The coffee maker gurgles through a third cycle of java juice to help me keep my eyes open as I struggle to stay awake long enough to watch the hovermudder championships set to close the current racing season. It's late, and I'm doing all I can to keep from dozing off. All of us have had a long, hard week working on the smartmen's giant radio, all of hustling to complete all the modifications and additions the smartmen send to us, reminding us that all our toil is required to make the radio's signal as powerful and pure as possible in order to get the most from the lizards and the little gray men out there between the stars. So I'm exhausted by the time Saturday night finally rolls around, and I'm not at all happy to have missed the live broadcast of the hovermudder championship for the first time in fifteen years. I remind myself that a person has to make due with everything that's swirling around the smartmen and their enormous radio.
It certainly isn't like Yogi hasn't been rewarding my efforts. I'm watching the recorded championship on my sparkling, new, giant television just installed into my home. Yogi's written me so many blank checks for any component I can dream of installing on my new hovermudder so that I might find the speed needed to compete at the highest racing circuit. I don't think it would be fair to argue that I'm not better off than I was before the smartmen had us start their radio project.
I grumble all the same as I watch those hovermudders circle the oval on my giant television. There's usually nothing that I relish watching more than those hovermudders tossing their contrails of mud onto the trailing vehicles of their competitors. But I'm too tired tonight. All that mud and rumble is just blurring all together like a lullaby.
I'm lucky when Kurt Larry crashes through my door after a loud, preliminary knock. His commotion kicks me out of sleep just as a yellow flag ends during the race.
"What are you doing, Jimmy Jack?"
"I'm watching the hovermudders."
"Why? Everybody knows Billy Brad won that race this afternoon. Stop wasting time and get up. I have something to tell you."
"It better be good."
"It's something, Jimmy Jack. It's something."
I resist the urge to slice Kurt Larry open with a kitchen knife for ruining the race's ending as I shamble into the kitchen for new coffee. Surely, the smartman who would preside over my murder case would take pity on me. Still, it must be something real important to wrench Kurt Larry out of his home in the middle of the night. So I offer him a mug of coffee and point to a seat at my table.
"I've heard what the smartmen are wanting to do with that radio," Kurt Larry whispers, like that contraption we've been building has been focussed onto my kitchen table. "I've heard what Yogi and his friends are hoping to do."
"The smartmen haven't made any secrets of it. They're trying to contact those aliens in the stars."
Kurt Larry shakes his head. "That's only a part of it. I know what they're all working to get in the end, Jimmy Jack. They're planning to make us all slaves."
"Slow down." Maybe it wasn't so wise to offer Kurt Larry that coffee. "They've paid us fine for all our work."
"They're only fattening us up." Kurt Larry growls. "I heard the smartmen talking tonight. I was messing around with that new television system Yogi had installed into my home, trying to tune in one of those sexy channels out of the late night crackle and snow. Well, my vice sure got the better of me, because I got more of a signal from all that static than I wanted.
"I tripped into the middle of a conversation the smartmen were having over their fancy computers. Not sure how, but I did. And I heard them talking like they all hoped the aliens would know how to keep them from getting sick, how to destroy the disease that keeps them in their bubbles. I heard the smartmen say they wouldn't listen anymore to any of us moaning about our problems and asking for their advice."
"How could your television system hear all that?"
Kurt Larry rolls his eyes. "Maybe it's the radio. Maybe it's so big it's just bouncing everything all around."
I set down my coffee mug. Suddenly, I don't need caffeine to stay alert.
"My eyes went real wide too, Jimmy Jack. Think of what it will mean to the rest of us if the smartmen don't have to live in their plastic bubbles anymore, if those aliens can cure them. It means the rest of us get real expendable."
"But they wouldn't."
"Wouldn't what?" Kurt Larry sneers. "Kill us? Why would they kill us? But they'll make us slaves, just like they wanted to do way back before the disease reminded those smartmen of their proper place. We're building more than a radio. We're building our cage."
I pace around the table. My mind feels so scrambled that I have to turn off the hovermudder championship because the roar of those engines is jumbling my thoughts. I've visited Yogi for so long that he's become more than just an advisor. He's become a friend. I don't want to imagine a day when Yogi would no longer open his doors to me. I certainly can't see Yogi harboring any desire to make me a slave.
"What do you want me to do about it, Kurt Larry?"
A fire flashes in Kurt Larry's eyes. "Be ready, Jimmy Jack. Be among my friends I can trust with a secret. Be a friend who doesn't want to be a slave. Be a friend who doesn't trust the smartmen. It's not easy, but we're trying to think of something. We know we don't have the smartmen's intelligence, but we're trying to think of something. Just promise to be ready, Jimmy Jack."
Kurt Larry leaves me breathless. "I don't even know if what you're saying is true."
Kurt Larry pauses before leaving my home. "I think you'll know by the time we call on you, Jimmy Jack. You might not be as smart as Yogi, but you're smarter than the rest of us. You'll know."
Kurt Larry leaves in a flourish of knees and elbows. I turn off the coffee maker. I turn off the lights. I just sit in silence and dark while my brain keeps hopping inside my skull. I don't know what to think. I haven't the slightest idea what to do. I want to ask Yogi about it, but that doesn't seem wise. Even if it's all the paranoia I think it to be, I don't want to harm Kurt Larry's chances for work by telling the smartmen I heard such a fear from my friend. Still, it can't be a bad idea to talk to Yogi about it. I just won't tell Yogi who the thought came from. I'm sure Yogi's advice will make me feel better soon enough.