I am so easily amused
And here's the story that's a direct result of this post a couple days ago. Thanks to everyone who prodded encouraged me to write it.


The Cross-time Accountants Fail to Kill Hitler Because Chuck Berry Does The Twist

Mabel stumbled through the Doorway, fighting vertigo and nausea. As she leaned against the wall, waiting for the Blur to pass, a variety of smells--sweet tobacco, beery sawdust, and cheap perfume--told her that she'd hit her mark, a club in Memphis, mid-twentieth century.

"Aren't you a little young," slurred a familiar voice behind her, "to be hanging out in this blunt?"

"Joint," Mabel answered, spinning around, off-balance. Had her replacement found her so soon? Not that soon meant anything to the Cross-time Accounting Office. "It's a joint, but it's not that kind of joint. You're not a rookie any more, Womack--you've got to get the client's slang right."

"But you're not here for a client," Womack said. He wore a too-small suit, covered with dust like it had been pulled off a museum exhibit, which it probably had. "You skipped out on the Hitler audit. He's still alive and the twentieth century is unchanged."

She didn't care any more. "There's no way to balance lives in that spreadsheet--I've tried." She'd spent her whole career trying.

"So you're doing this instead? Look at you--tight dress, lipstick, high heel shoes--it's not exactly uniform. Tell me you're not going Button-down."

Benjamin Button had been the CAO's first auditor, the man who discovered that going into the past reversed the auditor's age. Button finished up as a small boy obsessed with writers. He ran away in time and never came back. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote down a garbled version of his story but no one knew what really happened to him. Going Button-down was the worst thing a cross-time accountant could do. Benjamin Button was the reason they made you stop missions once you got too young.

"I'm at terminal age tomorrow," she said, her voice trembling. "I only get one more trip through the Doorway. After everything I've done for the Office, I deserve one trip for myself." One trip to bring back one small, good thing from the century she'd grown to love, before the century destroyed it all, before she was never allowed to time jump again. "Wait here."

The band had run out on stage. Before Womack could stop her, she turned away, jumping and screaming for the lead singer's attention. When he saw her, she held up a band poster and a pen. "Can you sign an autograph for me?" she shouted over the cheers of the crowd. "It's my birthday tomorrow."

The singer was tall and lean, with an Errol Flynn mustache and a shiny pompadour. He winked at his band mates, shifted his guitar to one side, and knelt beside her. When he smiled it made her knees feel weak; she told herself it was just the last effects of the Blur. "Sure," he said. "How old are you going to be?"

"Sixty--" She caught herself, remembering how old she looked, not how many years she'd lived. "Sixteen."

"Ooooh!" He winced and shook his head, signing with a big flourish. "I'm going to remember you, in case I see you again in a couple years. What's your name?"

"Maybelline," she said, already knowing they'd never see each other again.

He stood up, spun around, and strummed the guitar, the opening notes to a song she loved called "Ida Red." She felt herself grinning right back at him. The crowd applauded wildly as the band played it as their first song.

"Who's that?" Womack asked.

"Chuck Berry. He should have been famous, should have changed music forever. But this is his last show. Tomorrow afternoon he'll be kicked to death on Beale Street by a white trash nobody thug named Presley--duck!"

She grabbed Womack's shoulder, pushing his head down, shoving him toward a dark corner. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"Hoods," she said, jerking a thumb at the doors, standing open to let in cool air. Klansmen in bedsheets, with dunce-cap pillow cases on their heads and swastika-eagles on their chests, bullied the club bouncers. "You're a white man in a black club. If they see you, it'll give the hoods a reason to come in here and kill somebody."

"Then let's go home," he said, pulling the callback from his pocket.

She covered her hand with his, crumpling her autograph. "Not yet," she begged. "Go without me."

"I can't. You're off the mission team, but Martin wants you at the briefing."

"But there's no mission." The mission was cancelled when she went AWOL. She kept one eye on the door. Some of the people in the club were watching them too, wondering why a black woman was hiding a white man. Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea.

"It's a new mission. A suicide audit to the Führerbunker, end of April '45."

The hoods moved on and she let Womack up. "Who's crazy enough to volunteer for that?" she asked.

"You're looking at him," he said.

Womack? But his career... suicide? "It won't make a difference," she said. "There's no way to prevent Hitler's use of nuclear weapons in Europe, no way to prevent his alliance with the U.S. against the Soviets, dragging the war on another five years. Every time we try to change it we fail. That river of time is too big to divert."

"But we have to try," he said, brushing some of the dust off his suit. "It's all we can do. If my life balances out the spreadsheets even a little--"

"No, you're right." She looked at the crumpled autograph in her hand, embarrassed. What a selfish reason to abandon her mission. "I'll go back, help you plan, do anything I can."

"Thanks," he said. He gestured at the crowd. "You can have one dance first, if you want. You earned it."

She offered him her hand. "Do you want to learn the Twist?"

#

raecarson and my oldest told me the story makes little or no sense. (I won't say which one was little and which one was no.) Like the Monkeycon stories I wrote a few years ago, I suspect it is full of references that only amuse me. But it was fun to write.