The Museum of Jurassic Technology is one of those things, like the coelacanth or the Snoop Dogg award for community activism, that shouldn’t exist, but yet, there it is. The museum occupies a small space in a one-story building on Venice Boulevard in West LA, 1200 miles from Blaine, Minnesota and Smugglers’ Inn. Other than the fact that both institutions have websites that have been “under construction” for years, we scarcely have anything in common. They are a non-profit organization that owes its existence to a an endowment from a Swiss industrialist of the previous century who followed a charismatic mystic. The mystic maintained that around the time the dinosaurs disappeared, The physical dimension that contained the known world halved and that, basically, the other side got all the cool shit. We are a combo restaurant and ad agency. Which, all of a sudden, doesn’t seem that strange.
This is how I remember the call:
“Hello, Smugglers’ Inn.”
“Yes, we sent you an email.”
“I’m sorry. Lots of people email us.” (A lie.)
“I’m calling for The Museum ...(MUMBLES)...ology.
“Who?”
“THE MUSEUM OF JURASSIC TECHNOLOGY.”
The woman on the line then explained that her real job was as a personal assistant to an actor whom I’d never heard of, but pretended to know in the hopes of finding out what the hell she wanted. She was working at the museum “just for the summer, until (ACTOR’S NAME) got back from a three month ayahuasca cleansing with a shaman in Brazil.”
Suddenly, I remembered that I had to order towels.
“Is there something that I can help you with?” I asked, regretting that I’d asked.
“You have an employee there...Pogo?”
His name is “Pongo”. So, If I said “no”, I would not be lying. Technically.
“To be perfectly frank, we’re not keen on answering any questions about our employees without a very good reason. Did you have a good reason?” I regretted asking. Again.
“This is going to seem like one of those miraculous coincidences, but MOJT’s next exhibit will highlight instances of inter-dimensional travel in shamanistic cultures throughout recorded history, augmented by statements by quantum physicists who argue for a multi-verse models of the universe where competing dimensions exist on top of one another and can, in theory, be bridged.
“And the coincidence is, what? “MOJT” and “poop” have the same number of letters?”
I didn’t actually say that, of course. But I was thinking that I needed to get to those towels. The young woman went on.
“The shaman whom (ACTOR’S NAME) is currently receiving guidance from has claimed to travel to another dimension and on occasion, encounter others who were making similar journeys.”
“I see,” I lied.
“Well, quite recently, my guy’s shaman encountered another shaman who was trying to lead an acolyte whom had lost his home. This is all coming from (ACTOR’S NAME).
“Towels.”
“What?”
“Nothing. How does this involve us at Smugglers’ Inn?
“Getting to that. The two Shaman’s communicate, but they don’t really speak the same language, one being from Brazil and the other being in Sumatra. Sumatra is part of Indonesia.”
“You know your geography.”
“I had to look it up. Anyway, the lost acolyte’s name was “Pogo” and his spiritual center was in Blaine, Minnesota, specifically a restaurant that had portholes and shopping center
“I had to look it up. Anyway, the lost acolyte’s name was “Pogo” and his spiritual center was in Blaine, Minnesota, specifically a restaurant that had portholes and shopping center
nearby. I went on Google Earth. You got portholes.”
My worldview is pretty elastic, but it doesn’t stretch to include shamans who communicate telepathically in the never-never. It occurred to me that someone was probably pranking me.
“One minute, please,” I said and extracted my clunky Galaxy Note V from my too-tight cotton/poly manager pants. The voice recognition on Google worked, which was good since I couldn’t have spelled “Jurassic” had you given me four tries. My phone showed a picture of a deliberately blacked-out storefront blocked by a tree and hard by place called “Hurry Curry” along with a phone number and a website for the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Legit.
“Sorry for that, Miss...”
“Wendra. Would you rather I call back in the morning?”
“I’ll be asleep. No, please. Go ahead, Wendra; this is interesting.”
“OK, here’s the elevator pitch. The Museum wants to fly Pogo to Los Angeles for our opening, but that’s not the big thing. You know what TED talks are, right?”
“Sure.” I sort of knew--smart folks talking, normal folks pretending to understand.
“Well, Dr. (EGGHEAD’S NAME) is one of the the physicists who is helping us put together our show. He’s been asked to do a TED talk on multiverses and he wants your man, Pogo, to appear with him and tell everyone how he made the journey from Sumatra to Blaine, Minnesota.”
“And how was that?” It had taken substantial donations from our entire staff to get Pongo to Jalalabad, Indonesia with a bit of cash to get himself to Sumatra. It was not a round trip ticket.
“Sherpa-derpa.”
“Sorry?”
“I told Dr. (EGGHEAD’S NAME) that he should come up with a more scientific name, but he’s a big Deadhead and I guess that’s, like, the name of a Phish song.”
Don’t ask. I didn’t.
“Basically,” the young woman said, “your man, Pogo, was able to get from Indonesia to Minnesota in a matter of minutes when his Shaman opened a hole to an inter-dimension. The Shaman actually carried him on his back for the short duration of the journey, like a Sherpa.”
“That explains the name, anyway.”
“I know; it’s pretty wild. I’ve caught a couple of (DR. EGGHEAD’S) lectures, and he presents a ton of anecdotal evidence. He’s identified four cultures where these voyages had been described. There are probably loads more, since societies with shamans tend not to leave written histories.
I no long thought the person on the other line was pranking me. Scarier still, I was convinced that she was completely sane.
“I’m a bit busy, um...”
“--Gretchen.”
“Gretchen, I wish you all the best, but I am sure that you can understand, given the current political climate, my reluctance to discuss our employees with strangers. I can tell you there’s no one named Pogo here.”
“I forgot to say that (DR. EGGHEAD) is offering Pogo, or whatever his name is, two thousand dollars for appearing with him on stage. This is on top of the airfare and expenses that the Museum would cover.”
“That sounds like a lot.”
“Believe me, we’re stretched just to cover the airfare, but (DR. EGGHEAD) has deeper pockets and he’s looking big picture. He thinks that being able to show off a living inter-dimensional traveler would help prove what lots of quantum physicists believe, that there is no one, definitive reality. If this talk gets noticed, your guy could be doing this a lot. He’d be famous, in a YouTube, Scientific American sort of way.”
I was silent. My brain was catching up.
“Look, let’s do this,” the caller went on, “When I hang up, check out the Museum of Jurassic Technology online and satisfy yourself that we aren’t some false front for ICE or anything. The museum is actually closed Mondays, but I’ll be in the rest of the week and your guy can get me there. If he calls Wednesday or Friday, there will even be someone there who’s been to Indonesia and who speaks some Tagalog. I’ll give you my cell, too.”
Gretchen apologized again for keeping me from my work and ended our call. I looked at her number, but all I saw was a two with three zeros. Two grand is about what Pongo earns at Smugglers’ Inn in a month. Those were OK wages when we’d hired him as a dishwasher and prep cook, but we’d quickly drafted Pongo to help out with Smuggler’s Inn, the ad agency and it was here that he’d shown his worth. Pongo’s talent for big picture thinking and his intuitive ability to know what tactics would motivate people had helped us win pitches. We didn’t trot him out for company, but he was our head of new business and planning all the same. Since his “vacation”, Smugglers’ Inn had been little more than another theme restaurant with agency pretensions. Well, it was high time our little, ginger-haired Sumatran reaped some good karma after all of his his contributions to the team.
When Pongo showed up at 3:45 for his five-o’clock shift, I pulled him into the office and sat him down.
“Pongo, I’ve looked over the the brand manifesto for the University Hospital Network that Cat worked up from your notes--brilliant. I want you to know that if we end up with an assignment from these people, I’ve decided to give you a one hundred and fifty, no, two hundred dollar bonus. How does that sound?”
Pongo did two back flips in his chair, high-fived me and ran off to change into his uniform. Damned if I was going to let some mad scientists from California poach my head of new business. Heck, they hadn’t even cared enough to learn how to say his name.
