JonMichael is Neither Jon nor Michael

Chapter 1.7

Dean has spent six years reporting this cramped little lab. It was both amazing how much he fit into it and how much he didn’t need to take out of it. Pens, pencils, notebooks, pictures: one of his brother and sister-in-law and one of his mom. Office supplies have always been supplied so there’s no need to take stapler or those plastic “IN”/”OUT” trays. Joke stuff that Peter put in his drawers: traffic cone, plaque that says “you take this piss”. He wonders what all of this means – if there’s some message from the cosmos in all of his accumulated stuff loaded into four cardboard boxes.

Dean hurried through the halls up to 774. He was nervous because other people knew that he was uncomfortable with Jack Newt. Glances and laughs seemed to take on a heightened import. He just wanted today to be over. He opened the door with his key and marveled for just a second about having a lab with a key.

When the door finally swung open, he realized that he had a lab and not an office. This was a large room. There was a desk with a solid oaken mahogany teak finish. Behind it was a large rollable chair, which Dean was already now planning to use in the annual office chair race at the end of second semester. Dean set his box down on his desk and threw himself into the chair; it was not as comfortable as he’d have liked but was a big improvement over a stool. From there, he surveyed the window and noticed a distinct lack of the girl’s track team. Two plants in pots, both large and overwatered. Filing cabinets, but no lab tables. No sinks. What was wrong with this lab? He decided to knock on the interior door in the north wall to try to find more.

“Come in,” the voice beyond announced. Dean entered.

“Hi, Jack.”

“Hello, Dean. Nice to have on the program. I’m glad we were able to keep you at the university. You’re work has been very highly recommended to me and when my assistant moved on, I thought that here was a chance to get a good man for the job.”

Dean shifted uneasily. He loved everything that Jack was saying but hated that Jack was saying it. That it made him feel uncomfortable was also Jack’s fault as far as Dean was concerned. “Why don’t I have a lab?” inquired Dean.

“You don’t need one, or rather...”. Jack paused and indicated the other half of his room. Dean just then took in the size – the sheer enormity of Jack’s office. It was probably 90 feet wide from his door to the soft serve machine opposite. There was a large stainless steel area with a grate that he was referring to now. It had the better part of a vehicle of some sort in it. Beyond that was a laundry chute sort of thing that appeared to have a vacuum motor attached to it. It was so much that Dean didn’t hear the answer.

“Sorry, what?” Dean stumbled out when the silence grew embarrassing.

“Time travel experimentation can, for the most part, be done from a normal office. There’s just a few tool over there and you and I can work on this ‘til whenever. Oh and something arrived in the time chute this morning. I didn’t open it since it was addressed to you.” Dean opened it while thinking about working next to this man for all hours. He was very angry when he opened the letter. He was a little confused when he realized it was from Jack.

Congratulations on your promotion and on your new nephew. Signed, Jack Newt.

“What new nephew?” Dean asked in what felt like his sixteenth straight question.

“Hmmm?” Jack was focused elsewhere.

“What new nephew?” Seventeen.

“What ‘what new nephew’?”

“In this letter you congratulate me on my new nephew. My brother’s wife is pregnant but the baby isn’t due for a couple of weeks yet.” Dean congratulated himself on getting through the speech without asking a question.

“I don’t know. I haven’t sent it yet.”

“You haven’t what?” Eighteen.

“What date did I write it?”

“April 8th. That’s three days from now. How did you…”

Jack interrupted before Dean could make it to nineteen. “That, my new friend and colleague, is the power of time travel.”

Chapter 1.5 & 1.6

Dean was hastily enjoying his treat (half out of his gluttony for the flavor and half out of fear that Raymond news was bad and that he was being buttered up) when Raymond changed the whole course of history.

“You’ve been promoted.”

“Promoted?” He was really in his own mind now: pictures of Burger ‘n’ Stuff and sizing women’s shoes at Synex-Mart were deep recurring fear He snapped back when a small bit of chocolate soft serve trickled down his hand. He realized that Raymond was waiting for him to speak again. “What?”

“Two plant managers of the Synex Mattress Company are taking over the urine experiment and the mold experiment is being dumped. It turns out that…”

“Promoted?” interrupted Dean, more urgently than he’d been in Ray’s entire tenure.

“Are you worried? You shouldn’t be worried. Your work here has been top notch and we want to promote you within the department. To another lab job.”

Dean exhaled very slowly. There was lots going on that was exciting in the building where he sat: polymers made of potatoes, cars powered by kindness and even the collection of data on the Rock-Paper-Scissors project would be a promotion and a reasonable use of his time.

“You are,” continued Meyerhem when he thought he again had Dean’s attention, “the assistant scientist in charge of the time travel project on the top floor of this very building.” Dean heard every word but the words “time travel” were having a hard time connecting. He tried to figure them out and then he realized why his brain had blocked it out.

“Under…?” queried Dean, expecting the worst but hoping for the best.

“Dr. Jack Newt. Congratulations you start on Monday. Please spend the rest of today moving to your new office in room 774.”

Dean didn’t hear a lot of that as he was trying to clean up the soft serve he dropped when heard that name: Jack Newt.

-----

Meanwhile, five hundred years in the future, the suicidal Martha Denholm is about to jump off a bridge. She looks down and sees that water is warm and inviting. The people behind her cannot convince her that she has so much to live for, that she’s so young and holds so much promise, that the tax money that will be spent on dredging her out is better spent on education. She just closes her eyes and lets herself go.

Chapter 1.3 & 1.4

Dean is hustling along to Ray’s office hoping against all hope that he won’t get moved around again. He likes working in a lab. His pathologic temperament is suited to working alone. He would like to avoid becoming the night manager of the local Burgers ‘n’ Stuff, which would be considered a promotion but where he’d have to work with corporate flunkies and smart aleck high school students.

Dean knocks on the door.

“Come in,” yells Meyerhem.

“You wanted to see me.”

“Yes, come in. Have a seat.” Dean sits down.

“What seems to be the problem? Why am I here? Is it a glitch in the experiment? I swear I didn’t know those photograph were…”

“No, no. Not at all. Wait. Wait. Wait. Would you like some soft serve?”

“Oh, yes!” Dean was much in need of his soft serve and his face lit up.

As Raymond moves around to the machine he asks “Vanilla, chocolate or swirl?”

“Swirl.” Dean likes swirl and the swirl feature on the staff dispenser had not been functioning for about three weeks. Instead of getting the usual chocolate and vanilla, the staff dispenser produced a sort of machine grease and vanilla concoction. Sabrina Macaluber, from accounts receivable, was the only person who enjoyed this flavor.

----

Sabrina Macaluber was one of those unique people who could eat anything and usually did. Soft serve coated in grease, chocolate covered ants, licorice flavored barbed wire and even Cheez Its covered in Cheez Whiz. She enjoyed eating strange and exotic things; her digestive system was iron clad. Despite all of this, it is really a shame that she gets hit by a bus outside this very building in just under a week. More about that later.

Chapter 1.2

Synex University – Tuplen is one branch of the Synex University campuses across the country. Synex Industries owns and operates 175 large campuses from coast to coast as well as Burgers ‘n’ Stuff, Synex Auto Parts, Synex Baby Clothes B’Golly, Synex Furnace Repair, Ice Cream Plus, Synex Yoga Studios, Free Trade Coffee Hut, Synex Matress Company, and, of course, The Synex Television Network to name just a few. Will Ashwood, Synex Industries President, has made it very clear that everyone needs to work hard… or they’re OUT!

Synex University – Tuplen has very little interest in its students or faculty. Raymond Meyerhem, for example has no experience with chemistry, physics or women. He was formerly a manager of Burger ‘n’ Stuff. His managerial skills got him promoted to his current job. He had actually wanted to get into an executive management position at Synex Auto Parts, but the position was filled by the former department head of Physical Science at Synex University – Rosholt who had experience with women. Synex Industries have a pretty esoteric priority on what is important. It has something to do with money.

Graduation requirements at Synex Universities are pretty straightforward. As one might imagine, Synex University’s primary goal is separating the student’s parents from the student’s parent’s money. The only thing that seems to stand in the way is the students. All they have to do is work for Synex for 800 hours a semester for 8 semesters and they are the done. Granted all they may have learned in that time is how to mop up Potassium Hydrogen Carbonate and eat brightly colored mushroom from the biology lab, but they will have earned a Master’s Degree in Science and done some pretty neat stuff.

Synex Industries policy of the “six-year itch” derives from Will Ashwood’s theory that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely – so if no one knows how exactly to do their job, no one will notice that he’s absolutely corrupt. Of course, Ashwood has been in his position for years.

Chapter 1.1*

Dr. Dean Codle had always hated Dr. Jack Newt.  In fact, in the bottom drawer of his desk was a piece of paper with a list of reasons scribbled on it -- it included several different kinds of ink and was creased from overuse.  This list included:

• A private research lab
• 50-minute coffee breaks
• A wife
• The soft-serve machine in his lab
• His rugged and well-chiseled features even for man ten years older than me.
• His nice house in Pineranch

Right now, Dean was coveting Jack's soft serve machine.  When he wanted soft serve, he had to go down three flights of stairs to the main cafeteria.  Once there he's have to put up with surly cafeteria workers and a line that was as long as the intestinal tract of all of the executives of Synex Industries.  He was jonesing for a vanilla fix and instead he fumed under his fume hood.

At the top of the list, though, was Dean's A#1 reason for hating Jack Newt.  Newt worked on the federally funded TiExp project that dealt with, of all things, time travel.  Codle didn't know much (how he got to be a doctor of Physics, Chemistry & Biology is another story), but he did know that it involved the mathematical theory of choice and its extrapolation to cover time.  He knew that Newt had made many breakthroughs and got on the cover of the Science Department newsletter three times, whereas Codle had only ever appeared in it once when asked about Synex corporation president Will Ashwood's decision to require work time on Saturdays.  He had answered: "I don't care as long as it applies to everyone especially that imbecile Jack Newt."  This was taken to be a joke, but Newt has never forgotten the statement.  Newt was on the top floor of the building (which was technically a higher floor than his superiors) in the coveted Einstein Bundesspielen Gesundheit Gehen und der Flotsam and Jetsam wing (coveted because that's where the girls track team practiced).  Codle, on the other hand, was stuck in urine analysis, which is not exactly soft serve, in an office which over looks a brick wall.

There was a loud sound that awoke Dean from his jealousy-induced stupor.  He glanced around the lab  The view was still uninteresting.  The counter tops were still black with line stains near the water faucets.  The walls were still white in a not white sort of way.  His office was a little cramped but he had spread a lot of stuff out since his lab mate Dr. Peter Zyczyzyzcz had disappeared in the jungles of Africa collecting samples of mold for an experiment on sleep apnea.  Dean has tried to take over more space, but that would require cleaning up Peter's mess and Dean didn't know what was part of his experiment and what was just plain mold.  Urine samples dotted the tabletops and everyday at around this time Dean would start to feel himself regretting that his job consisted of running test after test on people's pee.  He was about to start his 349th consecutive day of this when the loud sound happened again and this time Dean recognized it.  It was the yellow-brown telephone sitting on his desk.  As his mind slipped into the current moment in the time-space continuum, it was ringing (the phone that is).

"Hello?" said Dean, still a little groggy from his one-two punch of jealousy and self-induced misery.
"Hello, Dr. Codle," barked the voice of department chair Raymond Meyerhem. "I have to see you in my office immediately.  Something important has come up and I don't want you to find out from the employee newsletter."
"I'll be there as soon has I can," Dean replied.
"Now!!" said Meyerhem in just the right way that you could hear the second exclamation point.
"All right, all right.  I'm coming. I'm coming."
The slamming receiver resounded in his ear.  Dean thought about the man and how much he would like to tie him up in a small sedan, lock the doors and shovel manure in through the opened windows.  Dean smiled a little too wide and then set off for Ray's office.  Just as he closed his door he opened it again.  He walked over to a hotplate and removed a sample of boiling urine.  He knew from experience that he didn't want to return to office if he'd have left that on for too much longer.  It took three years for his lab to smell normal after the last incident.
"That means I haven't been promoted in six years," thought Dean.  Gulp.  Six-year itch -- it's practically a Synex policy.  Six years and you're out, somewhere else.  Gulp.  "OK, here I go."

*Chapters are too high a level of aggregation for a blog, so multiple parts of chapters will be included as need be.

Prologue

Nestled along the banks of the Negbegammonkton river, is the small Midwestern City of Tuplen. Its residents pride themselves on their ability to recycle and follow local ordinances relating to smoking (not within 10 feet of a minor) and drinking (anytime after 7). Tuplen boasted the very beautiful campus of the former University of Tuplen, recently renamed Synex University – Tuplen and two malls (one with a wide variety of local shopping, the other with an Office Warehouse, Synex Auto Parts and a Hot Sam). This mall was on route 121 of the Tuplen City Bus system.

The driver of Tuplen City bus 121 was a man named Tarquin. To most residents of Tuplen, Tarquin was bus 121. Tarquin was a very strange man. He liked to collect the discarded plastic rings from around milk bottles. As a result, he drank a lot of milk. One day, he drank a bottle that he’d had shipped to him from the west coast (“Purple rings – very novel”), but it has been shipped by a very unscrupulous farmer and it had been sold after expiration. After that and shipping, the milk was no longer good. Tarquin missed his first ever day of work in 15 years while being taken to the hospital. It was on this day that tragedy struck his route.

The bacterium was virulent and the doctors had never seen this kind spread as quickly as it did. Within five days time he would be dead if they didn’t do something. The doctors used Synex-brand Kwikkeey-Freez suspended animation on Tarquin and began to work on the bacteria. The hospital soon lost funding and its frozen patients were left on ice, as it were.

Eventually, diseases were cured and bacteria were tamed. Human rights groups protested to open the vaults of the old hospitals and get those old bodies out of the vault. One by one, they were woken and cured. But poor Tarquin, no one had cured his disease; the doctors worked and worked for years. More specimens were taken and finally modern medicine found the cure, which involved Half and Half, pop rocks and jumper cables.  It had only been 497 years.

Tarquin was offered a job driving the new buses around the bustling Megalopolis of Tuplen. He agreed and was assigned to the new buses even though he had no idea  how to start them or where anything was. Soon he was back in his old routine. He did manage to get one day off a year for vacation. May 15 – the day he went into the hospital. It was on this day as he was crossing the Tuplen city bridge that tragedy struck yet again. 

Tarquin did not realize it at the time, but his life and death and destiny was tied to one man. Tarquin did not know this man nor would he ever meet him, but Tarquin’s fate and that man’s fate were linked by cosmic forces that only God, Time or Melissa Monroe could explain. This is the story of that man: Dean Codle.

"How to Commit the Perfect Murder" by Melissa Monroe

This was a novella I wrote back in the heady days of the summer between my freshmen and sophomore years of college.  I have since lost the original soft copy -- so, I will be rewriting the novella as I transfer it from the only remaining hard copy into the soft copy (blog) format.

I hope you enjoy it.