SERIALIZATION OF “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” – Chapter 3 of 61

COMFY STOLEN MEETS CONSUMER WARBLE

CHAPTER 3

As wealthy and eccentric men often are, Warble is on the mailing and cold-calling list of all sorts of companies who produce expensive and unique gadgets (in other words, toys for the rich).

Even among the most well-heeled, though, few are considered daring (crazy?) enough to purchase an as-yet untested time machine. Arodnap Inventions Unlimited, though, has run out of R&D money, and must get an infusion of cash from somewhere if construction of their flagship product, the Arodnap, is to continue apace--or continue at all, for that matter.

A human behavior expert contracted by AIU has targeted Warble as the most likely candidate meeting the two key qualifications for potential investors (being filthy rich is the initial requirement, and being borderline insane is the second).

Comfy Stolen, boy-wonder salesman, is selected for the crucial assignment: Get Warble interested enough in the device so that he will purchase one in advance, based on the prototype, to be delivered once the device is perfected.

Smooth-as-silk salesman that he is, Comfy is able to set up an appointment with Warble to show him the prototype of the Arodnap. When the agreed-upon day and hour arrives, so does Comfy, along with the Arodnap’s chief mechanic, Albert Joad. Comfy and Albert pull into the McGorkle’s long, winding driveway leading to their mansion on a hill in a brand-spanking new full-size pickup. On a trailer, under a tarp bearing AIU’s logo, rests the prototype time travel vehicle.

Warble sees the pair pull up to his gated entryway on his surveillance camera, presses the button to open the gate, and descends via elevator to the ground floor and out the door to await their arrival at the top of his circular driveway. When Comfy sees Warble, he waves and smiles to his potential customer from the passenger seat (Albert Joad, certified Arodnap mechanic, is driving). Sitting between the seat is Albert’s puppy Taterskin, a yellow Labrador Retriever who never leaves Albert’s side.

Comfy begins to step out of the pickup before Albert has put it in ‘Park.’ Warble waves him back in, though, and points to the back yard, yelling, “Pull around back; drop it off there, and we’ll take a look at it.”

Albert deftly maneuvers the pickup to the McGorkles’ spacious back yard, shuts off the engine, jumps out, removes the tarp, and begins loosening the straps securing the Arodnap before Warble has even walked around to the back of he and Mary’s new mansion (the McGorkles had it built following the Spam scam, tearing down a slightly smaller mansion they had just completed in order to make room for the new one).

“Mr. McGorkle, I presume?” Comfy says, stepping forward to offer his hand to Warble.

“That’s my name, and saving the world is my game. Don’t wear it out,” Warble replies (he had meant to say, ‘Don’t wear it out’ right after ‘That’s my name,’ but when he realized he had forgotten to do it, just tacked it on at the end).

Comfy is confused, but ignores Warble’s seemingly nonsensical nonsequiter. He expected Warble to be eccentric, based on what he’d heard and read about him, though, so he’s not too surprised or taken aback by the multi-trillionaire’s strange speech and behavior.

“My name is Comfy Stolen, head salesman for Arodnap Inventions Unlimited. This,” he says, indicating his workmate who is busy winching the Arodnap off the trailer, “is Albert Joad, Arodnap mechanic. He knows everything there is to know about this wonder machine, Mr. McGorkle.”

“You can call me Consumer Warble, Comfy. This Mr. McGorkle jazz makes me feel as old as them thar hills,” Warble says, indicating with a wave of his arm the meadow across the road from his house.

Comfy sees no hills, but lets it go, and makes a mental note to call the potential customer by his self-appointed title and given name.

“Fine! Consumer Warble it is,” Comfy says, walking around to the Arodnap, which is now sitting, gleaming in the sun, on Warble’s back lawn.

Soundtrack Note: Play Cadillac Ranch here, but see if my buddy Bruce (I don’t need to say, speak, or write his last name, do I?) will rework the lyrics, replacing “Cadillac” with “Arodnap”

“This, Consumer Warble,” Comfy says, presenting the machine to Warble with a flourish of his hand, “is a prototype of the most amazing vehicle ever contrived by the mind and hands of man: it’s a time machine, Consumer Warble, that will take you any place, at any time, that you want to go.”

Comfy looks at Warble to gauge his response. Warble seems to be, indeed, quite interested, but at the same time perhaps a little skeptical.

“So what’s it good for?” Warble asks. “Just joking,” he quickly adds, and turns serious. “Has it got four on the floor?” he asks Comfy.

“Whaddaya mean, ‘has it got four on the floor?’ Are you kiddin’ me?” Comfy replies, feigning amazement that Warble would even feel the need to ask such a question. “Of course it does! In fact, not only does it have four on the floor, it’s got one on each wall, ten or twelve on the roof, and there’s even a few hanging from the ceiling.”

“What’re we talkin’ about here?” Warble wants to know, lost in the shuffle.

“Beats me--you started it,” is Comfy’s repartee.

Yes, Comfy is a pretty decent salesman. He controlled the situation by tipping the confusion back onto Warble’s own head, and mildly chastised him for his lapse in logic -- not enough to irritate Warble and lose the sale, but enough to give himself a slight advantage in the game of mental parrying and thrusting that goes on between salesman and potential customer.

“The most impressive thing about the Arodnap, though,” Comfy says, “is not how many speeds it has, or its gear ratio, or anything of that sort, but rather its trippy GPS/CPS gadget.

“GPS, as everyone knows, stands for Global Positioning System. With this built-in capability, the driver, or more accurately pilot, of the Arodnap can choose a latitude and longitude to which to fly using a trackball-like globe. Spinning the miniature representation of the earth with your thumb to the continent that tickles your current fancy, you can ‘pop out’ that continent by pressing on it, and continue pressing and popping until you have selected the exact spot to which you want to travel. Visually, this has the effect of a jack-in-the-box, albeit one that has lost a good portion of its springiness. Of course, the ‘springy’ parts are really holograms.

“Once a location has been selected, the pilot (or the navigator, should the pilot delegate this duty) turns his attention to the CPS -- the Chronological Positioning System. By entering a year (and overriding the default date and time, if desired), not only the precise location, but also the exact time of arrival at the chosen location is set.

Warble still feels a little uncomfortable, having ‘lost’ that last conversational joust with Comfy. To impress the salesman with his superior intellect and command of facts, Warble comes up with a tidbit of arcane trivia, something that he thinks will derail Comfy, or at least knock him off his high horse: “Speaking of default locations, Daniel Boone was a Spaniard, you know! think he was Don Quixote’s cousin, or something. He was a frontiersman errant.”

“Daniel Boone was a Spaniard, you say?” Comfy replies, not knowing what that has to do with the price of coffee at Starbucks, even if true.

“Sure, everybody knows that,” Warble bluffs. “I’ll bet you can’t guess what ol’ Dan’s favorite food was?”

“I don’t know--venison?” Comfy ventures, wondering where the conversation is leading.

“Venice’n!? Are you crazy?” Warble squeals. “Danny boy had never been to Italy in his life. It was nachos he was crazy about. He was practically a univore for nachos -- at least, nobody ever saw him eating anything but that. As long as there was a restaurant around, you knew what ol’ Danny Boy (that song was written for him, you know) would order: three plates of nachos. But he spoke Spanish (being a Spaniard, after all), so he would lay his long gun on the table, yell out, ‘Hey, señorita! Tres nachos! Tres nachos! Andelé! Mach schnell! And hurry it up, while you’re at it.’ He was known far and wide for that ‘Tres Nachos’ business.”

“Man, Warble, who put a dime in your slot?” Comfy asks rhetorically, under his breath.

Taking an entirely different tack, though, Comfy wants to direct attention back to the matter at hand: the Arodnap, and getting Warble interested in it. “Let me demonstrate this little beauty to you, Consumer Warble,” Comfy offers, presenting the Arodnap anew with another flourish of his hand.

Soundtrack Note: At the appropriate spot earlier, first Danny Boy should play (artist choice yours), then the theme song from the “Daniel Boone” television show.

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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” is being serialized in this space each Thursday; it is also available in its entirety from here.

You can listen to the recording of this excerpt, by the author, here: