Well, when I should have been writing this week’s column, I was instead writing the first chapter of a story that may or may not come together. I have some ideas moving forward. Not sure if it’s going to the back burner or if I’m going to give it more love in the coming week. Anyway, I present it to you here, now, the first 2200 words of what promises to be a bunch of words thrown together.
Quantum X’s and Bros.
It was the afternoon of the first Thursday of the month. An easy day for )+( to remember; he was scheduled for his two hours a month Dad time, though the scowling man pacing the “grand design room” hated to be referred to as such. Dad. Biological father. Provider. These were empty words. Shadows without forms. The title he insisted on, Parental Unit Prime, wasn’t going to happen. Not in a million years. But that’s the kind of weird behavior you cope with when you were one of the many, many sons of Elon Musk.
For the last thirty minutes, Musk seemed incredibly agitated, a condition )+( chalked up maybe to a recent ketamine infusion. His bland features contorted with the mental exertion of shouting out tweets, captured and posted by his AI assistant as Musk circled the matte black vehicle parked in the center of the vast, Italian marble floored room. The walls were a horizon you had to squint to see.
The vehicle itself resembled something you might have if an Apache helicopter impregnated a Tesla, midwifed into existence by the world’s first trillionaire. It was painted the blackest black )+( had ever seen. So black it seemed to suck the available light from its immediate perimeter.
)+( sat on a chrome stool twenty feet away, studying his father and thanking whatever gods allowed this mess to continue that he took after his mother. He had his mother’s thick, dark hair and dark eyes, what his dad derisively called “Charlie Manson eyes.” On a good day, )+( liked to think he resembled a young Eric Bana. He was short, though, one of the shortest boys in his class. At thirteen, he was still holding out for his first growth spurt. He was scrawny, mercifully, and hoped to stay that way. An easy feat, according to his mother, given his disdain for beef, fish, and chicken.
Another vehicle entered from the north side of the cavernous room. They watched the small vehicle, what Musk called his personal personnel carrier, but which in all actuality, wasn’t much different than a two-seater Razor. Puddled in the passenger seat, looking both slumped and deranged, the President of the United States, Donald Trump. )+( had obviously seen the man often enough on the television. Real life left a lot to be desired. The fat, old man gingerly easing himself out of the personal personnel carrier looked like a caricature of a caricature. All wispy hair and bad skin and a midsection distended by an adult diaper.
“I don’t see why you got to have your headquarters inside a dormant volcano.” Trump said by way of greeting.
“I just always wanted one.”
“There’s so much prime New York real estate for the taking, especially with your investment portfolio doing so well. Why not look into Manhatten’s upper east side.”
“I’m good here. I don’t dig the traffic. You’ll find very little vehicular congestion along the rim of a volcano.”
“Hmph. So how’s the world’s first trillionaire doing today?” Trump said.
“Good afternoon, Donnie.”
“Would it kill you to call me Mr. President just once? You know, I always said, and you can quote me on this, I always said a trillionaire would only be possible in a Trump economy. There’s so much winning. Everywhere you look, fortunes are being made. I mean, look at me, my position, the most powerful man in the wide world, really, so you could say I’m a trillionaire, myself when you get right down to it. The Dumocrats would never accept it, though. You see how I dropped the ‘b’ there. I created that word.”
“The ‘b’ is silent and you’re not exactly spelling it out…”
“Exactly. I’ve achieved more than most, Elon. With very little help from anybody. Very little. Fought for every dollar, really. Did you enjoy my birthday celebration?”
“Donnie, you know I would have been there if I could. Between Space X going public and putting the work in on my latest invention, here, I couldn’t get away.”
“It was televised. Bigger ratings than the Super Bowl.”
“I don’t watch TV.”
“I’m sure it streamed to Twitter.”
“X, Donnie. It’s X, now.”
“Good brand. That X.” Trump turned toward the boy astride the shiny stool. His beady, pig eyes narrowed in his haggard, orange face. “Who’s this? Has he signed an NDA?”
“For what? Relax. He’s eight years old. Who’s he going to tell?”
“I’m thirteen.”
“I’m sure you’re closer to eight. You’re far too small for thirteen.”
“Is he your son?” The President asked.
“Well, he’s certainly not my assistant. He’s a son from the second round of breeders. His name’s )+(.”
“Say my name, Dad. Pronounce it.”
“I just did, )+(. And I warned you about using such antiquated appellations as ‘Dad.”
)+( felt his chest contract, his muscles tense, felt a tantrum building and tamped it down. He breathed deeply, counted to three, and said “No. That’s just what my name looks like on paper. How does it sound?”
“What do you want from me, kid?”
“A real name. A normal name.”
“It is a real name. A real name for a real exciting time in reality.”
“Mom calls me ‘Roy.’ Why can’t you just call me that?”
“Because I’m not in the business of siring Roys. I wanted a )+( to walk the earth and there you are. My will made flesh. If you can’t accept that, I don’t know what to tell you. Perhaps I can ensure the first Thursday afternoon of every month is rewarded to your brother, Xev67veX.”
“I’m not complaining. I’m just not understanding.”
“You believe the guff of this kid? Not understanding.”
“My sons knew better than to guff me,” Trump chimed in.
“The misunderstanding. That’s just the ‘tism, son. Keep with those ketamine infusions I have you scheduled for and the solutions to the mysteries of the universe will reveal themselves to you in due time.”
“My man, Robbie K, has defeated autism from the USA. The only autism coming in now is from the porous southern border thanks to Sleepy Joe and the Dumocrats putting Mexicans first.”
)+( shook his head. There’s no ‘tism, he wanted to scream in their smug faces. He’d been tested. Often. Maybe not as often as Trump got tested for dementia, but often enough. What )+( did suffer from was a genius level intellect. )+( understand any room he found himself in, he could guarantee he was the smartest person present. He knew his father would never allow himself to acknowledge this. )+( figured he got his brains from his mother’s side, anyway. Did Musk even know his son possessed such a formidable mind? )+( couldn’t say. He wasn’t even sure his dad knew his mother’s name off the top of his head.
Since )+( possessed a penis, Trump quickly lost interest in him. His attention drifted to the sheer black vehicle. Trump pointed at stubby, little finger at it. “Working on my birthday present, Elon?”
“Not hardly. What you see there represents a quantum leap forward for mankind. Or, at the very least, for Elon Musk’s valuation.”
“Please don’t tell me it’s another fucking electric car. You’re killing me with this crap, Elon.”
“Tell me what you know about time travel, Mr. President.”
Trump’s orange, sphincter lips puckered. “It’s a time machine?”
“No, Donnie. Does it look like a clock to you? Does it look like one of those imitation Rolexes you’re so fond of fobbing off on acquaintances? No. No, my orange-hued acquaintance. What you’re looking at here is a time traversing machine. What I call the Quantum X.”
“It looks like a fancy Tesla. With a weird paint job.”
“It’s the blackest black available.”
“Outside the ghetto.” Trump smiled smugly.
“Stop it, Donnie. I’m not trying to push white supremacy on my son. It’s better he comes to this conclusion on his own.”
“I would have thought you’d find a way to finagle this thing inside one of your cybertrucks. I don’t like them, personally. I guess some people do.”
“We tried. I had a nuclear physicist, quantum mechanics, regular mechanics, my chief web designer at X, one of my ketamine dealers, and some other guy, all liquated at this point, of course, working diligently on the cybertruck paradox to no avail. It was the strangest thing. Every time we initiated the sequence, the cybertruck would collapse in upon itself, like a dying star.”
“Hmph.”
“The Tesla should be fine, though.”
The old buffoon looked as though he were going to fall asleep standing on his feet, leaning precariously forward, counterbalanced only by the load he carried in the back of his diaper. Suddenly, his hooded, reptilian eyes snapped open in momentary cognition.
“So, you’ve invented a way of traveling into the past?”
“I funded and stewarded along the project which made the possibility a reality. So, yes.”
“Wow.”
“You see, last year, I was conducting my midmorning flurry of tweets from my operations room. On one of my projection screens, Napoleon Dynamite was playing in the background.”
“Great leader. Napoleon Dynamite. Hard man. Unfairly treated by the fake news of his day.”
“Yeah. Anyway, during the course of the movie, which I found to be quite episodic in nature, the titular man child is confronted by a contraption purchased by one Uncle Rico who foolishly believes this thing, what amounts to a child’s tinker toy, can transport him back in time.”
“Yes. Yes.”
“So it got me thinking. I was reminded of antimatter’s use as a fuel for the propulsion of objects through space.”
“Huh?”
“Star Trek. It’s an oversimplification to be sure.”
The President’s beady eyes remained hooded. His mouth poised to unleash insults if needed.
“Science fiction. What begins as speculative fantasy through the sheer strength of human endeavor can become a science reality no matter how outlandish the initial concept might seem.”
Musk tapped a sequence of numbers on the keypad mounted to the door and the door whooshed up, much like the door of a DeLorean would. )+( slipped off his stool and moved closer to peer into the cockpit of the vehicle. Buttons glowed everywhere. It made the cockpit of a 747 look like child’s play.
“So it can go backward in time?” Trump asked.
“Time is nonlinear, Donnie. We only experience it in such a way. The past, present, future, it all coexists. Think of time as a vast table top. Unmoving. You can roll a ball in whatever direction you desire, but it’s the ball that’s moving, not the table top.”
)+( considered this and decided if you wanted to make a correct analogy, you’d really have to set the table on an automated walkway, the sort you’d find in any self-respecting airport and set it to spiral. He meant well. His father. He was just bad at parroting the words spoken by his intellectual superiors.
Trump eased into the cockpit. Musk tried to stop him, placing a warning hand on his elbow but the President shrugged him off and slouched deeper behind the console. )+( slipped in closer as well. This Tesla showed no signs of a steering wheel or any mechanism needed to pilot the vehicle. He noticed the wheels were not wheels at all. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking at to be completely honest. There was no frame of reference. Not a wheel, not a landing platform. The material was so black, his eyesight couldn’t quite capture the perimeters of its form.
“So you could go back to 1992.”
“Why go backwards? The past is perfect. It has to be for us to be here which is where we want to be for the moment, doing what we want to do. No. The past is perfect. Why not go forward? Maybe to your third term, after I massage the voter machines one more good time. We can skip forward to where I’m three, four, ten times a trillionaire.”
Musk ducked into the machine, once again placing a guiding hand on Trump’s shoulder.
“But it can go backward?”
“Yes, Donald. For the last time, yes. You know, theoretically. I haven’t actually used this for the first time. The words ‘first time’ will lose their significance once the Quantum X is set in motion, of course.”
“It can go back to 1992?”
“What is it with you and 1992, man? Was that the first time you went bankrupt? What would you have done differently?”
)+( knew exactly what the year 1992 meant for Trump. He did the math quickly. It didn’t take a genius to understand who’s daughter was twelve years old in 1992.
“I’ve never been bankrupt,” Trump lied. “I occasionally lose interest in aspects of my business that no longer suit me at the moment.”
“Anyway, I think it’s time we abscond to the buffet room,” Musk said. “I’ve recently had a McDonald’s cabinet installed for your visits. You’ll find…”
“There’ll be time for that later,” Trump said, reaching forward and depressing the largest of the flashing buttons.
“Don’t touch that you goddam id…”
In a flash of crackling, brilliant black light, the Quantum X and the three male bodies in its vicinity winked out of this moment’s existence.
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
