The Mysterious Adventures of Shamrock Jones
By: Chris Vorhis
If you are looking for a very moving and poignant story, then you have definitely come to the wrong place. No, this story is about as undeep as a short story can be. Some novices to the art might say shallow instead of undeep, but that just shows their novicenessity. There lives a man at 123 Singsomemore Lane. His name is Arthur Biggles, and he will not be appearing in this story. He was sick the day of script writing, so we thought we should send you his address so you can write Get well cards to him.
No, the quasi-hero of today goes by the name of Shamrock. Shamrock Jones. That’s right, not Holmes, but Jones. Shamrock lives in a not too shabby apartment in the brighter side of Western Manhattan. Shamrock is a private detective, and a good one at that. Shamrock has solved cases across the better side of Manhattan, and all who seek advice also seek Shamrock Jones. He never went to college, no, Shamrock Jones went straight to the top of private investigations for Manhattan. Mostly because the other private investigator in the brighter side of Manhattan caught the flu.
Shamrock Jones may be the best, but he also lives dirt cheap. All of his clothing he got from his Dad, and all of his furniture he fixed up from the junkyard. His clothing is patched, and it smells slightly of lavender. That is the price for living single. Shamrock was a jovial fellow, mostly because he was completely nailed with cheap alcoholic beverages the night before. Well, he was still jovial. Shamrock Jones was a good man, he didn’t go to church, he obeyed the traffic laws, and he owned a small dog whose name was not Fluffy. To be more specific, his dog’s name was Bartholomew. To friends, the small Scottish Terrier was known simply as….Bartholomew. He was a high class puppy, but not in a snotty way. No, this was the kind of dog you took to the mall to impress women. He was low maintenance, and he was also low. Only a foot tall. Much easier to keep track of that way. Bartholomew was fond of reading the paper, and doing the crosswords on weekends. Shamrock, on the other hand, usually fetched the mail for Bartholomew every day.
Usually, Shamrock was unemployed. Even if he was the only Private Investigator on the Brighter Side of Manhattan, it was still rare to have a case. Shamrock had begun to doubt his job, and his self esteem had begun to plummet.
One day, which was called June 27, 2001, things were going to change. There was a knock on the door.
“Who could that be?” Bartholomew asked Shamrock.
Shamrock hurried to the door, hoping for a case. He opened the door.
“Hello,” Shamrock said.
A very odd figure stood before him. It was a man dressed in a trenchcoat, or at least it looked like a man. Instead of a face, there was a giant mirror that stared back at him from at an oppressing angle. The figure was almost eight feet tall, and its head was an inch taller than the doorway. A muffled voice seemed to come from the mirror, “Is Arthur Biggles, the Private Investigator here?”
Hmmm. This guy looked a little funny.
“Ah, Arthur Biggles is sick, he caught the flu. I am the only Private Investigator in the Brighter Side of Manhattan.” Shamrock pointed his finger up at the sign above the doorway.
“Arthur isn’t here? Well that’s a pissant. What do you think, Sedwick?” said Mirror Man.
“Umm, my name is Shamrock-“ he began.
“I think it is fine. Take this one, we’ve had a long day,” said a slightly more masculine voice from Mirror Man’s crotch.
“That’s a neat trick there, Sedwick-“ he began again.
“Yes, well, I’d say you should pack your bags Shamrock Jones, Only Private Investigator From the Brighter Side of Manhattan, and prepare for Intergalactic Travel.”
“What do you say, Bartholomew?” Shamrock asked.
“Sounds good to me. I have nothing better to do. But you might want to swing by a 711, I think I need a new toothbrush.”
“By the Holy Rock of Golanzar, that dog just spoke!” Sedwick commented from Mirror Man’s crotch.
“You are very observant, Sedwick. But what should I call you, the guy behind the mirror?” said Shamrock.
“Me? Oh, well my friends call me Rolling Water.”
“Really? Well, I did not even know that water rolled.”
Rolling Water sounded like he sniffed, and blew his nose. “Its just a name. You don’t have to be mean.”
“Sorry there, I didn’t mean to get on Rolling Water’s bad side. Forgive me?” Shamrock extended his left arm.
“Quite alright, no harm done. I’ll be in the Orange Volvo outside, so just come by when you’re ready to go.”
Sedwick and Rolling Water turned, and walked down the hall. Shamrock still had his arm extended, waiting to shake hands.
“What an odd fellow. He never even shook my hand. Crazy world these days, eh Bartholomew?”
“Better believe it. Could you put the nice dog collar on me today, you know, the one with the red stripes?”
“Sure, if you have to Intergalactic Travel, might as well Intergalactic Travel in style.” Shamrock puts shades on.
After packing the bare necessities, and a few of mother nature’s necessities, into a brown leather suitcase, the two walked out of the office.
Bartholomew took off his hat, and waved it at the office. “Good bye home, Helloooooo Intergalactic Travel!” he said.
The two hopped in the back seat, and said hello to Sedwick and Rolling Water.
“Good afternoon, as you Terrans say, Shamrock Jones, Only Private Investigator-“ Rolling Water began.
“Shamrock is fine, thanks Rolling.”
“Rolling?”
“Well, yeah. They don’t just call you Rolling Water all the time, do they?”
“Usually they don’t say my name very much.”
“That is because they never wanted to say the whole name, Rolling.”
Sedwick sighed. “It’s going to be a long flight.”
“We are going to 711 right?” Sedwick asked.
“Right,” Bartholomew replied.
“Okay. You can release the emergency break, Sedwick.” Rolling Water said.
“Sorry, haven’t driven the company car in a while.”
“You’ve never driven a car before this morning, Sedwick.”
“Good point. Well, lets try not to wreck any other cars today.”
Shamrock looked at Bartholomew. “It’s going to be a long flight.”
“So, Sedwick, what exactly do you guys need us for, if you don’t mind me-“ he began.
“BRAKE!!” Rolling Water screamed.
“Brake, check.” Sedwick braked the Orange Volvo.
“What was that?”
“Well, Sedwick can’t see the road. I have to tell him when to hit the brakes.”
“Oh, okay. Well, why do you need us?”
“It seems that the Royal Ambassador to Earth has disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Bartholomew asked.
“Yes, he vanished without a trace in a Galactic Senate meeting.”
“Sorry to break it to you, but we don’t have a Royal Ambassador.”
“Well, naturally, we didn’t expect you to kidnap him yourselves-“
“No, I mean, we didn’t know that we HAD a Royal Ambassador.”
“Really? We sent him over fifty years ago. His name is Yo Yo Ma.”
“Wait a minute. Yo Yo Ma is a musician.”
“A what? BRAKE!!!”
“A musician. He plays music in front of people.”
“Yo Yo Ma? So he hasn’t told anybody about being the Royal Ambassador?”
“No one that I know. He is a really good musician, he plays like ten instruments.”
“Sure, he’s a Tarkian. His species love music. They play instruments under the sea late at night.”
“Here is the 711. Hey, Rolling, could you get me a toothbrush and some Slim Jims?” Shamrock asked.
“Sure. Hold on a second.”
Rolling Water and Sedwick stepped out of the Orange Volvo. They, in the same body, walked into the 711. The two collected the toothbrush and Slim Jims and presented them to the cash register.
“Say, what kinda man ar’ ya? You got a mirra fer a head, ded ya know that?”
“Yes, we are well aware that we have a mirror for a head.”
“We? We? Now you ken just git outta my store.”
“We only want to get these Slim Jims-“
The cashier pulled out a double barreled shotgun. “I sed, ya better git outta my store! I’m gonna count to three, and if ya alls are not outta here, I’m gonna bury you out back. One!”
“What do you say, Sedwick? Think this is a good time to break our vow against violence?”
“TWO!!”
“Sure.”
“THREE!!”
Rolling Water looked at the man, and then slammed his mirror right into the cashier’s forehead. The cashier was out cold, and he was lying asleep, slobbering on himself behind the cash register.
Rolling Water and Sedwick got into the Orange Volvo.
“Rolling, did you hurt your mirror?”
“Don’t worry, just a scratch.”
“Say, Sedwick, where is this Galactic Transport?”
“Oh, its Maryland and 42nd. Nice place there, good slushies.”
“Slushies? What do you mean?”
Bartholomew and Shamrock almost knew the moment they saw the Galactic Transport what he meant.
“This is another 711, right? I mean, if you guys were really hungry for slushies you could have asked for one last time.”
Rolling Water looked at the two of them for a moment before answering. “You mean, you thought these places were only for slushies? We founded the franchise in hopes that everyone would someday travel to the stars. Sadly, nobody ever has.”
“711? Well they did an awful job of advertising.”
“All you had to do, Shamrock, was go up to the cashier and ask for their intergalactic prices. Seems pretty obvious to me.”
“But Sedwick, what’s the point of it? I mean, no one ever uses it. It’s kind of like the medicine cabinet at the end of the Pirates of The Caribbean ride in Disney World. Nobody knows that they have a miniature pharmacy right there, and you have to hear it from another tourist to ask the cashier in the first place.”
“Precisely. Actually, Michael Eisner is one of us, too.”
“Really? That explains a lot. Like the pride parades.”
The trio, or quartet, depends on how you look at it, walked into the 711.
“Excuse me, Ma’am, but what are the galactic prices to The Galactic Assembly?” asked Rolling Water.
“Er….what do you mean? Do you want a Slim Jim?
Rolling Water looked a little confused until the senior cashier replied from underneath the counter, “Forty five solaris. Best prices in town. Oh, it’s you, Rolling Water. I assume you would want your personal government issued craft, Big Blue?”
“No, it’s called Blue Book” answered Sedwick.
The senior cashier stood up, and looked confused for a second.
“Oh, sorry Sir, I forgot that you were together on this mission.”
“It is easier to forget when you don’t have to smell a Catzan who is sitting on your shoulders.”
The cashier laughed, but the junior cashier looked very confused.
“Thanks for your time, but we have to go. See you later”, Rolling Water inspected her id card, “Margaret.”
The three, or four, walked into the Traveller’s Only back door of the store.
“Didn’t even buy anything. Cheap bastard.”
Inside the back room, a medium-sized circular craft lay in a grimy storeroom. The ship was black, with a shiny surface. A dome-shaped glass covered the central part of the circle and allowed entry into the ship.
“Well, everybody get in! Try to get comfortable, as it is going to be a long flight.”
“Why didn’t you guys just travel on the ship at that 711 we went to a while ago? That would have saved us a lot of time in getting here” Bartholomew suggested.
“Maybe, but there is a big difference between flying coach and first-class. And there is nothing better than flying first class in a government all expense paid brand new Tokoshiro GL-X150 Galactic Transport Vehicle.”
“Tokoshiro? Sounds like the Japanese have been busy.”
“Well, they always did have a better work ethic than you guys” Rolling Water explained.
Bartholomew and Shamrock looked at each other with quizzical expressions.
They climbed the support ladder and walked up the rounded surface to the glass window/door that was popped open by Sedwick, or Rolling Water, they didn’t know who had control of the arms yet.
Everyone hopped into the bucket seats and fastened their seatbelts.
“Hold on to your seats, it’s going to be a bumpy ride,” said Sedwick.
The ceiling split along a narrow seam and opened into the midday sun’s shining rays of ruby light. With a sudden jolt, everyone was propelled into their cushioned seats. The fabric molded into the shape of their bodies, and partly concealed them from view.
Between a narrow strip between the two pieces of seat, Shamrock said, “Whoa. This is for REAL.”
A similar murmur came from Bartholomew, but the fabric had folded entirely and Bartholomew was enclosed in a bucket seat. All Shamrock could see through his peeping slot was the accelerated break from the atmosphere. Then, a strange blue mist encircled them, and they were moving uncontrollably through what appeared to be some sort of galactic storm. Tiny blue particles danced around each other in an endless pattern and unidentifiable rhythm. The faint trails each dot made flowed together in an elaborate and intensifying pattern. In some places, the dots and trails had sewn together, to keep the ship on course. The wormhole of a storm moved up, down, left, down, right, and then up again. The movements were sudden and made Shamrock almost glad he was protected within the shield of fabric.
After a particularly brutal jolt, the end to the galactic road could be seen. A patch of the tiny blue particles and trails were quickly disentangling themselves, and a wall of vibrant blue remained. A dead end? What kind of suicidal trip had Shamrock asked for?
As the ship bolted out of the road, a magnificent blue star shone with unchallenged brightness. They were back in real space, as the wonderful carpet of blackness and stains of stars appeared again. Shamrock practically kissed the seat, so relieved was he of the harrowing ordeal.
The next thing that Shamrock saw was a tiny marble of light green. As it became closer, Shamrock could discern a light green ocean and a vibrant red coastline. When they became even closer, the continent took on an eerie shape.
“The continent….it looks like….I mean it’s the face of….”
“George Carlin. Yes, we know. My fellow Pakmarians developed a very strong affinity towards his “Words you can’t say on TV.” Extremely funny, have you seen it?”
“Yeah, but your planet looks just like him!”
“All it takes is a few months of designing and a few weeks of terraforming, and voila! Our planet has made a special homage to the creative genius.”
“Is it often for alien races to demolish their planet in order to make it look more like Carlin?”
“No, we were the first. But there have been many look-a-likes and then again, you have to allow for all the planets to copy other Earth heroes.”
“Like who?”
“Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Sigmund Freud, Davy Crockett, Jackie Gleeson, Mel Brooks, Emilio Estevez, Johnny Carson, The Marx Brothers, I mean, each of the Marx brothers has their own GALAXY for Carlin’s sake. Entire galaxies have been terraformed to have each planet in order with the brother’s faces right next to each other. We consider that to be a little…how do you say…tacky?”
“Got that right. Why don’t you have planets of Abe Lincoln or say, Hitler?”
“We do, but who wants a boring leader who fought and died centuries ago for a cause that we neither understand nor care about. Davy Crockett and John Wayne, on the other hand, they did things which anybody would find noble.”
“What, you mean die at the Alamo and make really bad movies for the rest of your life?”
“Right, I think you’re starting to understand.”
That’s the thing about alien life, they always WANT you to understand them, and will go to any means necessary to think that you do understand, even if that means just flatly ignoring you.
The flight ended when the shuttle landed on what looked to be an abandoned plot of earth. There were no buildings, no welcome home reception, not even a raincheck for a get together later on. There was a red field of grass, and the trees surrounding the wide clearing had red leaves.
The cushions expanded and allowed Shamrock and Bartholomew to walk around for a minute inside the space craft.
“Can you believe that? A space ship!”
“I know, did you see the blue wormhole or whatever?”
“See what? No, I was trapped inside that infernal shield of theirs. What a bore.”
“I saw it all, and it was amazing! Look outside, everything is-“
“Ahem. Shamrock Jones, Bartholomew, you have a missing person to find. Yo Yo Ma was last reported visiting this planet one week ago. He was here for the G 239649. The meeting of the top 239649 galaxies to discuss matters of trade and the liking. What do you want to know?”
Bartholomew scratched his ears before he asked, “Are we there?”
“You are here.”
“No, I mean at the conference. Are we there?”
“Ha ha! You honestly expect to be in the top 239649 galaxies! You only have one planet, you can’t space travel effectively, and your leading electronic and technologically advanced nation has a strange penchant for Karaoke. That should disqualify you by itself. However, your country is present, but not as a voting member. A very important discussion will happen next week concerning whether or not to open trade with your undeveloped galaxy. It seems that there is some sort of evidence that it might be worth investigating after all.”
“What could we have to offer? Besides a plethora of movies, actors, and every facet of our culture that you have never seen from our radio and TV transmissions, of course.”
“Easy. There is one thing that you have on your planet that exists nowhere else in the universe. It is a tiny yellow object called the Banana. Whole star systems have been designed to follow the form of the Holy Banana, and several religions have been created in it’s wake. People will do anything for a banana, as it is worth more than several thousand star systems from the G- 239649 meeting.”
“All for one banana? Did you guys bring some with you?”
“Ha! We work for the government, remember. Stealing bananas from undeveloped galaxies is harshly dealt with in our universe.”
“Really? I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
“We have three crates full of bananas down below.”
“Quiet Sedwick, I told you we should tell no one.”
“Well, anyway, we’re here to take you to the security personnel. You should find their Usual Suspects to be rather helpful.”
“Rolling, this planet is uninhabited! Where are you going to find anyone on Carlin World?”
“No one lives on the surface, or course! We’re not as barbaric as your civilization, we can’t stand working out here in the unprotected wilderness. Follow me.”
The glass dome opened again, and the investigators hopped off the ship to the red grasslands below. Rolling/Sedwick pulled on one strand of grass in the field, seemingly at random, and a section of grass slowly disappeared. They walked down the staircase that remained, and pressed a switch to close the door.
“So this is what Carlin World looks like!”
Shamrock and Bartholomew were taken aback by the sheer size and view of the underground civilization. It was a futuristic city, with silver coated buildings and flying transit cars. No clouds of smoke, no dirty streets. Marvelous ground scrapers nearly touched the mighty ceiling of the humungous cavern that seemed to have no ending. Thousands of cars moved in several tiers of traffic, and the flashing lights they produced seemed remarkably similar to those of earth. They could spy jugglers in the streets, and people walking and running along the sidewalks. Children were playing with sparkling balls at intersections, and the entire city seemed to be engaged with a multitude of activities. The adventurers saw all of this, from their vantage point thousands of feet above the streets, encased in a clear tunnel that made use of the striking vista it provided.
“Shamrock, Bartholomew, we have much to do, and time is not on our side.”