Barkley Bohner, Celebrity Philosopher

Chapter 26

I hastily excused myself and headed for the bathroom. I closed the door, sat on the toilet, and took a breath. It had been one crazy evening.

As you will recall, Moosh woke me up from a dream involving me debating William F Buckley Jr. This wasn't a dream, as such, more like a life rerun. After the debate – back in my real life – I found myself in even greater demand as an authority on things I knew absolutely nothing about. 

In 1999, I appeared on Time Magazine's inaugural list of 100 most influential people in the world. Time credited my theory of improbability for just about every recent advance in science, plus cited me as the only sign of intelligent life in the punditocracy. 

As if this were not bad enough, the magazine also anointed me as the man who gave James Brown his funk.

Five years later, Time decided to make the list an annual one. I have appeared on every list, except in 2008. Ironically, that was the year I rescued Obama's Presidential campaign from his own people, which cleared the way for his historic victory.

But Moosh wasn't interested in all that. We were less than two days from toast falling up and we had one hell of a quantum puzzle to solve. The key to the puzzle, of all things, was the Secret Betsy's, who, coincidentally, were trying to kill me.

The Secret Betsy connection was an accidental discovery based on Moosh doing his own cross-checking with Quincy. As you recall, Quincy's own Improbability Drive spat out three Betsy-related dots, then stalled.

My own Drive replicated Quincy's results. 

A little later – after I recovered from Quincy almost killing me – we managed to get my Drive going based on my improbable account of "Betsy's Revenge."

"Betsy's Revenge" cleared up the logjam. Out came dots Newton, Darwin, Little Bighorn, and Mahler, all with significant Betsy connections. Or, closer to it, their men, who they now allowed to live as a sort of controlled experiment. These men became known as "bug-collectors," responsible for the English Enlightenment. We also had Barkley Bohner, Man of Action.   

Then my Drive stalled out. We tried to get it going by entering Funk Barkley, but the drive only emitted a fizzerfart. 

Clearly, Funk Barkley belonged in the sequence, but we needed to find an earlier dot.

Then Moosh got me settled into free-associating. I talked about the outlaw Betsy the Brave who killed Custer at Little Bighorn. In the course of narrative, I just happened to mention the now ubiquitous country of Ruthegonia. Next thing, I'm entering Ruthegonia into the Improbabitity Drive. Next thing, the Drive spits out Nikola Tesla.

Then the Drive does something totally unexpected. It backs up four hundred years as if looking for a valuable it dropped and zeroes in on Luca Pacioli. The Secret Betsy Empire employed Pacioli as an accountant. Pacioli later worked for the Duke of Milan, who also had Leonardo da Vinci on his payroll.

While in the employ of the Duke of Milan, Pacioli taught da Vinci mathematical proportions. This included the golden mean and Fibonacci sequences.

Da Vinci used these proportions only as a rough guide. Had he stuck strictly to the numbers, he would have produced some very strange-looking paintings.

But, of all things, one such painting may actually exist. We do have record of a certain Blue Madonna that he painted in Hungary and which went missing soon after.

So now we have Moosh insisting that da Vinci not only painted The Blue Madonna by the numbers, but that, four hundred or so years later, at the invitation of a group of Secret Betsy's, Tesla – THE Tesla – secretly viewed the painting in nearby Ruthegonia, where he immediately grasped its significance and went on to invent the twentieth century. 

Call me a skeptic. We have no written record, no eyewitness account, certainly none from Tesla, who has been dead for seventy years. But when I pointed this out to Moosh, every molecule in his body froze, then became animated.

THUMP! 

"Dunstar!" I heard from the other side of the bathroom door. "You coming out?"

"In a second," I replied. I got myself together. Here goes, I thought. I opened the door 

"It's about time," he said.

"Can't a guy take a shit in peace?" I asked 

"You didn't take a shit. You just sat on the toilet."

"But I sat with my pants down," I protested. "I could have taken a shit."

"Your intentions were honorable. Now take a seat. I have something to tell you."

A steaming Earl Grey was waiting on the table. I sat down. I took a sip.

"You ready?" said Moosh, from his position by the counter.

"Ready," I said.

Moosh had his own cup of tea. He picked it up, and set it right back down, without taking a swallow. "Okay," he said. "Here goes. Remember Quincy? He said the only one who can save toast from falling up has been dead seventy years."

Which would be Nikola Tesla. Unfortunately, there was a major catch to Moosh's brilliant deduction. "If Tesla's been dead for seventy years," I said, "then he can't possibly help us."

Silence from Moosh, then: "Not if he has a time machine."

Hit me on the head with a meteor. If it were anyone but Tesla we were talking about, I would be questioning Moosh's sanity. But we do know that Tesla had been working on a time machine. Not only that, he was the one man capable of building one.

This meant that – thanks to da Vinci – Tesla had already solved the reality puzzle. You could not build a time machine, otherwise.

It took me two tries to find some air to breathe. "So Tesla knows how to fix reality," I said. "And he needs to show up on location – here, right now."

"Good thing he has a time machine," Moosh said. 

Good thing, I agreed.

"And maybe he needs your help," Moosh said.

My help? Me?

"You're the one who came up with the Improbability Drive."

True.

"And Tesla, he probably needs to build an earth resonator, some kind of fix-reality machine. I'm guessing he doesn't have the parts for such a machine back in his own time."

This meant he needed someone to show him around Home Depot and Radio Shack. This was so crazy – so freaking improbable – it had to be true. Moosh caught the look in my eye. "Pretty amazing," he said.

"Pretty amazing," I agreed.

"Good thing for Tesla," he said.

"Good thing for Tesla," I agreed.

Moosh picked up his tea and almost sipped it, then set it down. "So anyway," he said, "we have this whole riddle of reality that involves everything from the Battle of Hastings to socks disappearing in the dryer that da Vinci encoded into a painting which went missing but which Tesla can sort out for us."

"That about sums it up," I said.

"So all we have to do," said Moosh, "is wait for Tesla to show up."

"And if he doesn't?" 

Moosh made for the door. "I'm guessing the end of reality is going to make the apocalypse look like a sweet sixteen pajama party pillow fight." He tossed me an ancient cell phone on his way out. "Just let me know when your guest arrives."