Fascinating. It really was a doozy. In a sudden fit of unnameable urges, Stan sat at the keyboard, opened a word processor file, and wrote:
Dear Stymied,
Since you’re eating in five-star restaurants, I must assutneyou have a little cash to throw around. Next tune you’re out to lunch with your client, slip the maitre d’ a twenty and ask him to toss the woman out on her ear at the first sign of dental hygiene. Alternatively, you might consider stationing a couple of friends at a nearby table with instructions to squeal “E-ee-w! Gross!” the moment she goes for the floss.
He was absurdly pleased with the response. Pity, he thought. Doing an advice column could be a kick. That did not answer the question of how someone else had come to be writing an advice column in his name… or rather, his face.
He was on the verge of searching the room in answer to that question when he heard the back door open and close. A peculiar humming tickled his ears. Hair rising all over his body (his chin felt as if it were in contact with a hedgehog), Stan slipped from the chair into the closet four feet behind it. Once there, he tried to peer through the louvers but found he couldn’t see a thing. He settled for listening.
What he heard was a bizarre series of clicks, whistles, hums, chirps and hoots that were answered by a similar barrage of sounds. He thought he could almost make out words, but couldn’t imagine what language he was listening to. It sounded made-up, but then, the only made-up languages Stan had ever heard were Esperanto and Klingon, so he hardly counted himself as an expert on the subject.
The sounds became suddenly more forceful and then, Stan heard his answer to the letter read back in strangely accented English. The reading was followed by a particularly loud hoot. “This misses the point entirely! For someone to display her teeth so prominently in a public place—well, it’s a miracle a fight didn’t break out. How irresponsible!”
“Ketzel, I believe it is you who is missing the point,” said a second voice in perfectly unaccented English.
“How so? Clearly—” (Stan could hear the manic depressing of keys on his keyboard.) “Clearly, to suggest this action is merely rude is to minimize—”
“Ketzel, who entered that reply? This file is freshly downloaded.”
There was a pregnant pause.
“More to the point,” continued the unaccented voice, “Where is the person who entered that reply? We were not gone above five minutes.”
There was a flurry of movement. One of them had left the room. Stan all but held his breath. A few moments later, the flurry was repeated in reverse.
“There is a ground vehicle before the house! Someone was here.”
“Excellent logic, Ketzel. Although, 1 should say the vehicle’s presence suggests someone is still here.”
“Would you, er, scan, please?”
There was a muted twittering sound and Stan’s hair saluted again. Instinct drove him to the floor of the closet to hide in a jumble of ski jackets, bleacher blankets and two large teddy bears he had purchased, but had never given to his niece. It was from this motley refuge that he saw the closet door swing open and peered up into the face of a giant, frilled lizard. Hovering near its shoulder was a sleek, silvery object that bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the probes used by Martians in the movie “War of the Worlds.” The lizard’s monstrous orange eyes swept the closet, coming to rest on the assorted debris on the floor.
Stan, numbed to speechlessness, prepared to surrender. The lizard’s mouth opened and perfectly intelligible English words came out.
“I don’t see anyone.”
“Ketzel,” said the sleek, silver probe, “observe.” A gleaming tendril issued from the probe and aimed itself at the tip of Stan’s nose.
The lizard s eyes focused. “Oh,” it said.
“E-ee-ee-ee!” said Stan, and fainted.
“It’s him. There are some differences between the 3D and the 2D, but it’s him.”
“I would have to agree. I suppose it was remiss of me not to suspect he would have to return to this domicile at some point. It is nearing the time of year when many of the inhabitants of this particular society go on vacation.”
“Vacation?”
“Similar to what you were doing when we became… lost.”
Stan assumed he was dreaming. The only viable alternative was that, sometime in the recent past, a short-order cook in Tahoe City had hidden his stash of recreational drugs in a jar of chili powder.
“He poses a singular problem. What do we do with him until we can leave?”
Do with him?
“We don’t have anywhere near the resources we need to leave… do we?”
“No, we do not. The engine refit is nearly complete, but the long-range navigational array is still a shambles, and the port gimbals suffered severe damage when we skidded sideways among the rocks. Really, Ketzel, we are fortunate there is anything left of the forward steering mechanism at all.”
Stan was dismayed to realize he was listening to a real conversation taking place somewhere behind him. He opened his eyes. He was stretched out on the sofa in his office staring into the glass panels of the tambour door of a bookshelf. Reflected clearly in the panels was one helluva tall reptile and the sleek little probe Stan had seen in an earlier psychotic episode. He closed his eyes then opened them again. The reflections were still there.
Abandon logic, all ye who enter here, Stan told himself, and studied his uninvited guests as they continued to ponder his fate.
“Perhaps if we just keep him here, quietly, no one will notice.”
The lizard was probably not really a reptile, Stan thought, but merely looked like one. Maybe he was some sort of intelligent dinosaur—the kind Bob Bakker would just love to find on his front porch some cool summer evening. Hello, I’m homeothermic. It did resemble the dilophosaurs from Jurassic Park, the Movie… except, of course, that it was wearing his sister Genevieve’s fuchsia sun-dress. Absurdity rose in his throat, nearly choking him.
“Someone may notice the vehicle before the house,” said the Martian probe. “And it is probable that someone will mark his absence. He may well have informed someone else of his intention to come here.”
“I did.” Stan sat up and turned to look at his… whatever. “I told my agent, my editor and several close friends that I was coming to Tahoe to see who’s been using my address—and my face—to publish an advice column.”
There was a heavy silence, then the dilophosaur shuffled to face him. “Hello,” it said and its rubbery mouth curled into an approximation of a smile. “I’m Qtzl.” It glanced sideways at the probe floating silently beside it. “I’m from—well, very far away—and I’m lost and I need to get home again.”
“And you left your ruby slippers at home, right?” Good response if this is a hoax. Please let it be a hoax.
The reptilian head canted sideways. “Excuse me?”
“He makes a reference,” said the probe, “to a popular movie—ixltl, to you—in which the lost heroine gets home through the agency of a pair of ruby slippers she has inherited from a deceased crone. Yes, Mr. Schell, that is essentially correct. We have crash-landed on your world and our only means of getting home is damaged, though not beyond repair. We have hopes of earning enough capital to purchase all the materials necessary to restore it.”