Possibilty Breach

By "Lorenzo N. Smythe"

CHAPTER ONE: THE MALTESE DUCK

The puke-colored mean streets of 1997 Denver groaned in protest as I drove my Ugandan N'gowa to the scene of the crime. I Leslie-Nielsened the three-wheel deathtrap up to the crumbling curb where Sergeant Big-Ass waited by the body. Big-Ass wasn't his real name, but everybody called him that because he was one of the Kalihari refugees that were the latest thing in the States that year, thanks to President Schroeder's latest crusade in SouthAf. The EEOC had taught him to wear clothes and not to eat birdshit and affirmative-actioned him into the force just one grade below me.

"Kill 'em dead, chop-chop, Donald," the little shit squealed.

"I know, craphead," I snarled, slamming the driver's door and watching the opposite one spring open and knock a Mongolian paper boy ass-over-yogurt. "And don't call me Donald!"

It was a losing battle. In between rain dances, my Native American mom had experienced a peyote trip in which a duck figured prominently, and upon consultation with the tribal elders on the way to pick up their welfare checks, had dubbed me "Delirious Duck," and fate and Uncle Walt had made the "Donald" inevitable.

I pushed past a couple of Rosicrucian nuns, shoved the 60-pound lizard hunter aside and examined what was left of the body. The head was gone, of course. A good one was bringing 100 New Newdollars on the black market these days, and many were going for brain transplants to wealthy, social-climbing politicians. A pocket search revealed a spandex condom, a Barney Frank three-dollar bill, and a junkie's license that identified him as H. Pipe Dreamer, a post-grad physics student at Colorado State. Inside the condom was a gold coin with a picture of Danny Kaye on it. I pocketed the license and money, and gave the condom to Big-Ass, who cheertully munched away at it as I peeled out and headed north.

CHAPTER TWO: PUSSY PATROL

"Official business, bint," I sneered, and rammed my way through the door. Rifamey looked up, startled, and shoved the chicken he'd been fucking into a drawer.

"This is highly irregular!"

"Not nearly as irregular as that chicken is going to be," I quipped, plumping my ass into a chair and hoisting my brogans onto his desk to show him I was a regular guy.

"I'd show you my cop I.D., but it's between your secretary's tits," | began. "Anyhow, it's about one of your people, H. Pipe Dreamer. One of our black-and-lavenders found him on skid row minus his head. Any idea what he was doing down there?"

"My graduate students' personal afairs are of no interest to me," he answered, kidking the drawer back shut as a weak "cluck" issued from it. "Besides, Dreamer was a visionary. Had no resect for precedent or authority of any kind.

Instead of following my directives, he was wasting his time poisoning cats in boxes."

I raised an eyebrow. "Cats? Why?"

"It had to do with Schroedinger's theory. If you seal a cat in a box, and have a sealed vial of poison irside that can be destroyed by atomic decay, there's a 50% chance that the cat will survive, but only after the box is opened — prior to that the cat is both alive and dead."

"That sounds like more fun than chickens. Can I have a look at his lab."

"Certainly. I have a lot of work to do. Find your own way.

I got up, blew him a kiss, and closed the door behind me, hearing the scrape of a drawer and an apprehensive "Buck-buck-bacaw." What the hell.

Dreamer's lab was sure as hell full of dead cats and open boxes. One box, unopened, was on his desk. I experimented, saying "Kitty-kitty-kitty," and got no reply. So I opened the box. There was a cat inside, dead as a doornail. I lifted it out and slapped its face times. Still dead. On a whim I took some cocaine out of my shoe and blew it up tabby's nose.

Then it happened. The cat's eyes opened and it started, appropriately, to caterwaul. At the same time, a combination earthquake and lightning strike split my head. The cat flew one way and I flew the other. I blacked out.

CHAPTER THREE: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS DARKLY

Sheesh, whatta grouch! I woke up on an expanse of atroturf. My cocaine shoe was gone and so was a lot of hide from my right hand that the cat evidently had taken along. I rolled to a sitting position and looked blearily around. I saw brightly dressed figures in the distance, most of them moving in my direction.

"I say, old chap, whatever seems to be the matter?"

I swung 180 degrees and went for my automatic, which turned out to be a brace of Reese Cups. Wrong pocket. By the time I had that sorted out, my eyes had focused on the speaker. A goddam penguin.

"Have you some sort of injury," he, or she, or whatever asked, adjusting his monocle and leaning towards me on his umbrella.

"Ah, nothing serious, Opus or Chilly Willy or whoever you are. Just gimme hand or a wing or a flipper up, will you?"

With surprising strength, the penguin lifted me up to where I towered over his three feet, and fanned himself with his Andy Capp hat. "Permit me to introduce myself. I am Squaark Amundsen-Peary, Finder of Lost Articles. Your name, sir?"

"Don--uh, D. Duck, Denver Police Department."

"How curious. You greatly resemble a colleague of mine who is also named 'Duck.' I'm not certain of his actual Christian name, but all who know him call him 'Daffy." Could you possibly be his brother?"

"Ah...y'know, I'm not sure. I just might be. I've had a bad day."

Squaark clicked his beak in sympathy. "Then let us go visit him. Oh, I see you don't have your ruby slippers. Never mind. Just take hold of my flipper and you can go with me."

I did, and he banged the heels together gingerly and zap, we were standing in fron of a psychedelic quonset hut. Squaark knocked and my eyes popped as I opened the door.

Not quite I after all. The guy that ushered us in was younger, less bald, and had more tasteful tattoos that I do. He also was wearing sequined hot-pants, a pink leather jacket with fifty zippers on it, moon shoes and a dunce cap. Other than that, he was my spit and image, especially the spit. He looked at least as dependable as I was, so after preliminary introductions, I told him my story…

"…And then 'Smoke Kools,' here, brought me to your place."

Daffy (by this time l'd learned that his first name was also "Delirious") shook his head and pushed a button on his Captain Kirk lounge chair. An ostrich in a French maid's uniform entered with a tray of hallucinogenic mushrooms and Thunderbird.

"Sounds like the old parallel world shtick, don't it, Squaark?"

"I'm afraid so, Daffy. I wonder at what point in history his world diverged from ours," mused the penguin.

"Let's find out," replied my counterpart, "Name the Presidents of the Affiliated States."

"You mean the United States?"

"We don't call them that any more, but yeah."

"Hmm, lessee... Washington, Adams, Jefferson-"

"Hold it!" Daffy raised a hand. "They've diverged already. Jefferson wasn't President till many years later."

"Well, I'm sure he was our third. What about your list of Presidents?"

"Ours starts with Washington, too. Let me see. He died in office of a toothache and he was succeeded by Adams, who imprisoned Washington's dentist for treason. Some thought, however that the dentist was innocent and that Adams himself had killed Washington, so he was impeached and replaced by Betsy Ross, who appealed to everyone's patriotism. But her Presidency was sullied by shameless flag-waving and Jefferson led a movement to impeach her. Then Washington's dentist, a Polish immigrant named Kovaleski, ran for President from prison, explaining that he indeed had killed Washington deliberately, but had good reasons. The voters agreed, and elected him President, and he proceeded to change everything about politics, morals, and economics and created the near-utopia we have today."

"Hold it," I interrupted, pulling the coin out of my pocket. "Is this that Kovaleski guy?"

Daffy peered at the coin and nodded. "Sure is. Greatest of the Affiliated States Presidents. It was he who realized that the phrase in the Constitution, 'A more perfect union,' was ungrammatical, and hence void, putting the skids to the whole idea of a union of the states and grading it down to an affiliation. This same principle came to be applied to politics and social afairs in general, and by the time of the Sacco-Vanzetti Administration--"

At that point the door burst open and three men and a whooping crane in black ninja suits rushed in firing. time I went for the right pocket and cut the first one down. Dafty decapitated the crane with a bullwhip I hadn't even noticed he had while Squaark skewered the second man with his umbrella. Before the third could react, the ostrich back-pivot-kicked him through the plate-glass window.

"Utopia, my ass!" | snarled, flicking crane feathers off my lapels.

"We like it," said the ostrich, going after the feathers with a Hoover.

Dafty used his Dick Tracy wristwatch to summon what I thought would be the authorities, but turned out to be a couple of flamingos from a sanitation company. While they were cleaning up the mess, a stark-naked little old lady peeked in the door.

"Hey there, Daffy! How's it hangin?"

And then I really passed out.