Tourist Trap

Chapter 26

A smile spread across Sarah's face and she fought back tears. "Uncle Oscar? Is it really you?" 

"Why, hello Sarah. What brings you here?" the good doctor looked up in surprise. He was wearing a brown Hawaiian shirt and was seated around a long circular table with about ten other creatures of various sorts.  

Sarah ignored the others as she ran to her uncle and threw her arms around him. "Thank god you're alive! I was so worried about you!" 

"There there, sweetie," Dr. Octavius said soothingly as he patted her on the back. "I've been around the block a few times. I know a trick or two about staying alive." 

Max wandered casually into the room and shook his head back and forth a few times. "Well if this isn't a suspicious group of characters, I don't know what is. You! Old man! Unhand the lady immediately!" 

"Max," Sarah glared at him. "This is my uncle. Remember? The guy we've been looking for this whole time?" 

"Uncle he may be," Max shot an index finger in the air. "But what, pray tell, is he doing holed up with this gathering of rogues in a little room guarded by a bunch of deadly traps? Something rotten's in the air and last time I checked I sprayed on some deodorant this morning." 

"Oh, sorry, that might be me," a sickly-looking sewer rat spoke up. 

"Has it ever occurred to you he might be hiding for his life?" Sarah asked. 

Dr. Octavius let out a hearty chuckle as he looked Max up and down. "And who might you be, young man?" 

"I might be a certain Maximillian J. Toad! Part time detective and full time enforcer of the law! If you're pulling anything sketchy here, have no fear, I'll sniff it out. And then you'll rue the day you launched yourself on your pathetic little lowlife criminal career!" 

"Stop talking to my uncle that way, you stupid toad!" Sarah glared menacingly at him. 

Dr. Octavius laughed again. "It's all right, sweetie. I admire his spunk. Hello, Maximillian. I'm Dr. Oscar Octavius. Pleased to meet you." He stood up and extended his hand in greeting. 

Max eyed him suspiciously before taking his hand and giving it a cursory shake. "Kissing up is good, but I'm warning you. I'll be watching you like a hawk!" He pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at the old man. 

Dr. Octavius chuckled again and sat back down. "Please, have a seat you two. We were just about to begin." 

An oversized canary pulled up two empty chairs next to the good doctor and Sarah and Max sat down. All at once Dr. Octavius and the other ten creatures pulled off their Hawaiian shirts revealing t-shirts emblazoned with bad math and science jokes on them. Dr. Octavius wore a shirt that read "Kiss my asymptote," while a green squirrel on his left sported one that said "Mathematicians put the e^x in sex." A long haired cat on his right wore a shirt that read "The SN2 Mechanism: Because it's always good to hit it from the back side." The sewer rat's shirt read "Physicists do it at light speed." 

"What's going on here anyway?" Sarah asked. 

"Ah, many of the top scientific minds in Quartzwater City have gathered here today in secret to discuss the toenail issue one more time before I give my speech at the convention tomorrow." 

"What's the deal with this toenail thing? I don't get it." 

"Well, you see it's a bit of a complicated issue," Dr. Octavius said as he moistened his lips with his tongue. "We believe that we've isolated the location of the universe in which Quartzwater City resides to a single molecule that exists under the big toenail of a man named Steven Hinkleheimer who lives in Cleveland, Ohio, in our universe."