The Launch

Chapter Two

We are almost to Syracuse by the time he wakes up. It is 11:26pm on the dash clock. At first, he is just moving around and making smacking sounds with his mouth. But when he goes to wipe his mouth he opens his eyes to see why his hands are stuck together. He sees the plastic ties and sits up and looks around. He sees us and blinks his eyes and looks out the window.

"Who are you guys? Where am I? What's going on?"

"God, I hate your whiny, nasal, superior voice," I say. "Who's superior now, fuck face?"

"Are you with that janitor? What do you want? Do you want money?"

JC turns around. "I was the janitor. Now I'm the jailer. And he's the jester."

"Alliteration," I say, keeping my eyes on the road. "Nice."

"Syracuse 15? We're going to Syracuse?" Ray is just finding out about the chain around his waist, I can see in the rear view mirror. He's looking a little paler now.

"So, listen," says JC, sticking out his hand. "We've never met, but my name is JC Dubois and this is my creative partner, Watson Sinclair."

Ray doesn't move to shake his hand. He just sits there looking at us one at a time and you can see the hamster in his head is turning his wheel. Finally, out he comes with, "You do that strip. The one about marriage?"

"You see that, Watson? He does remember us. We're not as far off his radar as we thought. You've really touched us, man. That was special."

"And you're... kidnapping me?"

"There you go," I say. "That wasn't so hard."

"I can't believe it. You just —"

JC cuts him off. "I can't believe you're surprised. You love demographics so much. Kidnapping is huge with 30-something cartoonists."

"You..." He pulls hard at the chain around his waist. "You both will fry for this! Kidnapping is a federal offense. You'll —"

"That would be true, if we were American," I say. "But we're not. Remember those pesky FedEx bills in the beginning when you sent us packages and acknowledged our existence? They went to Canada. That's Ca-na-da. It's a whole other country."

"Yes," says JC. "Now it becomes an international issue and it will depend on extradition treaties. It will be very messy."

Ray looks from me to JC and then back. "I have such a headache. What was that sweet smelling stuff in the rag?"

Ah, good question. At last he is thinking clearly about everything. This was the part I was most worried about. It was easy enough to find a recipe for making your own chloroform on the Internet, but everybody warned that getting the dosage right was critical because even just a little bit too much would be lethal. We didn't want to kill the heartless motherfucker (much); we just wanted to knock him out for a while. JC was in charge of our research, as is only befitting his expertise in that arena. Of all places to find up-to-the-minute information, we found the best source was the online version of "The Lancet" with articles from 1847. We, like many of the top chirurgeons of the day, had been searching for a New Anæsthetic Agent, More Efficient than Sulphuric Ether! It told us exactly how many drops to place in the cone in order to render our patient insensate for a few hours.

The recipe wasn't all that hard, mostly involving buckets and ice cubes. If we were interested in making a pipe bomb or a nuclear reactor, those recipes are there also. We are truly living in a golden age! A golden age in which rapists and sociopaths share information on the many nefarious purposes for chloroform that I shudder to think about. Just as I shudder at the petty dictators of the world with some plutonium, a neutron deflector and Google. We are all in a lot of trouble here.