Chaos, Inc.
Butters, the other South Park characters, and South Park itself belong to Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
Chapter One: Stotch's Gas N' Garage
The young woman in the scarf and yellow raincoat looked at the seat of the mechanic's light blue coveralls. It wasn't so much that the seat was an appealing thing to look at, but at the moment, it was the only part of him he was presenting to the view. At last he surfaced from the interior of the hood, oil on his right cheek, thinning blond hair sticking in all directions.
"I'm su-sorry, ma'am," he said, "bu-but I haven't got the foggiest idea what's wrong with your car here." He smiled apologetically and rubbed his oily hands together.
"You don't?" she said.
"Nope," he said cheerfully.
"But I don't understand," the woman said, shivering a little. It was a wet, raw, early spring day, and it would have been nice to be driving back to Denver in a reliable car with a heater that worked instead of standing here. "I asked downtown and they all said to come to Stotch's Gas N' Garage."
"Aw, they were j-just bein' nice," he explained. "I ain't much of a mechanic. Everyone around here is real nice and they just want me to get some business, but I don't know much more'n changin' oil and puttin' on wiper blades an' . . . "
"And pretty much anything anyone who has a car can do."
"Yeah, that's about right," he agreed. "Say, listen, ma'am, I'll give 'er a fillerup and check the fluids, and I kinda tweedled the jingie in there, it oughta get you down to McCormick's. Down the road, 'bout a mile on the left."
The woman sighed and tucked a strand of brown hair into her scarf a little better.
"OK," she said. "I don't understand it, but then, I'm not from around here."
"Well, I'm sure Kenny can get your car fixed up real nice for ya. OK, ma'am, that'll be 26.86, an' I won't charge ya for the oil or anythin' 'cause of the inconvenience. Sorry 'bout that."
She waved goodbye and pulled out of the gas station. She could see the skinny, scruffy blond mechanic in the rear view mirror, waving back.
That's funny, she thought, frowning. It was like he didn't want the business. She shrugged. What did she know about small towns in the Rockies? Not a lot, and if she was in luck, not a lot more.
The last she saw in the mirror was the strange man flipping up a sign. It said "Closed."
Back at the gas station, the mechanic wiped his hands on his coveralls and spoke, very deliberately, into the lapel pin that read LEOPOLD. "D-Dougie?" he said. "Closin' up for the day. Be right down." He checked to make sure everything was locked down, and went into the interior, all maps, dust, and chewing gum. He locked the door. Locked the cash register. Hardly anything in it, anyway. And pushed open a door that read "Employees Only."
There was nothing there except for another door, a big steel one.
Butters Stotch stepped close to the door and opened his eyes wide. Two thin laser beams passed over his face, and the doors slid silently open. He stepped inside. The doors slid closed again, and the elevator began its long descent.
Down, down, down went the elevator, almost a mile deep into the granite substrata of the mountain. There was no real need to pull off his mechanic's uniform and wad it up, but he liked doing it anyway. It helped him mark the transition between up there and down here.
The doors slid open. A red headed man in thick glasses and a white lab coat greeted him.
"Afternoon, Professor Chaos."
Chaos Labs was, quite simply, the best creator of electronic espionage equipment in the world. Only four people had ever seen it, but if anyone else had seen it, they would have agreed that even the lab in James Bond movies wasn't anywhere near in the same class.
And Dougie—General Disarray, as Butters still called him affectionately—left Q in the shade. He was now frowning at a computer screen.
"What's the matter, General?"
Dougie's nasal whine had deepened a bit over the years, but it hadn't really gotten any more attractive. He always sounded as though he had a head cold.
"I don't like the specs on the new instruments, Professor."
"Let me see," Butters insisted, and Dougie slid over on his rolling chair to let him have a look. "Wu-why, it looks okay to me. What's wrong?"
"What's wrong is it's still too big. If we're making a disposable microphone small enough to put in someone's latte and powerful enough to pick up any conversation until it gets crapped out, it has to be really, really small. It has to be about the size of a big sugar sprinkle."
"Uh-huh," said Butters, frowning as well. "OK, we gotta get the titanium alloy down even thinner. An' I know what'll work."
"What?"
"Hamster spit," Butters said simply.
"Of course!" Dougie exclaimed. "Leave it to you to discover the secret properties of the common pet hamster." They high-fived and laughed evilly. Butters wiped his eyes.
"Hoo, boy, I still enjoy a good evil laugh once in a while." They leaned back in their chairs. "Anythin' else?"
"Nope, that was all we had to get done today. You want a donut?"
"What time is it?" Butters looked at the clocks on the wall—TOYKO, LENINGRAD, CAIRO, PARIS, LONDON, WASHINGTON, DENVER, LOS ANGELES—and gasped. "Holy sm-smoke, Dougie, I gotta get outta here or I'll be late for supper. Mom'll k-kill me." And that was when the red phone rang.
The red phone NEVER rang. Almost never, anyway.
"Gu-gosh darn it," Butters grumbled and picked up the phone. He didn't have to ask who it was. "Y-yeah, Eric, what do ya want?" His eyes popped. "You ARE?"
"Yeah, numbnuts, and I only get one phone call, so listen carefully. And write it down. Butters, I am in deep shit hynah. You have got to help me out."
"Why?" Butters asked simply.
There was a deep sigh. It was, somehow, a fat sigh. Also an aggravated sigh.
"Because we're business partners. Because I know stuff about you that you don't want anyone to know. Because I have you by the short and curlies. Because I say so, goddamnit!" Butters heard a few deep breaths. "OK, ok. I've got a handle on it now. Listen. I'm being held."
Someone who didn't know Cartman would have asked, "why?" Butters asked, "What for?"
"Tax evasion. Graft. Espionage. Butters, if I'm lucky, I go up for about fifty years. If I'm unlucky, they'll bring back the firing squad just for me, just to make me feel all special. And I am not standing there with a blindfold alone. You are going to get me out of this."
"Oh, J-Jesus!" Butters said, nearly dropping the phone.
An angry voice was still quacking from the receiver. "Butters! Butters, you still there?"
"Yuh-yeah." Butters looked like the panicky kid he had once been who had hidden beneath the kitchen sink, convinced that he was seeing dead people.
"I don't have time to discuss this. We'll try to keep Chaos Labs from going public, but you have to somehow get some books that makes it look like a legitimate business."
"E-Eric, we been payin' the taxes, right?"
"Of course, dumbass. Who do you think I am, Al Capone?"
"Su-so we're clear on the taxes part. An' the graft?"
Another sigh. "Butters, let's not go there, ok? I think I can get that part straightened out."
"So. . . ." Butters said slowly, "that leaves espionage."
"Sure does."
"All—all right, Eric, me'n Dougie, we'll try an' think o' somethin', only I dunno what, 'cause of our policy, an'—"
"Gotta go, Butters. Call my lawyer in the morning. OW! You get those off of me, goddamnit, you assholes, you don't need to—" Click.
Butters held his head in his hands. "Aw, cracker crumbs."
Chaos Labs sold to everybody. Absolutely anybody, as long they had enough money. Need to catch a cheating spouse? Spy on your citizens? Bring down a government? Chaos Labs was proud to provide you with the finest in spooky technology, if you could afford it.
Long ago, when Dougie, Butters, and Cartman drew up the charter, they had all agreed on this. Cartman simply didn't want to be boxed in. Money was money. But for Butters, it was the principle of the thing.
Chaos Labs was there to create chaos. Period. You couldn't have rules about chaos, or it wasn't chaos at all.
So of course they had sold technology that was probably being used to spy on the US Government. It wasn't anything personal.
Officially, they made car alarms. Billions of dollars worth of "car alarms."
Cartman had become the youngest-ever U.S. Representative in the district to which Park County belonged.
Butters had simply bought the old gas station, tunneled a mile straight down, and built Chaos Labs. The gas station was a front. He owned it, Dougie worked there. And nothing else had changed. He still lived with his Mom, still kept hamsters, drove an old heap of a car, shopped at J-Mart, and gave most of the money to the Cartman and Stotch Fund for Abused and Neglected Children as an anonymous donor. He could afford to buy any comic book he wanted.
Almost everyone who had been important had gone places. South Park was a great place to be from, but hardly anyone stayed.
Butters Stotch had grown up to be a loser who ran a cruddy gas station and lived with his Mom, and a lot of people felt sorry for him. What a sad, boring little life.
If only they knew.
"Professor?" Dougie said, shaking Butters' shoulder. "Hey, Prof, what's going on?"
Butters lifted his head from his hands and sighed. "They g-got Eric. He's been arrested. He wants me to d-do somethin', but I dunno what."
"Wow," said Dougie. He took his thick glasses off and frowned. "Well, we've got to figure something out. Come on over to dinner and we'll talk about it there."
Butters shook his head. "Aw, no, D-Dougie, you know I can't d-do that. Mom'll be expectin' me an' she'll g-get awful sore."
Dougie laughed. "What's she going to do? Ground you?"
Butters smiled, but he still felt a bit uncomfortable. "Naw, 'course not, but. . . you know what she's like."
In fact, everybody knew what Mrs. Stotch was like.
Dougie looked Butters in the eye. "Listen, Butters, you can't let your Mom run your life forever."
"It ain't that," Butters said defensively. "Su-she . . . she just gets awful lonely, is all."
Dougie tried another tack. "What's she making for dinner?"
"Meatloaf."
"Filmore's making chicken piccata with pumpkin tortellini for the pasta course and we're having lemon sorbet and biscotti for dessert."
"Aw. . . " Butters began to weaken.
"Come on, Butters. Call your Mom up right now before she begins to worry. Tell her an emergency came up at work. It's the truth," he pointed out. "You can have a decent dinner and a nice Pinot Grigio to wash it down with; you need to relax. And afterwards we can brainstorm a little with Filmore—the non-classified parts, of course," he added. "Filmore's smart about politics. He'll have some good ideas."
Dougie's logic was faultless, and Butters knew it made sense. It had nothing to do with spending a pleasant evening with his friends in their tastefully appointed house instead of at home looking at pale green walls eating meatloaf with his Mom in the kitchen. He picked up the other phone, the one that had a line running a mile straight up to Stotch's Gas N' Garage. No cell phone signal could be picked up down here. They had made sure of that.
"Uh, hu-hi, uh, Mom? I'm, uh, going to be a little late. Y-yeah. Wu-we, um, had a little emergency at work. Yeah. Yeah, I gotta help Dougie clean it up. No, of course it ain't Dougie's fault." Dougie rolled his eyes. "No—I won't be home for dinner. No, we'll be ok. No, Mom, please don't bring meatloaf out here. We'll be ok. Well—ok. If you gotta. Please don't wait up. Bu-bye, Mom. Be careful. Love you."
He hung up the phone.
"Let me guess," Dougie said, "your Mom's leaving you some meatloaf in the oven to warm up for later. "
"Yeah," Butters sighed, "but she's upset about somethin', I can tell. An' she really hates it when I gotta work late. 'Cause she thinks I'm lyin'."
"What does she think you're lying abou—oh, yeah," Dougie said, as Butters gave him a look that said stop right there. "Sorry."
They were silent as they slipped into their mechanic's uniforms, took the elevator to ground level, and drove off in Dougie's beat-up Ford pickup with the bumper sticker reading, "Honk if you love aliens."
