The Exploding Detective (13 page)

“Seize him!” I
commanded.

The guards stared
at me stonily. Only one of them made a move to seize Overkill, and he stopped
and coughed when he saw he was the only one.

I held the ring
higher and moved it a little closer to them. “Seize him, my pretties!”

Still nothing,
except that one guy again.

I looked at
Overkill. He held up his hand. He was wearing an even bigger ring than I was.

“When I noticed
my ring was missing, I figured I’d better make another one,” he explained.

Ignoring my
offers to trade rings – I wasn’t proposing a straight swap. I was willing to
throw in some cash - he led me towards a box in the center of the room that was
about twice the size of a phone booth.

On the way, we
passed something familiar. It was a large machine, with a big red handle.

“I see you’ve
still got your Doomsday Machine,” I said.

“Oh, you’ve got
to have a Doomsday Machine. I’d feel naked without one. I mean, what if something
went wrong with one of my plans? Stop pulling on the handle, you idiot!”

“I just wanted to
see how much play was in it.”

“Well, next time
just ask me.”

“All right. Hey,
when are we going to get to the DeathBox?”

“Oh, yeah, I
almost forgot.”

He guided me over
to the box and opened the door. I walked inside and looked around.

“Doesn’t look
like much,” I sniffed.

“Oh, it does the
job, I assure you. It bursts each cell in the human body individually, in rapid
succession. You’ll go off like an atom bomb. And then you will cease to trouble
me, in any time period.”

“Won’t an
explosion like that do damage to the building? Or at least to the box?”

“No. The DeathBox
is made of the strongest substance known to man: painted iron. It can stand up
to anything, even a human body going nuclear. Oh, our ears will ring for awhile
around here, but the only thing that will be destroyed is you.”

“Oh, okay. I
thought I’d spotted a flaw in your plan.”

“Well you
didn’t.”

“Fine.” I looked
around some more. “Hey! There isn’t a ventilation shaft in this box.”

“No.”

“Well, how am I
going to get out?”

“You’re not.”

I looked at him
with horror. This was horrible. He started to close the door. I tried to get
him to change his mind.

“Wait! You think
of yourself as a modern day Abraham Lincoln. Would Lincoln do this? Would
Lincoln kill people just to have things his own way? Think man!”

My pleadings fell
on deaf ears. Then I tried appealing to his comedy sense.

“How about the
old switcheroo?”

“What’s that?”

“That’s where you
say you’re going to kill me, you’re going to kill me, you’re going to kill me,
then you don’t kill me. It’s hilarious.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Yes you do,
look…”

He started
closing the door, but he couldn’t quite get it closed because my foot was in
it. He looked around for a hatchet to chop my foot off. I used the brief
respite to make one last appeal.

“You can’t do
this to me. You’re my best friend.”

He stared at me.
“I’m your best friend?”

“Well… yeah. I
only have a few friends. And they all treat me worse than you do. So, yeah,
you’re my best friend in the whole world.”

“That’s
pathetic.”

“Only a true
friend would tell me that. Thank you, pal. Now let me out.”

He swung the
hatchet at my foot and I got it out of the way just in time. Then he slammed
the door and bolted it. He looked at me through the door’s small window. I made
as friendly a face as I could and then pointed it at him. He didn’t respond. I
kept making my face friendlier and friendlier to the point where both of us
were getting kind of nauseated. It was a question of who would puke first.
Finally he opened the door.

“I can’t do it.
Come on out.”

I stepped out of
the DeathBox, relieved. That was a close one. I had been about to stop looking
friendly and start calling him an ugly bastard. But friendship had triumphed
just in the nick of time.

I started to
thank Overkill for his magnanimous gesture and assure him he would never regret
it. Just then, Fred Foster, Secret Agent, burst into the room, having somehow
fallen out of the White House dungeon, and came charging across the room at me.

I tried to duck
out of the way, but he crashed into me and I toppled heavily over onto
Overkill, driving the hatchet he was holding deep into his chest.

I stood up,
shakily, and looked at Overkill. He appeared to be dead. I had killed him
again. I looked at Foster, who was lying face down on the floor, singing loudly
into the planks.

I tried to give
Overkill CPR, but I’ve never been very good at that, and by the time I was
finished, his chest was a mess and his head was gone. It probably rolled
somewhere, but I couldn’t find it.

I stood up and
leaned against the Doomsday Machine lever to think about what I had
accidentally done, and figure out what was the smartest thing to do now.

The lever came
down with a sharp clunk and the universe started to end.

Everything
started to shake and there was a high-pitched “Sqeeeee!” coming from the atoms
around me. I didn’t like that. That didn’t sound right to me. I couldn’t get
the lever to go back up, and the “sqeeeees” were growing louder and more
high-pitched, so I figured I’d better get out of there. I started to run,
carefully avoiding the building’s security devices which I had apparently also
triggered. Lincoln hats were shooting out of walls and big beards and warts
were dropping from the ceiling. And all the time I was trying to outrun the end
of the universe. What a day!

The door to the
outside was locked, apparently shut down by the security system. I ran back the
way I had come, looking for another door, or maybe a window. Suddenly I tripped
over Overkill’s body and went ass over teakettle into the DeathBox. The door
slammed shut and the machinery started up, beginning the “Death Process.”™

I banged on the
door, but it wouldn’t open.

I tried taking
the machine apart from the inside with a small screwdriver somebody had given
me in change, but there had to be at least a million screws in that thing.

I finally gave up
and threw the screwdriver against the door. The only other thing I had to throw
against the door, unless I wanted to try throwing the screwdriver again, was
me, so I threw that. That didn’t work either. Nothing was working around here.

The cells in my
body were starting to explode, just like Overkill had said they would. At least
the DeathBox worked. My nose cells were going first. They were closest to the
front of the box, the business end, I guess you’d call it. I probed my nose
gingerly with an exploding fingertip. Part of the nose was gone, all right. The
best part, too. The part with the holes in it. I clenched my exploding teeth
and waited for the end.

Suddenly the
machine stopped. I looked out the window and saw that the DeathBox controls had
been vaporized along with the rest of the building. The end of the universe had
saved me, though probably only temporarily.

Since I only had
a small window to look out of, I can’t give you a good description of what the
end of the universe looked like. But I can imagine what it was like: a horrible
shaking everywhere, people running around screaming their heads off, things
falling off shelves, workmen dropping panes of glass they were carrying,
painters painting a wriggly line down the center of the street instead of a
straight line, things like that. I had seen enough disaster pictures to know
what it probably looked like.

At this point the
DeathBox started shaking violently, throwing me from one end of the box to the
other.

The last thing I
remember seeing before I was knocked unconscious by the constant buffeting was
Fred Foster’s face in the DeathBox window, mouthing the words: “You’re mad,
Overkill.”

When I regained
consciousness some time later, the first thing I noticed was that the door to
the DeathBox was partway open. It had been charred black and bent almost beyond
recognition.

I kicked the door
completely open, and it disintegrated. Then I kicked the hell out of the
DeathBox. It disintegrated too. That felt good. Scare me, will you? Burly 1,
DeathBox 0.

Then I turned and
saw where I was, and I regretted kicking the DeathBox to pieces. Apparently it
and I were the only things left in the universe. If I hadn’t kicked it to bits,
at least I wouldn’t have been alone. I could have talked to the box. Now there
was just me.

I
was floating in limbo, all alone. The universe was gone. It had ended with a
bang and a whimper. The whimper, I noticed, was coming from me.

It was quiet. Too
quiet.

And cold. Mighty
cold.

I was bobbing
about in what seemed like a thin milky haze. The haze stretched as far as I
could see in every direction. I didn’t know where I was, but I knew
instinctively that I was in the wrong place.

I started trying
to get to the horizon so I could kick my way through it and get out of here. Go
someplace better.

I had trouble
moving through the murk at first, but after awhile I found that I could make
slow progress in any direction I wanted by pointing my mouth in the opposite
direction and screaming continuously. Farts, I accidentally discovered, worked
also. Nothing, however, made me move very fast, so progress was slow. Not that
I had anything better to do, of course, but a person likes to make good time
when he’s traveling.

When I got to
what I had thought was the horizon, I found out it wasn’t the horizon anymore.
There was a new horizon now, back where I had been before. Fine. No problem.
I’ll go that way then. And off I farted.

It would probably
be tedious reading to have to follow me through all my floating adventures. I
know it seemed tedious to me when I re-read my first draft. I ended up cutting
about 400 pages of it out, and I don’t miss any of it. All that floating from
one spot to another just bogged down the narrative, in my opinion.

So about 400
pages later, I found myself pretty much back in the same spot I had started out
in. I had no idea where I was. It’s all well and good to say you’re in “limbo,”
but where the hell is that? What does it mean? Talk English! And get me out of
here, while you’re at it.

It’s the boredom
of a total void that gets to you the most. There’s nobody to talk to, no
magazines to read, nowhere to sit down and take a load off your feet. Nothing.

Still, I was
alive, and not many people could say that, thanks to me. I found some comfort
in the fact that I was the last man alive. Out of the uncounted billions who
had inhabited our universe, I was the last man standing. I had won the human
race.

And, of course,
there are good things about being in a total void. There are no distractions,
for one thing. So you can get things done, if you can find anything to do. And
there are no more wars. Finally we had world peace. So, criticize me all you
want, at least I got that done.

But it was still
basically boring as hell.

I had my toothbrush
with me, so I spent a lot of time brushing my teeth. Nothing to eat though.
Except the toothbrush. So I finally ate that.

Having some solid
food in my stomach gave me a second wind. I renewed my efforts to get out of
there - struggling furiously across the void, then struggling furiously back
the other way. I was determined not to take “no” for an answer this time. After
awhile I noticed all this struggling was wearing me out, and getting me
nowhere. I had half a mind to stop struggling at this point. Maybe take “no”
for an answer. Then I decided to continue struggling, but on a reduced
schedule. For the next few days I would struggle for four hours in the morning,
take a break for lunch (I had found another toothbrush and some car keys), then
resume struggling until five. Then I’d knock off for the day.

Finally I got
tired of the whole business and just quit doing anything. I just kind of laid
in the void slantways looking pissed. If anyone had been watching me, they
would have seen me, my hand resting on my chin, falling slowly across the void.
I must have looked like a goddamn screensaver.

Okay, I just cut
out another 96 pages. Mostly just stuff about me lying slantways.

Just when I was
about to give up and start really lying slantways, at a much more pronounced
slant, I suddenly felt an odd spinning sensation. There was nothing to
reference in my surroundings, so I couldn’t be sure, but I seemed to be
spinning around and around, with my arms and legs outstretched, against what
used to be a milky white background, but was now all stripy colored. The Time
Nozzle, wherever it was, was pulling me out of this time period and sending me
somewhere else!

As I spun away I
heard what sounded like shrieks from Time Nozzle technicians somewhere in time
saying: “He’s coming right at us!” but I don’t know if I was coming at them or
not.

The last thing I
saw – or thought I saw, I may have imagined it – before I popped out of the
year 2265, was God running towards me through the void, shaking His fist
angrily at me. At least I think it was God. He had the short legs and pencil
thin mustache I associate with the Almighty. But before He could reach me I was
gone.

Things got
confused for awhile after that, as I began being thrown all over time by the
plainly malfunctioning Time Nozzle.

I briefly
appeared in the year 1467, where I heard someone say: “It’s a witch!” And then,
as I popped off again, the last thing I heard was someone saying: “It was a
witch!”