CHAPTER 13: TESLA AND TWAIN DO LUNCH IN 2035

It had started as an innocent Christmas gift. Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain used the time machine to travel to the year 2035 to enjoy a break from the whipping wind, sleet, snow and prying eyes.

They were enjoying a meal at an outdoor cafe overlooking a sleepy harbor in California.

"This was a wonderful idea!  I admit I was worried at first. Worried what we might find.  But this is nice," Tesla confessed to Twain.

"It's a comfort to know mankind made such strides. There are no wars. Everyone uses solar power. The entire world is clean, healthy and happy!  Imagine that! I never would have believed it! Thank you my friend. This was a marvelous!  Of course, it presents one problem. How do I explain my new found optimism when we return to our time?" Mark Twain laughed.

"By Jove!" Tesla exclaimed.

"What is it?" Twain asked.

"That boat! A dog just materialized on deck out of thin air!" Tesla started and before he finished, a second dog, then a third dog landed on the deck.

Suddenly it was raining dogs, palm trees, cars, buses, and buildings.

"Look out Sam!" Tesla cried, but it was too late. A lady and her husband fell out of the sky and landed right on Mark Twain and his leg snapped.

Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla transported back to 1894 to sort out what they had witnessed.

"According to my calculations, at the rate all these people, plants, animals and objects are slamming into the earth, the earth will be knocked out of orbit, freeze solid and then hurl into the unknown in a matter of hours," Tesla informed Mark without looking up from his papers.

"What does this mean?" Mark asked.

"It means we have travel back in time to Merlin's cave," Tesla started.

"How can we find it?"  Twain tried to stand but moaned and sat down fast because his broken leg was killing him.

"First we have to fix your leg," Tesla started flipping through his journals.

Under the duress of the moment, Tesla hardly had time to enjoy having taken the first x-ray and launching the world's first bone and soft tissue mender on the same afternoon.  

Tesla re-calibrated the time machine to match matter instead of time.

"We are going to travel to where this book came from," Tesla held Merlin's book of magic, the very same book he had used to build the time machine.

Twain and Tesla materialized in the mysterious crystal cave where Merlin was said to have become a hermit.

"He isn't here!" Mark Twain was alarmed. "Now what?"

Tesla ripped a page out of one of Merlin's journals.

"He's probably with this woman.  She was stealing from him," Tesla showed Twain the sketch of a woman Merlin had drawn. "In fact, from the way this place looks, she may have kidnapped Merlin!"

"We're not going to be able to find her with that sketch!" Twain exclaimed.

"Then we'll have to calibrate the machine to take us to the rest of this!" Tesla held up a two foot long gleaming silver stand of Merlin's hair.

~ TO BE CONTINUED ~

CRAB LOUIE V CH 11: MARCEL IS FULL OF NIETZSCHE! MARINATE ME AT ONCE!

"Do you think he loves her?" Petunia sighed and got more comfortable on her bay window cushion.

"He loves the pizza,"  Louis Le Roux cracked.  He was sitting in a bedpan on the window sill.  From this cozy alcove they could see most of what was going on in the harbor. They could hear Dean Martin's voice coming from the jukebox in the pizza shop next to Marcel's Tattoo Parlor.  A fat man was eating a slice of pizza and supervising Marcel the tattooist as he engraved a delicate rosebud on a young lady's derriere.

"Not him. Marcel. Does Marcel love her?" Petunia pondered.

"You've had too much champagne. Pardon me but you are a silly girl!" Louis commented.

"It was your idea that we should fortify our nerves with this stuff before entering the night," Petunia scooted a few inches away to express her displeasure and took a long sip straight from the Dom Perignon bottle.

"Come back, little flower petal! I regret having offended you. Excuse me.  I did not mean to imply that you cannot hold your liquor when it is obvious to me that you can. I was merely suggesting that your are innocent of the crime we call 'love'," Louis explained.

"I'm a lonely little petunia in an onion patch..." Petunia sang, ignoring him.

"Mercy! What nonsense! Now you are being silly!  When have you ever been alone or experienced loneliness? Marinate me at once!  I have had a shock! More wine!" Louis Le Roux motioned with his claw for Petunia to pour more champagne into the bedpan.  She complied.  He sighed with relief and spit a little on the windowpane, as is a crab's habit.

"I forgive you, Your Royal Rudeness," Petunia reluctantly forgave him.

"Then I am fortunate once again and will take more care," Louis promised.

"See that you do," Petunia scolded.

"Oh, I will. I must. I am love's fool and I must obey,"

"You said I get three wishes provided the first wish is to wish you inside the body of a loveable man," Petunia repeated the terms of their deal.

"Yes. A man that any woman will not be able to resist. That is the gist of it," Louis confirmed.

"Why can't you give yourself wishes?" She shot him a suspicious look.

"My mistress installed the one way wishing magic mainly to protect me from predators.  There was never a chef built that would boil a fellow who offered him three wishes if he wouldn't.  Except, of course, that deaf chef, Otis! I bit his thumbs, alright! I bit his thumbs!"  The memory of being held over that great kettle of boiling water made Louis clatter like loose nails in his bedpan.

"You mustn't let yourself get all steamed over it again! You're safe now.  Just stay away from Otis," Petunia poured more Dom Perignon over him.  She was too young to understand why he was marinating himself.

"Thank you, my dear.  You are too kind,"  Louis began to focus on the job at hand.

"The matter with Marcel is that he has the expression on his face that one gets from reading too much Nietzsche. Marcel does not love the little lady in his lap at the moment.  Marcel does not love any woman in any moment.  I'm quite certain that he goes about saying things like, 'Art and nothing but art, we have art in order not to die of the truth.' I am convinced from our observations that Marcel is full of Nietzsche. I don't want you to wish me into Marcel and I certainly do not want to exchange places with that fat man," Louis told her.

The fat man looked up when the music stopped, fished in his pockets for more quarters and grabbed another slice of pizza to accompany him to the jukebox.  Again the air was repaired with song.  The fat man wandered over to get a closer look at the work Marcel was doing on his lady's posterior. He was so pleased that he made a bouquet with his fingertips, kissed them and threw the kiss to the heavens. He began to sing along with the jukebox, "There's no tomorrow! There's just tonight!"

"If you wish me into that ridiculous man..." Louis began to concoct a menacing threat.

"We agreed you would choose, but for the sake of argument, why couldn't you move into his shell and simply give up pizza?  You're awfully picky," Petunia could hardly wait to be done with this and move on to wishes two and three.

Louis Le Roux spit more than the usual amount of champagne on the windowpane.

"I don't have the time to tell you all the reasons why that would be a stupid course of action!  Don't be offended again, my dear, but you are an imbecile," Louis held himself in check.

"I still don't see why you couldn't move into him and lose weight," Petunia pushed.

"Move into a fixer-upper when tonight is the night I wish to bid for my love?"  Louis was incensed.

"You have an impossible mind! I don't know why I put up with you!  Can you imagine a man proposing to the love of his life with that little rosebud down there in the background demanding explanations?  We don't have time for all this!  The fat man won't do because he does not have the physical memory of love in his bones.  The atoms of his body are not drenched in the memory of how to love a woman!" Louis ranted.

"You yourself said that you saw love in his eyes!"  Petunia clearly did not know when to quit. 

"Are you trying to drive me mad?  Were you born to argue with me?  Is that what you are good for?  I shall have to bite you if you attempt to turn me against myself like that again! What I said was that there was evidence of love in that man.  I didn't say what kind and how much.  Your fat man loves everything in a diluted way.  I am looking for a residence that has in it's walls the memory of undying, immortal love for one woman, love that defies everything, love...."

"I just remembered that I have something to do.  I'll be right back," Petunia interrupted, jumped down from the window seat and went to the kitchen.

While she was gone, Louis Le Roux spied what he was looking for on the deck behind the 101 Crabs Jazz Club.  It was most certainly a man in love, a man in nothing but love, pacing like a tiger in a cage for the want of the woman.  This was the body he would ask Petunia to wish him into when she returned.

Petunia was busy pouring potions out of the kitchen window into the ocean below. She washed and rinsed the bottles and then carefully replaced the hyperactivity cures with distilled water.  The sea lions made strange groans. Lobsters became loopy. Flabbergasted fish grew cross-eyed, ran into each other. They quit darting about and became very easy for the fishermen to catch.

When Petunia returned to the bay window, Louis Le Roux had his mind set.

"Wish me into that fellow over there in the green trousers!  And wish it exactly so that my shell remains here in this pan and the man shell stays where it is.  It wouldn't do for me to be seen leaving this shop.  I might be accused of breaking and exiting.  Meet me on the sport fishing pier and I'll give you the rest of your wishes.  Watch the whales and think very carefully.  I may be a while getting my affairs in order. Promise me you will wait for me there so I can find you," Sly Louis Le Roux counted on her lack of experience in these matters.

"I will," Petunia agreed. She did not hesitate to wish Louis into Mr green pants. All she could see was the back of his head and how he was removing the band that held his hair back in a neat ponytail. 

Louis never told her what lady he was trying to win and it wouldn't have mattered much if he did. Petunia was not interested in her mother's love life. It never occurred to her that his tattoo of the broken heart with the name, 'Vicky', was a testimonial of his love for Victoria, Countess Victoria Von Van Dee La Fountainbleute, her very own mother.

Petunia's eyes danced to a different melody now. She knew that this would be the very last time she would sit in this bay window watching life go by. Her adventure was about to begin. Such were the thoughts that occupied her mind as she headed for the sport fishing pier.

~ TO BE CONTINUED ~

CH 7: RED MADONNA, SHE'S NOT ESCAPE FROM PUSSY RIOT I CAN ASSURE YOU

"Excuse to me, old man, I'm not speaking English but if I can plaster my sister to your vindow?  I can assure you she is not escape-ed from Pussy Riot.  She is from lesser unknown Red Madonnas band currently seeking asylum in your country after first gig tonight," a polite young Russian man asked Dr. OMG for permission to post the announcement that his sister was preforming at 101 Crabs Jazz Club.

"Proceed,"  Dr. OMG replied as he locked up shop.  He was taking Petunia Fountainebleute to the arcade to avoid hefty property damage to his shop.

"Is that is like 'yes' or 'leave out of here'," the young man's younger cousin fretted.

"That is like yes. I'm not going to be Scrooge on Christmas Eve," Dr. OMG noticed that every available flat surface of the pier was plastered with the posters expounding the musical merits of RED MADONNA AND THE RED MADONNAS.

Petunia tugged on the jacket of the youngest man and translated for him.

"He said, 'Bah Humbug! Do what you want! Whatever!'" she whispered.

"What did she say? Are we allowed to do this?" Red Madonna's brother asked his little cousin.

"She said they are going to eat humburger.  I think she says we can come too, so hurry up, will you?"

"You are always eating.  I think you have an international leak or worms being taped in you,"  The older boy plastered a poster on the shop window.

"Who is going to tape worms?  Is anything make less noise than a worm?" the younger lad asked.

"This is land of opportunity.  They tape everything. All worm in USA is tape worm. Tonight they tape my sister and then it is all over for us," he pat his little cousin on the back, "Let us go get bah humburger! You're a pickle, eat your lettuce! It's an order! Do not upset us!" he began to sing what he could recall of the jingle.

"Whatever!" the younger one agreed whole heartedly.

~To Be Continued~

CHAPTER 6: OH HENRY! OH HENRY! FOLLOW THAT CRAB!

Henry Merci was hot on the trail of the vicious crab that had practically torn the thumbs off his good friend Chef Otis.  As best he could with his bleeding hands wrapped in towels, Otis motioned towards the gondola that Henry had just left the elderly couple waiting in when he heard the awful clamoring in the kitchen.

Henry was mortified to see that his gondola was violently rocking.  It was as if there had been a terrible earthquake, only his was the only boat in the harbor that was pitching to and fro.

Henry ran as fast as he could and then held the ramp rails to slide down faster than he could run.  He stopped short and almost crashed into the disheveled elderly couple trying to work their way up the ramp.

"Did you see an awful crab with a broken heart tattoo that says, 'Vicky'?" Henry called after them and rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath.

"Yes we did and we are not coming back until you can prove it's gone.  I don't mind telling you I don't approve of the language it used in front of my wife!" The elderly man patted and adjusted his Greek fisherman's cap and was thankful that it had not been lost in the fray.  He recommended to his wife that she also check herself to be sure nothing important was missing.

"We will be waiting in the cocktail lounge trying to recapture the mood until you inform us that that vile creature has been incarcerated.  I got a good look at him and will make myself available to testify in a line up if it comes to that," The elderly man took his wife's arm and they cautiously wobbled up the ramp and left the scene.

Henry went to inspect the gondola.  He was on his belly with his head under the bench when what the old man said finally sank in.  The old man had indicated that the crab had used language, foul language at that.  The very idea made Henry's head rear up abruptly and smack hard against the bench he was under.  It never works out well when large ideas come in tight quarters.  Henry decided to rest there for a moment and think everything over from the beginning, calmly and rationally.  The water slapping the boat about softly now was almost as comforting as he remembered being rocked in his parent's arms had been.  How he missed them, especially with Christmas drawing near.

All of a sudden Henry thought he heard the voice of an angel.

"Oh, Henry! Oh, Henry!  Why are you called 'Merci'? If you were truly of mercy made, would I be so starved for a kiss? Take a rich man's name so my dad will let us date or live up to your name and show me mercy tonight!" The beautiful Julia Miller whispered into the sea mist that was rolling into the harbor. She leaned on the deck railing and searched the heavens for a break in the clouds where she might find a star to wish upon.

Henry scrambled to his feet faster than a firecracker.

"Here I am!  O God, Julia! I'm right here!  I'll do anything you want, anything you need, anything! I'm right here! Oh! Julia!" Henry threw his arms up in the air with such enthusiasm that they almost flew out of their sockets. He managed to stay in one piece but fell out of the gondola and splashed into the black water of the harbor.

At the very moment, Mrs. Miller opened the sliding glass door and flooded the deck with sounds from the live band and the happy party guests.

"You're not wearing your sweater!  You'll catch your death!"  Mrs. Miller pulled her daughter inside.

Also at the same moment, Mayor George Miller rattled the ramp as he stomped down towards the gondola with the offspring of some of his wealthiest constituents and demanded that Henry produce himself to explain why the romantic gondola rides were so backed up.

~ To Be Continued ~