Chapter 1
Dr. Sheena Lypotrope had leant forward and smiled. “Oh, what’s this?” she breathed with a soft gasp; and with amorphous emotion and a tremolo of palpitations, Bobby watched as her pearly hand settled like a winter swan on to his dissertation. She opened it with the slightest of motions. "Chloride Monohydrate Portals in Anatidae Mesothelial Tissues and their Transfer Rates in 0.05% Mg+ Distillate.”Clutching at her nametag as if containing her rapture, she purred, “Thrilling.”
Unsure whether this demigoddess understood mortal speech, Bobby had mumbled, “That’s my dissertation. I’m going for my master’s.”
“Yes, we know." Closing the notebook and resting her fingertips on it again as if casting a sleeping spell upon it, she slid her hands into her pockets. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?”
This invocation of his knowledge, of the endless hours of dissecting geese, ducks, eiders, smews, mergansers, and goldeneyes, of the microscopy, the identification, the double-blind testing, the analysis, the desert bleakness of dead ends, the loss of data, and the accusations of academic plagiarism, all of this Bobby went on to relate, on and on, like epic poetry.
To this Beowulfing, she nodded with occasional wide eyes, and even a smile and a giggle of apparent interest, for about half an hour, although for Bobby Lumbar it was a sweet eternity. Finally, though, she deftly terminated his rambling with a soft and sultry, “Thank you, Dr. Lumbar.”
“Oh,” Bobby had swallowed, as if to keep forever her innocent mistake like a doubloon in his belly, “I’m not a doctor.”
“But at this rate...” she suggested creamily. “Yes, we think you’re probably the most talented staff on this Level. But maybe you could come with me to Level VIII? That’s where you’ll find my office.”
“Sure,” he had half-panted and putting his dissertation to his chest stood up to follow her.
Sheena Lypotrope had merely smiled, “Oh, that’s sweet. Here...” and sending her hand out like a well-manicured tentacle, snatched the notebook from him.
“Um,” Bobby gulped, “that’s really important.”
“But the committee might want to see it. You’ve been to Stockholm for the awards ceremony, haven’t you? It’s lovely,” and clutching his thesis to her ample bosom, she turned about.
Her walk bid Bobby follow and he began to eagerly do so, until he glimpsed his desk drawer and felt a with a twitch of guilt. He was leaving his best girl alone at home on a Saturday night.
He called at her fleeing form, “Oh, I just have to take care of one thing.”
But she had answered back lightly, “Oh, whatever it is, it’s not going anywhere.”
And so, abandoning his cubicle and all that it contained, Bobby Lumbar ran after her, while a happy ball skimmed along overheard, shining a fine dose of vitamin D into his love-struck eyes.
What transpired after the romantic elevator ride down to Level VIII, Bobby Lumbar recalled only in a sketchy montage. He definitely remembered the frosty energy drink, downed in manly fashion right out of the can. (Sheena herself had brought him this libation, compliments of the executive break room, already opened and ready to quaff.)
But after this point, Bobby stopped being a reliable witness.
Having drained the energy drink to the dregs, he had felt none too energetic—no doubt from a biochemical imbalance caused by unrequited passion. And as Sheena held forth on the vision of MAXIFAX, that Bobby was part of that vision, a sliver of true blue in the prismatic spectrum of the future, and something about a mission, she began to sway from side to side.
“What do you think of that, Dr. Lumbar?” she had asked.
Still trying to focus on her swaying form, Bobby had said, “Whatever, anything for the team…”
“MAXIFAX needs you to do this,” she had said with a moist, melting, hopeless gaze, “And I need you to do this.”
Bobby remembered nodding vigorously in agreement, before collapsing on to the floor.
He remembered Sheena leaning over him, her face oh-so close to his, like a starry sky in the eyes of an astrophysicist who had forgotten his key to the observatory. He recalled hearing, like an echo from the depths of a galactic garden. “You will do this, won’t you, Bobby?” and he had nodded again, bonking his head against the floor.
“Good,” she had said, her syllables dissipating into the cosmos, and waved a black notebook before her face like a fan. "I’ll just keep a hold of this.”
Then began a nebulous memory of getting hustled across the MAXIFAX tarmac to the waiting Willendorf I.
So, as Bobby Lumbar lay trussed-up in the back of Bella’s rig like a dead duck in a hot oven, he just knew that Sheena would straighten all this out and apologize and together they would laugh about it over a candlelit dinner at the steak house.
But still, the last sparks of his consciousness posed him one last stumper: If he was the scientist, why did he feel like the guinea pig?
