Chaos, Inc.

Butters, the other South Park characters, and South Park itself belong to Trey Parker and Matt Stone. See endnotes for specific references.

Chapter Three: Plans, Dreams, and Memories

"Cartman's just being melodramatic," Filmore called from the kitchen, where he was getting dessert. "No one's been executed for espionage since---hmm, where did I put the limoncello?"

Dougie smiled at Butters and shook his head, but simply went on sipping his espresso. Filmore was brilliant, but he was easily distracted when it came to food. He was a dedicated food freak who not only had subscriptions to Bon Appetit and Gourmet but who also actually used the recipes. He had been trying to convince Dougie for years that they ought to take a food tour of Tuscany, telling him that he was positive that Italy had as many aliens as Colorado. If not more.

Filmore was an exception to the rule that the most successful kids left South Park when they grew up. He had consistently had the highest or second-highest GPA all the way through school, and had been class valedictorian when Ike Broflovski got a case of senioritis and went through a heavy biker phase. Everyone was surprised when Filmore decided to go to college in Colorado and commuted home every weekend. He did the same thing through law school, when even the most unobservant finally noticed that Filmore was always in the company of the goofy-looking gas station attendant. As soon as he passed his bar exams, he came back and set up house with Dougie.

After losing the class presidency race to Ike, Filmore had never lost another political contest, and he hadn't had to bring in his aunt Rosie, either. He'd run for mayor straight out of law school and been mayor ever since, and everyone admitted that he was terrific. He could have run for Cartman's Congressional seat and won it without even breaking a sweat, but he always smiled and said he'd rather stay in South Park, thanks.

Everyone understood that he stayed in South Park because of Dougie, but they couldn't understand what the dark and handsome young mayor saw in him. It wasn't his looks, that was for sure; Dougie had red, bushy hair and still wore glasses that were Coke-bottle thick. It couldn't be personality, because when you started a conversation with Dougie, it always ended in the details of an original Star Trek episode or his plans to watch for aliens again that weekend. Dougie was the second-biggest loser in South Park, and he worked for the biggest loser in South Park, so what was the attraction?

Butters knew what it was. Dougie and Filmore had been great friends since Filmore started a chess club in high school; Filmore was always starting things. Dougie was the only one to show up and he had proceeded to kick Filmore's ass. Filmore had started hanging around more and more and it had come as a surprise to Butters that his little pal General Disarray was actually old enough to have a boyfriend. They were both exceptionally intelligent in complementary ways. Filmore loved to cook, and Dougie would eat anything, no matter how weird. Dougie supported Filmore when the people of South Park drove him nuts; Filmore knew perfectly well that Dougie was a part-owner of Chaos Labs and never asked any questions he knew he shouldn't ask.

Butters loved being at their house, which was decorated in a tasteful mixture of Tuscan Farmhouse and Mid-Century Sci-Fi, and they loved having him over. He'd been the best man at their wedding, and Dougie had jokingly threatened to return the favor until several years ago, when it stopped being funny anymore.

"Ah-HA," came Filmore's voice from the kitchen, "found it." He trotted back into the dining room with a tray of biscotti and sorbet and a green bottle under his arm. "Here it is," he said, "limoncello. Put it up myself this summer. Try a sploosh of it on your sorbet, Butters, you wouldn't believe how it kicks it up. As I was saying," continued Filmore, sitting down with Dougie and Butters at the large wooden table, "Cartman's just overreacting, as usual. No one's been executed for espionage since the Rosenbergs, and that was over fifty years ago. And they certainly didn't use a firing squad. They were electrocuted. No," he said, "federal prison is a lot more likely."

"But it is p-possible?" said Butters nervously.

"Theoretically," admitted Filmore, licking his sorbet spoon, "but I doubt it. The law says that in order for it to be espionage, you have to have meant for it to be used against the government by a known enemy. So you make and sell wiretaps with the most inoffensive little signals in the business—it's technically legal, unless you intentionally sold them to Al-Qaeda and delivered them by singing gorilla with full instructions on how to attach them to Dick Cheney's cellphone and what to listen for, and I hope," he added fervently, "that you didn't."

"D-Did we?" Butters asked Dougie.

Dougie shrugged. "I dunno, Prof. That's Cartman's end of things, distribution."

Filmore arched an attractive eyebrow. "Ah, that would be the problem, wouldn't it?"

"Kinda," said Butters. "See, Eric only h-had about five minutes. He didn't tell me what he was supposed to have done, exactly."

"Hmmmm," said Filmore. "Well, let's try looking at it this way—why has he been arrested?—Bear with me," he added, as Butters began again to say he didn't know. "Tax fraud, we know he's clean, or at least that the business is clean."

"We do?" said Dougie. Filmore smiled.

"Of course we do," he said, "because you are not going to jail for tax evasion if I can help it. Kyle Broflovski is the best tax attorney in the business and he's vetted everything. The business may make a lot of money, and the types of products may be a bit misleadingly named. I doubt that your #2 Deluxe Bozo the Clown Car Alarm is precisely what it sounds like, considering that it costs $200,000, and no, I don't want to know what it does."

Dougie and Butters exchanged looks. The Bozo the Clown was a combination GPS device and bug that could be made into a charming variety of bobblehead dolls for the dash. The Deluxe was a counterspy device that exactly mimicked the doll your enemy had given you, only it was wirelessly tuned to his car. A lot of ambassadorial cars had bobbleheads on the dashboard these days.

"But the books themselves, " Filmore continued, "are impeccable. You can open them to the IRS or any other government agency any time they want. And I think the FBI will step in here, too. They don't want an investigation into how many bobbleheads they bought last year. So there must be a reason they've decided to go after Cartman and Chaos Labs, and I'm guessing it's a download of some super-classified material off a federal computer, plus some sort of indication that somebody has some kind of information they aren't supposed to have. Would that be possible?"

"Yu-yeah," said Butters. "We d-don't set limits on what we make or what we sell or who we sell it ta. You know our ch-charter, Dougie."

They said it together.

"Organized chaos isn't chaos at all."

"Su-so ya see, Filmore," said Butters, "he really coulda sold some stuff to Al-Qaeda or somethin'."

"Hmmm, maybe," frowned Filmore. "But it's just as likely that someone knows about Chaos Labs and got hold of some of your equipment without permission. That person might have given it to a foreign government or to terrorists, or they might simply have sold the device so someone could make cheap knockoffs. That's economic espionage, and it's almost as bad: the FBI wouldn't like having their favorite toys copied by everybody and neither would you. And then that same person probably conveniently allowed the actual item to be traced back to Cartman—which will lead straight to you and Dougie if you're not careful."

"Bu-but—who would d-do that? An' why?"

"Well," said Filmore, beginning to pick up the dessert things as Dougie stood up to help him, "that's the problem, isn't it? Somebody will have to find out, and I think it means going to Washington. You'll want to talk to Cartman first—get as much of the story as possible—and then start looking around. I'd do it as soon as possible. Tomorrow, if you can." They carried the dishes into the kitchen.

"But—but. . . .I can't leave n-now!" exclaimed Butters.

"Why not?" called Dougie from the kitchen. "I can hold things down. We've got to try the jingety in the thingmabob anyway. That'll keep me busy, and I'll need to look busy and pump some actual gas, but there's no reason I can't manage." Dougie and Filmore popped back to the table again.

"It ain't that," said Butters, "it's—it's Mom."

Dougie and Filmore looked at each other, but didn't say anything.

"She'll worry," explained Butters unnecessarily. "An'-an' d-don't start with me, Dougie, it ain't her f-fault."

Dougie sat back down at the table. "I wasn't going to," he said mildly.

"Hmmmm," said Filmore, pacing in front of the fireplace, neatly avoiding by habit Dougie's large model of the Enterprise. "Let's look at it from another angle."

"That's what he does," Dougie said to Butters.

"Let's look at it from your Mom's point of view. We can't avoid her worrying altogether, but we do want to avoid her worrying too much, Dougie: Butters is right. If she worries too much, she'll start to ask a lot of questions, and you don't want that. So what we need is something that will occupy her, keep her interested in something else, and fortunately," Filmore stopped pacing and looked up at them cheerfully, "I have just the thing." He walked over to his desk and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

"Oh, it's this again," sighed Dougie.

"Yes, Dougie, it's 'this again.' It's the Arts Council I've been trying to get started," explained Filmore. "People aren't moving to South Park; they're leaving. And why?" he asked rhetorically.

"Beats me," said Dougie. "Even the aliens aren't showing up as often as they used to."

"It's because we don't have a vital downtown area," said Filmore, going into mayor mode, and rolling out a map. "We have that blighted spot, including the old Studcat Theatre, which has been abandoned for years, ever since people started getting their porn on DVDs and the internet. We need to restore the Studcat and make it into a real arthouse movie theatre; and what I really want to see down there," said Filmore, drawing a breath, "is a museum. A real art museum. We've got the money to build one and buy some nice art, too, but no one to run it. Right now I'm trying to put together an Arts Council. We'll start small: art classes for children and adults, some community theatre, and eventually we'll work our way up to state and federal grant money and a whole arts center."

He looked up at Butters. "So tomorrow I'll call your Mom, and I'll ask her to be on the Council. Everybody is going to be going to weekly meetings, there'll be subcommittees, I'm asking people to volunteer for at least one arts activity, like a class or a theatre production, and to get as many people involved as possible. With any luck," he said, rolling up the map, "your Mom will be busy, she'll make some friends, she might even find out she likes art. She might even be happy."

This sounded too good to be true to Butters, but there wasn't any real alternative.

"Th-thank you, Filmore," he said.

"Not at all," said Filmore briskly. "I really do need people for the Arts Council. Now, you can make reservations for your plane and hotel tonight. Promise us you won't stay in some piece of crap fleabag near the airport."

"Yeah, Prof," said Dougie, "you don't have to do that. You've got enough to worry about. Stay somewhere nice for a change."

"Ideally," said Filmore, with a glint in his eye, "near the Smithsonian."

"Aw, for crying out loud, Fill," said Dougie, "enough with the arts district already. I know what you're up to. You just want to set up a Northern Italian restaurant there."

"That's not a good idea? I thought you'd be happy to have a place we could go to where I wouldn't always be in the kitchen."

"But," said Dougie exasperatedly, "it would be your restaurant. I know you: you would always be in the kitchen messing around and I'd see even less of you! Honest to God, Filmore. . . ."

Butters knew his cue.

"Have a safe trip, Butters," said Filmore, waving. "Call us when you get in!"

"---covered in elephant garlic all the time when it isn't pesto, I don't know how I stand it. . . ."

Butters let himself out.

It wasn't a long walk from Dougie and Filmore's place to his house, and he preferred walking anyway. He reached the end of the driveway—the lights were on downstairs.

"Oh, hamburgers," he said to himself.

His Mom had waited up for him. Well, that's what he'd expected anyhow. He let himself in. Mrs. Stotch was sitting on the sofa in her bathrobe, reading a novel.

"Hu-hey, Mom," he said, kissing her on the cheek, "thought you weren't gu-gonna wait up."

"Oh, I wasn't sleepy anyway, sweetie," she said, standing up and stretching. "There's meatloaf in the oven." She began walking towards the kitchen. Butters followed her.

"I'm su-sorry, Mom," he said, "I couldn't eat a bite, honest. We had plenty to eat. We can use it for sandwiches tomorrow," he added, seeing her disappointed expression.

"That's all right, Butters," she said, "I just wanted to make sure you had dinner. I'm going to make some cocoa—would you like some?"

"Su-sure," said Butters, and sat down. No hardship, and he had to tell her about going away anyway; it would be much easier this way.

"Oh, by the way," Mrs. Stotch said casually, as she began to heat some milk at the stove, "you got another postcard from your father today."

Butters groaned internally. So that was it, he thought. He reached for the postcard, which had a picture of waves and surfers on it—probably Hawaii. He flipped it over, although he didn't need to read the message on the back. It was always the same.

---Having wonderful time.

It never added:

----wish you were here.

Probably because Mr. Stotch didn't wish they were there. And it was always "you got a postcard from your father," even though the postcards were always addressed to both of them.

Butters didn't blame his Dad. After that nightmarish time when he was eight, when his Dad had been caught and his Mom tried to kill him, they'd all pretended the whole thing had never happened. His Dad had turned in an Academy Award quality performance as a heterosexual man: coaching Little League, betting his Mom that he, Butters, wouldn't "turn out gay"—as though that would have been a bad thing, thought Butters, it didn't seem to hurt Dougie or Filmore any---even trying to be not quite as metrosexual as everybody else, just in case. If the trips to the bathhouse and the Studcat had continued, he'd been awfully discreet about it.

Then on Butters' eighteenth birthday, he'd come downstairs to find a large white envelope on the kitchen table containing a card and a thousand dollars in cash. All it said was:

Happy birthday. Sorry, son.

After that, there were only the postcards and a few phone calls at Stotch's Gas N' Garage. At one point, his Dad had tried to explain that he wasn't really bisexual: he was both a straight man named Chris and a gay man named Stephen. But not bi. Butters wondered why it was somehow better to be schizophrenic than bisexual, but he didn't say that. His father had also tried to explain that he had been so afraid that his mother would freak out and try to kill him again that he had done his best for as long as he possibly could. And Butters thought he probably had. You couldn't really blame a person for something like that.

His mom hadn't tried to kill Butters, or herself, or anybody else. She'd just locked herself in her room and cried for a long time, and then come out and tried to act as normally as possible. But now she clung tighter to Butters. She needed to know where he was, to make sure he was safe and protected, to fill him with meatloaf. She didn't date, she had no friends, she didn't even have pets. Butters had tried to get her interested in hamsters, but pit bulls would have been fine, if his Mom would only snap out of it.

But she didn't.

Early on, Dougie used to tell Butters to tell his Mom to back off, to run off to Vegas and really go nuts, to do something. But Butters loved his Mom; besides, how could he do that, hurt her even more when she'd been hurt so much already? He just hoped that somehow, someday, she was going to cheer up.

So the postcard was really lousy timing. Nevertheless, he had to do this.

"Uh, Mu-Mom?" he said, as she slipped him a mug of cocoa. "I—I gotta go outta town for a while."

Mrs. Stotch looked up at him and waited for him to go on. Gosh darn it, thought Butters, why does the truth sound so much like it's a lie?

"Oh?" she said.

"Um, yeah," he continued. "I g-gotta go to Washington. It's, um, somethin' ta do with, y'know, regulations and stuff. An' we wanna b-branch out into p-propane an' propane-related supplies. So," he said, letting out a breath, "I g-gotta go ta Washington. Tomorrow."

Mrs. Stotch looked alarmed. "That soon? Is anything wrong?"

"No, not exactly," said Butters, "but, uh, there's, ummmmm—su-somethin' I gotta do." There was a pause.

"OK, sweetie," she said brightly.

Butters dropped his head in his hands. This was worse than if she'd acted upset.

"Mom," he said, "I really do g-gotta go. It r-really is about work. Honest."

"Of course it is," she agreed.

"Mom," Butters said desperately, "I'm n-not hidin' anythin', I g-gotta go for work an' that's all."

"You're sure you're not hiding anything?" she said softly.

"Uh. . . . "

Butters hated lies. He really, really hated them, which made it ironic that he seemed to live in a web of them nearly all the time. He decided to be as clean as he could.

"OK, M-Mom. I ain't t-tellin' you the whole truth. 'C-Cause I can't. I can't an' that's all. B-But it really is about work, an' t-tonight really was work, honest."

She probably thinks I'm sneakin' around with Dougie, he thought. I wish she'd just ask me an' I could say, no, Mom, I was at their house, Filmore cooks real good, an' then we could both go.

If only, he thought, his Dad had come out as a teenager, like Filmore and Dougie, and hadn't tried to do what he thought he was supposed to and married a woman. But if he had, there would have been no Butters. It was the kind of question that made his head hurt, which is probably why he'd failed that Introduction to Philosophy course at Park County Community College. And Dad wasn't kidding when he said he loved Butters' Mom: somehow he did. Society might have pressured him into marrying her, but Society can't pressure a person into turning on the radio and dancing with someone at home, all alone, with your kid sitting there in footie pajamas looking up at you, night after night. He could still see them, sliding around the living room, doing foxtrots and waltzes—he'd come by his own dancing talent honestly—could still remember what it felt like to sit there on the floor with his finger in his mouth and think, when I grow up, it's gonna be just like that.

He decided to talk about the real issue for a change.

"Mom," he said, "I'm su-sure Dad loved you as m-much as he could."

Mrs. Stotch said nothing, but one tear streaked down her face. Gosh darn it.

"An'-an'—M-Mom? Listen? I love you, ok?" He got up from the table and hugged her.

"Oh, Butters, " she sighed, "I wish you had someone besides just me. You'd tell me if you were gay, wouldn't you, honey? You wouldn't sneak around and get yourself hurt?"

He sighed. They'd been through this a hundred times. "Mom," he said, "yeah, I would, honest Injun. I ain't t-told you nothin' 'cause there ain't n-nothin' to tell."

Boy, he thought, as she held him tightly, no wonder she didn't believe that.

Author's notes:

The Rosenbergs were executed for espionage in 1953. Ethel Rosenberg, in any case, was almost certainly innocent.

The meatloaf is from Jean Shepherd's A Christmas Story.

The abandonment and postcards were partly inspired by Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. In fact, there are a lot of Williams echoes in this chapter.

King of the Hill fans will recognize the propane and propane-related supplies.