Rhubarb (4 page)

Martin agreed to figure something out, opened the first
drawer, and unholstered his PDA and scanning wand.

From the FastNCo. procedural manual for area
representatives:

1.
Make contact with the account holder.
If the account has invoices outstanding, confirm that a payment plan has been
established.

2.
At FastNCo. installation, take a
general survey of the product presentation. Is the area tidy and organized? Is
it free of competing products and easy for a customer to use?

3.
For each drawer:

a.
Scan product code into
FASsys.

b.
Confirm that product matches
PIC card. Remove inappropriate items and return items to their correct drawers.

c.
Weigh contents. (For
products 1264-2350, hand count must be taken.)

d.
Record weight (or count).

e.
Restore product weight (or
count) to specified inventory level for bin size.

f.
Confirm restoration of
inventory with FASsys.

4.
For bulk products:

a.
Scan product code into
FASsys. …

Martin rose stiffly from neatening the hundred-count boxes
of screws on the lower shelves and rubbed the small of his back. His early
lunch had long abandoned him. Even Jeffrey’s no-brand candy sounded appetizing.
Martin made a final check for loose product, hanging PIC cards, and general debris.
He topped off the tray of paper sacks and hung a fresh pen on the string by the
digital scale.

“I suppose you need my signature,” Lester called from the
end of the aisle, appearing as if he’d been watching Martin work. Which he
probably had been.

“The ol’ John Hancock,” said Martin. He’d printed out the
long tape of the order on the little portable printer back in the truck. On his
first visit, he’d tried to get Lester to sign on the PDA’s screen with the
stylus and have an invoice emailed to him, but Lester had declared he’d be
damned before he’d sign anything but paper.

Lester scanned the three feet of receipt tape. “Six hundred
and change. Sounds about right,” he said. He signed the bottom of the tape with
his own pen on a nearby shelf. “I suppose you heard that fool on the radio last
night.”

“I did,” said Martin.

“Well, don’t you go believin’ a word of it.” Lester traded
the signed tape for a copy for his records. “Sure, Stamper built the truck stop
after the war and made it a success, but he made the whole lot of us look like
nincompoops—all that talk of aliens and flying saucers.”

“So you’ve never seen anything strange?”

“Bah,” said Lester, waving off the thought of it. “I only
bring it up ’cause Cheryl doesn’t need the attention. She and her stepfather
doin’ fine now.”

“Churl?” Martin asked. “I mean, Cheryl?”

Lester nodded gravely and lowered his voice. “Her mother
used to work for Stamper at the diner. She got caught up in his tales. Right
after Cheryl was born, she left Stewart and ran off to California with Cheryl’s
real father, some deadbeat vagabond, traveling shyster salesman—no offense. She
came back a couple years later, all messed up on drugs and who knows what,
claiming she’d been abducted by Stamper’s aliens. A complete disgrace. God
bless Stewart Campion. He settled in and raised Cheryl like she was his own.
Now you see why I don’t want rumors getting started up again.”

“No business of mine,” said Martin.

“Good. Good. Where you off to now?”

Martin tugged his emptied cart past the register as Cheryl
cha-chinged up an order for a woman in mud-splattered boots. Who am I to her?
Martin wondered. I’m the modern equivalent of the shyster who seduced her
mother and ruined her life. I’m the guy she’s staying in Brixton to avoid. And
what do I have to offer her that’s better than this? A one-bedroom apartment in
the Billings Heights and twenty-four nights out of thirty out on the road?
Plus, she had her stepfather to care for. Martin had heard that he was fighting
cancer or something. He’d seen him in the co-op, carrying an oxygen tank with
a—what was it called?—a cannula cinched around his ears and under his nose.

The doorbell jangled as Martin left, but Cheryl was busy
punching numbers into the till. It was just as well.

“You’re listening to the best of
Beyond Insomnia with Lee
Danvers
on SiriusXM Channel 162. If you hear phone numbers in this
rebroadcast, please do not call.
Beyond Insomnia
is broadcast live from
10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Sunday through Thursday and 10:00
p.m. to 3:00 a.m. Friday and Saturday.”

“Welcome back, Waker Nation. Lee Danvers coming from the BI
Bunker somewhere out there. It’s been a strange show so far. Not at all what I
had planned. Stepped out during the last break to see if it was a full moon.
Feels like one of those nights. To fill you in, this strangeness started when I
took a call from Frank in Joplin, Missouri, who announced that his name is not
really Frank, but Tootex, and he’s a visitor from a civilization in the Rigel
Cluster, an observer of our planet, and he has been compelled to break cover to
warn us about the self-destructive path we’re taking as a species. An
interesting conversation, to say the least. And he’s informed us that there are
many other visitors on Earth right now. So I’ve tossed my plans for tonight’s
show out the window and have opened the phone lines to visitors only. Any and
all aliens, extraterrestrials, dimensional travelers, and time travelers are
asked to call. We have a lot of questions for you. But be prepared. I want to
know exactly where you’re from, how you arrived here, and the true purpose of
your visit. 1-800-555-WAKE.

“We’ll go right to it. El Cajon, California, you’re Beyond
Insomnia.”

“Hello, am I on?”

“You’re on, caller.”

“Oh, cool…”

“What’s your name?”

“Dennis. At least that’s my Earth name.”

“Where are you from?”

“A planet in the Pleiades. It’s called Klipthon.”

“Klipthon?”

“It’s hard to say it right with a human mouth.”

“You’re not human?”

“I have a human form. But my people are more like lobsters.”

“Lobsters.”

“You could learn a lot from the lobsters here on your own
planet.”

“So how did you get to Earth, Dennis?”

“A ship.”

“You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“It has a muto-fission drive.”

“Can you explain that?”

“It’s powered by mutating living fissionable matter. We
breed it on Klipthon for ship fuel and to provide energy to our planet.”

“Okay, we’ll go along with you on that one for now. Is that
why you’ve come? To bring us this remarkable source of energy?”

“No. We’re breeding you humans as food.”

“Oh, my. That’s not very nice, Dennis. You know that we
humans don’t take being eaten lightly. How many of you Klipthonians are here?”

“It’s only me for now.”

“One Klipthonian?”

“When there are ten billion of you, the harvest will begin.”

“And if we resist?”

“Resistance is futile.”

“Uh-huh. It’s my opinion that Jonathan Archer was
undoubtedly the best captain of any Enterprise.”

“You’re crazy, Lee. Archer and his cheese-farting beagle
aren’t fit to lick Picard’s boo…”

“And goodbye, Dennis. Nice try. Little Rock, you’re Beyond
Insomnia.”

“Hi, Lee, this is Naomini. And my home world is actually in
another galaxy. It’s called Monhonia, and we are descendants of what you would
call Atlanteans.”

“As in people from Atlantis?”

“Yes, that’s right. They left Earth almost fifteen thousand
years ago and resettled on Monhonia. But before that they lived in a different
galaxy.”

“So how do you travel between galaxies?”

“Reincarnation, Lee. It’s the only way. These other callers
claiming they have ships are lying to you.”

“So you have to die, and then what?”

“Focusing crystals guide our souls to their next life. It’s
so beautiful.”

“You were born human?”

“When I turned twenty-four, I became aware of my nature.”

“It’s a one-way trip then? Or do you have a focusing crystal
here on Earth to guide you back to your home world?”

“We have a few crystals here.”

“So there are more of you?”

“I think there’s a few hundred of us, Lee. But most of us
are pretty reclusive. I’ve never met any others, but I can feel them.”

“And what are you doing in Little Rock? What’s your purpose
for being on Earth?”

“When our culture left, we accidently tore a hole in Gaia’s
soul, allowing evil to take hold. It’s irreparable, but we meditate every day
to keep evil from completely destroying all life here.”

“Let me be the first to thank you for doing that.”

“You’re kind to say so, but it’s what I was born to do.”

“Are you married? Do you have children?”

“Two beautiful little girls. I’m very blessed.”

“Are they Atlanteans also, or Monhonians?”

“No, they’re human. I’m the only one in my family.”

“You say you can feel the others. Is there anyone we might
be familiar with who is also a Monhonian?”

“I’ve never met her, but I’m pretty sure Angelina Jolie is
one of us.”

“I don’t think I’d argue with that. Thanks for calling,
Naomini, and thanks to all your people for holding the soul of our planet
together. More wake-up calls after this break.”

~ * * * ~

Martin tucked his phone between his cheek and shoulder and
opened his freezer. The cool air felt good. He’d spent the afternoon loading a
new shipment into his storage unit and restocking the truck. He’d rather be in
the shower than talking to Rick, but when Rick called, Rick—the FastNCo.
district manager for the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies—must be talked
to.

“Got to talk to you about your expense reports,” said Rick.
“Now, I’m talking to everyone, not just you. But the fact is you’ve got one of
the highest sales volume to expense ratios, not just in my district, but in the
whole company.”

“I’ve also got one of the lowest-density territories in the
country,” said Martin. “We’ve discussed this. Other reps get three, four,
accounts in one town, with towns a half-hour apart. I get one account per town,
towns two hours apart. It’s simple math.”

“I know, I know,” said Rick. “But management’s coming down
on everyone…” Martin dug a box of DiGiorno Rising Crust Pizza out of the
freezer and shut the door with his elbow. He tore off the perforated strip and
shook the disc onto his counter. “…wanting to cut overnight stays by forty to fifty
percent across the board.”

“Impossible,” said Martin, setting the oven for 400 degrees.
He ripped open the plastic wrapper. His cookie sheet was still in the sink from
his last meal at home. He gave it a quick wipe with a paper towel. “They can’t
reasonably expect me to drive home every night, or even half the nights. If I’m
lucky I get to three, maybe four, accounts in a day outside the Billings,
Bozeman, and Great Falls areas. If I have to start out from home every day,
that number drops to one, maybe two. It can’t be done. Perhaps back East they
don’t understand that this is a huge state. Can we explain that a town like
Plentywood is a seven-hour drive from Billings?” He slammed the oven on his
pizza.

“I’m sure we can trim some fat. I’m reviewing your March
expenses now. You spent three nights at the Brixton Inn, but you only called on
the Brixton Co-op once.”

“It’s a junction town, Rick. It’s a central starting place
to cover a lot of the northern and eastern part of the state. It’s also about
half the price of places in Great Falls. Don’t the money guys take that into
consideration?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Marty,” Rick said. Martin
cringed. Rick was the only person in the world who called him “Marty.”
“Something needs to give.”

How about the fact that if I drove a big rig, I’d be
violating federal law with the hours I put out on the road for you and
FastNCo.? It might not be constructive to say that out loud.

“Any cutback means I get into accounts less frequently. I’m
already pushing it to stay on a forty-day cycle,” Martin said.

“If a few more of your accounts would commit to the Triple-P
installation, maybe we could stretch that out to a fifty- or even sixty-day
rotation.” The Premiere Product Partner rack took up ten more linear feet and
pushed six inches deeper into the aisle than the traditional unit.

“I hard sold it to everyone,” Martin lied. He hadn’t even
bothered to mention it to most of his accounts. “But these are small stores.
Tight aisles. They can’t give up any more floor space.”

“Do you have your expense reports handy?” asked Rick.

When Rick had been finally, albeit temporarily, placated,
Martin closed his laptop, stripped off his damp, stiff clothes, and got in the
shower. A few minutes later, he heard the beeping.

Smoke billowed out of the oven. Water dripped on the
linoleum. He had to let his towel go to use both hands to take the battery out
of the smoke detector. After he got dressed and opened some windows, he dumped
the charred pizza in the trash and dropped the trash in the Dumpster on his way
to Sonic, or maybe Wendy’s. No, Sonic had those giant slushes.

~ * * * ~

“Randy Coburn is a physicist and author who worked with JPL
on the Voyager missions and has consulted with NASA on several projects, but
he’s known internationally for his recent research on the Nazca Lines of Peru.
Welcome, Randy Coburn, to
Beyond Insomnia
.”

“Thank you, Lee. It’s an honor to be on the show.”

“I had the pleasure to introduce you at this year’s
WakerCon. And we had a great response from your talk there. So it’s great to
have you on now, and I hope we can get you back to WakerCon next year in
Cincinnati.”