Editor's Introduction: An insurance claims adjuster usually has a fairly boring day, but not in this case, as Joe Parker stumbles across...
The Cereal Bowl of Indestructibility
by Tom Jolly
“You told me earlier that your trailer was
destroyed by a hurricane,” he said to Ralph. “The problem we’re going to have
with that is that there hasn’t been a hurricane recorded within two hundred
miles for over six months. I can help you file the claim, but the head office
will probably kick it back. What really happened?”
Ralph Borden looked small and trapped, sitting
across the diner table from Joe, hands fidgeting with his coffee cup. “What
really happened?” His voice was thin and reedy. “It’s a little hard to believe,
Joe. Can’t we just stick with the hurricane story?”
Joe shook his head. “What really destroyed your trailer,
Ralph? This is your old buddy Joe talking to you. Give it to me straight.”
Ralph let out a defeated sigh, splaying his hands
out flat on the table as though trying to stabilize himself. “Well, this might
sound a little crazy, but this alien gave me a bowl, and then it died, and some
other aliens came to get the bowl back from me. When their space ship took off,
it was too close to my home, and it sort of sucked the mobile up into the air
and dropped it a bit. Just like a hurricane would.” He shook his head and
couldn’t look Joe in the eyes. “I knew I shoulda installed those tiedowns like
you told me.”
“Aliens?” Joe blew out a little puff of air, then
leaned back and looked at the ceiling, tapping his pen slowly on the scratched
and faded Formica tabletop. Ralph wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room, and perhaps
he just saw something he didn’t understand. “Maybe you better start at the
beginning,” Joe said.
Ralph looked out the window of the diner and
pondered where he should start. After a minute of wandering around in his head,
he finally said, “I was huntin’ possum along Jack’s Creek when I found the
alien. There weren’t no spaceship around at all, just a big flattened area like
one had landed and taken off. I figured maybe the rest of the crew had left him
behind on accident, or maybe he was a criminal and they tossed him out, you
know?”
Joe nodded politely, took a sip of coffee, and reluctantly
motioned for him to continue.
“Okay. So, I ain’t found no possum, but instead
this ugly thing lyin’ on the ground. It looked like it was reaching out to grab
me and I jumped back, but this wiggly arm, a, uh…”
“A tentacle?” Joe suggested, still disbelieving
Ralph’s interpretation of events. But what sort of land animal had wiggly arms?
“Yeah, this tentacule thing couldn’t reach me. The
thing, it looked like it had six eyes, like black spider eyes, staring at me,
and one of its leg-tentacules was missing, and it was oozing this green stuff
into the dirt.”
“I get it. It was injured.” Joe winced every time
Ralph butchered the word ‘tentacle’ but he had learned long ago it was useless
to correct him.
“Yeah, and it had this bowl in its hand. And it was
holding the bowl out to me, like it was trying to give it to me. It was trying
to talk, but it sounded like goobly oobly blah blah, just alien hogwash. May as
well been a dog farting, I couldn’t understand a word of it. And it smelled
bad, too.” Ralph wrinkled his nose with the memory. “Anyway, it died after a while.
I didn’t help it. Die, that is. And I took that bowl from its cold dead tentacule.”
Joe leaned forward, sensing a possible lead in the
story that might get him closer to the truth. “Is the body still there? The
alien?”
Ralph looked distraught. “Naw. I went back later to
check, since I thought it might be important, but there wasn’t nothin’ there.
No body, no green blood, like someone had cleaned up. It was weird, and I was a
little scared, I can tell you.”
“But you have this mysterious bowl now?” Joe
probed.
“Nope. I had to give that back to the other alien. But
that’s later. I wondered what was so special about this bowl that the dying critter
wanted to give it to me. Maybe it was some ritual thing, or it changed water
into wine, or ramen into beef stew. Anyway, I messed with it a little bit,”
Ralph said.
Despite his disbelief, Joe leaned forward. “And?”
“Well, the ramen was still ramen.” He shrugged
sheepishly. “I ate cereal out of it a few times. But I didn’t get no special powers,
that I know of, anyways. And it tasted all right, but my spoon stuck to the
bottom a little bit, like there was a magnet there.”
Joe raised his eyebrows encouragingly and sipped
his coffee.
“I had to drink the cereal right from the bowl so
that I could get the spoon back out without makin’ a big mess. Next, I put some
nuts and bolts in it, and they stuck to the bottom too. It didn’t put them
together or anything. I put it on my head like a hat, and it fit pretty good,
but I didn’t get any new ideas. I started thinking it was just a bowl.”
“A magnetic bowl,” Joe provided. “And a hat.”
“Well, yeah. I reckon so,” said Ralph. “Anyways, I
step out of my mobile a day or two later wearing it like a hat, with my gun in
hand to go looking for possum again, and there’s two men outside, maybe federal
agents or something, I don’t know. But they don’t tell me to freeze or
anything, one of them just pulls out a gun and shoots at me. This blue flash
shows up in the air about a foot from me, the bullet drops to the ground, and
then the bowl shoots out these green rays and the two guys are gone, just like
that. Just a couple of greasy gray clouds where they were. Even their guns were
gone, more’s the pity.”
Joe’s jaw was hanging down. He leaned forward
conspiratorially and whispered, “You might have started with that! You should
be talking to a lawyer, Ralph, not an insurance adjuster. What did you do then?”
“I went hunting for possum like I was gonna do,”
Ralph said. “I kept the bowl on my head, though. Not like I was going to call
the police, you know. No bodies to show em’ anyways. Never did see their car,
either. The bowl got me curious, though, and when I got home, still with no
damn possum, I decided to see what made it work. I got out a screwdriver and
pried and scraped at it, but there weren’t no screws and no cracks to get any
leverage. So I got a hammer and started tapping at it, but it didn’t make no
marks howsoever. I tried to use the screwdriver like a chisel with the hammer,
and the thing still wouldn’t crack. It was, like, impossible to break open.”
The hair on the back of Joe’s neck was standing
straight up, thinking about how the bowl might have reacted to this crude attack
on its integrity. “Indestructible,” he muttered.
“Yup. That’s the word. Not even a place for
batteries, which you’d kind of ‘spect, seein’ it shoots death rays and such. I
thought about shooting at it to get inside, but then I remembered those two agents
and what happened to them, and decided not to do that.”
“Probably a wise choice,” Joe said, cringing. He
imagined a monkey chiseling at a propane tank to see if there was a banana
inside.
“I left the bowl on my TV then, just by accident,
and when I turned on my TV to watch the news, maybe see if there was anything
about an alien invasion, all I got on my screen was little spots of light with
some weird letters under each one. I moved the bowl away and the news came on,
and then I put it back and the little dots came back. I turned the bowl, and
the dots of light—they looked kind o’ like stars—shifted around too. Really
weird. One of the dots was lit up different than the others, with a lot more letters
under it. I stuck a tape in the VHS and recorded it for about ten minutes. Anyways,
after playin’ with it awhile, I took it off so I could watch the news.”
Joe’s breath caught. There was a star map? Was
Ralph smart enough to even make this up? Of course, the recording would only
work if the signal was coming in through the TV RF input, and how would the
bowl know how to format the signal? But if there were any chance at all… “What
did you do with the tape?”
“I kept it in the bowl, so I wouldn’t get it mixed
up with my other tapes. Seemed the smart thing to do.” He smiled smugly.
Joe rubbed his forehead as a headache started to
sneak in. “You put the VHS tape in the bowl with the magnet in the bottom?” he
asked.
“Yup.”
“Okay.” Joe sighed. “Go on.”
“So the next day,” Ralph continued, “I hear this whiny,
windy noise outside, and I look out the window. There’s this big space ship
coming down in that flat meadow a few hundred yards from my mobile, you know,
where all the blackberries grow next to the creek? I can’t see the space ship
too good since those big walnut trees block the view. Otherwise, I would have got a good picture of
it. I hear this big ‘foop’ sound, so I go outside.
“I’d left the bowl out front, since I was trying to
grow a tomato plant in it to see what would happen, so it just looked like
another flower pot, disguised. Anyways, here come a couple more of those ugly aliens.
One of ‘ems got a bowl tucked under his tentacule and the other one is flailing
his tentacules around, and points at the bowl the dead alien gave me. He kinda
swishes over to the bowl, ‘cause his legs is tentacules too, picks it up and
shakes the dirt and tomato plant out with no regard for me or the plant. It
stares at me for a minute and says more googly oogly blah blah again, makes no
sense to me. I tell it, ‘Hey, your friend gave me that bowl as a gift. It’s
mine now, so you just better put it right back where it was.’ Well, they blathered
on for a while, then the one alien who was carrying a different bowl turns
around and touches his bowl in a weird way using some of his tentacules, and
the bowl starts unfolding into a big shape! In about fifteen seconds, it’s
bigger than my trailer. It’s a spaceship! The other alien, he takes my bowl,
and does the same thing, so there’s two alien spaceships parked right next to
my trailer! Looked like an upscale trailer park. I was really excited, because
I thought they were going to give me the spaceship and show me how it works. He
says something to me in alienish, and they both get on their spaceships and close
the doors.”
Joe was getting into the story for the story’s
sake, whether he could rationalize the fantastic details or not. His coffee cup
was empty and he waved down a waitress for more. “So we’re finally getting to
the end of your shaggy-dog story where your mobile home gets destroyed?”
Ralph nodded slowly. “But there’s no dog. You know
my hound dog died last year, right? And he wasn’t shaggy.”
“Just an expression, Ralph,” Joe said. “Tell me the
rest of your story.”
Ralph’s forehead creased a little, but he
continued. “The ships started to hum, and the ground shook, and those two ships
rose into the air. When they were about twenty feet up, my mobile suddenly came
off the ground and started to follow the two ships, and the sides crumpled in.
The ships stopped suddenly where they were, and the mobile home fell to the
ground from ten feet high. And that’s why it looks like it was caught in a
hurricane.” He nodded his head and took a sip of coffee.
Joe held up one hand. “So let’s get this straight,”
he touched a finger, “there was a dead alien, but he’s gone now along with his
blood.” He touched a second finger. “Then there was an indestructible cereal
bowl, but you don’t have it anymore.” He touched a third finger. “Aliens landed
in your front yard, but you took no pictures. So we really have no proof at all
that the aliens were ever here.” He didn’t bother to mention the videotape. He
closed his hand, as though squeezing away any chance for a plausible story.
“That’s what I been tryin’ to tell you. I need to
blame it on a hurricane. Nobody’s gonna believe the truth ‘ceptin’ maybe you.”
Joe nodded and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We
can try the hurricane story, I guess. I don’t know if it’ll fly. It feels like
you’re not telling me something, though.”
Ralph blushed. “Well, it’s not the end of the
story, exactly. The aliens saw that they’d destroyed my mobile on accident and
they landed again. One of the aliens walked up to me, pointed at the mobile
with his tentacule, and pulled a little flat, square wafer out of this
vest-thing he was wearing. The alien had like a thousand of these flat squares
all around his body each in a little flat pouch, like little armor plates on an
armadillo. He handed it to me, then said some more alien stuff, got back on his
ship, and off they went, and the trailer flopped around like a catfish out of
water as they left.”
“So you still have this little metal plate?” Joe
asked doubtfully.
Ralph unbuttoned a shirt pocket and pulled out a
black, square wafer, almost an inch wide, about as thick as a driver’s license.
He slid it over to Joe. “It’s cold,” he said.
Joe picked up the thin wafer and dropped it again
almost immediately. “Damn, you mean it’s cold.
Have you tried anything with it?”
“Yeah. It’s the same temperature all the time.
Thirty-six degrees.” He scratched his head. “Don’t matter if I stick it in the
toaster oven or a cup of coffee, I take it out and measure the temperature with
a thermometer and it’s always thirty-six degrees. I poured hot water on it and
it was still cold. If I stick in an icebox, it’ll sit in a little pool of water
forever, ‘cause it’s a little warmer than the ice. You know?” He paused,
thinking. “I used it in a beer cooler, too, and that worked pretty good. It’s
like havin’ free ice forever. Not really a fair trade for my mobile, though.”
Joe picked up the wafer cautiously and dipped it in
his own coffee, then pulled it out and felt it. “I’ll be rolled in breadcrumbs.
Where do you think the energy is going?”
“What energy?” Ralph asked. “It’s cold.”
Joe shook his head, examining the chip. “Never
mind.”
“Anyways,“ Ralph continued, “I dug some stuff out
of my trailer; clothes, bathroom stuff, beer, and the video tape, and got a
room at the Motel 6. When I drove by there the next day, there were cars all
over the place, people goin’ through what was left of the mobile, and I didn’t
stick around. Maybe they’ll think I’m dead.”
Probably not, Joe thought. The big question was how
fast he could find a buyer for the alien chip before they tracked down Ralph,
and how fast Ralph would be forced to give Joe up once he was questioned,
friend or not. He looked out the diner window, scanning the parking lot for
government cars or suspicious white vans, but didn’t see any government-issued license
plates. Ralph, he knew, tended to pay for everything with cash since his credit
was so bad, so that might actually delay the feds, or whoever, a few days from finding
him. He’d have to give Ralph a few hundred to make sure his cash held out for a
while. Maybe move him from the Motel 6 to his spare bedroom, though that would
mean Martha would be cursing a blue streak at him for the whole time Ralph
stayed there.
Ralph pointed at the chip. “So you think this will
convince your boys that aliens destroyed my mobile? I didn’t think they’d buy
that story. Will they buy me a new one? Or a house, maybe?”
Joe smiled, twiddling the cold thin chip with his
fingers, thinking about an early retirement and a nice house for Ralph. Some
place where the possums still ran wild. “I’m pretty sure we can work something
out, my friend.”
END
Author Bio: Tom Jolly is a retired astronautical/electrical engineer who now spends his time writing SF and fantasy, designing board games, and creating obnoxious puzzles. His stories have appeared in Analog SF, Daily Science Fiction, Compelling Science Fiction, New Myths and a number of anthologies, including a collection of his short SF, "Damn the Asteroids, Full Speed Ahead" available on Amazon. He lives in Santa Maria, California, with his wife Penny in a place where mountain lions and black bears still visit. You can discover more of his stories at www.silcom.com/~tomjolly/tomjolly2.htm.
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