Serialization of "Quedly Dake and His Quest to Conquer the Globe" — Chapter 4 of 25
From Book 3 of the Trilogy “Taterskin & The Eco Defenders”
“Of course!” we all called out in unison.
“All right, then,” Albert said. “Alexis, would you do the honors, please?”
“Gladly, Albert, thank you,” the Parrot nodded. “OmniMagister, who stole the Arodnap in 2525 from The Eco Defenders?”
The “All-Teacher” almost immediately audibly responded:
The Arodnap, an eVTOL time-travel aircraft designed and built by Albert Spartacus Joad and used by The Eco Defenders to right wrongs and reverse tragedies, was stolen in 2525 by a man named Quedly Dake.
“Quedly Dake!?! Who is Quedly Dake?” I asked.
“Does anybody know a Quedly Dake?” Albert questioned the group.
Half of us said “No” and the other half moved their heads horizontally back and forth a few times.
“OmniMagister, who is Quedly Dake?” Alexis queried her and Albert’s invention.
Quedly Dake is a man who was born in Tonopah, Nevada in the year 2499. After stealing the Arodnap, he made a fortune in the stock market and used his amassed wealth, through publicity campaigns, flattery, bribes, and threats, to become the most powerful man in the world. Soon after naming himself Emperor of the World for Eternity, he mysteriously disappeared.
“He’s a whippersnapper! Quedly’s just in his mid-20s!” Tubthumper observed.
“How did Dake know about the Arodnap, and beyond that, where it was and how to operate it?” Albert asked.
I blushed at these questions, because I already deduced the answers to them, but didn’t want to say. For one thing, I was embarrassed that I had revealed the story of the Arodnap and its location, and had also given away the details of how to operate it.
Some of the others also seemed to know what I was thinking and were surreptitiously looking first at me, and then at Albert. They were letting me be the one to “spill the beans” (or not, I guess), but suddenly Alexis said:
“I think I know, but let’s ask: OmniMagister, how did Dake know about the existence of the Arodnap, its whereabouts, and how to fly it?”
Dake found out all that information by reading a couple of books that a Labrador Retriever named Taterskin had written, namely Wonders Never Cease and Tell It To Future Generations
Albert seemed taken aback for a moment. He put the palm of his right hand up to his forehead, looked up at the ceiling, and muttered, “Of course! I forgot about those books Taterskin wrote.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized, “Maybe I should have been more circumspect about the location, or at least the operation of the Arodnap.”
“It’s not your fault, Taterskin,” Alexis said. “No other reader ever caused us any problems. The fault lies with Dake and Dake alone.”
Everyone, even Albert eventually, agreed with this, shaking their heads up and down and saying things like, “That’s right” and “If that ain’t the truth” and suchlike ameliorating expressions.
After a while Falcona asked, “After Dake commandeered the Arodnap, where did he go, when did he go to, and why? How did he use its time-traveling capabilities to get rich?”
Wondering that herself (as we all were), Alexis took up the line of questioning (the most impressive thing about Alexis and Albert’s OmniMagister is that it keeps track of information already provided and thus does not repeat itself — e.g., after explaining what the Arodnap was and who designed it with its first answer, it “knew” that it never needed to provide that information again):
“OmniMagister, how did Quedly [the software didn’t need to be told the person’s full name, as it kept in its memory the context of the discussion, and perceived that ‘Quedly’ referred to Quedly Dake] make his fortune?”
Having set the Arodnap to two thousand years in the past, 525 C.E., Quedly took Cardamom with him to Europe. There he sold the much-sought-after spice for a veritable king’s ransom, as the saying goes.
“What’s Cardamom?” Marmalade asks.
“It’s the same as Cardadad, only it’s the mom that gets carded,” answered Yukyuk, chuckling.
Yukyuk was ignored by all. We were in no mood for humor, especially such a feeble example of it.
“Cardamom is a spice from India that’s related to ginger and turmeric,” Alexis informed Marmalade (and others, although we pretended we already knew what Cardamom was and stared at the wall, feigning a lack of interest while Alexis was providing this information to the callow kitten).
“Why it was worth so much a couple of millennia back, is the next thing you’re probably wondering,” Alexis continued.
“So why was it?” Drako asked, correctly surmising that Alexis already knew the answer.
“Rarity. Supply and demand. Cardamom was the Tulip of spices.”
“The Tulip of spices? What do you mean by that, Alexis?” Tubthumper asked.
“Tulip Mania,” Alexis laconically replied.
Half of us were embarrassed to question Alexis further, not wanting to reveal our confusion and ignorance, and the other half weren’t curious enough to further interrogate her in order to find out what Tulip Mania was, so the matter was dropped.
Rovette then shook herself, sat down on her haunches, and finally asked, “What did Dake do with the money that was paid to him for the Cardamom?”
Alexis reiterated the question, addressing it to OmniMagister, who would only respond to questions if they were explicitly addressed to her.
Dake took his booty and traveled forward in time (from the year 525) to 1980 and sold the Medieval coins he had received for the Cardamom (there were several large and heavy burlap sacks of it) to coin collectors and dealers for a huge windfall estimated at a value of 314 million dollars.
“That would pay for a lot of pies!” Yukyuk enthused, smacking her lips and chuckling.
Alexis looked around at us, and anticipating the next question, posed it to the software marvel which seemed to have all the answers.
The previous chapter can be found here.
The next chapter can be found here.
Book 1 of Taterskin & The Eco Defenders, “Wonders Never Cease,” can be found here.
Book 2 of Taterskin & The Eco Defenders, “Tell It To Future Generations,” can be found here.
Book 3 of Taterskin & The Eco Defenders, “Quedly Dake and His Quest to Conquer the Globe,” can be found here.
