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Springfield Elementary
The sun rose high into the Springfield sky, chasing the shadows away from almost every corner of the small schoolyard. The practiced eye of Principal Skinner, however, knew that there were always shadows to be found. There were always those dark envelopes of wrongdoing waiting for young men to find them. It was his duty as the Principal to root out those corners of sin and iniquity. Children couldn’t help themselves, so he knew he would have to help them himself. Mother would have been proud.
“Willie!”
“Yes, Principal Skinner.” The red-haired Scotsman brandished a huge set of pruning shears with a barbaric gleam in his eye. His family kilt was tied properly around his waist and the cold spring air made him feel alive again.
“That bush over there – I think it’s grown a bit big….”
“EEEEYAAHHHH!” The Scottish gardener let out a war whoop as he leaped to the bush. A furious tumult ensued with branches and shears engaging in a frantic dance of whirling steel. In a second it was done – the bush was nothing but a pile of leaves and twigs. Much to the chagrin of four school-kids playing dominoes behind the formerly thick cover.
Four sets of wide eyes stared up and the impressive figure of Skinner and the wide-eyed, panting gardener. A full second passed in eerie silence before one of the children yelled, “SCATTER!”
The children darted off in separate directions. Skinner’s photographic memory, though, logged each of their faces for later reprimands. For now, he would capture their leader. “SIMPSON!”
Young Bart Simpson was fast, but Willie was determined to catch him. Bart ran quickly towards the schoolyard fence. Willie smiled: he had the little brat cornered up against the six-foot chain link fence. “There’s no escapin’ now, Laddie!”
“Eat my shorts!” Bart had a plan, though. As he reached the fence, he jumped up on it and began to try and use his feet to climb the fence like a ladder. Unfortunately, Bart had not counted on the fact that his latest hero, Jacky Chan, had much more practice than he did at this maneuver: his first tennis shoe got traction, but the second shoe missed and he feel in a heap at the foot of the fence. “Oh, man.”
Willie triumphantly snatched young Bart up by the collar and carried him over to Principle Skinner.
“Good work, Willie. Let’s take him to my office.”
* * *
Principal Skinner leaned back in his chair. He had kept Bart waiting for nearly twenty minutes now. While he had letting Bart simmer, Skinner had been doing some light reading: “The Criminal Psychology of Grade School Miscreants” by Dr. **insert name here***. He was trying to decide on a new strategy with Bart. He knew there must be some way to get through to that boy and change him from his evil ways.
“Mr. Skinner?”
The voice pager on his desk lit up with his secretary’s voice. “Yes, Gloria?”
“There’s a man here to see you, Sir.”
“Hmmm.” Skinner glanced over at his calendar and didn’t see any appointments for today. He thought about it for a moment and decided that indeed he hadn’t made any appointments today. Maybe he was a friend of mother’s. “Does he have an appointment?”
“No, Sir, he doesn’t.”
Ordinarily, he would have refused him anyway, just on principle, but Principal Skinner also knew that it created the perfect excuse to have Bart sit and stew some more. “Show him in, please.” Skinner sat back, smiling to himself for his cleverness. Hopefully this wasn’t another textbook salesman.
Gloria opened the door to his office and Skinner immediately noticed she had fixed her hair and put on slightly more makeup than was usual for this time of day. “Principal Skinner, this is Jarod Fermi.”
Even Skinner, who was unaccustomed to gauging the glances of women, knew that Jarod Fermi had caught the eye of his normally mousy secretary. Her lustful eyes watched the tall man stride into the office and her hand involuntarily moved up to straighten up her hair. Skinner rose quickly to greet Jarod. “Good morning, Mr. Fermi. How can I help you today?”
“It’s nice to meet you, Principal Skinner – and please, call me Jarod.”
“Okay, Jarod,” Skinner sat, amazed that his secretary had not yet returned to her post. “Gloria?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Jarod, what brings you to our fine school this morning.” Skinner’s practiced eye scanned the dark-clad man filing each detail away for later use. He was tall, probably 6’2”, weighed probably less than 190lbs, had black hair and a mole below his right eye. He looked like he needed a shave, too.
“Actually, I’m looking for one of your students: Bart Simpson.”
Skinner immediately became suspicious: had Bart done something wrong, or was this just another of his schemes to get out of school? It wasn’t every day that a man in black came looking for a student, and when it was Simpson, Skinner knew to be extra careful. “I’m sure you can respect that we maintain the safety and privacy of our students, so we don’t just let that information out. What do you want him for?”
“I understand that he owns an abandoned warehouse in town. I am interested in renting it from him.”
Skinner laughed. “I’m sure that you’re mistaken, Bart doesn’t own any warehouse.”
“He is the registered owner. He purchased it at auction a few years ago for one dollar.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Fermi, but I can’t…”
Bart suddenly burst into the office. “I’m Bart Simpson.”
Jarod turned around, looked squarely at Bart and extended his hand. “Hello, Bart. I’m Jarod.”
“Cut the crap, man. You want to rent my warehouse or not.”
“Bart – what are you doing in here?” Skinner raised his voice at the boy, but he may as well have been millions of miles away for all the effect it had.
“Yes, I do. Is a thousand dollars a week enough for the rent?”
“Hy carumba! You bet!” Bart reached out quickly and shook Jarod’s hand.
Jarod reached around to his back pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “Okay, here’s two weeks advance pay. I should be here for about three or four weeks. I’ll pay the rest when I leave.”
“Yes!” Bart snatched the money out of Jarod’s hand.
Jarod immediately straightened. “Thank you, Bart. Thank you for your assistance, Principal Skinner.” The tall man walked out of the office as suddenly as he entered.
Skinner was shocked at the exchange he had witnessed, but it only took a second for him to remember that he now had Bart in his office. “Why don’t you sit down, Bart, so we can talk about what you were doing in the playground.”
“Awww.”
* * *
Springfield Nuclear Plant
“Smithers.” The decrepit man known to his friends and enemies alike as Montgomery Burns pushed his chair back a bit from his desk. It was time to begin the interviewing process for the new Safety and Training Officer. The damned government was again trying to dig into his pockets by passing some nandy-pandy law that he needed an entire Safety department, not just one man. It looked like it would be a long day.
“Yes, Mr. Burns?” The enthusiastic face of Waylan Smithers peered around the office door.
“Escort the first applicant in.”
“Yes, Sir!”
The door closed briefly, only to be opened a moment later by Smithers escorting a tall, black haired man that looked like he would be more likely to break into the place rather than ask for a job here. “Mr. Burns, this is Jarod Fermi.”
“Come closer, Jarod.”
Mr. Burns crossed his hands on the desk in front of him and waited patiently for Smithers to set his resume down. Smithers quickly moved into a position behind his superior and properly inserted the neatly typed resume into Burns’ field of vision.
“Lets see here, Mr. Fermi: the Hanford reactor in Washington, clean-up at Chernobyl, former regulatory inspector for OSHA and the EPA, doctorate in nuclear fission from MIT? Should I be impressed here, Mr. Fermi?”
Jarod was caught a bit off guard by the comment. “Uh, I don’t know.”
“Go away.”
Jarod had never failed to get a job before, so it was understandable, perhaps, that he did nothing but ask the obvious question, “Why?”
“Smithers, remove this man from my office.”
Suddenly, the puzzle piece clicked in Jarod’s mind. “Mr. Burns, sir. If you think I’m overqualified….”
“Overqualified? You’re not overqualified to wash my car.” Burns’ hand began to snake over towards the trapdoor button on the side of his desk. If this goody-two-shoes gave him any more trouble, he’d be food for the alligators.
“What I mean to say, Mr. Burns is that I made that whole resume up. It’s all nothing but lies.”
Burns’ hand stopped. “Lies? You wanted me to hire you based on lies?”
“No, I just really, really need this job. My family hasn’t eaten in weeks and I need the money. I just made some things up to see if you would hire me.”
“Smithers, check it out. Call these people and see if they have ever heard of ‘Jarod Fermi.’ We shall see, Jarod, whether or not you’ve told me the truth here.”
During the ensuing ten minutes, both men sat in silence. Twice during the time, Burns entertained thoughts of releasing the trapdoor, but his curiosity always got the better of him. Anyone who would blatantly lie during an interview and then beg for the job would be perfect for this new position. He always liked to have his employees right where he wanted them: under his thumb.
“It’s true, Mr. Burns.” Smithers entered without knocking or announcement. The look on his face was one of complete disgust. “Not a single job on this resume was able to be verified. Shall I have him thrown out of the building?”
“No Smithers, you should give our new Assistant Director of Safety and Training a tour of the facility. Welcome aboard, Jarod.”
Smithers looked at first to be completely baffled, then slowly the realization of Burns’ scheme dawned across his face, brightening it noticeably. Jarod similarly looked a bit confused. “Mr. Burns, don’t you think we should discuss salary first?”
Burns thrust his head across the desk in a very dramatic way, “Don’t push me. You’ll be paid what I decide to pay you.”
Jarod got the message.
“Mr. Burns, what shall I do with the others?”
“Tell them that the employment search is over. You can give them a ten second head-start for the main gate.”
* * *
As Smithers gave Jarod the tour of the facility, Jarod couldn’t help but notice two glaring facts about the facility: there appeared to be very few people running it, and those few people he did see wore absolutely no protective equipment. Smithers had donned a hardhat for the tour, but had not offered one to Jarod. Then, Jarod noticed the numerous employees were not wearing protective jumpsuits. A few of them were even wearing sandals instead of steel-toed shoes. Jarod immediately began to marvel at the simple fact that most of these me appeared to still be alive.
As the two of them passed the Safety Control Room, where he would soon be working, Jarod could hear a ruckus from the meeting hall about two doors down from the Control Room. Smithers frowned and led Jarod into the break room. Glancing at his watch, Jarod carefully noted that the employees must have a coffee break at or around two-thirty. The din of the room increased exponentially as they entered the room to find all of the people in the room huddled around the three windows overlooking the parking area.
“Look at that one run!”
“Oh no! Look out!”
“Oh! That’s going to leave a mark!”
Smithers tried twice to unsuccessfully get the crowd’s attention, then simply informed Jarod that the Safety Director was somewhere in the crowd. Smithers vanished without further trace.
Jarod wandered over to the window just in time to see the last of the prospective employees running headlong into the chain link fence as two dogs descended on him. Strewn about the parking lot were bodies, yapping dogs and burly security guards dragging the semi-conscious interviewees across the ground and out into a pile on the other side of the gate. Slowly, the crowd started to move away from the window.
Jarod calmly retreated back a few steps and stood in the center of the room, waiting for someone to notice him. Two minutes later, he cleared his throat loudly.
“Hey, who’s the new guy?” A medium-height man with a large nose finally noticed Jarod. His voice was nasally and his accent seemed faintly New York.
“Yeah, Lenny. It looks like they actually hired one this time. Hey there, my name’s Carl.” This man was a nice looking African-American who appeared to be quite educated. He was the exception in the room.
“My name is Jarod Fermi, but you can just call me Jarod.”
“Hey, Jarod, I’m Lenny.”
“Hello, Lenny. I’m looking for Homer Simpson.”
“DOH!”
Jarod whirled to see the rotund bald man who had responded to his request. His white shirt was littered with the glaze and sprinkles of a half-dozen donuts and he didn’t look like he’d showered this decade. “Homer?”
“Aw, what did I do now?”
“Nothing, I work for you now. I’m the new Assistant Director of Safety and Training.”
“You work for me?”
“Well, yes.”
“Woo Hoo! Okay, then we have to set down the rules.”
“Rules?”
“Yes. First of all, you will not eat any donuts from the break room until I’m done eating my donuts. Okay?”
“Uh, okay, but….”
“No buts! Then, you’ll do everything I want and you’ll call me ‘Master Homer.’” Homer developed a far off look and he began to imagine himself on a plantation with hundreds of slaves addressing him as Master Homer. Even Marge and the kids called him that here. ‘Master Homer, would you like some more pie?’ ‘Master Homer, can I turn down your bed?’ ‘Another beer, Master Homer?’ “Oh-ho-ho-oh, another beer….”
Jarod cringed as a string of drool began to form on the corner of Homer’s large, simean mouth. Deciding to leave Homer engrossed in his vision, Jarod wandered out of the break room and back to the Safety Control Room. He was only mildly surprised to find it unlocked.
Once inside, Jarod sat down in the well-worn and sticky chair and began to survey the panel. Every dial on the panel was swaying to some degree – most well outside their normally safe parameters. Three alarm panels had been permanently silenced with duct tape.
Homer apparently had recovered enough from his dream to barge into the office behind Jarod. “Hey, Jerry, that’s my chair.”
Jarod got up slowly. “Homer, it’s Jarod.”
“Jerry, Jarod what’s the difference. Look, just so we don’t get in each other’s way, I’m going to let you sit here and monitor the nice panel for the rest of the afternoon. Now, if any of the lights or bells go off, just make them stop, okay?”
Jarod could feel his blood slowly boil, but instead of lashing out at the overweight oaf, he decided to let it be. He wanted him out of here this afternoon anyway, so what would it matter why he left. “Sure thing, Homer.”
“See you tomorrow, Jerry!” Homer departed with a whoop and a whistle.
Jarod immediately pulled open his briefcase and whipped out his computer.
* * *
Simpson Residence
Although Bart was extremely late getting home from school, Marge was not worried: Bart’s detention record was reason enough to not worry. As the clock hands rotated towards four o’clock, she began the preparations for the evening’s meal. The supermarket had been running a special on pork roasts, and she was putting the better half of a large pig in the oven for dinner. Homer would be excited.
As she hummed along, she glanced out the kitchen window towards Bart’s tree house. What she saw there made her drop her measuring cup full of flour. “Oh my God!” Out in back, Bart was supervising three other boys who were pulling on a pulley arrangement to lift a huge television into his tree house.
Not sure where he had stolen the television from, she rushed out to the backyard. “Bart Simpson! You get down here this instant!”
The other boys all froze, but Bart quickly regained their attention. “Steady, men! Lower it back down easy and we’ll start again in a second.” He deftly scampered down the planks serving as a ladder and ran over to his mother. “Mom, I really bought it, see!” He thrust a signed receipt from Short Circuit City, a Springfield electronics store.
Marge grabbed the receipt and saw that Bart had indeed paid cash for the television. “Mmmmmm. Where did you get this money for this?”
“I rented my warehouse to a guy today for $500 a week.” Bart figured he might just lose the money when his mom and Homer found out, so he decided he’d half the true figure when he told anyone what the rent was.
“But Honey, you only paid a dollar for it. I don’t like this.”
“But Mom!”
“No buts – bring that television inside and we’ll discuss this with your father.”
“Awww.” Now he knew he would never see that money, or his new TV, again.
“Now get inside and start working on your homework.”
Bart’s smallish friend Millhouse ran over quickly to Marge, “Mrs. Simpson, I already have dibs on that.”
“What?”
“Bart told us that he would pay us $10 a day if we did his homework.”
Bart quickly grabbed at his friend. “Millhouse!”
The damage had already been done. Marge turned her wicked eye back to her oldest son. “BART!”
“Awwww, Mom.”
“Inside now!”
The screech of tires and rumble of a holed exhaust pipe interrupted her wrath by announcing the early arrival of Homer. It was far to early for Homer to be off work, let alone home from his typical after-work stop at Moe’s Tavern. Marge instantly began to fear that Homer had once again managed to incur the wrath of Mr. Burns and they would again have to find a way to get Homer his tenuous job back.
Marge dragged Bart into the house just as Homer whistled his way in through the front door. “Hey, Marge, I’m home!”
Even Bart was a little nervous. He knew, though, that the best way to get out of trouble was to deflect his mother’s wrath from him to the next most likely target: his dad. “Hey, Homer! Get fired again?”
Homer was unphased. “Nope, my boy! I’m a manager now.”
“WHAT?!?” Marge and Bart’s jaws dropped in unison.
“That’s right!” exclaimed Homer as he brushed passed them towards the Duff beer in the refrigerator. “Mr. Burns hired me an assistant.”
Bart now thought up a new tactic for evading trouble. “Way to go, Homer!”
Marge was still unconvinced. “Homer, why are you home if Mr. Burns hired you an assistant? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
Homer’s smile was infectous. He reached down and scuffed young Bart’s hair. “Marge! You know I’m not qualified to do that job myself! What makes you think I’m qualified to teach someone else to do it? Besides, when the new guy screws up, I’ll be even more important around the plant.”
“Hmmmm.” Marge groaned her lack of confidence in Homer’s usual optimistic assessment of the situation.
*****
Burns quickly scanned the panel of monitors displaying the usual chaos and mayhem around the plant. “Ah, yes, Smithers, it’s good to see the plant is running smoothly.”
Smithers, poised as usual over the right shoulder of his employer, chimed his agreement. “Yes, Mr. Burns. It seems that the reactor is running smoothly.”
He glanced up at the monitor showing the reactor chamber with two alarm beacons flashing and people running back and forth across the screen with their arms waiving frantically.
“Wait! Smithers! What’s that man doing?”
Smithers’ practiced eye followed Mr. Burns’ thoughts to the monitor in sector 7C showing the safety control center. All that could be seen was a pair of legs extending out from underneath the panel. “I’ll get right on it, Mr. Burns.”
Smithers ran down from the office to the safety control center as quickly as his loafers would go. He burst through the door full in the knowledge that Mr. Burns would be watching him on the monitor. “You there, what are you doing!”
Jarod pulled himself from out under the panel. “Trying to get this panel working.”
“Oh, I thought you were sleeping.” Smithers apologized.
Jarod looked visibly hurt.
Smithers turned to leave. “Carry on!”
Jarod jumped up. “Do you know that this panel doesn’t work? Did you know that this panel can’t monitor anything in the plant or control anything in the event of a malfunction?”
Smithers wasn’t sure what to make of this line of questioning. “Is that important?”
Jarod couldn’t decide if that was a dry joke or actually a question. He chose not to answer and see where this went.
Smithers observed the silence for a moment. “I guess not.” He turned and left the new hire staring at his back.
* * * * *
Dinner time at the Simpson residence was the usual venue for Marge to gather her day’s list of Bart’s transgressions and Lisa’s triumphs and put them out for her husband to deal with. It was Wednesday, so that meant it was meatloaf night. Homer always liked meatloaf night. It was hard to get him to focus on the children when he was elbow-deep in grease.
“Bart, why don’t you tell your father what you were doing this afternoon.”
“Aww, Mom,” Bart groaned, clearly thinking that Homer’s newfound managerial status would have deflected attention from his new career in Real Estate, “tonight should be about the big guy, here.”
“Yeah, Marge” Homer chimed in. “Tonight should be about me!” Homer emphasized this point by spearing another slab of meat from the tray.
“Homer! Pay attention! I caught Bart today lifting a big-screen TV up to his treehouse.”
Homer quickly turned from a state of saturated-fat-fed bliss to anger and suspicion. “Who did you steal it from, boy?”
“Don’t have a cow, man!” Bart exclaimed. “I rented my warehouse to a guy! Honest!”
Homer, never the quickest out of the gates, paused to consider the possibility.
“How much did you rent it for, Bart?” his sister Lisa chimed in from the other side of the table, clearly interested.
“$500 a week.”
“FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!” Homer exclaimed.
“Yup.”
“PER WEEK!!”
“You got it, Homer”
“WOO HOO! We’re rich!”
“Hold on, there, Homer. Who said anything about we? That’s my warehouse and I rented it fair and square.”
Homer turned from glee to homicidal in a heartbeat. “Why you little…” He reached around the table and grabbed his son by the neck and began throttling him roughly.
“AARGKK!” Bart squeaked.
“Boys, stop it!” Marge barked. “No body’s renting anything!”
Both Bart and Homer stopped and stared blankly at her.
“We don’t know what this man could be up to, but if he’s willing to rent Bart’s old decrepit warehouse for $500 a week, it has to be no good. You are both going to march straight down there and give that man back his money and tell him that the warehouse is not for rent!”
“Aww, Mom!”
“Aww, Marge!”
“No buts! Now get down to the warehouse right now or I’ll have to call Chief Wiggam!”
Both Homer and Bart slunk out of the house, dejected.
* * * * *
Jarod was working at 5:02 when Mr. Burns and Smithers strode into his work station.
“Well, nubie, I hope you don’t think you’re going to be getting any overtime because you forgot to check the clock!” Burns was as friendly as a reef shark in a feeding frenzy.
Jarod was so surprised by the intrusion and abrupt comments he couldn’t formulate an appropriate answer.
“Any work done after five is strictly on your time.” Burns reminded him as they strolled back out of the Safety Control Room.
“I don’t trust that one,” Burns coolly added to Smithers as soon as they were out of the room.
“Why not, Mr. Burns?”
“I’ve been watching him all day and he’s done nothing but work.”
Smithers was clearly confused. “Isn’t that a good thing, sir?”
“Not when you’re a safety inspector, Smithers. Keep a close eye on that one.”
“Yes, sir!”
* * * * *
Jarod quickly gathered up his things. Now he knew that Burns was watching him closely. Fortunately he had anticipated this and had wired a remote transmitter that would send a direct feed from the plant’s computer to his private laptop. That way he could monitor and run the plant from anywhere in Springfield. Including the abandoned warehouse that he had rented from Bart Simpson this morning.
Briefly he had wondered whether or not the complete waste of DNA-strands mascarading as a safety inspector he worked for was related to Bart. Simpson, of course, was a pretty common last name and the odds of that fat, human sloth having any relation to a boy who at the age of 7 already owned a warehouse, four patents, a lifetime membership to the NRA and had spent time managing a few B-list celebrities was almost too remote for his brain to calculate.
Jarod strode confidently out of sector 7C and to the employee parking lot. He could see that some of the guys had apparently had some fun at the expense of his current car, spray painting “Welcome to Springfield” and “Happy 1st Day” on his car with only the slightest hints of dyslexia displayed.
Jarod opened the door to his car and drove downtown to the red-light district of town where the warehouse lay. As he headed towards the center of town, his usually acute vision failed to find any place he might find food that would meet the nutritional needs of his body.
He quickly passed a seedy seafood restaurant named _______ and even more quickly passed three Krusty Burgers, feeling his veins hardening just driving past the cesspools of pulmonary-edema-in-waiting. The local grocery store didn’t look any better and finally, seeing no other options, he pulled into a local convenience store to pick up more Pez and see if they had an organic foods section.
As he strode through the dilapidated sliding door, a happy voice greeted him from behind the counter, “Oh, hello my new customer. My name is Apu and if it can be my pleasure to help you find your heart’s desire then I shall be forever in your debt.”
Jarod so rarely got to speak Pakistani any more that he couldn’t help himself. “Are you from Carachi or Islamabad?” he said in perfect Pakistani.
Apu was aghast. He too switched to his native tongue. “Oh by the many jeweled arms of Pishtar, you speak Pakistani?”
“Of course, doesn’t everybody?”
“Nobody in this Seth-cursed den of rat-lovers.”
“Ah, that is your misfortune.”
“Yes, indeed it is.”
Three young hoodlums slunk in the door behind Jarod, heading straight for the magazine and candy aisle. Jarod’s eyes followed their reflection in Apu’s practiced gaze.
Jarod continued in Pakistani, “Do you have anything worthy of a refined palate in this place?”
Apu was faced with a rare dilemma: on the one hand he wanted to be true to anyone who could speak his language, but on the other he wanted to make a sale. Capitalism ran very strong in his family. “Ah, for one such as you, I have some specially prepared flatbreads and a hummis spread. I hope that it finds your palate suitable.” He reached behind the counter and pulled up a package of three-week-old pitas and an ancient jar of spread a woman had once made for him: a woman who tried to kill him.
Jarod paid for the food and a bottle of water and started out the door. “Good bye, noble merchant!” he called in the traditional Pakistani marketplace farewell.
“Fill your soul and return.” Apu replied.
Just then the three boys pushed past Jarod and ran out the door.
“Stop you thieves!” Apu cried as he lept out from behind the counter and started after the shoplifters.
“Wait, Apu!” Jarod held out his hand, stopping Apu before he could run out the door. Then Jarod reached under his leather coat and pulled out three magazines, two candy bars and a six-pack of Duff beer.
“What? How did you…?”
Jarod simply grinned, “I picked their pockets as they were pushing by me. This is everything that they took.”
Apu just stared, mostly in shame, as Jarod handed him the loot, strode over to his car, got in and drove away.
* * * * *
Homer slid his rusted hulk of a car up to, and over the sidewalk in front of Bart’s warehouse. “Doh!” he exclaimed as the car came to an abrupt stop after running into a large mailbox.
Bart made no motion to get out of the car. “Let’s talk about this, Homer…”
Homer, though, was in no mood for discussion. This trip with Bart was cutting into his drinking time at Moe’s Tavern. “Come on, boy.”
The two of them climbed out of the car and walked hesitantly up towards the intimidating, dark warehouse. Just as they reached up to knock on the door, a few bats flew out an upper window, fluttering off into the night. “Maybe he’s not here.” Bart offered.
Homer was determined to get this over with. He inched forward just to the point where his stubby arms would reach the door and he quietly knocked, hoping for no answer.
Jarod instantly threw open the door. “Can I help you?”
“Jerry?!” Homer was very surprised to see his new subordinate.
Jarod glanced from father to son, clearly mystified and a little disappointed. “Homer.”
“Ah, um, well, what are you doing here?”
“I live here,” Jarod explained. “I am renting this place from young Bart, who apparently is your son.”
Homer grinned and sheepishly chuckled, “Yeah, Bart is my son.”
The silence stretched. Bart simply looked between Jarod and his father, hoping that somehow he could get out of this situation with his rental agreement intact.
Jarod finally broke the silence. “Is there a problem with the rental? I can pay more for the warehouse if necessary.”
“No problemo, Mister! Five-hundred dollars a week is just fine for me!” Bart quickly interjected.
Jarod’s face betrayed only a flash of confusion but he instantly recognized Bart’s tactic. “I do feel that is a fair price.”
Homer was clearly flustered. “Well, no, that’s not really the problem. You see, ah, we sort of wanted to make sure that everything was, ah, well, okay here. Yeah, that’s it, everything is okay here.”
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place for Jarod. “Oh, you want to insure that I am not doing anything illegal with the warehouse that might get your son in trouble!”
That stabilized Homer. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“I can assure you that I am not doing anything here that will impact your son or bring disgrace to his name.”
Homer beamed. “That’s great. Okay, we’ve got to be going now.”
“Where are you going?”
Homer was unprepared for the question, so he naturally answered it honestly. “Moe’s.”
“Where?”
“Moe’s Tavern. It’s where the guys get together after work. You should come there some time.”
Jarod quickly decided that it would be best to get to know more of the guys from the plant in a more social environment. “Could you show me where it is?”
“Jerry, my boy,” Homer amicably retorted, “I’d be happy to.”
* * * * *
The next two hours flew by in a haze of foam and questions. None of them Jarod was particularly prepared for. The first, though, proved the easiest to answer and ultimately the most dangerous.
“What’ll you have?” the surly bartender barked at him as Jarod pulled up a barstool next to Homer. Homer was already deep into the first drink of a local draft beer.
Jarod had never really drank a lot of beer, never really having the opportunity to while at the Centre. Since his departure, he had always been too busy to spend much idle time, and rarely had his pretends required him to drink much. He knew the recipe for over 1200 different mixed drinks, but a quick glance up and down the bar demonstrated the folly of ordering any of them. He wanted to blend in and not draw any attention to himself. There was only one clear answer, “I’ll have what he’s having.”
Moe pulled back the well-worn tap handle marked ‘Duff’ and drew a tall glass of foamy beer. Jarod instantly recognized that his glass had thirteen point four percent more foam than Homer’s beer, but he surmised that the bartender had accidentally poured a little too quickly and he decided not to make anything of it.
Homer, though almost half-done with his first beer, raised his glass towards Jarod. “Here’s to the first of the day!”
Jarod knew this was not Homer’s first of the day, but decided Homer’s grasp of counting was no better than his skills at neurosurgery. He raised a tentative glass and took a long drag of foam, chased with a swallow of a light, pilsner style beer.
His brain instantly took him back to a time when as a boy he had worked on a sim. The world suddenly turned from vivid color to black and white and he could hear his former instructor, Sydney barking at him from over his left shoulder. “Jarod, concentrate on the sim!”
“Okay, Sydney, I’ll try,” young Jarod replied. He was standing at a laboratory counter with a large set of chemicals in front of him. “I don’t understand the purpose of this sim.”
“Jarod, we’ve been over this. You are trying to carefully control the fermentation process of the mixture so as to maximize the complex sugars without creating complex carbohydrates.”
Jarod furiously began mixing numerous apparently disparate chemicals in random order, finally creating a foul-looking beaker of bubbling substance. He poured the substance into a large cylinder.
Sydney immediately turned the spicot on the bottom of the large cylinder and a lightly tinted foamy substance poured out into a large mug. Sydney tipped back the glass and drank deeply. “Jarod! You’ve done it!”
“By my calculations, Sydney, that beverage should have an alcoholic content of approximately 2.0%, 110 standard calories, 0 grams of digestible fats and 65 grams of carbohydrates.”
Sydney took another long drink and called the Sweepers over from the door. “Let Jarod go back to his room, I have to let the Willer Brewing Company know that we have developed the Lite beer that they have been requesting! Jarod, you are a genious!”
“I know, Sydney,” Jarod said quietly.
“Who’s Sydney?” Homer loudly interjected, drawing Jarod out of the memory and back to the world of color.
“A friend of mine.” Jarod went to take another drink and just as he was about to, he saw three kernels of stale popcorn floating on the top of the beer. As he pulled the glass back down a little to fish them out, the entire bar broke out into laughter.
He looked around his spot on the bar and saw about forty popcorn kernels that had apparently been thrown from different patrons at his glass while he had been reminiscing about Sydney. “Why did you put these in my glass?” Jarod asked of Homer.
“Put what in your glass?” Homer’s tone was undeniably condescending.
“This popcorn.” Jarod pulled out the three kernels and displayed them for him.
“I didn’t put those in there.”
“Then who did.”
“You did.”
Jarod was perplexed. “No, I wouldn’t put popcorn in my beer. I don’t eat popcorn.”
“Yes you do.”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes you do.”
This continued in rapid fire for over two minutes before the normally very patient Pretender realized that Homer lacked the intelligence to become bored or create a new comeback. “Fine,” Jarod finally ended it and he drained the last of his glass intending to leave.
Moe, however, poured him another one without asking. “So, where you from?”
Jarod, still a bit out of sorts from the childish exchange with Homer had to think quickly. “Ah, Delaware.”
That started the questions. Questions from each of the dozen or so patrons of the bar. Questions coming quickly and randomly, with apparently no regard for questions he had already answered.
“When did you get to Springfield?” asked Lenny from the plant.
“How long will you be in Springfield?” asked Benny from the plant.
“Do you like the Patriots this year?” asked Moe.
“Can you pass the popcorn?” Homer.
“Why are you dressed in all black? Are you a chauffer?” the drunk in the corner, apparently named Barny.
“Want to meet a nice girl for the evening?” Moe
“What’s your sign?”
“Where is my wallet?”
“Are you one of those funeral guys?”
“What is your name?”
“Why are you working at the plant?”
“Can you pass me the pretzels?”
The beers kept coming and after the first four, the room began to take on a fuzzy glow. After six, the room started to slowly spin. After eight, Jarod knew he had to get out of this place. “How much to I owe you?”
Moe looked at the register. “Hmm, thirty-two dollars.”
Jarod fumbled with his wallet and pulled out two twenties. Moe returned him his eight dollars change and Jarod stumbled out to the street.
He quickly flagged down a cab and headed back to the warehouse for the night.
* * * * *
The next day dawned with Jarod waking to a splitting headache. He barely remembered stumbling into his warehouse, kicking off his shoes and collapsing into bed. He suddenly sat upright and looked at the clock – he was running late for work.
“Doh!”
He quickly ran around, getting ready for the day and raced to get to the plant only five minutes late. He was surprised to find the rest of the guys already there, happily munching away on donuts and talking about the night before.
“Good morning, Jerry,” Homer chimed as he came into the break room. The coffee pot was empty, the burner still on and the pot was already on its way to a fearsome burn.
“No one made more coffee?”
“We all got ours.”
“Doh!” Jarod’s imitation of Homer was as dead-on as it was unconscious.
He fumbled with the grinds and filter. He had built a scale model of the Empire State Building as a four-year-old. He had built a working nuclear reactor at age eight, he could make coffee with a hang-over.
At least that’s what he kept telling himself as he spilled the grounds, the water and finally the first cup of scalding, weak brew.
“DOH!”
* * * * *
The next week passed in much the same pattern. Get up late, race to work, make the coffee, recover from a hang-over, swear off drinking, work all day, go to the warehouse, somehow end up at Moes, drink, get drunk, fall down, go home and sleep. The only real change in the routine is that after the fourth night, Moe stopped charging him double for his beers.
Jarod swore every morning that he would stay away from Moe’s but then every night he kept ending up there. At least on Saturday he hadn’t had to go to work so he was able to get some work done at the warehouse on his current assignment to clean up the nuclear power plant.
On Sunday Marge had come by to offer to take him to church where he heard Reverend Lovejoy talk about the evils of Halloween and the satanic influence of new age music. Apparently the good Reverend was not a fan of someone named John Tesh.
Monday it was back to the grind, except when he arrived at Moe’s, despite his many promises to stay away, Moe set the first beer in front of him with a happy smile and a cheery, “Compliments of the house.”
“Huh?” Jarod was confused and suspicious. He had never seen or heard of Moe giving anything away.
“Let’s just say your football tips this week paid off for me.”
“Oh.” Jarod didn’t remember giving any football tips. He did remember a lot of abstract questions about whether or not he liked jets, bears, lions, patriots, raiders, dolphins, saints, Texans, browns, rams, cardinals, the city of Green Bay and colts. Free beer was free beer, though.
Monday, Jarod extricated himself from Moe’s by nine and was back in the warehouse in a semi-sober state by nine-thirty. He huddled over his computer and was busy researching the employment history of every employee of the plant when one of the trip sensors he had installed on a back door sensed that someone was entering the warehouse.
Jarod quickly snuck back around and performed a textbook flanking maneuver in the dark warehouse to catch the would-be intruders. Two small forms were sneaking between some large abstractly positioned crates trying to sneak up on his normal work station. Jarod, however was ready for them.
“Can I help you?”
The two boys, Bart Simpson and another boy with glasses, screamed.
“Run, Millhouse!” Bart yelled as he took off.
Jarod didn’t know who Millhouse was, but he knew he wouldn’t get far. He instead started out after Bart.
Bart ran across the warehouse towards the front door. He reached it, but found it locked on the inside by a slide-bolt lock at the top of the door. He jumped up to try and reach it, but was too short. Jarod lunged at him. “AHHHH!” Bart shrieked as he dove under Jarod’s arms and ran back towards the rear door.
Jarod turned and resumed the chase. Bart saw one of the second story windows was open. The window had a fire escape and was right under one of the large crates. If he could just walk up the wall and crate like Jackie Chan, he could crawl out the window and go down the fire escape. It would be just like the movies.
He ran at the corner of the crate and wall and tried running up the wall. He made it one step up before his sneakers slipped and he ended up in a crumpled heap on the floor. “Awwww.”
Jarod was on him in a flash and grabbed his arm. “What are you doing in here?’
“Don’t have a cow, man. I’m just trying to see what you’re doing.”
Jarod, though, wasn’t really listening. He was thinking about that Bart had been trying to do when he ran into the crate. “What did you think you were doing running into the wall like that?”
“I was trying to run up the wall like Jackie Chan.”
“You know someone who can run up walls?”
“Sure.”
“Can I meet him?”
“No, but I can show you one of his movies.”
“Show me.”
* * * * *
It was now three A.M. and Jarod had watched ‘Rumble in the Bronx’ twice through completely and the fight scenes two more times. After freeze framing through each part of the wall-walking scene, he felt it was time to try it.
He ran at the wall and crate. One up, two up, fall. One up, two up, fall. One up, two up, three up, fall. Twenty six times Jarod tried to scale the ten foot section between the wall and the crate. Twenty five times, Jarod ended up in a heap on the floor. On the twenty-sixth, though, he made it. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“This is cool! I’ve got to teach Bart.”
* * * * *
Three nights later, Bart finally made it. His backside and legs were bruised, but he refused to give up. Jarod was never more proud. He had found a very capable pupil. Maybe even a candidate for Pretender training.
He and Bart became fast friends. He taught Bart computer hacking, lock-picking, document forging and investment banking. Bart taught him about Jackie Chan, Radioactive Man, tree-houses and dominoes. The two of them became inseparable. Much to his mother’s chagrin, Bart took to wearing all black, including black wrap-around sunglasses and to slicking his hair back like Jarod’s.
As Jarod became closer to Bart he found it increasingly difficult to tolerate Homer. He couldn’t imagine how a child as gifted as Bart could have come from such an inferior example of humanity. Meeting Bart’s mother did shed some light on where his intelligence may have come from, but it was such a shame to see all of Bart’s talents going to waste and being untrained by his family.
The time was drawing close for Jarod to put the sting on Montgomery Burns and his ecological timebomb and he still had to decide what he was going to do to make sure that Bart got the training he needed. He had a number of contacts within the CIA and the NSA who could make sure that Bart was taken care of, but that went against his own belief that a child shouldn’t be taken from their family and robbed of a childhood the way that he had been.
Every time he saw Homer, though, Jarod couldn’t help thinking that maybe Bart was the exception to that rule.
* * * * *
“Okay, boys! Gather round! It’s time to make a little money for your honey!” Bart had gathered a group of school children around him and he was busy manipulating three playing cards in apparently random order. “Who thinks they know where the lucky lady is?”
“I do, Bart,” chimed in Millhouse.
“It takes a quarter to see her wares,” Bart bantered back. “Fifty cents says you haven’t got a clue where she is.”
Millhouse set a quarter on the ground. “I think she’s there!” He pointed triumphantly to the King of Spades.
“Oh, no, Millhouse! Better luck next time!” Bart scooped up the money and flipped over the queen. “Who’s next?”
“SIMPSON!” Principal Skinner suddenly loomed large over the illegal card game.
“Hi carumba! Gotta go!” Bart sprang up and sprinted across the schoolyard.
“Willy! Simpson on the loose!”
“EEEEAAAAARGHHH!” The Scottish groundskeeper lept out from the maintenance shed and ran after Bart, cutting off his path to the school yard fence.
Thanks to Jarod’s training, this time Bart was prepared. He cut a quick angle towards the monkey bars. Willy chased him hard, gaining quickly on Bart with his much larger strides. Bart however dove headlong into the monkey bars diving through the narrow opening, tuck rolling and popping up to grab one of the highest bars. Willy tried to stop but crashed into the middle bars. As he frantically tried to extricate himself from the bars Bart executed a perfect maneuver pulling himself up to the top rung and swinging his feet out through the gap and landing on Willy’s stuck backside.
Bart stood for a moment on the enraged but stuck groundskeeper and let out a Tarzan-like yell, pounding his chest.
“I’ll get you Simpson!”
“Don’t count on it!” Bart jumped back down and headed straight for the fence originally cut off by Willy’s initial pursuit.
Willy finally pulled himself from the bars and ran after the boy. A scream of triumph, stirring the spirits of his ancestors arose in his throat as he saw the boy head straight for the corner of the eight-foot cyclone fence. “Now I’ve got you!”
Bart though, knew better. He ran right at and then straight up the fence. The kids in the schoolyard would tell the tale for years about the fantastic move, the catlike pose Bart affected on the angled top of the fence and then the perfect jump down punctuated by Willy’s bone-jarring crash into the sturdy, unforgiving fence.
Jarod sat in the bushes just outside the schoolyard and grinned like the Cheshire cat he was.
* * * * *
His time in Springfield had been entertaining, but Jarod knew it was time to end this pretend and get on to the next problem. Before he could carry out the final sting, he knew that he had one more loose end to fix.
“Homer.”
“AHHH!” Homer jerked awake from behind the console of the plant’s safety office. He turned around slowly to look at the suddenly very imposing figure of Jarod. “Yes?”
“Homer, you are completely incompetent. You have absolutely no business being in charge of putting your own underwear on in the morning, let alone the safety of an nuclear reactor. You are a disgrace to the human race!
“Now, I know that you were hired by Mr. Burns long ago. You have held this job now for almost ten years. The only way you could have done that is if you are cooperating with Mr. Burns to keep this plant unsafe. I would have thought that you were getting paid to keep quiet about this place, but after looking at your bank accounts, I can see that isn’t the case.
“I need to know, Homer, are you deliberately this incompetent or are you just stupid?”
The four cells that collectively considered themselves as Homer’s ‘brain’ slowly digested this line of questioning. “Did he just call us stupid?”
“No, I think he asked us if we were stupid.”
“Oh, well, we would be stupid to answer him yes, wouldn’t we?”
“Yes, but we are stupid.”
“You’re right, we are.”
“Should we tell him?”
“Who, Jarod?”
“No, he already knows. I mean Homer.”
“Oh, I don’t think he really cares.”
“You’re right.”
Homer looked straight at Jarod and then broke down sobbing, “Oh, Jarod! I am stupid! I couldn’t get a job doing anything else! Mr. Burns was the only one who would hire me! I don’t really know any better! Honest!”
Jarod’s face changed instantly from malice to joy. “I believe you, Homer. That’s why I’ve decided to help you.”
“Help me?”
“Yes. You see that button there?” Jarod pointed at a ridiculously large red button that read ‘PUSH ME.’
“Uh, huh.”
“If that light there,” Jarod pointed to the red rotating plant alarm light, “ever starts flashing, then just push that button. It starts an auto-populating logarithm that diagnoses the plant emergency and automatically adjusts for any incongruities in the normal operating parameters for the reactor and induces stabilizing functions.”
Homer just stared at the Pretender.
“Do you understand.”
“Uh huh,” Homer lied.
“It fixes the reactor automatically if there is any problem.”
“Oh.”
“So the reactor will be safe.”
“Oh.”
“Which should be what YOU are trained to do.”
“Oh.”
Jarod decided that he was getting nowhere with this. “Homer. What do you do if the red light flashes?”
Homer stared. “Uh, push the button?”
“Yes!”
Homer smiled.
“Now, Homer, this is very important. I’m going to scare Mr. Burns into taking the safety of the plant more seriously. So I want you to go home for the rest of the day so you don’t accidentally get involved with this. Do you understand?”
“Uh, sure. Go home.”
“Right.”
“Jarod?”
“Yes, Homer?”
“See you at Moe’s later?”
“I doubt it.”
“Oh.”
“Good bye, Homer.”
“Good bye.”
Jarod strode out of the safety control room and headed straight up to Mr. Burns’ office. Homer sank back down in the control room chair and went back to sleep.
* * * * *
Mr. Burns sat in the semi-gloom of his office, pouring over the latest expense records for the plant. “Twelve thousand dollars for disposal of spent rods? Maybe I can cut it up and use it to make emergency path markings for airplanes. Now there’s an idea…”
Suddenly, a small warning light began to blink on the corner of Mr. Burns’ desk. It was the containment break alarm for the main reactor. He quickly glanced up at the wall of monitors to see absolute pandemonium in every sector of his plant. Alarms and fires had broken out in every sector and people could be seen running and screaming everywhere.
“Scary, isn’t it?”
Burns quickly turned to the side door normally used by his assistant Waylan Smithers. Instead of the mousy lackey, however, he saw the imposing, dark figure of Jarod. “What is the meaning of this!”
Jarod strode into the office. “The plant is melting down. In thirty seconds, the containment will be lost and a nuclear cloud will spill out over the city of Springfield, killing thousands.”
“Bah. Who cares about those cretin?”
Jarod was taken a bit aback by the callousness of Burns, but he had anticipated this as well. “Of course, you feel pretty safe in here, with your lead-lined office and hermetically sealed ventilation system.”
“That’s right.”
“Too bad I re-routed the ventilation system to draw ventilation for this space directly from the main reactor chamber.”
“What? Are you insane?”
“No, just concerned that your safety record is inexcusable. You have sacrificed safety and environmental protection for the sake of profits!”
Jarod stood at the front of Mr. Burns’ desk, looming over the frail executive with all his Pretender fury. “You sacrificed these people for your own profit! DIDN’T YOU! DIDN’T YOU!!”
Just as Burns was about to blurt out his confession, though, the alarms suddenly silenced. Both Burns and Jarod turned to the monitors. Both instantly saw Homer Simpson moving his hands from the large button Jarod had recently installed.
“DOH!” Jarod exclaimed.
“Yes, my misguided friend. It seems that this plant is safer that you realize.” Burns reached under his desk for the trap door button.
Jarod leaped back just as the door opened under his feet. A side door opened up revealing four large dogs. “I trust that you can find your way out.” Burns’ sneer was mocking and infuriating.
Jarod turned and ran.
The dogs chased him down the main corridors and back towards the main entrance of the plant. He managed to keep a small lead on them while traveling down the well-waxed interior hallways, but once he burst out the main door, he knew that they would start to gain on him.
That’s when he saw the black Lincoln pull up. Miss Parker and two Sweepers jumped out just as he gained employee parking lot.
“Stop, Jarod!”
Jarod didn’t turn to look at Miss Parker as he ran past his car and towards the plant border fence. It was twelve feet tall, but he had an idea that he just might get out of this in one piece.
Miss Parker and the Sweepers immediately started chasing Jarod across the parking lot. Miss Parker stopped and shot a warning at Jarod that missed him and shattered the windshield of the Simpson family car. Jarod kept running, with the dogs, Sweepers and Parker in tow.
He reached the fence just as the dogs closed the last of the gap with him. He nimbly ran up the fence, vaulted the top and landed in a perfect tuck-roll on the other side. The dogs, not wanting to miss out on the chance of fresh meat, immediately changed directions and pounced on the Sweepers and Miss Parker as they neared the fence to take a shot at the fleeing Jarod.
Montgomery Burns called the dogs back in twenty minutes later despite the rather vociferous and violent threats of the three trapped Centre employees.
* * * * *
Jarod packed up the last of the DSAs and prepared to head out of town when he sensed a presence behind him. “Hello, Bart.”
“Hey, Jarod.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“Where you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I go with you?” The question tore at Jarod’s heart.
“Bart, you need to grow up. However, I will leave you this cell phone. You can use it to reach me any time. Also, I’ll have a friend of mine with the CIA check in on you now and again. This won’t be the last time we meet.”
Bart took the phone and stared up at his new idol.
Jarod turned and walked out of the warehouse and in the dark gloom, Bart thought he might have caught the glimpse of a small tear.
Bart turned and faded into the dark as quickly and quietly as the Pretender.
The sun rose high into the Springfield sky, chasing the shadows away from almost every corner of the small schoolyard. The practiced eye of Principal Skinner, however, knew that there were always shadows to be found. There were always those dark envelopes of wrongdoing waiting for young men to find them. It was his duty as the Principal to root out those corners of sin and iniquity. Children couldn’t help themselves, so he knew he would have to help them himself. Mother would have been proud.
“Willie!”
“Yes, Principal Skinner.” The red-haired Scotsman brandished a huge set of pruning shears with a barbaric gleam in his eye. His family kilt was tied properly around his waist and the cold spring air made him feel alive again.
“That bush over there – I think it’s grown a bit big….”
“EEEEYAAHHHH!” The Scottish gardener let out a war whoop as he leaped to the bush. A furious tumult ensued with branches and shears engaging in a frantic dance of whirling steel. In a second it was done – the bush was nothing but a pile of leaves and twigs. Much to the chagrin of four school-kids playing dominoes behind the formerly thick cover.
Four sets of wide eyes stared up and the impressive figure of Skinner and the wide-eyed, panting gardener. A full second passed in eerie silence before one of the children yelled, “SCATTER!”
The children darted off in separate directions. Skinner’s photographic memory, though, logged each of their faces for later reprimands. For now, he would capture their leader. “SIMPSON!”
Young Bart Simpson was fast, but Willie was determined to catch him. Bart ran quickly towards the schoolyard fence. Willie smiled: he had the little brat cornered up against the six-foot chain link fence. “There’s no escapin’ now, Laddie!”
“Eat my shorts!” Bart had a plan, though. As he reached the fence, he jumped up on it and began to try and use his feet to climb the fence like a ladder. Unfortunately, Bart had not counted on the fact that his latest hero, Jacky Chan, had much more practice than he did at this maneuver: his first tennis shoe got traction, but the second shoe missed and he feel in a heap at the foot of the fence. “Oh, man.”
Willie triumphantly snatched young Bart up by the collar and carried him over to Principle Skinner.
“Good work, Willie. Let’s take him to my office.”
* * *
Principal Skinner leaned back in his chair. He had kept Bart waiting for nearly twenty minutes now. While he had letting Bart simmer, Skinner had been doing some light reading: “The Criminal Psychology of Grade School Miscreants” by Dr. **insert name here***. He was trying to decide on a new strategy with Bart. He knew there must be some way to get through to that boy and change him from his evil ways.
“Mr. Skinner?”
The voice pager on his desk lit up with his secretary’s voice. “Yes, Gloria?”
“There’s a man here to see you, Sir.”
“Hmmm.” Skinner glanced over at his calendar and didn’t see any appointments for today. He thought about it for a moment and decided that indeed he hadn’t made any appointments today. Maybe he was a friend of mother’s. “Does he have an appointment?”
“No, Sir, he doesn’t.”
Ordinarily, he would have refused him anyway, just on principle, but Principal Skinner also knew that it created the perfect excuse to have Bart sit and stew some more. “Show him in, please.” Skinner sat back, smiling to himself for his cleverness. Hopefully this wasn’t another textbook salesman.
Gloria opened the door to his office and Skinner immediately noticed she had fixed her hair and put on slightly more makeup than was usual for this time of day. “Principal Skinner, this is Jarod Fermi.”
Even Skinner, who was unaccustomed to gauging the glances of women, knew that Jarod Fermi had caught the eye of his normally mousy secretary. Her lustful eyes watched the tall man stride into the office and her hand involuntarily moved up to straighten up her hair. Skinner rose quickly to greet Jarod. “Good morning, Mr. Fermi. How can I help you today?”
“It’s nice to meet you, Principal Skinner – and please, call me Jarod.”
“Okay, Jarod,” Skinner sat, amazed that his secretary had not yet returned to her post. “Gloria?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Jarod, what brings you to our fine school this morning.” Skinner’s practiced eye scanned the dark-clad man filing each detail away for later use. He was tall, probably 6’2”, weighed probably less than 190lbs, had black hair and a mole below his right eye. He looked like he needed a shave, too.
“Actually, I’m looking for one of your students: Bart Simpson.”
Skinner immediately became suspicious: had Bart done something wrong, or was this just another of his schemes to get out of school? It wasn’t every day that a man in black came looking for a student, and when it was Simpson, Skinner knew to be extra careful. “I’m sure you can respect that we maintain the safety and privacy of our students, so we don’t just let that information out. What do you want him for?”
“I understand that he owns an abandoned warehouse in town. I am interested in renting it from him.”
Skinner laughed. “I’m sure that you’re mistaken, Bart doesn’t own any warehouse.”
“He is the registered owner. He purchased it at auction a few years ago for one dollar.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Fermi, but I can’t…”
Bart suddenly burst into the office. “I’m Bart Simpson.”
Jarod turned around, looked squarely at Bart and extended his hand. “Hello, Bart. I’m Jarod.”
“Cut the crap, man. You want to rent my warehouse or not.”
“Bart – what are you doing in here?” Skinner raised his voice at the boy, but he may as well have been millions of miles away for all the effect it had.
“Yes, I do. Is a thousand dollars a week enough for the rent?”
“Hy carumba! You bet!” Bart reached out quickly and shook Jarod’s hand.
Jarod reached around to his back pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “Okay, here’s two weeks advance pay. I should be here for about three or four weeks. I’ll pay the rest when I leave.”
“Yes!” Bart snatched the money out of Jarod’s hand.
Jarod immediately straightened. “Thank you, Bart. Thank you for your assistance, Principal Skinner.” The tall man walked out of the office as suddenly as he entered.
Skinner was shocked at the exchange he had witnessed, but it only took a second for him to remember that he now had Bart in his office. “Why don’t you sit down, Bart, so we can talk about what you were doing in the playground.”
“Awww.”
* * *
Springfield Nuclear Plant
“Smithers.” The decrepit man known to his friends and enemies alike as Montgomery Burns pushed his chair back a bit from his desk. It was time to begin the interviewing process for the new Safety and Training Officer. The damned government was again trying to dig into his pockets by passing some nandy-pandy law that he needed an entire Safety department, not just one man. It looked like it would be a long day.
“Yes, Mr. Burns?” The enthusiastic face of Waylan Smithers peered around the office door.
“Escort the first applicant in.”
“Yes, Sir!”
The door closed briefly, only to be opened a moment later by Smithers escorting a tall, black haired man that looked like he would be more likely to break into the place rather than ask for a job here. “Mr. Burns, this is Jarod Fermi.”
“Come closer, Jarod.”
Mr. Burns crossed his hands on the desk in front of him and waited patiently for Smithers to set his resume down. Smithers quickly moved into a position behind his superior and properly inserted the neatly typed resume into Burns’ field of vision.
“Lets see here, Mr. Fermi: the Hanford reactor in Washington, clean-up at Chernobyl, former regulatory inspector for OSHA and the EPA, doctorate in nuclear fission from MIT? Should I be impressed here, Mr. Fermi?”
Jarod was caught a bit off guard by the comment. “Uh, I don’t know.”
“Go away.”
Jarod had never failed to get a job before, so it was understandable, perhaps, that he did nothing but ask the obvious question, “Why?”
“Smithers, remove this man from my office.”
Suddenly, the puzzle piece clicked in Jarod’s mind. “Mr. Burns, sir. If you think I’m overqualified….”
“Overqualified? You’re not overqualified to wash my car.” Burns’ hand began to snake over towards the trapdoor button on the side of his desk. If this goody-two-shoes gave him any more trouble, he’d be food for the alligators.
“What I mean to say, Mr. Burns is that I made that whole resume up. It’s all nothing but lies.”
Burns’ hand stopped. “Lies? You wanted me to hire you based on lies?”
“No, I just really, really need this job. My family hasn’t eaten in weeks and I need the money. I just made some things up to see if you would hire me.”
“Smithers, check it out. Call these people and see if they have ever heard of ‘Jarod Fermi.’ We shall see, Jarod, whether or not you’ve told me the truth here.”
During the ensuing ten minutes, both men sat in silence. Twice during the time, Burns entertained thoughts of releasing the trapdoor, but his curiosity always got the better of him. Anyone who would blatantly lie during an interview and then beg for the job would be perfect for this new position. He always liked to have his employees right where he wanted them: under his thumb.
“It’s true, Mr. Burns.” Smithers entered without knocking or announcement. The look on his face was one of complete disgust. “Not a single job on this resume was able to be verified. Shall I have him thrown out of the building?”
“No Smithers, you should give our new Assistant Director of Safety and Training a tour of the facility. Welcome aboard, Jarod.”
Smithers looked at first to be completely baffled, then slowly the realization of Burns’ scheme dawned across his face, brightening it noticeably. Jarod similarly looked a bit confused. “Mr. Burns, don’t you think we should discuss salary first?”
Burns thrust his head across the desk in a very dramatic way, “Don’t push me. You’ll be paid what I decide to pay you.”
Jarod got the message.
“Mr. Burns, what shall I do with the others?”
“Tell them that the employment search is over. You can give them a ten second head-start for the main gate.”
* * *
As Smithers gave Jarod the tour of the facility, Jarod couldn’t help but notice two glaring facts about the facility: there appeared to be very few people running it, and those few people he did see wore absolutely no protective equipment. Smithers had donned a hardhat for the tour, but had not offered one to Jarod. Then, Jarod noticed the numerous employees were not wearing protective jumpsuits. A few of them were even wearing sandals instead of steel-toed shoes. Jarod immediately began to marvel at the simple fact that most of these me appeared to still be alive.
As the two of them passed the Safety Control Room, where he would soon be working, Jarod could hear a ruckus from the meeting hall about two doors down from the Control Room. Smithers frowned and led Jarod into the break room. Glancing at his watch, Jarod carefully noted that the employees must have a coffee break at or around two-thirty. The din of the room increased exponentially as they entered the room to find all of the people in the room huddled around the three windows overlooking the parking area.
“Look at that one run!”
“Oh no! Look out!”
“Oh! That’s going to leave a mark!”
Smithers tried twice to unsuccessfully get the crowd’s attention, then simply informed Jarod that the Safety Director was somewhere in the crowd. Smithers vanished without further trace.
Jarod wandered over to the window just in time to see the last of the prospective employees running headlong into the chain link fence as two dogs descended on him. Strewn about the parking lot were bodies, yapping dogs and burly security guards dragging the semi-conscious interviewees across the ground and out into a pile on the other side of the gate. Slowly, the crowd started to move away from the window.
Jarod calmly retreated back a few steps and stood in the center of the room, waiting for someone to notice him. Two minutes later, he cleared his throat loudly.
“Hey, who’s the new guy?” A medium-height man with a large nose finally noticed Jarod. His voice was nasally and his accent seemed faintly New York.
“Yeah, Lenny. It looks like they actually hired one this time. Hey there, my name’s Carl.” This man was a nice looking African-American who appeared to be quite educated. He was the exception in the room.
“My name is Jarod Fermi, but you can just call me Jarod.”
“Hey, Jarod, I’m Lenny.”
“Hello, Lenny. I’m looking for Homer Simpson.”
“DOH!”
Jarod whirled to see the rotund bald man who had responded to his request. His white shirt was littered with the glaze and sprinkles of a half-dozen donuts and he didn’t look like he’d showered this decade. “Homer?”
“Aw, what did I do now?”
“Nothing, I work for you now. I’m the new Assistant Director of Safety and Training.”
“You work for me?”
“Well, yes.”
“Woo Hoo! Okay, then we have to set down the rules.”
“Rules?”
“Yes. First of all, you will not eat any donuts from the break room until I’m done eating my donuts. Okay?”
“Uh, okay, but….”
“No buts! Then, you’ll do everything I want and you’ll call me ‘Master Homer.’” Homer developed a far off look and he began to imagine himself on a plantation with hundreds of slaves addressing him as Master Homer. Even Marge and the kids called him that here. ‘Master Homer, would you like some more pie?’ ‘Master Homer, can I turn down your bed?’ ‘Another beer, Master Homer?’ “Oh-ho-ho-oh, another beer….”
Jarod cringed as a string of drool began to form on the corner of Homer’s large, simean mouth. Deciding to leave Homer engrossed in his vision, Jarod wandered out of the break room and back to the Safety Control Room. He was only mildly surprised to find it unlocked.
Once inside, Jarod sat down in the well-worn and sticky chair and began to survey the panel. Every dial on the panel was swaying to some degree – most well outside their normally safe parameters. Three alarm panels had been permanently silenced with duct tape.
Homer apparently had recovered enough from his dream to barge into the office behind Jarod. “Hey, Jerry, that’s my chair.”
Jarod got up slowly. “Homer, it’s Jarod.”
“Jerry, Jarod what’s the difference. Look, just so we don’t get in each other’s way, I’m going to let you sit here and monitor the nice panel for the rest of the afternoon. Now, if any of the lights or bells go off, just make them stop, okay?”
Jarod could feel his blood slowly boil, but instead of lashing out at the overweight oaf, he decided to let it be. He wanted him out of here this afternoon anyway, so what would it matter why he left. “Sure thing, Homer.”
“See you tomorrow, Jerry!” Homer departed with a whoop and a whistle.
Jarod immediately pulled open his briefcase and whipped out his computer.
* * *
Simpson Residence
Although Bart was extremely late getting home from school, Marge was not worried: Bart’s detention record was reason enough to not worry. As the clock hands rotated towards four o’clock, she began the preparations for the evening’s meal. The supermarket had been running a special on pork roasts, and she was putting the better half of a large pig in the oven for dinner. Homer would be excited.
As she hummed along, she glanced out the kitchen window towards Bart’s tree house. What she saw there made her drop her measuring cup full of flour. “Oh my God!” Out in back, Bart was supervising three other boys who were pulling on a pulley arrangement to lift a huge television into his tree house.
Not sure where he had stolen the television from, she rushed out to the backyard. “Bart Simpson! You get down here this instant!”
The other boys all froze, but Bart quickly regained their attention. “Steady, men! Lower it back down easy and we’ll start again in a second.” He deftly scampered down the planks serving as a ladder and ran over to his mother. “Mom, I really bought it, see!” He thrust a signed receipt from Short Circuit City, a Springfield electronics store.
Marge grabbed the receipt and saw that Bart had indeed paid cash for the television. “Mmmmmm. Where did you get this money for this?”
“I rented my warehouse to a guy today for $500 a week.” Bart figured he might just lose the money when his mom and Homer found out, so he decided he’d half the true figure when he told anyone what the rent was.
“But Honey, you only paid a dollar for it. I don’t like this.”
“But Mom!”
“No buts – bring that television inside and we’ll discuss this with your father.”
“Awww.” Now he knew he would never see that money, or his new TV, again.
“Now get inside and start working on your homework.”
Bart’s smallish friend Millhouse ran over quickly to Marge, “Mrs. Simpson, I already have dibs on that.”
“What?”
“Bart told us that he would pay us $10 a day if we did his homework.”
Bart quickly grabbed at his friend. “Millhouse!”
The damage had already been done. Marge turned her wicked eye back to her oldest son. “BART!”
“Awwww, Mom.”
“Inside now!”
The screech of tires and rumble of a holed exhaust pipe interrupted her wrath by announcing the early arrival of Homer. It was far to early for Homer to be off work, let alone home from his typical after-work stop at Moe’s Tavern. Marge instantly began to fear that Homer had once again managed to incur the wrath of Mr. Burns and they would again have to find a way to get Homer his tenuous job back.
Marge dragged Bart into the house just as Homer whistled his way in through the front door. “Hey, Marge, I’m home!”
Even Bart was a little nervous. He knew, though, that the best way to get out of trouble was to deflect his mother’s wrath from him to the next most likely target: his dad. “Hey, Homer! Get fired again?”
Homer was unphased. “Nope, my boy! I’m a manager now.”
“WHAT?!?” Marge and Bart’s jaws dropped in unison.
“That’s right!” exclaimed Homer as he brushed passed them towards the Duff beer in the refrigerator. “Mr. Burns hired me an assistant.”
Bart now thought up a new tactic for evading trouble. “Way to go, Homer!”
Marge was still unconvinced. “Homer, why are you home if Mr. Burns hired you an assistant? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
Homer’s smile was infectous. He reached down and scuffed young Bart’s hair. “Marge! You know I’m not qualified to do that job myself! What makes you think I’m qualified to teach someone else to do it? Besides, when the new guy screws up, I’ll be even more important around the plant.”
“Hmmmm.” Marge groaned her lack of confidence in Homer’s usual optimistic assessment of the situation.
*****
Burns quickly scanned the panel of monitors displaying the usual chaos and mayhem around the plant. “Ah, yes, Smithers, it’s good to see the plant is running smoothly.”
Smithers, poised as usual over the right shoulder of his employer, chimed his agreement. “Yes, Mr. Burns. It seems that the reactor is running smoothly.”
He glanced up at the monitor showing the reactor chamber with two alarm beacons flashing and people running back and forth across the screen with their arms waiving frantically.
“Wait! Smithers! What’s that man doing?”
Smithers’ practiced eye followed Mr. Burns’ thoughts to the monitor in sector 7C showing the safety control center. All that could be seen was a pair of legs extending out from underneath the panel. “I’ll get right on it, Mr. Burns.”
Smithers ran down from the office to the safety control center as quickly as his loafers would go. He burst through the door full in the knowledge that Mr. Burns would be watching him on the monitor. “You there, what are you doing!”
Jarod pulled himself from out under the panel. “Trying to get this panel working.”
“Oh, I thought you were sleeping.” Smithers apologized.
Jarod looked visibly hurt.
Smithers turned to leave. “Carry on!”
Jarod jumped up. “Do you know that this panel doesn’t work? Did you know that this panel can’t monitor anything in the plant or control anything in the event of a malfunction?”
Smithers wasn’t sure what to make of this line of questioning. “Is that important?”
Jarod couldn’t decide if that was a dry joke or actually a question. He chose not to answer and see where this went.
Smithers observed the silence for a moment. “I guess not.” He turned and left the new hire staring at his back.
* * * * *
Dinner time at the Simpson residence was the usual venue for Marge to gather her day’s list of Bart’s transgressions and Lisa’s triumphs and put them out for her husband to deal with. It was Wednesday, so that meant it was meatloaf night. Homer always liked meatloaf night. It was hard to get him to focus on the children when he was elbow-deep in grease.
“Bart, why don’t you tell your father what you were doing this afternoon.”
“Aww, Mom,” Bart groaned, clearly thinking that Homer’s newfound managerial status would have deflected attention from his new career in Real Estate, “tonight should be about the big guy, here.”
“Yeah, Marge” Homer chimed in. “Tonight should be about me!” Homer emphasized this point by spearing another slab of meat from the tray.
“Homer! Pay attention! I caught Bart today lifting a big-screen TV up to his treehouse.”
Homer quickly turned from a state of saturated-fat-fed bliss to anger and suspicion. “Who did you steal it from, boy?”
“Don’t have a cow, man!” Bart exclaimed. “I rented my warehouse to a guy! Honest!”
Homer, never the quickest out of the gates, paused to consider the possibility.
“How much did you rent it for, Bart?” his sister Lisa chimed in from the other side of the table, clearly interested.
“$500 a week.”
“FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!” Homer exclaimed.
“Yup.”
“PER WEEK!!”
“You got it, Homer”
“WOO HOO! We’re rich!”
“Hold on, there, Homer. Who said anything about we? That’s my warehouse and I rented it fair and square.”
Homer turned from glee to homicidal in a heartbeat. “Why you little…” He reached around the table and grabbed his son by the neck and began throttling him roughly.
“AARGKK!” Bart squeaked.
“Boys, stop it!” Marge barked. “No body’s renting anything!”
Both Bart and Homer stopped and stared blankly at her.
“We don’t know what this man could be up to, but if he’s willing to rent Bart’s old decrepit warehouse for $500 a week, it has to be no good. You are both going to march straight down there and give that man back his money and tell him that the warehouse is not for rent!”
“Aww, Mom!”
“Aww, Marge!”
“No buts! Now get down to the warehouse right now or I’ll have to call Chief Wiggam!”
Both Homer and Bart slunk out of the house, dejected.
* * * * *
Jarod was working at 5:02 when Mr. Burns and Smithers strode into his work station.
“Well, nubie, I hope you don’t think you’re going to be getting any overtime because you forgot to check the clock!” Burns was as friendly as a reef shark in a feeding frenzy.
Jarod was so surprised by the intrusion and abrupt comments he couldn’t formulate an appropriate answer.
“Any work done after five is strictly on your time.” Burns reminded him as they strolled back out of the Safety Control Room.
“I don’t trust that one,” Burns coolly added to Smithers as soon as they were out of the room.
“Why not, Mr. Burns?”
“I’ve been watching him all day and he’s done nothing but work.”
Smithers was clearly confused. “Isn’t that a good thing, sir?”
“Not when you’re a safety inspector, Smithers. Keep a close eye on that one.”
“Yes, sir!”
* * * * *
Jarod quickly gathered up his things. Now he knew that Burns was watching him closely. Fortunately he had anticipated this and had wired a remote transmitter that would send a direct feed from the plant’s computer to his private laptop. That way he could monitor and run the plant from anywhere in Springfield. Including the abandoned warehouse that he had rented from Bart Simpson this morning.
Briefly he had wondered whether or not the complete waste of DNA-strands mascarading as a safety inspector he worked for was related to Bart. Simpson, of course, was a pretty common last name and the odds of that fat, human sloth having any relation to a boy who at the age of 7 already owned a warehouse, four patents, a lifetime membership to the NRA and had spent time managing a few B-list celebrities was almost too remote for his brain to calculate.
Jarod strode confidently out of sector 7C and to the employee parking lot. He could see that some of the guys had apparently had some fun at the expense of his current car, spray painting “Welcome to Springfield” and “Happy 1st Day” on his car with only the slightest hints of dyslexia displayed.
Jarod opened the door to his car and drove downtown to the red-light district of town where the warehouse lay. As he headed towards the center of town, his usually acute vision failed to find any place he might find food that would meet the nutritional needs of his body.
He quickly passed a seedy seafood restaurant named _______ and even more quickly passed three Krusty Burgers, feeling his veins hardening just driving past the cesspools of pulmonary-edema-in-waiting. The local grocery store didn’t look any better and finally, seeing no other options, he pulled into a local convenience store to pick up more Pez and see if they had an organic foods section.
As he strode through the dilapidated sliding door, a happy voice greeted him from behind the counter, “Oh, hello my new customer. My name is Apu and if it can be my pleasure to help you find your heart’s desire then I shall be forever in your debt.”
Jarod so rarely got to speak Pakistani any more that he couldn’t help himself. “Are you from Carachi or Islamabad?” he said in perfect Pakistani.
Apu was aghast. He too switched to his native tongue. “Oh by the many jeweled arms of Pishtar, you speak Pakistani?”
“Of course, doesn’t everybody?”
“Nobody in this Seth-cursed den of rat-lovers.”
“Ah, that is your misfortune.”
“Yes, indeed it is.”
Three young hoodlums slunk in the door behind Jarod, heading straight for the magazine and candy aisle. Jarod’s eyes followed their reflection in Apu’s practiced gaze.
Jarod continued in Pakistani, “Do you have anything worthy of a refined palate in this place?”
Apu was faced with a rare dilemma: on the one hand he wanted to be true to anyone who could speak his language, but on the other he wanted to make a sale. Capitalism ran very strong in his family. “Ah, for one such as you, I have some specially prepared flatbreads and a hummis spread. I hope that it finds your palate suitable.” He reached behind the counter and pulled up a package of three-week-old pitas and an ancient jar of spread a woman had once made for him: a woman who tried to kill him.
Jarod paid for the food and a bottle of water and started out the door. “Good bye, noble merchant!” he called in the traditional Pakistani marketplace farewell.
“Fill your soul and return.” Apu replied.
Just then the three boys pushed past Jarod and ran out the door.
“Stop you thieves!” Apu cried as he lept out from behind the counter and started after the shoplifters.
“Wait, Apu!” Jarod held out his hand, stopping Apu before he could run out the door. Then Jarod reached under his leather coat and pulled out three magazines, two candy bars and a six-pack of Duff beer.
“What? How did you…?”
Jarod simply grinned, “I picked their pockets as they were pushing by me. This is everything that they took.”
Apu just stared, mostly in shame, as Jarod handed him the loot, strode over to his car, got in and drove away.
* * * * *
Homer slid his rusted hulk of a car up to, and over the sidewalk in front of Bart’s warehouse. “Doh!” he exclaimed as the car came to an abrupt stop after running into a large mailbox.
Bart made no motion to get out of the car. “Let’s talk about this, Homer…”
Homer, though, was in no mood for discussion. This trip with Bart was cutting into his drinking time at Moe’s Tavern. “Come on, boy.”
The two of them climbed out of the car and walked hesitantly up towards the intimidating, dark warehouse. Just as they reached up to knock on the door, a few bats flew out an upper window, fluttering off into the night. “Maybe he’s not here.” Bart offered.
Homer was determined to get this over with. He inched forward just to the point where his stubby arms would reach the door and he quietly knocked, hoping for no answer.
Jarod instantly threw open the door. “Can I help you?”
“Jerry?!” Homer was very surprised to see his new subordinate.
Jarod glanced from father to son, clearly mystified and a little disappointed. “Homer.”
“Ah, um, well, what are you doing here?”
“I live here,” Jarod explained. “I am renting this place from young Bart, who apparently is your son.”
Homer grinned and sheepishly chuckled, “Yeah, Bart is my son.”
The silence stretched. Bart simply looked between Jarod and his father, hoping that somehow he could get out of this situation with his rental agreement intact.
Jarod finally broke the silence. “Is there a problem with the rental? I can pay more for the warehouse if necessary.”
“No problemo, Mister! Five-hundred dollars a week is just fine for me!” Bart quickly interjected.
Jarod’s face betrayed only a flash of confusion but he instantly recognized Bart’s tactic. “I do feel that is a fair price.”
Homer was clearly flustered. “Well, no, that’s not really the problem. You see, ah, we sort of wanted to make sure that everything was, ah, well, okay here. Yeah, that’s it, everything is okay here.”
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place for Jarod. “Oh, you want to insure that I am not doing anything illegal with the warehouse that might get your son in trouble!”
That stabilized Homer. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“I can assure you that I am not doing anything here that will impact your son or bring disgrace to his name.”
Homer beamed. “That’s great. Okay, we’ve got to be going now.”
“Where are you going?”
Homer was unprepared for the question, so he naturally answered it honestly. “Moe’s.”
“Where?”
“Moe’s Tavern. It’s where the guys get together after work. You should come there some time.”
Jarod quickly decided that it would be best to get to know more of the guys from the plant in a more social environment. “Could you show me where it is?”
“Jerry, my boy,” Homer amicably retorted, “I’d be happy to.”
* * * * *
The next two hours flew by in a haze of foam and questions. None of them Jarod was particularly prepared for. The first, though, proved the easiest to answer and ultimately the most dangerous.
“What’ll you have?” the surly bartender barked at him as Jarod pulled up a barstool next to Homer. Homer was already deep into the first drink of a local draft beer.
Jarod had never really drank a lot of beer, never really having the opportunity to while at the Centre. Since his departure, he had always been too busy to spend much idle time, and rarely had his pretends required him to drink much. He knew the recipe for over 1200 different mixed drinks, but a quick glance up and down the bar demonstrated the folly of ordering any of them. He wanted to blend in and not draw any attention to himself. There was only one clear answer, “I’ll have what he’s having.”
Moe pulled back the well-worn tap handle marked ‘Duff’ and drew a tall glass of foamy beer. Jarod instantly recognized that his glass had thirteen point four percent more foam than Homer’s beer, but he surmised that the bartender had accidentally poured a little too quickly and he decided not to make anything of it.
Homer, though almost half-done with his first beer, raised his glass towards Jarod. “Here’s to the first of the day!”
Jarod knew this was not Homer’s first of the day, but decided Homer’s grasp of counting was no better than his skills at neurosurgery. He raised a tentative glass and took a long drag of foam, chased with a swallow of a light, pilsner style beer.
His brain instantly took him back to a time when as a boy he had worked on a sim. The world suddenly turned from vivid color to black and white and he could hear his former instructor, Sydney barking at him from over his left shoulder. “Jarod, concentrate on the sim!”
“Okay, Sydney, I’ll try,” young Jarod replied. He was standing at a laboratory counter with a large set of chemicals in front of him. “I don’t understand the purpose of this sim.”
“Jarod, we’ve been over this. You are trying to carefully control the fermentation process of the mixture so as to maximize the complex sugars without creating complex carbohydrates.”
Jarod furiously began mixing numerous apparently disparate chemicals in random order, finally creating a foul-looking beaker of bubbling substance. He poured the substance into a large cylinder.
Sydney immediately turned the spicot on the bottom of the large cylinder and a lightly tinted foamy substance poured out into a large mug. Sydney tipped back the glass and drank deeply. “Jarod! You’ve done it!”
“By my calculations, Sydney, that beverage should have an alcoholic content of approximately 2.0%, 110 standard calories, 0 grams of digestible fats and 65 grams of carbohydrates.”
Sydney took another long drink and called the Sweepers over from the door. “Let Jarod go back to his room, I have to let the Willer Brewing Company know that we have developed the Lite beer that they have been requesting! Jarod, you are a genious!”
“I know, Sydney,” Jarod said quietly.
“Who’s Sydney?” Homer loudly interjected, drawing Jarod out of the memory and back to the world of color.
“A friend of mine.” Jarod went to take another drink and just as he was about to, he saw three kernels of stale popcorn floating on the top of the beer. As he pulled the glass back down a little to fish them out, the entire bar broke out into laughter.
He looked around his spot on the bar and saw about forty popcorn kernels that had apparently been thrown from different patrons at his glass while he had been reminiscing about Sydney. “Why did you put these in my glass?” Jarod asked of Homer.
“Put what in your glass?” Homer’s tone was undeniably condescending.
“This popcorn.” Jarod pulled out the three kernels and displayed them for him.
“I didn’t put those in there.”
“Then who did.”
“You did.”
Jarod was perplexed. “No, I wouldn’t put popcorn in my beer. I don’t eat popcorn.”
“Yes you do.”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes you do.”
This continued in rapid fire for over two minutes before the normally very patient Pretender realized that Homer lacked the intelligence to become bored or create a new comeback. “Fine,” Jarod finally ended it and he drained the last of his glass intending to leave.
Moe, however, poured him another one without asking. “So, where you from?”
Jarod, still a bit out of sorts from the childish exchange with Homer had to think quickly. “Ah, Delaware.”
That started the questions. Questions from each of the dozen or so patrons of the bar. Questions coming quickly and randomly, with apparently no regard for questions he had already answered.
“When did you get to Springfield?” asked Lenny from the plant.
“How long will you be in Springfield?” asked Benny from the plant.
“Do you like the Patriots this year?” asked Moe.
“Can you pass the popcorn?” Homer.
“Why are you dressed in all black? Are you a chauffer?” the drunk in the corner, apparently named Barny.
“Want to meet a nice girl for the evening?” Moe
“What’s your sign?”
“Where is my wallet?”
“Are you one of those funeral guys?”
“What is your name?”
“Why are you working at the plant?”
“Can you pass me the pretzels?”
The beers kept coming and after the first four, the room began to take on a fuzzy glow. After six, the room started to slowly spin. After eight, Jarod knew he had to get out of this place. “How much to I owe you?”
Moe looked at the register. “Hmm, thirty-two dollars.”
Jarod fumbled with his wallet and pulled out two twenties. Moe returned him his eight dollars change and Jarod stumbled out to the street.
He quickly flagged down a cab and headed back to the warehouse for the night.
* * * * *
The next day dawned with Jarod waking to a splitting headache. He barely remembered stumbling into his warehouse, kicking off his shoes and collapsing into bed. He suddenly sat upright and looked at the clock – he was running late for work.
“Doh!”
He quickly ran around, getting ready for the day and raced to get to the plant only five minutes late. He was surprised to find the rest of the guys already there, happily munching away on donuts and talking about the night before.
“Good morning, Jerry,” Homer chimed as he came into the break room. The coffee pot was empty, the burner still on and the pot was already on its way to a fearsome burn.
“No one made more coffee?”
“We all got ours.”
“Doh!” Jarod’s imitation of Homer was as dead-on as it was unconscious.
He fumbled with the grinds and filter. He had built a scale model of the Empire State Building as a four-year-old. He had built a working nuclear reactor at age eight, he could make coffee with a hang-over.
At least that’s what he kept telling himself as he spilled the grounds, the water and finally the first cup of scalding, weak brew.
“DOH!”
* * * * *
The next week passed in much the same pattern. Get up late, race to work, make the coffee, recover from a hang-over, swear off drinking, work all day, go to the warehouse, somehow end up at Moes, drink, get drunk, fall down, go home and sleep. The only real change in the routine is that after the fourth night, Moe stopped charging him double for his beers.
Jarod swore every morning that he would stay away from Moe’s but then every night he kept ending up there. At least on Saturday he hadn’t had to go to work so he was able to get some work done at the warehouse on his current assignment to clean up the nuclear power plant.
On Sunday Marge had come by to offer to take him to church where he heard Reverend Lovejoy talk about the evils of Halloween and the satanic influence of new age music. Apparently the good Reverend was not a fan of someone named John Tesh.
Monday it was back to the grind, except when he arrived at Moe’s, despite his many promises to stay away, Moe set the first beer in front of him with a happy smile and a cheery, “Compliments of the house.”
“Huh?” Jarod was confused and suspicious. He had never seen or heard of Moe giving anything away.
“Let’s just say your football tips this week paid off for me.”
“Oh.” Jarod didn’t remember giving any football tips. He did remember a lot of abstract questions about whether or not he liked jets, bears, lions, patriots, raiders, dolphins, saints, Texans, browns, rams, cardinals, the city of Green Bay and colts. Free beer was free beer, though.
Monday, Jarod extricated himself from Moe’s by nine and was back in the warehouse in a semi-sober state by nine-thirty. He huddled over his computer and was busy researching the employment history of every employee of the plant when one of the trip sensors he had installed on a back door sensed that someone was entering the warehouse.
Jarod quickly snuck back around and performed a textbook flanking maneuver in the dark warehouse to catch the would-be intruders. Two small forms were sneaking between some large abstractly positioned crates trying to sneak up on his normal work station. Jarod, however was ready for them.
“Can I help you?”
The two boys, Bart Simpson and another boy with glasses, screamed.
“Run, Millhouse!” Bart yelled as he took off.
Jarod didn’t know who Millhouse was, but he knew he wouldn’t get far. He instead started out after Bart.
Bart ran across the warehouse towards the front door. He reached it, but found it locked on the inside by a slide-bolt lock at the top of the door. He jumped up to try and reach it, but was too short. Jarod lunged at him. “AHHHH!” Bart shrieked as he dove under Jarod’s arms and ran back towards the rear door.
Jarod turned and resumed the chase. Bart saw one of the second story windows was open. The window had a fire escape and was right under one of the large crates. If he could just walk up the wall and crate like Jackie Chan, he could crawl out the window and go down the fire escape. It would be just like the movies.
He ran at the corner of the crate and wall and tried running up the wall. He made it one step up before his sneakers slipped and he ended up in a crumpled heap on the floor. “Awwww.”
Jarod was on him in a flash and grabbed his arm. “What are you doing in here?’
“Don’t have a cow, man. I’m just trying to see what you’re doing.”
Jarod, though, wasn’t really listening. He was thinking about that Bart had been trying to do when he ran into the crate. “What did you think you were doing running into the wall like that?”
“I was trying to run up the wall like Jackie Chan.”
“You know someone who can run up walls?”
“Sure.”
“Can I meet him?”
“No, but I can show you one of his movies.”
“Show me.”
* * * * *
It was now three A.M. and Jarod had watched ‘Rumble in the Bronx’ twice through completely and the fight scenes two more times. After freeze framing through each part of the wall-walking scene, he felt it was time to try it.
He ran at the wall and crate. One up, two up, fall. One up, two up, fall. One up, two up, three up, fall. Twenty six times Jarod tried to scale the ten foot section between the wall and the crate. Twenty five times, Jarod ended up in a heap on the floor. On the twenty-sixth, though, he made it. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“This is cool! I’ve got to teach Bart.”
* * * * *
Three nights later, Bart finally made it. His backside and legs were bruised, but he refused to give up. Jarod was never more proud. He had found a very capable pupil. Maybe even a candidate for Pretender training.
He and Bart became fast friends. He taught Bart computer hacking, lock-picking, document forging and investment banking. Bart taught him about Jackie Chan, Radioactive Man, tree-houses and dominoes. The two of them became inseparable. Much to his mother’s chagrin, Bart took to wearing all black, including black wrap-around sunglasses and to slicking his hair back like Jarod’s.
As Jarod became closer to Bart he found it increasingly difficult to tolerate Homer. He couldn’t imagine how a child as gifted as Bart could have come from such an inferior example of humanity. Meeting Bart’s mother did shed some light on where his intelligence may have come from, but it was such a shame to see all of Bart’s talents going to waste and being untrained by his family.
The time was drawing close for Jarod to put the sting on Montgomery Burns and his ecological timebomb and he still had to decide what he was going to do to make sure that Bart got the training he needed. He had a number of contacts within the CIA and the NSA who could make sure that Bart was taken care of, but that went against his own belief that a child shouldn’t be taken from their family and robbed of a childhood the way that he had been.
Every time he saw Homer, though, Jarod couldn’t help thinking that maybe Bart was the exception to that rule.
* * * * *
“Okay, boys! Gather round! It’s time to make a little money for your honey!” Bart had gathered a group of school children around him and he was busy manipulating three playing cards in apparently random order. “Who thinks they know where the lucky lady is?”
“I do, Bart,” chimed in Millhouse.
“It takes a quarter to see her wares,” Bart bantered back. “Fifty cents says you haven’t got a clue where she is.”
Millhouse set a quarter on the ground. “I think she’s there!” He pointed triumphantly to the King of Spades.
“Oh, no, Millhouse! Better luck next time!” Bart scooped up the money and flipped over the queen. “Who’s next?”
“SIMPSON!” Principal Skinner suddenly loomed large over the illegal card game.
“Hi carumba! Gotta go!” Bart sprang up and sprinted across the schoolyard.
“Willy! Simpson on the loose!”
“EEEEAAAAARGHHH!” The Scottish groundskeeper lept out from the maintenance shed and ran after Bart, cutting off his path to the school yard fence.
Thanks to Jarod’s training, this time Bart was prepared. He cut a quick angle towards the monkey bars. Willy chased him hard, gaining quickly on Bart with his much larger strides. Bart however dove headlong into the monkey bars diving through the narrow opening, tuck rolling and popping up to grab one of the highest bars. Willy tried to stop but crashed into the middle bars. As he frantically tried to extricate himself from the bars Bart executed a perfect maneuver pulling himself up to the top rung and swinging his feet out through the gap and landing on Willy’s stuck backside.
Bart stood for a moment on the enraged but stuck groundskeeper and let out a Tarzan-like yell, pounding his chest.
“I’ll get you Simpson!”
“Don’t count on it!” Bart jumped back down and headed straight for the fence originally cut off by Willy’s initial pursuit.
Willy finally pulled himself from the bars and ran after the boy. A scream of triumph, stirring the spirits of his ancestors arose in his throat as he saw the boy head straight for the corner of the eight-foot cyclone fence. “Now I’ve got you!”
Bart though, knew better. He ran right at and then straight up the fence. The kids in the schoolyard would tell the tale for years about the fantastic move, the catlike pose Bart affected on the angled top of the fence and then the perfect jump down punctuated by Willy’s bone-jarring crash into the sturdy, unforgiving fence.
Jarod sat in the bushes just outside the schoolyard and grinned like the Cheshire cat he was.
* * * * *
His time in Springfield had been entertaining, but Jarod knew it was time to end this pretend and get on to the next problem. Before he could carry out the final sting, he knew that he had one more loose end to fix.
“Homer.”
“AHHH!” Homer jerked awake from behind the console of the plant’s safety office. He turned around slowly to look at the suddenly very imposing figure of Jarod. “Yes?”
“Homer, you are completely incompetent. You have absolutely no business being in charge of putting your own underwear on in the morning, let alone the safety of an nuclear reactor. You are a disgrace to the human race!
“Now, I know that you were hired by Mr. Burns long ago. You have held this job now for almost ten years. The only way you could have done that is if you are cooperating with Mr. Burns to keep this plant unsafe. I would have thought that you were getting paid to keep quiet about this place, but after looking at your bank accounts, I can see that isn’t the case.
“I need to know, Homer, are you deliberately this incompetent or are you just stupid?”
The four cells that collectively considered themselves as Homer’s ‘brain’ slowly digested this line of questioning. “Did he just call us stupid?”
“No, I think he asked us if we were stupid.”
“Oh, well, we would be stupid to answer him yes, wouldn’t we?”
“Yes, but we are stupid.”
“You’re right, we are.”
“Should we tell him?”
“Who, Jarod?”
“No, he already knows. I mean Homer.”
“Oh, I don’t think he really cares.”
“You’re right.”
Homer looked straight at Jarod and then broke down sobbing, “Oh, Jarod! I am stupid! I couldn’t get a job doing anything else! Mr. Burns was the only one who would hire me! I don’t really know any better! Honest!”
Jarod’s face changed instantly from malice to joy. “I believe you, Homer. That’s why I’ve decided to help you.”
“Help me?”
“Yes. You see that button there?” Jarod pointed at a ridiculously large red button that read ‘PUSH ME.’
“Uh, huh.”
“If that light there,” Jarod pointed to the red rotating plant alarm light, “ever starts flashing, then just push that button. It starts an auto-populating logarithm that diagnoses the plant emergency and automatically adjusts for any incongruities in the normal operating parameters for the reactor and induces stabilizing functions.”
Homer just stared at the Pretender.
“Do you understand.”
“Uh huh,” Homer lied.
“It fixes the reactor automatically if there is any problem.”
“Oh.”
“So the reactor will be safe.”
“Oh.”
“Which should be what YOU are trained to do.”
“Oh.”
Jarod decided that he was getting nowhere with this. “Homer. What do you do if the red light flashes?”
Homer stared. “Uh, push the button?”
“Yes!”
Homer smiled.
“Now, Homer, this is very important. I’m going to scare Mr. Burns into taking the safety of the plant more seriously. So I want you to go home for the rest of the day so you don’t accidentally get involved with this. Do you understand?”
“Uh, sure. Go home.”
“Right.”
“Jarod?”
“Yes, Homer?”
“See you at Moe’s later?”
“I doubt it.”
“Oh.”
“Good bye, Homer.”
“Good bye.”
Jarod strode out of the safety control room and headed straight up to Mr. Burns’ office. Homer sank back down in the control room chair and went back to sleep.
* * * * *
Mr. Burns sat in the semi-gloom of his office, pouring over the latest expense records for the plant. “Twelve thousand dollars for disposal of spent rods? Maybe I can cut it up and use it to make emergency path markings for airplanes. Now there’s an idea…”
Suddenly, a small warning light began to blink on the corner of Mr. Burns’ desk. It was the containment break alarm for the main reactor. He quickly glanced up at the wall of monitors to see absolute pandemonium in every sector of his plant. Alarms and fires had broken out in every sector and people could be seen running and screaming everywhere.
“Scary, isn’t it?”
Burns quickly turned to the side door normally used by his assistant Waylan Smithers. Instead of the mousy lackey, however, he saw the imposing, dark figure of Jarod. “What is the meaning of this!”
Jarod strode into the office. “The plant is melting down. In thirty seconds, the containment will be lost and a nuclear cloud will spill out over the city of Springfield, killing thousands.”
“Bah. Who cares about those cretin?”
Jarod was taken a bit aback by the callousness of Burns, but he had anticipated this as well. “Of course, you feel pretty safe in here, with your lead-lined office and hermetically sealed ventilation system.”
“That’s right.”
“Too bad I re-routed the ventilation system to draw ventilation for this space directly from the main reactor chamber.”
“What? Are you insane?”
“No, just concerned that your safety record is inexcusable. You have sacrificed safety and environmental protection for the sake of profits!”
Jarod stood at the front of Mr. Burns’ desk, looming over the frail executive with all his Pretender fury. “You sacrificed these people for your own profit! DIDN’T YOU! DIDN’T YOU!!”
Just as Burns was about to blurt out his confession, though, the alarms suddenly silenced. Both Burns and Jarod turned to the monitors. Both instantly saw Homer Simpson moving his hands from the large button Jarod had recently installed.
“DOH!” Jarod exclaimed.
“Yes, my misguided friend. It seems that this plant is safer that you realize.” Burns reached under his desk for the trap door button.
Jarod leaped back just as the door opened under his feet. A side door opened up revealing four large dogs. “I trust that you can find your way out.” Burns’ sneer was mocking and infuriating.
Jarod turned and ran.
The dogs chased him down the main corridors and back towards the main entrance of the plant. He managed to keep a small lead on them while traveling down the well-waxed interior hallways, but once he burst out the main door, he knew that they would start to gain on him.
That’s when he saw the black Lincoln pull up. Miss Parker and two Sweepers jumped out just as he gained employee parking lot.
“Stop, Jarod!”
Jarod didn’t turn to look at Miss Parker as he ran past his car and towards the plant border fence. It was twelve feet tall, but he had an idea that he just might get out of this in one piece.
Miss Parker and the Sweepers immediately started chasing Jarod across the parking lot. Miss Parker stopped and shot a warning at Jarod that missed him and shattered the windshield of the Simpson family car. Jarod kept running, with the dogs, Sweepers and Parker in tow.
He reached the fence just as the dogs closed the last of the gap with him. He nimbly ran up the fence, vaulted the top and landed in a perfect tuck-roll on the other side. The dogs, not wanting to miss out on the chance of fresh meat, immediately changed directions and pounced on the Sweepers and Miss Parker as they neared the fence to take a shot at the fleeing Jarod.
Montgomery Burns called the dogs back in twenty minutes later despite the rather vociferous and violent threats of the three trapped Centre employees.
* * * * *
Jarod packed up the last of the DSAs and prepared to head out of town when he sensed a presence behind him. “Hello, Bart.”
“Hey, Jarod.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“Where you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I go with you?” The question tore at Jarod’s heart.
“Bart, you need to grow up. However, I will leave you this cell phone. You can use it to reach me any time. Also, I’ll have a friend of mine with the CIA check in on you now and again. This won’t be the last time we meet.”
Bart took the phone and stared up at his new idol.
Jarod turned and walked out of the warehouse and in the dark gloom, Bart thought he might have caught the glimpse of a small tear.
Bart turned and faded into the dark as quickly and quietly as the Pretender.
