Glad Jake was staring into his drink as my chest delivered this speech, since the movement of my lips had absolutely nothing to do with the words coming out of my chest. It was Louie speaking.
“And so you create more and more terrorists,” says Molière.
Jake looked from me to Molière and then reached over and took my glass and with a nod to me, took a big swig. He’d emptied his.
“We should get out of this hellhole and let the damn Arabs settle their differences among themselves,” he says.
Silence.
“No offense, Khalid,” he adds.
“I will be happy to see you go,” says Khalid. Morosely.
“Not as happy as I will be to leave,” says Jake.
THIRTY-SEVEN
(From THE OFFICIAL HISTORY OF THE ALIEN INVASION, Volume 1, pp. 366–369. Being Agent Michael Johnson’s informal notes on his meeting with Chief Investigator Rabb of Unit A.)
I asked for a special meeting with CI Rabb and finally he gave it to me.
“Chief,” I said. “I think Billy Morton is still alive.”
“Oh?”
“Roger Cayle brought to my attention the video and audio from the flight that the Proteans Molière and Louie-Twoie took from New York to Paris to Iraq. I’m convinced that they show Billy Morton aboard the flight, sitting five rows behind the two Proteans and the woman Karen Bell.”
“What… what video are you talking about?” the chief asked.
“Remember, the CIA ordered special video and audio monitors mounted on the plane carrying Molière to Iraq. They wanted to examine all the other passengers, especially those that interacted with either of the two Proteans or Karen, to see if any of them could be identified as humans suspected of aiding and abetting the Protean terrorists.”
“Ah, yes, that video.”
“There are three things that made me conclude that the elderly man sitting five rows behind Molière is in fact Billy Morton in disguise.”
“Although we know for a fact that Mr. Morton was blown up on his boat.”
“We thought that Billy Morton was blown up on his boat. Until I saw the video and listened to the audio tape.”
“Did this Morton apparition ever approach or talk to the Proteans or to this Karen Bell?”
“No, but as I say, three things indicate it was in fact Billy Morton.”
“What three things?”
“First, the elderly man is wearing a toupee, and a suit, but otherwise fits the description of Billy Morton. He looks like Billy.”
“But never bothers to talk to his friends five seats ahead.”
“No, but there is the second thing: at one point Karen Bell gets out of her seat and walks down the aisle. As she passes the man I think is Billy, she winks at him. And keeps going.”
“She winks at him. What does the Morton ghost do?”
“Well, not much—he smiles a bit.”
“A wink.”
“A wink directed at the passenger I’m convinced is Billy Morton.”
“What’s the third thing?”
“The audio.”
“The audio.”
“It picks up this passenger appearing to talk to himself.”
“Oh, well,” the chief said. “There you have it. It must have been the senile Mr. Morton.”
“The audio was cluttered with other voices and the sounds of the plane. At first there appeared to be nothing to it but an old man muttering to himself.”
“Exactly.”
“But after I’d seen the videotape I insisted that our experts work on the audio and see if they could determine much more precisely what the passenger was muttering.”
“Okay, that’s good.”
“They claimed they couldn’t get anything that made sense, but I insisted they let me hear the best version they’d been able to recreate. At first it all seemed gibberish to me too, but suddenly I thought I got it. The audio voice seemed to be saying, “Hammetui, stopicklingme.”
“Hammetui, stopicklingme,” echoed CI Rabb.
“I’ve become certain that what the passenger was actually saying was ‘Damn it, Louie, stop tickling me.’”
Chief Rabb only stared at me.
“Stop tickling me…” he repeated.
“Billy Morton was wearing Louie as a sort of sweater or vest. And Louie was tickling him.”
Chief Rabb stared at me for several more moments.
“Tell me, Michael,” he finally said. “When did you last take a vacation?”
ITEM IN THE NEWS
DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN INTRODUCES LEGISLATION OUTLAWING THINKING
Washington, D.C.
In what most observers consider a political masterstroke, Rep. Jon John (D-MN) today introduced legislation making thinking by Democrats illegal.
“We Americans believe in a level playing field,” the congressman said. “And this legislation will do just that. For the last decade we Democrats have been operating at a severe political disadvantage: gathering facts and thinking about our nation’s problems, while Republicans have been proceeding totally without facts and thought and have thus gained an enormous political advantage. This must end. Democrats must stop thinking. My legislation will achieve this.”
When asked to comment, Republican House Speaker John Ruan said, “No.”
“No, what?” asked the reporter.
“Just ‘no,’” said Speaker Ruan.
“But to what are you saying ‘no,’ Mr. Speaker?”
“Everything,” said Mr. Ruan.
THIRTY-EIGHT
(From Billy Morton’s MY FRIEND LOUIE, pp. 276–282)
Back in New York it didn’t take Lita and me more than a half hour to know that we’d never be able to create as good a life as we’d had before our “deaths.” I was exhausted from my Iraq trip, and when an old man is overtired he’s always depressed. Even if Louie had plopped me down in the middle of Eden I’d have probably begged for an old farmhouse on a half acre. Lita wasn’t tired, but she was even more certain than me that we were doomed to be miserable in our new lives. No matter how expensive the condo, it was still a small group of rooms in a huge building in the middle of hundreds of other huge buildings. You usually had to walk half a dozen blocks to see a tree. Growing out of concrete.
Not our style.
As soon as I realized how miserable Lita was, I felt a lot better. We were on the same page. The boys weren’t miserable yet, but they were clearly working on it. We were sure they would be when they realized they could never be Jimmy and Lucas again.
So Lita and I arranged to meet Louie in our temporary hotel room in Queens. The room was a bit shabby for a guy who’d recently spent time setting up a half-dozen multi-million-dollar bank accounts, but I didn’t notice; I’m a shabby sort of guy.
I was sitting up against the headboard of the king-sized bed, with Lucas beside me. Lita was in one of the two easy chairs and Louie on top of the dresser. Louie-Twoie was there too, spending his time trying to shape himself into new giant bugs, mostly a ten-legged centipede sort of thing with a bulbous head. Louie-Twoie still hadn’t learned to talk clearly yet, and Louie worried he might be a little slow. Jimmy sat at the foot of the bed, when he wasn’t running after a centipede.
“This won’t work, Louie,” says Lita, as usual getting right to the point. “A life away from the water is just not natural to Billy or the boys. And the boys always enjoyed school. Tutoring is already a drag and they’ve been at it for less than a week.”
“I understand,” says Louie.
“And I don’t want any life that takes me away from the kids and Lita,” says I. “Even if it’s just for a week.”
“You’ve got to find some way we can be ourselves,” says Lita. “Be near the water, near forests, and have a house where we can look out the window and see trees and flowers instead of gray walls and crowded streets.”
“Be yourselves…” says Louie.
“We have to have lives that are almost identical to what we ha
d as the Mortons,” she says.
“Actually,” says Louie, “Molière and I have created several identities that would have you be a happily married couple with two kids in a country environment.”
“So you’ve done it!” says I.
“We have,” says Louie.
“Well?”
“It won’t work.”
“Why not?” says Lita.
“Because your faces are too well known,” says Louie. “We can change you with wigs and make-up and the way you dress, and we might be able to make Billy look a few years younger, but we can’t disguise the boys. Just not possible. They’ve been seen by millions of people on the YouTube reruns of that television interview and now, with your sensational deaths, you’re being seen a million times all over again. They’d be recognized the moment they entered school.”
“The boys weren’t recognized in the Caymans,” says Lita.
“Yes, they were,” says Louie.
“They were!?” says I.
“That’s why we insisted they go to a safe house. Someone had reported seeing them to the local police and the NSA got wind of it, and then of course we did too. And this was before you became famous all over again by getting blown up.”
“Shit,” says I.
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” says Lita.
“Well, Gibberish came up with an idea, but his solution could possibly be worse than the problem.”
“The solution can’t be any worse,” says Lita. “What have you got?”
Louie hopped off the dresser and squashed a strange two-legged bug that had three four-inch antennae sticking up out of its body, and a tiny elephant trunk at his front. Then he bounced back on the dresser. It took Louie-Twoie about ten seconds to puff himself back into bug shape, but then he was missing his trunk and one of his antennae.
“Molière and I killed you,” Louie said. “We were thinking of un-killing you.”
“How?” says I.
“Resurrection,” says Louie. “We thought we’d try resurrection.”
“That would put us in pretty elite company,” says I.
“It would. We’re afraid it would make you more famous than ever, and it wouldn’t change the fact that you’re both still accused of felonies, and that they might be tempted to use you to get at us.”
“But how’d we do this?” says I.
“We haven’t yet quite figured that out,” says Louie.
“Great,” says I. “You guys are the most super-intelligent creatures our whole universe has ever known, and you can’t solve a simple problem like resurrecting me and my family. Jesus did it with Lazarus and didn’t break a sweat.”
“We have to reappear again as the alive Mortons,” says Lita, “and have a plausible story about what happened since the night the boat blew up. A story that doesn’t get us into more trouble than we’re already in.”
“That’s about it,” says Louie.
“I know!” says Lucas.
We all turn to stare at him.
“We were abducted by aliens!” he shouts.
I laughed.
“We were!” says Jimmy.
The sober-minded and intelligent adults in the room were strangely silent.
“Abducted by aliens,” says I. “What American wouldn’t believe that?”
“Excellent idea, Lucas,” says Louie.
“But which aliens abducted us?” says Lita. “Was it Louie and Molière?”
“And where did the aliens take us?” says I. “What did they do with us?”
“They took us to their universe!” says Lucas.
We all began mulling that.
“That could get complicated,” says Lita.
“I don’t remember a thing,” says I. “None of us remembers a thing.”
They all look at me.
“One moment we were on the boat going to bed, and the next we woke up in our old home two weeks later.”
Not bad for an old guy who doesn’t read much science fiction.
“And the four of us won’t get our stories confused,” says I, “because we won’t have a single story to tell.”
“You’re a genius, Billy,” says Louie.
“Yep. Once every half-century.”
THIRTY-NINE
(From Billy Morton’s MY FRIEND LOUIE, pp. 290–295)
Well, let me tell you, waking up in my own bed after two weeks of pretending to be so many other people was one of the great moments of my life. And this despite the fact that we had no electricity in the house, no water, and toilets that couldn’t flush and were soon filled with poop. We had arrived after midnight in a car driven by Molière. I was finally getting used to being driven by a long skinny something with only one leg, no head, and steering with his belly button. By getting used to it, I mean I no longer screamed every time we were within two miles of another car.
Lita had a new smartphone, so first thing in the morning, after we’d breakfasted on a dozen doughnuts we’d bought on the drive out from New York, we began making phone calls.
The first was to the electric company to turn the electricity back on. Sheriff Coombs had had it turned off after we’d been dead for about a week. When the electricity guy asked who I was I said I was the homeowner, William Morton.
“Right,” says the Con Ed man. “And I’m Thomas Edison. We need to note the name requesting the renewal of service.”
“William Geronimo Morton,” says I. I love to give myself interesting middle names since my parents gave me Henry.
“I thought you were dead,” says Con Ed.
“I was,” says I. “But I got better.”
The next call was to Sheriff Coombs to let him know we’d been resurrected.
“Jesus Christ, Billy,” he says. “Is this really you?”
“It is, Jerry, it is.”
“No way you could have survived that explosion,” says he. “What the hell happened?”
“Don’t have the faintest idea,” says I. “One moment we were asleep on the boat and the next, just an hour or two ago, we wake up here in our house. Gotta tell you, it was a surprise.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“There’s no electricity here so we don’t even know what day it is,” says I. “Could you fill us in on the date?”
“It’s December twenty-second, Billy.”
“Holy moly! We’ve been asleep for almost two weeks!”
I’m sure the sheriff wanted to explode out another “Jesus Christ,” but he restrained himself.
“That’s right. Your boat blew up just about two weeks ago.”
“My boat blew up!? What are you talking about!?”
There was a silence while the sheriff processed this data.
“Billy, I think maybe you and I had better have a talk,” he says. “A lot has happened since you fell asleep.”
“Well, you’ll have to come here, Jerry. Our car seems to be missing.”
“It’s still down at the marina where you took it the day that… that your boat blew up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jerry.”
“I know,” he says. “That’s why I’ll be right over.”
Lita said she’d bicycle to the marina and get the car and then do some grocery shopping. Lucas and Jimmy wanted to go tell their friends that they were still alive. At first I vetoed it. I reminded them that it was a school day and their friends would still be in classes.
“We’ll go to school,” says Jimmy.
“Yeah, Dad,” says Lucas. “It’s the last day before Christmas vacation, and we don’t want to be truants. We’re not sick.”
“You may not be sick,” says I, “but you’re dead.”
“We’ve got to come back to life sometime,” says Lucas.
“School, school, school!” says Jimmy.
Well, they had to see their friends sometime. That’s why we’d resurrected ourselves, so they could be back with the people they know.
“Okay,” says I, “but remember
, you don’t remember a thing. You didn’t even know two weeks had passed until you checked the news on Mom’s smartphone.”
“Okay, Dad,” says Jimmy.
“But we already know a lot of that stuff from watching TV in that place we went to right after we blew up,” says Lucas.
“Well, see what’s been written since then, but don’t forget, you don’t remember a thing. You went to sleep on the boat and you woke up here this morning.”
“We were abducted by aliens,” says Jimmy.
“No, you weren’t,” says I. “Let them reach that conclusion. All we know is that we don’t remember a thing.”
“The aliens erased our memories,” says Lucas.
“I’m sure they did, but let other people figure that out,” says I. “Our safety lies in our stupidity. Believe me, as soon as people find out we’re really alive, they’ll know we were abducted by the FFs. They thought the FFs had blown us up, so they’ll think they abducted us, dissected us, brainwashed us, and erased all memory of what they did to us. Remember, most people have read a lot more National Enquirer stories than we have.”
When Lita got back with the car and some groceries, I drove the kids to school. They were three hours late so I had to take them to some special office before they could get to class. The lady behind the desk took one look at us and fainted.
So they had to find a substitute for her. It was the principal himself. He was sharp as a tack.
“I thought you were dead,” he said.
“We were,” says I, “but we’re back. And the kids don’t want to miss any more school.”
He had about 2,506,000 other questions he wanted to ask, but he had a school to run.
“I’ll get the papers you have to sign,” he says. “Miss Mellon, take Lucas and Jimmy to their classes.”
Cool guy, especially for a principal.
* * *