Mark Dunn - The Age Altertron

In which Rodney and Wayne wake one morning to discover that something isn’t quite right…again

Generally, it was Rodney who woke first, though, on occasion, his twin brother Wayne, who had a better nose for morning bacon than Rodney, would be off and down the stairs before Rodney knew it. But most often it was the younger of the two brothers who rose first and who knew first what kind of a day it was going to be.

Now, some days were fine and exactly what Rodney and Wayne expected them to be. Aunt Mildred would have breakfast waiting and a cheery “good morning” for both of her thirteen-year-old great-nephews. Sometimes there would be more than just bacon on the table. Rodney and Wayne would sit down to oatmeal with cinnamon or cinnamon buns or cinnamon toast. Aunt Mildred was quite fond of cinnamon and would sprinkle it on whatever she could, and her great-nephews Rodney and Wayne hardly ever complained (except when she put it on the scrambled eggs, because then the eggs tasted odd).

Aunt Mildred, you see, had begun craving cinnamon several months earlier when everything that was granular and sprinkleable in the town of Pitcherville was turned to cinnamon. This included most of the herbs and spices on Aunt Mildred’s kitchen herb and spice shelf, but also all the bath powder and tooth powder in town, and even all the sand in all the town sandboxes!

be the kind of thirteen-year-old boy you most wanted to be.

These were the days in which men wore brimmed hats to work and women wore hats of their own that sat flat and funny upon the head. These were the long-gone days in which the milkman brought not only milk but fresh creamy butter to your door, and the egg man brought eggs, and there were also people who came to your door to sell you brushes and vacuum cleaners or came to give you something they felt was important for you to read. These were the days in which television sets had rabbit-ear antennas that sat on the top and spindly antennas affixed to the roof, antennas that would pull three whole channels down from the sky, each channel giving you every kind of cowboy story you could ask for. And the only computer in town was the one to be found at Pitcherville College. It occupied nearly every inch of one whole room where it blinked and beeped and spat out punch cards.

Then there were the other mornings — the mornings when things were not right at all. Sometimes Rodney would wake, still drowsy with sleep, and wonder to himself, even before he had opened his eyes: “Will this be a normal day, or will it be one of the other kind?” And he only needed to open his eyes to learn the answer!

One Saturday morning in September, Rodney and Wayne woke to discover that everything in their town was the color of ripe peaches. Wayne pulled back the covers from his peach-colored bed and slapped his bare feet upon the peach-colored rug that covered the peach-colored floor of the bedroom he shared with his brother. He went to the window and looked out and could hardly tell one thing from another, because the lawn, the trees, the street upon which the boys lived — everything that he could see from his window— was the same color.

Peach.

“Hey, get a load of this!” Wayne exclaimed to Rodney, as he waved him over to the window. (Rodney could hardly see Wayne’s waving arm, since it was the same color as the wall.) “It looks like Mr. Lipe’s car just crashed into Mr. Edwards’ car, and lookit over there.”

“Where?”

“Where I’m pointing. Squint your eyes a little. See Mrs. Carter and Mrs.Wyatt? They’re both sitting on the sidewalk rubbing their heads. It looks like they just bumped their heads together.”

The boys stood for a moment longer at the window, whistling in wonderment, before putting on their weekend clothes and going down to join their aunt in the kitchen.

“It’s terrible, just terrible, boys!” said Aunt Mildred in a fretful tone. “Everything is the color of peaches — everything except for peaches themselves. For some reason they’re now blue. ”

Wayne picked up one of the blue peaches from the fruit bowl on the table. “I wonder if they still taste like peaches.”

“Well, there’s no time to find out. You must go to Professor Johnson’s house this instant and ask him how long we’re going to have to endure this. It’s a terrible inconvenience — worse than all the others that have befallen this unfortunate town. While you are speaking to him, ask him why we deserve this — why should we always be put to such trouble? I would take you boys by the hand and run away from this place as fast as our six legs could carry us were it not for that dastardly force field that prevents any of us from leaving.”

Aunt Mildred sat down in her peach-colored chair and fanned herself with a peach-colored Ladies’ Home Journal that was otherwise useless to her now.

Wayne went to his aunt and kissed her on the forehead. He stepped back and stood, posed just the way his favorite comic book hero, Mighty Mike, stood, with one hand upon his hip and the other raised in the air as if he were about to give a speech. Standing in this silly way, Wayne proclaimed, “Have no fear, kind lady! The evil that lives behind this…this…”

“ Peachiness ,” said Rodney, trying to be helpful.

“Peachiness — it will not stand! And now, my faithful companion Rodney, let us fly to the laboratory of good Professor Johnson.”

Rodney hated the role of the faithful companion to Mighty Mike. The superhero’s true companion, Beaver Boy, was generally ignored by Mighty Mike except when he needed a dam built.

On their way to Professor Johnson’s home laboratory, the boys were careful not to collide with any trees or mailboxes or lampposts. “Aunt Mildred is wrong,” said Rodney. “This is not the worst thing that has ever happened to the town of Pitcherville. I can think of a dozen other calamities that were much worse than this one.”

Then the boys began to list all of the strange things that had happened to Pitcherville in the last eleven months. Rodney and Wayne remembered the day that the Troubles had started; it was the same day their father disappeared. It was also the day that Professor Johnson, not knowing about Rodney and Wayne’s father, had come to deliver his own sad news: his laboratory assistant Ivan and two professors at his college had vanished without a clue. The Professor was going from house to house helping the police with their search. He was also curious to know if his neighbors were having the same sort of personal trouble that he was having.

The personal trouble was this: every time the Professor opened his mouth to speak, all that came out was a series of numbers. And when the Professor looked all about him, he saw nothing but numbers in all the places where words usually appeared: throughout his daily newspaper, for example, or inside his copies of Science Today magazine. All the words on the street signs and store signs had also been replaced by numbers. Even the town billboards had only numbers on them. For example, the Plash Detergent billboard didn’t sell Plash Detergent anymore. It sold a product called “86–42,” although it had the same picture on it as before: a happy woman holding up clothes that gleamed with cleanness.

In answer to Professor Johnson’s numerical inquiry, Rodney shrugged and said, “Fifty-seven.”