This time people heard when Brittany knocked. This time it was ten o’clock on Saturday morning, when most normal humans would be expected to be awake. This time, Joey wasn’t screaming. He was happily building Lego space ships on the balcony with his mother.
Pete, however, didn’t hear. Pete wasn’t like normal people. Pete had been up late last night battling aliens on the Internet. Didn’t people understand that Saturday was his one day to sleep in? His One Day? During the week he had school. And homework. Hours of homework. On Sunday he had church. Saturday. Saturday was the day he got to sleep in. But no. Here was his dad telling him that Brittany was here to see him. And what was up with that? What had happened that his best friend’s little sister suddenly thought it was perfectly OK to just come over all the time? What made her think they were friends?
Come to think of it, Pete was actually pretty worried about his best friend. George had spent the whole week walking around oblivious to the world. He hadn’t been talking to Pete, or anybody else, as far as Pete could tell. When Pete tried talking to him, he just mumbled, or muttered, and turned away. He hadn’t been handing in work at school. He just sat there staring vacantly when the teachers came around to collect it. In fact, George had been doing a lot of vacant staring since they had gone to the beach together, and he had gone off with Jennifer. It couldn’t be drugs, could it? A person couldn’t get addicted to drugs overnight, could he?
Then, yesterday, all of a sudden, George had snapped in English class. Completely lost it during Elizabeth Martin’s symbolism presentation. He had just started screaming about Democracy not being able to mitigate evil, and there being no order in the universe. Elizabeth had kept her cool. Pete had been impressed. He didn’t know how he would have reacted if somebody had started yelling at him in the middle of his presentation about Simon, which had gone off without a hitch. Elizabeth had tried to explain that she and George were saying the same thing, which was pretty amazing, because Pete couldn’t really tell what George was saying, or why he was so worked up about it, but Mrs. Moore had sent him to the counselor, and as soon as he had left, the class had burst into giggles. Pete had felt terrible, even as he giggled along with everybody else. It was nothing to giggle about, as Mrs. Moore had sternly pointed out, and it wasn’t like they had really thought it was funny.
OK, so George did look a little humorous with his face all red, and his fists all balled up, and spit flying out of his mouth.
He had looked a little bit funny.
But what he had really looked like was scary.
Pete was a little shocked by his own insensitive reaction to George's outburst , and he realized how much tension he must have been building up inside, watching his best friend, zombie-George walk around day after day in his cocoon of oblivion, and not knowing what was wrong, and not being able to reach him. Mysterious wiener dog detectives hadn’t exactly soothed his nerves, either.
The giggling had been some kind of nervous release. That’s all. Mrs. Moore had them all get up out of their chairs, and she guided them through a few stretches and breathing exercises before they went back to listening to Elizabeth explain the symbolism of the conch shell.
But that was yesterday. Friday. This was Saturday morning. Early Saturday morning. Before noon, Pete was sure. He forced himself to crawl out of bed, and he threw on some jeans and a t-shirt.
Brittany didn’t have any real news about George. She knew that he had taken off early to go with a group of kids to volunteer at an orphanage. She knew this because she had been listening around the corner when their mother had talked on the phone to the school counselor. George hadn’t told her anything himself. George still wasn’t talking to his family at all, unless you counted monosyllabic grunts. Brittany said that you couldn’t even really call them grunts, because they were too halfhearted and pathetic. She said he was acting like he had just given up on life, for no reason that anybody could figure out. Nothing had changed in George’s life, as far as his family, his friends, or the counselor could see. Brittany said she would be surprised if he actually made it to the orphanage.
But she hadn’t come over to talk about George. She had come over because the new notebook had sprouted another installment of the story.
December 7, 2004
"Oh, here's everybody." The pigs were not knocking today, but barging. Martin, the oldest of the three Littels (though only about half the girth of Zeke), appeared in the kitchen doorway. "I brought you some raspberries from our greenhouse. Hey," Martin addressed the other pigs, "did you two take that funny trough away--it's gone now."
"Oh, there is much going on with the trough and with these deer and with this Christmas holiday. These deer are from the North Pole, they say, and this Claus fellow is on the sauce, and this trough, I think is part of it -- Taub and I have seen it vanish into the air, and now it is here," said Zeke.
"Come along to the lab. The results of the first batch of analytic tests should be just about ready by now." The wiener dogs' laboratory, and Fred's skill as a forensic scientist, were surprisingly advanced.
Akelmeyer was first in the single-file line of animals down the narrow stairway and corridor that led to the basement lab, and it was he who opened the door. "It's gone!"
Fred was the next into the lab, which, by contrast to the hallway, was very spacious, with a high ceiling, and full of sophisticated-looking equipment, some of which looked like it belonged on the set of a science-fiction movie. He nodded his head slightly, but did not look surprised. "I'm not surprised," said Fred. He went straight to a printer that was connected to a large square box, and picked up a piece of paper from the output tray. He studied the numbers printed on it for about fifteen seconds, and said to the group, "That trough's atomic structure -- oh, how can I put this simply – is -- out of phase slightly with our, er, universe. See here, the electrons are orbiting at a different -- It is either from another time, perhaps the distant future, or the past, and," Fred broke off. "Well, I would feel silly saying this if it were not for Fawn and Chloe's story, here. It is -- perhaps, well, for lack of a better word, enchanted, no, maybe that's just the right word. Yes, enchanted, by a very old and very powerful magic. There was a time when belief in such things was common."
"Well, I'll believe anything right now. I've been thinking about it. If matter is energy, and energy is thought -- whose thought? We are, as we are thought. Whatever the Author writes, is indeed possible. It's like we are characters in a story," said Akelmeyer. The others ignored his comment, as if they did not hear. "Or, maybe not," added Akelmeyer.
"And," said Fred, whose powers of scientific deduction sometimes seemed supernatural, "at 11:23 this morning, it took a sort of quantum leap, to the magnetic north pole. And, we must follow."
"The magnetic north pole, not the actual pole?" asked Akelmeyer.
"The magnetic north pole in the universe next door, actually," said Fred.
"How do you propose to get the North Pole? In another universe no less?" Malchisedech rarely doubted Fred, who as things usually turned out, was almost always correct in matters mysterious and adventurous. But, this was, as Martin would soon put it, rather far-fetched.
"I don't know," admitted Fred. "But, I think much more hinges on it than that Santa Christmas story. That story is real to these deer, and they are real to us. Deck, I know that Santa didn't bring you those milk bones in our universe, but I'll bet he did in Chloe's. The trough, and the deer are here. I think our concept of Christmas, yours and mine -- Jesus the Savior, Christianity, our whole spiritual fabric, are being threatened here. Maybe our whole existence as we know it. 'What is real?' is a tricky question when examined closely."
"No Jesus Messiah, is that such a bad thing? We Jews are still waiting for the King," said Martin.
"And that is real for you, like Christ is real for me, and Santa is real for Chloe, you see?"
"This is like Star Trek meets Batman and the Brothers Grimm," said Zeke. "It is too much for a pig like me. I am going to go upstairs and have another cinnamon roll."
"Wait for me," said Tubby, and the two younger pigs left hurriedly.
"I think it is all very interesting, if far-fetched," said Martin.
"The fabric of our universe, threatened? By two nutty deer and a mystery trough? Aren't you extrapolating a bit far, Fred?"
Fred gave Malchisedech a look that put his tail between his legs. "We must get to the North Pole. Chloe and Fawn's North Pole. And we must get there soon. But, how?"
TO BE CONTINUED...
“What are you drawing?” Brittany asked. She had been reading aloud, and Pete had been doodling without noticing it.
It was the laboratory, complete with microscopes, and a set of scales, and screens, and something that looked like a fish tank, with lots of knobs and buttons. In the middle of the whole thing was what looked like a wooden water trough, with two wiener dogs, and a pig hovering near the equipment.
“That’s really cool,” she told him. “How did you do that? I didn’t know you could draw!”
“Well, I can’t. I just --”
To tell the truth, the drawing was just as much a surprise to him as it was to Brittany. He had been listening to her read the story, and imagining what it would look like. He was imagining the wiener dogs standing on two legs, and taking samples from the trough. He was thinking about what else would have been in the lab. He had made the machine that had printed out the numbers look a little like a seismograph. That wasn’t quite right, but otherwise, it looked pretty good. He wondered what Fred would look like in a lab coat. Maybe he would try drawing that some time.
He handed it to Brittany, telling her she could glue it into the notebook if she wanted. “Luckily, the fabric of our universe isn’t being threatened,” he added. “Let's go find a soccer ball.”
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