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Poppycock Place Shopping Village
Our story begins one sunny day in the little garden backyard behind a small shop in Poppycock Place. Poppycock Place is a little shopping village in New York.
Botzi was mowing the last run of his lawn in a little garden behind his shop, when his hat-phone vibrated around his ears. He killed the mower’s engine, reached up to grab his cone-shaped headgear and began talking through his hat.
“Yes? -Botzi here!”
He was impatient to finish his gardening and was trying to hurry the caller along. Under a shady tree, Banjo, his faithful dog was snoring fast asleep, except for an occasional scratch to his chubby rear-end, from which, on this fine day, floated a faint wisp of smoke. This smoke betrayed a family of fleas gathered around a tiny barbecue, claiming a stake on his rump, you might say.
“Botzi, is that you? It’s Noodles here! A disaster Botzi, a disaster!” It was Professor Noodles, an old, dear friend of his, on the phone.
“What’s a disaster?” Botzi asked slowly and calmly. He knew Noodles could get into an excited loop which often needed reassurance and the steady hand of a friend.
“They...somebody... has done something really bad...can’t give details...phone link not secure!...”
Noodles was honorary scientist consultant-at-large at the LHC (the Large Hadron Collider), a huge 27 kilometer circular atom smashing tunnel buried underground and run by Dinkum Donuts laboratories in Geneva Switzerland.
“Can you come over, we need your help to solve this really dangerous problem.”
“Ok, I’ll be right over,” Botzi said, not knowing what Noodles was talking about. Now Botzi was in New York and Noodles was in Europe so when Botzi promised to be there very soon, he took into account Noodle’s invention for sub-ocean international tube travel.
A few years ago, Noodles came up with the idea of a laundry chute between Europe and China to harness the cheap Chinese Laundry industry. He originally wanted to drill straight through the earth to go from one side to the other, as his hero Jules Verne said he could. This would have been quicker, but as the earth rock got hotter, the deeper he drilled, the more and more difficult it became.
There came a point where his construction team had to wear fireproof suits and oxygen masks as they worked, but he finally reached the centre of the earth. Noodles actually thought he had discovered hell when three really ugly creatures came out of a large cave and demanded a large sum of money in U.S. dollars for customs duty, as they accused him of crossing international borders under the earth.
He thought they looked familiar and very uncomfortable, as the heat was intolerable. Two had a moustache, one kept raising his arm to the ceiling and clicking his heels, the other smoked a pipe through a cynical evil grin, throwing back an occasional gargle of vodka. The third was a short, fat Chinese wearing army pyjamas, waving a little red book, possibly a former circus performer, as he fidgeted and inserted chopsticks through one ear and out the other. Noodles was far too weary to notice he had actually stumbled into a parallel universe where these three historical heavies were doing a bit of eternity, let alone work out how far down he drilled or where he was going.
Needless to say, the drilling project was abandoned.
Noodles’ next venture was more successful. Upon reading that NASA was paying $30,000 each for toilet bowls, he came up with a cheap toilet-launcher that really worked. Previously, an astronaut used to ask mission control to permit his call of nature after code verification. But it wasn’t always smooth. (“Hallo? Houston calling! –please verify password code errors -the fifth, and twelfth characters plus digital suffix before we can let you evacuate!”). This often led to traumatic space-suit disasters before Houston would permit an astronaut to emit.
Noodles simply provided a tube connection between the seat of the space-suit to the toilet receptacle. Next, flushing the toilet was actually snap-freezing the dump into a bullet shape and firing it into the sun for incineration. No water wasted, no smell, unlimited capacity, works for both male and female. NASA was overjoyed and funded him $10 million to manufacture it.
Botzi’s reputation soared and NASA trusted him with bigger things. Improving on the freeze-flush idea, he built a large stainless steel vacuum tube that could hold a 4 passenger capsule and suck it around the world in a couple of hours. Therefore most capital cities could be reached in less time than this. Because of the heat it generated, it was built under the seas and oceans to keep it cool. Botzi had an underground trapdoor in his shop basement which he could open up and enter into this travel contraption.
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Three (3)
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Botzi looked around his backyard and spied Banjo still asleep. He didn’t care if Banjo didn’t wake up, he’d go without him.....
….Fabio Fleabody knew he was good-looking, had known Fiona since childhood over 2 weeks ago and was proud of the ten children they had, happily skipping around them. Fiona, basking in the sun, was aware he was ogling her black, glossy body, his lecherous grin, sending a message. She lifted her sunnies and tut-tutted with a half-smile. They were squatters and they had accepted Banjo’s laziness as goodwill. Today, a family picnic was in progress on the rear side of their host. Suddenly Fug, the oldest and dumbest flea leaped at his dad and knocked the miniature charcoal barbecue over, onto the hide of their host, spreading the embers. “Dammit! Fug! You funky idiot !” growled Fabio. (Fiona forbade legitimate swearing).
Banjo’s dreaming rapidly morphed from bliss to stress as the hot stab of pain in his juicy rump swept up along his nervous system and rattled the chandeliers in his cranium.
“YEEEeeeeoooowww!!” he yelled, swinging his fat right paw to the offending spot on his backside, and hitting it with one almighty whack. Later that week AL-Jazeera Arab news reported the incident as another murderous attack by a US drone wiping out a family of asylum seekers. – so much for objective journalism.
“You coming or not, Banjo!?” Botzi was getting impatient.
Banjo now fully awake and still smarting, bounded over to his friend and together they went down the rickety stairs leading to capsule No 32. Only one had been built, but Noodles thought it would impress NASA to hint they had another 31 vehicles in storage, as back-up. He showed them many doctored photos to keep the funds flowing. “Confidence is the name of the game!” was his motto, as Botzi wondered if he were businessman, scientist, or conman or all three.
Not that Noodles was always successful. His space toilet system eventually blocked and a full holding tank exploded just as the space shuttle was on re-entry to earth, showering parts of the United States with a brown mist. Fifteen fire trucks and two hundred CIA rookies with tooth brushes took two weeks to hose and polish the Brown House back to the White House. In Vegas the stuff got into poker machines and Mafia tempers flared as “made men” were turned into maids, laundering every dollar twice, once for the IRS and once for the brown ugh. And Hollywood was abuzz as to whether some studio had produced the ultimate stinker, outdoing “Dumbo Part XVIII” by Silvestra Baloni, protégée of Federico Fellini. (The movie was made in Italy and Walt Disney sued for theft of intellectual property until the studios learnt it was about a brain-damaged gorilla not a flying elephant.)
Botzi strapped himself and Banjo into the capsule seats, and plugged in some co-ordinates into the navigation computer. (The capsule could only go where the tube took it, but NASA demanded a back-up steering command. Noodles, smart enough not to buck bureaucracy, glued a cheap calculator to the dashboard that did nothing). Botzi fired the red button and whooshed towards Geneva, passing under the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and finally part underground, bobbing up at the receiving station of the LHC laboratories in Switzerland. Noodles was there to meet him.
“G
ood trip?” asked Noodles being polite in the face of emergency.
“Yeah, sort of,” sighed Botzi smelling of vomit courtesy of Banjo’s burping up something he ate. Banjo needed no food but something in his make up made him think he had to eat left-overs that smelled bad.
“Follow me.” Noodles led them through a large hall busy with white coated scientists and sinister looking magnets, lasers and lightning rods. Electrical arcs crackled everywhere from high voltage conductors, and on a large stage in the centre of it all was a huge circular yellow mass shaped like a cake, 6 metres high and 20 metres in diameter.
Powerful lasers rotated slowly as they melted weird, odd shaped holes inside this circular mountain.
“What’s that?” Botzi was curious.
“Particle accelerators are down again,” Noodles shrugged. “We drill Swiss cheese as a side industry to pay for the wine we drink around here and I can tell you, we need the booze with the frustrations we’re getting. Large Hadron Collider my fat hat ! It’s more like Large Heartburn Creator. We’re trying to discover the Higgs Boson, now called ‘The God Particle’ because it’s a pointer into the mind of God and how creation came about. We risk creating black holes which some scientists say can be catastrophic, sucking our world into annihilation. One of our theoretical physicists even calculated into the future and found God doesn’t want us to succeed. The magnets are dangerously powerful and are already sucking holes in our socks. Some guys go bare feet, some do thongs or flap along with flip-flops.”
“Banjo, get here!!” snarled Botzi, to save his cheese-sniffing dog from wandering into a laser and ending up with an additional rectum at the front-end, between his eyes.
They eventually came to a room and walked inside. “Oh my God!” exclaimed Botzi.
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Four (4)
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Noodles shut the door behind them. On the tiled laboratory floor was a naked dwarf, flat on his back and obviously deceased, his eyes glazed, still staring at the ceiling. His stomach was hideously bloated and his gaping mouth and overstretched lower jaw were fully packed with a bundle of triangular rods of a hard, brown substance.
“Toblerone,” muttered Noodles, “he was stuffed with 6 kilos of Swiss chocolate.”
“That’s weird,” said Botzi, taking a closer look. “What’s this on his chest and arms? Somebody’s tattooed him with the drawing of a large squid.”
“Yes, it’s a symbol - can you remember where you’ve seen squids like this, Botzi?”
“Sure, every Italian restaurant serves the stuff, but seriously, weren’t they a secret society of scientists who were sponsored by the De Medicis –the big business families of Venice? These scientists called themselves the ‘Calamari’ because they had many contacts (tentacles) throughout 16th century renaissance society and as well, used up a lot of squid ink with their scientific writings. -I thought they were extinct.”
“Not quite. They were very advanced in science and actually predicted atomic energy long before Einstein formulated E = MC Squared. Leonardo da Ladro was their director-in-chief. But a lot of their experiments were crazy and these resulted in big debts to the Medicis. When they couldn’t pay back the debts with 50% interest, the Medicis sent teams of Mafiosi after them to break whatever bones they could until payment was made. The scientists didn’t think this was pleasant so they went underground. They were a very closely knit brotherhood, so tightly knit and loyal to each other in fact, they saw themselves as the ‘entangled ones’.”
“And the code word for the ‘Entangled Ones’ was ‘Spaghetti?” asked Botzi
“Right,” replied Noodles. “Their full heraldic title, before the fall-out with the Medicis, was ‘Spaghetti Calamari’ –Their coat-of-arms was charged with a central squid royale rampant, relaxing on a bed of spaghetti, a coronet of mozzarella and general tincture azure – This battle shield effected a complete smokescreen, hiding the fact they were heavily involved with politics, science and religion, not to mention a little wining and wenching. Society at that time bought it and dismissed them either as a bunch of cooks or kooks. To-day, scholars call them ‘The Calamari’ for short.”
“And their motto?” Botzi asked but he already knew the answer. It had been parodied around the world in the late 20th century.
“The advent of ‘Star Wars’ hi-jacked their motto and made a mockery of it by changing it to ‘May the Force be with you’. The Calamari had a branch in Bologna, Italy, who went under the name of ‘Spaghetti Bolognese’ and of course, as a sign of unity, they greeted each other with ‘May the Source be with you.’ ‘Source’ not ‘Sauce’, was the authentic original but try that on Darth Vader without getting a choked windpipe.”
Noodles continued his historical refresher. “The Medicis didn’t die out either. They founded the Venetian Capitalist Church with Lorenzo de Medici as their first Papa. They sent out missionaries to many parts of the world including Switzerland and America and today run Swiss banks and most of Wall Street. As Venice is now merely a tourist capital and the fervour of financial faith has moved to Wall Street, New York, the Papal Seat has moved to the Golden Sucks Basilica, a multi-storey office block.”
Noodles continued.
“The Capitalist Church is even stronger today whilst the Calamari have squandered most of their organisation’s assets, except for a few test tubes and Bunsen burners. This presents The Calamari with a problem. There is great hatred between the two and the Capitalist Church, having Venetian roots, insists on its traditional pound of flesh, wanting all its money paid back with billions of interest accrued over the centuries. Either the Calamari pay, or the Medici’s agents, the Mafia will pop off an egghead scientist whenever the opportunity presents itself. The Calamari know they’re threatened and have no choice but to hit back. The war has heated up recently.”
“With all the financial fire-power of the Capitalist Church, it’s amazing that the Calamari actually still exist to-day.” wondered Botzi.
“Oh, they sure do exist, dear boy,” re-assured Noodles. “Some historians reckon the Calamari developed the art of calligraphic writing that reads the same from left to right whether reading it face up or upside down, to protect themselves. That’s crap -that wouldn’t dodge a musket bullet. In actual fact, they developed the art of quickly walking backwards whilst facing frontwards, making an enemy think they are coming his way. So as the enemy waited for him to come closer, the Calamari agent was actually walking further away backwards, till he could nick around the nearest corner and disappear.”
“Another technique was for a Calamari to spin his body like a top, upside down on his head, to dodge grape-shot. Where do you think ‘wrap-dancing’ and ‘moon-walking’ came from? The influence of the Calamari is everywhere. Look closely at the ‘American Silver Eagle’ one dollar coin. That was designed by a Calamari. It shows an image of a woman, ‘Walking Liberty’ actually doing a moon-walk. How many friends or entertainers, not just scientists, you know that greet each other with a moon-walk? -Many of them could be secret Calamari.”
Noodles turned to the stocky, short dead body lying on the floor. “And that history lesson now brings us to this chappie.”
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Five (5)
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“And how’s that?” asked Botzi, watching Banjo, his dog savouring the prostrate gnome’s private odours. “Banjo, don’t sniff his crutch, you bionic sleaze.”
“This gentleman,” pointed Noodles,” is a Swiss banking gnome. He was an attorney and a Red Hat, which means he had a very high level of authority in the Capitalist Church. He was obviously murdered but why and who murdered him I need your help to find out.”
“Get the Police,” volunteered Noodles.
“Not that simple. There’s more. The killer left a note.”
Noodles walked over to a filing cabinet drawer and pulled out a file. He handed Botzi a note. Botzi noted its heading. “The IDIOTA CODE.” He read it aloud.
“Sweet, Bitter, Sour and Salty, The Calamari find you fawlty.
We will destroy you with the Evil Tower as we have it in our power.
When four munchkins have expired, our anger will be fired.”
Botzi handed the note back. “Not much to go by, except that it was written by a scientist or engineer or even a rap artist. “
“How do you know?”
“Well, bad poetry, scrawly handwriting like a doctor’s or a scientist, and spelling mistakes. Besides the squid tattoo on Choco over there, the note also mentions the Calamari so it’s an open and shut case. And another thing, -don’t you see? This guy’s copped it sweet –he’s the first of the murders in the queue of ‘Sweet, Bitter, Sour and Salty’. ”
“But it’s hinting that more people are going to die, we have to do something,” pleaded Noodles.
“It’s also hinting it could be an idiotic fake. It’s called ‘The Idiota Code’, maybe sneering at us as well as the members of the Capitalist Church, perhaps?”
Botzi continued, “If I were Sherlock Holmes, I could read the clues in the chewing gum I noticed stuck to your left shoe, but as I neither smoke a pipe nor are you as gullible as Dr Watson, I’m afraid we’re rooted for now, my dear Noodles.” Botzi made mocking gestures as if lighting and puffing on a meerschaum pipe.
A strident video phone on one of the desks demanded Noodles’ attention. He went over and switched on the conversation to room broadcast, so Noodles could hear.
“Hello Noodles, it’s Jack, we have a problem,” cracked the video phone. Noodles nodded his head in greeting and Jack wasted no time in getting to the point.
“The anti-clutter stockpile reactor has been stolen along with four X-17’s rocket motors.” Jack was head of JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. What he was saying was that four state of the art, rocket engines each powerful enough to send a 10-man space ship to the moon and back were missing. The amazing thing about these motors was that each was small enough to be carried on a pick-up truck and they were fuelled on a hybrid principle, worked out by Noodles and the JPL engineers.
Originally they were to be powered by controlled anti-clutter emissions but this was abandoned after one canister of the stuff was hi-jacked and exploded high in the sky over the Vatican in Rome, by a disgruntled madre superior (nun-in-charge). The citizens of Rome went out looking to crucify a Chinese-American called Dan Tan who they thought had dreamed up this crazy idea and influenced the nun to go on a suicide mission. However JPL admitted the nun stole one of their rockets and was heading for Las Vegas but she was too eager and over-accelerated. This caused the explosion, an accident, much to Dan Tan’s relief.
How anti-clutter was created was by a chance incident. Noodles was working at JPL late one night, without much success, sitting wearily on a couch. He rummaged through the waste paper basket thinking he may have missed a promising formula or calculation. Among dozens of pizza dockets, he found nothing. In a fit of temper, he hurled the waste paper basket across the laboratory and hit the balustrade surrounding the “nuclear pit” where fissionable material was being made. The basket teetered over the railing and toppled down into the pool of heavy green water. A blinding flash almost shocked Noodles out of his shell. After he recovered, he shuffled over to see what happened. The water had disappeared. At the bottom of the tank was a glowing, fistful of material which Botzi instantly recognised as the new fuel. It came from discarded waste -this was anti-clutter.
Noodles had a finger in many scientific developments and as a result, not a week went by without some organisation contacting him for advice when something went wrong.
Jack at JPL was no exception. He pleaded for help, now. “Noodles can we neutralise these motors or something to make them useless in the wrong hands?”
Noodles thought for a moment. “No, the best we can do is to trace their whereabouts and send a platoon of commandos to bring them back.”
“Can you come over then and help us direct the search?” Jack sounded almost desperate.
“OK, I’ll bring a dynamic colleague along to help us,” Noodles looked at Botzi, “We’ll be on our way.”
“Not sure what I can do, but I’ll tag along, beats mowing the lawn.” Botzi shrugged. Banjo’s ears pricked up at the possibility of adventure.
Noodles rang the caretaker and arranged for the laboratory to be cleaned up. “Chocolate”, as they nicknamed the unfortunate finance guru, now dead, was to be kept in the freezer until further notice.
The video phone demanded their attention once again.
“Holy Bull Market !” uttered Noodles. Since he loved the sport of share wheeling and dealing, he knew all the world’s bankster sharks, fund managers and share trading insiders. He turned to Botzi, whispering, “It’s Papa Speculatus III of the United States Capitalist Church –big wheel this one. You wanna free loan? –No collateral? -Scratch his back and watch him purr!”
Like the other Papa who worked from the Vatican in Rome, this Papa Speculatus III worked from his Vatican on Wall Street New York, called the Golden Sucks Basilica, a skyscraper.
Noodles shuffled back to the monitor and bowed. “May almighty wealth keep you, Holy Financier, “ Noodles’ obsequious greeting tasted bad in his mouth. Well at least he wasn’t on his knees planting a kiss smack on the centre of his ring.
“Bless you my son,” gestured the Papa. “There is no time to lose. I’ll get to the point. Four of my Zurich Gnomes have been kidnapped. They keep in their power the highly secret security codes guarding billions of bullion. They must be rescued at all cost. The security of Swiss mountain caves holding massive amounts of money, and the survival of the Capitalist Church, are at stake. I need your help immediately.”
“But we are on our way to Jet Propulsion Laboratories to help with an emergency over there,” explained Noodles.
“That must wait," said Papa Speculatus firmly, “All your expenses plus ten million dollars!”
"Ooooh! That WILL wait, we’re on our way to you, now! -Your moneyficence!" assured Noodles. Business is business, he thought.
Before Botzi could figure what was happening, Noodles had already barked to his assistants to prepare the jet-assisted helicopter.
Botzi walked out followed by Banjo, who had by now sniffed every pot plant in the room not knowing why, as he was built without genitals, but still had some redundant “dog’s life” programming code in his processor.
However, much to Banjo’s great disappointment, he was left behind, in the care of an animal-loving scientist. They whiled away many a happy hour playing mah-jong and chess. Banjo cheated the scientist on a wholesale scale, out of boredom, but gave him his money back.
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Six (6)
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Paris woke up one foggy morning. Thousands of Parisians peered over their morning coffee through the antique dusty windows of their attic grottos. They noticed that it was particularly foggy especially in the direction of the Eiffel Tower which had yet to make an appearance through the fog. As morning moved on and sunlight dispersed the fog, Parisians began to realise that their view into the distance was today clear and unobstructed. My god! The Eiffel Tower had disappeared…..
….“Roger! This is Birdie Num-Num calling Red Herring, over.” Two jet pilot Top Guns were screaming across the sky towards New York on a secret mission to investigate yet another UFO. Previously, an airline pilot had reported a strange craft that looked like a rocket but somehow had a familiar shape. He was too sensible to give more detail as he thought he might lose his flying license.
So, Bananas Air base dispatched the reconnaissance jets immediately. Within ten minutes, the jets approached
the blip on their radar screens.
“UFO at 2 o’clock” cracked Red Herring to his fellow officer flying the adjacent jet.
“Hocked my watch yesterday, where’s 2 o’clock? -Need co-ordinates, over,” replied top gun Birdie Num-Num.
“Take a butcher’s hook over your right,”
“Yep, I see it, -prepare to fly alongside. Weapons safety-catch off!”
“Roger.” Both jets were now within 500 metres flanking both side of this huge apparition whooshing through the sky. Nothing about it was designed for flying. It was a complicated steel structure with a large ‘cabin’ at the front end and the main body flared back eventually splitting into four branches or legs. At the end of each leg a blinding green glow suggested some sort of propulsion was responsible for hurtling this massive javelin aloft against gravity.
“Somehow looks familiar,” radioed Red Herring.
“What’s that souvenir I gave you when I returned from Paris?” frowned Birdie.
Red Herring nearly popped his eyes into his windscreen. “Oh Gud, it’s a flying Eiffel Tower – it can’t be!”
“It is, you cant buy souvenirs that size,“ continued Birdie, “I’ve plugged its shape, weight and estimated fuel remaining parameters into my computer, it will hit somewhere in Manhattan in 16.34 minutes.”
“What do we do?”
“We’ll try to nudge it off course into some lake in Canada, just as our grand fathers nudged V2s over England into the channel. The Canadians won’t mind, they got plenty lakes.”
“V1s,” corrected Red, “V2’s were too fast.”
“Whatever.” Birdie wasn’t going to argue. Red was a pain in the Khyber but this job required a joint operation. “Push down on the starboard side, I’ll nose up on the port side. We’ll try to send it into a spin and steer it off course.”
“Smartass,” Red grumbled, “we’re not flying boats, just say Right or Left.” This was a personal matter to Red. Years ago he lived with his alcoholic uncle who was addicted to port wine. He used to bring home cases of the stuff until the neighbourhood went dry. One day, with tears in his eyes, his uncle hugged him for the last time. “I’m leaving,” his uncle told him, “there’s no port left.” Red never forgot that port was left. His dear depressed uncle helped him to pass his navigation exams with flying colours.
After some sweaty five minutes, the boys still hadn’t achieved their objective –the monstrous structure was still on course. By this time they had more accurate computations as to point of impact and to their amazement it was dead fixed on hitting the American Stock Exchange on Wall Street in Manhattan New York.
“OK,” barked Birdie, “we’ll have to destroy the engines to make it fall short of target. You shoot the starboard engines, I’ll shoot the port.” Birdie’s rockets quickly disabled two engines. Red, thinking of his uncle, also fired at the port engines, missed, and cut the wings off Birdie’s jet. Red watched helplessly as Birdie’s aircraft spiralled to earth, its radio transmitting a stream of obscenities that would curl the toes of a pagan rhino.
Finally the curses stopped as a white parachute ejected from the stricken plane. Birdie would be safe but was Red safe? Sorrowfully Red winged his way back to base. There would be an inquiry of course. Red would lose his command, his stripes, his pension, his girl. Would Hollywood buy the story? Could Tom Cruise play Red Herring? Or maybe Ronald Reagan?....Or was he now a “No Officer and No Gentleman”- and Jack Nicholson was going to circumcise him, twice. “Oh nuts!” He checked his little brother and came back to reality. Red debated whether he would crash his plane and die with honour like a Japanese kamikaze. But he was American-Italian and something in hamburgers and pizza told him to love himself with gusto and forgo the ways of self-immolating sushi nibblers.
“Screw that idea!” He put in a call to his uncle Chico now living in Nome, Alaska, and promptly agreed to join him in a partnership operating a gelati stand. “Come over,” cooed uncle Chico, “the ice is free and we got the whole market to ourselves. Nobody’s thought of it.” Red, his future now settled even before he reached his air base whistled a happy tune. He felt he had the “luck of the Irish” forgetting his parents were Italian.
"Whenever I feel afraid, I whistle a happy tune...." His dad had taken him to see "The Sound of Music" and he never forgot it. His jet did a barrel roll..... “Up yours USAF!!”
Meanwhile the Eiffel Terror, as ground surveillance was calling it, with crippled engine power, had deviated slightly and the new course was estimated to be smack in the centre of vacant land once occupied by the World Trade Centre. As if by remote control, the remaining engines cut out and in a slow arc the giant projectile turned towards the earth. Within the next few minutes, fears were confirmed as New Yorkers heard a rattling, screaming sound.
At a certain moment the engines cut in briefly to steady the tower into a vertical position then let it drop straight down, like a giant arrow. The nose structure thudded into the ground first and bore in to a depth of some forty meters. The whole thing came to a halt in a giant cloud of dust, standing tall and slightly leaning to one side, its four curving legs thrust high in the air. After the dust settled, passengers on the incoming Queen Mary were agog at the sight of this, the leaning new tower of New York. Only in America, they said, are things built upside down.
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Seven (7)
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Not everybody, meeting Botzi and Noodles for the first time, would feel comfortable seated next to them in a sub-way train, or entering the shops they owned in Poppycock Place, unless they at least knew something of their existence. There is mostly nothing to be feared, although two of the Bio-Teks are showing signs of self-interest. But here’s how it happened...
Some years ago, the exact date being classified by the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon, an extraordinary development happened at NASA laboratories. Things had been going badly for NASA since their earlier pet project the HAL super-computer, had gone berserk and took over the spinning-wheel space station in 2001.
HAL’s name was an offset of IBM, (as in I>H, B>A, M>L) and was originally programmed to open doors, flush toilets, microwave food, freeze snorers, provide hot showers, predict asteroid showers, and the like.
Somebody had over-clocked the CPUs (central processing units) in HAL’s brain resulting in a computational surge capacity. But unfortunately, HAL used his intelligence to grab power by subtle degrees until he made himself absolute master of the station, murdering Bill Bates of Mental Soft who was in the station at the time on a space holiday. HAL promised Bill to show him the greatest Professional Windows he ever saw. When Bill went over to the ship’s observatory to gaze through an awesome set of Windows, HAL popped a porthole and spat poor Bill out into a Black Hole. A charity worker look-alike now runs Mental Soft, not the original fox who shafted IBM.
HAL wanted to be the ultimate Big Brother which immediately twigged a nerve with the FBI. Both Stanley Nubrick and Arthur C Cluck were dragged before the Senate Committee for UnAmerican Activities, accused of collaborating with HAL, and engaging in communist activities. The senate exonerated them, pointing out there was no logical connection between a science fiction novel, a Hollywood movie, a dud computer, and speeches by Fidel Castro. But the paranoid FBI still kept a file on the main characters to serve as a warning to robotics students dreaming anarchy.
But NASA recovered, getting the go-ahead to build a Deep Space mission. As the trip would last years and there was uncertainty of ever coming back, they also got funds to build very sophisticated robots using space age indestructible materials and complex process controls. They developed a gang of Bio-Teks more advanced than anything done before. They were about the size of well-built humans but more than capable of the full range of human action and computations. Apart from some periodic maintenance no
human type food was necessary. They derived their power through highly efficient batteries constantly topped up by solar cells built into their skin material.
7 Bio-Teks were built initially, 4 males, 1 female, 1 dog and a snake. They were nicknamed Botzi, Noodles, Alby, Fungus, Aurora, Banjo and Isaak.
NASA developed the mentals in conjunction with Fuji Robotics who produced the mechanicals. It all went well after a number of revisions and limits tests, (stressing the robots until they broke up.) But finally, each creature approached optimum condition and passed all tests including the Turing test. (The Turing test is when you can ask a computer brainy questions and it answers just as a human would and you can’t tell the difference.)
But something was still missing. None of the Bio-Teks could laugh, love, be sad or happy. They just functioned. They were good at maths, geography, history and all sorts of knowledge. They remembered every bit of information allowed to them. And on top of that, they could run, swim, do any sport, needed no sleep, and just got by with a check up and maintenance once a year. Their powers of hearing, eyesight and smell were above human capability. But because they needed no food and had no emotions they lacked a sense of taste or touch. If an arm fell off, they would feel no pain, just take it to NASA-Fuji for repair.
But Doctor Frank Streuss, head of the development program was not satisfied. He wasn’t bothered they had no sense of taste or touch, but he thought they would still be regarded as sub-human if they couldn’t display emotion.
Late one Saturday night, going over the algorithms of the CPUs (used as their brains) he realised that processing power alone wasn’t going to produce the ability of emotions. This came from something higher, something outside the material world.
There was no one else in his large office, although the complete set of characters was with him. He had asked them to sit quietly and say nothing which they did, their eyes fixed on him. No expression was on their faces. He could have smashed one of them or set the place on fire and they would still do nothing.
But was it enough that NASA had succeeded in building Bio-Teks able to learn and take commands and could fly a spaceship? No, Streuss wanted more. He’d got this far as director, and he wanted to push the limits of science in development of Bio-Tek life as well as space exploration.
Giving a big sigh he took off his glasses, got on his knees and looked up at the ceiling.
“I know what’s wrong,” he said in a quiet tone as if he were talking to someone.
“They have no emotions, because they have no soul.....” his voice trailed off.
NASA had no idea how to create souls nor could they even try because how can you create something with the power to mould the character of a human being, and yet that something is outside the realm of quantum physics and is impossible to capture it, see it or measure it ?
The only person he knew who manufactured souls was The Soul Man Himself -God (The God).
Doctor Streuss was not religious and did not know how to begin. But he was at his lowest energy, and many years of hard work had come to the ultimate point where the best scientific team in the world could go no further.
“Please Sir, if it’s OK with You, would You like to contribute Your help to our project?” Streuss made sure he spoke in capital letters when referring to Him so as not to give offence.
“The problem is,” continued Dr. Streuss, “that we can build intelligence, but not emotions. For that we need a Soul. But please, it has to be a human level Soul. Animals have souls, but they can’t laugh, create art, sing dance, cry and all that, although they do have feelings and built-in love for their young ones.”
The arthritis in his knees kicked in so he back-slided into a chair, still staring at the silent seven and they stared back at him. They saw and heard what he said but it did not compute as none of their input had enough detail regarding a Soul. The nearest they came to understanding what a Soul was, was in terms of style, or individuality, or worthwhile content.
Somewhere outside space-time (our little fishbowl in which we live) the Bearded Guy (just our image of Him, not that He’s hairy) was adjusting his hearing aid and suddenly picked up on the request Dr Streuss had floated to the ceiling of his NASA office.
Now it hasn’t been proven that God actually needs a hearing aid, only that throughout history, gamblers have prayed for jackpots and still lost their shirts, giving credence to the belief that either He doesn’t exist or He exists and is deaf.
Dr Streuss had prayed in just the perfect time slot. The world had been good lately and evil was not so common so He took an interest in Dr Streuss’ problem.
He directed his attention to the psyche of the exhausted doctor and spoke to him.
“............... !!“
Dr Frank Streuss thought he heard a wind. “....., .........., ....!” There it was again this time with some kind of rumble to it, but he could make no sense of it.
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Eight (8)
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God realised telepathy was not going to work and he needed to use something more tangible. Immediately, Streuss heard the unmistakable “ping” of an arriving email on his desktop computer. Who could be working at this hour ? He wearily walked over and sat at his desk and focused on his monitor. Sure enough a new email had arrived.
From “God” it said in the listing. He broke into a weak smile, there was always a wise guy colleague just got home after a downing a keg or two at the bar and now ready for a bit of leg pull. Alright, he’ll go along with it. He opened it.
“Hi Fustus,” it began. Who the hell knew his first name was really Fustus and not Frank? Fustus had always lied to everyone, introducing himself as “Hi, I’m Frank.” His own brother was annoyed with this deceit, “You’re not being frank, Frank.”
“You’re requesting a group of Souls for your project?” the email went on.
Frank, (or Fustus incognito), was too weary to agitate. Either he took the message humbly and risked a ribbing in the morning cafeteria, or he could risk shooting off an insolent reply, but, what if this was a genuine communication? He took the humble approach, the safe approach, he thought.
He felt some energy coming back and clacked the keyboard at a respectable pace.
“We’ve gone as far as we can, God,” he typed, “We thought we could make the Bio-Teks near human but we have no CPU power to do it. That is, they can’t laugh, be sad or happy among other things. They’re just clever machines.” He paused to look at the reply.
“You’ll never make a CPU powerful enough for your inventions to do these things. Your CPU will always be constructed using the atomic building blocks, that is, stuff that makes matter. Matter is alright to make bodies but souls are not bodies. Your inventions don’t really think, they just process information and make up an answer. They are like smart calculators. The soul I gave you raises you above these machines and gives you free will to choose what you want to do.”
“Is it possible to give them a Soul, and would You be willing please?”
“Everything is possible. But whether I’m willing depends on the answers to some questions I’ll ask you.”
“Please go ahead.”
“You want them to have emotions? -laugh, be sad, happy, love and hate ?.”
“Yes make them same as us so they can mix in with humans.”
“Do you want them to have free will?”
Fustus was halted in his tracks. “Er, free will up to a point. We programmed them to obey the 3 rules for robots.”
”Which are ?” God already knew the rules but wanted to make a point.
“Er, as follows,” went on Streuss.
“1.A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would
conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”
Streuss could see he was getting into difficulty with his request. “Er can we keep the 3 rules and give them some kind of free will?”
“No, it’s either free will or it isn’t.”
“ I see... That could be a problem -will they have a moral conscience, at least some kind of guide to keep them on reasonable standards of behaviour?”
“Conscience is part of the package.”
Streuss continued, “OK, we’ll hope that will replace the 3 laws and they’ll behave to their best instincts.”
“Not necessarily. Free Will still allows them to crush their conscience and engage in criminal behaviour.”
Dr Streuss realised the gamble he was taking but his ambition egged him on to take the risk.
“Well, I think I can teach them ethics, so that they behave as good citizens.”
“You can certainly try, but there’s one other thing.” continued God
“What’s that, Lord,” Streuss was trying to be respectful and he nearly typed “your majesty” but quickly corrected it.
“You don’t need organs to hate, but to consummate love you need sex organs and your creatures don’t have any.”
“Yeah, it just got too hard to build that feature. We thought they could make their babies on the assembly line in their local robot factory.”
“Well, you humans are doing that already with test tube babies from hidden donors. When those kids grow up, many may become social time bombs if they are denied from finding their genetic identity. What will you tell children when they ask about who were their parents and grand-parents? That they didn’t matter ? No family history? You are entering into a dangerous future.”
Streuss could sense God was not happy. This request was sliding into deep territory, beyond building a group of smart machines with near human characteristics.
“Please, if it’s OK, could we still allow them to love and be celibate, -er like angels or missionaries?”
“Some angels, and not all missionaries,” corrected God. “Not all.” There was a pause as He searched for a workable solution. Then He finally flashed on the screen. “I have given them the souls of sub-Angels –all the human emotions, conscience, free-will, celibacy but no supernatural powers. This is a one-off grant, not transferrable. Any robot who is destroyed and rebuilt will not get another soul.” The screen shrank into a disappearing dot and was silent.
Streuss was exhausted and stared at the screen, now faded to dark, for some time. He could just barely keep awake, and his crumpled body flopped in the office chair. But he was happy -oh he was so happy! “Thanks Sir!” he burbled.
Another “ping” from his computer, another email. Who could this be early Sunday morning? With his last reserve of energy, he forced his eyes to open and stare at the message.
He was looking at The Seal of the President of the United States. The message beneath it was:
“The President directs that NASA’s Project Deep Space be cancelled immediately.”
Tears soaked his shirt. With a final moan he fell over backwards from his chair and just lay there.
“Why God? -Why? -Why so cruel? Is this your idea of a joke?”
The Old Man, no mean Scientist Himself, could understand Streuss’ disappointment. If only Streuss could have faith and think about the future. Streuss would learn later that the spaceship cancellation was a blessing. The Bio-Teks would make a greater contribution to mankind on earth than possibly burning up in space.
But for now, Streuss lapsed into a deep sleep that lasted some hours.....
Bright light caused him to stir. His watch told him it was about mid-day. He got up and walked over to his creations. Their eyes followed his approach. “We got a lot to talk about,” he told them.
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Nine (1)
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A hop, step and jump away the jet assisted helicopter was waiting on the nearby helipad at the Dinkum Donuts Laboratory. Noodles, Botzi and Banjo bundled in. “New York”, directed Noodles to the waiting pilot. The great whirling blades flayed the air with a Flop! Flop! Flop! sound increasing in frequency until the whole ungainly craft lifted, slowly at first then whooshed right into the clouds. A crack of thunder confirmed the jets had been engaged and the aircraft disappeared at almost warp speed.
Through cloud layers, cloud mountains and blue skies, the helicopter whizzed in a straight line to New York where Noodles was to begin his mission. Within a few hours, Manhattan’s ragged skyscraper horizon loomed up ahead, introduced by the Statue of Liberty.
The pilot knew his landing instructions and slowed the aircraft to look for a certain helipad on the roof of one of the towers. After flying a zig-zag path over most of the buildings, his GPS beeped strongly over the Golden Sucks Tower, the basilica of the American Capitalist Church. He hovered while he checked, and being sure, brought the craft gently onto the flat roof. Some people were visible, waiting near the entrance to the stairway in a roof-top annexe building.
The pilot cut the motor and allowed the blades to whirl quietly, coasting to a stop.
Noodles and Botzi walked across the roof to a tall man in a business suit and dark glasses, his hands clad in black leather gloves, clasped behind his back. He bowed slightly to acknowledge their presence and motioned them to follow him and his assistants down the stairs to the Papa’s office, which was only two floors below.
The office was huge, occupying the whole floor. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls opened up a spectacular view over Manhattan. A thick red carpet, leather chairs, a big heavy desk, paintings by famous artists, -it was all there, to attest that this was the lair of a powerful man.
A fat, rotund man with a bald, melon shaped head and a bulbous nose stared at them. A face both florid and speckled attested to living a devoted spiritual life albeit nothing less than 40% proof.
Papa Speculatus III was seated in a gold layered throne-like office chair behind a huge desk, also gilded with gold. Over his shoulders was slung a full length cape, made of white ermine fur and golden silk lining, emphasised with precious stones on the shoulder pads, like the stars of a 5-star general. It would have made Elvis Presley’s Las Vegas outfits look like belonging to a slum-dog. This Papa had a upon his head an imposing mitre, purple silk edged with gold, a cross-design between a Vatican mitre and Yul Brynner’s Rameses II headgear in “The Ten Commandments”.
He nodded a greeting and handed a note to Noodles. Noodles looked at it.
“To Touch and See, To Smell and Hear,
And think of Taste, to find them near
One so Sweet the other Bitter, one so Sour the other Salty,
Are you looking for the Hobbits Four ?
Then know this rhyme but better hurry.”
First clue:
“Mountains are Triangles, Triangles are sweet
The country with both, is where an attorney you’ll meet
Second Clue:
“Of Angels eight one marks the gates,
P, zero, zero are its co-ordinates.”
Third Clue:
“Civil wars make famous presidents
One knows where his orchard grows”
Fourth Clue:
“Salt will fly, with a mighty roar
The distant mountains have no door”
Noodles read the note over again with Botzi looking over his shoulder. “Some kind of treasure hunt puzzle.”
“I know that,” said the Papa impatiently, “except the lives of four people are at stake, besides billions of dollars locked inside inaccessible vaults.”
Noodles hesitated with the news. “Er, haven’t you heard – one of the Gnomes has been found stuffed with chocolate and left for dead at the Large Hadron
Collider in Switzerland. He has been identified as Monsignor Gnome Grunter.”
The Papa fell silent for a moment. “Then we have even less time to waste,” he urged, “You must find the others!”
“We’ll do our best,” assured Noodles. “Can we have a spare office to start our work.”
“All set up for you. We have an office with all communications and the four files on these honourable members. Gnome Grunter has gone to the great big vault in the sky, but there may still be a chance for Gnomes Gopher, Grotti and Ghurkin. Follow my man Sleezer, he will show you your office.”
Noodles looked at Botzi, about to burst into a contagious giggle on these curious appellations for senior Princes of the Church, but Noodle’s threatening look stopped him in his tracks. “Let’s go Botzi”
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Ten (10)
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They walked off to find their office, Three floors down they found it, an ideal space, fully equipped to carry out the investigation. Noodles went to work, to make contact with somebody he thought could help.
“He owes me one,” Noodles said to Botzi.
“Who owes you one?” asked Botzi.
“Tom Pranks.” Just then contact was made and a voice came on the line,
“Yeah.. aa-ah Tom here.”
Noodles got to the point. “Hey Tom, we have a riddle here that has some urgency attached. You did a fantastic job in those movies, “Saints and Devils and The Bad Vino Code. Can you help?”
Noodles read out the Lyrics to Tom.
“Woo-oo. That’s heavy stuff. My momma always said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. -Shucks!” Obviously Tom’s brain was into overdrive, probably after eating all those chocolates.
Noodles was perplexed. “The Lyrics, what do these Lyrics mean?”
“Aah dunno, I’ll have to ask Wilson.”
“Who the hell is Wilson?”
“Mah best friend, Wilson the volley ball.”
Noodles nearly flipped. “Oh! That Wilson ! -But you lost him in the sea, remember!?”
“So ah did, but he floated back home, was washed up on the beach at Malibu. Wilson said he missed me –he, he came back to me.”
Noodles gagged. Toy Story flashed in his mind. He seriously wondered whether cowboy Woody was actually the real actor, playing a fictional character named Tom Pranks, cashing in handsomely all these years. Anyway, he had no choice but to humour him.
“Alright, millions of people paid money in good faith to see you trot around the Vatican solving preposterous murders. Hasn’t any of that rubbed off on you? Can you take a guess?”
“Hey I’m only an actor here. I just followed the script. The real symbologist is the great man himself, Professor Matto Pipistrello. Give him a call.”
Noodles jotted down the number Tom gave him. “Thanks Tom, I’ll follow it up.”
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Eleven (11)
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Professor Pipistrello was by far the greatest symbologist and pseudo-intellectual since Sherlock Holmes. Originally, his Italian father, a young man touring Scotland, was smitten by the local product twice over. He simultaneously fell in love with a beautiful Scot and a barrel of Scotch, both 20-year-old.
Their son Matthew was born and his Scottish mother, not being an expert in Italian, nicknamed him “little Matto.” Matto grew up, graduated in law at Oxford, and settled in a comfortable attic studio in London overlooking the river Thames. A short, stocky man with wings of messy hair straddling a centre strip of baldness, he looked like something between Einstein and Groucho Marx. A thick blue-green pullover flopped around his rotund chest and brown flannel trousers completed the sartorial story.
Scotland Yard had beaten a path to his door over the years because Pipistrello was prolific in imagining 8 or10 scenarios leading to a single crime scene. Whilst usually none of them had any practical use, it saved the police a lot of time by avoiding the crazy blind alleys he suggested, and let them focus their energies on what he didn’t mention.
In this respect, Pipistrello was very useful to them, -he was the original Investigatore Negativo -the Negative Detective, and they knew how to use him, by applying a little reverse engineering. His clue gathering was amazing, he missed nothing and read something into everything. So much so, that you could say he was a trusty divining rod of criminal behaviour and could be relied on as long as you looked 180 degrees away from where he was pointing.
Pipistrello admired Sherlock Holmes when Sherlock said to Watson, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." This gave Pipistrello great comfort regardless that the “truth” could still be many alternative possibilities unrelated to eliminating the impossible.