The Toyminator

16

Jack left the Golden Chicken Diner at the hurry-up.

He sprinted through the open doors and out into the sunlit street beyond. The sunlit Californian street that was Hollywood Boulevard.

Jack was a very desperate lad. He sprinted here and sprinted there in desperation, up this way and down that way, but all to no avail. Passers-by did passings-by, but none paid Jack any heed.

Jack took now to shouting at and accosting passers-by.

“Have you seen him?” Jack shouted at a large man in a larger suit of orange plaid. “Small bear, about this size? Being led along by me, but it wasn’t me?” The large man thrust past Jack, continued on his way.

Jack started on another. Dorothy’s hands caught Jack by the shoulders. “Stop it, Jack,” said Dorothy. “You’ll get yourself arrested.”

“But I have to find him, time is running out.”

“He could be anywhere now – he was probably taken in a car.”

“A car?” and Jack made fists. “I need a car. Do you have one?”

“Of course I don’t have a car. Do I look like I could afford a car? And I’m too young to drive, anyway.”

“I’ve got to find him. How could you let this happen?” Jack turned bitter eyes upon Dorothy. “I left him in your care.”

Dorothy’s eyes weren’t bitter, but they flashed an emerald fire. “You did no such thing,” she said to Jack. “You left him with me in the hope that I could win him over.”

“You’re part of this.” Jack made fists and shook them all about. “You’re in on it. This is all a conspiracy.”

“Now you are being ridiculous. Come back inside and sit down with me and then we’ll talk about this.”

“I’ve no time to talk. They’ve got Eddie and if I can’t get to him quickly he’ll die.”

“If they’d wanted to kill him,” said Dorothy, “they could have done it there and then in the diner. Ripping a teddy bear apart would hardly have caused the customers much concern.”

Jack put his hands to his head and raked them through his hair. Knocked his hat off, stooped to pick it up, kicked it instead and watched as it rolled beneath the wheels of a passing car to be ground to an ugly flatness.

Dorothy stifled a smirk. This was no laughing matter.

“Let’s go inside,” she said.

“I can’t.” There was a tear in Jack’s left eye. “It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have left him. I should have protected him at all times. If any harm comes to him –”

“No harm will come to him.”

“That’s a very foolish thing to say.”

“I’ve said that if they’d wanted to kill him they would have. They’ve taken him captive, probably as a hostage, probably to use to bargain with you.”

“With me?”

“To get you to stay out of their affairs.”

“That’s not going to happen,” said Jack. “I’ll track this other me down and if he’s harmed Eddie, I’ll kill him. I’ll probably have to kill him anyway, but if he’s harmed Eddie, I’ll kill him worse.”

Dorothy’s green eyes fairly glittered. “You really love that bear,” she said. “You really, truly do.”

“Of course I do,” Jack said. “He’s my bestest friend. We’ve been through a lot together, Eddie and me. And he’s saved my life more then once.”

“Come back inside, then, and we’ll work out some plan together. We’ll get him back somehow.”

Jack followed Dorothy back to the diner. “I’m so sorry, Eddie,” he said.

Eddie Bear was rather sorry, too. Sorrowful was Eddie Bear, puzzled somewhat, scared a bit and quite uncomfortable also.

He was all in the darkness and all getting bumped about.

“How did I let this happen?” Eddie asked himself. “How could I have been so stupid? I’m as stupid as. How didn’t I know that it was the wrong Jack? Why didn’t I smell a rat?”

But Eddie Bear had not smelled a rat and neither had he smelled that that Jack wasn’t Jack. So to speak.

And this worried Eddie more than most things.

“I don’t understand this.” Eddie sniffed at the air. Hot air, it was, and humid, too, as can be the way of it in the boot of a car on a hot and sunlit day. Eddie sniffed the air some more and then he growly grumbled. “I’ve lost my sense of smell,” he growly grumbled. “I can’t smell anything. Why has this happened? Do I have a cold? This can’t be right – my nose has never let me down before and OUCH!”

The car, in whose boot Eddie was presently domiciled, bumped over something, possibly a sleeping policeman, and Eddie was bounced about something wicked.

“I’ll have things to say when I get out of here,” said Eddie Bear.

“And he’ll die,” Jack told Dorothy over another coffee. “He has three days left at the most. If I don’t get him back to his own world before then, he’ll die.”

“And how did you arrive at this revelation?” Dorothy asked.

“I have my sources,” said Jack. “Let’s leave it at that.”

“So we have to do something fast.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” said Jack. “I’ll do this on my own.”

“We’ve been through all that. You need me, Jack. You won’t last long here on your own. You’ll get stopped by the police, they’ll ask you for ID, you won’t have any and they’ll take you off to juvenile hall.”

Jack did grindings of the teeth. He felt utterly helpless. Utterly impotent. Neither of these were nice ways to feel. The second in particular didn’t bear thinking about. So Jack did some heavy thinking about other things. And certain thoughts entered his head. Regarding his most recent conversation with Wallah the calculating pocket.

Wallah’s advice to Jack, based upon her calculations, had been that he must take employment at a Golden Chicken Diner and penetrate the higher echelons by utilising the American Dream. Also that Dorothy would prove to be a useful asset during the short term, if ultimately a disaster.

Jack leaned forwards, elbows on the table, and buried his face in his hands.

Dorothy said, “Let’s think about this, Jack. Work together, throw some ideas around.”

Jack groaned.

Dorothy continued, “I think we have established that whoever is the brains behind the Golden Chicken Diner is the most likely candidate for being behind the murders in Toy City.”

“Yes,” said Jack. “Of course.”

“Well, not necessarily ‘of course’ – there could be other options to choose from. But he or she –”

“Or it,” said Jack.

“He, she or it is the most likely candidate. That entity is the one that you have to find and deal with.”

“And I will,” said Jack.

“So the questions is, how?”

Jack nodded through his fingers.

“Well,” said Dorothy, “the most logical thing to do, in my opinion, would be to gain employment at one of the Golden Chicken Diners, then work your way up into a position that would gain you access to this, er, entity.”

“Eh?” said Jack, and he looked up through his fingers.

“It’s the most logical solution,” said Dorothy. “By my calculations, it’s the best chance you’d have.”

“By your calculations?”

“Yes. You see, it’s an American thing – the belief that anyone in this country can do anything, if they just try hard enough. That they’ll get a fair deal if they try. It’s called pursuing the American Dream.”

“I know what it’s called,” said Jack.

“You do?”

“I do. Do you really think it would work?”

“It might with my help.”

“Ah,” said Jack.

“You have no ID,” said Dorothy. “You’re, well, an illegal alien, really. You’d need a work visa. But there are ways. I could help.”

“I have no choice,” said Jack, and he threw up his hands, knocking over his coffee, which trickled into his lap. “Oh damn,” went Jack. “I think this trenchcoat is done for.”

Dorothy giggled, prettily.

Jack smiled wanly towards her. “When I said I had no choice,” said he, “I didn’t mean it in a bad way towards you. I’m very grateful for your help. So how do we go about getting jobs?”

“Just leave that to me.”

Now it is a fact well known to those who know it well that in America, in accordance with the American Dream, you can always get a job in a diner. No matter your lack of qualifications, the fact that you cannot add up to ten, the fact that you have rather strange ways about you, a curious squint, buck teeth, answer to the name of Joe-Bob and hail from a backwoods community where your father is your brother and your aunty your uncle (although it has to be said that there is a more than average chance that you will be very good at playing the banjo), you can always get work in a diner.

In England (a small but beautifully formed kingdom somewhat to the east of America) it is the case that you can always get a job in a pub. Here, of course, you will not be expected to be able to count up to ten, as, if you are, like Jack, an illegal alien (probably from Australia, in the case of England), it will be expected that you will short-change the customers. Oh, and be an alcoholic, which is apparently a necessary qualification.

But this is neither here nor there, nor anywhere else at the present.

Twenty minutes passed in the Golden Chicken Diner and when these twenty minutes were done, certain things had occurred.

Dorothy now stood behind counter till number three, all dolled up in a golden outfit. And Jack stood somewhere else.

Jack stood in the kitchen washing dishes.

Jack had his arms in suds up to the elbows.

Jack had a right old grumpy look on his face.

“Back in the bloody kitchen again!” swore Jack, frightening Joe-Bob, who was drying dishes. “A couple of days ago I was washing dishes in a Nadine’s Diner, and now I’m back at it again. Is this to be my lot in life? What is going on?”

“You ain’t from around these parts, aintcha, mister?” asked Joe-Bob, spitting little corncob nibblets through his big buck teeth. “You a wetback, aintcha?”

“I don’t know what one of those is,” said Jack, “but whatever it is, I’m not one.”

“You must be from England, then.”

“If this is some kind of running gag,” said Jack, really wishing that he’d rolled up his shirt sleeves before he began the washing up, “then it stinks.”

“Not as bad as that trenchcoat of yours,” said Joe-Bob.

“No,” said Jack, “but it’s washing up nicely.” And he scrubbed at the trenchcoat’s hem.

“I don’t figure the manager’d like you washing your laundry in his kitchen sink,” said Joe-Bob. “But I guess I’d keep my mouth shut and not tell him if you’d do a favour for me.”

“Listen,” said Jack, “I can’t lose this job. It’s really important to me. But then so is a smart turn-out. I’ll soon be done washing the trenchcoat. Then we can dry it in the chicken rotisserie.”

Joe-Bob shook his head and did that manic cackling laughter that backwoods fellows are so noted for. “That’s even worse,” said he. “I’ll want a big favour.”

Jack sighed deeply and wrung out his trenchcoat. “You won’t get it,” said Jack.

“Then I’ll just mosey off and speak with the manager.”

“All right,” said Jack. And he sighed once more. “Tell me what favour you want.”

“Well,” said Joe-Bob, “you’ve got a real perty mouth and –”

Joe-Bob’s head went into the washing-up water and then Joe-Bob, held by the scruff of the neck by Jack, was soundly thrashed and flung through the rear kitchen door into the alleyway beyond.

“And don’t come back!” called Jack.

The head chef, who had been in the toilet doing whatever it is that head chefs do in the toilet – going to the toilet, probably, but neglecting to wash their hands afterwards – returned from the toilet. He was a big, fat, rosy-faced man who hailed from Oregon (where the vortex is)[26] and walked with a pronounced limp due to an encounter in Korea with a sleeping policeman.

“Where is Joe-Bob?” asked the head chef.

“He quit,” said Jack. “Walked off the job. I tried to stop him.”

The head chef nodded thoughtfully. “Tried to stop him, eh? Well, young fella, I like the way you think. You have the right stuff – you’ll go far in this organisation.”

Jack did further trenchcoat wringings, but behind his back.

“I’m going to promote you,” said the head chef, “to head dryer-up.”

“Well,” said Jack, “thank you very much.”

“Not a bit of it,” said the head chef. “Loyalty is always rewarded. It’s the American Dream.”

By lunchtime Jack had gained the post of assistant to the head chef. He had risen rapidly through the ranks, from dishwasher to dryer-up to plate stacker to kitchen porter (general) to kitchen porter (specific) to head kitchen porter to rotisserie loader to supervising rotisserie loader to assistant to the head chef.

There had been some unpleasantness involved.

There had in fact been considerable unpleasantness involved and no small degree of violence, threats and menace. And a few knocks to himself. Jack sported a shiner in the right-eye department; the kitchen porter (general) was beginning a course of Dimac.

Jack’s role as assistant to the head chef gave him a degree of authority over the lower orders of kitchen staff. Who were now a group of boisterous Puerto Ricans whom Jack had seen dealing in certain restricted substances outside the kitchen in the alleyway and asked in with the promise of cash in hand and free chicken for lunch.

Jack stood next to the head chef, decapitating chickens.

The chickens, all plucked and pink and all but ready, barring the decerebration, came out of a little hatch in the wall, plopped onto a conveyor belt and were delivered at regulated intervals to the chopping table for head-removal and skewering for the rotisserie.

Jack put a certain vigour into his work.

“You go at those chickens as one possessed,” the head chef observed after lunch (of chicken).

“What do you do with all the heads?” Jack asked as he tossed yet another into a swelling bin.

“They go back to the chicken factory,” said the head chef. “They get ground up and fed to more chickens.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Jack, parting another head from its scrawny neck.

“It’s called recycling,” said the head chef. “It’s ecologically sound. I’d liken it to the nearest thing to perpetual motion that you can imagine.”

“Chickens fed on chicken heads,” said Jack, shaking his.

“Well, think about it,” said the head chef. “If you want a chicken to taste really chickeny, then the best thing to feed that chicken on would have to be another chicken. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?”

Jack looked up from his chopping and said, “I can’t argue with that.”

“Mind you,” said the head chef as he drizzled a little oil of chicken over a headless chicken and poked a rotisserie skewer up its backside, “chickens are a bit of a mystery to me.”

“Really?” Jack nodded and chopped.

“I don’t know where they all come from,” said the head chef.

“They come out of eggs,” said Jack. “Of this I am reasonably sure.”

“Do they?” said the head chef. “Of that I’m not too sure.”

“I think it’s an established fact,” said Jack.

“Oh really?” said the head chef. “Well, then you explain this to me. Every day, in Los Angeles alone, in the Golden Chicken Diners, we sell about ten thousand chickens.”

“Ten thousand?” said Jack.

“Easily,” said the head chef. “We’ll do five hundred here every day and there’s twenty Golden Chicken Diners in Los Angeles.”

Jack whistled.

“And well may you whistle,” said the head chef. “That’s ten thousand, but that’s only the tip of the chicken-berg. Every restaurant sells chicken, every supermarket sells chicken, every sandwich stall sells chicken, every hotel sells chicken. Do I need to continue?”

“Can you?” asked Jack.

“Very much so,” said the head chef. “It’s millions of chickens every day. And that’s only in Los Angeles. Not the rest of the USA. Not the rest of the whole wide world.”

“That must add up to an awful lot of chickens,” said Jack, shuddering at the thought.

“I think it’s beyond counting,” said the head chef. “I don’t think they have a name for such a number.”

“It’s possibly a google,” said Jack.

The head chef looked at Jack and coughed. “Possibly,” he said. “But where do they all come from?”

“Out of eggs,” said Jack. “That’s where.”

“But the eggs are for sale,” said the head chef. “We do eggs here. Again, at least five hundred a day. And that’s just here, there’s –”

“I see where you’re heading,” said Jack. “Googles of eggs everyday.”

“Exactly,” said the head chef.

“Well, the way I see it,” said Jack, “or at least what I’ve always been led to believe, is that fertilised eggs, that is those that come from a chicken that has been shagged by a cockerel, become chickens. Unfertilised eggs, which won’t hatch, are sold as eggs.”

“You are wise beyond your years,” said the head chef, “but it won’t work. The numbers don’t tie up. Unfertilised eggs, fine – battery chickens will turn those out every day for years. Until they’re too old to reproduce, then they get ground up and become chicken feed. But think about this – to produce the fertilised eggs you’d need an awful lot of randy roosters. Billions and googles of them, shagging away day and night, endlessly.”

“Nice work if you can get it,” said Jack.

“What, you’d like a job shagging chickens?”

“I would if I were a rooster. And it’s probably the only job they can get.”

“Well, it doesn’t pan out,” said the head chef. “I’ve never heard of any chicken stud farms where millions of roosters shag billions of chickens every day. There’s no such place.”

“There must be,” said Jack.

“Then tell me where.”

“I’m new to these parts.”

“Well, don’t they have chickens where you come from?”

Jack remembered certain anal-probings. “Well, they do …” he said.

“It doesn’t work,” said the head chef, oiling up another chicken and giving it a little flick with his fat forefinger. “Doesn’t work. There’s simply too many chickens being eaten every day. You’d need a stud farm the size of Kansas. It just doesn’t work.”

“Well,” said Jack, “I have to agree that you’ve given me food for thought.” And he laughed.

“Why are you laughing?” asked the head chef.

“Sorry,” said Jack. “So what is your theory? I suspect that you do have a theory.”

“Actually I do,” said the head chef, “but I’m not going to tell you because you wouldn’t believe it. You’d laugh.”

“You’d be surprised at what I believe,” said Jack. “And what I’ve seen. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.” Which rang a bell somewhere.[27]

“Well, you wouldn’t believe this.”

“I’ll just bet you I would. Trust me, I’m an assistant chef.”

“Well, fair enough,” said the head chef. “After all, you are in the trade, and clearly destined for great things. But don’t pass on what I say to those Puerto Rican wetbacks – they’ll only go selling it to the Weekly World News.”

Jack raised his cleaver and prepared to bring it down.

“They are not of this world,” said the head chef.

Jack brought his cleaver down and only just missed taking his finger off.

“What?” said Jack. “What are you saying?”

“Have you heard of Area Fifty-Two?” asked the head chef.

Jack shook his head.

“Well,” said the head chef, “ten years ago, in nineteen forty-seven,[28] a flying saucer crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. The Air Force covered it up, gave out this story that it was a secret military balloon experiment, or some such nonsense. But it wasn’t. It was a UFO.”

“And a UFO is a flying saucer?”

“Of course it is. And they say that the occupants on board were still alive and the American government has done a deal with them – in exchange for advanced technology they let the aliens abduct a few Americans every year for experimentation, to cross-breed a new race.”

“Go on,” said Jack, his cleaver hovering.

“Half-man, half-chicken. Those aliens are chickens, sure as sure.”

Jack scratched his head with his cleaver and nearly took his left eye out.

“And I’ll tell you how I figured it out,” said the head chef. “Ten years ago there were no chicken diners, no fast-food restaurants. Chickens came from local farms. Shucks, where I grew up there were chicken farms, and they could supply just enough chickens and eggs to the local community. Like I said, the numbers are now impossible.”

“But hold on there,” said Jack. “Are you saying that all these google billions of chickens are coming from Area Fifty-Two? What are you saying – that they’re being imported by the billion from some chicken planet in outer space?”

“Not a bit of it,” said the head chef, oiling up another bird. “Well, not the last bit. These chickens here are being produced at Area Fifty-Two. The alien chickens would hardly import millions of their own kind to be eaten by our kind every day, would they?”

Jack shook his head.

“When I say that they’re being produced, that’s what I mean. Look at these chickens – they’re all the same. All the same size, all the same weight. Check them out in the supermarket. Rows of them, all the same size, all the same weight. They’re all one chicken.”

Jack shook his head once more and made a face of puzzlement.

“They’re artificial,” said the head chef. “I’m not looking now, but I’ll bet you that each of those chickens has a little brown freckle on the left side of its beak.”

Jack fished a couple of chicken heads from the bin and examined each in turn.

They both had identical freckles.

Jack flung the chicken heads down, dug into the swelling head bin, brought out a handful, gazed at them.

And said, “Identical.”

“Sure enough,” said the head chef.

“This is incredible,” said Jack. “But why hasn’t anyone other than you noticed this?”

“It’s only at the Golden Chicken chain that the chickens arrive with their heads on. They don’t have their heads on in supermarkets.”

“Whoa!” said Jack. “This is deep.”

“Do you believe what I’m telling you?”

“I do,” said Jack. “I do.”

“Well, I’m glad that you do. You’re the first assistant chef I’ve had who did. Mostly they just quit when I tell them. They panic and run. They think I’m mad.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Jack. “But what are you going to do about it?”

“Do?” asked the head chef. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said Jack, “that you know a terrible secret. You have exposed a dreadful conspiracy. It is your duty to pursue this to its source and expose the perpetrator. All of America should know the truth about this.”

“Well,” said the head chef, “I’d never thought of it that way.”

“Well, think about it now. Surely as head chef you could follow this up the chain of command. Identify the single individual behind it.”

“Well, I suppose I could. We head chefs are being invited to head office tomorrow. I could make subtle enquiries there.”

“It is your duty as an American to do so.”

“My duty.” The head chef shook his head. It had a chefs hat on it. The chefs hat wobbled about. And now much of the head chef began to wobble about.

“Your duty,” Jack continued, “even if it costs you your life.”

“My life?” The head chef’s hands began to shake.

“Well, obviously they’ll seek to kill you because of what you know. You are a threat to these alien chicken invaders. They’ll probably want to kill you and grind you up and feed you to the artificial chickens that are coming off the production line.”

“Oh dear,” said the head chef. “Oh my, oh my.”

“You’ll need to disguise the shaking,” said Jack, “when you’re at the meeting tomorrow – with all those agents of the chicken invaders. I’ve heard that chickens can smell fear. They’ll certainly be able to smell yours.”

“Oh dear, oh my, oh my,” said the head chef once more, and now he shook from his hat to his shiny shoes.

“If you don’t come back,” said Jack, “I will continue with your cause. You will not have died, horribly, in vain.”

The head chef fled the kitchen of the Golden Chicken Diner upon wobbly shaking legs and Jack found himself promoted once again.