Inventrix

Part 1: The Inventrix

Angus Twizzle wore blue and yellow striped socks this morning, because he didn't know that the world was ending.

He didn't know that today, certain essential things in the world (bedroom slippers to name one) would be wiped from existence, their very particles un-written in the languages of the land and the laws of physics.

Which would explain his slightly frozen sock-clad footsies later on. Oh dear.

This morning he felt a sort of disquiet, a rumbling in his stomach, an unease slithering in his bones as he made his way into town. He never much cared for how the townspeople snorted and turned up their noses when he came traipsing - his hat was the cause, maybe. It wasn't much of a top hat, what, with its top open and a flower on a spring popping out. But he was in too much of a hurry to meet Helsega. She would know what to make of his strange symptoms.

"Good morning Mrs. Ironsmith," Angus tipped his hat, or what was left of it, in politeness.

Mrs. Ironsmith mumbled something under her breath and hurried away.

"The nymphs of cheeriness sure spared her this morning, didn't they?" he marveled to himself, stretching out an exceptionally long chopstick leg before him. "Especially on this morning, the morning that could be the last gasp of spring air those old lungs get! MR. MILLER! Good morning, old chap! I expect a flock of chalk weasels around noon-o’clock!"

Mr. Miller exhibited a similar response. Sighing, eye-rolling, and trundling his cart of wares out of the town square as quickly as his gout could manage him. He seemed to be in a rush and looked over his shoulder warily.

“People really do hate when sentences don’t end the way they jellybean,” Angus said to no one in particular. The town square was eerily empty as he splashed through. There wasn’t a car in sight.

"Helsega! Helsega!" Angus burst into the dim hut, forgetting his signature entry song.

He went back to the door just to whistle the last three notes, as it was considered polite and just a plain a delight by the old witch. “Sometimes after a long day, the only thing I want to hear is that endearing squawk you call a theme song, dear,” she’d say, patting the sofa for him to join her, a mug of his favorite tea at hand.

Helsega was one of the only features of the town that wasn’t “going out of style”.

Unlike the horsecarts that had been replaced with big, smelly boxlike things and the tailor’s shops that had been replaced with racks of cheap factory clothes, Helsega sat pinned to the land given to her grandmother’s great-grandmother. It had been a gift of gratitude from the townspeople, after she healed the mayor’s son from a fall out of a gnarlblossom tree. Helsega liked telling that story and used it to explain to visitors why witchcraft would never go out of style. She might brew them a broth of slugs with a coconut garnish – and their symptoms would go away in a day or two, but they would quickly forget her lessons in the humdrum of life. Soon only a few people visited her, and Mr. Miller if his gout was really acting up, but for the most part she found herself alone with only gangly Angus Twizzle to keep her company. He visited almost every day, and she always looked for his big orange and white-spotted toadstool umbrella to come bobbing down the hill.

This time he couldn’t find his umbrella, had been in too much of a hurry to throw on his mismatched bedroom slippers and rush to town. Twenty-five and a madman, they said. Head only full of the sounds of different models of doorbells (his obsession), and the history of just about every sentence ever uttered by a human mouth. He was particularly interested in engineering situations to make people say, “Blue beetle broth brings bliss to my belly.”

“Helsega…” Angus was too much out of breath, and hung his head, not bothering to keep his tongue in his mouth.

“What’s all this dear, you’re panting like a dog,” Helsega quipped with worry, removing the shawl from around her shoulders and draping it around his. “It’s not good to be out, especially on a day like today.”

Helsega was short and round and had a lively old voice like Angus imagined his grandmother once did. Today her frizzy gray-black hair was tied back in a bandanna with red tulips on it; her small dark eyes shone out atop a folded nose and square jaw. She wore a shapeless purple potato sack of a dress.

Snug under the shawl that smelled like her patchouli incense, Angus felt the raindrops instantly vaporize from his clothing. “Thanks, Helsega. I needed that.”

“Like Mr. Miller needs his ale,” chirped Helsega, rolling up to the teakettle and putting on the hot water. “Tell me, what’s got your slippers in a twist?”

All Angus could do was look at her. Maybe she’d get the feeling he was having from his eyes. “Like this. See this? This is disquiet. This is something about to happen. Helsega, I feel it in my bones.”

Helsega turned around in silence, and when she returned her gaze to his Angus was struck by the knowing in her face. “It’s happening too soon, she murmured, “and even you, you twizzleball, can sense it. Well of course you can.”

Angus was excited. “What’s happening? Is the world going to end in a flash-bang like fireworks?”

Helsega shook her head. “No, child. But you may be able to contribute something soon.” She rolled up her sleeves. “All the umbrellas disappeared from town today. The cars too. Everyone is bundled up inside, thinking robbers struck in the night.”

Her eyes shot up with the howling wind, and Angus was astonished to see the crackle of electricity in them. He realized that she had been watching a thunderstorm through the window, but one unlike any he had ever seen. For one, the colors were comically absurd – purple, red and green spangling whipped-up clouds.

“World-ending fireworks indeed,” Helsega said, and pressed a mug of tea into Angus’ hands. “Drink up dear, or we may never know why I needed to teach you to be creative all these years.”

As the tea slid down Angus’ throat, an ember began pulsating in his head. A dull throbbing at first, and then faster and faster, until he was sure his brain would box its way out of his head. Then came the heat – blinding, searing his vision white – he roared and stumbled blindly for the door, anything to put out this fire inside him – he tumbled out under the rain and staggered across the square, not sure if the lightning was coming from outside his head or inside.

“Angus! Look out!” he heard a voice say, and then he put his foot into a hole at the base of the largest gnarlblossom tree in town, a hole that didn’t end.

Part 2: The Designer

Angus felt like he had been crushed by a doorbell factory. There was no other way to describe it – the pain, the blackness – wait! There was a horizontal slice of light far, far above him. It occurred to him that his stockinged feet were cold. His slippers were gone.

He stumbled up a mountain of stuff –shapes that didn’t have words yet, words that he would have to someday make people say – and put his eyes up to the crack. A room extended beyond the crack, with massive furniture, a massive rocking horse…

Angus yelled as the dark sky was suddenly lifted away and replaced with blinding light.

A MASSIVE face was just inches from his.

“H-Hello,” Angus stuttered, looking up at a – a boy, was it? Towering above him.

“Who are you and how did you get in my toy bin?” came a small high voice that still blew all of Angus’ hair back. The voice quavered round the beginning of the sentence, as if it wasn’t sure of its rightfulness, then resolved into the demanding boom of a child given the world.

“I’m Angus Twizzle. I’m a sentence inventor,” Angus ventured.

““YOU’RE Angus Twizzle?!” The enormous child withdrew in surprise. “Erm, what’s a sentence inventor?”

“I create original sentences that haven’t been uttered in all of human history, and I make scenarios for them to be said organically.”

“That’s boring,” the child said, “sounds too professionable.”

“Oh no, it’s rather fun,” Angus said. “A silly eggplant surprise and three hundred pounds of walrus meat cooked at a slow boil.”

“I like that,” giggled the child.

“What’s your name?” said Angus

“Toby.”

“Toby. That’s a nice name… Why have my slippers disappeared?”

The child looked at him, huge eyes wide and framed with dark lashes. It gave him a rather innocent look, like a big-eyed fish, Angus thought to himself. The child of mermaids.

“I made them disappear,” Toby said quietly.

“What? How?” Angus leaned closer, “do you have a superpower?”

“I’ll show you.”

Toby extended his enormous hand, and Angus gingerly stepped into his palm, careful not to tickle him. The child had enormous power and Angus could only imagine what an irritated flick could do.

“See here…” The hand with Angus on it shot into the air, over the landscape that was the toy room. “This is my lab. The Universe Designer Junior, Helsega Edition.”

“Whoa!” Angus couldn’t tell what the contraption was, but it looked like a series of columns containing holographic blocks with things on them. Hundreds of things from – well, from Angus’ little town, and, he imagined, from the rest of the world. A masterlist of words floated on an adjacent holographic screen.

“I come up with words I like and put them on the masterlist. Then the Universe Designer makes things in your little world that has the essence of those words. It’s easy!”

Angus beamed brightly up at Toby. “Wow! You can create all the words and sentences you want!”

“Sure can! That’s how you were created. One of my best word combos ever. Watch this – beezlebumblebrock! Type it in… Poof!”

The space where the holographic columns were suddenly dissolved into a three-dimensional screen, where Angus could see Mrs. Ironsmith running about screaming wearing a very concerning hat. It looked like a cross between a bumblebee with measles and a head of broccoli, and it was suctioned very tightly on her head.

“Your world now has a beezlebumblebrock,” Toby grinned. “And ‘umbrella’ and ‘car’ and what are those awful things you used to wear - ‘slippers’ – are gone. Too much of the things that only grown-ups like. Not exciting enough.”

“There’s Helsega!” Angus pointed joyfully. The witch was now trying to assist Mrs. Ironsmith in getting the beezlebumblebrock off her head.

Angus waved and waved, and wished he could bring her up here, to the surface of reality. She had known the whole time – who knew how long that knowledge had floated about that frizzy head full of big and small mysteries. But she looked right through him.

“Tax returns, those thingamajingits have got to go next,” Toby was grumbling and scrolling furiously on his masterlist. “And approximalations! Those things that grownups and accountants have to do!”

“Toby, you know Helsega?” Angus looked up at him in delight.

“Yes, she makes sure I behave. My mom wanted this version to be child-proof.” Toby whirled, rolling his moon-sized eyes, and deleted another word off the masterlist. “There are so many words I don’t like that came with this version. I could just delete them, like this. I’m almost eight and a half; that’s almost full-grown. She can’t tell me what to do.”

Angus followed Toby’s finger up to the masterlist, freezing when he saw carbon and oxygen on a list of the elements.

“I always thought these are so boring. My mom says they’re the fundamalentils of building a universe with life in it.”

“Toby, no, stop!” Angus cried.

“Angus, why are you waving your arms around?”

“Toby, come here,” Angus mustered all the confidence he could from the tips of his stripe-stockinged feed and ordered the boy. He was, after all, a rather large child, much like Angus thought of his own self.

Toby obeyed, slowly kneeling, a skyscraper in descent. He veered near so Angus could see the big blooming details about him: the veins in his massive eyes from looking at the screen of his simulation for too long, the excited flush in his cheeks. Angus tried not to see him as an evil wizard, or worse still, a mad scientist.

“Toby,” Angus began, “don’t. You don’t know what you’re doing.” He cringed as soon as the words were out of his mouth; it was something that he himself would hate to be told.

“What?” Toby said quietly. His face turned a bright healthy pink like plastic lawn flamingos, then a deep red. “You think you’re so much more grown-up?” His finger veered closer to the DELETE button for carbon.

“Toby, Toby – TOBY, I’m sorry, I didn’t express myself well. I think you’re a brilliant designer to invent my world. You do know, you really do. Will you please listen to what I have to tell you?”

“Speak, Angus.”

“Carbon is what we’re made of, and oxygen is what we – and you – breathe,” Angus explained.

The child’s eyes widened with understanding.

Swallowing, Angus continued, “Helsega will die if you do that. I will die if you do that. Then you won’t have friends to invent things with. You will have to do your favorite thing, alone.”

Toby stopped short, his face falling. “Oh, that would be wretched.”

Yesss, Angus rejoiced internally. A surge of electric clarity moved down his spine. The words formed and he continued, “If you want to trim words, please let them be ones that aren’t useful for us. Alienation; exclusion for example. Not ones like doorbell.”

“Okay,” said Toby. Something had changed. Calm, the boy was now. He looked very earnestly at Angus. “Angus? You’re my first friend from – from your world.”

Angus was flooded with a wave of relief, then utmost exhaustion. He very much wished Toby would invent a soft blue blanket for him that very minute. “Toby,” he yawned, “I’m very glad to have met you.”

“You had better promise to come back for chapter two. I’m stuck on inventing some whosits for the kernuzzle,” Toby said.

“I promise,” Angus said as Toby carried him towards the toybox, “we inventors need to stick together.” The world was getting hazy as the tea wore off.

Before Toby closed the lid of the toybox, he knelt down to his little creation. Angus Twizzle, some of his most favorite words on the masterlist.

“Hey Angus,” he whispered, “Blue beetle broth brings bliss to my belly.”

Epilogue

“Tobias!” Toby’s mother screeched from the dining room. From the sound of that screech, she had finished whipping up a meal of his not-so-favorite things. They were likely things that he had fervently eliminated from his masterlist: Brussel sprouts or quiche or something equally as dreadful. Or perhaps she was sitting with her accountant in the kitchen and wanted him to come in to say hello. She loved to show him off: eight and a precocious little wunderkind in his unassuming action-figure t-shirts.

Three days had passed since Angus’ unexpected visit and Toby had watched the town of Stonebrick a bit more closely. He checked in on his new friend. He watched the market square and all the usual suspects trundling past. He saw what the townspeople liked, and what they needed. He tried to invent things they needed and have them appear close by. The people were terribly boring, he sighed to himself. Poor Angus. But perhaps they were boring because they needed some joy. They needed his magic words. And so, he had been glued to the Universe Designer Junior, Helsega edition, making improvements that even Helsega herself had commented on. A brief message had popped up on the screen, and he was happy that the witch was on board. She had immense power in Stonebrick and in his simulation.

Toby sported a new pair of striped socks. He had also engineered a top hat of sorts for himself. But instead of a flower, a rubber fish that sprayed water sprang out the top. Inventors had to have their mascots, and their own songs; he knew by now.

With the help of Helsega and her magic, Angus had sent him a message about a long-held dream of his; one that he needed Toby’s help for. He wanted to set up a school for inventors of all kinds, so that the madmen and madwomen of the world would be united for the very first time and never feel alone again.

Angus would be paying him a visit in-person in the next three days.

“Tobias!” his mother screeched again, “that’s mighty impolite.”

“I’m coming, Mother!” Toby scrambled to shut down the hologram for the moment, lest anyone see the marvelous blueprints for Bluebeetle Academy for Inventors.

He bolted out of the toy room, only to slip and land on the wood floor.

“Huh?” he said, “I was just wearing them, on my stripey-doodle feet. Where on earth could my slippers be?”