Mister Mxyzptlk: (/mɪksˈjɛzpɪtlɪk/ US dict: mĭks·yĕz′·pĭt·lĭk or /mɪksˈjɛzpɪtəlɪk/ US dict: mĭks·yĕz′·pĭt·l·ĭk), Backwards, Klptzyxm (kil-pit-ZEE-zim /kɨlpɨtˈziːzɨm/)
– Wikipedia
The lights at Refuge Farm flickered briefly as I breathed the last letter of my name, spelled backwards. “V,” I said, and the great room seemed to swell and gain color and then diminish and snap back into focus. The Methodist Christmas Tree swayed languidly as though standing in a mild breeze.
I stood up, blinking. Had it worked? Had the simple act of saying my name backwards transported me into the Fifth Dimension, the home of the 76th most influential villain in the history of DC Comics? According to the lore from the Golden Age, such transit between the worlds resulted in an expenditure of energy that would take a full calendar quarter- ninety days- to regenerate and permit a return to the First World.
That is a little longer than Attorney General Holder gave himself to investigate allegations of misconduct on his part, but I was confident I could get to the bottom of it. Just like the DoJ did. They discovered everything was just fine, releasing the report late one Saturday night. At that point, said the Department’s press spokesman “what difference did it make?”
I decided to go outside and see what the Fifth Dimension looked like, up close and personal. I opened the front door- it swung inward, just as it always did, and the storm door still swing out as I stepped onto the porch. The lawn was unchanged from what I recalled at dawn: a desultory mist was coming down, just as it had in the First World.
The skies were the same uniform gray, and the Panzer- or what could have been the Panzer- was still parked next to the yellow sign with the image of a tank and the admonition “Violators Will Be Crushed.”
Situation normal, it appeared. I stepped back into the house and smelled the dark-roast Russian-blend Dazbog coffee. Completely normal. I shrugged. Inter-dimensional travel wasn’t as big a deal as I had thought.
I turned on the Boze Acoustic Wave stereo system. WJMA is the local country radio station, but they were doing one of those year-end wrap-ups, and they were in mid-story.
“Exiting the political stage this year were some memorable figures. Shortly after the President opened all the sealed records of his educational background and social security numbers, he announced he would return to Honolulu and learn to play the ukelele. “I am truly sorry about all that stuff. And the stuff in the autobiographies? We mostly made it up.”
Former First Lady Michelle announced that she would return to Chicago with senior counsel Valerie Jarrett to do good works. President Joe Biden announced that he had been pretty much wrong on every significant foreign policy issue in the last forty years, apologized, and asked Robert Gates to return to government as Secretary of State.
Hillary Clinton’s public apology for the fraud surrounding the Clinton Foundation was largely accepted by the electorate, as was her abject explanation of the terror attack at Benghazi. “I am sorry about that,” she said. “We sort of panicked when we realized that the bad guys not only were not on the run, they were running towards us. It is daunting when everything you know is revealed to be sort of…well, wrong.” Her press secretary announced that she would return to Arkansas to manage the successful Whitewater Resort.
Governor Chris Christie announced that a cheap political trick had resulted in the inconvenience to many New York media personalities and resigned. As an act of penance, he will be personally picking up traffic cones around the Garden State.
The repeal of the War on Poverty Programs had resulted in savings of trillions of dollars and the elimination of the budget deficit. Speaker Boehner immediately stopped using that stuff on his skin that turns it orange.
Al Gore announced that the continued slight decline in global temperatures probably made his assumption that warming was associated with Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere was wrong, and apologized after returning $500 million to the Al Jazeera Network in exchange for the return of his low-rated cable television channel. He vowed to use to set the record straight and support the Keystone Pipeline.
Al Jazeera, in turn, broadcast the entire Reformation and Reconciliation Conference from Mecca in which Sunni and Shia Islam made up and vowed to be more tolerant. “The whole thing was a colossal misunderstanding about what the Prophet meant about jihad. We are dropping the whole thing and we really apologize for the inconvenience.”
As a gesture of good faith, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appeared at a press conference to say that the Israelis were actually pretty good guys and the whole nuclear thing was like “so fifteen minutes ago.” He ordered all the enrichment centrifuges to be destroyed immediately.
In Washington, Attorney General Eric Holder revealed that his Department of Justice had discovered several troubling ethical lapses regarding wiretapping and gun-running to the drug cartels. He announced that serious charges would be brought against him, and he immediately recused himself as AG pending the trial.
Colorado and Washington legalized recreational use just about everything, with Governor Hickenlooper vowing to “just get government out of everyone’s face.”
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen announced that regaining public trust was his number one objective. As a demonstration of good faith, he reduced the Federal Tax Code from 80,000 pages to one, and imposing a progressive flat tax in its stead. “Gosh darn thing was just too complicated and rewarded those with the money to lobby Congress,” the Commissioner said. “And all our people really could use the opportunity to get real jobs and help stimulate the economy.”
Senator Harry Reid agreed, and in a rare display of bi-partisan amity, the entire House and Senate resigned.
I looked at the radio in astonishment. This was the Fifth Dimension, all right. I realized I needed to get out of there before I started to do the right thing, too.
Maybe the ninety-day thing was bogus, and just a story to keep us from jumping dimensions. I took a sip of coffee and stared off into space. V-I-C-S-O-C-O-T-R…..
Poof!
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303