A Reminiscence

Chapter Four

Taken Again

()()()

A hotel was not particularly difficult to find in the large city; within a few blocks, we found a nice, old-fashioned three-story building whose sign pronounced itself as the "Gala Premiere", and indeed it did seem premiere, though admittedly somewhat dated.

"This looks absolutely perfect." I said. "Lovely theme."

"I don't know, these old-timey places always smell like Listerine and soap." Anne said, looking disdainfully at the hotel.

"Nonsense, Anne! That smell simply adds to the charm, and quite a charm it is, might I add."

"Can we please just get a room already?" Ralph moaned. "It's starting to feel less and less safe out here. I really don't want to get robbed."

"Hm…" I considered that thought for a moment. "Yes…I do have a rather uncomfortable feeling…"

"Yeah, that Eusine guy was a weirdo," Anne added.

"No, no, I felt odd before that all happened. Something seems…odd. I think we should check in and get some rest. We will probably be safer in there."

()()()

Checking into the room was uneventful, although Anne was right in that there was a distinct smell of Listerine and old soap. Also correct was the assumption that it would feel somewhat dated; the décor was something my grandmother, bless her soul, would have been likely to have in her house. Lace doilies, dark green wallpaper, strange trimming, and pictures of generically picturesque scenes somehow connected to make a theme that was simultaneously comfortable and utterly nauseating. As some consolation, it did have a rather nice television.

"Well…regardless of the design choices, it at least has beds," I said, setting my bags down and picking up the remote. I flipped through a few of the channels, but found little of interest.

"Ech. Nothing on the telly these days, I swear." I switched it off, and removed my earpieces.

"What are you doing?" Anne asked.

"Well, I could hardly leave them in all the time, they would get filthy and my ear may get infected. More than that, they may permanently damage my hearing if kept in constantly, and at my age, I do not need my hearing any worse than it already is. I would suggest you two do the same."

Anne and Ralph glanced at each other, and both of them took theirs out as well and handed them to me.

"I think we should put these in that drawer there," I said, gesturing towards the small bedside table that had a lamp and some old gardening magazines upon it. "I wonder if they have…" I asked, opening to see if it contained the traditional Gideon Bible. "Yes, they do!" I pulled it out, revealing that at least half the pages had been removed crudely from the binding at some point. Flipping it open, I found that almost the entire New Testament was completely gone.

"Thou shalt not steal indeed." I threw the ruined tome into the bin and placed our translators in the cabinet.

"All right then," I said. "I think we should ready ourselves for bed then."

"What?" Anne asked. "It's still light out."

"Is it?" I turned to the window, and saw that it was, indeed, still quite bright outside. "Ah, my apologies. It seems with all that happened today, I thought it was much later than it was."

"Um, I have a question," Anne spoke up. "How are we gonna split the beds?"

"Well, there are three of us and two beds." I observed. "Two of us will have to share."

Anne looked between Ralph and I, and came to a decision.

"Well, I can't, in good conscience, allow any of those combinations to happen so I'll just sleep on the floor and let you two have a bed to yourself. Sound good?"

I nodded, and so too did Ralph.

"Of course," I said, "that will not be necessary for some hours, so perhaps we should have something to eat in the meantime."

"Now, there's an idea," Ralph said, immediately leaving the room so he could dine. Anne and I followed as well, hoping there would be something pleasant to eat.

()()()

The dining hall was decorated as expected: an ancient chandelier in the Baroque style, mahogany furniture that was chipped and worn, tables barely covered by thinning white cloth, and so on. I was beginning to question the choice of hotel, but thankfully, the food prepared smelled pleasant, and it seemed that the service was prompt enough.

"Well, this hotel just keeps getting better and better, Larch," Ralph said, looking at a set of cutlery that had been set out, and appeared to be half made of pure tetanus.

"It…still has a certain…charm to it…" I attempted to argue. "Besides, the food seems quality enough."

"That's the only thing in this dump that's quality," a voice came from behind us. We turned around, shocked to see a colossal man of perfect tone and figure, and flawless, long blond hair tied in a ponytail. He was easily recognizable, since he was one of the most popular actors on the planet: Clive Warren.

"I know you," Ralph said, an emotion, shock, finally showing on his face. "What are you doing in here?"

"I'm working on a brand-new hit TV show where I critique bad hotels, and so far, the only redeemable part of this one is the food. Hey, I should use that for the bumper."

"Is it really that terrible, though?" My attempts at defending the hotel were increasingly desperate; if Clive Warren had chosen it for a show explicitly about bad hotels, there had to be very little to defend.

"Don't tell me you poor bastards checked in already," he chided. "Good luck sleeping in these beds. I ran 'em under a blacklight and I'm pretty sure the last time they were cleaned was when they got these decorations."

Anne glared at me. "Good job, Berkeley."

Recognizing that I had, indeed, made a very poor choice, I quietly excused myself from the room so as not to embarrass myself further, and so Clive could continue producing whatever show he was making.

"I had better do something to make up for this garbage dump," I muttered to myself as I walked back to the room. That smell of Listerine was starting to get more and more pungent, so much so that I thought I might pass out if I did not cover my mouth with my shirt.

"Bloody hell, is there a hazmat team in here? What is that?" I wondered aloud. I silently thanked every higher power I could think of when I managed to get to the hallway containing our room. However, as I walked for the door, it opened before me, and to my surprise, out walked the inspector, from earlier in the forest!

"I say, Inspector, what are you doing here?" I asked, my voice muffled by my impromptu gas mask. He did not seem in a particularly talkative mood, though, as he immediately ran off, apparently clutching some small object to his chest. I immediately knew that something was afoot, and ran as quickly as I could to the room. At first, I was thankful because it seemed the room was not as violently ransacked as I had expected, but it was still obvious that somebody had rifled through it.

"Well, this is fantastic," I muttered, looking through the small mess, trying to determine what he could possibly have taken. It appeared to me that nothing was missing, but then I came to a horrific realization that I was not looking in the correct place.

"Oh, no…surely not…" I opened the drawer in the bedside table, and lo, it was completely empty of the invaluable contents I had entrusted it with: the translators.

"Damn that inspector!" I cried. "I thought something was off about him!"

Forgoing all ideas of leaving Ralph and Anne to themselves, and ignoring the hideous smell, I ran back to the dining room, noticing that the camera crew was filming Clive shouting at who I assumed was the (evidently very stubborn) manager, a short, heavyset balding man, who was insisting his hotel had no flaws, which I now recognized as an absolute lie.

Ignoring them, I made my way over to Anne and Ralph, both of whom had, at the moment, no food at all.

"We've been robbed!" I whispered, trying to keep my voice under the microphones.

"What?" Anne whispered back, shocked.

"Do you remember that inspector from back at the Team Rocket base? I believe that after I informed him of the existence of my translators, he became very interested and followed us back here, then stole them from our room!"

"I thought he was strange," Ralph muttered.

"We must find him, or else my most important work will be lost fore—"

"CUT!" Clive yelled suddenly, signaling to the cameramen to stop rolling at once. "What is that goddamn smell? Seriously, we'll have to do this later, this is terrible. And speaking of terrible, that was not very good, way too over the top," he chided, turning to the manager.

"I always figured these things were faked," Anne said.

"Wait…shit! I recognize that smell!" Ralph yelled. "We need to get out of here, now!"

"What is it?" Clive yelled.

"I remember this from during the war! It's a highly flammable compound called Charmax! The slightest spark could set it off!"

"Could we please all calm down before I go deaf?" I requested.

"We need to get out of here as fast as possible before this place goes up!" Ralph demanded, running off to warn the other guests that may or may not have actually been there.

"Wait, was he talking about that Listerine smell?" The manager asked. "That's just the broken water cooler. Must be acting up again."

"I thought it was musty in here…" Anne mused.

"You seem remarkably…calm, now that the cameras are off," I said, silently thankful there was no apparent threat of explosion.

"Of course!" He said, somewhat surprised. "These things are all faked. I knew the hotel was going to shit, so I brought him down to help me fix it, and if I act like an insane asshole, then that draws people in because they want to see that crazy guy who was on TV last night, and I get money."

"Meanwhile, I look good when I manage to turn him and his hotel completely around, so we both get something out of it!" Clive said.

Before I could point out the severe issues inherent in such a model, Ralph ran back into the room, looking only very slightly out of breath.

"Okay, I don't think there's actually anybody here right now, but we need to get our things and leave as quickly as possible. If it hasn't gone off by now, we might still have a little bit of time to escape and…"

He was interrupted by a very loud boom, seemingly coming from the roof. Ralph shrieked and dove beneath a table, while the manager stared in disbelief.

"Uh…that was the water cooler, bucko. I think it finally died. 'Bout time, too."

"What?" Ralph asked, barely peeking his head out.

"That smell comes from the water cooler when it stops working. I don't know what that 'Charmax' stuff is, but whatever it is, I don't think it comes out of that old piece of junk, considering this place is still standing."

"Can we please get back on topic?" I requested. When all eyes were on me, and Ralph clambered out of his makeshift cover, I continued.

"A detective inspector robbed me of a very important invention of mine, and I desire to have it returned to me."

"A robbery!" Clive shouted, quite excited at the prospect. "This is great! Think of the ratings!"

"What?!" I cried. "No! My rightful property has been taken from me, and I intend to retrieve it without taking part in this cynical ratings game of yours!"

"Aw, please?" Anne begged. "I've always wanted to be on a Clive Warren show!"

"Well…make a statement about the hotel during the deconstruction bit or something, then! Ralph, do you at all care about this business?"

"I hate reality television," he said.

"Well, then, would you care to help me retrieve what is mine?"

"Hm…something might be up with that inspector. We should probably go looking for him."

We continued our conversation as we walked out of the dining hall. "Do you think he might be corrupt?" I asked.

"It's possible, but I don't think that's it." Ralph shook his head. "More likely is that he saw an opportunity for easy money and took it."

"Well, after he sells the prototypes, then what? He could not possibly determine how they work, they are extremely complicated, state of the art technology. The tone recognition coding alone is revolutionary."

"He doesn't care about the tech, he just wants whatever money he can get off of it."

"Bloody philistine," I muttered. We had just left the hotel, and I looked around, wondering where he might have gone.

"Blast! I think he may have escaped!" I cried.

"Hold on, Larch, it's not too late, he's probably still nearby. Hey, sir!" He ran off, and I saw that he was running towards a teenaged fellow waving about a sign for some cheap tax service.

"Did you see a tall, thin white guy clutching something to his chest run by here recently?" Ralph asked.

"Uh…yeah, actually, he looked like he was in a hurry. Why?"

"He's a friend of ours. Listen, which way did he go?"

"That way." He gestured to the east, which did not seem to have much there, thankfully narrowing our search.

"Alright, where might he have gone east?" I wondered.

"There's a motel over that way," the youth offered. "He might be in there."

"Thank you." Ralph and I ran off, hoping we were not too late.

()()()

The motel, though small, seemed infinitely superior to the horrific hovel we had just left behind, and it seemed a likely choice to settle down after a daring robbery.

"Alright, shall we take this bastard down?" I asked.

"We'll most likely have the element of surprise," Ralph said. "I think we should go in and extract him as soon as possible."

"Uh…yes. Anyway, if we go in and ask for him, it should be easy to find him."

We nodded, and made our entrance, Ralph walking up to the apathetic teenage girl at the front desk and putting on his best smile.

"Hi, a friend of ours just came by here, about yea high, black trenchcoat, kinda shifty looking?"

She blew out a bubble of gum and paused until it blew apart, then decided to answer him. "He's in room 203, over there." She pointed down a hallway, and Ralph thanked her, the both of us immediately running over there.

"'Allo?" Ralph asked, putting on a convincing impression of a Swedish housemaid. "Ve are de rume service, could ya opun op, pleaze?"

"What?" He asked from inside, opening the door. When he saw us, a look of shock crossed his face, but he quickly formed a plan of action to escape from us: punching me in the face and running away while I was distracted.

"Gah!" I cried, holding my bruised eye. " I looked with my uninjured eye and saw that Ralph had already given chase, and I did the same, trying not to bump into everything along the way.

()()()

By the time I got outside, Ralph and the inspector had already gotten into a fistfight, the two of them grappling with impressive skill.

"Get him, Ralph! Show him who the boss is!" I yelled, propping myself up against a porch pillar.

"Give the translators back, asshole!" Ralph yelled, evidently ignoring me.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" He insisted, clearly lying. Soon, Ralph managed to get an edge over him and force him on a table, trying to get a decent punch in. However, the inspector was not ready to give up that easily, and moved his head away from each punch. Eventually, the inspector managed to push Ralph off, and leapt back up into an uppercut, which forced Ralph to the floor.

"Come on, Ralph!" I attempted to encourage him, but it was little use, as now the earlier situation had been reversed, with the inspector throwing punches and Ralph dodging them.

"Oh, bollocks to this," I muttered, picking up a chair and smashing it over the inspector's back.

"Thanks," Ralph said, getting up and dusting himself off. "Is he okay?"

The inspector moaned, which was good enough for us.

"Now, where does he have those…" I started rifling through his overcoat, eventually pulling out the six devices he had so callously stolen from me.

"Should we call the cops?" Ralph asked.

"Is he worth the trouble?" I responded.

"Hang on…" Ralph pulled out the Inspector's wallet, and started looking through it, quickly spotting something of great interest.

"This inspector ID is a fake. Look, you can tell by the image of the crest. It's all smudged when it should be a lot clearer."

"Impersonating an officer of the law!" I cried. "Astonishing! What have we uncovered?"

"I was working for Rocket," he muttered beneath us. "I wanted to see who it was that found the base, and when you mentioned those translators, I thought it would be pertinent to our interests."

"Well, doubtlessly the police will find you very pertinent to their interests. Ralph, do you have a handle on this situation?"

"Yeah, I don't think he'll be moving much at all for a little while."

"Excellent! I shall go rendezvous with Anne and then search for a better hotel."

"This one's pretty nice," the false inspector said. "Smells a lot better. Has free Wi-Fi, too."

"Very well, then, I will move us into this fine edifice after I meet with Anne. Ta-ra!"

()()()

"Anne?" I asked, seeing her standing outside the hotel. I noticed that she had taken the liberty of removing all of our bags, so that was one thing out of the way.

"Oh, hey, Larch. Found him?"

"Indeed." I held up the translators to confirm this. "It turns out he was an impostor working for Team Rocket. Quite nasty business."

"Jeez, what a douche."

"However, it turns out the motel he was staying at was quite nice, so we will be able to move there soon."

"Yeah, I'd rather not interrupt Clive anymore than I already have. I'll have to miss the part where I get to say what was wrong with the hotel, though, which is a shame."

"I am very much certain he knows what is wrong already."

"Hey, Larch, what the hell are you doing here?"

His voice was as a nail upon a thousand chalkboards, and I knew whom the voice belonged to before I ever turned around: Jack LeBoure.

"Jack…" I muttered, trying to look away.

"Seriously, what the hell brings you to this place? And that hotel, Jesus, you should consider a cardboard box, it'd be an improvement!"

"Still attempting to sell yourself as some sort of stand-up comedian, I see."

Jack smirked. "Hey, at least I'm more successful than you ever were!"

"We shall soon see, Jack, we shall soon see."

"Yeah, sure, whatever, once I show off these legendaries, I'll be heading straight for the top!" He punctuated his sentence by pointing straight into the sky and walking off.

I grimaced powerfully, but then shook it off, picked up my and Ralph's things, and we both walked to the motel, well ready to get some rest…