Mr. Ferdinand's Fate

Chapter Eight: Night 261

 

Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had been allowed to say. Then, when it was the two hundred and sixty-first night, SHE CONTINUED:

Emerson intoned, "Om mane padme Hum," several times. An observer at that point would say he fell asleep. He invisibly opened his eyes and noticed there was a new door in the library. Its lines were clean and precise, as if machine-made. Emerson stood and walked to the door and opened it slowly to reveal to himself a squalid room of gimrackery and gewgaws and charts on walls and pens and clay everywhere and a large table in the middle of it around which sat two women and a man. The first woman was fiddling with paper, the second woman was rapidly pressing the keys on some sort of weird typewriter, and the man was blowing smoke rings. The typing woman looked up and said, "Uh-oh."

Mr. Smoke-ring looked at Emerson. "This isn't right at all."

Emerson said, "This is ... 2014, isn't it?"

Miss Paper grunted. "Aw, man, like, I knew someone would figure it out." She looked at Mr. Smoke-ring. "Dude. You and your games."

Emerson said, "You're making it all up, aren't you?"

Miss Typer said, "Not at all. Not everything. Very little."

Mr. Smoke-ring said, "Three per cent we reckon."

Emerson cried, "Ah! I see! You can peer through a dimension and see exactly what's there, in the past! Plus you can affect it somewhat."

Miss Typer said, "Pretty much. It was all supposed to be on television."

Miss Paper said, "Mr. Ferdinand was going to be related to Franz Ferdinand."

Mr. Smoke-ring said, "Until you showed up and pulled it all to pieces."

Miss Typer said, "With your cousin Neil and everything."

Emerson said, "But he confessed to me. He did it."

Miss Typer sighed. "I guess our little post-modern jokes ruined it all."

Emerson said, "I don't know how I'll explain it to the Dumphries."

"Doesn't matter. It's all over, it's back to the drawing board."

"They won't understand my explanation."

"Probably not."

Emerson looked around the room. He noticed there was another door, oddly out of place. It looked to be made of crystal or some such material. The door-knob beckoned.

Miss Typer said, "I wouldn't go through there if I were you."

Emerson coughed into his hand. "I suppose not. I should go back to the library now; I should leave my trance."

"Take care of yourself."

"Yes, you too. All of you."

Emerson went back into the library and came out of his trance. He went into the hallway where Constable Eddings was standing idly.

Emerson said, "Didn't work."

Constable Eddings said, "That's a shame."

 

THE END