Walter Stickle and the Galactic Rangers, page 8
The captain glared at the view screen. “How do you know this name?”
“Everyone knows Tobine. He’s the Evil One, the criminal mastermind that you’ve been chasing for years from planet to planet and galaxy to galaxy, and who’s now hiding on Earth. He’s a hideous creature from a dark and lifeless world, though I see that as a contradiction, but that’s beside the point. He’s ruthless and cruel, wanted for crimes spanning many star systems.” Walter paused to catch his breath. Was he supposed to say “sir” after each sentence or just at the end? He couldn’t remember, so he said it anyway, “Sir.”
The captain looked at him oddly. “Mr. Stickle. Will you help us?”
“Absolutely,” Walter said. “This is amazing, beyond amazing.”
“We need your guarantees of utmost secrecy. You are to tell no one. Is that understood?”
“You have my word. My lips are sealed.”
“We will recontact you on this channel in twenty-four Earth hours with further instructions. Kleeg out.”
“Okay, bye. Out. Stickle out, I mean.”
Walter grabbed the remote, and when he turned off the TV, the Internet browser refreshed to a new page that displayed the error message, “404: Page Not Found.”
He called the dish company back, cancelled his appointment, agreeing to the twenty-five dollar charge for not giving them twenty-four hours notice before canceling, and went to bed.
Chapter 7
It was raining the next morning, but not hard enough to dampen Walter’s spirits. He laughed at his neighbor’s floodlights, and when he got up and accidentally kicked a slipper across the room in the dark, he didn’t bother to retrieve it, instead walking into the bathroom in one slipper and no bathrobe. He underbrushed his teeth, defeating the purpose of the automatic timer built into his electric toothbrush. He underbrushed his hair, leaving it as dull as the fake wood veneer covering his desk at work. He got dressed without tying his tie, a first for him. That’s what having something exciting happen does to someone whose life has been so normal for so long. Everything changes, including your dreams.
Walter didn’t remember his normal dreams too often. Dull, boring, and normal fantasies are hard to distinguish from a dull, boring, and normal reality, but Walter did remember his previous night’s dream. In it, he was at the Comic-Con and was surprised to be called up from the audience to join Kelso and the other actors in a staged fight scene in which Tobine took them hostage at ray-gunpoint. It was an intense struggle, and it wasn’t looking good until Walter pulled a classic cartoon move. He stepped on Tobine’s foot and pulled his leg out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor where the Rangers handcuffed him. It was Walter’s autograph the fans were asking for after that slick move, not the Rangers’ and not Kelso’s. Walter was the real hero, and after such heroics, Captain Kleeg of Galactic Ranger Scout Ship Alpha was begging him to put in for vacation time and join them on their next adventure. They were certain they could have him back before he’d used up all his accumulated days, but just in case, Kleeg put in a good word with Bill Ruben who was in the audience and who had already signed the proper “emergency advance on vacation” request form.
Of course, that was just a dream, but somewhere in the back of his mind, Walter thought that a TV series or even a movie based on the comic strip would be almost as good as his childhood dream of going into outer space, especially if he could play the role of the unpredictable Earthling, Ensign Stickle. He would provide the down-home insight and intuition of an inferior species in counterpoint to the predictable, methodical, and hyper-intelligent Rangers. It was a plot nuance he could see as definitely appealing to the younger crowd, a demographic the moviemakers all went after. He resolved on his way to work that morning to ask his boss about any potential conflict of interest with his government career without giving away his hopes and without giving away the secret he had sworn to keep. After all, a promise is a promise, even if it’s to a TV actor and not a real Galactic Ranger.
He made a double pot of coffee at the office that morning, something he usually did on hump day, and skipping the front-page news, he settled in at his desk with the Galactic Rangers.
The first panel was a drawing of Captain Kleeg, staring at an ordinary-looking man in the view screen.
Walter sat up straighter and smiled ear-to-ear.
“This is Captain Kleeg of the Galactic Ranger Scout Ship Alpha. Identify yourself.”
“I’m Stickle,” the man said.
Walter couldn’t take his eyes off that ordinary face inside the view screen. It was his, or at least vaguely like his, or so he told himself, but it was most definitely his name. He should have worn a gray suit. That would have been a more proper way to greet his fellow Ranger actors for the first time. He moved on to panel two.
The view screen was dark. They had cut transmission.
“Recommendations,” said Captain Kleeg.
“The Congress of Planets has forbidden all but emergency contact with this species,” Gak said.
Sparks disagreed. It was drawn in the deep furrows on his face. “Captain, we need the human’s help. We could be walking into a trap.”
Walter remembered more happening at that point the previous night, but realized the cartoonist had to distill the events down to their essence to fit into the rigid format of a three-panel comic strip. Galactic Rangers: The Movie would do justice to that scene.
The third panel showed the captain talking to Walter again. “Will you help the Galactic Rangers?” said the captain.
“Yes, I will help,” said the one called Stickle. Walter didn’t like the way Kelso portrayed him with such robotic dialog, but he couldn’t stop smiling. After all, it was him, Walter Stickle, ordinary guy, helping the Galactic Rangers, syndicated in hundreds of newspapers throughout the country, on interactive TV, and soon to be a movie. Good-bye normal. Hello stardom.
“Next: The search for the scout!”
Walter put the paper down when he heard someone knocking. Realizing that he had forgotten to prop the door open to let out yesterday’s smells, flush the toilets, and straighten up the waiting room before Mildred arrived, he ran to the front door to let her in.
“Sorry, Mildred,” he said. “I’m a little out of whack this morning.”
She smelled the coffee and looked around him to Red’s desk. “It’s hump day. No doughnuts?”
“I completely forgot. I think we have leftover bagels in the fridge.”
She sighed at the floor as only a person who has practiced disappointment for seventy-two years can, then at the waiting room chairs all out of kilter, and then at Walter. She trudged off to get the push broom. Walter felt bad, so he left his jacket and tie in his office, jogged to the diner, waited forever in the breakfast take-out line, and bought a box of doughnuts. By the time he’d jogged back, he was all hot and sweaty and everyone was standing around eating the doughnuts Marilyn had brought in for hump day. The comics lay open on Red’s desk.
“Hey, there he is, the famous Stickle from Galactic Rangers,” Bill Ruben said.
Walter blushed.
“How’s it feel to be famous and handsome?” Marilyn asked, latching onto his arm harder than the sentient Grenubian Sucker Plants that had captured the Rangers a few months back when they had to lay over for emergency repairs on what they thought was an uninhabited planet.
“It’s just a name,” Walter shrugged. He didn’t want to lie. After all, that was a sin, but he was sworn to secrecy, so he decided that being vague was an acceptable way to resolve his inner conflict between the eighth of the Ten Commandments and his promise to the Rangers.
“It’s karma, Walter,” Red said, “and very far out.”
“He looks cute, Walter, just like you,” said Marilyn.
“You should have it framed and get Kelso to autograph it Saturday,” Mr. Ruben suggested.
“That’s a great idea,” said Walter. He took a doughnut and poured himself some coffee in an attempt to step out of the limelight, but his co-workers had only one thing on their minds that morning — the momentarily famous Walter Stickle, claims representative for the Social Security Administration and, coincidentally, Galactic Ranger.
“We should all go out and celebrate after work,” Marilyn said. “How about the Krazy Kat?”
“I can’t,” said Walter. “I still have that screen door to fix.”
“Oh, come on, Walter. Don’t be such a dork all the time. Have some fun for once.”
“I have fun,” he replied and smiled, thinking of last night.
“Don’t get all defensive. It was just a suggestion. After all, it’s not every day you get to be a star.”
“Maybe some other time,” he said. “So, Mr. Ruben, if they ask me to appear in the TV show or the movie, is that a conflict of interest?”
Bill Ruben laughed. They all did. “You’re a riot, Walter,” he said. “You, an actor? But, seriously, if lightning strikes and they offer you a bit part in a TV show, take it. It has nothing to do with Social Security. There’s no conflict as long as it doesn’t interfere with your work here, and it would be great publicity for the agency. I wonder if they would consider doing a public service commercial for us?” he mused, taking another doughnut.
“Do you think there might actually be a TV show?” someone asked.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Ruben said, “but it sounds like a great idea to me. Have you seen any more of those commercials, Walter?”
“No, no commercials,” he said. “What about you? Have any of you seen anything about Galactic Rangers on TV?”
No one had.
“Well, I hate to break up this little party, but it’s time to get to work, folks,” Mr. Ruben said.
Walter found it beyond difficult to focus on his work that morning. He was faithful to his normal routine of helping everyone who came through his door, he walked each of them back outside when they were done to make sure they had bus fare or remembered where they’d parked their car, but the part of him that was no longer normal had already left the launchpad and was rocketing through dark space in Galactic Ranger Scout Ship Alpha.
When lunchtime came, Walter closed his door and searched the Internet to see if there was any news about the Galactic Rangers, but there wasn’t. He looked up “interactive TV,” which he found to be called “iTV,” and read a few non-technical articles that claimed it was the TV of the future, not widely implemented and very expensive. There was some testing going on in California with live home audience participation on game shows, but the equipment cost for the average viewer was not yet practical and there were apparently too many glitches, such as the woman who appeared in her bathrobe when she forgot the show was on, and another who had intentionally appeared in far less.
He tried to connect to 71.256.135.123. He typed the number in three times, but each time the browser just took him to a search engine. So, he gave up and went outside for a break. The sun was shining again. He found Red smoking in the alley behind the building. He stood upwind of her, let the sun warm his face, and noted the time. Ten minutes of direct sunlight was his limit. He didn’t want skin cancer. He wanted to be a Galactic Ranger on TV.
“Slumming it, Mr. Far Out Celebrity?” Red asked.
“Funny, Red. You really shouldn’t smoke, you know. You’re filling your body will all sorts of toxins.”
“Yeah, groovy, isn’t it?”
“You know something about computers, don’t you?” Walter asked.
“Sure do. Have to. Like, know thy enemy, and all that,” she nodded. “Sun Tzu, Art of War. And computers are the enemy, for sure,” she said, taking a long drag on her cigarette.
“Do you know why a number would work one day and not the next?”
“Come again?” she exhaled and coughed.
Without a word about the Rangers, Walter explained how the IP address that had worked the previous night no longer worked from his office computer. “Do you think it has something to do with the agency’s firewall?” he asked.
“Firewall? Our firewall’s a joke. I could buy pot online from a distributor in Mexico at my desk if I wanted to, I mean, not that I do.”
“So what do you think it is?”
“Maybe the site’s down. What did you say the address was? I’ll check it out later.”
“71-dot-256-dot-135-dot-123.”
“Bogus,” she said.
“What do you mean, ‘bogus?’”
“I mean bogus, Walter. That number is bogus. You can’t have an octet above 255.”
“A what?”
“The four groups of numbers are called octets. The most any one can be is 255 because that’s the largest number possible in a hexadecimal byte.”
“So, in English…?”
“Number’s too big, dude.”
“Then how did it work last night?”
“It didn’t. You must have written it down wrong or typed something other than what you wrote.”
“That’s weird,” he said.
“Definitely a classic,” Red nodded.
As she exhaled again, the wind shifted and Walter coughed.
“Sorry,” she said, snuffing out her cigarette against the wall of the building. She placed the extinguished butt into a plastic bag that she sealed and stuffed into her pocket, sprayed a breath freshener in her mouth, and began unwrapping a candy bar.
Walter’s ten minutes were up, so he went inside. When he checked his email, he saw that there was a response to his query to Central Office. He had asked for a complete list of Social Security beneficiaries who had earnings from Pandactic Enterprises. What he had gotten was a spreadsheet of ten names and Social Security numbers with a few other pertinent pieces of information. Mr. Genischewitz was first on the list. That meant his claim had been approved. Walter wrote himself a note with a big smiley face on it to call Vivien Benoit later to give her the good news.
He scanned the rest of the list. They were all New Jersey residents, and their claims spanned a period of ten years. In fact, as he realized after sorting the data in chronological order, the claims were almost exactly one year apart from each other. That seemed strange to Walter, as did the fact that a company that manufactured ship parts and had been in business for at least thirty years had only ten employees eligible for Social Security. He had seen stranger things, but couldn’t think of any at that moment.
Accessing the online file for the next name on the list after Mr. Genischewitz, Walter paged through the documents submitted with the claim. There had been an initial denial on that one too. According to the narrative, the man had submitted an uncertified foreign birth certificate. After his claim was denied, he hired a lawyer who was able to obtain a certified copy to get the claim approved. The lawyer’s name was Vivien Benoit. Walter checked through the file and found the form SSA-1696 Appointment of Representative listing her address. Almost exactly one year to the day before Walter sat there staring stupidly at his computer screen and wondering at the weird coincidence, Vivien Benoit’s office had been in Hoboken, New Jersey.
He closed that file and accessed the next. Two years before, a Mr. Dornburger had filed for benefits in East Rutherford, New Jersey. His claim had been approved the next day. No hitches, no denials, no problems, and Walter was feeling better about things until he saw the checkmark in the “with representation” box on the application. He was feeling decidedly less better after finding the SSA-1696 and seeing that Vivien Benoit, Esq. had represented Mr. Dornburger from her office in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
It was time for his next appointment, Mrs. Hibble, one of his regulars who came in monthly like clockwork, more for Walter’s company than for help with any problem with her benefits. She was eighty-two and would spend a good hour chatting with him about this and that, and was always interested in how Walter was doing and whether he had found “the right woman” yet. Walter got her a cup of coffee with non-dairy creamer, just the way she liked it, and brought her a doughnut, knowing she never ate lunch on the days she came in to see him.
Mrs. Hibble launched right into her soliloquy with the story of her trek to the office that day. It had been cold and drizzling when she had gotten up at five, so she wore her lamb’s wool sweater and took an umbrella, but then after she’d started over to the office and the sun was out, she had gotten too hot in the sweater, and she had to stop to take it off. Thank God it wasn’t a pullover. Then, she felt cold again when it became cloudy. She didn’t remember that from the morning weather forecast. Then, someone almost ran her over crossing Broadway. The way people drive these days — not like it was when she still had her license. Walter listened and nodded, smiling and grimacing when appropriate, and thinking all the while about the open spreadsheet on his computer and the other names on the list.
After walking her out and pointing her in the right direction, he got right back to it. Three more names, three more cases of attorney representation by Vivien Benoit, and three different cities and towns in New Jersey — there was nothing illegal about it, but Walter didn’t like it. It wasn’t normal for someone to move around that often.
His next appointment took another hour. It was nearly closing time. He sent Bill Ruben a quick email that he would be working a little late and went back to the list. The remaining four claims were the same as the others. That there had been only ten employees of Pandactic Enterprises ever to collect Social Security seemed odd. That Vivien Benoit had represented every one of them was strange. That she had moved ten times in ten years was beyond odd or strange. It smacked of someone with something else to hide behind those Coke bottle glasses other than the most beautiful eyes in the world.
Walter dug deeper into the case. He filled out a cross-agency query to Internal Revenue for the tax returns of Pandactic Enterprises. Ten minutes later, he got a response. None of the company’s returns were available. IRS document retention policies required their destruction after seven years. Pandactic had been out of business for ten. That added “too convenient” to the growing list of things Walter found suspicious. He checked the state’s online corporation database for a record of filing to see who was behind the company, but Pandactic had never incorporated and their establishment over thirty years ago predated computer records. He went back through all ten files looking at the W-2s. They seemed fine to him. Pandactic had always been located in Washington Hills, New Jersey, and by his reckoning all ten people had been with the company for about thirty years. All the right blocks were filled out on the forms, and by all appearances everything was in order. It just wasn’t right.
