Keely Teslow was coming into the Diffy house more and more now that she and Phil were serious in their relationship. His father was no where nearly as paranoid of being the time-misplaced traveler in a time period that was not his own and his mother was slowly getting adept to doing things the Late Twentieth Century way without robots and holograms doing things for her. Pim was still trying to get things in this century to work for her in order to get all that she wanted from what she referred to as "these backwoods semi-intellectual throwbacks." Phil was enjoying his Late Twentieth Century lifestyle in old-fashioned school, but unlike his peers in this time period, he was a bit more distressed by what passed as Twentieth Century entertainment. When Keely entered the Diffy household through the back door, Pim uncharacteristically came running excited to see her.
"It's here! It's here!! It's…" She screeched to a stop. "Oh, it's just Blondie." Her voice dropped to less than excited levels.
"Yeah, it's me…" Keely looked up with her big blue eyes to Pim then over to Barbara Diffy. "What's going on?"
"Oh," Barbara had been getting quite adept to washing dishes. "She's waiting for a package from the postman, honey." She was already seeing Keely has her future daughter-in-law. "Phil's watching TV in the living room."
"Thanks, Mrs. Diffy."
"What was that?"
"Oh…" Ever since they learned from another time-traveler that Phil and Keely were going to be married with children, Keely was expected to treat Phil's mother as her mother. "I mean, mom…"
"That's better…."
Keely just mused on the moment with her future in-law beaming over her then turned into the living room toward the front of the house. Before her, Phil was sitting up straight on the sofa while he watched TV, a bottle of soda in one hand and a sandwich in the other. Keely came up behind him, ran her hands down over his shoulders and kissed his cheek before nuzzling up close to him. Phil shined back to her and set aside his drink and lunch watching her climb over the sofa to sit by him. Finding her favorite spot by his side, she looked at him with a loving smile and felt his arm reaching over and around her shoulders.
"What are you watching?"
"This show…" Phil answered scowling confusingly. "I don't know why, but there's something about it that disturbs me."
"What show?"
Phil lifted the remote to turn up the volume on the sound.
"…And his family on vacation from the Twenty-Second Century." The show's quirky opening ditty repeated its premise in a hyper speeded up cartoon voice. "They got a rented time machine and they're on their way… to a time way, way, way back in the days… because he's…."
"Phil…." Keely took the remote and hit the mute button. "It's just a stupid show. I mean, Alyson Michalka's doing much better without it."
"But it wouldn't have been cancelled if she hadn't walked away."
"It had nothing to do with her." Keely groaned lightly and rolled her eyes. "Alyson wanted a singing career and they put her in the show. Yes, it helped her career a lot, but believe me, she would have stayed on it if the powers that be had decided to keep it around for a sixth season or maybe even a seventh. Phil, it's gone. Stop grieving for it."
"I really liked the little sister." Pim walked behind them.
"Pim, no one liked the sister…" Phil interrupted.
"She was the real star!!!" Pim shrieked and stamped her foot. "Now, look where she is. Trapped on a god-awful cartoon doing voices where no one can even see her true genius, or even her true beauty! She was…." Pim heard someone knocking at the front door. Turning to her left, she hastened for the door and looked up to Mr. Morley, their postman. She became even ore excited to realize he had a large and heavy package.
"Hi," He spoke up with his usual friendly demeanor. "I've got a package for Mrs. Pim D-"
"It's here!!!" Pim screamed excitedly, grabbed the thirty-pound package from him and jerked it away, knocking Morley off the front porch with a flurry of letters and slamming the front door on him. "It's here! It's here! It's here!!!!" She began laughing her evil voice as if it was already too late for anyone to do anything.
"Oh no, young lady…." Her mother came after her trying once more to instill compassion and humility in her. "That had better not be that surface-to-air missile you wanted for Christmas. Just wait till your father gets home!"
"This is like so better than that, mother." Pim glared a look of derision to her parent. "It's a phone board… the same those god awful telemarketers use to harass people at home for money. With it, I'll never have to ask for money again…"
"Oh…" Barbara thought it over from a financial point of view. "Well, I guess that's okay…"
"You know, Pim…" Her brother looked over to him. "There is a reason that telemarketers and spammers were outlawed in 2008."
"Details, details…." Pim rolled her eyes at his preaching and then looked round to see if her mother was listening. "With this device, I can make back all the money Blondie's clone stole from me and more. People will soon be mailing me the money that will lead to their own destruction." She began laughing her evil laugh.
"Pim…" Barb leaned her head in from the kitchen. "Were you doing your evil laugh?"
"No, mother…" Pim sounded sweet and innocent as she ripped open her package and pulled out the laptop-sized object amidst a mess of wires, paper and packing peanuts. Keely waved the Styrofoam packing material away from her face and Phil watched with his disapproving look, realizing that his sister was her own worst enemy. On the table next to the telephone, Pim was hurrying to start having money mailed to her phony charity, but first she had to hook up the device. She grabbed the instructions.
"Oh no… they're in Korean!!!!" She whined out loud. Her brother and his blonde girlfriend started giggling in secret at her.
"Phil…" Keely looked to the TV and started shaking Phil. "Turn the sound up! Turn the sound up! They're announcing the winners to the Hannah Montana Boston Concert Giveaway."
"I think we're going to win." Phil was quite confident in their luck. "I used the Wizard to compute our chances, we bought enough tickets, we mailed them all on time and we monitored the postal routes…"
"Plus you knew in advance when they started selling tickets despite the secret date." Keely loved having a boyfriend from the future.
"Hey, Hannah's still big in my time too." Phil revealed. "Her great-great-granddaughter is just as big as her even while re-releasing all her old songs."
"Wow!"
"Yeah," Phil once again told secrets from the future. "You ought to see their video. Young Hannah singing to a hologram of Old Hannah; it's like she was right there!"
"That is like so cool!" Keely was shaking her head trying to believe it. In between commercials during a break from the Ricky Ullman and Alyson Michalka Disney TV series, Hannah Montana had popped up on the screen against a light blue background with her likeness on it. Petite, cute and endowed with golden blonde hair, she was garbed in her usual denim country-pop look, she waved to her fans through the television.
"Hi! I'm Hannah Montana…" She spoke with her Nashville accent. "I'm here to finally announce the winner of my Boston Concert ticket giveaway, "Backstage with Hannah Montana," and the winners are…" She paused to read from cue cards. "Phil Diffy and Keely Teslow from Pickford, Illinois! Way to go, Phil and Keely, I'll be seeing you in Boston!!!" She began waving to her others fans.
In Pickford, Phil and Keely jumped up from the sofa cheering and dancing loud enough they did not hear the names of honorary winners who had won first-row tickets to the concert. Pim rolled her eyes at their merriment, still trying to hook her device up to the phone. Barb had come to congratulate them.
"This is so cool!" Keely was dancing up and down with her hair bobbing around her head. "This is almost as good as missing out to see Aly and AJ! Well, almost as good…"
"I told you." Phil was quite smug. "Science, probability and mathematics, they were all working toward us. I'll get to ask Hannah where she got her name from."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't know…" Phil stopped to realize what she had asked. "You don't know Hannah's real name? Keely, she's a girl in high school just like us. Her real name is…"
"Whoa!!" Barb had stopped the name-dropper. "Phil, I'm pretty sure there's a reason her real identity was kept a secret in this century."
"What?" Keely wanted to know. "I gotta know. What is it?"
Phil looked at his mother wanting to obey, to Keely wanting to be loyal to her then to Pim hooking her phone board up to the family phone line. His conscience was bothering him. Like his mother said, there had to be a reason it had been a secret in this time. Keely looked to him with undying respect.
"I'll tell you after we meet her." Phil was able to make both his mother and girlfriend happy. "That way… you won't be liable to accidentally blab it to her."
Barb was happy with that decision.
"Just a hint?" Keely tried pouting and using her feminine wiles on Phil.
"After we meet her."
"Who cares about some teen pop diva currently in her fifteen minutes of fame?" Pim was setting up her command station around the family phone fully equipped with a plant, a picture of herself and a hands-free phone set ready to pollute the communications freeway with her money harassment scheme. Sitting down before the phone content, happy and already counting her money, she braced herself at her seat and leaned forward as she pushed a button to mathematically ring up phone calls at random. It started working. She had a sucker!
"Hello," She started with her sugary sweet and innocent voice. "Let me introduce you to PIM, the People in Mortality fund indebted to helping people in adversity. For a first donation of $50, you can help the unfortunate get health benefits, homes, Internet access, surface-to-air missiles, their own island country…."
Sitting in his favorite chair in his Chicago suburb home, Derek Venturi stared at the television listening to Pim drone on about helping the unfortunate. He wasn't really paying attention to her as much as he was watching Ricky Ullman on TV and lusting after Alyson Michalka in a Disney TV series he himself agreed had been cancelled way too soon. He yawned, rolled his eyes and heard his stepsister coming down the stairs near him.
"Casey…" He held the phone up. "It's for you." He could care less for charity.
"Thanks, Derek!" She took the phone.
"Oh, yeah…" He mumbled under breath. "And you also just won front seat tickets to Hannah Montana in Boston…." He miffed annoyingly his loss to not having won tickets… unless he could finagle a scheme to get Casey to take him with her.