Doorways to Everywhere (Tourist Trap Book 2)

Chapter 9

 They stopped by Dr. Octavius' lab, which was still cleverly concealed as a store selling broken glass and rusty nails. They wanted to check in and also pick up some dental floss, as Max fully intended to put in another solid bout of drinking. Sarah didn't want a repeat of the running out on the tab incident. Indeed she thought they should go back to the hole in the wall and pay the tab once they got the floss.

"Go back?" Max asked. "Are you crazy? We got away clean! Why the hell would we want to go back there?"

"I don't see how you can claim the moral high ground busting purse snatchers when you're skipping out on your tab," Sarah said.

"First of all, they're completely different things," Max said exasperatedly. "I need alcohol. I don't think that Chihuahua needed your purse for his very survival."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You wouldn't begrudge a starving man for stealing bread to feed his family, would you? Well, I'm like that starving man except it's for booze. Actually, come to think of it, I'm kind of hungry, too. After we score some floss maybe we could stop by a restaurant?"

Sarah quickly grew weary of arguing and tried to tune Max out as he blabbered on about how that bartender had been hindering an important criminal investigation by cruelly insisting on charging a poor detective for vital alcoholic resources. She was glad when they finally arrived at the lab and would have somebody else to talk to.

They walked through the door to find Dr. Octavius carefully examining a test tube full of a green liquid. He wore a pair of goggles that magnified his eyes so they looked like two dinner plates. Maurice was curled up in the corner taking a nap behind the rocking chair that the good doctor had just purchased.

Dr. Octavius flicked the test tube a couple times and stirred it with a glass rod. Slowly, before his eyes, the green color faded to a dull gray. "Hmm... most unusual."

"Hey Doc," Max shouted out in greeting. "Made any progress yet?"

Dr. Octavius looked up with a perplexed expression on his face. "Oh hello. No, no progress yet. I've talked briefly to some of my colleagues here, but haven't had a face to face meeting yet to see if they have any theories. In the meantime, I've been performing some experiments of my own. I've managed to witness the phenomenon occurring a few times now. I've never seen anything quite like it. The color green appears to be simply vanishing."

"I could have told you that," Max muttered. "In fact, I'm pretty sure I already did. So let's make with the results already, eh?"

"Patience, my young friend," Dr. Octavius chuckled.

"Patience? That's easy for you to say! You're not green! Speaking of which, you got a mirror around here anywhere? I need to keep track of my status."

"There's one over there against the wall, but I wouldn't-"

"Against the wall, gotcha!" Max cut him off as he waltzed over to the wall and picked it up. He leaned in for a close-up inspection and found his head inadvertently slid straight through the surface and emerged in the middle of some sort of strange turbulent environment that shook and crested like waves in a stormy ocean. Loud pops and explosions raged through the air around him, often followed by the instantaneous formation of odd vibrating masses that would collide with other such masses or blink out of existence entirely.

Max stared around in confusion for a minute and then decided to pull his head back out. "What the hell was that?"

"Just a bit of an experiment in quantum mechanics," Dr. Octavius said apologetically. "It's not finished yet. I think it's relatively harmless as long as it remains in responsible hands, but I wouldn't want to get lost in there."

"No, I don't suppose you would," Max said with a bit of a distant look in his eyes.

"I wouldn't trust it in irresponsible hands either," Dr. Octavius said. "It could be very dangerous indeed in that instance. Speaking of which, perhaps you'd better set that down."

"Are you implying I'm not responsible, Doc? I'm very responsible. Why, I was once responsible for a campus-wide outbreak of food poisoning back in my school days. Apparently I didn't seal a bunch of containers while I was working in the cafeteria. Oh yeah, and I accidentally left the freezer unplugged. Regardless, it was determined that I was most definitely responsible."

"Be that as it may, you have important work to do, so why not set the mirror down gently?"

"All right, all right," Max muttered. "You'd think a guy could be trusted with a task as simple as setting down a mirror. Jeez." He accidentally banged the mirror against the arm of the rocking chair as he set it down, but nothing disastrous seemed to happen. "Oops. No harm, no foul though. Right, Doc?"

"Please step away from the mirror," Dr. Octavius said.

Max took a giant step backwards and thrust his palms upwards. "I'm away. Hey is that a flame thrower over there?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact it is," Dr. Octavius said as he scurried over and grabbed it away from Max's reach. "Don't touch that either. As a matter of fact don't touch anything."

"You got it, Doc," Max said and began staring aimlessly off into space.

"How's Maurice doing?" Sarah asked concernedly.

"He'll be all right after he sleeps for a few hours," Dr. Octavius said. "I would have given him some of the old pep juice, but I appear to be out. I did manage to whip up some aspirin."

"That's great, but could we bum some floss off you?" Max said coming out of whatever reverie he had been lost in.

"Yes, of course. You'll be needing currency. Here's twenty canisters."

"I'll be in charge of those," Sarah said snatching them away from Max's greedily outstretched hands.

"What?" Max asked incredulously. "Why should you be in charge of the floss? Everyone knows chicks can't handle money."

"Because you'd blow it all on booze and strippers in one night," Sarah admonished him.

"Well you'll at least put me on salary again, right? I am working on this purse theft case of yours after all."

"All right. I'll put you back on salary."

"Woo hoo!" Max shouted as he thrust his fists in the air. He pulled them back with an uncertain look in his eyes. "What about expenses?"

"I'll cover your reasonable expenses," Sarah said.

"The definition of 'reasonable' to be negotiated later, I presume?"

"We'll take it on a case by case scenario, okay?" Sarah sighed.

"Deal," Max beamed. "So we should probably be getting to that bar to question my sources, don't you think?"

"One more thing before you go," Dr. Octavius said as he dug through a paper bag he had under the table. He pulled out a navy blue Hawaiian shirt and handed it to Sarah. "So you can blend in with the locals. Trevor Mastodon may be gone, but there's still a certain level of anti-tourist sentiment here. Besides, there's no need to stand out unnecessarily."

Sarah put the shirt on and gave her uncle a hug. She walked over to where Maurice slept and kissed him gently on the forehead. "Sleep tight, Sweetie Bear. I'll check up on you in a little while."

As they walked out the door Max whirled around and pointed his index finger at Dr. Octavius. "Stop fooling around and get to work, damn it!"