Season 1 · Episode 5

TIME OUT FOR REDHEADS by Miriam Allen DeFord

31 min Clean Full episode
TIME OUT FOR REDHEADS by Miriam Allen DeFord
Astounding Tales of the Public Domain
0:00
30:50
MP3

About this episode

It took a trip in time to make a man of Mikel...

Transcript

Automatically generated, so expect the odd misheard name.

Good evening and welcome to Night's Gallery. Thank you, Rod, and I want to welcome everyone to Midnight Viewing, where once a month we talk all about your follow up to the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's Night Gallery. They say it's Rod through Ling's Night Gallery, and it isn't really Rod through Las Night Gallery. It's somebody else's. Oh we know, we talk about it a lot.

Your curators at Midnight Viewing are the projection booths. Mike White. What can happen to human beings when trust is wiped out by suspicion and culture casts? Chris Stashue, small boy incased in the Crystal Ball, and I'm father Malone, the kind of thing that usually infest nightmares, joined us monthly at Midnight Viewing. The Night Gallery podcast at weird Ingwaymedia dot Com doesn't remotely belong to me.

I have no proprietary interest in that at all. Weird weird Way mediates Astounding of the Public Time Out for Redheads by Miriam Alan DeFord. His name was Michael Scott. He was thirty four, five feet ten and lean, with decent features and all his hair and quite nice brown eyes. But somehow he always seemed to give the impression of being of indeterminate age and slightly dusty.

He lived alone, He gravitated between his job and his lodgings, and since the age of fourteen, he had never known a girl well enough to call her by her first name. For twelve years, ever, since twenty eight twenty seven, he had sold tickets at one of the windows of time travel Tours Unlimited. If raises hadn't been automatic, he would never have had one. Though he was punctual, faithful, honest, quick and accurate, even the other ticket sellers still called him Citizen Scott. He had never budged from his cozy era, even though as an employee he was entitled to take any tour he wished on his semi annual vacation at no cost to him beyond the planetary sales tax.

Nor had he even left his native city, let alone his native planet. He was too shy even to realize he was lonely. This morning, there was the usual rush Staggered vacations meant that any time of the year was the busy season for TTT. Skillfully, Michael Scott arranged tours and calculated raids. Two weeks in Rome forty five, BC.

That'll be Crid's eight fifty. Citizen, you get your costume and equipment in room one oh four right off the teleport. Yes, I'm sure they'll have a Latin language transformer. You can hire England in sixteen hundred one month preservation in the name of Chaz Russell. Yes, I have it right here.

That will be Krad's five hundred. Please you mean you want a ticket for here in loose for a week six years ago in February. Yes, it's a little unusual, but oh certainly I understand a second honeymoon. Congrats, citizen. Not many couples stayed together that long.

Just a mean while I look up the rate for two. The queue seemed endless, and crowds of travelers who already had their tickets were pushing their way through the doors back of the ticket office to the teleport itself, together with the friends who were seeing them off. If Michael had had a moment to spare, which he hadn't, he might have wondered, as so often before, at the numbers of people everybody except himself seemed to know. The morning wore on, and he was beginning to think longingly of thirteen thirty o'clock when his lunchtime relief would arrive, and he could sit in a quiet corner of an auto calf and watch the trimitten screen for the day's news while he ate his favorite vite attabs and smoked a health sake.

Then everything happened all at once. The girl standing at his ticket window was a redhead. Her eyes were green with little dancing amber lights in them, and she smiled at him as if he were the kind of man girls do smile at and not ineffectual. Michael Scott, can you tell me? She began in a warm, slightly husky voice.

Then she screamed loudly and collapsed. There were shouts and jostling and milling around, and somebody leaned over the counter and abruptly thrust something into his hand. He stood there, dazed, grabbing the object, whatever it was. Then he leaned over the counter. The girl was lying there, very still.

On one side of her. A pool of blood was slowly forming on the floor. The guards were coming from all directions, trying to get some kind of quiet and order into the excited throng. Michael looked down at the thing in his hand. It was a knife, a steel knife with a wooden handle.

It was obviously an antique and of great value, and it was smeared with fresh blood. Michael Scott lost his head entirely. Never before had he or anyone he had ever heard of, been involved even remotely in any kind of violence. He never even took an historical crime plays. The redheaded girl was dead, and he held in his hand the knife that had killed her, and she had been the first girl who had smiled at him for years.

He wanted out now. He reached behind him and grabbed a ticket at random, not even looking to see what date it was. He punched it hastily. For a week, nobody was looking at him. Everybody was still yelling at everybody else.

In the sweating guards were trying to line people up and blocking doors so they could not get away. Michael ran to the corridor back of the counters which the ticket sellers used, and saw that the company door to the teleport was open out there, what with parties singing happy time, trave to you or noisily greeting homecomers, and the loudspeaker directing passengers to their proper stations, and the roar of the takeoffs in return, jets. Nobody seemed to have noticed that anything was wrong in the ticket office. Michael glanced around once to be sure that nobody was watching him, and slipped through the door. He was still holding the knife.

Automatically, he thrust it into his belt pouch. It was typical of him that, after twelve years, not one of the telepo port attendants knew him by sight. He thrust his ticket at the nearest one. The man glanced at it. Three other travelers were trying to get his attention at the same time, and said platform eight.

Michael hurried there. Before he reached it, he remembered something. He had punched the ticket for duration, but not for place. Well, that was all right. If it had no place punch, it would mean los itself.

He was escaping into his own city. The attendant at eight took his ticket, then peered at him dubiously. You haven't got clothes for the period, citizen, go to room one oh four, and doesn't matter, Michael interrupted him. He was in a fever to be gone. It's a research project, he added, in a sudden inspiration which didn't make sense even to himself, but which the attendant used to strange statements from travelers accepted without comment.

He sealed the time porter on Michael's wrist, set it for return in a week, and helped him into the telechamber. There was a swift moment when his head felt empty in his stomach heaved, and Michael Scott found himself sitting on an iron bench in a park. He had a week now to think things over. He was in los He had to be his ticket said so. But when he looked about him, it must be the middle of the day, the same time it had been before, and the park was full of people on their lunch hour.

They were dressed weirdly. The men in half the women wore tight cylindrical garments, one on each leg. The upper part of their bodies were covered with various kinds of brightly colored cloth, though occasionally he saw a woman who wore only a breastholder above her bare middriff. Michael, in his belted tunic, huddled in a corner of his bench, fearful of notice. But nobody paid any attention to him, and once a man passed who had on a tunic two a long white one over bare feet and under long hair, and a flowing beard, apparently in this period, people dressed as they pleased, at least in Lows.

The city itself, what part of it he could see from his vantage point, was stranger than the people. There were no moving sidewalks and no weather canopies over the streets, though perhaps these had only been removed for the dry season. The buildings looked shrunken and tiny. Hardly one seemed to be more than thirty or forty stories high. Arcade buses and motor cars, apparently powered by some non atomic fuel, plied the actual streets instead of being confined to subways.

The skies were almost empty of planes, and those he saw were incredibly clumsy and slow. It was obviously no freeway for helicopters. It was self evident that he was in some year of the remote past, though just which he had no idea. He wished he had taken time to glance at the ticket before he handed it in. He wished he had studied history, comic books, or given more than a cursory glance at the telescreen prop in forms of TTT.

There was something to be said, after all, for the general educationalists, cranks as they were. Certainly this was not his los his giant city, stretching from mex to San Franz without a break. This was a little place of probably not much more than two million inhabitants. Well, here he was for a week, and he'd better find out how he was going to eat and sleep properly equip Time travelers had money of the right period, but the credchanks in his pouch would do him no good. Now, what did he have on him that could be exchanged for board and lodging.

Only one object of undoubted value, the knife. Surreptitiously and with distaste, he took it out and looked at it. The blood had dried on it and doubtless left traces on the lining of his pouch. It was probably covered with the fingerprints of the murderer as well as his own, but it was all he had. In the middle of the park there was a fountain with a pool around it.

Casually, Michael Scott strolled over to it and sat down on the ledge. When he was sure nobody was looking, he dipped the knife in the water and scrubbed it dry on the inner hem of his tunic. There would still be traces of blood, which any chemist could find, of course, but nobody here would be examining it. For that, since anyone could see that it was of immense value, he would have to account for possession of it. He could say it was an heirloom.

Putting it back in his pouch, he approached a fat man on a bench near by. Where is the nearest history museum, please, citizen, he asked politely. The man looked up. He had been scanning a large piece of paper which Michael, with a thrill, recognized from one of his few visits to the Museum of Antiquities. It was a thing called a newspaper, which had antedated that treademan's telescreen.

He remembered that the specimens he had seen had borne dates at the top, and if he could read the archaic printing, he could find out what year it was. But the man folded it up and thrust it under his arms. As he answered history museum, he echoed, gosh, but I don't know. I'm a stranger here myself, just got in from Kansas yesterday. You a foreigner, he asked, with frank curiosity.

You got a funny accent. He sure looked funny. A foreigner. That was a good one, But Michael had no time to waste. He murmured excuse and left.

The man stared after him and made a gesture which Michael did not understand, describing a circle in the air near his forehead. Michael walked to the edge of the little park and looked about him. Across the street was a store with newspapers in racks in front of it. He could go over there and see the dates, but what did really matter. With his ignorance of all but the haziest generalities of history, he thought that once, thousands of years ago, Los had belonged to the Spaniards, and after that there was some kind of a war that was maybe called the American Revolution, or the Civil War or the World War.

He was not sure which. It wouldn't do much good to know whether he was in, say, eighteen twenty or nineteen sixty or twenty eighty. Besides, he was afraid to cross that street, full of clumsy vehicles, and with neither an overpass nor an underpass, nowhere could he see anything that resembled a museum. Farther down, on the same side of the street on which he stood, he saw something that looked faintly promising. He walked down to it and found a window full of odd looking primitive objects, the nature of some of which he could not guess, But there were knives among them, and a sign in ancient spelling.

Jewelry bought and sold. On an impulse, he walked in. A man in another queer garment, some kind of cloth upper, with a white linen thing beneath it and a ribbon tied around his neck. Looked up without surprise at Michael's literally untimely garb and said, yes, sir. Michael drew out the knife.

Very valuable, he said, an heirloom. How much will you give me? The man shrank back, not as if he were afraid of the knife, but as if he were suddenly afraid of Michael. You kidding me, he asked, Or is this a stick up? Michael was not sure what the words meant, so he merely shook his head.

Then are you nuts? There's nothing valuable about that thing. It's just an ordinary kitchen knife, not valuable. Michael's face fell. But look, wooden handle, steel blade, So what every knife as a wooden handle and a steel blade.

You will not give me money for it? Of course not. We don't buy junk there was no arguing one age's antique is another age's junk. Michael sighed and departed quietly. How was he to get food and shelter for a week.

He went back to the park and sat down again on a bench. He put the knife back in his pouch. This was what came of panicking. For the first time in his humdrum life. A sudden image of the red headed girl came before his mind, her green eyes and her smile.

That girl, she was so pretty, and she had smiled at him whom girls never noticed. And then she had been killed. Now that it was too late, he wished he had stayed whatever might have happened to him. He wanted to help to avenge her. He wanted to be home again.

His stomach reminded him sharply that he had had no lunch. He had never heard how long a man could go without eating. Could he even live through the week? He sat there disconsolately, his eyes fixed on the ground. On his wrist was sealed the little gadget that was his only means of ever seeing twenty eight thirty nine again.

Somebody came up and sat down beside him. Deep in thought. He did not even glance up. A voice said, can you tell me what time it is? My watch is broken and there's no clock around here.

Watch that meant to be alert clock. That was an ancient time measuring device, he thought. The only way Michael knew to tell the time was to glance at the ceiling of any room, or, if he were outdoors, to tune in on his miniature triteman's gadget attached to his belt. He dialed it now, but there was no response. Of course not It wouldn't work across perhaps a thousand years.

I'm sorry, he answered, I can't. He turned. As he spoke, he jumped violently. The speaker was a girl. She had red hair and green eyes.

Otherwise there was no resemblance, though she too was pretty, but red hair and green eyes seemed to be haunting him. What's that thing on your left wrist, then asked the girl. Spunkily, Michael reddened. Rule five of the booklets he handed out with the tickets to all travelers leaped into his mind. Remember you cannot change the course of history.

To avoid confusion and difficulty, avoid revealing to any person you meet in the other time periods the true nature of your presence there, he broke the rule and was sorry at once. It's a time porter, he said, sept from my return home. The girl laughed, that's a good one. I thought i'd heard everything since I came to this crazy place. What are you?

An Arab dressed in that tablecloth? I was born right here in Los, Michael announced with dignity. I've always lived here, so they grow them here crazy right from the start. Then where's your home? Yours?

Set to return to here and Los. The girl stood up hastily, a look of alarm on her face. Oh please, Michael cried, don't go. I can explain things. Perhaps you can help me.

She sat down again dubiously. Well, I'm a sucker for a good story, she said. Shoot. I wouldn't shoot. I have no weapon.

That wasn't true. He did have a weapon, the knife, but he could hardly mention that anyway. The girl only laughed again. Why is Greggs yet? She said, unintelligibly, Well, what's the story?

I am from this place, but I am not from your time. Michael began laboriously. He was utterly unaccustomed to social conversation with a woman. I am with me. It is twenty eight thirty nine.

What in the look? What are you advertising some science fiction magazine? I don't understand the word. What is it? Please believe me.

I shouldn't tell you. I'm breaking a rule, but it is true. Go on, She fixed him with a skeptical glance. I was I am a ticket seller for time travel tours. This morning?

I mean, what was to me this morning? A customer was killed at my window? He plunged ahead. She listened in silence, uliar expression in her eyes. See see, he concluded.

I am here for a week, but then I go back. The time porter will see to that. I want to go. I'm sorry I ran away, but I'm sure the police will say I did it because of the knife. Let's see it.

He brought it out. Why that's just an ordinary kitchen carving knife, she said, just as the man in the store had done. I suppose you would call it an antique? And what was it? Twenty eight thirty nine, I still say, you're hey, wire or else?

This is some new racket. I don't get. I don't understand. Okay, I guess you wouldn't. In twenty eight thirty nine, the language would change plenty In eight hundred and eighty sixty years.

Once more, her laugh rang out. I'll say, you keep it up five, that funny, half foreign way you pronounce your words. But I'll play along and pretend this is all on the up and up. Even so, it's hey wire crazy because the dumbest cop in the world wouldn't suspect you of murder. Anybody would know.

The murderer just got rid of the knife the quickest way he could. Gosh, you were behind your window, weren't you? And she was in front of it. Where was her stab wound? Wait, it's hard for me to understand.

And cop is that slang for the police? In the blood, he shuddered, came from her side. Either someone in front or someone behind her could have done it. But they'll find out right away, won't they, that you didn't know the girl. They'll find out who she was, and they'll grow everybody she knew to see who had a reason for water out of the way.

Listen to me, I'm as big a nut as you are. I'm talking just as if this whole thing really happened. It did happen, Michael assured her earnestly. No, I didn't know her. I don't know any girls at all.

I'm not attractive to women. Why you're not so bad, said the girl kindly. I think you're kind of cute, or would be if you weren't rigged up in those outlandish clothes. She paused, then continued, Well, if you can prove you didn't know her, what have you got to worry about? The knife?

And then I lost my head and ran. The girl nodded leave the knife here then, or would that change the course of history, she smiled. Of course, what you ought to have done was handed right over. Then if it was such a great antique, they'd not only have the guy's fingerprints, but they'd also find out who knewer that worked in a museum or had a chance to steal it from one. That's elementary homicide procedure, you see, said Michael.

This also, you won't believe, but our police are not conditioned to take care of killings. This is the first time in my whole life that I have ever even heard of one, except by accident. The psychologist wouldn't allow anyone to grow up who had murderous tendencies that couldn't be sublimated. They let that one slip by them. Didn't they And do you mean that in the great scientific future they tell us about the police won't know as much about handling a homicide case as any hit constable knows today.

Who are you trying to kid? We do not have crime. The police are to guard traffic and take up for reconditioning anybody who doesn't obey the civil rules. I don't know much about history, but I know there were once wars, and then there were experts in war. Now in my time we have no wars, so there are no experts.

In the same way we have no experts in crime. Then what would they do to you if they did convict you of this murder you didn't commit. I don't know. There is no penalty for murder because there have been no murders for so long. This will be a world affair.

The police will refer it to the Supreme Council and they will decide what to do. I suppose they will have me euthanized as a nativistic deviant. That's why I lost my head. It was a totally new experience and I haven't been conditioned to new experiences. But even if they don't convict me, they'll punish me for running away.

They'll demote me, perhaps all the way back to where I started twelve years ago. It doesn't sound like much of a brave new world to me, said the girl in a disparaging tone. What's your name or do you have numbers? My name is Michael Scott. Michael Scott, Well, that sounds like a regular name anyway.

Mine's Betty French. By the way, many grats do you, Citizen French. You have given me good advice. I know now it is my duty to take the knife back with me and give it to the police. I shall tell them also about looking for somebody in a museum, as you suggested, but there will be no fingerprints.

I washed the knife in that fountain. When I hope to sell it, I forgot it must exist in my era, or the murder could not have occurred. But that is not my big problem right now. I have no money of your time. How shall I live until I can go home?

Betty French seemed to stiffen. She looked at him disgustedly. I get it now, she said, I might have known. This is just a new way of panhandling. I certainly admire it.

It's a work of art. Well, I got my money's worth. I'll pay for it. She opened her handbag, drew out a dollar bill, and laid it on Michael's knee. He gazed at it curiously, but made no attempt to pick it up.

Is that your kind of money? He asked? What do I do in exchange for it? Oh, let's drop it, she sighed wearily. My lunch hour's up.

Anyway, take it. It'll buy you a hamburger and coffee, and then you can tell your tale to the next comer and maybe get enough for a bed in a flophouse. Brother, you must have told it plenty to get it all down. So Pat, it's a wonder I've missed you before. Or are you just starting to work this neighborhood.

She snapped her bag shut and stood up. Please, I don't understand. Why are you so angry at the desperation in his voice? She turned and stopped. Look, I really have to get back to the office.

This is an act, isn't it. Come clean? Aren't you panhandling? What does panhandling mean? Oh?

I give up. I guess you're just looney after all. All right, Mike, let's call it a day. You keep that buck, And now you just go to the nearest police station and tell them your story. They'll take you over to the psychiatric ward to the county hospital, and you can get freeboard and lodging there.

Michael turned pale and shivered. Oh no, he breathed, I'm not insane. If you don't believe me, no one else will in the hospital. Will euthanize me? Is that what they do to crazy people in your time?

Of course, and they punish the psychologist who didn't detect the tendency and have the person uthanized in childhood. Suppose I can give you my word, they won't do that to you here and now. They'll just observe you for a few days, and then they'll have you committed to a state hospital. You're quite positive if I could be sure of being alive a week from now, no matter where I am on the time porter checks, I'll go back home, even if you're in a padded cell, it won't matter where. Well, then your problem is solved, isn't it.

I'll show you how to get to the station. I must eat first. I'm very hungry. And what were those things you said? If I should get hamburger and coffee.

They are original foods Our food is all synthetic. You don't have to keep this up with me anymore. There's a quick lunch place, she pointed. And they won't mind in this autocap that I'm not dressed like the others in this berg. They wouldn't notice if he wandered around in a loin cloth.

Now I've got to go. This is the wackiest thing that ever happened to me. Whatever it really means, well, good luck, Mike. Grats to you, citizen French from deep in my Pineal Oh, we just want men more. Please?

What is it now? You have given me so much to tell our police? But won't they wonder why this man killed the girl? They can ask him when they catch him, can't they. But it's perfectly obvious she was buying a ticket, wasn't she Yes, certainly, Well, that meant she was going away leaving him, doesn't it?

So he was in love with her. Maybe she was his wife and he couldn't take it. Maybe she was going to some other guy. How do I know? He found out she was just serting him, so he got hold of the knife and followed her.

But I don't see why. Michael was utterly bewildered. She was a free agent like anybody else. He couldn't object to her leaving if she no longer loved him. He didn't own her.

That doesn't make sense. If I tell one of our police that theory, she will surely think I'm insane. She all our police are women. Of course, women are naturally gifted to keeping order. To tell that to our cops and they'll surely get you tucked away in a nice hospital.

But fast, well, why else would he kill her? I don't know. That's why I asked you. You know so much more about such things in your barber in your time. Your policewoman will have to figure it out for herself.

So long, Mike, She shook her head, smiling, Well, I have a tell to tell the crowd. If they don't decide, have gun nuts myself. Goodbye, googy citizen and grants again, Still smiling, she hurried down the path out of the park. When he could see her no longer, Michael stood up and began hesitantly to walk toward the restaurant she had pointed out. Fortunately, it was on the same side of the street, not far past the shop where he tried to sell the knife.

This was not going to be pleas, not at all pleas, despite what this Betty French had told him. He was nervous about putting himself in the hands of either the police or psychologist of this barbarous era. But there didn't seem to be anything else he could do. His conversation with the red headed girl had shown him clearly what kind of reception he would meet from anyone else he ventured to approach. First, he must eat.

He was ravenous. He dared not ask for any food except the two things the girl had mentioned, whatever they were like. Presumably the money she had given him would be a knock. The restaurant had a long counter of some white substance, with stools fixed before it. Only one man sat there eating, but behind it stood another man dressed in white with a white cap on his head.

Michael perched himself on the nearest stool. Hamburger coffee, please, he said, and laid Betty's money beside him on the counter. The other customer looked up and eyed him sharply, but the man behind the counter merely yelled out wanted a bun through a hole in the wall. He asked onions cream, no citizen hamburger coffee, Michael repeated, flustered a joker. The man grunted, it's taff you in the movies, Bud.

Michael stared, he wants a burger without and coffee with the other customer put in Suddenly, he was a heavy set, middle aged man, dressed as the men in the store had been, in dark cloth, bifurcated leg coverings in a dark long sleeved upper garment over a light colored undergarment, with a gaudy ribbon around his neck. Okay, okay, said the man in white placatingly, and sat down before Michael. Something on a plate and something else in a cup, both hot. Michael began sampling them gingerly with the unaccustomed implements. The restaurant man took the money, put it in a box that rang a bell, and laid down some small metal objects in its place.

Then he disappeared through a door behind the counter. Michael's neighbor waited until he had gone. Then, in a low voice, he said, finished the food, citizens, Scott, then we'll talk. Michael looked up, froze. The stranger shot his left wrist out from the sleeve sealed to it was a time porter from TTT executive.

Citizen, he said briskly. I didn't think i'd find you quite so soon, but I knew it wouldn't be long, since you didn't wait to get proper equipment for your journey. It is fort for you that this is perhaps the only place in this era where you could not have been taken up at sight for wandering around in unusual clothing. How did you know what period? We only had to check the tickets to see which was missing.

Have you the knife? Michael brought it out dumbly and laid it on the counter. The man put it in a pouch sewed into his lower garment. I didn't do it. I didn't, Michael cried, despairingly.

He had lost his appetite completely. Sh we don't want to fuss here. I am rechecking your time porter, Citizen Scott. We are going back immediately. I didn't even know the girl, Michael pleaded, remembering Betty French's instructions.

We shall see as to that when we get home, said the TTT executive grimly. Then suddenly he burst out laughing. He laughed until he had to take a small piece of white material from his upper garment and wipe his eyes. I meant to give you a good scare, to put some sense into you, he gasped finally. But I can't keep it up.

Citizen Scott, you are a fool. I know that, citizen, said Michael humbly. The psychologist really conditioned you a bit too well. I am told that you live for your work and have no recreation at all. You are as ignorant of the world as a small child.

Come. Did you ever hear of a murder in our time anywhere in all your life? No? But I know such things occur in the past, not in our time. How could there be a murder in our era?

In the old times, people killed one another for jealousy, for revenge, for greed. Such incentives do not exist in the twenty ninth century. The only other possibility would be insanity, and the psychologist would never allow that to proceed to such a point. The diseased person would be youthanized at the very first symptoms. But the girl was killed right before my eyes, my poor man, and you were a victim of your own ridiculously retired existence.

Anyone else would have guessed at once. It was planned that way so as to get a good effect of a crowd in confusion. Most of them were extras. Of course, all the arrangements had been made with us beforehand, and the concealed telecams were focused away from any time travel signs telecams. World Theater was making a historical crime Treatman's in modern dress, Citizen Scott.

The girl was an actress, the blood was faked. They thought it would be more effective to not put an actor behind the ticket window, but to use a real ticket seller without warning him, just as part of the crowd wasn't warned. It worked beautifully, They tell me your fright and horror showed up wonderfully. Well. They picked your window because they said they liked your looks.

I can't imagine why that was their big mistake. Any other of our ticket sellers would have waited to see what happened next you. You dumble, fell into a panic and ran away, and I've had to leave my desk in the middle of a busy after to go and fetch you. You couldn't let you wander around here for a week without means of subsistence, and thinking you were suspected of murder. I suppose I'll be demoted now, Michael said gloomily.

That wouldn't be fair. This wasn't one of the known responsibilities of your position. No, but I imagine you'll come in for a lot of whiffing. To use a slang expression, kidding, that's what they call it here. I think, well, I'm used to that.

And Daphne Dart says she's wild to meet you. Daphney Dart, who she Michael looked alarmed again. Your performance made a tremend impression on her. She told me to tell you she thinks, quote, you're purely vlumpish. She's the actress who played the murder victim.

That red haired girl with the green eyes with flex of amber in them, asked Michael eagerly, with the streely smile and the gorge voice. You seem to have noticed her, said the TTT executive dryly. Yes, that's the one. I thought you didn't go for women. That's different, Michael, Scott carrold redheads with green eyes, that's the one kind that crashes me and then eye crash.

I just found it out today. Come on, citizen, what are we waiting for? Let's go this episode performed and produced by Father Malone. Music by HP

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