PROBLEM SOLVED!

I sat there at my desk, finger poised over the enter key. I kept asking myself, over and over, “Can I live with myself?” A world in turmoil, people starving to death, rampant, senseless, murder on the grand scale, I could end it all with the simple stab of a finger.

Damn me to hell, I pushed it.

Let me explain.

The Happy Crab is a local watering hole in Codorus, a small borough nestled in the Appalachian foothills of southern Pennsylvania. That’s where I met Marvis.

I’d finished my afternoon run, parked the big yellow bus in the lot, and walked the fifty paces to the Crab. Things were clouding up, a storm on the way, and I was glad to enter the cozy little bar. About halfway through my first Yuengling Lager, a stranger, accompanied by the tintinnabulation of the wind chime hanging from the front door, came in from the blustery darkening outside.

He was singular in appearance. A slight fellow, the first thing I noticed after that was the Bowler hat and, right below the brim, two black circles that were the rims of coke bottle lenses. The heavy frames accented his narrow face and almost nonexistent chin. His thin lips seemed almost pursed in a tiny smile. He wore a Sherlock Holmes overcoat, you know, the kind with the half cape, and had a strange shuffle when he walked.

He came up to the bar next to me, tipped his hat with slender fingers, and said, his voice thin and scratchy, “Hello, I’m Marvis.”

I’m a good natured guy. I went with it. “Well, hello Marvis,” I said, “can I buy you a drink?”

He looked at me and blinked his eyes, which, behind those lenses, gave the impression of those Navy signaling lamps. (Blink, blink) “Sure,” he said, “what do you suggest?”

“Clyde, get Marvis here a lager on me,” I said to the doughy bartender who complied with his usual disinterested sluggishness. I looked at Marvis. “And a glass, too.” Clyde snorted as if I’d just asked him to build a pyramid but brought a pilsner glass.

I poured the lager into the glass and said, “There you go, bud. Cheers.”

Marvis held the glass up to his hawk like nose, sniffed, then took a sip. Narrow as it was to begin with, his face immediately scrunched up and his lamp eyes flickered a quick unintelligible message. In a moment he recovered and said, “That’s good!” His tiny smile widened just a bit.

He tipped the glass again, drained it in one long chug and exhaled loudly as he placed the glass back on the bar. “Yes, that’s good,” he said. (Blink, blink) “Ooo . . . “ He erupted a belch that got the attention of everyone in the bar.

“Take it easy,” I said, laughing. “You’re not supposed to inhale it. Slow down and enjoy it.” After a short group laugh the bar went back to minding its own business. I spurred Clyde to bring us another round.

“So what brings you to this little nowhere?” I asked, “It’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from here.”

“Well (Blink, blink), now that you’ve asked,” he said, “I’ve come to see you. I’ve got something to give you.”

“Me?” I said, incredulous. “Give me what?” I was thinking this could be good or it could be bad. I’m no holy angel and maybe one of the skeletons from my closet has come back to haunt me or maybe I hit the lottery or something.

“I can’t give it to you here,” (Blink, blink) he said. “Is there some place more private?”

Like I said, I’m easy. So, with Marvis shuffling and puffing behind, I led him to my apartment, another fifty paces down the road.

After we’d settled in, I popped a couple lagers from the fridge. He drank from the bottle this time.

“So, what you got?” I asked.

(Blink, blink) “Ahh, right to it, eh?” he said. “Very well.” He reached in to a breast pocket in his coat and withdrew what looked like an obsidian stone about the size of my wireless mouse. “This,” he said, “is a Quantum Rectifier.”

Oboy, I thought. A rock? “And just what is a ‘Quantum Rectifier?’”

(Blink, blink) “It ‘rectifies’ things,” he said. “It can recognize types and then remove them from current causal reality.”

“Yeah, whatever you just said.”

(Blink, blink) “It’s easy. Say you don’t like oak trees. Set the rectifier to recognize and tag oak trees, select ‘remove,’ and all oak trees will be removed from this reality.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said. This guy is nuttier than squirrel poop. “That’s not possible.”

“It’s not, and it is,” he said. (Blink, blink) He handed it over.

It felt like it weighed about five pounds and it wasn’t just obsidian. It was blacker than black, light didn’t reflect off it, like some kind of black hole or something.

“Connect that to your Internet,” he said.

“Huh?”

(Blink, blink) His tiny smile got smilier and he said, “Just put it in contact with your computer. It’ll connect automatically.”

I took it over to my desk and put it on the slim line tower. The machine came out of power down by itself and the message, “new hardware found” came on, followed by “your device is ready to use.” That was followed by a popup with an “OK” button. It said “Quantum Rectifier User Interface ready. Start?”

“Go ahead and hit start,” Marvis said. (Blink, blink)

This was turning into an interesting afternoon, I thought. I clicked it.
The program opened with some fancy animated graphics spinning the words “Quantum Rectifier” around until they settled in the middle of the screen. Then it switched to a “Typecast Identifier” window. There it remained with the cursor blinking in a “Search” field.

“Okay,” I said, “now what?”

(Blink, blink) “Think of something the world could do without,” Marvis said, “an organism of some kind, a species, a political movement, a manmade object, anything that exists in this reality. The Identifier can even tag abstract thought.”

“You mean with this device I could get rid of, say, mosquitoes?” I asked.

“Exactly,” he said. (Blink, blink) “Try it.”

I typed in mosquitoes. I became aware of a very low humming sound and realized it was coming from the black hole thing. Images of all different kinds of mosquitoes flooded the screen. A popup appeared over top with two choices—“Browse” and “All.”’

“All?” I asked.

(Blink, blink) “Choose all, tag them and execute and no more mosquitoes. They’ll all simply disappear. Gone forever.” He tipped his hat.

I clicked on “All.” Another popup came with “Are you sure?”

Ha! I thought. A world with no mosquitoes? I told you I’m easy, I went with it. Why not? I clicked “Yes.”

Another popup said, “Tagged. Execute removal?” There were three choices: Back, Yes, and Cancel.

I hit yes. “Are you sure?” it queried.

(Blink, blink)

I took a breath, held it a bit, then hit yes again. A progress bar came up with the legend, “Removing.”

I looked at it dumbfounded as disbelief fought with my imagination. The possibilities of such a device cascaded through my mind, adding to my confusion. Could it really be true? And why me?

Marvis broke my reverie. “My time is up, I must be going,” he said.

“Just who in the hell are you, mister?” I asked.

He cocked his Bowler topped head (Blink, blink), “Just someone who wants to help.” His tiny smile became an actual smile, his parting lips revealing sharp little corn row teeth. He tipped his hat again, shuffled in his odd way straight to the front door and left. I haven’t seen him since.

After he left I just sat there staring at the screen. Too crazy, I thought, and I took the “stone” from its place atop my computer. The machine complained with a department store ding! “Hardware removed” appeared in a little popup.

I held the little empty space in my hand, cool to the touch, turned it over and over, no marks on its black on black surface. Yeah, I thought, too crazy. I tossed it into my catch all drawer in the desk and didn’t think of it again. There were a few lagers that needed to be dealt with.

So life went on, I drove my bus, added numerous casualties to my perpetual war on full lager bottles and, more or less, forgot all about the mysterious stranger and his strange device.

That was until I heard the news story at the Happy Crab about how the number of malaria cases worldwide had dropped to zero. The story went on to say that, after a little research, no mosquitoes of any kind could be found anywhere on the planet.

Time stood still for me as I realized the terrible enormity of what lay in the catch all drawer in my desk at home. Me, a dumb ass bus driver, I had the power to change the world, solve all its problems with a few clicks of my mouse! Mind reeling, I got a six pack from Clyde and went home.

I put the object back on my computer and was soon presented with the Typecast screen. So what could we all do without? I thought.

And that brings us up to the present.

Yes, I pressed the “Yes” button on the “Are you sure?” popup. God forgive me.

“Removing,” the next popup said, and the progress bar ran up to 100%. Then it disappeared leaving only the search string I had chosen. “White People,” it said.