Chapter 11 - What's In A Name
It was late in the evening. Danny had napped a bit following the car trip home from Chicago. He was up now, taking it easy in the Fenton living room, reading the one of the comics he'd picked up at their fake comics convention. Dr. Peculiar, Ghost Annihilator. The Master of Mystic Energies ran around the world stopping ghost invasions. The first few years had been interesting when its creator, Moondog, was doing the book. Everyone assumed he had been whacked out on LSD all the time accounting for the book's surreal and imaginative content. Moondog disappeared one day, never to heard from again. Since then the comic had become bland, conventional, and, oddly, more successful.
Jack Fenton wandered in from the kitchen, holding a plate with a dish towel. From the aroma Danny assumed it was a pizza although most pizzas don't make a mound. His father sat down on the sofa near him, exhaled contentedly and tucked the dish towel into his orange jumpsuit under his chin. Balancing the plate on his ample chest he folded the pizza over like a taco and took a huge bite out of it. "Pizza's in the kitchen, Danny," he said through a mouthful of mozzarella.
"No thanks, Dad. We kind of lived on pizza at the -- uh -- convention. I don't think I could eat another bite." Which, oddly enough, was the truth.
Danny's mother came into the living room as well, holding a platter of vegetables -- broccoli flowerets, baby carrots, dip and some sliced apples and a dollop of peanut butter. Danny grabbed some carrots as she passed by. She put the platter down on an end table and took the seat beside it, found the remote and turned on the wall-sized television. She turned to the Discovery channel in hopes of Mythbusters blowing something up.
By leaning half-way out of his spot on the soda Danny could just reach the platter. He grabbed an apple slice and scrapped up some peanut butter.
"Ah, Doc Pec" Danny's father sighed, wiping his hands on the dish towel. The pizza had already disappeared. "That was my favorite comic when I was your age. I read it from the day it started."
"Uh, Dad, Dr. Peculiar started in 1962; you were born in 1965, right?"
"Yes, I was, April 12th, 1965!" Jack sighed contentedly.
"By the time you were born "Moondog" had already left the series and disappeared from off the face of the earth."
"Eh, what?" Danny's father looked confused.
Danny grabbed another slice of apple.
"If you were reading it when you were my age that would have been the Higgenbothen era, 1978 to 1983. The Necronomicon cycle."
"Higgenbothen? I but I recall the Moondog stories so vividly," Danny's father protested.
"That's because Professor Bushrod caught you reading an issue during his lecture," Danny's mother suggested.
"Issue three, 'Invasion of the Voids.' I paid twenty bucks for that issue and he burnt it. He burnt it in front of the whole class."
"After lecturing you for the rest of the hour about not wasting your time on trash."
"Twenty bucks is not trash."
"Number three was the scarce, censored issue. Too many people exploding in graphic detail." Danny said, "The publishers had to pull it off the newsstands."
"Exactly!" Jack Fenton asserted. "And he gave me 40 hours of detention -- which was spent cleaning up his lab, so that actually wasn't so bad."
"Professor Bushrod wouldn't let anyone into his lab," Danny's mother explained. "He was rather paranoid about people stealing his inventions. Then he went and had Jack clean up his top secret, private lab -- and never hung around to see what Jack was doing?"
"What was Jack -- er, Dad -- doing?"
"Snuck your mother and Vladie in, that's what! Oh we had so much fun looking at what he was doing, reading his lab notes. He was working on a Ghost Portal back then. The first in the world. But it was all wrong, never worked."
"Was that when Vlad had his accident?" Danny asked. An experimental Ghost Portal had blown up in Vlad Masters' face putting him in the hospital for years with Ecto-Acne. Everyone knew about that, what only Danny knew was that the explosion also gave Vlad ghost powers twenty years before a similar accident had given Danny his ghost powers.
"No, that was later. Can you imagine a couple of freshman blowing up a professor's lab? We would have been expelled so fast we would never have gotten our degrees." Danny's mother said, handing Danny the bowl of apple slices so he wouldn't have to keep reaching over to snag them. "That accident happened in our Senior year. We had developed our own design for a ghost portal, based somewhat on Professor Bushrod's design but incorporating numerous developments of our own."
"He tried to fight our patent in court, years later, claiming that we had stolen his designs but the judge ruled that our modification were sufficiently different and because his design had never worked there was no prior art involved. Man, he was pissed. Never spoke to us again."
"That's because he died, sweetie, shortly afterwards," Maddie Fenton corrected.
"He died?" Danny repeated. Suddenly all this sounded interesting. "When was that?"
"Oh, several years ago by now."
"2003." His father explained. "He said we would rue the day. Do you ever hear anyone say 'rue' in normal conversation? I thought that was pretty shirty of him because the three of us had been the best lab assistants he had ever had. We did more research, produced more papers for him than he had produced in the ten years before us. But academics are like that, I guess. 'Publish or Perish.' Always fighting over credit and prior work. I gather there were some really violent arguments in Theoretical Physics over who had contributed to what. On the whole I'm rather glad we went private. Though there were some tough years, aye, Maddie?"
"That's all behind us now." Danny's mom replied sweetly.
"So you were Professor Bushrod's lab assistants" Danny nibbled on an apple slice, thinking furiously. "That must have been awesome. And just because he caught Dad reading a comic in class?"
"Well, no. That came later, after your father aced a couple of his tests."
"I did?" Jack looked up, confused.
"He did?" Danny was just as confused.
"When it comes to things that really matter, your father has a memory like a steel trap. By the time your father had worked off his detention Professor Bushrod had seen his test scores and knew that Jack had to be his lab assistant."
"I've never forgotten an anniversary yet." Jack said proudly.
"Dear, that's because I circle the date on all the calendars in thick red marker."
"But the accident -- Vlad's ecto acne -- wasn't that caused by Dad's forgetfulness?" Danny had been allowed to travel back in time by Clockwork to that moment once when the modern day Vlad had infected Sam and Tucker with a deadly form of Ecto-Acne. That experimental Ghost Portal had blown up because Jack had poured soda pop into the Ecto-filtration unit instead of the proper coolant.
"It didn't happen that way at all," Maddie Fenton corrected. "It was entirely an accident."
Danny wasn't sure whether his mother was covering up for his father carelessness or honestly didn't know how his carelessness had caused the accident. In either case, since this happened long before he was born he couldn't claim to know more about it than his parent did, even though he did.
"So what was Professor Bushrod like?" he asked, changing the subject.
"He was a smart, incredible smart man," Jack said. "Had a thing about people leaving pizza boxes in the lab, though."
"That was just us, sweetie. None of your professors liked it when you ate in the lab."
" 'A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do'," Jack quoted. "We had some great brainstorming sessions." Jack smiled at the fond memory. "He was pretty tight with the money, though. Didn't pay us much for being his lab assistants. And he was always docking my pay for breakage. There were times when it was more like I was paying him to be his lab assistant. If it weren't for my scholarships and Vlad's trust fund I don't know how we made it through those years."
"That's true. And all the while he would tell us how he would be making beaucoup bucks from ghost research," Maddie added.
"Wait!" Danny ejaculated. " 'beaucoup bucks.' He said that? A lot?" Danny was suddenly sitting on the edge of the sofa looking intently at his parents.
"Why yes. It's cajun for 'lots of money'," His mother explained. "Professor Bushrod always believed he would become immensely rich from his patents on ghost detection and eradication technology."
"Instead he got kicked out of the university because of Vlad's accident..." Jack Fenton sighed.
"Vlad sued the university for millions because of his accident, dear," Maddie Fenton told Danny. To Jack she said, "You were just lucky Vlad didn't include us in the suit."
"Sue his best friend? Vladdie would never do that!"
"He was in a lot of pain at the time, sweetie, It's hard to say what he would have done."
"But Professor Bushrod like saying 'Beaucop Bucks'?" Danny persisted.
"Yes," his mother answered. "We sort of made it into a joke about him during Homecoming Week at the University."
Jack Fenton grumbled, "made me look like an idiot."
"Jack, dear, the character of 'Student' was not based on you. We were engaged by then. I would never have let anyone make fun of the man I was going to marry."
"He wore a pillow under his shirt!" Jack raised his voice. "What do you think people were going to think?"
Danny was surprised by how upset his father had become. But his parents were wandering away from the subject. So he asked, "How, exactly, did you make fun of Professor Bushrod?"
"We did a skit about teachers and their students and we called our teacher "Professor Beaucoup Bucks." Maddie explained.
"I imagine he didn't take kindly to that," Danny suggested.
"Oddly enough, he got a kick out of it. He said it showed that his students actually were listening to his lectures. Your father was not as amused."
"So Professor Bushrod like being called Beaucoup Bucks?"
"I guess you could say so."
"Have either of you guys ever hear of a Beauregard C. Buchwald?" Danny asked. The news that his parent' old professor liked being called Beaucoup Bucks was sending chills down his spine. He sensed that he was finally on the trail of the maker of the zombie-bot ghosts clones.
"Can't say I know much about him. Did a lot of work for the Guys in White. Claimed to have invented a Ghost Zone Radio but could never get it to work," Jack Fenton said off-handedly. "Didn't he die a few years ago?"
"I think you're right," Maddie agreed. "I don't recall anything else about him."
"He never worked for Professor Bushrod? Never went to State University with you guys?"
"Doesn't ring a bell."
"So, no connection with Professor Bushrod?"
"No, not at all. Why are you interested in our old college professor, Danny?"
"You guys never talk about your college days," Danny extemporized, "and since I'll be going to college in just a few years, I thought I could pick up a few pointers on college life."
"Hard to think of our little boy going off to college, Maddie? It seems like only last week I was changing his diapers."
"Jack, you fainted at the smell of dirty diapers."
"Dad, if Professor Bushrod had sent you an E-mail would it have gone through the normal computer filters or would have bypassed the filters because he was on the whitelist?" Spam was normally controlled one of to ways, through a "blacklist," a list of always suspicious sites or through a "whitelist" a list of friendly, certified virus free sites. Whitelists are short and easier to manage while blacklists are enormous in size and slow down processing greatly
"He's dead, Danny, it's not like he's going to be sending us any E-mails now." his father told him.
"But when he was alive did you have him in the whitelist or blacklist?"
"Blacklist my old college professor? Never!"
"When he died, did you remove his name from the whitelist?"
"Of course I -- er -- Maddie, do you recall if I did?"
"Can't say that you did or didn't, sweetie." Maddie Fenton was nibbling on a baby carrot. She was thoughtful for a moment. "You know, Dear, you probably ought to revise the Whitelist. I don't recall when the last time you did that."
Jack looked uncomfortable. Like, Danny, Jack Fenton had an aversion to doing chores. "Danny, why all this interest in the E-mail?" he asked
"I sort of thought my computer had picked up a virus and since it was linked to the web through the mainframe I was worried that maybe the mainframe had gotten infected."
"A virus on the Fenton Mainframe -- I'd better look into that." Jack Fenton hopped up and hurried off towards the stairs leading into the basement.
His mother watched Jack go and sighed. She turned off the TV. "I think I'll just head off to bed. Your father will be busy for hours down there." As she got up she handed the platter of vegetables to Danny. "Put these away when you're done," she instructed. Before straightening up she grabbed one last broccoli floweret and dabbed it with dip. "See you in the morning," she called, going upstairs.
Danny gave her a count of ten, pushed the vegetable platter aside and dashed upstairs.
"Jazz! Jazz!" he called bursting into her room, then frozen horrified.
His sister was in her underwear, holding the little black dress in front of her, studying the effect in her dresser's mirror. Jazz screamed for him to get out just as Danny, finding his feet again, backed out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.
A moment later the door was yanked open and Jazz, now bundled in a robe, stuck her head out. "Never barge into my room!" She scolded, "Do I barge into your room?"
"All the time. I'm sorry. I'll probably be traumatized for weeks, but we're got to talk. I think I know who Beaucoup Bucks is!"
"Shouldn't you be talking about this to your friends?" Jazz pushed Danny back and finished emerging from her room. "We'll talk in your room," she told him.
"You know Mom will never let you wear that dress," Danny guessed that the reason she didn't want him in her room.
"Of course she will. You just don t understand women, and you never will."
Danny opened the door to his room. Jazz moved a bag off his bed and made herself comfortable on a corner. Danny spun the chair at his computer around and faced her. "I was talking with Mom and Dad tonight and they mentioned that their old college professor, a guy named Bushrod liked to use the expression 'beaucoup bucks'. That doesn't make him our villain, But he was obsessed with making money from ghost research, Mom said. And they did a play about him where he was called Professor Beaucoup Bucks.
"This all sounds weak, Danny.
"Wait, there s more. He died a few years ago, which would put him in the Ghost Zone, where we all agree these attacks have come from. And because he's Dad's old college professor he would be on the Mainframe's whitelist . He could upload a virus to the computer without it being caught. That's how my computer would have gotten infected, and from that, everyone else's."
"It still seems kind of weak, Danny. I think this Buchwald is a better candidate."
"But Buchwald doesn't exist. From what Tucker and Abigail could find out from searching the Internet, Buchwald has never paid taxes, never owned property, never had a gas or water bill. Nothing. But Bushrod does, or did exist. We can find out where he last lived and that's got to be where he had his Ghost Zone Portal, relay or whatever!"
"It wouldn't hurt looking into Bushrod , I guess. Don't expect me to do any driving for you, though."
"I thought you wanted to help me?" Danny asked.
"I do. I think being the level-headed sister does help you a lot."
"I mean -- oh, never mind. I'll call Tucker and Sam."
Jazz left. Danny looked at the clock. It was late. But they would be so excited to hear about this -- wouldn't they? Danny stifled a yawn. Who was he kidding. The were all tire from the drive home. He'd call in the morning.
***
Tucker was still sleeping when Danny called the next morning and Sam wasn't answering her phone. When Danny called the house line, the housekeeper said she gone off to the community pool earlier. So Danny changed into swim trucks and told Tucker to meet him at the pool.
Even though it was still early in the day the pool was already crowded. They found Sam swimming laps in the deep end of the pool. She must have crossed the pool five times before she noticed them, something not easy to do since Tucker insisted on wearing his red beret. Sam pulled herself up on the edge of the pool, shedding water like a sleek otter.
"I didn't expect either of you guys to be up for another hour," Sam said. "I was just going to swim a few more laps, shower and beat it home before you called."
"You swim here often?" Danny asked. "How do you keep your pallor in all this sun?"
"SPF 100 sun block. It's what all us Goths wear when we have to go out in the sun. Also, does this look like a pallor?" Sam held her arm next to Danny s thigh. Danny rarely wore shorts so his legs were particularly white. Next to them Sam's arm looked decidedly -- off white. Not brown exactly but clearly darker than Danny's legs.
"Ah, Sam, haven't I seen that bathing suit before?" Danny asked. She was wearing the Indigo blue suit Danny had picked out just two days before.
"Could be."
"You snuck back to the gift shop and bought it?" Danny asked, admiring how good it looked on her.'
"Heck, no! Someone would have seen it and made an issue of it. That's what cell phones are for. I ordered it and had it expressed home. Whatever got you two out of bed this early must be really important so -- race you to the other side," and Sam slipped into the pool and started swimming.
Danny flung his rolled up towel to the base of the fence surrounding the pool and leaped in after Sam.
"I'm going to the Water Slide," Tucker called after them and walked around the pool and got in line. He figured that they'd find him when they got through horse-playing . At the top of the line he was surprised to find Valerie Grey working as lifeguard. Valerie was another of the small number of blacks in Casper High, a little on the plump side but good looking, often cranky from working two and three part time jobs at once. In her ludicrously brief free time she rode around on a high-tech flying surfboard looking for ghosts, and in particular -- Danny Phantom. All that aside Val was kind of nice, and a little sweet on Danny Fenton . Tucker chatted with her for a couple minutes, letting people behind him go down first. Finally Tucker throw himself into the flumway and screamed all the way down. When he bobbed up in the water at the foot of the slide his beret was, astonishingly, not wet.
He was getting in line again when Sam and Danny came up. Danny told them about Professor Bushrod as the line advanced. Then Tucker took the plunge down the slide, with Sam and Danny following close after. Danny had thrown himself into the tube with so much vigor that his legs were tangled up with Sam's when they splashed into the pool. They surfaced with a laugh, only to get a scowl from the lifeguard working that end of the slide. "Get a room," she suggested. Danny knew he wasn't supposed to centipede on the water slide like that but how could he resist.
They dressed and rode their mo-peds over to the Nasty Burger for late a breakfast and talked some more about Professor Bushrod . Tucker got out his PDA and programmed in some searches for the Professor. As they had concluded in Chicago, Beaucoup Bucks had to have a live connection from the Ghost Zone to the Internet, and that meant some kind of Ghost Zone Portal, maybe the radio portal that Buchwald had tried to promote. But that meant he had to own some piece of property to site the portal. And he needed some kind of electrical connection to power it. So there ought to be some kind of record of his presence on the Internet, leading to a physical location where all these attacks had come from. Abigail had her laptop do searches for Beaucoup Bucks anḑ Beauregard C. Buchwald at the hotel and had come up empty. This new name, though, might just be the link they were looking for.
Tucker and Danny had, naturally, taken one side of the booth, giving Sam the other side, But as the search results started coming in Sam slid around, pushing Danny and Tucker back, so that all three were crowded around the PDA looking at the results together. There was a death notice from Social Security and an obituary from State University's newspaper. The obit glided over the reason why Bushrod had left his position in 1987, though it did have a statement from Vlad Masters who fondly remember his teacher. There was notices of his patent infringement suit against Jack Fenton two years before his death, but no notes on the outcome of the trial. In fact a year after the trial, in 2002, Harold V. Bushrod simply disappeared. There were no notices of taxes paid, no records of him in either the gas, water or electric utilities. No cable subscriptions. No credit cards bills, no telephone records.
"Go back to the obituary," Danny suggested. "Maybe it lists where he died." But the article was blank on that.
"Who reported him dead?" Sam wondered. The obituary was dumb on that as well.
Likewise the Social Security death notice. "Are we even sure he really died," Sam wondered. "Maybe he's faked his death and is hiding somewhere."
Tucker began thumbing through dozens of open web pages. "Wait, wait. I got it, there!" he announced. He pointed to an entry in a Vermont cemetery where the ashes of one Harold V. Bushrod had been interred in 2003. "He's dead alright, but his ghost lives on."
"West Mill Race, Vermont. Isn't that where he was born?" Danny asked. Tucker went back to the obituary, then nodded.
"So if he was born there and was buried there, maybe he lived there as well?"
"Maybe not," Sam interjected. "That burial notice mentions delivery by DHL . A local cremation would have been delivered by a local funeral house. DHL does interstate shipments so his ashes could have come anywhere. All we have to do if find the shipping numbers for his remains, get into DHL's computer and look it up -- "
"I don't think so," Tucker objected. "I'm willing to break into the school's computer for you, Danny. Maybe even the public library's computer but I draw the line at a big corporation with tons of lawyers."
"We need someone reckless and foolish enough to do this," Sam concluded. The three looked at each other for a moment, then said simultaneously, "Abigail."
***
They trooped back to FentonWorks because Danny didn't have Abigail's number on his cell phone.
"You are so into me!" Abigail chirped as she answered. "It's not 24 hours since we left the hotel and you're already calling me!"
Danny's phone s volume had been turned up so everyone could hear. Sam was bowed over laughing. Abigail must have heard because she asked, "am I on speaker-phone?"
"Close enough."
"Oh. -- If you re looking for me to break into the old man's computer, you are so out of luck."
"What happened, get caught using the strato-cycle?"
"Worse, the human slug has decided to work from home this week! I can't get to his computer -- he's always there."
"Even in the middle of the night?" Danny asked.
"I'm not getting up in the middle of the night!" she protested.
"It s pretty juicy," Danny hinted.
"It would have to be awfully juicy to get me up at 3 AM!"
"We think we know who Beaucoup Bucks is."
"The guy making those computer virus ghosts?"
"Right."
"I m listening."
"We think it is my parent's old college professor, Harold V. Bushrod . He always used the phrase 'Beaucoup Bucks' to describe how he was going to make a fortune from ghost technology. He died about the same time as Buchwald, and he was working on a Ghost Zone portal, which could have become Buchwald's Ghost Zone Radio."
"So why do you need me to get up in the middle of the night to break in the old man's computer?"
"Because we lost all trace of him about a year before he died. He stopped all utility services, telephone, Internet. More importantly he sold all land he was know to have had. That was in February of 2002. He died and was buried in April of 2003. But the obituary didn't say where he died, but it looked to be out of state." Danny paused, not sure what more to add.
"How can I help?" Abigail asked. "I doubt that the Guys In White have any more information than what you've already dug up."
"I'm counting on them maintaining detailed surveillance of people involved in ghost research." Danny explained. Then he added, "I know they do with Dad."
"If he disappeared before he died," Abigail was saying, "it sounds like he was planning to become this Beaucoup Bucks."
Sam was listening to what Abigail was saying, then noticed something trapped under her boot. She reached down and picked up a well-folded brochure. She was going to drop it on Danny's bed when she noticed an arrow pointing to "Jefferson Memorial." She started unfolding the sheet. Danny stopped what he was saying and stared at her in silent horror. The brochure proved to be a map for a Washington, DC bus tour. Danny remembered stuffing the map in his hip pocket when he had secretly gone to Washington to visit Abigail. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he came home that night and had been laying on the floor until then.
"What's this, Sam asked. "When were you in DC?"
"There was an "Oops!" from the phone and Abigail hung up. Danny was red-faced, unable to answer.
"Was this when you were at that 'gaming convention' Tucker and I never heard of before?"
Tucker cleared his throat. "I -- uh -- got to be -- uh -- going. I've got -- uh -- see ya."
Sam grabbed Tucker's arm and pulled him back on the bed. "What do you know about this?" she demanded.
"Nothing! I'm as surprised as you."
"You're Danny's friend, you'd said that even if you did know." Sam groused.
"I swear I don't know what's going on," Tucker repeated.
"I suppose you don't know either?" Sam asked Danny.
"No, I know," he muttered. "I just didn't want to tell you because you'd--"
"I'd what? -- go ballistic? have a cow? punch you in the nose?"
"Do pretty much what you're doing."
"You went to Washington, DC without telling us? To see Abilgail, wasn't it?"
Danny nodded. "It was the only way I could get her to break into her father's computer the first time."
"You went on a date with her to get into her father's computer?"
"It wasn't a date!"
"You traveled across half the country to see her, don't tell me that's not a date!"
Tucker stood up again. "Look, I'm going. I'll catch up with you guys later."
"Don't bother, I'm going!" Sam declared and stalked out of the room.
"Sam wait," Danny called, then raced after her.
Tucker sat back down and waited.
After a while he picked up Danny's cell phone and hit redial. Abigail answered on the first ring."You know," he said to the speaker, "you are a piece of work." and hung up.
***
Danny ran after Sam. She had stormed out of the FentonWorks and charged down the street, leaving her mo-ped behind. She saw him catching up and quickened her pace but refused to break into a run.
Danny, running, caught up with her and pulled her over to a stoop of one of the brownstone buildings lining the street. "I'm sorry, Sam." Danny said. "I realize it was a dumb idea but I was desperate to learn anything about that ghost I could and didn't see any other way to get her to do it."
"You could have come to me, Danny. We could have figured something out."
"I guess. Why are you so upset about Abigail? You were never this upset when I was going out with Val?"
"I don't know. I guess I never figured you and Val would ever last."
"Oh, come on, we had a lot in common."
"What," Sam snorted. "Outside of you being a ghost and she was trying to kill you."
"That had nothing to do with it. She never knew I was a ghost. We were strictly people."
"Technus was manipulating you."
"Not at first, Sam. Anyway that's all history now. Val's got too many jobs to see anyone."
They were quiet for a moment. Then Danny began, "Sam, you've got to understand: there is nothing going on between Abigail and me."
"She's pretty."
"So are you."
"She's perky. I'm just an old sourpuss."
"A little perkiness goes a long way, after a while it gets tiresome."
"I'm still mad that you didn't think to tell me about this."
"I was too embarrassed."
"You should be."
"Will you forgive me?"
Sam gave him a swift, sharp glance. "I'll always hold this against you but I guess I can get over being angry with you." She stood up. "Let's get Tucker before he thinks the worst of us."
***
They dragged Tucker to see a move they had already seen, then played video games in the theater's lobby. It was a subdued group that broke up in the early afternoon. Danny returned home to look over the print-outs they're already made hoping to find a clue where Harold V. Bushrod had been before he died. But nothing popped out at him. Danny sought out his father, hoping to ask him more questions about his old professor, but his father was working on some bugs in the Fenton Yo-yo. Telescopic binoculars obscured his face as he probed the circuitry of the opened device. Remembering how one prototype had blown up unexpectedly, Danny decided to give it a wide berth.
When night came he fell into bed exhausted but unable to sleep. If he could just solve this last riddle of Beaucoup Bucks, destroy his Ghost Radio, put an end to his attempt to take over the world then life would get back to normal. He and Sam would get back to normal.
Somewhere in all this he must have fallen asleep because when his cell phone rang he was in the middle of a weird and twisted dream. He sat up with a start, relieved to be out of it. Then the phone rang again and he began feeling around for it in the dark.
He didn't need to be told it was late at night. He wondered who would be calling him at this time of the night.
He croaked, "hello?"
"I'm in," a familiar, perky voice told him.