The Black Box
The smoky Nevadan bar room echoed with smoke as the bronze counter sat underneath the arms of the former Inspector General, whose face was hidden behind a glass of bourbon. On the other side of the glass stood the burly bar tender, who gingerly poked the former Inspector General with a billiards cue, after a reproachable thought came to his mind. The man can’t stop his tab now, thought the reproachable bar tender and he poked the former chief inspector with a billiards cue.
The inspector general startled, and looked at his glass of straight bourbon. Ah, he thought, bourbon. He took a sip and lifted his head out from under the arms that were resting on his elbows and eyed the bartender whose back was to him. The inspector paused, and his head involuntarily bobbed around drunkenly as he realized that he could not begin a conversation with the bartender given the bartender’s present orientation. He looked down at his drink and tried to count the bubbles. But there were none.
A swinging sound followed by an opening door was followed by vicious warmth that momentarily subdued the air conditioning. A new visitor entered the dimly lit bar that sat in the corner of a small casino in the middle of the desert. He took a seat next to the inspector, who had returned to dozing, and poked him just for the fun of poking a drunken person, with a good natured chuckle. The Inspector General startled violently, scaring his new neighbor.
“Excuse me!” the inspector reprimanded belligerently in a thick accent, taking off his gray detective hat and slamming it onto the table, spilling his drink. “I was drinking that!” he continued, lowering his bushy eyebrows and squinting his eyes.
“My apologies,” apologized the newcomer, a stocky man with white hair partly hidden under a banana hat. He had an impressive mustache, and wore a bright red Hawaiian shirt and jean shorts. He called to the bartender to replace the offended man’s drink. But the man was not appeased.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked angrily, grimacing. But the newcomer was already staring intentionally in an awkwardly different direction in an attempt to avoid the unpleasant situation.
“I am the former Inspector General!” he said. And then, unexpectedly, he threw his glass into the air and began to sob. The local man turned around. Empathy was raised in his heart, like the thrown glass of bourbon that flew upwardly in the air, but unlike the glass, the empathy did not descend, but ascend, as the cup came down upon the former inspector’s head.
The drunken Inspector General barely noticed as the glass bounced off his hat and shattered on the counter, but shook his head vigorously and continued to sob.
“I take it you liked being the Inspector General?” asked the other man, after a cautious moment of uncertainty.
“Yes!” the inspector agreed, sitting up sharply, with the undue excessive enthusiasm of the drunk, who feels that any simple affirmation is a pronouncement of the deepest camaraderie. He reached over and took hold of the other man’s shoulder.
“You know,” he began, hiccupping. “You know,” he continued with greater determination. “I was never the former Inspector General while I worked there.” He paused reflecting on his thoughts. “You know, as long as I was Inspector General, I was never, or would never call myself or be thought of in general as the former Inspector General. Or generally inspected as such.”
“Suspected?” corrected the Nevadan. The inspector stared at him blankly.
“But now that I am the former Inspector General, I am no longer the Inspector General.”
“Yes?”
“You know?” insisted the inspector, raising his eyes to where he imagined the blurry pale ball that was the other man’s face to be. The other man waited, suspecting that he would soon find out.
“You know? I much preferred being the former Inspector General.”
“You mean the Inspector General?” corrected the sober man. The drunken inspector stared at him blankly.
“I take it you are retired?” asked the man politely, although he knew the drunk to be no older than forty years.
“No!” the inspector exploded, banging both fists against the table. The other man attempted to budge away nervously, but his shoulder was trapped relentlessly in the inspector’s grip. The drunk began to froth slightly at the mouth and he agitatedly twisted on his chair.
“Well, what happened?” asked the stocky man, curious against his better judgment, although he was more interested in seeing what story this degenerate could conjure up to convince him he was actually the former Inspector General of any given civilized place, than anything else.
“Oh! It’s terrible! Terrible!” answered the drunken man.
“Oh?” replied the man rhetorically, “What happened?” The drunk propped himself up on the counter, releasing his neighbor’s shoulder. He stared into space, with brown eyes that had turned somewhat red, and momentarily looked as though he were going to sober up. He reached into his beige coat that was absurdly heavy for the outside weather, and drew out a cheap cigar, lighting it. “You know, it began like this…
My tragedy begins five years ago during the time in the late teens or tens or whatever decade they’re calling it now. I am not so updated to know. I first noticed that something was terribly wrong, oh; I should have known something was wrong! Whom do I fool! I was the fool! You know, I was in my office in Geneva, which is where I was the former Inspector General.
“You mean the inspector general?” interrupted the Nevadan, casually.
“What?” said the former inspector general, looking up crossly. “That was my profession, yes.”
You know, I was in my office in this city Geneva, when Ugly was reported missing exactly a year before the day of the Drill.
“Excuse me?” interrupted the stodgy man, confused. “Ugly? Is this a person?” The inspector general coughed as he inhaled his cigar, and then rolled his eyes angrily and looked around for someone to share in the glory of this man’s ignorance.
“Ugly was a Swiss singer and mandolin player. She became a hit in 2015. She disappeared three years after, Wait. Ha! Ha! I confuse myself again. She never disappeared at all. “
“Oh,” replied the other man, who was a good twenty years older than the drunk, had never visited Switzerland and therefore had never heard of this pop singer. “Was she very ugly?”
“Oh, no. She was so beautiful that she called herself ugly. Like a joke you know?” the inspector general managed to laugh and frown at the same time, which resulted in another fit of coughing. He recovered and wiped his sweaty face with his soiled white dress-shirt.
“Yes, I see the humor.”
“So as I was saying I was in my office in Geneva…
You see, and I got a report from Interpol that this singer had disappeared in a very unusual way. ‘So?’ I say. ‘What is so unusual?’ They respond, well she was here for the last couple of days, but now she’s been missing for over a week. ‘Okay, I see,’ I say. So I put on my coat, and I walk outside. ‘That seems strange,’ I say to myself after some reflection. ‘How can that be?’ I think. My thought was, you know, that it was not possible for someone to be there and not be there at the same time, you know. So naturally I was somewhat curious. It was winter, like it is winter now, but unlike in the desert there was some snow spiraling down and I looked in the sky and it fell into my eyes making them wet, from the snow, you know, But yes, that is when it all began.
I walked back into my office and I searched for Ugly online, using the Internet. And indeed, she had been missing for a few days. And as I thought about it, I remembered hearing ads for her concerts days before. So not only had this celebrity disappeared, but also she had disappeared several days before she had been last seen.
I tried to call the FBI, the American police, because they are good at finding things, you know, but they were unavailable as usual, you know, and sometimes I suspect they just blocked my number for jealousy or something. Anyway, I called Lucille, who lived in Naples in a nice gated community, with ivy on the gates, you know, the fancy kind where you stop your car and press the buttons to get through the gate, you know, and then the gates open. Lucille was a very strange woman, so very eccentric, but so very beautiful. So she answered her phone immediately, which was unusual for her.
“Hello?” she said to me, although she had just answered the phone, so it was to whomever, who happened to me, you know.
“Hi, it’s me, the Inspector General,” I said, because I was the Inspector General at the time. But of course I say this in Italian, because I am Swiss and I know so many languages, unlike you, you know, who only know English.
“Oh, hi,” she said with this weird tone I didn’t recognize.
“You heard about Ugly the singer going missing?” I asked her.
“Yes… after the evacuation?”
“What evacuation?”
“She got evacuated to Cuba, everyone knows that,” answered Lucille. “Along with the other Italian rice farmers. She was visiting her parents.”
“What? Italian rice farmers?” I asked confused. I didn’t know that was the climate for growing rice, you know.
“Yes. Ugly always said she preferred brown rice. But the rice farmers all sold white rice.”
“Yes. So?”
“Well it’s not all that surprising considering who her parents are.”
“Who was her parents?”
“They preferred lettuce.”
‘Who?’
“Brown lettuce.”
‘Yes, so?’
“Her brother. Fortunately for me I was able to talk with him before his untimely demise.”
“Oh that must have been a fascinating conversation,” I said sarcastically, you know, when you say one thing but you are meaning something else. It’s not so simple, so I don’t know if you people use it here.
“If you want to find her, go to Cuba, that’s all I can say,” Lucille said.
“Okay, sure,” I replied. “You are a great help. Well are we still on for dinner this weekend? I can take the train from Geneva to Naples early in the morning.” You see, this was where the grief was to really begin. Lucille and I were intimately involved in an important relationship way for many, many years, you know. So she says:
“Yes, yes, of course! Come over soon,” she said, and then cackled evilly, which was unusual. That should have warned me that something was different. But oh no, it did not! What a fool I was! A fool! And a few hours later I left the office. I slept at home, and as I left early the next morning I thought I glimpsed my disowned, lost brother across the street. I looked again, but he was gone.
“Wait,” said the Nevadan, shifting his position on the chair. “First of all what did any of that conversation mean? It made absolutely no sense. And why is your brother disowned?”
“Eh?” Said the former inspector general, confused that his narrative was interrupted and by the fact that he no longer seemed to be talking anymore. The man repeated his questions, uncharacteristically loudly, looking down at the slumping former Inspector General.
“ Oh. Well you see there was a reason for that. It has to do with my training, and that the words don’t mean that. But I was never trained in code, or actually I was but I didn’t pay so much attention, so it seemed strange to me too at the time. I agree. But that is not what is important,” replied the inspector, having forgotten that the question was twofold. He finished his drink, slid it down the counter recklessly, twitched nervously and continued.
So you see the rest of the weekend I spent skiing in the mountains and trying to get in touch with the American police division by my landline in a hotel, so they wouldn’t recognize my number, you know. I turned off my cell phone in the mountains since there is not as much reception anyway there, you know. But the Americans were not to be found.
On Saturday I arrived in Naples. I called Lucille, and a denser voice answered than usual. But when she addressed me I knew it was Lucille, as she knew to call me by our name we call me, Inspector General. We agreed to meet that afternoon to go to the beach and I arrived there a few hours later. I saw Lucille and ran over to embrace her. She smiled. There was something different about her but I wasn’t quite sure, and it didn’t matter as long as it was still she. Together we ran into the ocean splashing water at each other and then returning to the sand to throw at each other, you know, and then splashing again the water and the sea, watching it and the sky and the gulls, you know. But it was all going to end so soon! I was such a fool! And as the sun was going behind the ocean, Mt. Vesuvius stood out like a gigantic volcano over the sea.
So you know eventually we became restless and frosty as the air got colder and we got up and went to the Italian restaurant we always went to by the beach. We were seated by an Italian who worked there but as soon as we sat down, Lucille coughed loudly. She looked up at me with open eyes and stared at me inquisitively. I noticed that she had a beard, which was different, you know, but it did not really register until later when I had more information.
“Can I trust you, Inspector General?”
“Yes,” I said. She always called me Inspector General because that is our name for me, because my real name is hard to pronounce you know, for the Italians especially. Ha ha! And you people too, you know. So, anyway, I said:
“Why? With what?” so I was curious, you know. She picked up her purse, opened it in her lap and handed me something under the table. It was small and rectangular and had a lid, but it was very, very heavy.
‘Do you know what this is?’ Lucille asked. I did not know. I looked under the table to see what this strange gift was, for a hint, you know.
There was a whizzing noise above me and a groan. I startled and hit my head against the table. But this saved my life, being under the table. You see, an arrow whizzed by where I had been sitting and drove into Lucille. It was terrible! Terrible! Someone in the restaurant shrieked in terror also, probably. Realizing immediately that my life was in danger, since I was well trained, I got up and ran outside the restaurant holding the odd black box.
The Nevadan looked over at the drunkard with disbelief, who was staring passionately into space. His story seemed to have sobered him up, and he tensely gripped the edges of the bar counter.
“So how long had you been seeing this woman, Lucille?’ the sober man asked. The inspector blinked and shook his head, as though returning from an intense dream.
“We were together for three years, beginning in 2015. I remember meeting her. It was in England, although she is originally from Hungary. I was in a market, you know, searching for food, and she came up to me. ‘General Inspector, is that you?’ she asked. I nodded although I was confused since I didn’t know her, you know. ‘I always wanted to meet you,’ she said. ‘Okay,’ I said and later we went swimming and other fun things. But when I reflect you know, I should have known something tragic was going to happen! It always does! It is all so awful!”
“Yes that is awful, I can see why you would not want to resume your job after that,” consoled the sober man sincerely. He was beginning to get the impression that even if this man wasn’t a former Inspector General, something truly traumatic had probably happened to him at some point, perhaps involving multiple concussions.
“Well no! I did not quit my job!” huffed the inspector general, unconsciously blowing his nose over the other man. “And this was not the end of my torments with Lucille!”
“ What do you mean? Didn’t she die?”
“Let me continue, and I will explain, you see,” said the inspector. The still sober Nevadan nodded, and waved at the bartender, who was busy poking another dozing customer with a cue, for two drinks. The inspector reached for one of them without a word of thanks, took a sip and continued…
So I was in Naples, you know, because this was where I was when this happened, and running away and so I became exhausted so I finally stopped running, you know, and hailed a taxi. I decided to return to the office in Geneva very briefly to gather my things and then fly to Cuba. I knew, after Lucille’s tragic assassination that I would be pursued by the people looking for my black box. So in the taxi I finally looked down at the box that caused me so much grief. Engraved on the cover were the initials BFDWTPT. I will never forget those letters, although I have no idea what they mean, you know. I tried to open the box but it was sealed shut. With all my strength I could not open it.
I arrived at the police station, in Geneva, and my friend greeted me.
“Back so soon? Did you find your cell phone?” he said, affably. I looked at him puzzled, not yet understanding what was wrong, you know. My cell phone was placed securely in my pocket, although I had turned it off the entire trip, perhaps they had tried to call me. I went to my office, and looked out the window. There was a black limo sitting outside on the street. Intermittently I gathered my things and planned my escape to Cuba.
I will not bother you with the details of my escape from that building to the Geneva airport. It was so harrowing and dangerous, the black limo following my taxi steadily through traffic. As we entered the tunnel I looked behind me and saw a large man climbing out of the sunroof of the limo with a gun. This made me worried. He was huge and wearing a black suit and especially carrying that big gun. Fortunately for me he was decapitated as we entered the tunnel. So I was alive still when we arrived, you know. When I pulled up to the airport I ran into the terminal and then on the plane and hid under a blanket, you know, so no one can see me.
When I got to the Cuba airport on the other side I turned on my cell phone briefly and called the Geneva office. I knew once I left the airport I would be traced, and having a cell phone with me would make that a process in simplicity.
So my supervisor general answered.
“Hello,” I said. “It is the Inspector General.”
“You found your phone!” he said. ‘What?’ I thought. ‘What is up with this phone business?’ I ignored him and continued.
“I need to know, has there been any suspicion going on in Cuba recently?”
“Not that I know of. Do you have a cold?”
“No.”
“Where are you?”
“Cuba.” The supervisor laughed. “Hold on the boss wants to tell you something.”
“Inspector General?” said a deep voice, in a very serious tone.
“Yes?”
“I have some bad news.”
“Yes?”
“Lucille. She’s dead.”
“Yes, I was there. In Naples.” It was hurtful to have the reminder and I replied with barely clinched angst.
“You were there?” the voice replied, surprised.
“Yes she was brutally impaled by arrow.”
“No?”
“Yes!” I was very upset at this point, you know.
“Inspector General! She was found around a few days ago near a volcano. She had obviously suffered severe burns.”
“No. She was killed at an Italian restaurant by an archer, whom you have not caught. You, who are so busy barking up this wrong bush with your ridiculous theories!” I nearly shouted. I am sure my face was bright red, like a plum. There was silence on the phone. Then my boss cleared his throat.
“Inspector General, I need to explain something to you.” And this was the part that truly upset me, you see. “A man was indeed murdered by an arrow there, if that’s what you’re talking about, much more recently. But he really looks nothing like Lucille. And we found the real Lucille, who has been dead for a much longer time, in a completely different way. She is a Hungarian Spy who was assigned to spy on our organization through her affiliation with you.”
“What? What are you talking about! It is a lie!” And I threw down my cell phone and crunched it with my heel. But then as I thought about it later on, you know, it didn’t really surprise me. She was always asking me for top-secret government information and no matter how much I told her, she would always want to know more. And I am a very ugly slob and she is very good looking and elegant woman also. And the whole meeting at the super market thing was in some ways give me suspicions. But I was still so upset, you know. Because there was, I know, a true love, between Lucille and me. So in my mind, that was the second time I lost Lucille, but it was not the last. What a fool I was at the time to think that it was all over now! A fool!
So you see now I was stuck in Cuba. With no reason, so much. All I had was the advice of a former lover who had turned into a man and then was assassinated by an archer and then revealed to be a Hungarian spy, while she had somehow died on a volcano slightly earlier. Perhaps she was misleading me, you know, I thought. I wanted to call the office back and ask about leads on the Ugly case, but I had smashed my phone. So I stood in a lounge at the airport watching the news. But it was in Cuban, one of the languages we don’t speak in Switzerland, so I gave up.
Eventually I looked down at the black box. The secret must be inside! BFDWTPT? What could that mean? I decided to find some sort of store that would be able to function the case. It had no lock, so I was not sure if a locksmith could help, but I was not sure what could, it was clenched like an oyster, you know. So I go outside carefully and wander through the back streets of Havana, looking behind me sometimes. As I turned a corner a man on a bicycle waved at me. He was very, very tall and wearing a brown pointy cap and had rolled up his pants to reveal such highly pulled up socks.
“Hello,” he said. “I just invented the bicycle and I’m trying to ride it.”
“Oh.” I paused, not sure what to say to such an odd statement. He smiled at me with bright shining teeth. He must use much toothpaste, I thought. So I reflect on an answer, and use my history knowledge, you know. Why not?
“Did you invent it after the battle of Westphalia?” I asked.
“No, after Waterloo,” he said. But you see, as I was bantering with this odd man, a Rolls Royce was pulling up behind me. In retrospect this was clearly a set up. What a fool I was! A fool!
A beautiful woman, who looked very much like Lucille, got out of the car as I turned around. However, at this point I was suspicious if it was truly Lucille,. But it truly looked like her.
“Hi, Inspector General. I seem to have a flat tire. Would you help me change it?” she asked. I gasped with hope. It must truly be her, as she knew our name for me, Inspector General.
“Okay,” I said naively, so foolishly! But as I walked around to the other side of the car, I noticed that the tire is not flat. Which should have alerted me, you know. She asked me to help her with the flat tire but it is not flat, you know. But it was too late and all of a sudden a hungry, hungry hippo grabbed me.
The Nevadan spit up a little bit of his beer. Now the story was getting ridiculous.
“Hungry, hungry hippo? As in the children’s game?” he asked the inspector general, brushing off his moustache with the handkerchief he kept in his shirt pocket.
“Well yes, but it is also what the Hungarian Mafia is called in Cuba. Because they are always hungry for more, like greedy men, and it also joke like the country, you know, and also they are large burly man and the most dangerous, like the animal, the hippopotamus,” the inspector informed snobbishly. He was now looking down at his already empty cup wistfully.
“Is it?” asked the puzzled Nevadan. “I might as well believe you. Let me buy you another drink.” The bar tender placed another bourbon in front of the shaking inspector and he continued his story.
So at this point I get tossed inside the car, where there are many, many, hungry, hungry hippos. And I realize the box is doomed. The woman gets in the driver’s seat, and looks behind her.
“I’m sorry Inspector General, but this really is necessary,” she says. And suddenly I know it is Lucille, because she looks so much more like the real Lucille than the one who was assassinated in Naples. So I relinquish the box, accommodating the helpless situation. One of the hippos takes out some sort of round object. It looks like the things you use to open cans when your hands are slippery. But it was magnetic and once he placed it on the lid and twisted, it easily came open. But the box was empty. Inside was a green picture with red letters in the middle.
“What is this trash?” he said in a thick accent and threw it out the car’s window.
“Does the real one still work?” asked another man, protruding with anxiety. A black box, identical to the one I was given, was passed back to the back seat. The men scooted over, crushing me against the door like a pancake. They placed the box on the empty seat and opened it with the same round object.
And suddenly, like the jack-in-the-box, a person sprung out, growing ten times in size.
I was very surprised at this moment. She was very small and a moment later she was very big.
“It is so neat to be back on my feet. It is so nice. It is so good,” she sang. I was shocked; it was transparently the singer, Ugly! Suddenly she paused and looked at me. “Inspector general!”
“You know me?”
“No, no, no,” she said, and became quiet and sullen. I was confused how she could know me, since we did not know each other, you know.
“But you can call me Lucille. That is my real name.” She winked. My eyes opened very wide. There was two Lucille’s in the car, you know, which was unusual.
So we didn’t talk anymore, and the car ride was very long, and as I stared out the window I began to suspect that I was not even in Cuba any longer, so far we traveled. Finally! Finally(!) we pulled up to a large mansion on a hill. With two hungry hippos behind me and two in front I passively followed them inside. The outside of the building had looked normal, painted white with large columns in front, like an arranged polar bear sausages, but the inside was very bizarre. There were no rooms. Just one very huge space. And in the center of that space was another black box, you know, but the size of a small house. On the far wall was a staircase that looked down into the box, and there were two small cranes. One crane was holding up a massive black lid, and the second looked like a telephone wire fixer’s machine for transporting people up and down.
So we were recommended toward the staircase by the escorts, and I had a feeling that I was going to end up in that large black box, you know. It was a bad feeling. Which ended up being the case, however, so I was right, at least, you know. But Lucille went in too. And then suddenly Ugly went in too! And she shouted angrily.
But the inside of the box was very interesting to me as I looked around. It looked just like a large greenhouse, with plants and fruits, and in the center was a large tent. I entered it curiously. There was a deck of cards inside with the cribbage instructions, which turned out to be helpful for playing cribbage later on, during our confinement, you know, along with a goat, which could make milk and cheese as we later found out. But while I was looking around the tent, the lid must have been closed. And I was in that box for many, many months, never to come out again.
The inspector stared into space gloomily.
“Well that can’t be the end! You clearly made your way out of the box,” the other man corrected, perturbed, almost angrily.
“Well yes and no,” sighed the inspector general. “It depends on your definition of box, I suppose, and which box you are talking about.” His neighbor put down his beer heavily.
“What do you mean, yes and no? A box is a box. And you’ve only mentioned one box. Either you got out of the box or you didn’t, and you clearly did,” retorted the Nevadan stubbornly, whose pale face had turned wrinkled and slightly pink. The alcohol was clearly affecting his temperament.
“Well, to explain. You need to understand the nature of the black box and its history,” declared the inspector after a long pause. He was sinking into a more drunken state again, like a toy tugboat drowning in a tub of ethanol. “I will tell you what Lucille explained to me while we were lazily interred in the box.”
First of all, you must make a thoughtful commitment that the Hungarian Government invented this box. They were trying to develop a way to make things shrink and accidentally came up with a shrinking box, you know. The only thing was that the scientists would not agree to make a way to enlarge them, for reasons I will make clear later. Nonetheless, the Hungarian government decided to showcase this amazing achievement at a convention in Budapest, where Ugly was asked to perform. So she agreed, and coincidentally it seemed to the Hungarians that her manager decided she should emerge mysteriously out of a black box placed against a black background, so it would appear as if she had come out of nowhere, you know. Like the magical eye trick. So guess what happened?
The boxes got confused behind stage, of course. Suddenly the world’s favorite rock star, and the world’s greatest invention simultaneously disappear at the same time. So once the Hungarians realized what happened, they revoked the box, and cancelled the show on some false pretense.
So that same day the Hungarian government urgently asked their scientists to find a way to enlarge the box. But the scientists refused on ethical grounds despite the person inside, you know, which I will explain later. The government was not sure why, so eventually a connection is established with the hungry hungry hippos through an official Hungarian agent. This agent asked the mafia to find a group of criminal scientists to work on the project. And they did, and eventually they figured it out, the solution, you know. They even make a way that the box can be opened in a small space. If there is a person in the box, they sit in a small capsule inside the box that is impenetrable, and a bomb goes off outside this capsule, in the box, and always destroys the greenhouse, you know. Then the capsule is released from the box, and a moment later the person comes out in his normal size, without the greenhouse, or even the box.
But during this discovery, the hungry hungry hippos realized they had invented something else of massive destructive value. By this point, however, the Geneva police had begun to realize that something was politically incorrect with the Hungarians.
“So why haven’t I heard of this invention?” questioned the Nevadan listener. The former inspector general did not respond right away, but rotated back and forth dangerously on his stool.
“You see, I inadvertently help destroyed the final prototype, and the original invention fell into obscurity after the convention, you see,” the Inspector General furiously replied after a few seconds of spinning silence. “And that was not all I destroyed with my negligence! I was such a fool!”
“Wait! But I thought you are still in the box,” accused the Nevadan, certain he had caught this imposter at his own game. The Inspector General calmed down slightly.
“Yes I am, but the Inspector General came and rescued me, and I was able to escape to some extent,” replied the Inspector General, wearily.
“Another Inspector General?”
“No, the same one,” said the Inspector General.
“You mean you?”
“Yes, me.”
“Well that makes no sense,” murmured the Nevadan.
“I will explain.”
So it was after a few months at this point when Ugly, Lucille and I were dropped, inside of the box, from the air with a large explosive that may or may not have appeared inside. We could not see what was going on outside, but from the lurching feeling in our stomachs we all decided to crowd into the protective capsule. This was a good idea because we were able to avoid the potential inevitable nuclear explosion that may or may not have exploded, most likely destroying Naples or somewhere else perhaps. But I am getting ahead of myself.
You see, this is where something most interesting occurred. The force of energy released from the box as it continued through the center of the Earth or the ocean or somewhere created a hole in time, you know. So when we got out we were standing on the ledge of Mt. Vesuvius looking down on a very wholesome Naples. However, the capsule door must not have closed completely and Lucille was mortally burned. Ugly turned white and ran down the volcano towards the city. I just stood there in shock. What had happened? You know, I was confused. This was not the last time I would lose Lucille! What a fool I was!
“Stop. Stop right there, this must be the fifth time Lucille’s died,” the Nevadan virulently reacted.” He had turned bright red. “And what you just said made absolutely no sense!”
“Oh?” said the former inspector, curiously. He shook agitatedly, and lit a second cigar.
Sadly and steeply, I proceeded down the volcano to Naples. I decided to go at first to Lucille’s house. I took a taxi there, went through the gate and knocked on the front door. I waited. I thought I heard a noise, but no one came to the door. After a few protracted minutes I gave up and left. I decided to go to the train station and make my way to my office in Geneva. It was at this station that I learned the quite troubling information. I looked down at my ticket, and realized that it was 2018. It was many months before I had been in that box, or as I would later learn, exactly a year before the Drill! I blinked. I went to the conductor and said in Italian, this cannot be right, the year. He said, looking at me strangely, yes it is correct. It is 2018.
I got to my house early the next morning and as I approached I thought I saw my disowned brother across the street. But when I looked closer, he was gone. I went inside my house and it was exactly as I had left it. Since it was the weekend, and I was covered with fatigue, I rested a little bit, trying to understand what had happened. It seemed that I had traveled back in time. I realized the only way I could include the intellectual adjustment was to secretively find the dangerous hungry, hungry hippos and follow them, you know, so I could figure out what happened outside of the box.
I went to work the next day and greeted my boss ecstatically. I hadn’t seen him for a year. He laughed merrily.
“Why haven’t you answered your phone?” he asked me.
“I lost it,” I admitted, not wanting to tell him about my adventures in case he thought I was crazy, you know, since they make no sense at that point. Suddenly, I had an idea. I searched for the Hungarian Convention on my shiny computer. To my horror I realized it had been several days before; I had missed it! I opened the Internet, and looked up Ugly. I had failed; she was still both missing, and not missing.
“Wait, wait, wait,” said the listener. “Even if I were to believe this, if she hadn’t died on the volcano in that dimension, and hadn’t gone missing in the earlier dimension, she wouldn’t just be partially missing. She’d not be missing at all.”
The inspector general nodded sadly. “Ah, yes. I realized this contradiction myself eventually. I was such a fool!”
Yes, yes! So having missed the convention, I decided the only way to understand what had happened to me was to follow the hungry hippos by going to Cuba, as I just said, at the same time that I went there in the other dimension.
I arrived in Havana, making sure I was on an earlier plane so as to not run into myself and cause suspicion. I then made my way to that same alley and waited. Finally I saw myself approach. The old me encountered the strange man on the bicycle. I watched in horror as the Rolls Royce drew closer. My heart jumped, however, when I saw Lucille get out of the car. But as I looked at her more closely this time, I realized there was something strange about her. But a moment later she and I were gone and the car was being driven away. I realized suddenly that I had no way to chase them as they were going so much faster, being in the car. I ran out of the alley and knocked the tall, strange man off of his bicycle and pedaled after the car. He shouted after me, but I was extensively past. After the marathon ride, I reached the mansion. I waited a couple of moments at the gates, and then went to the side of the building, hopped over a picket wall and glanced in through the window. I watched as we were all dropped into the box and the box disappeared. You know, I needed to get to that box to save ourselves and reverse history, you know.
But then someone grabbed my shoulder. I turned around and gasped. It was Lucille!
“Wait,” said the Nevadan. “It couldn’t be Lucille, because she had both died in the volcano, and also was stuck in that box until you went back in time.”
“Shut up. Let me explain,” said the inspector general angrily. He was getting excited.
“Lucille!” I said. “How can it be? I saw you dead at the volcano!”
“Inspector General!” she said warmly in a hushed voice. “I’m sorry I spied on you. But I would never have tricked you into being captured in that black box.”
“But you just did, twice! I saw you do it!”
“No, that was not me.”
“How?” I asked, incredulous, with incoherent expectations.
“You see, I have been in league with both the hungry hungry hippos and your Geneva division. I am a double agent. Ugly didn’t accidentally happen to put a black box on stage at that convention. The hungry hippos had kidnapped Ugly earlier that same day. I had planned ahead of time with the hungry hippos to dress up as her, and disappear in the box myself, so the Hungarian government would have to release the technology to the mafia, an agreement I had also arranged.”
“Well when we were in the box for so long together, why did you never tell me? The whole time I was either thinking that Ugly was you, since you were switched, or maybe that you were both Lucille.”
“I was too afraid that you would be upset with me, I must admit. And when I was in the car I tried to hint it at you, as I was so surprised to see you at first. I told you my name was Lucille, right in front of the hungry hippos, knowing that they wouldn’t think anything was odd; Ugly’s real name is coincidentally Lucille as well. And since you didn’t know that, you would pick up that hint. But you didn’t.”
My head was reeling. Suddenly I thought of something and looked at her crossly.
“You are not really Lucille,” I accused. “Who was the other Lucille then, first of all. And secondly, how come Ugly is still partially missing, if she did not die at the volcano?”
“Well, because she was pretending to be me,” answered Lucille, simply. “You see, once the hungry hippos kidnapped her, they demonstrated their technology to her, and promised her a large share of the profits once they released it, if only she helped them out for a single week. Thinking that she would become a billionaire, she agreed. She dressed up as me, so she could kidnap you, as I was inside the box. But then we were all double-crossed by the hungry hungry hippos and dumped back in the black box for good at their headquarters.”
“Why did the hippos want to kidnap me?”
“Because the Geneva agent who was pretending to be me in Italy told you a lot of information in code over the phone. When it seemed like you were pretending not to understand it, he decided to see if you were in league with the HHH. The HHH at the same time were worried you understood the message and would be able to trace them in Cuba.”
I thought about this for a moment, and decided to comprehend.
“But we have work to do,” she continued. “I was the one who suggested to the government to hire the HHH, since I had connections there in previous roles as a spy. Realizing the corrupt HHH would most likely steal the product for itself once the corrupt scientists made it practical, I asked both the government side and the mafia side for a share of the profits. Everything went fine, until I happened to find out about the mafia’s real plans for this technology.”
“Well, what was that?” I asked.
“Once they learned how to clear out the greenhouse in the box with a bomb before releasing the people stuck in the box, they realized they had a weapon of mass destruction in their hands. If they put the most powerful nuclear weapon inside the box, and timed the opening of the box with the explosion, it would be amplified a hundred fold.”
“Oh!” I said.
“It was at this point that I anonymously alerted the police at Geneva. They realized who I was, however, and sent an agent out to spy on me. The agent disguised himself as me as well, and hid behind my mirror, which he had taken the real glass pane out of. But I didn’t want him to know that I knew, as I could work that to my advantage. And then he met you at the beach, disguised as me, to try to see if you were involved in the plot through your connections to me. They gave you a fake black box to see if you would recognize it.”
“But I didn’t! I am not functioning with the Hungarians!”
“True, but they weren’t sure. But unfortunately, the HHH who had been also spying on Geneva found out that I had given them away. They thought the fake agent who dressed up as me was actually I, and attempted to assassinate me at the restaurant. Instead they shot your agent from Geneva with an arrow. And I think you know the rest.” I processed all this slowly, you know. Then I looked up urgently.
“We must stop the HHH from selling that bomb to terrorists!”
“Yes, and we know two things. First we will succeed in diverting the bomb by taking it Naples the day it will explode, a year from now. Using complex calculations I have determined the exact hour of its explosion. Secondly, I must continue to pretend to be Ugly, not only to prevent a rupture in space-time since Ugly cannot be missing twice, but also because I am much safer from the HHH under this identity. If we cannot take that box to Naples we will most likely fail to exist.”
The Nevadan looked down at the zealous inspector. “So there is two of you and two of Lucille. And one pair of you is still in the box? Right?” asked the Nevadan.
“Yes, and we must find that box, as it is in the arms of the Hungarian mafia in Cuba,” clarified the Inspector General. Customers were coming into the bar in increased numbers, and the general din had grown louder as the evening had gotten later. The Inspector General continued.
For so long, we followed the actions of the HHH carefully, as they became linked with a terrorist organization, and then began to search for a nuclear weapon in conjunction. Although I was not trained as a spy, Lucille taught me quickly, and I gave myself a disguise and new identity. We determined that the terrorists were a group of militant Unitarian Universalists somewhere in Canada.
I was able to contact the terrorist organization, through the Internet under the guise of a Canadian student in Switzerland, and once I gained their trust, I was in touch with them daily. It was lucky for me, as both the Canadians and I knew some French and some English. It helped build a level of trust that would not have been easy to achieve with more conventional terrorist organizations.
The arrangements with the extremist Unitarian Universalists took a number of months, and winter turned to spring and spring turned to summer, like usual, you know. I was living in a stuffy room and as the heat grew and grew, I had to adjust some selective underpinnings of my shirts more and more often. My eyes were becoming bad as I no longer went outside in the light very often, and I was always staring at the computer screen, talking with these evil extremists.
In fact I was hoping through my vigor that I could position myself to be chosen to transport and detonate the weapon, so we would not have to steal it from anyone else at the last minute to defuse it. This was a difficult task as the Unitarian Universalists had multiple cells across Canada and the United States, some linked with militant Humanist groups, but none of these cells were actually connected. The little information I had was given through me from my supervisor, who coordinated a larger group of cells, although his information was also limited. I was beginning to give up hope with this mission, as the conversations became more and more full of emotional and angry speeches and less and less about logistics or planning. But finally one day, I found out the attack would coincide with the Drill, exactly the day Lucille had hypothesized.
“The drill? Why would they possibly choose the drill?” asked the intoxicated man in the banana hat, perplexed.
“Well, you know, the Drill is the day when all the economically involved nations pretended that a huge epidemic of sickness had broken out. Global politicians and business leaders had realized that if this happened all the global supply chains would stop, but the disease would already be globally transmitted. The fear was that if the supply chain stopped, medicines and the general economy would not continue and this would be even worse than if the disease was belatedly and partially quarantined.”
“Yes, so, why then?” urged the other man.
“Well the terrorists realized that since the supply chain would not stop on that day, they could easily send the weapon to their agent through a delivery service.”
“Ah,” said the man, who was now almost as drunk as the inspector general. “So let me guess. You stopped the bomb, returned back, and suddenly there are two of you, and the other one you had taken your job. And that’s why you’re the former Inspector General.”
“Ah!” said the general inspector. “It is much worse! Terrible! Terrible! Let me continue.”
During these busy months, I rarely saw Lucille, although she would call me intermittently between not calling. There was still an awkward tension between us, after her multiple deceptions and deaths that were an emotional havoc to me. She was busy touring around, pretending to be Ugly, you know, and I was in a room on the Internet ten hours a day, living off of saved money from my Inspector General fund in the bank. When Lucille and I did meet, I noticed that she looked preoccupied and worried.
There was not much news with the Unitarian Universalists, but in July I was suddenly promoted up two ranks, you know. There still was not so much information, but suddenly this strange term kept on coming up, again and again in this circle: the oyster pinata. I was not sure what it meant, but apparently the terrorists had received one. I guessed that it was either the nuclear warhead or the black box, or perhaps both. Regardless, I was promoted again in August, and began to talk with the paramount leaders of the organization. I did not want to ask for the weapon directly, but instead, wanted to figure out where and how they wanted to make explosion, so I could conveniently position myself to take it conveniently, you know.
Eventually I learned that the Unitarian Universalists wanted to drop the bomb into the ocean by Naples, or perhaps inside of Mt. Vesuvius, to create either a flood or volcano explosion that would wipe out the entire city and perhaps both of the continents. This was encouraging, because Naples was the place we ended up before the first theoretical explosion, and it was also a convenience to me as I lived in Switzerland, upstairs to Naples. Indeed, the leaders began to pay much more attention to me, and I became increasingly certain I would be chosen for the task.
However, out of much curiosity, I wanted to know why these Unitarian Universalists wanted to blow up this Naples so badly. But I was not sure how to ask, because if it were so obvious and central to their doctrine the blanket would be torn off my guise, like a sheep without wool, you know. So one morning I began a casual conversation with my ‘comrade’. I asked this person what his favorite part of the destruction will be. And he said it was that from Naples we would also destroy Rome, Palermo and Tunis with the great volcano or water explosion.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And you personally, what is your dislike experience with these places?’ But at this point he grew suspicious, and I pretended it was a joke. That was the closest I came to being disclosed as a spy.
Perhaps this was the lethal mistake I made in my positioning process. I was such a fool! A fool! A few months later, as the Mediterranean summer turned into fall there was bad news. The weapon had been assigned to someone else. I wasn’t even told where it would be sent. I was very worried. It was now only a few weeks before the Drill was to occur. One morning, Lucille called me.
“Do you have any idea where in Naples this explosive will be discharged?” she asked.
“No,” I responded, despondently, “I think we may be doomed.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I think I have some information of my own.”
“How?” I asked, but she had hung up the phone. It was here when I should have begun to get suspicious, but I was such a fool! Such a fool! Speech of the oyster pinata became more and more frequent, and it became pretty clear that it was the total weapon, the nuclear weapon inside of the shrunken black box. I made a metaphorical exploration with myself, and thought, the bomb must be the pearl of the oyster, and when it is cracked open, like a pinata, it will release lots of candy, like the nuclear energy.
A few days later Lucille revealed that she knew the location of the agent with the explosive. But now instead of simply having the bomb at our own location, we would have to steal it from the other agent at the last minute, and as Lucille suggested, take apart the detonation mechanism within a very small time amount.
Finally the day arrived. The black box had supposedly been enlarged again in a large house, and the missile was inside. I flew out to Naples, and met a depressed looking Lucille at the beach. We looked at the waves and the sand longingly. It reminded me of the song Lucille sang to me when she was pretending to be the singer, Ugly, and had jumped out of the small black box when we were all crowded together in the Rolls Royce with the Hungarian Mafia in Cuba. She had sung to me, in her song voice, it is so good, it is so nice. But now it was not being on our feet so much that was so neat, it was the falling sun over the blue ocean and the gulls and the waves and I had to agree, it was so nice and suddenly I was resolved not to let any explosion ruin anything.
After a dinner at the same restaurant where Lucille had seemed to be assassinated just under a year or two before, we made our way to the terrorist’s building. As we walked up to the front gate that was covered in ivy, I noticed that the house looked very similar to Lucille’s house. I looked at the street sign, and the name was very similar too. I was suspicious, but not suspicious enough. I was such a fool! A fool!
“Wait outside,” said Lucille, “I’ll get it. I think I know how to shrink it.” I tried to convince her that I should go with her, but she refused.
“It will be much quieter and faster with one person,” she argued. So I agreed. She put in a pin number at the gate and disappeared. I waited outside the building, tapping my foot with a building impatience and counting the stones in the cobble road. After a fretful hour, she came out from behind a corner, and handed me the small oyster pinata with the insignia BFDWTPT.
“Go,” she said, hiding behind the corner. “I might be being followed. I’ll catch up with you.”
I looked around, but then took the box from her, surprised again that it was so heavy as the fake. I walked away quickly, weaving through alleys and streets to catch a taxi. Soon I was running to the beach, and the rowboat we had prepared was sitting serenely on the shore. It was Lucille’s idea to take the rowboat, so if the Unitarian Universalists realized that we had tricked them, they would not be able to catch us unless they had a rowboat too, which seemed unlikely. It was getting late, and I knew I shouldn’t waste time, as the bomb would detonate soon. As I was about to leave, Lucille ran out of nowhere.
She ran up to me and gave me a hug.
“Goodbye inspector general,” she said.
“Goodbye? We will see each other again. Right?” I asked naively. I was such a fool! A foolish, negligent fool! She looked at me sadly, and nodded her head.
“Go,” she said. And pushed my boat away from the dock. I paddled away frequently, looking behind me ever so often. When I decided I was far enough from the shore, I held up the black box to think about the un-detonation process. I looked out at the beach to see Lucille waving. Behind her stood Lucille. I jolted, shocked. There were two Lucille’s! How could this be? Had she returned from the future a third time? I hesitated.
“Let it go!” Lucille shouted. “It’s going to explode!” I held the box in my hands, but all of a sudden it crumpled like a wilting flower and vanished. Lucille and Lucille vanished from the shore. And then suddenly I understood.
“No!” I shouted about the tragic thing that had occurred and paddled back to sea. But it was too late. There was nothing I could do. Then nothing happened.
“What do you mean nothing happened?” exclaimed the Nevadan, confoundedly.
“Well you see,” began the general inspector. “I rowed back to shore, but Lucille was gone. I searched for her for weeks. Eventually I realized that I was back in 2018 again, a year earlier.
“So, wait, what happened?”
“You see, Lucille must have outbid me to get the weapon in the first place from the terrorists, perhaps through her old connections with the HHH, you know. But she never actually installed the bomb inside, but instead she opened the bomb and let the real Lucille out, then closed the box again. While I was out to shore, I passed the time when the bomb should have exploded, and suddenly the universe straightened itself out. Since Lucille wasn’t in the box, she didn’t come back at all to the year before, in 2018. And since Lucille disappeared, the HHH never got a hold of the box, I never ended up in the box, and the other me failed to exist!” Explained the Inspector General, who was reaching the height of his agitation, shaking furiously, and waving his hands. “You see it was my failure to understand Lucille’s intentions that led to her demise! It was my fault! She, who completely redeemed herself!”
“Oh? I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I understand,” admitted the drunk Nevadan, carefully, not wanting to excite the Inspector General any further, but very curious about the inspector’s reasoning. He rubbed his forehead with his handkerchief.
“You know, it did not matter whether the bomb exploded or where it exploded or any of that, or any of the things Lucille said to me as we begun our anti-terrorist activity. Once the oyster pinata passed the point when it exploded a year ago, everything would go back to the year before, once again, regardless of any external change we could do outside the box. There might have been six of us wandering around the next time in 2018, and if we repeated this, there would be eight then ten then twelve, and so on. Lucille realized this, but I did not until it was far too late. Lucille knew that the only way she could catalyze the fortuitous revision would be to deal with the box internally, as the box was now a universe to itself. So she let the first Lucille out of the box, and everyone went back in time, except for Lucille. So she did not exist and did not initiate the chain of events that led to all of us being trapped in the black box to begin with!” The inspector placed his head in his arms, resignedly.
“But wait, you said that you were still in the box,” said the other man, grabbing hold of the Inspector General by both shoulders and shaking him. “How could that be?”
“Well! That other universe with the double people was caused by the absence of the box, by its explosion. When it did not explode, it simply became the universe as it is now. We are all in that box.”
“So none of this really happened.”
“No, not at all,” sighed the inspector general contritely. The other man released the inspector and sat, perching his elbow on his knee in thought.
“Well if none of this really happened, I think we can agree on that, ” he exclaimed finally, with drunken resolve. “Each in his own way.” But the Inspector General was not amused. He groaned.
“None of it matters as long as I have lost my dear Lucille. And I could have prevented it too, if I was not such a lousy Inspector General! I was such a fool!”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Lucille did what had to be done. She was the one who made the mistake of getting the mafia involved in the whole business to begin with so they could steal the technology and make themselves and her rich.” The inspector stared at the Nevadan blankly, not at all consoled.
One last thing,” prodded the Nevadan. “Why are you the former Inspector General if you have no double, and you returned back in time, in 2018, for work?”
“Oh. Yes, well as you know I missed a few weeks searching for Lucille, and then my degenerate brother took my job.”
“How did he do that? Is he qualified?”
“Well no, but he’s my identical twin.”
