2.
"Who the deuce are you?!"
Good question. Who are you, Raymond Shaw? Other than a hollow shell of a human being, I mean? He looked around before finally locating the source of the voice—a baby seated on the discolored linoleum floor, watching him. Raymond stared as the strange little creature, grappling with a VHS cassette box, skimmed what was presumably the film's summary on the back. The words The Manchurian Candidate were clearly visible on the spine.
He hadn't heard of it.
The baby's abnormally large eyes widened in horror, the implications of whatever he was reading apparently beginning to sink in. Could a child that young even read? "What's this? Released in 2004?! Damn you, woman!" he screamed, slamming his tiny fists into the floor. "This is the wrong film! I wanted a killing machine, not some pouf politician!"
Raymond Prentiss Shaw was having what he would reluctantly describe as a bad day. Admittedly, if he were to be entirely honest with himself (and he generally wasn't), he would probably come to the conclusion that he'd had nothing but bad days for two months straight—the unfortunate but inevitable result of campaigning to be Vice President of the United States. This required him to, among other things, speak voluntarily to other people and wave enthusiastically at crowds of screaming onlookers—both activities that for whatever reason he despised. Admittedly, today had been a bit worse than the usual three-ring circus that had become his daily existence. For example, an old army comrade had that afternoon, in a fit of extreme paranoia, bitten a hole in his left shoulder. That a baby no more than one year of age was now insulting his manhood was not doing much to assist his emotional wellbeing. He hated children as a general rule, if not only because they eventually became adults.
Not much about Raymond's life made sense these days (most especially not to him), so it was with only moderate surprise that he picked up the squirming youngster and pressed a kiss onto his forehead. Smile bright, he pinched the child's cheek and said something suitably nauseating about the innocence of youth. If what Marco had said was true about those implants, Raymond thought grimly, it would seem being mean to small children was a character flaw "They" had thought it necessary to fix.
The child seemed unimpressed. "What are you, stupid, man? Release me at once!" He kicked and thrashed but, after a couple of half-hearted attempts to play with the youngster, Raymond set him back down on the floor with a quick pat on the head.
There was something very wrong with this situation. This was not his campaign headquarters, for instance. In the back of his mind, a little voice shrilly protested that young babies ought not to be able to speak at all, much less use "pouf" correctly in a sentence. It didn't help that there was something in the child's calculating expression that reminded him distressingly of his mother.
The baby's eyes narrowed in contemplation. "I see!" he said, the child's voice cut with enthusiasm. "You're still brainwashed, aren't you? Perhaps I will have use for you yet, Raymond Shaw. Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?"
"How do you know my name?" were the first words to escape his lips, although it soon occurred to him that in the current political climate there were few human beings more recognizable than he was. His mother had seen to that. "Where am I? Did Marco put you up to this?"
"Your location at this juncture is unimportant. What is important is that you take this pack of playing cards and play some solitaire right now! I have things for you to do and time is of the essence!" His sharp English accent put Raymond in the mind of a villain from the James Bond films, although for the life of him he couldn't think of one that small. The baby, trembling with frustration, continued to shout instructions unabated. His tiny knuckles whitened around the deck of cards clutched in his little hands.
That's when things got weird.
"Look, he obviously has a different trigger. Welcome to Rhode Island, Congressman Shaw."
For the first time, Raymond became aware of a man seated at the kitchen table. He was mostly obscured by the newspaper he was reading, but it was obvious the man was unusually short in stature... and had a tail. The dog laid the paper down on the table, revealing it to be an issue of The Quahog Informant. Raymond was not naturally comfortable in social situations but he had been often told that it was impolite to stare. That said, he was currently under the mistaken impression that the whole ordeal was a terrible bite-induced nightmare and that manners were therefore a secondary issue. "You can talk," he said blankly.
"So can you," the dog noted. "I have to say, I am impressed. Seems that Harvard education did some good after all."
"What's this?" the baby exclaimed. "You know about him? How does he work? Tell me, or by God this will be the last time you meddle in my affairs, dog!"
The dog sighed. He rose to his feet (or rather, paws) and extended a paw as if to shake hands. "My name is Brian Griffin. It is a pleasure to meet you, Congressman."
Raymond gave the paw a distasteful look and, rejected, Brian reluctantly retracted it. He was a Shaw—or a Prentiss, depending on whom you asked—and he wasn't about to shake hands with a dog. Even if it did seem reasonably articulate. "Where am I?" he repeated.
"31 Spooner St., Quahog, Rhode Island," Brian calmly replied. "This is our home."
Raymond looked around. It certainly wasn't his home. There weren't enough servants, for one thing, and Abraham Lincoln didn't dominate the décor. "I shouldn't be here. How do I get h—back to where I was?" He felt foolish asking a dog for directions, but the baby seemed an equally unreliable source of information.
The dog turned his attention to the machine, now a smoking heap in the corner. A bit of cautious experimentation with the switches revealed that the power was still dead. "That might be a bit complicated. Looks like Stewie's little masterpiece downed Quahog's main power grid. They'll probably have it up and running in a few hours, but until then you're stuck here. That is, assuming this thing still works."
"Stewie?" Raymond asked, not really wanting to know.
"Raymond Shaw, meet Stewart Griffin." Brian gestured towards the petulant child, still clutching his package of playing cards. "Look, there's been a mix-up. He didn't want you in the first place. He wanted..." Brian stopped mid-sentence, his formidable brain searching in vain for a satisfactory way to describe what was going on without emotionally scarring the man standing before him any more than he already was. "... Laurence Harvey."
Raymond frowned. "I've never heard of him."
"He is you," Brian said thoughtfully, "only different."
On some level, Raymond was aware that those sorts of statements were on par with "There is no spoon" so far as reality-warping, mind-bending complexity is concerned. Yet, all the man was consciously able to manage was a mildly uncomfortable expression and a few weak protestations. "That doesn't make any sense," he said.
Brian looked at him and shook his head. "You expect a talking dog to make sense?"
Raymond couldn't help but admit that the talking dog raised an excellent point.
"Brian, I'm making sandwiches for lunch. Would you like anything?" Lois's pleasant, if nasal, voice lofted into the kitchen. The woman soon followed, arms overflowing with packages and parcels that were quickly dumped onto the kitchen table. Selecting a couple of cans of pureed corn from the heap, she looked up to discover a large man blocking her path to the cupboard. "Oh my!" she exclaimed, followed by a lesser but still audible "Oh my..." that she probably hadn't meant to say aloud.
The charming people-loving Raymond was compelled to smile. He extended his hand automatically and was about to introduce himself when Stewie felt obligated to interject. "Mother," he said sweetly as he selected the Queen of Diamonds from the deck, "I would like you to meet--KILL HER! KILL HER NOW!"
"Raymond Shaw," he said with a laugh. "Your son is adorable. It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss..."
"Lois. Lois Griffin," she said with a flustered giggle. "It's a pleasure to meet you too, Mr. Shaw. Are you a friend of Brian's?"
"Um, yes," Brian said, interrupting what were more than likely going to be Raymond's vehement denials. "We were just going out for a drink. Weren't we, Raymond?"
"But Brian!" Lois protested. "It's barely three thirty! Why don't you and Mr. Shaw stay in for the afternoon? Stewie seems very fond of him, and Meg and Chris will be home from school in a few minutes. I'll make sandwiches..."
"You have... more children?" Raymond said, recovering quickly.
"Oh yes!" she said happily, her face aglow with maternal pride. "Meg is sixteen now and Chris is thirteen. It's an awkward age but Chris takes so after his father, the little gentleman... Hold on, let me find the photo album..."
"Red Queen! Red Queen!" Stewie shouted, jumping up and down in a desperate attempt to get the Queen of Diamonds into Raymond's line of vision. "You must do as I say! I order you to KILL LOIS--"
"Although the idea of staying here and looking through photographs of your no doubt delightful family is, um, tempting," he said with a friendly laugh, "I'm afraid that it is very important Brian and I leave. Now."
"BLAST!" Stewie cried.
The front door slammed closed. "Lois! Have you seen my pants?" came a booming voice from the living room. Lois's attention momentarily averted ("Peter, you were wearing your pants when you went to work! Did you leave them in the car?"), Raymond took the opportunity to slink towards the door. He didn't get far.
"Who're you?" demanded the large wall of lard blocking his escape.
"I currently serve in Congress as the representative from New York and am the Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States. My name is Raymond Prentiss Shaw. If I have answered all of your questions, please get out of my way."
Lois beamed. "Oh, that's Peter, my husband. Peter, this is Raymond. He's a friend of Brian's. Why, I hadn't realized you were in politics, Mr. Shaw! You must be very important to be running for Vice President."
"I am," Raymond replied, more tersely than his programming would have liked.
"It's such an honor to have a Vice Presidential nominee in our house!" she said, her words accompanied by something that sounded suspiciously like a dreamy sigh. "Well, Mr. Vice President, you are welcome in our home anytime!"
"That's convenient," Brian muttered, "given that he's going to be living here from now on."
"What was that?" Lois snapped.
Peter ambled across the room in search of cookies. He continued to be without his pants, but seemed to be under the impression that this was a problem that would resolve itself given enough time and calories.
"Nothing," Brian said quickly before disappearing out the door. Excluding his brief stint in the army and a number of subsequent photo-ops his mother seemed convinced would further his political career, Raymond had little first-hand experience with "the American people". He'd read about them, of course, but he'd always considered this self-imposed detachment to be a good thing. The sight of Peter Griffin without pants did nothing but confirm this to be fact. And to think Marco complained of nightmares... Raymond reluctantly stopped in the doorway, treating the dazzled couple to a smile and a quick wave before practically darting after the dog onto the streets of Quahog.