Mustard Seed

Chapter 1

Mister Frostie and the End of the World

It would be an eventful day, but Mister Frostie would remember none of it. He wasn’t even a year old yet. He didn’t know he was a boy, or even what a boy was, or that there were other options. He had no religious or political affiliation. He had no worldview, no spirit guide, no life coach, no ideology, no favorite sports franchise, no language even.

He was being held by his mother, but he didn’t know that. He didn’t have a name for her either, or a word. He just knew he wasn’t alone. He was with an all-embracing, comforting presence, a shroud of sensations, a smell, a color, a sound, and a touch. There was another presence too, a mysterious one that was always nearby but with a different sound and color and touch and smell—that was his whole world, such as it was. A world that would gradually get bigger, and he would eventually have a name for them both and many other things, including himself. Though he wouldn’t become Mister Frostie for many years.

In the meantime, he was content to have no name for himself and no awareness of the world beyond the embrace of the comforting presence. He was just a speck of consciousness, a seedling, soaking it all in, in wordless wonder and silent, but perfect, communion.

Communion like they talk about in all those stories from people who’ve died and then come back from it somehow—how they always say they understand whatever it is the angels or Jesus or L. Ron Hubbard are saying to them, only it’s without words, and that it’s better than mere communication, it’s complete and undeniable understanding with no words to confuse things. It was like that for him that day.

He knew that something was very wrong with the comforting presence, and the minor one too. He knew they were confused and sad and distressed and very, very afraid, though he didn’t have words for those yet either. Nevertheless, in solidarity with their feelings, he was screaming his head off.

It would not be a pleasant drive in Ted’s brand-new red Thunderbird that day, quite the opposite in fact. Baby Gill was screaming, President Kennedy was dead, and Ted had just been informed that the end of the world was nigh and that he should proceed directly to Bakersfield with his wife and infant son. On the brighter side, the traffic wasn’t bad since everybody was huddling around their TVs or radios listening to the assassination news, so it could have been worse.

The drive through LA and the San Fernando Valley was kind of surreal. It all seemed so normal, just another beautiful sunny day in Southern California—the big donut by the airport, the Uniroyal tire factory that looked like a Babylonian palace, the Griffith Observatory, the Hollywood sign, Helms Bakery trucks, people in cars, and none of them knew what Ted knew, that World War III was in the starting blocks waiting for the gunshot.

He would miss it all, even the smog that hid the San Gabriels, but mostly he’d miss the sky and the ocean that was too far away to see, though he knew it was off to his left somewhere. He also knew that soon it would all be gone and a mere memory and that he and his wife and the bellowing baby were for some reason chosen to be spared.

He was a tall, slender man, though some might consider him wiry, with a narrow face and a broad pale brow. He ran his hand over his coarse hair and noted that he needed a haircut, since he liked to keep it short, but that would have to wait under the circumstances. He’d noted with some dismay a few gray hairs on the barbershop floor after his last haircut. No doubt he’d have more gray hairs on the floor the next time, if there was a next time since the world was about to end.

He wanted a cigarette, a habit he’d picked up during the war, but he didn’t want to smoke with baby Gill in the car. They’d been trying for a baby for so long and the fact that they finally had him was something of a miracle, a very loud miracle today. Connie was carrying him on her lap. Ted always thought she looked like an actress he’d seen on Bonanza, only taller and without the buggy whip.

They’d passed Gorman and were going down The Grapevine into the Central Valley, so he thought it might be the altitude change going over the summit at Tejon Pass causing the crying. “It might be his ears, from the air pressure change. Try giving him a bottle. That’ll help make his ears pop.”

Connie lifted Gill to her shoulder, patted him gently on the back, and shouted over his cries, “He’s not hungry. It’s not that. It’s because of the end of the world and everything.”

Ted shook his head. “I don’t think he knows about that yet.”

He fished out a cigarette and looked over at his tiny son, who finally seemed to be quieting down. “I don’t think he knows about the end of the world, that’s just for us.”

He put the cigarette in his mouth and wondered what kinds of tiny thoughts his tiny son was having in his tiny world, but then, thinking better of it, he tucked the cigarette behind his ear.

Chapter 2

Control Data

The Control Data 6600 was a brand-new prototype machine. It was the most powerful computer in the world with over sixty-four kilowords of memory and only weighed six tons. The operator console had a pair of gigantic circular displays, each over twelve inches in diameter, and today the console operator was updating the Statistical Human Threat Forecast (SHTF) program with some late-breaking and tragic news, even though he’d voted for Nixon himself.

The program was conceived and mathematically formulated by John Von Neumann and Edward Teller during the Eisenhower administration, and in the years that followed it was meticulously and lovingly crafted by a crew of geo-political strategists from RAND, a cluster of multivariate statisticians from MITRE, and a phalanx of FORTRAN IV programmers from TRW. The program was massive with nearly twenty thousand subroutines and functions to predict future events, based on the contemporary equivalent of ominous planetary alignments used for astrological augury in ancient times.

In this case, and in present times, the planets were replaced with over 300 precisely defined variables representing a multi-dimensional mathematical tensor to predict the future based on the position of Soviet troops in East Germany, Soviet aircraft loitering in the arctic, Soviet nuclear submarines lurking in the North Sea, plus moon phases, gold and pork belly futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, status of various celebrities and world leaders, etc.

The program was updated continuously to accommodate new data and SHTF63 was the most recent version. It also allowed direct operator input as shown below:

? VARARIABLE NAME

> WORLD-LEADER-USA

? VARIABLE NAME NOT FOUND

? VARARIABLE NAME

> WORLD-LEADER-USA-PRESIDENT

? STATUS

> DEAD

? DEAD-CONTEXT: -1, 0, +1:

? ENTER -1 FOR NATURAL-DEAD

? ENTER 0 FOR ACCIDENT-DEAD | SUICIDE-DEAD

? ENTER +1 FOR ASSASSINATED-DEAD

> +1

? INVALID INPUT

? DEAD-CONTEXT: -1, 0, +1:

? ENTER -1 FOR NATURAL-DEAD

? ENTER 0 FOR ACCIDENT-DEAD | SUICIDE-DEAD

? ENTER +1 FOR ASSASSINATED-DEAD

>1

? DEAD-LOCATION: -1, 0, +1

? ENTER -1 FOR OCONUS-ASSASSINATED-DEAD

? ENTER 0 FOR CONUS-ASSASSINATED DEAD

? ENTER +1 FOR TEXAS-ASSASSINATED-DEAD

>1

When the operator finally hit carriage return at the console keyboard, all 300 planets fell into perfect alignment, and the SHTF63 program calculated that the world was about to end—global thermonuclear war was predicted with a 99.999% probability. It didn’t mention this to the operator though, for security reasons. Instead, the printer immediately started chattering, and the console screen filled with a disorienting assortment of alarms, alerts, warnings and comments that scrolled by too fast for the operator to actually read. Except for the last few lines which read:

> SEND “BINGO WAS HIS NAME-O” TO THE FOLLOWING TELEX ADDRESSES:

> 14922 NORAD

> 13429 NSC

> 15538 NCA

> 22344 SAC

> 55484 CNO

> 28240 JCS

> 66688 CIA

> 19981 USGS

> 19882 USDA

> 99101 WALT

> 01953 LILPAL

The operator tore the printout from the printer, sat down at the Teletype machine, and sent the message to the specified recipients, subsequently setting numerous Bell Pageboy gadgets abuzz across the fruited plain.

Chapter 3

Knock Knock

The secretaries were crying. They were all hugging each other and huddled in front of the Sony portable TV they’d always watch for their lunch hour soap operas. But there was no soap opera on the tiny TV today. It was Friday, payday, and the president had been shot, and it was dead president stuff on all three TV channels.

Airman 1st Class Sweetser felt bad for the crying secretaries, even though he’d voted for Nixon himself. He was just about to go join them, since one of them was recently divorced with a great figure and a sizzling beehive hairdo, but his new Bell Pageboy was buzzing on his belt, so he knew he was needed in the tank, and that he wasn’t to say anything to anybody about where he was going or why. Which was actually pretty easy since even though he knew where he was going, he had absolutely no idea why he was going there. He only knew that in the event the new pager gadget buzzed, he was to go directly to the tank and respond as instructed to a highly classified challenge-response sequence.

He’d had several short conversations with the recent divorcee, usually at the cigarette machine where they’d engage in friendly banter about menthol versus regular, so he decided to give her a reassuring and comforting pat on the shoulder in passing, or possibly a pat on the back, but he wasn’t sure which would be more appropriate under the post-assassination circumstances. As he reached out, he noticed his hand was shaking, no doubt due to the buzzing summons of his new-fangled pager gadget since he presumed it was important and had something to do with the dead president.

He soldiered on and patted the divorcee on the shoulder. She nodded her head in silent acknowledgement. He stopped at the cigarette machine for an extra pack of Camels, since he didn’t know how long he’d be in the tank. He preferred the old-fashioned, short and stubby, filterless cigarettes since they seemed more timeless and heroic to him, like Bogart, and therefore more manly.

He remembered nothing of the golf cart ride through the first set of blast doors, since he was considering tactics and strategies for turning the cigarette machine conversations with the divorcee into asking her out on an actual date, or maybe just start with a cup of coffee at the Waffle House outside the main gate. He passed through several more blast doors and ID checkpoints until finally arriving at the last checkpoint at the end of a long, sterile corridor. He decided that coffee at Waffle House was the best strategy for the divorcee.

He handed his badge to the lone ape on duty, who was snappily attired in Class B 1505s with a blue “AP” armband, bloused boots with white ladder lacing, a blue ascot, and topped with an Air Force Blue helmet liner emblazoned with a large white “AP” on the front. He was accessorized with a white M36 pistol belt and a Smith &Wesson .38 Special.

Airman Sweetser silently envied the ape’s uniform but also felt bad for him, since the ape had what he considered to be a really shitty job. Sweetser on the other hand didn’t have the cool uniform, but he did have a fantastic job that allowed him to hone his cartooning skills and amass a portfolio to help get him on the animation staff at Disney or Warner Brothers or Hanna-Barbera when he’d get out of the Air Force in two more years. His pager buzzed again.

“Hey, did you hear about President Kennedy?”

The guard checked the badge and looked at the photo, then at Sweetser. “The Marilyn Monroe thing? Yeah, why did he get Liz Taylor too or something?”

“No, he got a coupla bullets in his head. The Russians shot him in Dallas.”

The ape laughed, handed Sweetser’s badge back, and waved him in. “Bullshit, there ain’t no Russians in Dallas.”

Sweetser was met and led to a small office by a bored first lieutenant who carried a yellow-striped manila folder and left a plume of English Leather cologne in his wake. There was no desk, just a small table and an office chair. The lieutenant took the chair. Sweetser stood and watched the lieutenant break the seal on the yellow-striped envelope and pull out a laminated card. “Okay, go ahead.”

Airman Sweetser squared up his shoulders for the top-secret challenge-response sequence. “Knock knock.”

The lieutenant yawned. “Who’s there?”

Sweetser answered clearly and deliberately, “There was a farmer.”

The lieutenant seemed confused. He looked at the card and then flipped it over. “Uhh, say again.”

Sweetser smiled brightly. “Knock knock.”

The lieutenant didn’t look up. “No, not that part, the last part, the answer.”

Sweetser hesitated. “Well, I was told I was only to answer to the ‘Who’s there?’ part, for security reasons.” He noticed that the lieutenant’s heel was tapping.

“Okay, who’s there?”

“Did that last ‘knock knock’ count, or do we need to start over again? Because I was told that the challenge-response had to be exactly…”

“Okay, start over, take it from the top.”

Satisfied, Sweetser nodded. “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

Sweetser smiled and said, “There was a farmer.”

A bead of sweat was on the Lieutenant’s upper lip. “There was a farmer, who?”

Sweetser answered proudly as if winning a spelling bee, “There was a farmer who had a dog and Bingo was his name-oh.”

The newly attentive lieutenant flipped back and forth between a few laminated pages to confirm the response. He then opened the manila folder again and sorted through several red-striped manila envelopes. Sweetser noticed that the lieutenant’s lips were moving slightly as if silently talking to himself.

Apparently finding what he was looking for, the lieutenant pulled out a red envelope, broke the seal, pulled out a red laminated card and stared at it blankly for a moment. He then rose unsteadily to his feet.

Sweetser watched the lieutenant collect his yellow-striped manila envelope and walk to the door. “Wait here.”

“Okay…” He immediately corrected himself. “I mean, okay sir…Hey did you hear about the president?”

The lieutenant opened the door and said blankly, as if swatting away a fly, “The Marilyn Monroe thing? Yeah.”

Sweetser called after, “No, the Russians, they…”

But the lieutenant was already gone.

Chapter 4

This Is A Test

Gill had finally stopped crying and was getting drowsy. His head had been resting on his mother’s shoulder, and he’d occasionally raise it to look out the window at a car or the shapes and colors of the farms and fields and oil wells as Ted drove across the valley floor. The head resting intervals got longer and longer as sleep overtook, and he was asleep before they passed beneath the great big “BAKERSFIELD” sign that straddled Highway 99 in the middle of town, though he would often admire it in subsequent years when passing beneath it.

Connie had her window down, and Ted could see Gill’s wispy black hair waving slightly in the breeze—his eyes were light brown and Connie thought they looked like Milk Duds. The radio was droning on about events in Dallas, but Ted wasn’t listening to the radio. He was listening for something else. Connie reached over and silenced the radio.

“Why’d you do that? I’ve got it on 640 in case there’s a CONELRAD alert…”

She held her finger to her lips and pointed at the snoozing baby.

Ted nodded and responded sotto voce. “Oh yeah, okay. I guess it doesn’t really matter at this point.”

They drove in silence except for the breeze for a few minutes. Ted shook his head. “I don’t hear any sirens or anything. It all just seems so normal. I guess they just don’t know…” He fell silent again as anticipatory survivor guilt washed over him at the thought of all the people who would soon be shadows caught mid-stride on some street or vaporized standing at a kitchen window.

He checked a street sign. “Okay we’re on Union, and it turns into Panorama and we follow that to the civil defense radio tower, so we’re almost there.” He noticed that Connie’s head was bowed down. She was softly crying again, but at least the baby wasn’t.

“You know, I think this is just a drill. It’s just a test to make sure the whole system works, just like we did for the Matterhorn and Mister Toad’s Wild Ride.” He turned onto Panorama Drive and his thoughts turned to the conversation that put him on Panorama Drive with his wife and son for the end of the world.

He’d been called to Walt’s office which was kind of unusual since Walt would usually just show up at your drafting table if he had a question about anything. This was different. Walt was at his desk smoking a cigarette and leafing through blueprints when Ted was shown in.

He looked up, smiled, and stubbed out his cigarette. “Teddy, you’ve done a fantastic job here on Todayland USA—the stores, the sky, the bowling alley, the radio station, the malt shop. It’s a little world you’ve created. It’s fantastic.” He then leaned back in his chair. “But if we’re lucky, no one will ever see Todayland or even know that it ever existed.”