Kitman Versus The Squirrels

A novel. With some squirrels in.

<< Chapter 5 >>

In Which Half-Squirrels Go, The Squirrels Arrive, And A Disaster Occurs.

Kitman has never gotten along with duct tape. He is the only person I know who has ever made a duct tape wallet entirely by accident. In keeping with tradition, he now proceeded to turn several yards of the gray and sticky into a large blob that bore a striking resemblance to the bust of Benjamin Franklin III in the State House.

I removed the roll of tape from his hand with the aid of a pair of scissors, and set about attaching the detector and the VeePod to the radio controlled Humvee.

"Kitman?" I said.

"Mmf?" said Kitman, for reasons I will leave up to the reader's imagination.

"How did I manage to perceive imaginary light?"

"With your imagination, of course," he said, after freeing his buccal cavity.

"Surely you jest."

"Well, I have to admit —" he nodded toward the auxiliary library's windows — "the cold rational light of dawn, there, has been exposing a lot of moth-holes in my beautiful hypothesis. Metaplasma probably doesn't explain what you saw or heard. The odds are exceedingly good that our ghostly visitor is actually just some repercussion of...our recent adventure. I'm sure the possibility had occurred to you."

It hadn't, actually. "Then why —"

"I wanted an excuse to build this metaplasmic energy detector. It will, at least, eliminate a possibility, and the testing process will give us a little more time before we have to explain to Katrina about our...adventure."

"I thought you wanted to tell her?" said I.

"Tell her what?" said Kathleen, walking briskly into the room.

For those interested, she was now dressed in black jeans, sandals and a Hawaiian Republic shirt that Kitman had mail-ordered and then rejected when it proved to be too tropically fructo-fluorescent even for his absence of taste.

"That Williams here is desperately in love with you," said Kitman.

"Oh, he is? " said Kathleen. "Well, good." Removing the remainder of the roll of tape from my hands with a pair of scissors, with a few deft rips and sticks she assembled the roving recorder and handed it to her brother without comment.

"You missed the technobabble," I said. "Guess how the metaplasmic energy detector works."

"Imaginary light?" she said.

Kitman blinked. "Where did you get that from? Were you listening?"

"No, I read about it in Blackspring's Guide to Spiritualist Claptrap and jumped to conclusions." said Kathleen. "Imaginary light is one of the shaven hypotheses for ghosts."

"Uh?" I said.

"Rational explanations that didn't make it past Occam's razor. —If you're going to be running this under the floorboards, what are you going to be using for visible-type light?"

Kitman picked up the Humvee remote control and sent the vehicle whirring about the room. "As it happens, the VeePod has a built-in frequency shifter. It handles infrared and ultraviolet with the greatest of ease."

"Why?" said I.

"Because the Woz wanted it so," said Kitman complacently, driving his toy across his sister's sandals. "Extendibility," he added. "A hallmark of excellence in design: always include a pleasant surprise for the more inquisitive customer. Of course, a lot of people don't appreciate that kind of thoughtfulness, which is why so many VeePods and Wozboxes and such turn up in the barrels at Electronics Trash Hut."

He brought the Humvee back to his feet and switched it off. "Well! All that needs to be done now is set up the computer to receive the video signal, and of course: a hearty breakfast." He looked at a random corner of the room. "—I don't suppose there's any possibility of one, is there?"

The air was filled with the sound of Kathleen giving him the eyebrow raised and fixed.

"Capital! " he said. "Some might suggest that the bonds of sororal-fraternal love might be invoked in situations like this, but I for one prefer to eat of the fruit of mine own labors. Bread is so much tastier when salted from one's own brow."

"If you want pancakes," said Kathleen, turning her attention to the ceiling, "all you have to do is beg."

Kitman and I exchanged lightning-quick glances. (Truth be told, though Kitman could follow a recipe like a tailgater, and had in fact outscored Kathleen in the written portion of the flapjack exam in Home Economics, his prowess with the screwdriver did not extend to the operation of the common spatula. He couldn't flip a pancake to save his life. His wrist lacked the necessary degree of whippiness.) "Please, please, may we have pancakes?" we said.

Kathleen, still examining the ceiling, said "I don't hear any knees on that floor..."

(There was a gentle rain of knees on the floor.)

"One day," said Kathleen, turning for the door without lowering her gaze, "I will be less susceptible to groveling. —All right, you shall have pancakes. But you'll have to be satisfied with butter. Apparently Ken and Kevin drank all the syrup. All we have left is lime grenadine."

And she was gone.

I looked at Kitman, and Kitman looked at me. "Perhaps they did," he said. "But there are those who are wise in the ways of the kitchen, and they say: look behind the largest box of oatmeal."

 

•

 

And in the fullness of time we found behind the largest box of oatmeal a note from Kitman's mother reading "We're out of syrup and pancake mix. Go to the store." But that was all right; the lime grenadine suited the eventual French Toast quite well.

"Interesting color," said Kitman, picking a slice up with chopsticks. "Sort of a...chalcedony, wouldn't you say, Williams?"

"Um," said I. (One trip to the dictionary later: yes, greyish-blue.)

"It's not burnt," said Kathleen. "I had to use Black Milk."

"..." said Kitman and I.

Kathleen set a half-full bottle down on the table. Moon Goddess Black Milk said the label, with Magellanic Limpidity Co., Phnom Penh, Cambodia at the bottom. In between there were ideograms and italicized double exclamation points and a complete absence of any other English words, including a list of reassuringly normal ingredients and "Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr."

"Uncle Jon sent it," she explained. "It came in yesterday's mail."

Kitman looked at me; I looked at Kitman; Kathleen looked at us with perfect composure — and we ate French Toast, after pouring ourselves glasses of electric black mystery beverage.

How did it taste? Milky — and a bit like liquor, a bit like ice, a bit like liquorice, and unlike carrageenan to the fullest extent of natural law.

"Not bad," said Kitman, "but I think I'll go to Food-N-Stuf later today."

"That reminds me," said Kathleen. "We were also out of bread."

"..." said Kitman and I.

"And speaking of food," said Kathleen, "if whatshisname here saw a nonexistent squirrel eating our house, what was it eating, exactly?"

"An interesting conundrum," said Kitman. "We shall investigate post-haste."

"To science! " I said, raising my tarry cup.

"Yes," said Kitman. "Which reminds me — Kathleen, I need to borrow your computer."

"Why?"

"Because it's a portable, and therefore ideal for carrying up to the hayloft, and also because it's the only PC in the house that isn't in pieces."

"Ah. And what happened to those Wozboxes you were raving about last month, the ones you described as, if I remember correctly, the Swiss Army knives of PDAs?"

Kitman hesitated. "Confiscated," he said. I could tell he was hoping not to have to explain that they had been confiscated by an alien superintelligence rather than his parents, but I wasn't sure why.

"Ah," said Kathleen once more. "And what exactly will I get out of this, exactly?"

"You said 'exactly' twice, " said Kitman, doubtless to stall for time, since he still, or once again, had an effective net worth of twenty-five cents.

"I know."

"Um..." Kitman suddenly straightened in his chair and pointed at me. "He'll give you lots of hugs when we're done."

"I beg your pardon?" I said. At least I thought I said it, but I may have been hallucinating.

"Well, 'lots' is not very exact but it will do," said Kathleen. "Pass the lime grenadine, would you? Thank you."

After a few significant moments Kitman became aware of the bulgy eyeball I was directing toward him.

"What?"

"Lots of hugs?"

"What about them? I've seen you give hugs."

"Kitman," I said, "I have hugged grandparents, cousins, random strangers, ducks and even you, but I do vaguely resent having my affections dispensed without my consent."

"Do you consent?"

"Um...yeah."

"Well then!" gaid Kitman. He put down his napkin, and stood up from the table. "Let's get down to it."

And there is a lesson in this: if you believe there is a squirrel, ghostly or otherwise, gnawing away at your house, address the issue promptly, and neither dawdle nor delay. Do not, for example, run out to Food-N-Stuf for bread and rice milk first. Do not, prior to running out to Food-N-Stuf for bread and milk, squabble over proper methods of loading the dishwasher and whether the empty bottle of milk, black or otherwise, washed along the glasses and kept on the grounds that it is a handsome souvenir, or merely be rinsed and filed with the recyclables because the house is brimming over with handsome souvenirs. Do not, prior to said aesthetic debate, engage in idle banter while bussing your dishes from the table. No, follow the way of Kitman and just get down to it.

"Wait," I said. "We haven't cleaned the table."

"Oh? Yes," said Kitman, surveying the wreckage. "How slovenly of me."

"How well-behaved of him," said Kathleen, referring, presumably, to myself. "You did say he was in love with me, didn't you?"

"Desperately," said Kitman, attempting to work out the Towers of Hanoi puzzle with the dirty plates and failing because they were all the same size.

"Why?"

"It's your hair. He can't stop talking about the way it streams dramatically in the wind."

"It doesn't stream," said Kathleen, gathering up the silverware. "It's too short."

"I didn't say he was observant," said Kitman. "Possibly he meant the rain." He stacked the plates into an unconventional ziggurat and headed for the kitchen. "And don't let his next-to-godliness fool you. He only sleeps in our bed because his own is covered in dirty clothes."

"That is a filthy lie," I said, collecting the glasses. "Those clothes are fresh from the dryer. I haven't put them away yet, but they're perfectly clean. A little dusty, maybe...

"Ah, what shall I do with this empty bottle, by the way?"

 

•

 

"Well," said Kitman, after we had returned from Food-N-Stuf and put away the bread and rice milk, "now let's get down to it."

And we did.

 

•

 

Kitman unlatched the crawlspace access panel and opened it onto darkness. "Ideally," he said to his hybridized Humvee, flicking its various power switches one by one, "I would be cramming myself into the unknown at this point. Alas, there isn't room under the floorboards for the likes of me, and so I send you, my faithful servant Sergiu, instead."

He patted Sergiu on the hood and placed him inside the wall, then took up a cross-legged position in front of the hole. He balanced Kathleen's computer on his left knee and the Humvee's remote control pad on his right. "If I were really good," he said, examining the computer keyboard pensively, "I would have wired the controls into this little red pointer button thing. Ah well, maybe next year." He pressed a few keys to bring up three windows of video (spectrally shifted infrared, standard light, and one completely black display of metaplasmic imaginary light), and switched the Humvee into drive.

In some houses the business twixt floor and ceiling consists of cross-braced parallel boardwork, but in Kitman's it more resembles telephone poles or tree limbs. Dr. Kitman had once hypothesized, while laying network cable under the floorboards, that the idea was to allow the inevitable rodent residents to get around without having to damage the structural integrity of the house. At any rat(e) the Humvee had no trouble making its way around, and Kitman soon had it traveling down the length of the north-side water tank.

"Whereabouts did you see the effluvium?" he said.

"You already passed it," said Kathleen.

"Appropriately enough," said Kitman, turning the steering wheel.

"Why not just go stick your head in the hole and look?"

"You have fun your way, I'll have fun my way. —Good heavens."

This last remark was occasioned by the appearance, in the imaginary light display, of a faint but definite blotch amid blackness.

"Omnia vinces Tesla!" exulted Kitman. "Who would have thought it?"

He drove the Humvee as close to the blotch as the architecture would allow, and parked. There was no video glitch; there was a definite blotch, and one clearly fixed to its location. It did not appear on the infrared display, and when Kathleen flashed her keychain LED flashlight into the crawlspace it did not appear on the visible spectrum display either.

"It's not what I saw, though," said Kathleen. "What I saw was clearly defined. That's a—"

"Blotch?" I suggested.

"Not the ideal word, but it will do," she said.

"Well, the detector's very primitive," said Kitman. "But — maybe the imaginary light is secondary radiation. Imagine for the moment a wholly ontological squirrel poo."

"A Platonic Ideal squirrel poo," said Kathleen.

"Exactly," said Kitman. "A squirrel poo whose existence is purely conceptual. You've heard of weighty concepts? Well, this one is sufficiently massive that it distorts the space-time continuum —"

"And the stress results in the emission of imaginary light by way of something along the lines of triboluminescence!" said Kathleen.

"Um...yeah," said Kitman.

"Fine. But how did I observe it?"

"Pure existential perception," said Kitman. "Your underlying reality perceiving its underlying reality. Normally you can't perceive the underlying reality of, say, this wall —" he thumped the wall with his palm, and the radio controller fell to the floor — "because its actual existence gets in the way, but the squirrel poo has no reified aspect."

This was all starting to sound strangely familiar.

"That's why it glowed but didn't illuminate," said Kathleen. "No quantum eigenstate, no probability wave function collapse — get back here! Don't go running off just because someone said eigenstate."

I sat back down.

"Come to that," said Kitman, regarding Kathleen with vague suspicion, "where did you learn that word?"

"Blackspring's Guide To Quantum Rubbish," said Kathleen.

Kitman handed me the radio controller. "Here, you drive for a while. Well, anyway, where there's squirrel poo there's probably a squirrel."

"A metasquirrel," said Kathleen. "What does a metasquirrel eat?"

"Pilcrow nuts," I said, switching out of P into N and then R.

"What?" said Kathleen.

"Um," said I, and paid more attention to what I was doing.

"Williams," said Kitman — but he wasn't interrupting to shut me up. "You did say that you saw the little devil with his head stuck into a beam, no? And heard him gnawing?"

"Yes?"

"That would suggest he was gnawing the metaphysical part of that beam."

Kathleen turned to her brother and gave him the eyebrow raised and fixed. "Are you suggesting he was eating away the underlying reality of the beam?"

"Somethinq like that, yes," said Kitman, scratching the side of his chin. "Could have...negative ramifications, that."

As mentioned previously, I was paying attention to what I was doing. The central staircase, as seen from under the floor, takes the form of an inner wall. I (or Sergiu) was approaching the south corner of this, and at the appropriate time I hooked a left —

"Kitman, you've got squirrels!"

Not a squirrel, not some squirrels; lots of squirrels. Indistinct in the imaginary light display, and missing from the others, but clearly identifiable, and all looking straight at the hybridized Humvee.

Which plowed straight through them, because I didn't think to stop.

"Back up!" said Kitman.

"Turn around!" said Kathleen.

I started to put Sergiu into reverse, but suddenly realized that I was about to compound whatever squirrel-type faux pas I had already committed, and drove around a support beam in a wide circle instead. When I brought Sergiu to a halt...the squirrels were still there. They had turned around to watch the hybridized Humvee, but they were still there. They looked at us — at the camera — for a long moment...and then split. Or rather divided. They stepped aside not from each other, but from themselves: each squirrel moved left and right simultaneously, and there were twice as many squirrels staring at us.

And then they did it again and there were four times as many squirrels staring at us. And then they did it again and there were too many squirrels staring at us.

"This is not good," said Kitman, whereupon it promptly got worse.

The squirrels swarmed. And multiplied.

And streamed.

I looked up from the screen and into the hole in the wall just in time to get a flood of squirrels through the face.

 

•

 

In the event that you have never had thousands of squirrels pour through the fiber of your being...well, it's not all that unpleasant, really, although I did suddenly develop a great sympathy for swimming pools.

We scrambled up onto the desk to get out of the way.

"This is completely unacceptable," said Kathleen.

Fluorescent-blue squirrels were billowing out of the access panel — and they knew where they were going. That was the disturbing part. They went for every corner in the room, they spread out the door and attacked every corner we could see outside the room; they even stacked up like cheerleaders and went for the corners of the ceiling. And they kept coming.

"I was afraid of this," said Kitman. "They're going for the joists. Some of them, anyway."

Things suddenly looked brighter — literally, sad to say. Above our heads was sun, blue sky, and fluffy white clouds, because the roof had softly and silently vanished away.

"I think it might be a good idea to leave," we said.

We stepped down off the table and waded through squirrels to the door. They paid us no heed.

No sooner had we entered the hallway than Kathleen said "Wait, my computer!" and turned back like Orpheus —

— and to no one's surprise (other than mine, I assume) found herself facing an unobstructed view of the house across the street.

The wall-to-wall carpeting now stopped at the doorway; there was no room beyond it. Several feet below where the floor had been there was now — even more oddly than you might expect — a roof. An ordinary roof covered in ordinary black shingles, such as is found attached to most houses in Abelton Park, but not, hitherto, this one.

"Obviously a major abnormality," said Kitman.

"I had three thousand unread emails on that computer!" said Kathleen.

"Good riddance," she added. and ran for the stairs. Actually we all ran for the stairs. Not to put to fine a point on it, we fled.

And as we fled the house disappeared from around us — replaced, section by section, by an entirely different house — bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, doors, carpets.

We tore through the front door — or not; it suddenly wasn't there — down the steps, down the walkway, and out into the street, where we came to a halt in front of a Mr. Squooshee ice cream truck surrounded by children who didn't seem to be paying attention to what was happening.

We turned around.

And at the head of the walkway we saw a brand-new Cape Hatteras style duplex...with, strangely, the top of the Kitman staircase projecting through its roof, but that persisted only for a moment before it too ceased to exist.

The Kitman home was completely and utterly gone.

We leaned up against the vibrating side of the Mr. Squooshee truck.

Kitman took a deep, centering breath such as is practiced by the yellow saffron robe set at Venus Vincenzo's, and exhaled. "What a...blasted nuisance," he said.

Kathleen took a deep, centering breath, such as is practiced by the yellow saffron robe crowd at Venus Vincenzo's, and her brother, and exhaled. "Be a little more scatological," she said.

I took a deep, centering breath —

— and the Mr. Squooshee driver leaned out his little window.

"Are you going to buy something, or what?" he said.