Chapter I
In Which the Primary Characters are Introduced
Christopher knelt down and picked up the soggy newspaper from the dirt where it lay. An article in the corner caught his eye: “Local Doctor Nathaniel Glurch Strangled by Unknown Assailant. ‘He won’t be missed,’ says colleague…” The news was always depressing. With a sigh, he put it down and returned to the task at hand.
The morning traffic had already started. And here came grouchy old Mr. Clumpox, of Clumpox & Associates Aluminum Inc., walking his poodle Fritzy. They were both extremely stingy, but Christopher figured with a little more prodding…
He emerged from the alley, looking rather pathetic, which came naturally to him. He pleaded to Mr. Clumpox, of Clumpox & Associates Aluminum Inc., and his poodle Fritzy, “Oh, Mr. Clumpox of Clumpox & –”
“Bite the bullet and tell me what ya want,” he sneered, “as if I didn’t know.”
“Change! You got change?”
Mr. Clumpox of – oh, forget it – dug out the first thing he found in his pocket. He only kept pennies in his pocket, of course, ever since the morning when he’d missed his cup of coffee and accidentally almost given Christopher a thousand-dollar bill – which, to him, was still change.
“WOW! Thanks, Mister! A genuine collectible 2023 double-sided Denver mint penny worth well over a million dollars!”
“WHAT?!” yelled Clumpox. “Dagnabbit, I thought I’d got those all put in the display case!”
“Nah, just pulling your filthy stinkin’ rich leg. To see if any money falls out. Sorry for wasting your time, I can tell it must be such a pain in the butt to have money and fame and people to boss around. Tell me, buddy, how many former employees will you be sending my way this month?”
Clumpox snorted. “I’ve a mind to petition you riffraff out of the city,” he snarled, “and I could do it too!” He stomped off.
“Yeah, of course,” Christopher retorted to his fading back, “but we wouldn’t want to hurt your tender little fingers typing all those words, would we? And then think how much the bribery would cost, maybe a hundred bucks per councilman. Wouldn’t want to leave you dry, would we!” Clumpox was now beyond earshot, so Christopher gave up and turned back into the alley.
“Wake up, you lazy street rats! Loitering waits for no one!”
Groaning, his four friends – Matt, Derek, Tyler and Thomas – got up from their concrete bed. “Thanks, you interrupted my favorite dream about stapling my eyelashes to a rabid wolverine’s butt and throwing senile chickens into a tree so the aliens can get them easier but the wolverine–”
“Shut up, Thomas,” said Derek. Derek generally needed twenty hours of sleep, which of course he never got, so he was constantly ready to snap at everyone. Christopher had some news that cheered even Derek up, however, although in just a few days it would have struck fear into his heart:
“The girls are coming.”
“The girls,” of course, were their friends from the alley on the other side of Buckitooey Falls – Sammy, Dana, Louise, and Bethany. Necessity dictated they live in two different alleys, but they visited each other as often as possible.
So began an attempt to make the place presentable. Sweeping dust away, scaring off the rats, and arranging the cardboard beds into armchairs and sofas. Suddenly, Tyler glanced across the street, and noticed them walking towards the alley with McDonald’s breakfasts spilling from their arms.
“Where’d they get that kind of money!?” he sputtered.
“Weapons, my friend, weapons,” Christopher explained. “Feminine charms, puppy pouts, and the threat of being pinched until twenty layers of your skin turn purple and shed – they’ve got an advantage.”
“Duh,” grumped Derek. “But they better share.”
They did. With a cheerful “yoo-hoo” and a kiss-blowing from Louise, they trip-tramped right over. Sammy shared with Derek, Dana with Thomas, Louise with Tyler, and Bethany with Christopher. Matt was feeling rather left out until Beth, and then the others, started to share.
Perhaps it should be clarified at this point that such social structuring was common. All of them knew that if they hoped to have a future, and they did, their spouses would be from this group. And, as time went on, stronger relationships were inevitably formed between the aforementioned pairs. Matt wasn’t an outcast – not any more than the rest of them, anyway – but with five boys and four girls, someone had to be left out.
Derek had explained that since they couldn’t afford to be technically married anyway, it wouldn’t be that much more immoral to share someone else’s.
Matt explained that with their feminine charms, puppy pouts, and the threat of being pinched until twenty layers of your skin turn purple and shed, the girls could scrape that much together. It could be a cheap ring, and cake was overrated.
Derek explained that the others would be guilt-tripped into buying wedding presents, and that wouldn’t be so easy.
Matt explained that if they thought the sacred institution of marriage was all about material goods, then that was their problem.
Derek explained that a fist was rapidly approaching from his left.
And so, it remained a pressing issue. But as Matt sipped a cappuccino – unknowingly ruining his sleep habits for life and losing whatever growth he had left – this was in the far corner of his mind.
“Did you hear about the local murder?” Beth asked, just to make conversation.
“You need to be more specific, Beth,” said Sami.
“This one is big stuff.”
“I saw the headline, if Dr. Glurch is the guy you mean,” said Christopher. “But that stuff happens every day. It’s a really crappy world we live in –”
“But it looked like he was torn apart with someone’s bare hands,” Beth persisted. “That’s not your average murder.”
“Let’s focus on the bright side,” said Dana. “In the same hospital room, a living person was reassembled after being torn apart by a speeding train. That’s not your average operation.”
“Ah, oui.” Louise nodded. “Zat Laverĝe chic –” at this point it should be explained to anyone as ignorant as Louise that “chic,” as a noun, means 1. the quality or state of being stylish; fashionableness, or 2. sophistication in dress and manner; elegance, which both describe Kayynar perfectly but is not, as Louise thought, the French word for “chick,” which, in this instance, is slang for a girl or young woman, and also describes her perfectly “–ees very–” Tyler grabbed Louise and kissed her passionately, stopping her from embarrassing herself by getting another word wrong, or, in fact, to everyone’s great relief, saying anything else at all.
“Hmmm…” Christopher pondered. “It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that ‘zat Laverĝe chic’ could be a suspect.”
“Well,” Beth pressed, “the other staff said she was unconscious for at least twenty-four hours and couldn’t have done it.”
“The other staff hated the guy’s guts,” Christopher insisted. “Of course if Kayynar killed him they wouldn’t rat her out.”
“You think they’re that callous?”
“I do.”
“But she’s too nice to do a thing like that, stupid,” Derek interrupted, “and really hot too.” Sammy punched him.
“Not like either of you would know what that means,” said Matt. Sammy punched him a little harder.
Dana quickly tried to avert an argument. “Look, guys,” she said, “we’re going to be late for the symposium. Something about ‘our country’s alarming moral decline, not to mention the steadily increasing reversal of traditional gender roles’. I’m just in it for the free pencils.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Tyler told her, “because I was planning on attending a similar thing. It’s got Dr. Ian Malcolm the Fourth, PhD. in Chaos Physics.”
Derek called them both losers.
***
Dr. Ian Malcolm the Fourth, PhD. in Chaos Physics, cleared his throat. He was unusually hip for a mathematician. His grayish-black hair all poofed up at the front (he slept on it that way every night, to avoid wasting gel) and to complete the cool look he wore dark squarish sunglasses, a long gold chain necklace, and entirely black clothing that showed just a hint of his chest. He also had a weird smile that would encourage you to punch it, if it were worn by anyone else, but on him it simply added to the nearly overwhelming air of charisma and cologne. He cleared his throat again and looked at his audience.
His audience cleared his throat too, and said “hi.”
Malcolm smiled and waved at Tyler. “I’d like to thank you all for turning up here today. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Dr. Ian Malcolm the Fourth–”
“Hey,” Tyler interrupted, “you’re descended from that guy in Jurassic Park, right?”
Malcolm grinned sheepishly. “Well, yes–”
“I’ve only read the book. But I love that guy! He’s awesome! It’s a shame he died.”
“Actually, he survived,” said Malcolm. “He comes back in the sequel.”
“Gee, thanks for giving it away.”
“No problemo. You should have expected that. Don’t you remember the concept of chaos theory?”
“D’you remember any good quotes from him?”
Malcolm thought a moment, then said, “‘You are indeed very pretty, Dr. Sattler. I could stare at your legs all day.’”
“Uh, I meant about chaos theory.”
“Oh.”
There was an awkward silence, and then Dr. Ian Malcolm the Fourth, PhD. in Chaos Physics, cleared his throat again and decided to start the symposium. “All right,” he said, “to start out with, bluntly, here is a chart of men’s and women’s rights, circa 0 A.D, when Christ was born or thereabouts. Now you will notice women couldn’t do much of anything, and that’s deplorable, but –”
Tyler raised his hand and patiently waited to be called on. “What about the ‘moral decline’ part?”
Malcolm shrugged. “If I know you street rat types, and I do, you’ve got no problem with moral declining. You’ve been quite close-knit and lived separately from the rest of us for as long as history, and something about eking out a pathetic existence humbles you quite a bit. Not to mention that’s where most of the religious people are now that things have gotten – well, you know.”
“I hear you,” said Tyler. “People are living in fear of the Antichrist coming and all that but firstly, he’s already here, and secondly, they invited him. Why do you care about this anyway? You’re not much like your ancestor.”
“My ancestor,” Malcolm stated huffily with the air of someone trying to preserve his dignity, “was from the age when Chaos Physics was a newly discovered branch of mathematics. Times change, kiddo, and three generations later it’s time to find practical applications for it.”
There was a pause while he went over some painful memories, and then he continued. “I suppose I seem arrogant, considering I’m one of them myself, but I’m also one of you guys, y’know? I went to school for years before anyone realized no one was paying for my education, and by then I’d earned a scholarship. I was only twelve, mind you, and even though I’d already started cussing and smoking and losing my virginity, I wasn’t prepared for what I ran into in college. At the same time my mom was evicted, so I went to live with some friends of hers who happened to be street rats – you don’t find that term offensive do you?”
“Not at all. There are lots of somewhat nastier alternatives.”
“Great. So, anyhow, maybe these street rats aren’t angels, but that’s how they look to a twelve-year old next to college people. On New Year’s Eve, one night, we all got drunk, myself included. But then…” his eyes filled with tears. “Then, I sobered up with a real throbber, but the others were still drunk, and… I saw what somebody was doing to somebody else, and, and… I was scarred for life.”
He quickly regained his composure and hastily exclaimed, “But, when your ancestor gets eaten by a T. Rex you tend not to worry about that. It’s not really relevant to any of this. I was just trying to make a point which, incidentally, also isn’t relevant to any of this, but you gotta connect with your audience. You guys are doing great, y’know, don’t let society’s ills get dumped on you like they are, ’cause civilization is a worthless load of –”
“Yes, yes,” Tyler hurriedly interrupted, “but let’s not generalize too much. My associates and I were just discussing earlier a famous, wealthy, above average girl named Kayynar Laverĝe. But she’s really nice.”
“And how do her peers view her?”
“Well, naïve and ditzy, but –”
“And, anyhow,” Malcolm went on, “I’d advise you to be wary of her. Surely you’ve heard about how she got hit by a train and pieced back together?”
“Yes, that’s why my associates and I were discussing her.”
“Beware, my friend. Something has gone horribly wrong.”
“And how do you know?”
“Chaos theory. This is the greatest advancement medical science has ever made, and there is no possible way for its first unprecedented utilization to work one hundred percent well. Phase space, you will remember, doesn’t move that way. Instability is built into it.”
“But–”
“Imagine a propeller blade, a slightly warped propeller blade, with a droplet of water moving down its surface. The droplet, at times, as it reaches the edge of one propeller blade and moves to counter it, split and reform. Perhaps it will not reform, in which case you will have a great disaster, metaphorically speaking. But if it does, it will not be exactly as it was before. Unless it’s lost some of its mass, probably no one will notice. But it won’t be quite the same. The constitution of its molecules will have been scrambled and rearranged. In short, you have a different droplet of water.”
“But how do you know something’s gone horribly wrong, that it’s not just a little mistake?”
“Because there are no little mistakes. Say I go back to the time of dinosaurs, if you will excuse the irony, and step on an ant. Have I just wiped out the one ant?”
Tyler didn’t quite follow him, and said so.
“No! I have wiped out his children, and his children’s’ children, and their children, and so on, more so with every seceding generation. By the time we return to the present day that has reached staggering billions of ants. There goes, also, any advances in natural selection that they would have made, any animals that would have preyed upon them, any diseases they would have stopped the spread of by feeding on carcasses. I have made quite an impact, by killing what we so wrongly think of as insignificant.”
“There was no mention of it in the paper.”
“Well, of course not, there’s no need to get us afraid of a trip to the doctor’s, they say. The powers that be might lose their funding.”
He waited a few moments for this to sink in, and then returned to the chart. “You know, of course, that chaos theory will not let these figures stay constant.” He flipped through some more charts, showing how they progressed century by century, until the present day. “As you see,” he continued, “there is no real progress until women gain the right to vote, in 1920. Then for the longest time they could not get equal wages for equal work with men, but for some reason they got the right to murder babies in 1973. Once we actually started making progress on the wages issue, everything started falling into place faster and faster, much like mankind’s accumulated knowledge. This is good, obviously, if it stops when the two genders are equal. But we passed that point, about 2050 A.D.”
“Oh, dear…”
“The most alarming aspect is how many of these rights aren’t legally spelled out, but they get because of what they are. I hate to stereotype, of course, but the potential for abuse of power cannot be ignored. Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase ‘feminine charms, puppy pouts, and the threat of being pinched until twenty layers of your skin turn purple and shed?’”
“Hmmm… yes, that does sound slightly familiar.”
“And here is a men/women employment chart from 1800 A.D., another from 1810 A.D., and so on until now. Until about 1920 or so it’s very poorly documented, but you can see how women employees started to multiply rapidly. Mostly during the World Wars, of course, when all those soldiers were gone, and if we were to have another one now… of course, as with the rights thing, these things are good. The problem is when they come at the expense of equally qualified males.”
“I think you’re overreacting again, sir.”
“Shut up and let me talk. There’s no need to give them retribution, no need to make up for what our ancestors did. That was the past, and all we need to worry about is now, and getting everything equalized once and for all, like it was, however briefly, in 2050.”
“Is it impossible to keep it like that?”
“Oh, fluctuations would be inevitable,” Malcolm said, “thanks to chaos theory. But yes, if the human race wasn’t stupid, we could keep it at more or less the same spot. Then, with our own petty social problems under control, we could focus on entire races of people who still have no rights and are being mistreated.”
“Wow,” said Tyler, “this is insane.”
“Sometimes,” said Malcolm with a wink, “it takes an insane perspective on things to make the world progress.”
“Wow.”
“Free pencil?”
***
Dana waited expectantly and stared at the stage, chewing her fingernails nervously. She was beginning to wish she’d gone to Tyler’s thing. Ian Malcolm was kind of cute. She realized she was starting to drool and suppressed that reflex by contemplating how anyone could fit “Our country’s alarming moral decline, not to mention the steadily increasing reversal of traditional gender roles” onto a pencil, and hoping they’d succeeded because otherwise she was wasting perfectly good preening time here.
What the heck, she decided, and started preening anyway.
There was a loud drumroll that caught her entirely by surprise, and then Kayynar Laverĝe leaped onto the stage, which caught her even more by surprise. Reportedly this lady was still in a hospital bed relearning how to talk and sucking food through a straw.
“Welcome, welcome,” she said, bowing, “I see we’ve got quite a turnout today. Sorry to have this scheduled the same day as Dr. Malcolm’s little shtick, and on such deplorably short notice too, but I promise you won’t be sorry. Any questions before we begin?”
Dana raised her hand but didn’t wait to be called on. “I thought you were in a hospital bed relearning how to talk and sucking food through a straw.”
Kayynar’s smile froze. Her eyes narrowed. Her voice lowered. “You must have been misinformed,” she said.
“Oh, that makes sense,” said Dana.
Beth suddenly had an inexplicable sharp pain in her stomach.
“All right,” said Kayynar, as the smile regained its warmth, “any more questions? No? Okay, I’ll get right down to business then. For most of human history, we’ve been mistreated, right? I mean, fewer rights, lower wages, that sort of thing.”
Someone coughed. Someone else said… “Er, we?”
Kayynar sighed, and decided, quite rightly, that not everyone in the world was as intelligent as she. In fact she had always known this and had carried it as a subject of great pride, but often felt the need to reconfirm it when someone missed something so plaintively, glaringly obvious as this.
“Look at everyone around you,” she instructed. They did so.
“Now, do you see any similarities between yourself and all these others?”
There was some confusion as to who should answer, so Sammy did: “Is that a tone of condescension in your voice?”
Kayynar saw no reason not to be truthful, so she said, “yes.”
“Why, I oughtta–”
Louise suddenly arrived at a conclusion and yelled out, “Zey’re all chics!”
There was an awkward silence.
Kayynar broke it. She pointed at Louise and said, “Is this kid with anyone?”
Sammy, Dana, and Beth reluctantly raised their hands.
“My most heartfelt condolences to all of you. Now, this symposium is a gender thing, right?”
“Er, what about moral declining?”
“Look,” she exploded, and went through Dr. Malcolm’s whole shtick in less than a minute. Then, out of breath and more than a little flustered, she said, “I couldn’t agree more with the idea that we should get things equalized. But hey, is it really so much to ask that we enjoy our moment of triumph before we consent to that?”
Everyone thought she was insane.
“The world is a terrible place,” she said. “It’s up to us to take a shot at fixing it. That’s why I’m forming a little group here. Think of it as sort of the new TGIF club. We’ll just have fun, hang out, keep the males under our gentle but stern thumb, and get paid to do it. I estimate it should take us about fifty years at a maximum to get everything straightened out.”
Beth had another inexplicable sharp pain in her stomach. “Miss Laverĝe, ma’am,” she said, “that sounds very noble, but are you sure you aren’t you just exploiting our fundamental human greed and selfishness to make us demand higher prominence because of events from the past that had nothing to do with us?”
Kayynar gave a strained chuckle. “I suppose it might seem that way from some perspectives.”
“I just have to be sure,” said Beth, “that you really have everyone’s best interests at heart, before I make any commitments.”
“Beth, for Christmas’ sake shut up!” Sammy hissed.
“Well,” said Kayynar, nodding slowly, “you seem to be a wonderful, honest young lady with high moral scruples. Exactly what this world needs. Trouble is, the world doesn’t want them. You can’t get anywhere nowadays unless you’re willing to cheat. I’ll accept people like you. They won’t.”
“I thought you were that kind of person.”
“Times change, doll,” she said wistfully. “Look, it’s not like we’re evil or anything. It’s just a little group.” She studied Beth’s face. Beth was a beautiful woman, but she was clearly a street rat. Her freckles were obscured by a layer of dirt, which piled up into her dimples and had a tendency to crumble when she smiled. Her brown hair was pretty, too, but it was ratty and tangly, and the dirt obscured her blonde highlights. If she had some decent money, well, she could be a cover girl. Kayynar decided to go for the jugular vein.
“Anyone special in your life?” she asked.
Beth instantly turned a pretty shade of pinkish-red.
“Dark alleyways are no place for young love,” Kayynar insisted. “Maybe if you all had your own houses… nice, clean, roomy houses… maybe a dog… if you could afford to go out to restaurants, to buy bouquets and presents, and… rings…”
Beth struggled with the decision, but Kayynar knew before she said anything what her answer would be. “Well, that about wraps it up,” she concluded. “Free cookies, ice cream, and pie?”
“What!” Dana huffed. “No pencils!?”
***
When the girls returned, they looked considerably different. They’d been washed, manicured, and perfumed. In fact, Matt smelled them coming from three blocks away. When they came into view, his jaw dropped and just kind of hung there for a while.
“We’ve got jobs,” Beth explained unnecessarily.
“This,” Matt decided, “calls for a celebration.” He let out a yippy birdlike call, and the others came scurrying out. “Christopher,” he said, “get some sodas.”
Christopher snapped him a sharp salute and disappeared through the back door of Duff’s Stuff.
***
In Duff’s Stuff, one could find most anything. It was a popular tween hangout, with comic books, candy bars, and soda. Besides that it also sold all kinds of random secondhand junk from food processors to loaded guns to things a normal average person wouldn’t really want to know about. Fortunately the vending machines were in the back. Christopher ambled over to one that looked old and rusty.
He whistled cheerfully as he pressed his back against it and surveyed the crowd. Next to him a punk with purple hair and his everythings pierced was screaming obscenities at an invisible giant rabid radioactive virtual reality hamster as he proceeded to beat the snot out of it. No threats here.
***
He emerged from the store, triumphantly displaying Coke and Mentos for Tyler and Louise, Pepsi for Thomas and Dana, Mountain Dew for Matt, orange Gatorade for Derek and Sammy, and for himself and Beth, Dr. Pepper. “The doctor is in,” he said, and took a long swig.
***
Back inside the shop, the punk had been rather messily devoured by the invisible giant rabid radioactive virtual reality hamster (coincidentally, the game was called “Attack of the Invisible Giant Rabid Radioactive Virtual Reality Hamsters) and decided to cool off. He went over to the vending machine right next to him. The door had been unceremoniously duct-taped onto its torn hinges, but even so he was very surprised when it came detached and fell on top of him.
***
“Well,” Beth announced (by now you should know she was the spokesperson for the group), “we can tell you the bad news, I guess.”
“The bad news!?”
“Yeah,” Sammy interrupted (by now you should also know she was the interrupter for the group), “we’ll be busy a lot of the time and have to move around the country for more symposiums and stuff.”
“But in a year or so, we’ll be able to settle down, get married, and move into a nice house with all the luxuries we want,” Beth reassured Christopher.
“Guess who’s employing us!” squealed Dana.
Without warning, Sammy wheeled around and punched Dana right in the face, wiping the blood onto a wall with a distasteful grimace. “Our employer wishes to remain anonymous at this time,” she explained, “as certain also unnamed parties may find his or her failure of great interest.” She glance angrily at Tyler with this last bit, but he was busy snorting Coke out of his nose and didn’t notice.
“In fact,” said Beth, gritting her teeth, “we’re leaving tomorrow for Florida. So long.” She gave Christopher a long, passionate kiss, and he suddenly wished she would leave for Florida every day.
In fact it took quite a bit longer than that, but some things do not need to be shared. They stayed and talked long into the night and the next morning they were gone.
Next: Chapter II: In Which Things Get Weirder (Unfinished)
The morning traffic had already started. And here came grouchy old Mr. Clumpox, of Clumpox & Associates Aluminum Inc., walking his poodle Fritzy. They were both extremely stingy, but Christopher figured with a little more prodding…
He emerged from the alley, looking rather pathetic, which came naturally to him. He pleaded to Mr. Clumpox, of Clumpox & Associates Aluminum Inc., and his poodle Fritzy, “Oh, Mr. Clumpox of Clumpox & –”
“Bite the bullet and tell me what ya want,” he sneered, “as if I didn’t know.”
“Change! You got change?”
Mr. Clumpox of – oh, forget it – dug out the first thing he found in his pocket. He only kept pennies in his pocket, of course, ever since the morning when he’d missed his cup of coffee and accidentally almost given Christopher a thousand-dollar bill – which, to him, was still change.
“WOW! Thanks, Mister! A genuine collectible 2023 double-sided Denver mint penny worth well over a million dollars!”
“WHAT?!” yelled Clumpox. “Dagnabbit, I thought I’d got those all put in the display case!”
“Nah, just pulling your filthy stinkin’ rich leg. To see if any money falls out. Sorry for wasting your time, I can tell it must be such a pain in the butt to have money and fame and people to boss around. Tell me, buddy, how many former employees will you be sending my way this month?”
Clumpox snorted. “I’ve a mind to petition you riffraff out of the city,” he snarled, “and I could do it too!” He stomped off.
“Yeah, of course,” Christopher retorted to his fading back, “but we wouldn’t want to hurt your tender little fingers typing all those words, would we? And then think how much the bribery would cost, maybe a hundred bucks per councilman. Wouldn’t want to leave you dry, would we!” Clumpox was now beyond earshot, so Christopher gave up and turned back into the alley.
“Wake up, you lazy street rats! Loitering waits for no one!”
Groaning, his four friends – Matt, Derek, Tyler and Thomas – got up from their concrete bed. “Thanks, you interrupted my favorite dream about stapling my eyelashes to a rabid wolverine’s butt and throwing senile chickens into a tree so the aliens can get them easier but the wolverine–”
“Shut up, Thomas,” said Derek. Derek generally needed twenty hours of sleep, which of course he never got, so he was constantly ready to snap at everyone. Christopher had some news that cheered even Derek up, however, although in just a few days it would have struck fear into his heart:
“The girls are coming.”
“The girls,” of course, were their friends from the alley on the other side of Buckitooey Falls – Sammy, Dana, Louise, and Bethany. Necessity dictated they live in two different alleys, but they visited each other as often as possible.
So began an attempt to make the place presentable. Sweeping dust away, scaring off the rats, and arranging the cardboard beds into armchairs and sofas. Suddenly, Tyler glanced across the street, and noticed them walking towards the alley with McDonald’s breakfasts spilling from their arms.
“Where’d they get that kind of money!?” he sputtered.
“Weapons, my friend, weapons,” Christopher explained. “Feminine charms, puppy pouts, and the threat of being pinched until twenty layers of your skin turn purple and shed – they’ve got an advantage.”
“Duh,” grumped Derek. “But they better share.”
They did. With a cheerful “yoo-hoo” and a kiss-blowing from Louise, they trip-tramped right over. Sammy shared with Derek, Dana with Thomas, Louise with Tyler, and Bethany with Christopher. Matt was feeling rather left out until Beth, and then the others, started to share.
Perhaps it should be clarified at this point that such social structuring was common. All of them knew that if they hoped to have a future, and they did, their spouses would be from this group. And, as time went on, stronger relationships were inevitably formed between the aforementioned pairs. Matt wasn’t an outcast – not any more than the rest of them, anyway – but with five boys and four girls, someone had to be left out.
Derek had explained that since they couldn’t afford to be technically married anyway, it wouldn’t be that much more immoral to share someone else’s.
Matt explained that with their feminine charms, puppy pouts, and the threat of being pinched until twenty layers of your skin turn purple and shed, the girls could scrape that much together. It could be a cheap ring, and cake was overrated.
Derek explained that the others would be guilt-tripped into buying wedding presents, and that wouldn’t be so easy.
Matt explained that if they thought the sacred institution of marriage was all about material goods, then that was their problem.
Derek explained that a fist was rapidly approaching from his left.
And so, it remained a pressing issue. But as Matt sipped a cappuccino – unknowingly ruining his sleep habits for life and losing whatever growth he had left – this was in the far corner of his mind.
“Did you hear about the local murder?” Beth asked, just to make conversation.
“You need to be more specific, Beth,” said Sami.
“This one is big stuff.”
“I saw the headline, if Dr. Glurch is the guy you mean,” said Christopher. “But that stuff happens every day. It’s a really crappy world we live in –”
“But it looked like he was torn apart with someone’s bare hands,” Beth persisted. “That’s not your average murder.”
“Let’s focus on the bright side,” said Dana. “In the same hospital room, a living person was reassembled after being torn apart by a speeding train. That’s not your average operation.”
“Ah, oui.” Louise nodded. “Zat Laverĝe chic –” at this point it should be explained to anyone as ignorant as Louise that “chic,” as a noun, means 1. the quality or state of being stylish; fashionableness, or 2. sophistication in dress and manner; elegance, which both describe Kayynar perfectly but is not, as Louise thought, the French word for “chick,” which, in this instance, is slang for a girl or young woman, and also describes her perfectly “–ees very–” Tyler grabbed Louise and kissed her passionately, stopping her from embarrassing herself by getting another word wrong, or, in fact, to everyone’s great relief, saying anything else at all.
“Hmmm…” Christopher pondered. “It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that ‘zat Laverĝe chic’ could be a suspect.”
“Well,” Beth pressed, “the other staff said she was unconscious for at least twenty-four hours and couldn’t have done it.”
“The other staff hated the guy’s guts,” Christopher insisted. “Of course if Kayynar killed him they wouldn’t rat her out.”
“You think they’re that callous?”
“I do.”
“But she’s too nice to do a thing like that, stupid,” Derek interrupted, “and really hot too.” Sammy punched him.
“Not like either of you would know what that means,” said Matt. Sammy punched him a little harder.
Dana quickly tried to avert an argument. “Look, guys,” she said, “we’re going to be late for the symposium. Something about ‘our country’s alarming moral decline, not to mention the steadily increasing reversal of traditional gender roles’. I’m just in it for the free pencils.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Tyler told her, “because I was planning on attending a similar thing. It’s got Dr. Ian Malcolm the Fourth, PhD. in Chaos Physics.”
Derek called them both losers.
***
Dr. Ian Malcolm the Fourth, PhD. in Chaos Physics, cleared his throat. He was unusually hip for a mathematician. His grayish-black hair all poofed up at the front (he slept on it that way every night, to avoid wasting gel) and to complete the cool look he wore dark squarish sunglasses, a long gold chain necklace, and entirely black clothing that showed just a hint of his chest. He also had a weird smile that would encourage you to punch it, if it were worn by anyone else, but on him it simply added to the nearly overwhelming air of charisma and cologne. He cleared his throat again and looked at his audience.
His audience cleared his throat too, and said “hi.”
Malcolm smiled and waved at Tyler. “I’d like to thank you all for turning up here today. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Dr. Ian Malcolm the Fourth–”
“Hey,” Tyler interrupted, “you’re descended from that guy in Jurassic Park, right?”
Malcolm grinned sheepishly. “Well, yes–”
“I’ve only read the book. But I love that guy! He’s awesome! It’s a shame he died.”
“Actually, he survived,” said Malcolm. “He comes back in the sequel.”
“Gee, thanks for giving it away.”
“No problemo. You should have expected that. Don’t you remember the concept of chaos theory?”
“D’you remember any good quotes from him?”
Malcolm thought a moment, then said, “‘You are indeed very pretty, Dr. Sattler. I could stare at your legs all day.’”
“Uh, I meant about chaos theory.”
“Oh.”
There was an awkward silence, and then Dr. Ian Malcolm the Fourth, PhD. in Chaos Physics, cleared his throat again and decided to start the symposium. “All right,” he said, “to start out with, bluntly, here is a chart of men’s and women’s rights, circa 0 A.D, when Christ was born or thereabouts. Now you will notice women couldn’t do much of anything, and that’s deplorable, but –”
Tyler raised his hand and patiently waited to be called on. “What about the ‘moral decline’ part?”
Malcolm shrugged. “If I know you street rat types, and I do, you’ve got no problem with moral declining. You’ve been quite close-knit and lived separately from the rest of us for as long as history, and something about eking out a pathetic existence humbles you quite a bit. Not to mention that’s where most of the religious people are now that things have gotten – well, you know.”
“I hear you,” said Tyler. “People are living in fear of the Antichrist coming and all that but firstly, he’s already here, and secondly, they invited him. Why do you care about this anyway? You’re not much like your ancestor.”
“My ancestor,” Malcolm stated huffily with the air of someone trying to preserve his dignity, “was from the age when Chaos Physics was a newly discovered branch of mathematics. Times change, kiddo, and three generations later it’s time to find practical applications for it.”
There was a pause while he went over some painful memories, and then he continued. “I suppose I seem arrogant, considering I’m one of them myself, but I’m also one of you guys, y’know? I went to school for years before anyone realized no one was paying for my education, and by then I’d earned a scholarship. I was only twelve, mind you, and even though I’d already started cussing and smoking and losing my virginity, I wasn’t prepared for what I ran into in college. At the same time my mom was evicted, so I went to live with some friends of hers who happened to be street rats – you don’t find that term offensive do you?”
“Not at all. There are lots of somewhat nastier alternatives.”
“Great. So, anyhow, maybe these street rats aren’t angels, but that’s how they look to a twelve-year old next to college people. On New Year’s Eve, one night, we all got drunk, myself included. But then…” his eyes filled with tears. “Then, I sobered up with a real throbber, but the others were still drunk, and… I saw what somebody was doing to somebody else, and, and… I was scarred for life.”
He quickly regained his composure and hastily exclaimed, “But, when your ancestor gets eaten by a T. Rex you tend not to worry about that. It’s not really relevant to any of this. I was just trying to make a point which, incidentally, also isn’t relevant to any of this, but you gotta connect with your audience. You guys are doing great, y’know, don’t let society’s ills get dumped on you like they are, ’cause civilization is a worthless load of –”
“Yes, yes,” Tyler hurriedly interrupted, “but let’s not generalize too much. My associates and I were just discussing earlier a famous, wealthy, above average girl named Kayynar Laverĝe. But she’s really nice.”
“And how do her peers view her?”
“Well, naïve and ditzy, but –”
“And, anyhow,” Malcolm went on, “I’d advise you to be wary of her. Surely you’ve heard about how she got hit by a train and pieced back together?”
“Yes, that’s why my associates and I were discussing her.”
“Beware, my friend. Something has gone horribly wrong.”
“And how do you know?”
“Chaos theory. This is the greatest advancement medical science has ever made, and there is no possible way for its first unprecedented utilization to work one hundred percent well. Phase space, you will remember, doesn’t move that way. Instability is built into it.”
“But–”
“Imagine a propeller blade, a slightly warped propeller blade, with a droplet of water moving down its surface. The droplet, at times, as it reaches the edge of one propeller blade and moves to counter it, split and reform. Perhaps it will not reform, in which case you will have a great disaster, metaphorically speaking. But if it does, it will not be exactly as it was before. Unless it’s lost some of its mass, probably no one will notice. But it won’t be quite the same. The constitution of its molecules will have been scrambled and rearranged. In short, you have a different droplet of water.”
“But how do you know something’s gone horribly wrong, that it’s not just a little mistake?”
“Because there are no little mistakes. Say I go back to the time of dinosaurs, if you will excuse the irony, and step on an ant. Have I just wiped out the one ant?”
Tyler didn’t quite follow him, and said so.
“No! I have wiped out his children, and his children’s’ children, and their children, and so on, more so with every seceding generation. By the time we return to the present day that has reached staggering billions of ants. There goes, also, any advances in natural selection that they would have made, any animals that would have preyed upon them, any diseases they would have stopped the spread of by feeding on carcasses. I have made quite an impact, by killing what we so wrongly think of as insignificant.”
“There was no mention of it in the paper.”
“Well, of course not, there’s no need to get us afraid of a trip to the doctor’s, they say. The powers that be might lose their funding.”
He waited a few moments for this to sink in, and then returned to the chart. “You know, of course, that chaos theory will not let these figures stay constant.” He flipped through some more charts, showing how they progressed century by century, until the present day. “As you see,” he continued, “there is no real progress until women gain the right to vote, in 1920. Then for the longest time they could not get equal wages for equal work with men, but for some reason they got the right to murder babies in 1973. Once we actually started making progress on the wages issue, everything started falling into place faster and faster, much like mankind’s accumulated knowledge. This is good, obviously, if it stops when the two genders are equal. But we passed that point, about 2050 A.D.”
“Oh, dear…”
“The most alarming aspect is how many of these rights aren’t legally spelled out, but they get because of what they are. I hate to stereotype, of course, but the potential for abuse of power cannot be ignored. Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase ‘feminine charms, puppy pouts, and the threat of being pinched until twenty layers of your skin turn purple and shed?’”
“Hmmm… yes, that does sound slightly familiar.”
“And here is a men/women employment chart from 1800 A.D., another from 1810 A.D., and so on until now. Until about 1920 or so it’s very poorly documented, but you can see how women employees started to multiply rapidly. Mostly during the World Wars, of course, when all those soldiers were gone, and if we were to have another one now… of course, as with the rights thing, these things are good. The problem is when they come at the expense of equally qualified males.”
“I think you’re overreacting again, sir.”
“Shut up and let me talk. There’s no need to give them retribution, no need to make up for what our ancestors did. That was the past, and all we need to worry about is now, and getting everything equalized once and for all, like it was, however briefly, in 2050.”
“Is it impossible to keep it like that?”
“Oh, fluctuations would be inevitable,” Malcolm said, “thanks to chaos theory. But yes, if the human race wasn’t stupid, we could keep it at more or less the same spot. Then, with our own petty social problems under control, we could focus on entire races of people who still have no rights and are being mistreated.”
“Wow,” said Tyler, “this is insane.”
“Sometimes,” said Malcolm with a wink, “it takes an insane perspective on things to make the world progress.”
“Wow.”
“Free pencil?”
***
Dana waited expectantly and stared at the stage, chewing her fingernails nervously. She was beginning to wish she’d gone to Tyler’s thing. Ian Malcolm was kind of cute. She realized she was starting to drool and suppressed that reflex by contemplating how anyone could fit “Our country’s alarming moral decline, not to mention the steadily increasing reversal of traditional gender roles” onto a pencil, and hoping they’d succeeded because otherwise she was wasting perfectly good preening time here.
What the heck, she decided, and started preening anyway.
There was a loud drumroll that caught her entirely by surprise, and then Kayynar Laverĝe leaped onto the stage, which caught her even more by surprise. Reportedly this lady was still in a hospital bed relearning how to talk and sucking food through a straw.
“Welcome, welcome,” she said, bowing, “I see we’ve got quite a turnout today. Sorry to have this scheduled the same day as Dr. Malcolm’s little shtick, and on such deplorably short notice too, but I promise you won’t be sorry. Any questions before we begin?”
Dana raised her hand but didn’t wait to be called on. “I thought you were in a hospital bed relearning how to talk and sucking food through a straw.”
Kayynar’s smile froze. Her eyes narrowed. Her voice lowered. “You must have been misinformed,” she said.
“Oh, that makes sense,” said Dana.
Beth suddenly had an inexplicable sharp pain in her stomach.
“All right,” said Kayynar, as the smile regained its warmth, “any more questions? No? Okay, I’ll get right down to business then. For most of human history, we’ve been mistreated, right? I mean, fewer rights, lower wages, that sort of thing.”
Someone coughed. Someone else said… “Er, we?”
Kayynar sighed, and decided, quite rightly, that not everyone in the world was as intelligent as she. In fact she had always known this and had carried it as a subject of great pride, but often felt the need to reconfirm it when someone missed something so plaintively, glaringly obvious as this.
“Look at everyone around you,” she instructed. They did so.
“Now, do you see any similarities between yourself and all these others?”
There was some confusion as to who should answer, so Sammy did: “Is that a tone of condescension in your voice?”
Kayynar saw no reason not to be truthful, so she said, “yes.”
“Why, I oughtta–”
Louise suddenly arrived at a conclusion and yelled out, “Zey’re all chics!”
There was an awkward silence.
Kayynar broke it. She pointed at Louise and said, “Is this kid with anyone?”
Sammy, Dana, and Beth reluctantly raised their hands.
“My most heartfelt condolences to all of you. Now, this symposium is a gender thing, right?”
“Er, what about moral declining?”
“Look,” she exploded, and went through Dr. Malcolm’s whole shtick in less than a minute. Then, out of breath and more than a little flustered, she said, “I couldn’t agree more with the idea that we should get things equalized. But hey, is it really so much to ask that we enjoy our moment of triumph before we consent to that?”
Everyone thought she was insane.
“The world is a terrible place,” she said. “It’s up to us to take a shot at fixing it. That’s why I’m forming a little group here. Think of it as sort of the new TGIF club. We’ll just have fun, hang out, keep the males under our gentle but stern thumb, and get paid to do it. I estimate it should take us about fifty years at a maximum to get everything straightened out.”
Beth had another inexplicable sharp pain in her stomach. “Miss Laverĝe, ma’am,” she said, “that sounds very noble, but are you sure you aren’t you just exploiting our fundamental human greed and selfishness to make us demand higher prominence because of events from the past that had nothing to do with us?”
Kayynar gave a strained chuckle. “I suppose it might seem that way from some perspectives.”
“I just have to be sure,” said Beth, “that you really have everyone’s best interests at heart, before I make any commitments.”
“Beth, for Christmas’ sake shut up!” Sammy hissed.
“Well,” said Kayynar, nodding slowly, “you seem to be a wonderful, honest young lady with high moral scruples. Exactly what this world needs. Trouble is, the world doesn’t want them. You can’t get anywhere nowadays unless you’re willing to cheat. I’ll accept people like you. They won’t.”
“I thought you were that kind of person.”
“Times change, doll,” she said wistfully. “Look, it’s not like we’re evil or anything. It’s just a little group.” She studied Beth’s face. Beth was a beautiful woman, but she was clearly a street rat. Her freckles were obscured by a layer of dirt, which piled up into her dimples and had a tendency to crumble when she smiled. Her brown hair was pretty, too, but it was ratty and tangly, and the dirt obscured her blonde highlights. If she had some decent money, well, she could be a cover girl. Kayynar decided to go for the jugular vein.
“Anyone special in your life?” she asked.
Beth instantly turned a pretty shade of pinkish-red.
“Dark alleyways are no place for young love,” Kayynar insisted. “Maybe if you all had your own houses… nice, clean, roomy houses… maybe a dog… if you could afford to go out to restaurants, to buy bouquets and presents, and… rings…”
Beth struggled with the decision, but Kayynar knew before she said anything what her answer would be. “Well, that about wraps it up,” she concluded. “Free cookies, ice cream, and pie?”
“What!” Dana huffed. “No pencils!?”
***
When the girls returned, they looked considerably different. They’d been washed, manicured, and perfumed. In fact, Matt smelled them coming from three blocks away. When they came into view, his jaw dropped and just kind of hung there for a while.
“We’ve got jobs,” Beth explained unnecessarily.
“This,” Matt decided, “calls for a celebration.” He let out a yippy birdlike call, and the others came scurrying out. “Christopher,” he said, “get some sodas.”
Christopher snapped him a sharp salute and disappeared through the back door of Duff’s Stuff.
***
In Duff’s Stuff, one could find most anything. It was a popular tween hangout, with comic books, candy bars, and soda. Besides that it also sold all kinds of random secondhand junk from food processors to loaded guns to things a normal average person wouldn’t really want to know about. Fortunately the vending machines were in the back. Christopher ambled over to one that looked old and rusty.
He whistled cheerfully as he pressed his back against it and surveyed the crowd. Next to him a punk with purple hair and his everythings pierced was screaming obscenities at an invisible giant rabid radioactive virtual reality hamster as he proceeded to beat the snot out of it. No threats here.
***
He emerged from the store, triumphantly displaying Coke and Mentos for Tyler and Louise, Pepsi for Thomas and Dana, Mountain Dew for Matt, orange Gatorade for Derek and Sammy, and for himself and Beth, Dr. Pepper. “The doctor is in,” he said, and took a long swig.
***
Back inside the shop, the punk had been rather messily devoured by the invisible giant rabid radioactive virtual reality hamster (coincidentally, the game was called “Attack of the Invisible Giant Rabid Radioactive Virtual Reality Hamsters) and decided to cool off. He went over to the vending machine right next to him. The door had been unceremoniously duct-taped onto its torn hinges, but even so he was very surprised when it came detached and fell on top of him.
***
“Well,” Beth announced (by now you should know she was the spokesperson for the group), “we can tell you the bad news, I guess.”
“The bad news!?”
“Yeah,” Sammy interrupted (by now you should also know she was the interrupter for the group), “we’ll be busy a lot of the time and have to move around the country for more symposiums and stuff.”
“But in a year or so, we’ll be able to settle down, get married, and move into a nice house with all the luxuries we want,” Beth reassured Christopher.
“Guess who’s employing us!” squealed Dana.
Without warning, Sammy wheeled around and punched Dana right in the face, wiping the blood onto a wall with a distasteful grimace. “Our employer wishes to remain anonymous at this time,” she explained, “as certain also unnamed parties may find his or her failure of great interest.” She glance angrily at Tyler with this last bit, but he was busy snorting Coke out of his nose and didn’t notice.
“In fact,” said Beth, gritting her teeth, “we’re leaving tomorrow for Florida. So long.” She gave Christopher a long, passionate kiss, and he suddenly wished she would leave for Florida every day.
In fact it took quite a bit longer than that, but some things do not need to be shared. They stayed and talked long into the night and the next morning they were gone.
Next: Chapter II: In Which Things Get Weirder (Unfinished)
