SWEAT DREAMS
Copyright Lindsay Johannsen 2015
Thank you.
National Library Of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication data:
Author: Johannsen, Lindsay Andrew
Title: Sweat Dreams
Cover art and design bungled by the author.
To order the McCullock’s Gold paperback version or contact the author please visit
www.vividpublishing.com.au/lajohannsen
SWEAT DREAMS
“…Umm, hello. I er...
“Look I’m not too sure about this. I mean should I even say ‘hello’? …Sorry. I'm just a bit nervous, that’s all. Only there’s something that’s worrying me and I reckon someone else should know about it – you know, in case of…
“Well, for the record, at least. But please don’t think I’m some sort of paranoid nut-case or anything, ‘cos I’m not. It’s just that umm … ‘something’ happened recently that er…
“‘No suspicious circumstances’, they said. And yeah, it certainly looked accidental, but I’m sure it was deliberate. Whatever the case, if it hadn’t been for a bit of luck me and Brian might well be … you know…
“Oh dear. I suppose I do sound paranoid. But I really am worried about this and you’ll understand when I explain it all.
“You see, I’m the bloke that, um ... ‘invented’, the Fuel Stretcher.
“‘—Yeah, right,’ you’ll be thinking, ‘and the Easter Bunny is real and the moon is made of green cheese.’ You’ll probably feel like laughing, too, but I know you’ll have better manners. I wouldn’t blame you for being skeptical, though.
“Anyhow, the thing is, you and just about everyone else in the world thinks the Fuel Stretcher was developed by big research laboratories somewhere, like in the UK or America or someplace. But there were no laboratories and it wasn’t ‘developed’. In fact most people just made their own; the Fuel Stretcher is that simple.
“Oh, every town and suburb in the world had half a dozen get-rich-quick merchants turning them out, but so many people tried to get on the bandwagon that most of them only ever sold a few dozen. And when word got around about how easy they were to make most people just put one together for themselves.
“Then as you know, fuel consumption world-wide plummeted and the oil companies all crashed, and pretty soon they were looking for the ones who’d started it. They wanted blood, see, from what I heard, only there was nowhere for ’em to start – no leads on how it got going or patents or evidence or anything – anywhere. …Like as if it the whole business had suddenly just come into being.
“Brian was dead-set on my keeping control of it. We’re business partners, him and me. …Well, sort of. He’s the wife’s brother, see. Besides meself he’s the only other one who knows about this.
“Course Brian could see money coming in by the truck load, even while I was explaining to him how totally risky it would be. ‘Mate,’ I kept telling him, ‘You don’t have to be Einstein to work out what this’ll do to the Oil Companies. Their fuel sales will absolutely crash … like by bulk Sydney Harbours.’ I kept on about it, too, before we actually did anything.
“He wouldn’t listen, but. Well, not at first. ‘You’re throwing away a fortune,’ he kept telling me. ‘A total fortune. …But it’s your footy, I suppose, and if you want to kick it out of bounds mate … Well, that’s your business.
“‘But look,’ he’d argue. ‘Big companies are not like that. They wouldn’t know a couple old battlers like us even existed. And how do you reckon they’d get onto us? …look out their New York board room window with their round-the-world telescope and say: “See those two old codgers up there in the wheat country north of Adelaide? That’s them; they’re the ones that buggered everything.”
“I kept working on him, though. ‘Brian,’ I kept saying. ‘Think about it. They’ve got Reps and Agents in every half baked country town and termite-clay tennis court in the country. Don’t you reckon they might just use a couple of ’em?’
“But you have to put yourself in my shoes, see. Here I am, Mister Average Aussie Nobody, kids all grown up and gone, and Harriet – that’s the missus – well she went up to that big kitchen sink in the sky nearly five years back. After that I was on me own, see, so I give up the road making and settled back to me snail garden in Port Adelaide, and giving the compost bin a stir every coupla days for a bit of excitement. I’m not complaining, though; we’d tucked a few dollars away; it’s enough to keep a beer or two in the fridge.
“Then one morning about eighteen months ago along comes this dream, like how to make a Fuel Stretcher gadget that’ll spin-out petrol and diesel waaay further than normal – like ten times or more as it turned out.
“Now I’m no bleeding-heart do-gooder, but I saw straight away that if the thing really worked … well, the benefits for humanity would be enormous – you know, environmentally. Immeasurable even. It could even make the difference between us and everything else surviving on this little round rock we call home.
“And then I realized: if the idea did work and enough people got to know about it, then the world economy would be in for a HUGE shakeup. Course pretty soon the big boys would have their heavies out looking for the ones who spoiled their game, and if they found that out I’d be saying goodbye to me big win on the pokies, ’cos I wouldn’t be getting down the footy club no more.
“That’s when it dawned on me that I had no choice: there could be nothing in it for me – well, except for the satisfaction of having done it. I could either forget the whole business or go ahead with it for the good of the Earth; for the good of humanity and everything.
“But the truth of the matter – and you have to believe me here – the truth is: I didn’t actually invent it.
“See I just went to bed one Saturday night after Port Adelaide got flogged again and woke up in the morning knowing how to make an incredibly efficient fuel stretching gadget. The funny thing was, though: I couldn’t remember the actual dream, yet the gizmo's details were clear as crystal. Anyhow, as soon as I got dressed I went out to the shed and made one. Like before breakfast.
“I mean there was no chance the thing would actually work. How could it? It was just a stupid dream. All I wanted to do was prove it was nonsense. And I had everything I needed, all the bits and pieces and different types of metal tubing and everything. Well, except for the magnets, and they had to be the right shape. Then I remembered: in Gooshy’s stereo headphones; they should be perfect.
“Gooshy’s me grandson. He left all his stuff here when he cleared out from home and went to Queensland. That’s not his real name; it’s just what we call him.
“Course that first one was pretty rough. I mean what was the point of wasting time on something that’d be going straight in the bin? Anyhow, soon as it was finished I wedged a four litre can of petrol under the old Holden’s bonnet, ran a hose from there to the ‘Fuel Stretcher Mark One’ and connected it to the fuel pump.
“I had to fiddle with the carby a bit to make it run properly, of course, but once it was going okay I took it out for a spin – you know, to prove that it’d make no difference.
“And she went like a dream! Better than it had for ages. After a while I got jack of waiting for the stupid thing to run out of fuel and went back home. I parked around the back, too, in case someone came poking around to see what I was doing – still half thinking that if by some miracle it did work maybe I could make a dollar. Then I looked under the bonnet to see what had been going on – and found the can still half full. I couldn’t believe it! …like how far I’d gone on such a small amount of fuel. Only then I noticed a leaky connection! Most of the petrol had gone on the road!
“The next one I took some care with.
I machined and threaded the main tube really accurately so the magnets fitted perfectly and made sure the hose connections didn’t leak. I needn’t have bothered, though. The only real improvement came from fixing the leak.
“…And so why did I call it the ‘Fuel Stretcher’? Well, I have to admit it’s not much of a name, but once I'd made up my mind about what I was going to do it was all I could think of. See whatever I chose for a name had to describe exactly what it did, otherwise word of it wouldn’t have gotten