[I promised another chapter of Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels and here’s the first post. Enjoy!]
Vans, as everyone knows, are vehicular catalysts. Stupid or brilliant, things happen when vans are involved. This does not apply to their limp and uninspired offspring, minivans, which are just boring enough to simulate suicide without the sweet release of death. Our story continues with real people driving real vans.
Let one part of the story fade as Cindy Leachman sleeps off a drunken binge in her 1989 Ford Econoline. Turn now to a 1961 Dodge A100 sputtering towards Portland.
Fred Smith gently eased the clutch on his van; a machine older than him. It was out of place on a modern highway. Anything from a Civic to a SmartCar could blow his doors off. Ignoring the pell-mell madness of modern life, he babied his vehicle in a way that would make Cindy fume. He didn’t care. His van was not transportation. It was, to be frank, his whole world; job, hobby, and pussy magnet all rolled into one.
Fred had a perfect life and he knew it. He’d carved out a lazy, relaxed, comfort zone within the universe that would make billionaires and rock stars jealous. There was only one problem with this, he was part of a team and the team only worked, he sighed, when he shouldered the officially unofficial leadership role.
He’d finally caught up with traffic. With a little luck from rush hour delays he’d be able to keep up. This gave him time to make a call.
This, like all such phone calls, would touch on a terrifying and alien universe. He donned a hands free headset, gingerly turned on the special cell phone he’d been given, and pressed the single button.
He assumed it was encrypted. He assumed it had all sorts of nefarious internal components. For all he knew there was a combination of state secrets and uranium inside the slim case. Almost certainly it contained components of uncertain origin; ranging from unregulated to flat out illegal. He couldn’t rule out the possibility it would explode if misused or should it fall into the wrong hands (whatever that might mean).
It was a “gift” from his sister. The single button placed a call to her and her alone. It began to ring. He braced for intellectual impact.
“I told you not to call me at work!”
He winced, would “hello” be an impossible greeting? But that was the way of things. One simply had to roll with it. Also, he was no wimp himself. After all, he had survived being her sibling. She was made of pure power but he was (mostly) at ease with her particular flavor of psychopathy.
“Is that what you call it?” He needled. “If you’re doing it naked I have doubts about your career choices.”
There was a muffled THUMP in the background. This was immediately followed by a high keening wail. “Quit whining! You’ve still got one left.” She barked to the unseen victim of her training.
Fred cringed. He loved her, but his sister was a menace!
“I told you to evaluate with respect to t = 0. You erroneously dropped the baseline adjustment to the voltage at the initial step. Furthermore it’s best approached with the limit as t approaches zero rather than the actual end state.”
There was some muffled response. It was either weeping or advanced calculus. Probably both.
“Try again, you’ve got literally one chance left.” She was still ignoring Fred. He found himself rooting for this unseen victim of her regimen. A sobbing and whining voice burbled some words Fred didn’t recognize. Something about irrational numbers and the diode feedback effect. Whatever the voice said must have been right.
“Excellent, my assistants will provide first aid and a 30 minute rest period. Hydrate and avail yourself of the pain medications provided. When you come back I’ll give you a cookie.”
Fred shuddered at the mention of a cookie. Once you learned a lesson delivered by cookie, you never again accepted a cookie from her (or anyone else)! She’d used the method to “help” him study for a high school trigonometry final. He’d wrecked the curve. It wasn’t worth it.
“So, baby brother, what’s up?”
“I’m checking that you’re coming to the convention this weekend.”
“Oh Fred, just because our parents gave us stupid names doesn’t mean we’ve got to play goofy roles for our whole lives.” She fussed.
“Au contraire, I believe in predestination. It was fate and the name has given me the power to land women like magic.”
“Aren’t you tired of ascots and blue jeans?” She grumbled.
“Nope.”
“Getting pawed by bimbos and skanks?”
“Not at all.”
She sighed, “It’s not fair. For every 36D Barbie that swoons over your ascot I’ve got to fend off a dozen hyperventilating greasy nerds.”
“It sounds like you’ve found ways to vent your frustrations.” Fred reasoned.
“Fine, I’ll be there.”
Fred breathed a sigh of relief, Velma was always a wild card. Growing up, the close knit siblings had embraced their names to various degrees but Velma had been the most unpredictable. Her rebellious phase had pulled her from a pre-teen youth interested in solving mysteries to the ferocious mind-flayer she was now. As an adult she’d made it her quest to drag humanity, kicking and screaming, into higher dimensions of consciousness. From Fred’s point of view that was a hopeless task. The average person was deliberately stupid and half the population was dumber than average; barely sentient if at all. The lengths she went to find minds sufficiently flexible to take the kind of mental journey she took on a regular basis made it self evident. She might as well try teaching ferns to play chess.
Velma’s harrowing youthful years had been tense. She directly or indirectly caused the destruction of several buildings, a run on a bank, and the complete elimination of a Girl Scout troop. The troop’s demise had been the worst of all. The Scout’s central organization had stiffed Velma on a salesmanship award and her troop let it slide rather than back her up. It was the worst (and last) mistake the troop made. For a while Fred wondered if pre-teen Velma would raze the entire Eastern Seaboard in her rage. Thankfully, after all involved personnel had been replaced and the local troop disbanded, things cooled down.
Like all teenagers she’d graduated to greater levels of chaos, but thankfully she never became a genuine Bond Villain. Now, as a young adult, she was a human mental vortex. However, in the best interests of society and due to some inner sense of fair play, she limited her focus to rich nerds who volunteered for the trip.
Fred, conversely, loved his unfair advantage with what mere mortals might call “Game”. To his credit, Fred was far more careful than mercurial risk taker Velma. Even so, everyone in the family breathed a sigh of relief when he reached adulthood without a series of paternity suits.
“I’m pretty busy today. Can you spring Daphne from wherever she’s stuck this time?” Velma asked.
“Sure.” Fred agreed. Daphne hadn’t fared as well as he and Velma. She’d drifted from her assigned role as purple wearing damsel in distress to perpetual cult member. Dutifully, the other siblings saved her; over and over. Now that she was an adult, it was a matter of monitoring into which cult she’d landed and making sure she was reasonably safe amid whatever Kool-Aid drinkers she’d chosen to roost. Velma and Fred managed this task jointly. Fred would ply the cult’s “managerial staff” with bribes, his winning smile, and various fiscal incentives (funded by Velma’s… jobs). Due to their efforts, hapless Daphne usually wound up living a life of luxury as the cult’s “chosen one”.
Should a situation get too sketchy for Fred, Velma would take over and pay a personal visit. Velma’s visits resulted in the sort of behavior modification one would expect from a direct encounter with Satan. Thus, Daphne was oft kidnapped and perpetually cult programmed but always happy and safe. Fred would “bust her out” for the weekend’s activities but she’d probably be back with anyone from the Hare Krishnas to an encampment of PETA whackjobs by Tuesday.
As for Shaggy, he’d been just what you’d expect; a goofy lovable pothead. He’d been last seen baked off his gourd at a truck stop in Barstow. They hoped he was well. Fred and Velma let him drift on the clouds of drug assisted cluelessness and only interfered when he asked. They assumed he would call home if he wanted (or when his head was straight enough to recognize a phone). Lacking knowledge of his whereabouts, Fred would hire a stand in.
All that was left was finding a Scooby. This was the point of the call.
“I’ve got a lead on a dog.” Fred grinned.
“Again? They never talk! You have to stop buying talking dogs.” Velma discouraged his interest in obtaining a Scooby but Fred never gave up hope.
“I’ll use a few hundred out of petty cash.” Fred ignored her. He never stopped marveling over the thought that he had access to “petty cash”. Velma had thoroughly and legally created Mystery Inc. It supported them all, except Velma of course. Fred wasn’t sure if she had gone beyond material concerns or was merely wealthy beyond his wildest imagination; maybe both. Regardless, Mystery Inc. provided for them like a benign magic spell. It paid for whatever Scientology training or guru’s donations Daphne needed. It supplied all the weed Shaggy could smoke. It allowed Fred to deduct a customized Mystery Machine van as a business expense!
What a glorious existence! Bedding as many women as his ascot supply could manage while posting it all as negative numbers on an IRS form! Could there be a better life?
“Fine.” Velma agreed, “Pay for the dog. You don’t have to whore for it.” She grumped, completely ignoring the irony of her job as the world’s only “clandestine dominatrix genius mind coach”. In mid-conversation she turned and cooed at someone out of microphone range. “The bandages look good. Now have a cookie before the chemistry lesson.”
Fred sighed, the poor one balled bastard would be lucky to live out the night.
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