The End
© 2010 Tim Fort
IT was a gray, august September morning and the fall of Autumn was nigh. The trees had turned over a new leaf and were ablaze with oranges and yellows. The sun shone brightly in a solid blue sky over the MIT campus that Sunday and only a few people were out and about. MIT–the Maine Institute of Technology–was located in the picturesque coastal town of West Quonkscroddy, Maine, and the campus extended almost to the rocky granite shore. There used to be a East Quonkscroddy years ago until the townsfolk realized that it was out in the Atlantic Ocean. Other than MIT, West Quonkscroddy was world-famous for having the only restaurant on the Maine seaboard without a giant wooden lobster in front of it, Chang’s Crab Hut, which had a giant anthropomorphic crab instead.
The university was home to the world-famous School of Kinetic Arts, overseen by Professor Emeritus Dr. T.A. Forte, Ph.D., Esq., Etc. The School of Kinetic Arts was notable for having absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this story. MIT was also home to the Applied Ontology Laboratory. Located in Margaret Hall, a pink granite building done in neo-classical style, the Ontology Laboratory was the premier research laboratory in the world in applied metaphysics. Dr. Norman D. Plume, Ph.D., was the Chairman of the Laboratory; when he wasn’t setting up chairs in the various meeting rooms, he also served as Director.
“How’s my Maine man?”, said Vera Monte, Executive Secretary, to Dr. Plume as he entered the Applied Ontology main office on the first floor.
“Fine, thanks. And how’s my Vera?”, replied Norm.
“OK, I guess. Sue’s already waiting for you in the basement laboratory.” Susan Doe Nimm, Associate Aide, was a grad student with a B.A. in Applied Ontology who also majored in Minority Studies.
Norm was a bit gimpy in his right leg due to an underwater hockey accident he sustained back in the 70s, and often had trouble going down the stairs to the basement. “Hey, Sue, how’s it hangin’?”, he asked as he made a reasonably decent descent of the stairs this time.
“So, so,” said Sue softly.
Next Norm noticed Associate Assistant, R.J. “Rob” Dobbins, who was working next to Sue, contentedly smoking a pipe. After he finished flushing out the pipe with concentrated smoke from an air compressor, Rob re-connected it to the Aetherial Condensing Liquefaction Unit. He was in charge of the Aetherial Condenser because he took up space in college and got a degree in Aerospace Engineering. The temperamental Divine Omniscient Omnidirectional Philosophical Heuristic Inquiry System (DOOPHIS) was fixed again.
The DOOPHIS wasn’t very sophisticated looking, but it was the crowning achievement of Applied Ontology. It was designed to provide definite answers to the metaphysical questions that have plagued mankind since the first Australopithecine monkey monks sat around contemplating the existence of the cosmic Top Banana. By connecting directly to the Parallel Platonic Universe, the DOOPHIS would allow mankind and womankind to ask philosophical questions and get answers in plain English.
On one end of DOOPHIS were three psychic channellers, Mary, Flo, and Shirley. Due to budget restraints, they weren’t very good psychics, but merely medium mediums. They were in tune with the Platonic Parallel Continuum when they weren’t slapping and poking each other. Their brain waves were scanned by Aetherial Condensing Liquefaction Unit, which extracted excess phlogiston and transmogrified the brain waves into the Digital Multiplexer which caused mechanical fingers to type the information into a computer keyboard.
Next to the keyboard was a Macintosh; it was hanging with other raincoats on a coatrack. However, behind the coatrack was a Spewitt-Hacker computer (“Our computers are RAM tough”) that was running DivineWrite 7.0. The DivineWrite program translated the information from the Digital Multiplexer into English phonemes. Then the output was sent to a fiberglass head of Louise, the cartoon mascot of the Cheese Louise pizza chain, who had a tomato-red pageboy haircut.
Yesterday’s attempt to contact the Infallible Source of Infinite Sentience (ISIS) in the Parallel Platonic Universe was a mixed failure. They did pick up a signal, but it was from a cosmic opera, As The Afterworld Turns, and apparently they were tuned in to the episode where Hera tells Pluto to go to Hades after discovering he got Venus pregnant and stole all of the golden kumquats. Because of the interference, the DOOPHIS unit experienced a histrionic overload which caused it to break down.
Today that damned thing will work, Norm told himself, despite medication to keep him from talking to himself. He then told Sue and Rob, “You guys go ahead and warm up the DOOPHIS; I gotta go to the bathroom,” and then hobbled off towards the rest room in the basement of Margaret Hall.
After Norm reached the rest room, he limped past the cots to the bathroom inside. Inside the bathroom, past the tubs and showers, he found the water closet. After working his way around the water heaters in the small closet, he found a small toilet hidden in a corner and voided himself.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Norm to get back?”, asked Sue.
“Naw, we better follow Norm’s orders. Do it for the gimper,” replied Rob.
When Norm returned, they activated the DOOPHIS. The head of Cheese Louise spun around, and then an unearthly voice issued forth with an Arial accent, “You are now in contact with ISIS. All your metaphysical questions will be answered. What is it you wish to know?"
Rob and Sue were elated and jitterbugged with joy; the darned thing worked. It was a no-brainer what to ask of it. Sue asked, “What is the Meaning of Life?”
“84.”
Rob countered, “84??”
“Yes, 84. One who is known as Doug Adams had almost figured out the answer, but he was only half correct.”
Norm had returned in a hurry and zipped up his fly. Then he set the giant genetically-engineered housefly with the built-in zipper to the side and said, “No, Sue, Rob. You have to ask it more specific questions.” He turned towards the head of Cheese Louise and asked, “How exactly does the Universe work?”
Louise’s head spun around and her eyes glowed. Then she spewed forth the answer in a torrent of verbosity, “The Universe is a monistic, ontologically-recursive, solipsistically-inverted manifold in three spatial...” Norm smiled; the thing seemed to be working perfectly. Louise continued, “...one temporal, and seventeen non-Euclidian dimensions in a self-referential, fnork, ideo-material, potrzebie...” Louise’s head was spinning rapidly now, and the smell of burning insulation filled the air.
The DOOPHIS continued, “...mission accomplished...poodle in a puddle with a paddle...does not compute...slithy toves...read my lips...a moose named Seuss in a caboose with a loose goose... glurble... lemon harangue Pi... whang dang diddley syzygy grzbyzky hrbek pbluphth !@q$;# * * * *”
There was a loud bang as the head of Cheese Louise blew out a lip pronouncing the asterisks, and smoke began pouring from her mouth. The three mediums were singed and their hair was smoking.
The psychic named Flo turned to her right and said, “Surely, Shirley, I don’t think it was one of us.”
Shirley replied, “Yes, we’re really keeping the flow, Flo.”
Flo then turned to her left, “I’ll bet right now Norm isn’t very merry, Mary.”
It took several minutes to repair the DOOPHIS and clear out the data with an I.B. Enema. Excess phonemes were flushed out of the system, and Louise had a healthy vowel movement. Then the familiar voice issued forth in 16-point Arial, “You have regained contact with ISIS. Please give my your questions.”
Norm scratched his goatee and then carefully asked, “OK, ISIS, what exactly is Ultimate Reality?”
“Ultimate Reality is that you are nothing but characters in a ridiculous short story slapped together for shits ‘n’ grins, and for some strange reason, published online in the Tim-Space Discontinuum.”
Norm replied, “The Tim-Space Continuum? Awesome! Who is the author of this story?”
The head of Louise replied with authority, “The author is Tim ‘Timothy’ Fort, a/k/a, the Kinetic King Lunatim Rex, a hack writer and second-story man who conceived of this story in two seconds.”
Then Norm said, “Now that would explain all the horrible puns.”
The voice continued, “Well, He Who is Known as Tim was once known the Fastest Pun in the West until they revoked his comic license and put him in the Old Jokes’ Home. Now that his one-track mind had derailed, he went loco and took to writing short stories.”
Then Allenby the Alliterative Alligator from Allentown stepped into the story from Nowhere and said to his imaginary sidekick Norma Gnome, “Alas, the allotment of alarming alliterations is also a lot,” and then vanished again.
After the brief non-sequitur thrown in as a cheap plot device, Rob grinned and piped in, “Say, if we’re just characters in a story, that means you have the power to grant us whatever wish-fulfillment fantasies we want, eh?”
The voice replied, “You betcha! When you’re an Author, even a hack one, you can make up any damned thing you want!”
Then there was an almighty bold-type “¡POOF!” with a Spanish inverted exclamation point that shook the room.
Lo, and R.J. “Rob” Dobbins suddenly found himself in the Land of Silk and Money where he dwellt in a solid gold mansion whose walls were encrusted yea with cubic zirconia. Verily, his rod and his staff grew by half a cubit, and he was surrounded by a multitude of dominatrices who wore raiment as of spandex and, yea, as of vinyl as well. Truly Rob’s Slack increased unto infinity and beyond and he was filled with the Beatnikific Vision.
Sue ejaculated, “Well, that was unexpected!” Then she turned towards the DOOPHIS and asked, “What else can you reveal to us, O Divine Scribe?”
“Well, for one thing, I know the name of You the Reader Who Is Reading 'Fort's Shorts' right now, but I refuse to say it for fear of freaking You out.” And, for a brief moment, You the Reader were startled at this egregious violation of the invisible Fourth Wall.
Norm then asked, “O, obtusely omniscient oracle, what other information can you give to us?”
The voice spoke, “Well, I’m tempted to throw in a gratuitous plug for the book I’m currently writing, King of the World, or my status as the Kinetic King Lunatim Rex, or my website at www.lunatim.com, but that would be tacky, so I won’t. However, I would like to say that I’m really content with the content of this story which I wrote for practice. You the Reader are reading this simply because I needed filler material for my website.”
Then Sue asked, “So, exactly where are we in the plot–oh, and by the way, what exactly is the name of this story, anyways?”
“Well, it’s...”
"The End."