The Secret Diary of Cameron Baum
THURSDAY
"He won't speak to me! He just lies there!" Mia wails.
Snowy does indeed just lie on the floor of her bedroom, eyes closed. The only indication he is still alive the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.
"What's the matter, fella?" John asks kneeling down and stroking Snowy's fur. "Can you tell me what's wrong?"
Snowy can't; he can barely open his eyes.
"He is he sick? He is gonna get better?" Mia demands tearfully.
I don't know. But I know someone who might."
-0-
The vet's surgery is a single storey white building situated just off the turnpike. I cradle Snowy in my arms while John drives the Suburban. Mia is at home. It is thought she might become hysterical if the prognosis is bad.
The waiting room is full of sick pets and their anxious owners. There are several dogs present. Snowy makes no attempt to bark a greeting or sniff their posteriors. He must be really be sick since he usually loves nothing more than sniffing butt.
The vet is a young man in a white lab coat. He gently manipulates Snowy's limbs and probes his abodomen. "No broken bones and no nasty swellings. That's good. How long he's been like this?"
"It happened quite suddenly," John says. "He was fine yesterday."
"Has he been in any fights with other animals?"
"I don't think so."
"Anyone in your area spraying pesticides?"
"I'm pretty sure they aren't."
He leans down and sniffs Snowy's fur. "Has he been in a swimming pool?"
"Yeah, he plays with our little sister in the pool."
"How often is he in the pool?"
"Couple of times a day."
"I think that's the problem. Chlorine posioning. You see, dogs don't have sweat glands. They don't perspire to keep cool the way we do. They hang their tongues out of their mouths and cool off that way. Chances are he's ingested a fair bit of pool water by accident. The chemicals have overloaded his kidneys."
"Can you make him better?"
"I'll give him a couple of shots. He needs rest and to be kept hydrated. If he won't drink by himself you need to squirt water into his mouth with a pipette. I won't lie to you, his kidneys will either recover or they won't. If he's no better in five days the kindest thing will be to put him to sleep."
Put him to sleep. A euphemism for termination.
For death.
-0-
Once home we lay Snowy on Mia's bed and make him comfortable. There is little to do now but wait.
FRIDAY
Snowy no better. Mia refuses to go to school and for once Sarah Connor relents and allows her to stay home.
SATURDAY
Snowy no better. John uses a pipette to squirt water into Snowy's mouth as the vet advised.
Mia weeps and demands to know why God hates her and doesn't want her to have any family or friends to love. For once even John is lost for a satisfactory answer.
SUNDAY
Snowy no better. I overhear John and his mother discussing whether or not they should buy Mia another puppy if Snowy doesn't pull through. They are rapidly losing faith.
MONDAY
Snowy opens his eyes and accepts a small piece of meat which he takes an age to chew. We all agree to this a positive sign.
TUESDAY
Snowy sits up and eats more pieces of meat. He is able to drink unaided. More positive signs.
WEDNESDAY
Snowy off the bed and moving around. He seems back to his old self.
snowy feel better now!
"I can see. You had us all worried there, fella," John tells him, ruffling his fur.
snowy play in the pool with mia?
Mia bursts into tears.
"No more pool for you. That's how you got sick," John explains gently.
snowy love the pool!
"You want to get sick again? No more pool. Hear me? Or I'll drain the water out so no one can use it. When you've got your strength back I'll take you and Mia to the beach."
snowy love the beach!
"Just try not to swallow the ocean."
-0-
FRIDAY
The air-conditioning unit in the attic room is malfunctioning. While John is busy downstairs I strip it down to its component parts and make the necessary repairs, adding some design improvements of my own devising. I leave it running while I go downstairs and attend to my other chores.
Later, when John goes up to change clothes, he discovers the temperature in the room is now ten below freezing. Ice has formed on the windows and the floor is covered in a light dusting of snow. Quite rare in Los Angeles. Especially indoors.
"Cameron!" John yells. "What did you do to my room?"
"I repaired the air conditioner," I explain.
"How - by turning my room into a meat locker?"
"It might require fine tuning."
"No kidding?"
He wrenches open the wardrobe door. All his clothes are frozen stiff as a board.
"I guess I'm wearing what I'm standing up in."
He pulls the power cord out of the a/c and opens a window, letting the warm air circulate.
"Let the place defrost. Don't let Mia or Snowy up here or they'll want to keep it like this and build a snowman."
-0-
MONDAY
It is my turn to drive Mia to school. On arrival she hugs Snowy and waves me goodbye. A blonde girl her age waits at the gate, her new friend Megan presumably. The phat girl. The two walk inside together, smiling and chatting amicably.
I am about to put the Suburban in gear and drive home when a woman I have never seen before indicates I should wait.. She is older than the children so I deduce she is a teacher not a pupil. A plastic nametag on her jacket lapel strongly suggests her name is Donna. I roll down the window so we can converse.
"Hi, I'm Donna Helstrom, Mia's form teacher. You must be her sister?"
I tell her this assumption is correct.
"I need to give you this." She hands me a brown paper envelope. "It's Mia's report card. We like to hand it directly to a member of the family. If we give to the children to take home it has a tendency not to arrive, if you know what I mean."
I don't but make no comment. Instead I tear open the envelope. Mia has received A grades in all subjects except English where she got a B.
"She's an exceptionally bright girl," Donna Helstrom tells me. "Where did she go to school prior to here?"
"At an abandoned quarry in the badlands of Mexico."
"Ah. Well, it's certainly done her no harm. Is that Snowy the dog?" she asks, indicating Snowy in the seat next to me.
"You know Snowy?"
"Oh yes. Mia writes stories about him. He's a talking dog apparently." She smiles. "Kids and their imaginations!"
Snowy begins barking.
mia write story about snowy? snowy famous!
Donna Helstrom takes a step back. "Oh dear. Did I do something to upset him?"
"Please remain calm, Donna Helstrom. He is merely indicating his happiness at being written about."
"Ri-ght...Well, I - uh - better back inside. Nice to have met you."
She hurries away.
snowy like mia's teacher!
"She seemed pleasant enough," I agree. "A trifle skittish perhaps."
-0-
John and his mother are impressed with Mia's grades.
"Wow. Looks like we're raising a little genius," John grins.
"A genius who still won't tidy up after herself," Sarah Connor carps.
Perversely the person least impressed by her report card is Mia herself. When she arrives home from school later in the afternoon she merely shrugs and says, "It's no big deal. School's easy. Papa's lessons were harder."
"Even so you should be very proud of yourself," John insists. "A new school. A new country. Amazing. I know what it's like, believe me."
Another shrug. "Whatever."
"You want some extra help with English? I mean, a B's great but it's a shame not to have straight A's."
"The English teacher hates me! He calls me Mya. I tell him it's pronounced Mee-a yet he still calls me Mya. So I tell him he's an idioto."
"I think that explains the B."
"You have to respect your teachers," Sarah Connor tells her.
"Even if they're idiots?"
"Especially if they're idiots."
"I'll think about it. No promises. Can I ask a question?"
"Sure. You can ask us anything."
"Why are there guns in one of the bedrooms upstairs?"
Silence. "Why d'you think there are guns upstairs?" Sarah Connor asks in a neutral tone.
"Because sometimes you, John and Cameron smell of guns. Papa smelt the same. And he had lots of guns."
John decides on a version of the truth. "The guns are for protection from some bad people who are after us."
"Are the bad people after me?"
"No. They don't know anything about you."
"If they find us will we have to leave?"
"They won't find us. Don't worry."
"Good. I like living here. So does Snowy. He says it's even nicer than the last place he lived, though he misses Jerold and Alys. Who are they?"
"Friends who lived next door."
"Can I meet them?"
John shakes his head. "I'm afraid not. They live across town. And if we get in touch the bad people might be able to use them to track us down."
Mia nods solemnly as if being hunted is the most normal thing in the world. "Okay. C'mon, Snowy, let's go and watch TV."
John watches her go. "That is one bright kid. Of course she knows what guns smell like - her father was the biggest gunrunner in Mexico."
Sarah Connor says, " She didn't seem too upset that people are after us."
"Which is a blessing." John checks Mia is out of earshot before saying, "I've managed to trace Miquel's bank account. For a communist who hated America he sure didn't mind using our banks."
"Can you access it?"
"Yeah. The password's dorwssap. That's password spelt backwards. Not the smartest move in the book."
"How much is there?"
"Little over ten thousand."
"Doesn't seem much considering the value of the drugs he was smuggling."
"That's what I thought. I did some more digging. There's another account in Mia's name."
"How much there?"
"Almost a hundred thousand. He was obviously providing for her future. I think he knew the drug cartel would never let him just walk away, so he was preparing an escape route for his daughter. It probably explains why he sought out Andre Cordoba to forge documents."
"Until we arrived and ruined it all."
"Mom, what happened wasn't our fault."
"I wish I could believe that."
"What should I do with the money?"
Sarah Connor thinks for a moment. "Move the ten to our account. We might as well get some use out of it."
"And the hundred?"
"Open another account in Mia's new name. Maybe one day it'll put her through college."
"Okay. Oh, one other thing...I found a photograph of Miquel's wife. Do you want to see?"
Sarah Connor hesitates then says, "Show me."
She stares at the photo for a long moment. "She was beautiful."
"Yeah. If Mia grows up looking like that in a few years we'll be beating the boys off with a stick."
"Don't worry," I assure him. "I will beat off the boys for you."
"You will, huh?" John grins.
"Yes. I will beat off the boys."
John and his mother exchange smiles. I get the sense I have accidentally said something amusing. How I don't know.
What is funny about me beating off boys?
-0-
SATURDAY
Mia has built a robot. Out of Lego bricks.
"His name's Ricardo," she announces proudly.
"Ricardo the robot?"
"Uh huh. My. Name. Is. Ri-car-do. How. May. I Serve. You?" she says in a tinny-sounding voice. Do we talk like that? I think not.
Ricardo's arms fall off.
"That keeps happening. Stupid Lego!"
She conducts hasty repairs.
"My friend Megan says one day every house will have a robot. They'll do all the chores and obey our every command so we can just lie around and watch TV all day."
"Suppose they don't want to obey you?"
"They gotta!"
"We don't gotta."
"We?"
Oops.
"I mean, they don't gotta."
"Robots can't think for themselves, silly. They just obey orders. There. He's all better. Hello. I. Am. A. Robot. How. May. I-"
Ricardo's legs fall off.
"Stupid robot!"
Mia flings the robot at the wall in frustration. He shatters into its component bricks. Ricardo lacks even a rudimentary self-repair system so merely languishes on the floor in small pieces.
I share his humiliation.
-0-
SUNDAY
While the human and canine occupants of the house sleep I retrieve the scattered remnants of Ricardo the robot and take him down to the basement. Here I repair him, adding some significant upgrades to Mia's crude handiwork. I use a plastic bonding agent to ensure the Lego bricks will no linger suffer catatrosphic failure. I add circuitry and small servo motors at the major joints to give him some mobility. A modified CPU from a cellphone grants him sentience via some primitive reprogramming, including a facial recognition program. Power will come from a laptop battery pack I modify to form part of his ambdomen.
When I am done I place Ricardo by Mia's bed so she will find him when she wakes.
-0-
"Wow, you rebuilt Ricardo!" Mia exclaims on waking. Snowy sniffs the robot suspiciously.
"Not merely rebuilt, improved," I inform her. "Watch."
I switch Ricardo on. He boots up and begins to scan his surroundings. "Greetings, stranger," he says to Mia. "Please state name for identification purposes."
"Mia!"
"Greetings, Mia. Are you friend or foe?"
"Friend, silly."
"Affirmative. Mia indexed as friend, silly."
John puts his head round the door. "Mom says breakfast is on the table. What's that?"
"Greetings, stranger. Please state name for identification purposes."
John says nothing. He seems slightly dumbstruck to be addressed by an eighteen inch tall robot made of Lego bricks. Mia answers for him.
"John."
"Greetings, John. Are you friend or foe?"
"Uh - friend, I guess."
"Affirmative. John indexed as friend, I guess."
"Isn't he cool!" Mia smiles. "Wll he do my chores for me?"
I tell her this is unlikely since Ricardo lacks fingers to pick things up. Lego bricks have their limitations.
"Well, he's still cool. Ricardo, march up and down."
"I obey Mia, friend, silly."
Sarah Connor appears in the doorway. "Aren't you up yet? Breakfast is on the table."
"Look. Cameron built me a robot."
Ricardo swivels round and scans Sarah Coonor. "Greetings, stranger. Please state name for identification purposes."
When she makes no attempt to reply Mia says, "Sarah."
"Greetings, Sarah. Are you friend or foe?"
Sarah Connor regards him with hostile eyes. "Foe" she states emphatically before turning around and going back downstars.
"Affirmative. Sarah indexed as foe."
"What's that mean?" John asks. "He 's not gonna attack mom, is he?"
"No," I assure him. "Ricardo lacks offensive capabilites. I thought it prudent to omit them after the roboraptor unpleasantness."
"Prudent is right. It nearly tore that girl's head off."
Mia spends the rest of the day interacting with Ricardo, teaching him the names of things and having him follow her round the house like a puppy dog.
Like Snowy in other words.
The one person even less enamoured of Ricardo than Sarah Connor is Snowy, who sulks at the amount of attention she is lavishing on the tiny robot. During the night while most of the house sleeps he picks up Ricardo in his jaws, takes him outside to the yard and drops him in the pool where the water shorts circuits his electrics.
MONDAY
"How did he get in the pool?" Mia asks when Ricardo's whereabouts is discovered. "D'you think he wandered off in the dark and accidentally fell in?"
"I don't think this was an accident," John says retrieving Ricardo from his watery grave. "See the tooth marks in the plastic? I think a certain doggie did this."
"Snowy? Why would Snowy drop Ricardo in the pool?"
"Why don't we ask him."
At first Snowy denies all responsibility only to cave in when John questions him further. He is not good under pressure.
mia like ricardo better than snowy!
He whimpers pathetically.
Mia hugs him to her chest. "Of course I don't! I love you, not some silly robot. No one can love a robot."
"They can't?" I ask, alarmed by this revelation.
"No. Robots are dumb and ugly."
"Oh I don't know," John grins wrapping his arms around my waist. "Some are pretty smart." He kisses the nape of my neck. "Cute too."
"Cameron's not a robot, silly!" Mia giggles. "Be cool if she was though."
"Yeah? Why's that?"
"She could do all my chores for me."
"I think Cameron does enough for you. Haven't you noticed your toys are being put away after you're done with them? Who do you think does that - the toy fairy?"
"That's Cameron?"
"Sure is. I think you should say thank you, don't you?"
"Thanks, Cameron."
"You're welcome."
Snowy is forgiven and Ricardo is put on a high shelf to dry out. And to keep him out of Snowy's reach.
SATURDAY
Today John makes good on his promise to take Mia and Snowy to the beach. They are gone most of the day, returning in the early evening. Mia requests I read her a bedtime story which affords me an opportunity to quiz her about the day.
"Were there lots of people at the beach?"
"Yeah, lots and lots!"
"Were there any girls in bikinis?"
"Uh huh."
"Did any speak to John?"
"There was one girl. Her bikini was so small you could totally see her butt cheeks." She puts her hand to her mouth and giggles. "I said butt cheeks!"
More giggles. I wait for them to subside then ask. "What did she and John talk about?"
"I don't know. Snowy and I were busy making a sandcastle. You should have seen it - it was huge! As big as this house!"
I consider this highly unlikely but let it pass. I have more pressing concerns. The girl with the exposed butt cheeks for one. "Did John seem happy talking to the girl?"
"I guess. I think he told her a joke. She laughed quite a bit."
"What was the joke?"
Mia doesn't remember and the exertions of the day take their toll and she soon falls asleep before I have barely begun questioning her.
-0-
John is still up when I return to the attic room. "Fell asleep quick tonight?" he says. "Thought she would. Busy day. You should've seen the size of the sandcastle she built."
"Was it as big as a house?"
"Almost!" John laughs.
"Please tell me about the girl with the exposed butt cheeks."
"Huh?"
I divulge the information Mia gave me. John simply shrugs. "Oh her. I think her name was Dayna. Something like that. She was more interested in Snowy. Said he reminded her of a dog she had as a kid. Man, that dog's popular with chicks!"
"You told her a joke."
"Did I? I guess so."
"Was it the one about the rabbi, the stripper and the three foot salami? Because I still don't understand how the salami came to be inserted in such an unusual place."
"No, it wasn't that one. I wouldn't tell that when Mia's around."
"What joke was it?"
"You really want to know?"
"Yes."
John sighs. "Okay...A penguin goes into a bar. Walks up to the barman and asks, Has my brother been in? The barman says, Don't know. What's he look like?"
I wait. John doesn't continue. I ask, "Had the penguin's brother been in?"
"Cam, that's the joke."
"A talking penguin is funny?"
"No. The barman says, What's he look like? All penguins look the same."
"So the barman is retarded and mental illness is funny?"
Another sigh. "No, that's not it either."
"Where is this bar situated?" I ask. "Penguins inhabit Antartica. It seems an unlikely locale for a bar. Wild animals would be the only clientle and they seldom carry sums of money."
"Cam, let it go. It's just a joke."
-0-
I don't let it go. My CPU continues to analyse the joke long after John has fallen asleep. There are so may unknown factors. Who was the mysterious penguin? Why did his brother frequent the bar in the first place? Did he have a drinking problem? Possibly he was an alcoholic penguin and his brother was concerned about his welfare. Why did the bar hire an employee who was so ill-suited for the postition? So many questions and yet so few answers.
As night falls I go downstairs to begin patrolling. I find Snowy in the kitchen eating a late night snack, his appetite now fully restored after his illness. I decide to tell the joke to him and see if he understands it better than I do.
"A penguin goes into a bar at an unspecified location, possibly Antarctica," I begin. "The penguin asks the employee, Has my bother been in? The employee doesn't know because he is mentally challenged."
Snowy doesn't laugh or snigger. He stares at me briefly then resumes eating.
It is possible I told the joke incorrectly.
-000-
Chlorine poisoning is a hazard for small animals, normally by drinking pool water. Their kidneys overload. No idea if Snowy's recovery is feasible - couldn't bring myself to total the little varmint tho!
The old penguin goes into a pub/bar gag. Funnier after a few beers. Most things are.
Noticed a surge in hits recently. I understand TSCC is now on US Syfy. Welcome all you newbies!