authorjeffbaker

One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato Four

by Jeff Baker

“Alright, Mister Margolis,” the Repair Tech in the green jumpsuit said looking at his clipboard. “It says here you are the registered owner of an A709 Emolurator with a Dimensional Sub-Routine, model K65, correct?”

Margolis sat in his easy chair looking nervously around him and nodded.

“Correct.” Margolis said.

“According to your call the problem is not that the device is not working properly, correct?” The Repair Tech asked.

“Correct,” Margolis said.

“The ticket describes the problem as, I quote here; ‘Unintentional Misuse.’” The Repair Tech shook his head. “Mister Margolis, I assume you read the directions before even attempting to engage the device, am I right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Margolis said looking around again.

“Did you adhere to the regulations involving underage use of the device?” The Repair Tech asked. “And requirements for instructing any teen-agers in the house of the restrictions on the device’s usage?”

Margolis nodded, somewhat frantically.

“Any infants or toddlers in the house?” The Repair Tech asked.

“No. No kids,” Margolis said. “It’s just me and…uh, my…my cat.”

“Your cat?” The Repair Tech asked.

“Yeah, I had, uh been duplicating the last slice of pizza and I guess there was some of it left in the machine and the cat went in and, uh, got well…duplicated.”

“Um, duplicated a living cat?” The Repair Tech said. “And it was a living duplicate?”

“Well, yes.” Margolis said. “The copy acts just like Ginger-Boy. Right down to the whiskers.”

“Mister Margolis, there was no reason for you to place an expensive service call, inert non-living matter will stay solid but something living like a cat will simply flicker out of existence in about six hours. If you’d read the instructions…”

“I’ve read the instructions, dammit!” Margolis snapped. “I helped write the damn instructions I helped develop the programs that make the Emolurator possible. And I’ve been working on one of the sub-routines. But there are a few…glitches…”

“Glitches,” the Repair Tech said. “What kind of glitches?”

“Um, non-inert matter, you know like a cat, that’s supposed to disappear after a few hours? Well that’s the sub-routine I was working on. To stabilize the effects.”

“Stabilize?” The Repair Tech said in a flat voice.

“Yeah.” Margolis said. “So we can duplicate a person’s body parts, you know, for replacement and transplants. Stuff like that.”

“Stuff like that,” the Repair Tech said.

“I’ve managed to stabilize living matter,” Margolis said. “Under controlled conditions. The new sub-routine kind of messed with…messed up the Emolurator’s programming.”

“Messed-up…” the Repair Tech said.

“That was working. Well, sort of.” Margolis said. “It’s working on-and-off. I mean, it will go on and off without anybody turning it on or off. And it did.”

“Cats…” the Repair Tech said.

Margolis nodded. “Yeah. I got the one extra cat and I turned the thing off and I checked out both cats and I guess mine went back in the machine and took a nap and then the machine started coming on and on and on…”

The Repair Tech held up his hand with the clipboard to silence Margolis.

“Mister Margolis, is that the reason you are sitting here in the middle of your street in an armchair?”

“Uh, yeah,” Margolis said. “I ran out to the garage and I had this old chair out there and my car’s in the shop and I needed to sit down and I had to get away from the…well, I puled the garage door shut and pushed this out into the street and called you on my cellphone and…and…”

Margolis took a deep breath, shut his eyes and clenched the armrests.

“Acceleration.” Margolis said. “Proportionately. Real fast.”

“Um..is that your house?” the Repair Tech said, pointing.

The Mid-Century Modern home had its window curtains open. There were orange, furry shapes pressed against the windows.

“One-Potato-Two-Potato…” the Repair Tech breathed.

There was a glassy pop as the front window burst open and a flood of orange cats fell into the yard, meowing, yeowling, sniffing.

Margolis and the Repair Tech ran for his van.

As the van barreled down the street, the Repair Tech put through an emergency call to his office, concluding with the words “Don’t ask me why but I need an emergency shut-off on the power to that customer address on my contact sheet!”

“I have a generator…” Margolis said, sinking into the van seat.

They imagined seeing hundreds of cats following them in the rear view mirror.

—end—

The Little Dog Laughed To See Such A Sport

by Mike Mayak

The old farmhouse was filled with the quiet of a Summer night when Miss Kitty started awake from her curled position at the foot of Hetty’s bed, her whiskers twitching.

The soft whirring noise was coming from outside.

Miss Kitty’s soft “Mrrrp” caused Hetty to stir and then sit up in bed.

“What’s the matter, Sweetheart?” Hetty asked.

“Mrrrp.” Miss Kitty said.

Hetty scratched behind the cat’s ears and then noticed the whirring noise which had gotten slightly louder. Also there was a soft blue glow coming through the curtained bedroom window.

“Let’s go see,” Hetty said determinedly, quickly putting on her slippers and robe as Miss Kitty jumped to the floor.

The two of them walked through the house, its usual semi-darkness lit by the light from outside.

Hetty and Miss Kitty stepped outside onto the back porch. The light was bright enough that she could clearly read the date, 1916, over the door of the barn her Grandfather had raised. There was a gibbous Moon angling through the sky.

And a softly glowing blue and white disc hovering over the yard between the barn and the house.

The disc looked solid and metallic and was as wide as the barn and from what Hetty could see not as tall. There was a rise in the top of the disc, the disc being angled slightly downward as if to give them a better view. It was just hanging there in the air at level with the top of the barn.

“Mrrrp?” Miss Kitty said quizzically.

“I think this counts as a Close Encounter,” Hetty said, giving the saucer the once over. If it wasn’t an actual flying saucer it certainly looked like it. What sort of people were inside it, she wondered.

“Hello,” Hetty called out, feeling a little silly. “Welcome to Earth. This is the O’Hara farm. In Kansas,” she added wondering if the saucer had GPS or some kind of printed map.

The saucer just hung there, the Moon looking very small behind it. The gentle whirring noise quietly filled the yard. Hetty stepped off the porch and went across the yard to the saucer, Miss Kitty trotting along beside her. Hetty kept remembering the old rhyme about the cat, the fiddle, the dish and a cow jumping over the Moon. She wondered if the saucer had been to the Moon or if it maybe came from the Moon. This despite everything the astronauts had said about the Moon.

Miss Kitty sat there looking up at the saucer, making the gentle “Mrrrp” sound, which made a nice accompaniment to the saucer’s whirring. Hetty wondered if the saucer people wanted to take them up with them. She wished she’d had the foresight to cancel the newspaper and stop the mail delivery.

Could the saucer be seen from the highway? Hetty wondered. She knew she could see the lights from the big trucks at night on the highway and that she could see the top of the barn from the highway. Maybe the newspaper people would come to the farm if the saucer stayed there in mid-air.

But a few minutes later the saucer’s whirring became louder and it backed up into the sky and then streaked off, looking like nothing so much as meteorites she had seen.

Hetty stood there for a few minutes, not expecting the saucer to return, but still she felt like she was waiting. She turned and headed back to the house, the yard now lit only by Moonlight and starlight.

“I would have turned on the porch light except the saucer was so bright,” she said aloud. Miss Kitty trotted ahead of her and waited at the door for Hetty to follow.

When they were both back in bed, Hetty lay awake for a while, she realized the saucer would be back someday. And she remembered the one thing the saucer had said, just before it vanished into the sky.

The voice from the saucer had said: “Mrrrp?”

—end—