B is for Brown Noise
Introduction to “B is for Brown Noise”
I was hesitant to include this as the second story in this collection, since it would be something of an esoteric topic.
It’s intended as a somewhat fond satire of Dan Brown, the author of “The DaVinci Code” and other best-sellers. I had heard for years that Mr. Brown was a bad writer; legendarily bad, earth-shakingly bad, astonishingly bad. So I sat down to read “DaVinci,” and this is my response.
I need to say up front that Mr. Brown is an outstanding storyteller; the analogy I often use is that if we were all sitting around a campfire, I would ask Dan Brown to tell the next story.
Oh, of course his stories have improbable plots, but why is that a problem? If I wanted something true to life, I would watch a documentary. Mr. Brown knows how to tell an interesting story that zooms along and keeps our interest along the way.
However, in terms of putting nouns and verbs together, his early efforts were not very good, but yet his stories were best-sellers. So that’s what this story is; a fast-moving tale that, in the middle, suffers a massive syntax failure.
So here’s to Mr. Brown, a reminder that story often trumps syntax.
It was not the way Dan expected to spend lunch, as the victim of a kidnapping.
Clearly kidnapping was not the original objective; a non-tenured English professor likely wouldn’t be high on the value chart of kidnapping targets. But that’s where he had been, inside the Burger King, when the two robbers had burst in, waving guns and yelling about the safe.
Of course, no one in the building had the combination to the safe, given that no one with any sense would give the combination to a minimum-wage teenager. So since there were guns but no immediate money, it devolved into a kidnapping. Dan was the only one in the room in a sport coat, so they grabbed him and dragged him out to their car, insisting that he call someone and demand money.
Who would he call? His roommate would have bitched that Dan already owed him money. His uncle the bookie had some money, but could care less if he ever saw Dan again. His department chair at the university could replace him with a phone call. He tried to explain this to the kidnappers in a calm, surprisingly apathetic tone and words of few syllables.
The kidnappers drove to a deserted parking lot on the outskirts of town; what had decades ago been the local municipal airport. Tires squealing, they drove through a no-longer-locked gate and pulled around behind what used to be the main terminal building.
Imagine their surprise to be confronted by two carloads of men with automatic weapons. The kidnappers would not survive long enough to realize that the deserted airport had become a meeting place for local cells of international terrorists. Dan ducked down in the backseat but it was an unnecessary gesture; the two kidnappers had stopped the car, leaped out, and been gunned down before they could get a shot off.
The terrorists dragged him out of the back of the car and pulled him into the old terminal building. It was mostly dark; he could see a few utility lights clamped up, near humming generators. They pushed him into a chair and began to shout at him, which continued until they realized that he spoke only English; there was some brief confusion while they seemed to confer about finding someone who could speak his language.
Then a woman appeared out of the shadows; a short, petite blonde, way too young to be involved in something like this. She could have been one of his undergrad students. She came near to his chair, and knelt in front of him. In the dim light, he realized that she was one of his students.
She smiled. “Dr. Langdon? Yes, it’s Miss Henderson. Don’t be alarmed. You won’t be harmed. Trust me.”
Then there was a huge noise from outside and above, like a C-5 was going to land on the roof. The group of terrorists began yelling and running outside.
The girl rolled her eyes. “Oh, really, now?” She took him by the wrist, pulling him up out of the chair. “Come on.”
Dan stumbled outside into the light...except there wasn’t much light, as if the sunny day had turned cloudy. Then he looked up and saw why.
A huge spaceship filled the sky. It was so huge, it was impossible to say how high up it was. It could have been a hundred yards up, it could have been a hundred miles. It was gigantic, and silver, and there were no seams or joints or parts visible. It was like one giant silver plate, hovering over them, blotting out the sun.
“Citizens of earth…” came a voice, so loud that it rattled the building and shook tiles off the roof.
“Sorry, sorry, damned sorry,” continued the voice, slightly less thunderous. “Having some trouble with the levels here. Give me a minute.”
They all stood and stared and waited.
“Better? Is that better?” the volume was now bearable. “Okay. Again, sorry. Now, [ahem]...citizens of earth, this is your official announcement. I am only going to say this once. This is an invasion. Please surrender immediately.”
The terrorists looked at each other, then pointed their guns and began to fire.
“Citizens of earth, this is your official announcement. I am only going to say this once,” the voice repeated. “Please surrender immediately. Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be, people.”
One of the terrorists had a bazooka; after some confusion and discussion, it was loaded and fired. The shell arced up into the sky and crashed against the silver. There was no hint of even a dent.
“Citizens of earth, this is an understandable response. However, you should be aware that resistance is futile and all that…I mean, look, we have this big-ass ship and this awesome PA system...you should know that you don’t really have a shot here…”
The terrorists emptied their clips at the ship. The pings of the bullets bouncing harmlessly off the silver began to sound like a pinball machine.
As the bullets continued to ping, the voice came over the loudspeaker again, sounding exasperated this time. “Citizens of earth...oh now that is so rude...citizens of…oh for the love of…okay, fine.”
A silvery panel on the underside of the ship slid open, and a tube extended out, pointed at the terrorists. Without warning, a blindingly bright blue beam shot out of the tube. There was no sound, but there was a smell; the smell of burnt flesh.
The terrorists were gone.
The tube swung around toward Dan. He felt his muscles tensing, his heart racing, his palms wet. But as much as he wished it otherwise, his sense was flight, not fight. As a boy, Dan had gotten lost in a Cadillac dealership and almost went blind from the bright lights reflecting off the chrome for hours before being rescued. Since then, he'd suffered a haunting phobia of chrome and silver plating...antique stores, East L.A. car shows, spaceships.
He closed his eyes, waiting for the end. But nothing happened. He wondered if that was what dying felt like, like nothing.
He opened his eyes.
She was standing two feet in front of him, the gleaming blue of the death beam bouncing harmlessly off of her chest. She was taller than he was, with long brown curly hair, and some sort of brown costume, with black boots and black gloves.
He’d never seen a superhero before...never.
“Quick, that ellipse, throw it!” she shouted, italically.
He looked down and was surprised to find three perfectly-round, flat, identical, six-inch-diameter black stones at his feet. He grabbed one and was surprised to find all three of them came up together, somehow attached together, somehow.
It was time to move past his fearful past. Overcoming his paralyzing fear and recalling his time as an national intercollegiate champion boomerang athlete, he stepped out from behind her and hurled the array with all his might and precision, hoping to strike a critical blow. But the stones bounced off the silvery hull...effectless.
“It didn’t work!” he shouted in her vicinity. “What now?”
The young superheroine gestured foreshadowingly toward the ship, reaching out one of her two black-gloved hands. She opened her mouth wide, thrust her chin out defiantly, and an awful sound began to come out. It was hugely loud, and ear-splitting...deafening. It was deep, and ponderous...it felt, almost, brown, if sounds could be colors, like a kaleidoscope of power that had brown in it.
The giant silver ship began to shiver, and shimmer, it’s silvery skin rattling and shuddering...like it was about to shake apart. And then, with an ear-piercing “kra-koom,” it silently vaporized into dust. It was gone...completely and totally vanished, except for the very large pile of dust which was still there.
Dan was frozen with fear. He turned to look at the tall healthily-built young superheroine, and...
Wait, what? How could he turn to look at her if he was frozen? Dan’s head began to pound, throbbingly. No, not throbbingly; that wasn’t a word, was it? No, of course not. And who was he talking to? Isn’t this third-person omniscient? What was the matter with him? He felt his legs turning to jelly, and he fell to his knees in something like a heap.
He started to say, but the words...the words were just in piles in his head, random piles, like the piles of leaves his mother made him rake up before she would give him a quarter for… Wait, what, what?...he felt his thoughts spin in his head, like the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, which was contained in a circular tunnel, with a circumference of 26.7 kilometres, at a depth ranging from 50 to 175 metres underground.
Dan accusingly looked at her, the almost-handsome middle-aged English professor’s eyes burning like charcoal just before it’s ready for the hamburgers. Or hot dogs. The almost-handsome middle-aged English professor had always preferred hot dogs.
“This is your fault,” his voice indicted at her. “You’ve done something, haven’t you?”
She stared down at her highly-polished black leather stiletto boots, with the ten-inch heels, that were a staple of her costume, which identified her as Entropy, the superhero. She exhaled a breath. She wondered what Joan of Arc, her hero, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans," and considered a heroine of France, for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War, and canonized as a Roman Catholic saint, would do.
“It’s part of my power set. I’m Entropy. I cause things to break down and fall apart and lose cohesion...by breaking down...and falling apart,” the tall brunette six-foot female superhuman told.
His voice glared out at her. “So what happened to that ship was you? No, I mean…” What was the matter with his head?, he thought, reaching for that head with one of his two hands. The other hand that he did not reach for his head with, he was busy cramming it into a fist...ready for action. His words were not like he was used to his words being.
She paused, waiting a moment before again she spoke. “I can’t help it. When I use my powers, everything breaks down. Even…” her sad eyes were filled with sadness. “Even the narrative. The grammar. The sentence structure. The word choice. The metaphors, the similes, the punctuation. The whole enchilada.”
She suddenly straightened herself straight up, turning away from him and standing tall against the glowering midday sun. Hands covered with black fine kidskin leather gloves, they raised over her head, pointing straight up in a crossing motion. Her broad, wide shoulders were thrown back and her chin was thrust outwardly, in a forward motion. Her 28-inch-long shimmering black curls cascaded like a chocolate fountain from her headtop. Her blue eyes pierced the horizon like a flaming orange spear thrown against the heart of darkness. Her jutting jaw revealed her determination and unblinking severity in all matters... he knew now that even if none of them survived this, it wouldn’t be her.
“Transitive!” she shouted, with a shout. It was so loud, he desperately covered his two ears with his two hands, even the one that was still a fist.
And then it was gone. The pain in his head, the confusion, the shout...all gone.
He looked up. Entropy was gone, too.
Standing where she had been was the short, petite, blonde teenage girl. Miss Henderson. She rushed over to him and helped him up from his knees.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she kept saying over and over. “I promised I wouldn’t do it again, that I wouldn’t change again, but…”
He looked at her and smiled. “Look, that’s one nasty power set. But if you hadn’t….well, I think we’d both be dead.”
She put out her hand; he took it gratefully, then pulled her to him. She wrapped her arms around him. The hug lasted only a moment, but it was nice.
He let her go, and looked down at her; everything else seemed different, but she still had the blue eyes. “How long have you… and why are you in college...and…?”
She put a finger to his lips. “Spoilers,” she smiled at him. “I’m where I need to be right now. And now that you know, well, I guess you’re a part of it, too.”
“I’m okay with that,” he smiled back at her. “But it doesn’t mean an automatic “A,” you know?”
She stepped back, and held her hand out again. “Sam.”
He took her hand in his. “Dan.”
