CASE NUMBER TWO

THE CASE OF THE ODD GOD OUT

CHAPTER ONE

It was a beautiful autumn morning in the crossroads village of Goodsite, South Carolina. I was standing under an oak tree looking out across about ten acres of pastureland. In the not too far distance some contented cows were lazily enjoying the sunshine and the Carolina air. They belonged to Shumptous Dairy where the milk was ‘pasturized’ but never homogenized. The milk was a lot like life, a little lumpy, but nothing a little shaking up couldn’t cure.



A couple of months had passed since my last assignment, ‘THE CASE OF THE PREDESTINED SHEGAH RUNAWAY’ and I was beginning to wonder if I was being passed over for new assignments. I had made a couple of big blunders in that case, and truth be told, I could have solved the case by simply staying at home and reading a book. But I had never been reprimanded in any official kind of way so maybe it was a just a matter of a temporary moratorium in conundrums theological.


Then the celestial cell phone begin ringing...

CHAPTER TWO

"Neercassel speaking."

“Howdy, Mr. Neercassel. This is Earl, a recent graduate of the Pond of Fire Flight Academy, and your soon-to-be personal jet pilot. How are you doing today, sir?”

“Well, howdy to you Earl. Call me Nick by the way.”

“Yes sir, Nick.”

“What can I do for you?” I suppose I should say I was surprised someone named Earl was on the celestial wavelength, but over the years my surprise quotient had become practically immune to surprise. I didn’t know it then but my surprise quotient was about to soon lose its immunity.

“It’s more what I can do for you. Can you meet me at the Petiger International Airport in one hour?”

“Of course.” A TPE never says no to the celestial cell phone no matter who’s on the other side.

There was a problem though. As was usually the case, all 16 motorcycles were in the shop and my SUV, the Flying Belt, was also undergoing heavy repairs due to falling off the side of a mountain. The Petiger Airport was about 12 miles from my home slash office so walking there in an hour was out of the question. I decided to call Selym Namwen, a Meslam (a Methodist offshoot of Islam) friend of mine who lived about thirty minutes away. Fortunately, Selym was available to help. While he was on the way I put a portable toothbrush in my pocket and charged up my celestial, all the while wondering why the Boss hadn’t personally called.

CHAPTER THREE

Selym was right on time and I said both hello and thanks as I hopped into his Plymouth minivan. Selym had just retired as a PPE (Philosophical Private Eye) and was currently writing his memoirs tentatively entitled ‘SOCRATES AND SAM SPADE: THE PHILOSOPHICAL RAMBLINGS OF A PHILOSOPHICAL PRIVATE EYE.’ Catchy title, but then Selym had always had an eye for the subtle and a flair for the sublime.

He asked me as I buckled up, “Why the sense of urgency, Nick?”

“A jet is picking me up at Petiger in twenty minutes. Courtesy of the Boss.”

“What’s it about?”

“The pilot wouldn’t say. But if the Boss isn’t talking over the celestial then it must be something really big. Too big to take a chance of it being overheard.”

“Well, don’t fret too much, Nick. You know what we Retired Meslam PPEs always say.”

“You can kiss your kismet goodbye?”

CHAPTER FOUR

As it so happened the jet with the angel shaped wings was taxiing on the runway as we were driving up to the gate. And a few minutes later, after taking off my shoes and emptying my pockets at the check-in gate, I was sitting in the back compartment of the somewhat smallish plane. Sitting across from me were the aforementioned, Earl, the pilot, and an older man who identified himself as Nehemiah Paidion, professor of astro-hermeneutics at the Pond of Fire Graduate School.

Earl said he had to get back to work in preparing the plane for take-off. We were leaving in about fifteen minutes. The professor started talking,

“Nick, you’re probably wondering what this is all about.”

“Sure do, Professor. I was beginning to think I had been put out to pasture and now I’m about to take off in a jet plane on what may be the most intriguing assignment of my career.”

“I’ll get right to the point, Nick. The Ghost is gone.”

I gasped, “You mean THE Ghost?”

“The one and only. For the first time in his career, he’s AWOD.”

AWOD? I wasn’t familiar with the term but before I could ask the Professor what it meant, he said, “Absent WithOut Definition.”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about, Prof. But please keep your explanation as simple as possible. I’m just a Class II TPE, after all.”

“As you wish. To put it simply, The Ghost, as far as both terrestrial and celestial sciences are concerned, has ceased to exist. It is axiomatic that that which by definition cannot be defined does not have existence.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

CHAPTER FIVE

Just then, Earl walked into the cabin and announced we were leaving in five minutes. I asked if he had any Shumptuous chocolate milk in the fridge. Thankfully he did. I asked for a double.

A few minutes later the jet took off without any difficulty. It suddenly struck me that I had no idea where we were headed. I had been so shocked by the news about The Ghost that I had momentarily forgotten about the mission at hand.

The Professor shook me out of my revelry.

“Don’t you want to know what your, that is our, mission is?”

“Shoot, Professor.”

“Our job is to find The Ghost and convince him to exist once again; i.e., to once again be in a state of definition.”

Wow. Another find and convince job but I don’t think staying at home and reading a book would get the job done this time. How do you find something that by definition does not exist and then convince that which does not exist to exist?

“Where do we begin?” I took a sip of chocolate milk.

“Our first stop is the San Fernando Valley where we’ll meet with Donn McClean, retired rock and roller.”

“He actually agreed to meet with us? Most old Rockers don’t like to deal with theological conundrums. Drums, yes, conundrums, no.”

“He said he would. Straightpoint has made all the arrangements.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Lance is back in action?” I asked.

“Yes, but only because we need everybody to find nobody. Straightpoint has been reinstalled with the caveat he’ll have to attend Pond of Fire Rehab training when this is all over.”

“So tell me about this McClean guy. What does he know that we don’t?”

“Back in 1971 he wrote a song entitled ‘Bye, Bye, Miss American Asparagus.’ (Asparagus was the name of McClean's golden retriever who had died the year before. Her death had inspired the song.) It was a long song, six minutes or so, but it was a big hit and the radio stations were willing to play it in its entirety. But we’re not interested in the whole song. We’re only interested in one verse. It went like this…”

The three men I admire most

The Boss, Boss Jr., and the Ghost

One of them got lost on the coast

The day Asparagus died

I stroked my chin thoughtfully. “Almost a premonition, isn’t it? Did McClean have access to the celestial wavelength?”

“Class I TPE, but he gave it up when his song made the Top Forty.”

“I don’t know. Class I TPEs don’t usually have premonitions.” I stood up and went to the fringe and grabbed another Shumptous chocolate milk. “Want one, Professor?”

“No thanks. I’m allergic to chocolate. I will take a water bottle though. Any Perrier?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I handed the Professor a bottle of water and sat back down. “What about the Boss and BJ (Boss Jr.)? What are they doing about the Ghost’s disappearance?”

“The most recent report from the Astro-Eschatological SkyLab slash Celestial Telescope said the Boss was looking in the M75 galaxy and BJ was just leaving the Andromeda Galaxy. They plan to search the whole universe if they have to.”

“I guess two searchers are better than one.”

“Yes and no. The problem is even if they split the Universe in half for purposes of searching they still, because the Universe is infinite to begin with, have an infinite Universe to search.”

“But is that really that big a problem? After all, they can be everywhere at once.”

“That’s a misconception. Now when the Boss, BJ, and The Ghost are linked as they have been for eternity and because The Ghost has the ability to be everywhere at once, then the Boss and BJ, by way of association, can also be considered to be everywhere at once. But now that the triangle has been severed at one angle, the Boss and BJ are limited to just one place at any one time. The good news is they’re very fast but the bad news is there’s lots of ground to cover.”

“Our task seems to be pretty hopeless.”

“Perhaps not. I have a theory.”

“I’m listening.”

“The Ghost is here on Earth or to put it more correctly, The Ghost is experiencing his non-existence here on Earth.”

The metaphysics were dancing around the cabin. I just hoped the oxygen supply wasn’t affected.

“Why would he choose to non-exist on Earth if he could non-exist in the Universe? He’d have a lot more places to non-exist in the Universe. If non-existence is what he's after, as I presume it is, or why else non-exist?”

“Your reasoning is sound and is ergo probably the same as the Boss and BJ. The Ghost knows that and that’s why I believe he’s non-existing here on Earth. It is in his mind, I contend, his best bet to remain non-existent.”

“That makes sense. But why can’t we get the Associates to help us?” (Editor’s Note: the Associates were called Angels or Messengers for billions of years until 1995 when the Boss changed their name. Sam Walton, upon entering the Third Heaven, had become BJ’s business consultant. He had done such a good job for BJ that the Boss had started appreciating Wal*Mart’s organizational genius. Besides allowing Wal*Mart to be the sole distributor for BJ’s CDs – the first one was ‘The Free Wheelin’ Boss Jr.’ – he had also had adopted some of their terminology).

“They’re tied up in the Alpha Centauri system fighting The Man and his Minions. (Editor’s Note: ‘The Man’ was a euphemism TPEs and Pond of Fire employees used for THE DIABOLICAL ONE. We didn’t like him, in fact we hated him, but we had learn to respect his power and influence.)

I took one last gulp of the Shumptuous. “So it’s up to us to find The Ghost?”

“That about shums, I mean sums, it up.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

As I walked to the fridge for another round, I took the opportunity to look out a small, rectangle shaped window on the port side of the plane. All I could see was bright blue sky and white, wispy clouds, but I sensed somehow there was a universe of stars in cosmic disarray that lay behind the prosaic skyscape.

It was a smallish plane but it had a longish range. After about three thousand miles we were nearing San Fernando Valley’s Conquistador Jetport. Upon landing, a limousine was waiting for us. Our chauffeur was named Jimmah, who turned out to be a Moslam (Mormon offshoot of Islam) and we had quite a lively discussion on the way to Donn McClean’s home. He knew about the Tom Jones Polygamia experiment and was generally in favor of it.


The house turned out to be at the end of a long, eucalyptus tree-lined driveway. It was nothing to be ashamed of and it was obvious ‘Bye, Bye, Miss American Aspagarus’ had been very good to Donn.

Donn met us at the door and invited us into his study slash recording studio where a fire was crackling and the sounds of BJ’s latest album (‘BJ on the Tracks’) was playing in the background. Donn motioned us to sit down and asked if we would like anything to drink. I asked for a Shumptuous but Donn said the Commerce Department (this was before President Obama had decided to get rid of it) had not approved it for sale west of the Mississippi (not approving Shumptuous for sale on the West Coast may have been one of the primary reasons the President wanted to abolish it). The Professor and I both had a Shagah Lite instead. Apparently it was a new product from Shagah Incorporated. It reminded me of Old Milwaukee, watery but with no bad aftertaste.

Donn asked us what he could do for us. The Professor did not try to explain the Cosmic Predicament the Universe was in but simply said he had always been a big fan and wanted to know the genesis of one of the verses of Donn’s most famous songs.

“What verse might that be?” Donn amiably asked.

“The one that contains the line ‘One of them got lost on the coast.’ Which one of the three were you referring to?”

Donn look befuddled. He began to stammer incoherently.

The Professor began to lose his patience. The immensity of the situation had begun to wear on him. “Think man! The whole Universe is at stake!”

Donn’s incoherence didn’t seem to be waning. I walked over to his fridge and got a Shagah HD (Heavy and Dark; another new product from Shagah Ink; this one promised to be fuller, richer, and less watery than Shagah Lite). A few swallows brought Donn back to coherence.

“Ah… that’s an interesting question.” Donn began. It was obvious he was being evasive.

“Which I hope has an interesting answer.” The Professor spoke rather sharply.

“Look here, I might as well fess up. I didn’t write that particular verse. A woman I was seeing at the time had read the lyrics of a song I was working on which would eventually become ‘Bye, Bye, Miss American Asparagus’. She said she really liked it but thought it was missing a verse. Funny thing, in all our time together it was only time she ever suggested any lyrics.”

“What was her name?”

“Inca Angelou.”

“Don’t you mean Maya Angelou?”

“No, it was Inca. Maya was a distant cousin.”

“Whatever happened to Inca?”

“Last I heard she married an artist named Aztec Devilou and moved to Taco, New Mexico.”

“So now she goes by Inca Devilou?”

Donn nodded. As we were leaving, I grabbed two Shagah Lites out of the fridge. The Professor looked like he needed one. I knew I did.

CHAPTER NINE

Earl was waiting for us at Conquistador. He seemed to be in a good mood. He told us he had spent the interval talking Karma Theory with a Haslam (a Hare Krishna offshoot of Islam). 

It was time for another Shumptuous. The Professor wanted another Shagah Lite. Luckily Earl, anticipating the Professor’s needs, had bought a six-pack before leaving the Jetport. He told us later a free manual with instructions on how to improve one’s sex life in six easy steps came with every six-pack. I never got to see it because Earl had inadvertently placed it in the jet exhaust when pulling out a Lite for himself. The FAA allowed pilots to drink Shagah Lite while flying because it was classified by the FDA as a TCW (Tasty Colored Water).


Soon we were back in the air headed for Taco. I asked the Professor, “Are you familiar with these Devilous?”

The professor looked preoccupied. A few seconds elapsed and I asked the question again. He replied,

“Not Inca but I do know Aztec. He’s the grandson of the late Alonzo Von Tapp, founder of Aztec Publishing Concern.”

“But how can he help us find The Ghost?”

“I have a hunch. Now stay with me on this. I believe The Ghost inspired Inca back in 1971 to suggest those lyrics to McClean. He knew Inca would one day probably marry Aztec. He didn’t know for sure but the stats and the stars were pointing in that direction.”

“And what makes Aztec so potentially important to our mission?”

“He knows how to speak Mayan. We need him to interpret the stone inscriptions once we reach the temple ruins.”

CHAPTER TEN

Once the Professor said the word Mayan my mind started clicking on its own and pretty soon the full gears and internal combustion of an alert and ready TPE was revving at a high level of RPMs. Years of training at the Pond of Fire TPE Institute had not been in vain. Yes, it was the autumn of 2011 and the Mayan prediction that the world would end at the end of 2012 meant the end was still over a year away, but with the recent turn of events, could the end be nearer than we thought, and if so, was this the reason The Ghost had become non-existent?

My eyes had been closed while I had been doing all this heavy thinking and when I opened them the Professor was gazing at me in such a way that he must have known what I had been thinking. He said, “Take a look at this.” and handed me the following document (Editor’s note: the document turned out to be marked classified by the THEA –Third Heaven Extra-intelligence Agency – so it can be not reproduced here without severe repercussions. However, THEA has allowed us to reveal one paragraph for purposes of keeping the plot moving):


“There is a yet-undiscovered physical process, apparently involving the interplanetary medium (i.e. hydrogen gas or protons) and the so-called Hubble acceleration (which might be a misinterpreted local physical phenomenon). This process has a period of about 6500 yr.; ancient astronomers thought it was due again in 2012AD, hence the Mayan Long Count(down). Every 6000-6500 yr., Earth gets hit by something like a big flyswatter from space. It's not the end of Creation, but it seems like it. Our species gets thinned out, but picks up the pieces and continues, though with some historical amnesia.” Joe Keller (THEA Extra-Special Agent).


After reading the entire document, I knew I was on to something. But I had no idea what. The Professor, on the other hand…

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Taco was a bustling artists’ town in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. It was nighttime and the western sky was ablaze with millions of points of light. The Boss and BJ were out there among those points of light searching for a ghost. But so were we.

Aztec was a big man in his sixties who sported a full grey beard as well as a healthy paunch and a painter’s panache. Inca was much smaller with delicate features. She was serving us beef tacos with frijoles and tamales. We thanked her profusely.

“I thank you. I don’t get to cook like I like to cook much anymore. Aztec is a Vegan. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but I love him anyway.”
Between mouthfuls, the Professor explained pertinent aspects of the situation to Aztec. He then asked him, “Can you help us?”
“My Mayan is mighty rusty, but what the heck, old man Tapp would have wanted me to give it a shot.” Aztec replied.

I had finally caught up with the Professor. He suspected that The Ghost had taken it upon himself to attempt to save the world from the Mayan Calendar Cataclysm. But in doing so it might mean that the The Ghost’s current state of non-existence might become permanent. The Professor intended not to let that happen.

I had also learned that all of Alonzo Von Tapp’s children and grandchildren had not only learn to speak Aztecan but Mayan as well. When asked why, Von Tapp replied, “If they don’t do it, who will?”

Inca had fond memories of her time with McClean but had no recollection of recommending a particular set of lyrics to him. It was obviously a case of The Ghost at work.

I asked the Professor, “But if The Ghost knew that he was going to attempt to save the world in 2011, why would he engineer a message back in 1971 that might end up thwarting his attempt?”

“Funny you should say 2011. Don’t you mean 2012?”

CHAPTER TWELVE

I was a little flustered. Did I mean 2012? No, I didn’t! Peril was in the air and the danger was both immanent and profound.


I replied to the Professor, “Linear Time is in flux, isn’t it?”


“I think you’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head. According to the astro-cosmological-relativity-theological scientific instruments located at the Pond of Fire Physics Lab, time has been speeding up for the last 6500 years. Only a fraction of a second per year, but enough to move time forward so that what would be December 21, 2011 will actually be (for us anyway) October 7, 2011.”


October 7? That was tomorrow!


Time was short, and not only that, even shorter. We didn’t have twenty-four hours. Because of the time flux, we only had twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes and 59.999999999999999999999999991 seconds.


“What do we do next?”
“We're flying to Chichen Itza!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

We were on the plane again flying at top speed on our way to the coast of Southeastern Mexico.


“Professor, you never answered my question about why The Ghost might be willing to thwart his own plans.”
“My best hypothesis is that he somehow planted a time controlled Metaphysical Warning Beeper (MWB). Since it was metaphysical, it wasn't limited by the ordinary laws of nature. Contrary to the tenets of Caslam (a Calvinist offshoot of Islam) hermeneutics the future is not set in stone. The future is open to various possibilities and sundry developments. The Ghost knew that with a MWB he was setting the stage for a heroic rescue attempt at preventing him from becoming permanently non-existent.”
“So The Ghost really wants to exist?”
“I don’t say this lightly. It would seem so.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

(Editor's note: please indulge us while an omniscient narrator briefly makes an appearance.)


If you’re standing on a clear night In the Mojave Desert and you’re about a mile from any road or highway and you look up into the sky in the direction of the North Star, and if you imagine you could actually see another 3 million light years or so beyond the North Star, you might see another star; a large yellow one burning brightly. And you might see in the halo of that star the outlines of two figures that appear to be having a casual conversation:


“No luck, eh, in the XM11115987 Galaxy?”
“Nothing. Just like in the 17,234 galaxies I’ve searched previously.”
“Same here. You know I miss the old fellow. He was never actually there with us because he was everywhere but he was the kind of fellow that was always there when you needed him even when he wasn’t. If you know what I mean.”
“He could be funny when he wanted to be. I especially liked the times when he called himself THE ODD GOD OUT. He’d asked, “Why am I always mentioned last? Why is it always the Boss, BJ, and The Ghost? Why couldn’t it sometimes be The Boss, The Ghost, and BJ or better yet The Ghost, the Boss and BJ?”
“And then he’d sometimes complain that you got to sit at my right hand while he, always having to be everywhere, never had the chance to be just somewhere. But you know, he never let his gripes interfere with or negatively affect the quality of his work.”
“How true.”
“But let’s be serious for a moment. Our decision making process is in shambles. Contrary to some thinking we did not plan out everything billions of years ago; too much trouble and besides there’s no fun in that. Much more fun to make decisions on an as needed basis and for that we had devised (after billions of years of trying) a pretty darn good system. On any issue I would let you two vote first. If you two agreed we’d go ahead with that plan. If you two disagreed, I would cast the deciding vote. Simple? Yes, but highly effective. Now that we’re down to two, the decision making process is much tougher. I don’t like pulling rank but there may be times I’ll have to and it’ll be a miracle if our relationship isn’t strained in the process.”
“We need him back in the triangle to make this thing work like it should.”
“That means we keep looking.”
“Let’s meet again after diligently scouring at least 20,000 galaxies each. We need to pick up the pace. No more star gazing.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I could feel the quickness of time as it compressed upon me. All history was cascading toward the Mayan Temple of Kukulcan. Sure, it was a ruin, but there were many times when I felt like one myself.


The Professor had Google Earth up on his laptop and was up in the cockpit collaborating with Earl. They were pinpointing Kukulcan and also checking wind currents. Oh, didn’t I tell you? We were parachuting down to the ruin. There were no landing strips in the area.


Earl was upset. We had told him to fly to Mexico City after we had made our jump. He felt by doing so he would accrue some Karma deficit. His Karma was telling him he needed to remain a part of the action.


“Maybe next time, Earl.” The Professor told him.
“There may not be a next time.” Earl replied. No one said anything.


About ten minutes later, we were jumping out of the plane. In the distance below, we could see a few lights in the darkness.


As were drifting down, something caught my eye to my right. I turned and an airborne fiery ball was hurtling in our direction. The seconds passed and I looked in horror as it crashed into the temple.


We were too late!


Or were we?

EPILOG

There was something almost redolent in the air. My eyes seemed to be closed and I seemed to be lying on my back. I felt no pain. I first tested my arms to see if they could move, then my legs. They were all in working order. I then opened my eyes to see if they could see. They did. I then moved my body into a sitting position and looked at the structures in front of me. I was sitting on a dirt street in what appeared to be a small town.


“Howdy, stranger. What brings you to Dime Box, Texas?”


The voice came from behind me. I turned my head and there stood a scrawny teenager with a big headful of black hair holding a beat up guitar.


“That’s a good question.” was all I could reply.
“Well, Dime Box loves strangers, especially if they like to eat.”


I suddenly realized I was ravenous. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in years.


“Well, I’m a little hungry.” I replied, and then for some reason another question popped into my head. “By the way, what year is it?”


“1959.”

THE END