.”

I turned my back to him, choking back tears, dying inside. I stood perched on the edge of sanity and reason, full of confusion and fear. Behind me, the one man who knew my heart, my soul–before me, nothing more than the Abyss of Weeping Wounds. That long dark cavern from which no mortal had ever returned. I drew a breath and made my choice.

Spinning around on the heel of my shoe, I turned again to face him, to run to him, to hold him until he had no strength left to deny me. I faltered, just for a moment, and tumbled back. I knew as I fell that his heart had softened, and if only I’d worn those practical flats, things would be different.

I never thought I would see his face again, see that same glimmer in his eye.

This day we stood, regarding each other from across his dimly-lit office, both drowning in our own memories.

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