Iceland Spar, Chapter Twenty: The Chums of Chance Experience the End of the World!

We're back with the Chums in a short but portentous chapter. They're in New York, for "ground-leave," receiving occasional messages from the mysterious Chums HQ: they have no idea where these are really coming from. "'Well we are their proletariat, ain't we,' snarled Darby, 'the fools that do their 'dirty work' for next to nothing?'" (397). You sort of thing of the Chums transcending such exploitation, but they're subject to the world as much as anyone else...well, not as much as anyone else. And in different ways. But still.

One of the messengers is offended when Lindsay tries to pay him with a commemorative coin from the World Fair ten years prior, and sarcastically declares that "all I need's d' toime machine, I'm in business, ain't I?" (ibid). This causes them to prick up their ears, and they arrange a later meeting with the kid, named "Plug" Loafsley, in "his personal headquarters, the Lollipop Lounge, which turned out to be a child bordello in the Tenderloin, one of several that Plug ran as part of a squalid empire also including newsboys' opium dens and Sunday-school numbers rackets" (398). Well, just Chick and Darby. The more "worldly" ones, if you will. Yeah...I remember from when I used to watch South Park, there was a restaurant called Raisins, which was like Hooters but with pre-pubescent girls. That made me squirm, and so does this. Though I suppose I am compelled to note that it does go along with the idea of "communities outside normal society in weird places" thing that I noted last time. Anyway, they bribe "Plug" and he takes them to see the scientist with the machine. He's in a rundown, mysterious part of the city; they pass an archway reading "I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY" (401), which you will remember from the Iceland fiasco way back. This is the same place, it seems, or at least the same idea.

Anyway, they meet Dr. Zoot, a steampunk scientist "in workingman's fatigues, carpet-slippers, smoked goggles, and a peculiar helmet punctuated over its surface by not entirely familiar electrical fittings." He shows them the machine, the appearance of which "struck neither lad as particularly advanced" (402), but to their skepticism, he offers them a free ride into the future. Who could refuse? They get into the machine, and they see an apocalyptic vision of a dark, stormy battlefield with deadeyed cavalry sweeping across it, that may be a combination of World War I and the end of the world (though really, is there a difference?). Of course, you talk about "the future" in this novel, it's not clear how straightforward it is, really, since time doesn't work in a totally linear way. And when they come back, you always have to ask: are they in the same world? Well, seemingly.

They're understandably upset when Dr. Zoot reveals that his machine isn't totally reliable and that, amusingly, he bought it second-hand at the famous time-travel convention at Candlebrow University. He gives them a name--Alonzo Meatman--and suggests they can check it out, although things could be dangerous. And that is the chapter. Be prepared for extreme zaniness next time.

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