“There was a suitcase. There was a bed. What was it doing there? The bed was the first bed that the legendary bedmaker would make. Now, the bedmaker would prefer if his name was not mentioned in this book, though it perplexes me, for he is already quite famous indeed. But from here on out, I will call the legendary bedmaker ‘Gustavo.'”
This book is dedicated to my breakfast bagel.
Prologue
The Dictatorship of America, 3789 A.D.
The following letter has been retrieved from an archive and is believed to have been written by Jim Nlocnil.
Palermo, Sicily, 1915 A.D.
Bed
There was a suitcase. There was a bed. What was it doing there? The bed was the first bed that the legendary bedmaker would make. Now, the bedmaker would prefer if his name was not mentioned in this book, though it perplexes me, for he is already quite famous indeed. But from here on out, I will call the legendary bedmaker “Gustavo.” Gustavo was not always famous, for he grew up in a humble cottage on an island in the Sardinian sea. This island was called Sicily, and it was quite a magnificent island indeed, for tourism and commercialization had not found the island yet, letting the locals live a happy life with no one to disturb them.
Gustavo had a father named Monee, who, despite the name, was a very poor bedmaker. One day, Monee stumbled across a stream. He looked into the stream. He then walked away. Another day, he ran into a beautiful untouched beach, and when he put his hand into the pristine crystal waters, it was a pleasant temperature — refreshingly cool but not uncomfortable. He took off his hat and filled it with the water and took the hat full of water home. Now, Monee was quite a forgetful man, and he forgot to show the fresh, pure water to his family. The next morning, to his surprise, the water was still the same perfect temperature it had been when he first discovered it. He was intrigued but not frightened by this discovery, for he was still curious about this liquid. He went back to the beach, and, sure enough, the water was exactly the same temperature it had been the afternoon he had found it. Monee’s mind instantly whirred into action, thinking about the possibilities of making this water into a product he could sell.
The first thing I should do, he thought, is tell Gustavo. As soon as Gustavo had heard about this “cool water,” he got some leather, sewed together a water-tight bed, and filled the bed with the water. And, though Monee and Gustavo did not know it, they had just created the first water bed. Monee gathered his savings, and soon, they patented this water bed, though they did not mention this, for they wanted to keep the water a secret.
Suitcase
Nazi Controlled Poland, 1941
Jakub sighed. He and his best friend, Filip, had made a secret organization for boys like them. They had “special powers,” though they were more like a curse. They could do “amazing things” like climb up brick walls and shoot energy from their fingers. This did nothing against the tanks, soldiers, machine guns, and other terrible things that the Nazis used to invade. But because of these “special powers,” they were targeted by soldiers, who were ordered to execute any boy who used “magic.” Jakub probably had the worst power of all. He could see and hear through any solid object. What use was seeing through a tank when it was about to shoot a shell at you? The other boys were younger than him but were far more powerful. They respected him, though, for he was the leader.
“Quick!” Filip screamed.
The soldiers! Jakub and the other boys dove behind a bush as Filip started making hand signs to release an energy shield. Another boy closed his eyes and opened them, although this time his eyes were red. He looked at a soldier and instantly paralyzed him.
“Jakub, help! My shield is going down!” Filip screamed.
Filip only had enough energy to sustain the energy shield for a few minutes, which, until now, had been plenty enough time. It seemed that the soldiers heard Filip too because they instantly rushed his way.
“No!” Jakub yelled.
They had Filip. Without his shield, he was helpless, and one of them was dragging Filip onto the Jeep while the other one held a rifle to his head.
“You can’t do this!” Jakub screamed.
By then, the Jeep had driven off to the forest, and the only person who could see and hear Filip was Jakub. The last words that Filip uttered before he passed out were: “under the bench.”
Palermo, Sicily, 1924 A.D.
Bed
Meanwhile, Gustavo and Monee were raking in the profits from their successful bed-making business. The beach still looked untouched, and Monee suspected, though they had drained many gallons of liquid from it, that the beach would still make more.
“Gustavo,” Monee said, “when I die, you have the choice to lead the company. Will you continue the family legacy?”
“Of course I will!” Gustavo exclaimed. “But I hope that I do not take it over soon.”
Kepler-443b, circa 5.55 billion years ago
“Rumor has it that there is a habitable planet only 2,500 light-years away!” Bob said.
Bob and his family lived on a planet called Logic, and it was about to explode. It was rumbling violently, and they needed to get off it as soon as possible. They first considered moving to the puny moon, Ableton, or the dwarf planet, FL Studio, which was circa 600 light-years away. But then they discovered that the planet would make such a shockwave that all of the habitable planets and moons would be terminated. The scientists of their colony searched desperately for a habitable planet, and it seemed that they had found one.
“Quick!!!” Martha (the mother) screamed. “The spaceship is going in 10 minutes!!!”
“Okay, Mom. My UltraBomb is not going with me, right?” Tommy said.
“Of course it is! Now come on!” Martha said.
The UltraBomb was a safety device that some scientists had discovered in the Renaissance Period. They had discovered many things, but the UltraBomb was by far the coolest. A child, if threatened, could deploy this UltraBomb and vaporize every living thing except itself for a 1,000-mile radius. To trigger it, you needed to pour a special type of liquid onto a compressed plasma ball. It would then kill everything around it except for the child itself. The Logic government-issued UltraBombs to every kid colonizing Earth, but they were strictly told to only use it if necessary. Tommy thought they went overboard on the liquid, though. They brought more than a thousand gallons!!!
“Watch your step, little guy,” a crew member said.
Tommy sat down in his seat and prepared himself for this new adventure.
The Dictatorship of America, 3789 A.D.
The following snippet has been retrieved from an archive and is believed to have been an advertisement from “Palermo Daily.”
Palermo, Sicily, 1956 A.D.
Bed
Gustavo flopped down on one of his many waterbeds and cried. His father had died the day before today, and he was sad. Even worse, he had to give a speech at the funeral, and his words were unrecognizable from his sobs. But he had to move on and keep the family legacy.
One month later
Stress. SO much stress. Gustavo had reformed the waterbed, spreading business outside of Sicily, and it was spreading quickly. He had also put advertisements in newspapers all around the world, and his company had gone public. (NASDAQ, GWB ^1.27%,1598.7) The Mariott had replaced all of their beds with Gustavo’s, and his business was doing well. Gustavo was having a good life.
Suitcase
Nazi Controlled Poland, 1942
Under the bench, under the bench, under the bench. Jakub kept rolling this around in his head. What? He had checked under every bench he had seen for the past year. Unless… The stone bench!!! Filip had chiseled a miniature stone bench for Jakub, but before he could snatch it, Filip had thrown it way off into the woods to tease Jakub. Jakub thought that Filip had thrown it in a random direction, but Filip was very precise with his arm, so Jakub now knew that this was not the case. Jakub searched for hours and hours in the dark woods until he finally found the bench. He dug the soil under it and found a mysterious ball of light.
Suitcase & Bed
Warsaw, Poland, Marriott hotel, 1963
Filip was dead. Who cared about him anyway? Jakub had been trying to sell this weird ball of light to museums, but they said it was just some lights in a glass ball. He slammed the suitcase (containing the ball) onto the bed. The waterbed burst, and the suitcase cracked open. The ball bounced out and fell into the liquid.
The Dictatorship of America, 3789 A.D.
The following letter has been retrieved from an archive, and is now known to have been written by “Zadinsky.”
