I was coming out of the Wal-Mart Supercenter yesterday when an earnest-looking fellow who appeared to be in his mid thirties came up and tried to hand me some kind of lurid religious tract.
“I can’t accept that,” I told him.
“Why not?”
“I”m an Alpha Prime.”
“Huh?” he asked in obvious confusion. “Alpha what?”
I decided to take the time to explain it all to him. “Prime,” I said. “Alpha Prime. Surely you know as well as I do that there are only three types of people in this world. Alpha Primes, Control Agents, and Subsidiaries.”
“Subsid. . .”
“That’s right,” I replied. “And I know you’re not an Alpha Prime because we always recognize one another. And you don’t look focused enough to be a Control Agent, so it’s pretty obvious that you’re just a Subsidiary.”
For some reason he seemed to find this mildly alarming, so I moved in closer, put my arm around his shoulders, and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “You see,” I said, “the sole purpose of Control and its agents is to keep us Alpha Primes from detecting the Pattern. That’s the reason they try to annoy and distract us as much as they possibly can. But I’m onto them.”
“You are?”
“Right,” I said, giving him a conspiratorial wink. “I saw the Pattern a long time ago.”
“The Pattern?”
“Right again. Let me give you an example. I’m sure you’ve seen that insurance ad that features the British rock guitarist, Peter Frampton… Right? It’s on TV all over the country.”
He gave me a hesitant nod, his eyes growing ever wider.
“Well, surely you realize that there is no such thing as a Frampton.”
“No?”
“Absolutely not,” I said firmly. “Can you imagine anything more absurd than a Frampton? I mean, have you ever actually met one yourself?”
He shook his head. “No, I can’t say that I have?”
“Of course you haven’t. You see, the Control Agents just gave that guy the name because they realize that ‘Frampton’ is one of those words that we Alpha Primes are genetically predisposed find utterly loathsome.”
Here I stopped speaking and gave his shoulder another squeeze and then continued in a knowing whisper. “And if we’re all bent out of shape about ‘Frampton’, then we’re sure as hell not going to notice the Pattern, now are we? And that’s any Control Agent’s whole purpose in life. Obscure that Pattern. Get it?”
“I… I’m not sure,” he said dubiously. “But I really have to go.”
“But you haven’t given away all your tracts.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t had much luck here, anyway.”
“Luck?” I asked. “Why, my friend, there’s no such thing as luck.”
“No?”
I shook my head gravely. “Of course not. There’s only the Pattern. For example, have you ever been about ready for bed and then realized you just had to have a soft drink or something? So you find yourself dragging your shoes back on and driving a couple of miles to the convenience store and dealing with some idiot who can barely make change. That’s because you had to be in a certain place at a certain time, either to cause something or to prevent it. A car wreck or whatever.”
“Well, I…”
“No doubt about it,” I said and gave him a resigned shrug.
“The grim truth is that we’re all slaves to the Pattern, whether we realize it or not. Even the Control Agents. But you should be grateful that you Subsidiaries only get the small assignments. We Alpha Primes get the big jobs. Why, I once had to fly all the way to Budapest and eat a liverwurst sandwich in a certain cafe to prevent a dormant volcano from blowing up in Iceland. And I hate liverwurst.”
At this he bolted and sprinted to his car and then sped quickly from the parking lot. No doubt he was eager to fill his friends in on what he’d just learned about the Pattern. I regretted that I hadn’t been able to tell him about the Watchers, but there’d be plenty of time for that later on. I’d memorized his license plate number, and I have a helpful friend in motor vehicle registration.
It was a lovely day.
Milton T. Burton is a texas native, author of two crime novels, “The Rogues’ Game” & “The Sweet and The Dead“, St. Martin’s press.
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24 Responses to “THE WATCHERS • by Milton T. Burton”
Comments
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June 20th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Milton:
Funny, funny, funny. Sort of reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts.
K.C.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:32 am
haha, what a loony. Oh yeah the character in the story is pretty crazy too
June 20th, 2008 at 3:21 am
Now you’ve done it. Even dropping hints like this will alert them, and then they’ll deal with you. Just read C.M.Kornbluth’s MS found in a Chinese fortune cookie to see what will happen to you now.
June 20th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Lovely, lovely! This story made perfect sense to me. I took notes.
Bonnie!
June 20th, 2008 at 4:16 am
Wonderfully funny. And inspiration for what to do the next time I am approached by guy-with-tracts.
June 20th, 2008 at 4:32 am
You gave me something to smile about on this Friday morning! Thank you!
June 20th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Oh my goodness, I LOVE this story
My doorbell has been ringing lately with a certain group of tract-pushing individuals. CAN’T WAIT to lay this on them.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:36 am
If you Alpha Primes are really on to us Control Agents inventing Framptons, we’re all in deep doodo. I suppose I’ll have to contact Gilli Whittingham-Smythe now and tell her to hold the mayonnaise and side order of colourful double-bluff fliers. Damn! Disinformation used to be a doddle…
June 20th, 2008 at 5:59 am
Great story!
June 20th, 2008 at 6:04 am
Never mind the Framptons! What about us Grils?
June 20th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Where did you get “grils”????? My family has been using this word ever since we saw it in a Readers Digest humor item a few decades ago. I had no idea it would have been picked up by anyone else. It is occasionally now supplanted by “grrrls,” but there are times when only “grils” will do.
As in your comment!
I’m excited! I feel like I’ve touched minds across a universe!
Bonnie!
June 20th, 2008 at 6:20 am
“And I hate liverwurst”…classic!
June 20th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Bonnie:
What About Us Grils? is the title of a piece of short scifi fiction written by Mel Gilden in the early 1970s (I think — that’s when I read it, anyway).
It takes it’s title for a piece of graffiti scrawled (in the story) on a public restroom wall. It’s three lines:
I like grils!
It’s GIRLS, stupid!
What about us grils?
I’ve used it as an in-joke, too, over the years.
K.C.
K.C.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:30 am
I’m going to check this out! Thank you for telling me about the short story. That graffiti exchange is exactly the way we remember it from Readers Digest unless, as is entirely possible, we’ve “remembered” the wrong source.
Bonnie!
June 20th, 2008 at 8:49 am
So fun! Loved it!
June 20th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Obviously, as an Alpha Prime, you’ve written this to somehow uncover more of the Pattern. That is a big No-No, and you know it.
If this story wasn’t so entertaining, there would have already been trouble. Consider yourself lucky.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:50 am
great story, made me laugh out loud, thank you Milton
June 20th, 2008 at 10:55 am
… What about those of us who have seen a Frampton in person? Where do we fit in?
June 20th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I posted a comment here earlier but it didn’t show up. Let me just repeat as closely as I remember, I really like this story. Funny yet decidedly deeper than just humor. Great job.
June 20th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Good one. Well written and nicely paced. A bit paranoid that passing the plate number to the Watcher’s, though.
June 20th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Loved it.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:12 am
This gave me a good laugh. Loved it.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:37 am
Thanks for the positive feedback, folks. Glad you enjoyed the story. But he didn’t give the license number to the Watchers; the implication is that he will us it to get the fellow’s phone number and address and call or visit to tell him more. Thanks again.
Milton T. Burton
June 28th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Comment by Joe Prentis,
Another great story by Milton T. Burton, who never fails to entertain.