Nostradamus Ate My Hamster

21 Basic Tin Sink

Russell left the store and then the mall. He walked slowly back along the something-strasser, with his head bowed into his chest and his hands thrust deep in his trouser pockets.

He was down, Russell was, it had not been his day. As days went, he’d known better. For it’s not every day that you’re chased by a howling mob, escape in a time machine while having sex with a beautiful woman, kill Adolf Hitler and still have a moment to screw up the future of the human race.

And it was early yet. Scarcely five of the afternoon clock. Russell scuffed his shoes along the pavement. What was he going to do now? He’d have to go back and try to sort things out. But things were rather complicated. If the time belt only took you back in time, then he couldn’t go back too far. Certainly not further than the moment when he and Julie escaped in the Flügelrad, when he escaped. If he went back further, he’d already be there. The other Russell, the one that was the “him-then”, who didn’t know what he knew now. So to speak.

“I am in a state of stress,” said Russell, startling a passer-by. “I really thought I could win this. But now I’m not too sure. It doesn’t matter what I do, they’re always one step ahead of me. If only there was some way. Some way.”

Russell stopped short and began to laugh. Those hysterics again? Not this time. There was a solution. It was a bold plan, and there was a risk of failure. A big risk. In fact the very biggest risk there could be. A risk that could cost Russell everything. His life. Everything. But it was a risk he was prepared to take. Because if there was one person capable of pulling the whole thing off, then that one person was he, Russell.

Russell took a very deep breath. “All right,” said he. “This time.”

Mr Eric Nelluss[35] was a tall imposing figure. Although now the graveyard side of sixty-five and the wearer of a long grey beard, he was still a force to be reckoned with. A major force, for he was undoubtedly the most powerful and influential film producer and distributor in the western world. In his long career he had struck many deals and invested many millions, but today, today would be the very crowning point of his brilliant career.

Because today he was having a meeting with a Mr Ernest Fudgepacker and his associates, to put the final seal on a film deal, the like of which the world had never seen before.

Mr Nelluss stood, his hands behind his back, looking out from the boardroom window of his towering corporation building at Docklands.

Below the hum of London traffic, above the clear blue sky.

Mr Nelluss coughed and clutched one hand against his chest. He was not a well man, he had a heart condition, the years of constant stress had taken their toll. But today. Today was going to be his day.

The intercom on the long black boardroom table buzzed and Mr Nelluss strode over and sat down in his big red leather chairman’s chair.

“Yes, Doris?” His voice had a deep American accent. They said that he hailed from the mid-west, but no-one knew for sure. The man was an enigma. A virtual recluse.

“Mr Fudgepacker and his associates are here, Mr Nelluss. Should I send them up?”

“Please do, Doris.” Mr Nelluss sat back in his chair and smiled a pleasant smile. Before him on the table were the stacks of contracts. The rights, the residuals, the spin-offs, the series, the video games, the whole world marketing deals.

At the far end of the boardroom the lift light blinked red and chromium doors opened in the wall of travertine marble.

Before him stood an ancient fellow in a long black coat, supported at the elbows by his two associates, a gaunt thin pinch-faced man in black and a beautiful blond woman in a golden dress and a fitted, buttoned jacket, also in black.

“Mr Fudgepacker, come in, sir, come in.” Mr Nelluss rose from his chair and came forward to greet his guests.

He wrung Mr Fudgepacker’s wrinkly hand between his own, patted the fellow in black on the shoulder and returned the flashing smile of the beautiful blonde. “Bobby Boy, Julie,” Mr Nelluss beckoned them in. “Come in. Sit down. Would you care for a drink? Tea, coffee, something stronger? Champagne, perhaps?”

“Champagne,” said Bobby Boy.

“Yes,” said Julie.

Mr Fudgepacker nodded.

Mr Nelluss pressed the intercom button and ordered champagne. “You got here all right?” he asked. “My guys pick up all the stuff? No problems?”

“No problems,” said Mr Fudgepacker, easing himself onto a boardroom chair.

Bobby Boy limped over, pulled one out from beneath the table and sat down upon it. Leaving Julie standing.

Mr Nelluss strode around and assisted her into a chair.

“Thank you,” said Julie. “At least there’s one gentleman in the room.”

Mr Fudgepacker grunted. Bobby Boy said nothing.

“Bobby Boy,” said Mr Nelluss, “I see you’re still limping. Went a little over the top with that stunt you pulled on us at the end-of-picture party at Hangar 18.”

Bobby Boy sniffed, it had been just two weeks since the screening and him getting shot in the kneecap.

“Quite some stunt,” said Mr Nelluss. “And quite some party. You really know how to throw a party, Mr F. Having a mock shoot-out and that guy dressed up as Adolf Hitler. And the flying saucer just vanishing in the car park. I’ve been in the movie game for nearly forty years and I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Glad it entertained you,” said Mr Fudgepacker.

A door slid open and the champagne arrived.

“Just leave it, Doris,” said Mr Nelluss. “I’ll pour the drinks.”

After the door had shut once more, Mr Nelluss poured champagne and passed glasses round. “You didn’t bring the other guy with you,” he said. “Your producer, Russell. Where’s he today, then?”

“Russell is no longer with us,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “I don’t think we’ll see Russell again.”

“Shame. I kind of liked the guy. Although all I saw of him was him wielding the prop pistol. Seemed like a crazy dude.”

“Can we just talk about the movie?” asked Bobby Boy. “And the money?”

“Sure we can. Sure we can. That’s what we’re all here for, after all. Now, I’ve got contracts drawn up and you’re gonna like them, I promise.”

“How much?” asked Bobby Boy.

“For what?”

“For a start off my fee as star of the movie.”

“I thought twenty-five million,” said Mr Nelluss.

The corners of Bobby Boy’s mean little mouth rose halfway up his cheeks. “Sounds about right,” he said.

“But it’s chicken feed in the ultimate scheme of things. Now, before we start any signing, I have to know, did you bring everything? Everything I asked you to bring?”

Mr Fudgepacker nodded shakily. “Everything and I wouldn’t have done so but for your reputation and your standing.”

Mr Nelluss smiled once more. “But of course,” said he. “I know what I’m worth and you know what I’m worth. I am the power behind movies. You had to choose me, you know you did.”

Mr Fudgepacker nodded again.

“So you’ve brought it all with you? The negatives, the rushes, the out-takes, the videos and the Cyberstar equipment? That alone is going to gross us more millions than, well, shit, than I’ve had business lunches, for God’s sake.” Mr Nelluss laughed. But he did so alone.

“Quite so. Quite so. But this is an exciting day for me. If I was to tell you that I have looked forward to this day throughout all the long years of my career I would not be exaggerating. No siree, by golly.”

“Let’s get the contracts signed,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “I want to go down to your laboratories and personally supervise the copying of the negatives. It is absolutely essential that it’s done under my personal supervision.”

“No problem there. We’ll have them coming hot off the press and I do mean hot.”

“Give us another glass of champagne,” said Bobby Boy.

“Help yourself, my good friend. Help yourself.”

Bobby Boy helped himself.

“Some over here,” said Julie. Bobby Boy passed her the bottle.

Mr Nelluss rose from his big red chairman’s chair and took himself over to the boardroom window. “This is one hell of a day,” he said, flexing his shoulders. “One hell of a day.”

“Can we get on with the signing?” asked Mr Fudgepacker.

“Yeah, sure, that’s what we’re here for. But hey, what are those guys down in the car park doing?”

“I don’t give a damn,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “Let’s get this done.”

“No, you really should see this, come over to the window, do.”

“I’m not interested.”

“Sure you are, sure you are. Come over. Bobby Boy, you come over too and Julie, come on, all of you.”

“Oh all right!” Mr Fudgepacker struggled from his chair and limped over to the window. Bobby Boy joined him in the limping. Julie didn’t limp, she sort of “swept”.

“Look at those guys,” said Mr Nelluss. “What do you think they’re up to?”

Many storeys below tiny figures moved in the car park. They were tossing things into a skip.

“Just builders,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “Now let’s not waste any more time.”

“I don’t think they’re builders,” said Mr Nelluss. “Surely those are cans of film they have there.”

Mr Fudgepacker’s eyes bulged behind the pebbled lenses of his spectacles. “Cans of film?” he croaked. “That’s my film, they’re opening up the cans. They’re exposing the negatives.”

“By God,” said Mr Nelluss. “That does look like what they’re doing, doesn’t it?”

“They’re chucking it onto the skip.” Mr Fudgepacker swayed to and fro. “They’re destroying it.”

“Hey, and look at that guy.” Mr Nellus pointed. “Surely that’s the Cyberstar equipment he’s got there. He’s not going to … oh my lord, he’s thrown that on too.”

“No!” Mr Fudgepacker croaked.

“And who are those?” Mr Nellus pointed once more. “Those guys in the protective suits. Are those flamethrowers they’re carrying?”

Mr Fudgepacker chewed upon his fingers. “Bobby Boy, do something. Do something.”

“What can I do?” Bobby Boy had fingers of his own to chew. “Look what they’re doing now.”

“Isn’t that gasoline?” Mr Nelluss asked. “Surely it is. They’re pouring it into the skip.”

Mr Fudgepacker gasped and tottered.

“They’re lighting it up.”

From below came a muffled report, a flash of flame and a mushroom cloud of oily black smoke.

“Dear, oh dear, oh dear,” said Mr Nellus, returning to his chair. “Now is that a blow to business, or what?” He perused the piles of contracts on the table before him and then, with a single sweeping gesture of his arm, he drove the lot into a wastepaper bin, positioned as if for the purpose.

Ernest Fudgepacker sank to his knees. Bobby Boy stood and made fists. Julie’s face wore a bitter expression, tears were welling in her eyes.

“Why?” croaked Mr Fudgepacker. “Why? Who did this? Who?”

“I did it,” said Eric Nelluss, suddenly losing his accent. “It was me.”

“It was you? But why? All the money. Everything. Everything lost. The future lost, oh the future, the future.”

“I did it,” said Eric Nelluss, “because my name is not Eric Nelluss. Can’t you guess who I really am?”

“You’re a mad old man,” shouted Bobby Boy. “And I’ll take your head off.”

Bobby Boy lunged across the table, but the Eric Nelluss who was apparently not Eric Nelluss skilfully caught him by the left wrist, snapped it and cast him down to the thick pile carpet.

“I could always take you,” said not-Eric Nelluss. “I did ju-jitsu at night school, remember?”

Bobby Boy clutched at his maimed wrist. “Russell?” he gasped. “Is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me.” Russell settled back into his big red chairman’s chair.

“But how? You’re old, or is that make-up? You bastard.”

“It’s not make-up.” Russell took a sip of champagne. “I am old. I’m more than sixty-five years old. I gave up my life for this day. For this moment. My time. I gave up my time.”

“But how?”

“I know how,” said Julie. “He came back from the future with one of the time belts and he went into the past.”

“Correct,” said Russell. “It was a one-way journey. You were always one step ahead of me. That’s what gave me the idea. I would be one step ahead of you. I went back to 1955 and I took a job in the film industry. Just a humble gopher, but I worked hard. You know me, Mr Fudgepacker, I work hard and if I’m given a job to do, I do it. I worked my way up. Well, I knew which films to invest in, didn’t I? But it was hard work. But as the years went by I grew more and more powerful. I only had one ambition, you see, to be top of the heap.

“To be the biggest and most influential independent film producer and distributor in the world. The one you would have to bring the movie to. And you did. And now it’s all over. The film is destroyed, the Cyberstar equipment is destroyed. It is all over. All of it.”

“No,” Mr Fudgepacker groaned. “It can’t end like this, it just can’t.”

“But it can and it has. I agree it could have been a whole lot more exciting. Explosions going off, roof-top chases, chases through time, even. Guns, violence, all the stuff you love in your movies. But that’s not life, is it? I know life is duller than art, but there’s more power in the boardroom than on the battlefield. It’s all over now. It’s done.”

“No!” Mr Fudgepacker raised a shrivelled fist. “I’m not done. He’s not done.”

“I’m afraid you’re wrong again,” said Russell. “He is done. He is being disposed of even as we speak.”

“No! That cannot be.”

“I set up a little bureau back in the Fifties,” said Russell. “Department 23. To investigate paranormal occurrences. The data came in from police stations around the country. I called myself The Captain, investigated one or two very strange ones in the Brentford district. A crime wave caused by a man who turned out not to be a man at all, just a bundle of spare parts.

“The workings of that thing in your basement. I’ve kept Him under close surveillance and I’ve learned all about Him and all about His weaknesses.”

“He doesn’t have any weaknesses. Only –”

“Only his problem with time,” said Russell. “He lives time in reverse, doesn’t he? He was born in the future, and he’ll die in the past. He halts the process by absorbing other people’s time. He can do that to them. Steal their time. And I know about his voice. His one voice which is many. The voice that has the power to hypnotize and control, the voice you intended to dub onto the movie so that all who heard it would be controlled.”

“He’ll take you,” crowed Mr Fudgepacker. “He’ll take your time.”

“No,” said Russell. “A special unit of my operatives is already at the Emporium. They are wearing protective reflecting suits. And earphones which broadcast white noise. Your creature cannot influence them. They have the time belt. I’ve set it for the year dot, as it were. I wonder how long ago that is? A million years? A billion? They will put the time belt on the creature and press the little button.”

As Russell spoke the intercom purred. Russell whispered words into it and whispered words were returned to him.

“It is done,” said Russell. “It is all over.”

Julie slumped into one of the boardroom chairs and stared across the table at the old man who sat before her. “You really did a number on us, didn’t you, Russell? You really pulled out all the stops.”

“It has cost me my life. I have a chronic heart condition. I only have months, maybe only weeks, to live. But I held on because I knew this day would come. I’m finished now, but I have stopped you.”

“Oh no you haven’t,” said Julie. “There’s something you’ve forgotten.”

“What?” Russell asked.

“I still have my time belt, I can go back to yesterday and cancel this meeting.”

“No,” said Russell. “You wouldn’t do that?”

“Oh yes I would.” Julie opened her jacket. She was wearing the belt. She adjusted the little dial on the buckle.

“No,” implored Russell. “Don’t do it.”

“I’ll see you yesterday,” said Julie. “Except you won’t see today. I’ll gun you down as you cross the street. You’re dead, Russell. Goodbye, and it hasn’t been nice knowing you.”

And with that she pressed the button on her belt and promptly vanished.

“Ha ha!” Bobby Boy laughed up from the floor. “You’re dead, Russell. Ha, ha, ha.”

Russell smiled. “I don’t feel very dead,” he said.

“But she’ll shoot you, yesterday.”

“I don’t remember being shot, yesterday.”

“What?”

“You didn’t really think I’d leave a loose end like that floating about, surely?”

“What?”

“I’m afraid I did something yesterday,” said Russell. “I crept into Julie’s bedroom and did a bit of reprogramming to her time belt. I think you’ll find she’s a long way from here now. Back in the year dot.”

“You bastard!” croaked Fudgepacker. “That was my wife.”

“The Führer’s girlfriend,” said Russell. “She played you false. She played everybody false.”

“Ah yes,” Ernest Fudgepacker rose from his knees. “The Führer, the Führer.”

“Ah yes. The Führer.” Russell perused the golden Rolex on his wrist. “I think just about now, on the western horizon … If you’ll just look into the sky.”

Ernest Fudgepacker turned and as he did so a bright flash, almost like a daytime firework, lit up the western sky and then faded into the blue.

Ernest Fudgepacker groaned.

“Bomb on board the Flügelrad,” said Russell. “If only he hadn’t kept popping back from the future to have a drink with you. Still, at least this time he went out with a bang, rather than a whimper.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw what you did to him in the future,” said Russell. “What did you do, sacrifice him to that time creature of yours?”

“I would have, a couple of years from now, for what he did. Taking my beautiful wife.”

“Well, he’s gone now,” said Russell, “for ever. And that, gentlemen, I think, is it. I’m afraid the excitement has all been a little much for me, I will have to have a lie down. I can call for a paramedic if you want, Bobby Boy.”

“No thanks,” the thin man climbed unsteadily to his feet.

“And you’d best get back to the Emporium, Mr Fudgepacker,” said Russell. “There’s a lot of business coming your way.”

“There is?”

“I’m producing a movie,” said Russell. “It will be my last. But I’ll want to hire props from the Emporium. Many props. All the props. You’ll make enough for a happy retirement, Mr Fudgepacker. I wouldn’t deprive you of that.”

Mr Fudgepacker sighed. “You’ve a good heart, Russell. You’ve always had a good heart.”

“Sadly,” said Russell, “I now have a bad one. But you’ll get your retirement fund. I’ll see that you do.”

Mr Fudgepacker shuffled to the lift door accompanied by a sulking Bobby Boy, and then he turned.

“Tell me, Russell,” he said, “what’s your movie about?”

“It’s autobiographical,” said Russell. “It’s called Nostradamus Ate my Hamster.”