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.
Cars powered by kindness, huh? Interesting... road rage would have to end... or the hippie drivers would get run over by the cars powered by other things.
Posted by: nichole | May 24, 2006 at 01:31 PM