The Man Who Sold Another World (Part 1 of 9)

The Man Who Sold Another World (Part 1 of 9) 19 Jul 2008

Posted by lupinejohn in Uncategorized.
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Ophelia had been in some nice hotel rooms in her days, especially when she used to travel on her old boyfriend’s dime to Formula One races to watch his father. She’d never seen one quite this spacious, though, quite this elegantly decorated, and she’d certainly had no clue there was a hotel like this within easy driving distance of Port Manteau.

Henderson had asked her to come, along with John and Irene, to meet a friend of his who would be helping with some sort of special project for which they’d all be paid handsomely. It all sounded very vague (not to mention quite unusual for a clothing manufacturer) but it was the sort of thing you got used to when working for Mr. Henderson – Ophelia knew he had an interest in unusual, possibly magical artifacts, so she assumed this was something to do with that interest. Probably some con artist planning to take Henderson’s money for a useless trinket – that happened often enough.

So here they all were, Henderson, of course, listening intently to the pitch. Ophelia herself, more interested in the comfort of her Barcelona chair than she was in anything else, and John and Irene sitting in opposite sides of the make-shift semi-circle they had all made. Irene had been sullen during the drive up, and still wasn’t really involved in the conversation (she’d been this way since Maria’s death, and O wasn’t sure why it was hitting her so hard).

Oh, and then there was the man making the pitch. Ophelia had expected a run of the mill scammer. What she found here instead was one of the world’s richest men, a self-made billionaire and owner of the second largest microchip manufacturer and solar powered calculator distributor in the world. Terrance “Red” McAllister, CEO and founder of Oklahoma Implements. Ophelia couldn’t figure out why he’d bother trying to run an angle to squeeze money out of a man with 1% of his net worth – so at the very least, he had to believe in this himself. Most likely the real scammer had spun McAllister around his finger and was using him as a dupe.

All of that meant he was worth listening to with more attention than this hocus pocus stuff usually deserved. Henderson was constantly getting employees involved in these scams, and he was always scrupulously fair about ensuring they were paid extra for their participation – but Ophelia had learned long ago she got paid whether or not she knew what was going on – and getting one’s hopes up was never a good idea with con artists. This could be different, though. If a man like McAllister was involved, it was something big. At the very least, it was a big scam. So it was worth listening to what he had to say.

“Alternate universes?” asks Henderson, incredulously.

“Alternate universes. This device, which I can assure you has been quite thoroughly tested by my R&D department, allows travel to a parallel world for a period of 48 hours.”