Johnny Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine

What a guy will do to try and get a date.

Embracing the Impossible

Johnny Fazoolie had the knack for being the wrong guy at the right place at the right time. Half big genius and half bullshit artist, he was so slick people couldn’t tell the difference.

His scam was starting startup companies based on amazing concepts that investors couldn’t resist. Only problem was the concepts were so amazing that he never delivered a final product.

The more outlandish the concept, the more enthralling his sales pitch. Notorious for his biodegradable sex toy line and artificially stupid robotic assistant, Johnny was a legend.

“What’s the point of doing a deal if you don’t have any fun?” said Johnny at the start and close of every opportunity. “Then people will tell their friends: ‘That guy didn’t have any fun.’”

No one ever doubted Johnny enjoyed himself, investors instead worried about getting their money back. Despite all the companies dying on the vine, his portfolio bloomed like poisonous weeds.

Johnny lived large, with nobody in charge. Everybody’s attention span diminishing, the everyday speed of life finally caught up to Johnny’s ADHD, transforming a vagabond into a visionary.

A Forbes magazine “Thrillionaire Under Thirty,” Johnny was asked to explain his success. “Hooch your Fazoolie!” was all he said before bungee jumping out of his 109th story penthouse.

The idea for Johnny’s latest startup came as it usually did — in a blink — this time while desperately seeking a cup of coffee at Panama Jack’s Resort Hotel breakfast buffet in Cancun.

Johnny was waiting for his blockchain consultant to show, delayed by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. He was helping Johnny regain access to his bitcoin ledger after forgetting the password.

“Hi,” hyperventilated Johnny, leaving another voicemail. “I’ve tried to get in nine times, only one attempt left. I might have used some variation of my kids’ names, but I don’t have any kids.”

The stress of losing millions in crypto kept him up for five continuous days — that, and the oscillating binges of meth and ketamine jacking and sedating him into dizzying hysterics.

Chaotically shifting gears from adrenaline overload to narcotic hallucination, his appetite annihilated, his sleep hopelessly deprived, Johnny craved a rejuvenating jolt of caffeine.

“Where can a guy find a lousy cup of coffee around here?” yelled Johnny, his clothes drenched in sweat, his pupils the size of beach balls. Wildly gesturing hands left light trails as he spoke.

"Try helping yourself, my dear," suggested a woman with a heavy German accent who to Johnny's bloodshot eyes looked like a mash up between a cordial librarian and accomplished dominatrix.

A brunette with bangs and thick round glasses, she stood about five feet nothing and wore a black leather dress with a stainless steel buckled belt and stiletto heels. She winked and pointed.

Sure enough, right in front of Johnny’s face and perched on an otherwise empty banquet table stood an enormous ornate silver coffee urn with a prominent sign next to it that read COFFEE.

“No shit,” nodded Johnny, extending a hand that the woman accepted despite his excessive perspiration. “I’m Johnny Fazoolie. I start things but don’t know how to finish them.”

“I finish things before they ever get started,” she replied, delicately wiping her hand on a napkin. “And I am Basine Felderhossen of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science.”

Basine was an attendee of the annual String Theory, Cosmology, and Particle Astrophysics Conference that Johnny hadn’t noticed was taking place down the hall at the Convention Center.

His first clue should have been the banner strung across a hotel balcony, not to mention the eccentrics lurking in the lobby. “Shall I pour you a cup?” asked Basine. “Regular or decaf?”

“Regular, thanks,” said Johnny, squinting. “Don’t know how I missed that.” He checked her out as she poured. “Hey. What’s the most obvious thing you’ve missed today, Ms. Hossenfelder?”

“Doctor,” corrected Basine. “Felderhossen.”

“Right on.”

“String Theory is bullshit,” she said matter-of-factly, handing him a steaming cup of joe.

“All talk, no do,” agreed Johnny, trading business cards. She raised a sharp penciled eyebrow. “Now tell me the most outrageous thing you’ve heard today. I bet you I can make money off it.”

“Good luck with that,” said Basine.

“Try me,” said Johnny.

“OK. I just walked out of a lecture where a cosmologist asserted that the probability of being able to teleport from one Universe to another Universe is infinitesimally small, but non-zero.”

“Sounds like a ride people would throw big coin at,” said Johnny, his mind already exploring sales angles. “A Hyperdimensional Disneyland! Outrageous things excite people. They’ll pay.”

“Pay for what?”

“Pay for that.”

“That assumes a Multiverse even exists,” cautioned Basine. “And that teleportation between Universes makes any sense at all given what we know about the constraints of nature.”

“I don’t make assumptions,” said Johnny, “or even insist that things make sense. Those constraints get in my way. You don’t know until you know, and by then it’s usually too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“Too late for some other douchebag to come along and take your cool idea and run with it.”

“Science is based on evidence,” insisted Basine. “Hypotheses are tested, then proven or rejected. Everything else is outside the realm of science, or simply nonsense. Cream or sugar?”

“Lots and lots,” said Johnny, helping himself to heaping tablespoons. “Whether or not things can be proven doesn’t interest me.” He sipped and winced. “I’m an entrepreneur, not a scientist.”

“But how can you sell a product that doesn’t work?”

“That’s their problem,” said Johnny, toasting then dumping even more sugar into his coffee. “Consumers are the cheapest and best beta testers. Let them decide if it works or not.”

“That’s very democratic of you,” said Basine.

“You’re welcome,” said Johnny, sipping more coffee, his eyes opening wide, then blinking rapidly. “Hey. How many Universes in the Multiverse?”

“Infinitely many, of course. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Gotcha. So the number of possible worlds are endless?”

“I prefer to say they are boundless.”

“And we could endlessly explore them?”

“Assuming such technology could ever be developed.”

“But such a device isn’t theoretically impossible, right?”

“I distrust men who use the double-negative.”

“No worries,” assured Johnny, shrugging. “I never say never.”

“Nice to meet you, Johnny Fazoolie,” shrugged Basine Felderhossen, smirking and turning to go.

“Did I give you my card?’ waved Johnny after her.

“You did,” said Basine, holding it up as she sashayed back to the conference.

“Cool,” said Johnny, watching her go. “Hey. What are the odds that you’ll call me?”

“Infinitesimally small,” her voice trailing. “But non-zero.”

“In this Universe? Or another?”

“Just because something is possible doesn’t necessarily mean it exists,” said Basine, stopping and turning. “And just because something can happen, doesn’t mean that it will happen.”

“But you said the Multiverse is infinite,” smiled Johnny. “With an infinite number of Universes within it. So sooner or later, somewhere here or there, whatever is possible must become real.”

“Now that’s the most outrageous thing I’ve heard all day,” said Basine, chuckling and mock-bowing. “Congratulations, Mr. Fazoolie. You win the conference. Write a paper.”

“Or start a company?”

“Our bet is still on.”

“What are the stakes?” leered Johnny, trying his flirt face. “A date?”

“Not in this Universe,” scoffed Basine, doing the Mensa equivalent of a hair flip.

“Then I’ll have to teleport to another one.”

“That begs the question,” said Basine, ducking back into a conference session, “of the device actually working or not.”

“Hey, just because something is outrageous,” called out Johnny Fazoolie, nodding with self-satisfaction and pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee. “Doesn’t make it impossible.”

Recruiting the Talent

Johnny was a pro at making outrageous things seem possible — and profitable, at least for him — so he couldn’t get Basine’s wild Multiverse teleportation idea out of his mind.

The more he thought about it, the more impossible it seemed. And the more impossible it seemed, the more outrageous his pitch would have to be to woo investors. He went all-in.

Adding to the allure was Basine herself, whom Johnny liked. A sucker for those more mature and intelligent than he was, Johnny often chased the creative ideas of the women he chased.

Cynics considered such behavior a crass strategy to get them into bed, but for Johnny business and pleasure were always intertwined, and usually resulted in similar outcomes, mostly bad.

“Imagine having the ability to jump Universes,” he tested the outlandish idea back at home. “Teleporting anywhere you like at any time? Think of the erotic possibilities! Boggles the mind.”

“Not today, Johnny,” said the prospect, and hung up. Others followed suit. A self-replicating recycling bag? Meh. An endlessly sharp pencil? Maybe. But leaping dimensions? No way.

Undaunted, Johnny got serious and googled talent. Entirely by accident, he had discovered that the more legitimate he made his exotic ideas appear, the more likely investors would invest.

Sometimes all it took was a nicely printed brochure or fancy website. Pretty slide decks went a long way. Plenty of fancy lunches. But for this bad boy, Johnny knew big guns were needed.

He found the prodigiously gifted yet under-employed Professor Patty Flannery through a long tail search that included the keywords “multiverse,” “teleportation,” and “low hourly rate.”

Flannery’s preprint paper “Synthetic Wormholes and the Inflationary Multiverse” caught his eye, only because the title was neat. He browsed the abstract, downloaded the PDF, but never read it.

“Hi,” he emailed the research professor. “Let’s make tons of money.”

“Will I get my own lab?” responded Flannery.

“Of course!” lied Johnny.

Johnny invited the Prof to his small, cluttered office in Chicago. They barely made direct eye contact during the interview, which began awkwardly and ended in almost violent confrontation.

Above them “Fertile Descent LLC” was stenciled onto his door window, an apropos company name given Johnny’s gift for spinning nonsensical garbage into highly lucrative bankruptcies.

“Take a seat,” he gestured from his plush, padded CEO chair, feet on his desk, waving a cigar. “Have you ever wondered: What’s the point of doing a deal if you don’t have any fun?”

Patty stood silently, twitching a bit, staring at a file cabinet. A black cat with white mittens watched them from atop a bookshelf, purring audibly as its bushy tail wagged hypnotically.

Johnny took his feet off his desk, cleared his throat, and scanned the Professor’s CV. “Stanford, Caltech, MIT… Raytheon, Lockheed, Grumman… Looks like you’ve got the chops,” he said.

“Why did you contact me?” asked Patty, rocking back and forth and staring at a mote of dust floating in the stuffy office air. “I still don’t know what you are doing, or what you want done.”

“I need a project leader with mad skills in multiple areas of expertise who can oversee this new project of mine,” said Johnny. “The big idea is rather ‘conceptual’ and needs to get real, fast.”

“Quantum teleportation isn’t conceptual,” said Patty, who’d heard Johnny’s pitch and could tell instantly that the guy had no idea what he was talking about. “We’ve already gotten it to work.”

“See? That’s the spirit!” Pleased with himself, Johnny tried to break the ice and fell right through it. “Online you describe yourself as a ‘nonbinary lesbian’ — No judgment, of course, just curious.”

“What about it?’ asked Patty, now fidgeting and staring at the wall behind Johnny, right above his peroxide blond, slicked back hair. (Think a younger and equally manic Max Headroom.)

“How can you be a ‘lesbian’ if you’re ‘nonbinary’?” continued Johnny, a chronic sufferer of foot-in-mouth disease “Last I heard, a ‘lesbian’ is a chick who’s into other chicks, right?”

Patty made direct eye contact with Johnny for the first time, the savant rocking back and forth with ever greater agitation, but saying nothing. The cat on its perch licked itself and meowed.

“So by definition,” stated Johnny, mesmerized by Patty’s dazzling green eyes, crew cut red hair, and exploding galaxy of dimples. “You can’t be a lesbian unless you’re also a chick. Q.E.D.!”

The Professor’s pale Irish face turned beet red, freckles flairing. “Easy for a sexist, misogynist, white heterosexual male tool of the patriarchy to say,” snapped Patty, fists poised to punch.

“Woah, woah, woah,” waved Johnny, having made a career of sweet talking himself out of one calamity after the next. “My bad. Let’s say you’re the first nonbinary lesbian I’ve ever met, dig?”

Patty slowly calmed down, fidgets back to twitches, staring at the chair again. The Prof was as relieved to stop looking at Johnny as Johnny was relieved the Prof was no longer triggered.

Johnny honestly couldn’t have cared less about Patty’s identity. To sell this crazy thing in, he sensed he needed expertise in advanced biometrics, computer science, and nuclear physics.

A two-time Fields Medal nominee alongside work in electrical and mechanical engineering, Patty had the rare combination of theoretical and applied skills necessary to lead such a project.

Only glitch was the savant’s Asperger’s syndrome, resulting in compulsively repetitive behaviors and avoidance of all human interaction — making career advancement challenging to say the least.

“Least,” thought Johnny, who understood these were exactly the quirky qualities that made such a talent the perfect project leader for his latest scam: No questions asked, and no answers given.

Except, of course, those answers that convinced bored billionaires to toss him their loose change. Between Johnny’s bullshit and Patty’s brains, they were a match made for the Multiverse.

“When can you start?” asked Johnny Fazoolie, feet back on his desk, thinking about lunch.

“What’s the name of your cat?” asked Patty Flannery, staring at the bookshelf.

“Bernie Sanders.”

“Why?”

“I hate commies,” said Johnny, tapping his phone and ordering himself a meatball sub. “And I hate cats.”

“Oh.”

Johnny suddenly stood and extended his arms in a V-for-Victory position. “Welcome aboard!”

Naming the Game

Next up: activating Johnny’s sweet spot for selling something cool that didn’t exist, was difficult to describe, impossible to create, and certain to lose lots and lots of other people’s money.

But first he needed an exciting and memorable name for whatever “it” was. Since none of this teleportation shit made much sense to him, a good name could also help Patty fake the tech.

So he began as he usually did, with what marketers call brand strategy: What were this gizmo’s unique qualities? What practical benefits did it provide? What feelings did the product evoke?

Whether influenced by his new project leader’s ideas, behavior, morphology, or all of the above, the term transfinite instantly popped into Johnny’s head, so he ran with it as a creative spark.

When Johnny heard it in his head he sounded smart, or at least felt like he did, which was all he needed. Coined in the 1880s by Georg Cantor, it referred to different types and sizes of infinity.

The thinking was creative and got complicated, but in a nutshell used the difference between the number of elements in a set and the order in which they were counted to blow people’s minds.

The results were counterintuitive and paradoxical, which Johnny loved because they seemed enticing without being agitating, and confused people without making them feel inferior.

The wild concept that some infinities could be larger than others also fit well with Basine’s outrageous idea of an infinite Multiverse containing an infinite number of Universes within it.

“Transfinite” sounded cool so far, Johnny thought, but “transfinite… what?” He remembered his own outrageous leap that if anything were possible then everything must be real, and hit on it.

He whispered “transfinite reality” to himself a few times, then wrote it on a yellow sticky with a purple Sharpie. He liked oxymoron names, such as “Icy Hot,” and felt this was a good one, too.

Johnny also knew he had to convey the gizmo could eventually be bought, or as they said in Chicago, was a “thing.” So he riffed on vehicles like “jet,” and the sci fi-sounding “transporter.”

These sounded fake to him, and hinted more at what the thing could do than what the thing was that did it. So he opted for the simplest mechanism he could think of, the steampunky “engine.”

He said “Transfinite Reality Engine” out loud three times, like a blessing. Bad ass! He had no clue what it was, and knew it couldn’t exist, but hearing the name made him want one, anyway.

Johnny ran the name by the Prof, who responded as they usually did by silently staring at the file cabinet, chair, then wall. “Well?” asked Johnny again. “What do you think of the T.R.E.?”

“Quantum teleportation instantaneously transfers information, not objects,” replied Patty, “and does so in this Universe and not between Universes. But I’ve been making new calculations…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Johnny, twitching from drug withdrawal and fidgeting from boredom. “The name. Do you love it? Do you think I could sell it? Do you think people would buy it?”

“My initial results suggest discrete courses of action.” Patty showed him graph paper with an absurd list. “We need a neuroimaging scanner, a quantum computer, and a nuclear warhead.”

“No problem,” mumbled Johnny, annoyed he wasn’t hearing what he wanted to hear while not paying any attention. At least he had a cool-sounding name, and an illusory hint of progress.

Bernie Sanders leaped from the bookshelf and onto Johnny’s desk. The cat and the Professor stared dispassionately at each other, somehow simultaneously disinterested and dumbfounded.

“What a team,” thought Johnny Fazoolie.

Bernie hacked a hairball and hurled.

Making Dreams Come True

While the Professor poured over the math and design specs, Johnny dived into doing what he did best: Spinning hype into actual dollars he slowly but inexorably vaporized into broken promises.

Since whatever the thing was wasn’t built yet, and likely was impossible anyway, Johnny gave himself carte blanche to add groovy features to make it particularly enticing to his clients.

He downloaded Getty images with the watermark still on them of complex machinery, clean rooms, and technical schematics, then hired an art school intern to paste them into cool slides.

Johnny hurled buzzwords and told jokes, described “hyperdimensional paradigm shifts” and forgot the punchline for “a Jesuit priest, a male stripper, and an astrophysicist walk into a bar…”

But having no limits made his pitch confusing, and he dialed back. For starters, a Multiverse was tough enough to simply describe, let alone a device for jumping between Universes within it.

From his experience selling discount solar panels to Norwegians during the winter solstice, Johnny learned he had to simplify the complex, build empathy, and justify delayed gratification.

Bernie Sanders purred at Johnny’s side, annoying and inspiring him. How could he illustrate infinite possibility? How could he excite people with the idea of living beyond any limits?

“Now let me get this straight,” asked a befuddled investor, pointing to a PowerPoint slide that depicted a dozen slightly different versions of the same cat. “Each cat is a Universe? WTF?”

“The point isn’t that each cat is a Universe,” he explained, and failed. “I’m showing how there’s infinite Universes and infinite cats, and you can leap to any Universe to get any cat you want.”

“Ohhh, kayyyyyy,” said the billionaire. “But why the fuck would I want any of these cats?”

Why indeed.

“Great,” said another Silicon Valley investor after hearing his spiel. “Even if I could get to another Universe in the Multiverse containing any of these cats, who gives a shit about cats?”

Who indeed.

Johnny summoned Professor Patty Flannery back to his office. Bernie Sanders was lying on his desk, licking himself, his tail uncannily undulating in sync with Johnny’s wild hand gestures.

“Let’s say I have a black cat…” he began, tapping Bernie’s head, moving slides around, standing at the screen, sitting back at his desk, tapping Bernie again, riffing variations of his sales pitch.

“That’s totemism,” snapped Patty, surprisingly direct but still twitchy enough for Bernie to leap off and hide. “Which makes you a racist in addition to your shameless sexism and misogyny.”

“With mittens,” added Johnny. “White mittens.”

“Of course,” said Patty, staring at the floor again.

“Instead, I want a white cat with black mittens,” suggested Johnny, looking for Bernie who was hiding underneath the desk. “No offense, buddy.”

Meow.

“White makes it right,” mumbled Patty, looking out the window. “That’s even worse. You mind? I have quite a bit of work to do back at the lab…”

“Bear with me,” insisted Johnny, settling for an unsympathetic audience of one with a spectrum disorder. “I have a black cat with white mittens, but want a white cat with black mittens.”

“Of course you do.”

“So I fire up… drum roll, please… the T.R.E.!” Silence. “Here’s my question: Can it take me to another Universe where my black cat with white mittens is a white cat with black mittens?”

“That’s your value proposition?” asked Patty, now looking at the ceiling. “That’s how you plan on raising the millions of dollars we need to build this device? By talking about cats?”

“Schrodinger’s Cat! In a box with a bottle of poison hooked up to a radioactive isotope. If it decays, then the bottle breaks and kills the cat. If it doesn’t, the bottle is intact and the cat lives.”

Patty rolled their eyes and continued staring out the window.

“Until you open the box and observe it, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Opening the box collapses the wave function of the isotope, and the cat is suddenly either alive or dead.”

“Yes,” said Patty. “According to the multiple worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, the entire Universe splits into two: One where the cat is alive, and the other where the cat is dead.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere: If the Multiverse exists, and if it hosts infinite Universes, and if everything possible plays itself out, then there’s a Universe containing the exact cat that I want.”

“By that logic not just one Universe, but actually an infinite number of Universes with infinite variation, including those where your black cat with white mittens is a white cat with black mittens.”

“No, shit,” said Johnny, rubbing his chin. “I didn’t think of that… Make sure you write all that stuff down, I might forget.”

“But what if Schrodinger’s Cat meows in the box before you open it?” asked Patty, taking out a notebook and jotting equations all over it. “Can a dead cat meow? Will a live cat stay silent?”

“This isn’t about cats, for fuck’s sake,” sighed Johnny. “Let’s stay focused. It’s about the traveler being teleported to another Universe where any wish they make can actually come true!”

Patty stopped staring at the ceiling and the floor and out the window to make direct eye contact with Johnny again, but this time in what was almost, but not quite, an unprovocative gesture.

“Hmmmmmm,” mumbled Patty, inscrutable wheels turning. “I see what you did there. Anything is possible in the Multiverse and everything is real. That actually helps fix some of my math…”

Johnny tapped his smartphone, scrolled, tapped some more, then handed it to Patty. “Go ahead, order lunch. Any entree, but just one appetizer, OK?”

Messing with Texas

From that moment onward the project took a new turn. What began as a far-fetched concept that was as difficult to describe as sell, suddenly became a genie’s bottle everyone wanted to rub.

Still slippery and out there, the essential idea was taking shape: The T.R.E. could conceivably grant any wish by teleporting the user to a similar Universe where the wish happened to be true.

The three core components started to make sense, too: The brain scanner read the traveler’s desires, the quantum computer ran the numbers, and the nuclear warhead created the wormhole.

Johnny’s new sales pitch confused folks less with many Universes and cats, and excited them more with the prospect of wishes being granted thanks to a Multiverse of limitless possibilities.

“Imagine anything at all,” pitched Johnny, his blue eyes blazing, hands gesturing wildly, hair tingling. “Now imagine jumping to a Universe out there where whatever you imagine is real.”

The “out there” part was a stretch, as was most of his story. But he learned how to flip objections into enthusiasm by tapping into the one human emotion he could always count on: infinite greed.

Johnny figured it out. Most investors had no idea what this “Transfinite Reality Engine” was or how it purported to work, but they threw money at what sounded like a magical wishbringer.

Positive feedback grew exponentially. The more VC money Johnny sold in, the more he could spend on Patty’s lab — and the more Patty’s lab grew, the more VC money Johnny could sell in.

The two lies fed off of each other. A bizarre multidimensional wishing well generated the excitement needed for investment, and the expanding lab and staff assuaged any scepticism.

The growing buzz also further motivated Johnny to sell and Patty to build. On a roll, his pitch golden, millions poured in while Patty turned abstract equations into shimmering hardware.

Within weeks, Johnny’s ramshackle office in Chicago expanded into a cattle farm-sized facility near Amarillo, Texas, chosen for its low rent, forgotten mine shaft, and open spaces to hide.

Abandoned buildings were renovated into sprawling labs, fuel stations, and temperature controlled servers. The nearby small town of Big Slick boomed in dry goods and booze sales.

Ground zero for the T.R.E. was a couple miles away within a shaft drilled through the Ogallala Aquifer. At the bottom loomed a bunker built by a survivalist rancher during the Cold War.

Dug several hundred yards below the Panhandle plains, the repurposed space was sealed by a thick lead-lined door, and was only accessible through a hydraulic elevator and narrow stairwell.

The Prof prepped the Egyptian tomb-like chamber with its own generator, batteries, and oxygen. Supercooled electromagnets surrounded the egg-shaped sarcophagus of the burgeoning T.R.E.

The framework of the experience was already taking shape: the “traveler” would lie down on a padded gurney and be wheeled into the custom engineered PET scanner for a deep brain scan.

That data fed into banks of a conventional supercomputer, the output of which created a single topological algorithm solvable only by the world’s most advanced quantum computer.

The computation’s output was in turn used to angle the surrounding superconducting electromagnets to precisely channel the concentrated blast of a thermonuclear warhead.

In other words, the Transfinite Reality Engine read the user’s wish, translated it into a multidimensional coordinate system, and teleported them through a nuke created vortex.

“That’s astonishing!” said Johnny after his tour of the prototype. “What a load of horsehit,” he also thought, wondering how he was going to get away with this. Had he finally gone too far?

Back topside, Johnny started wearing cowboy hats, leather chaps, and knee-length snakeskin boots. A chameleon, he acquired a quirky Southern accent and switched to an all-protein diet.

The gun range, horse stables, and BBQ pit were arguably a bit much. Despite all the noise, Patty remained laser-focused on the task at hand, and made slow but steady experimental progress.

With enough capital already hustled to purchase the best positron emission tomography unit money could buy, the next step was plugging into a quantum computer with sufficient fire power.

“How much juice do you need?” said Johnny with a distinct drawl, sitting at his new billiards table-sized desk, polishing a vintage Colt .45 revolver. Bernie Sanders napped at his feet.

“A minimum of 128 qubits for the necessary computations,” said the Professor.

“How long will those calculations take?”

“About 11 million years.”

“Well that sure ties my knickers in a knot,” sighed Johnny. “Can’t you do it any faster?”

“Get me 256 qubits, and it’ll finish within 5.4 seconds.”

“Now you’re cooking with bacon grease!” said Johnny, spitting chewing tobacco. “But I’m too poor to paint, and too proud to whitewash. A guy at IBM owes me a marker. I’ll hit him up.”

“We’ll also need five hundred kilotons TNT of thermal energy,” added Patty, twitches turning into fidgets. “Minimum power threshold for inducing the hyperdimensional transposition.”

“You mean the thermonuclear warhead you’d asked for in Chicago?”

“Yes.”

“I plum forgot about that,” smirked Johnny, tipping his cowboy hat and aiming his revolver at a target on a far wall with Nikola Tesla’s face in the center. “I feel like a fart in a fan factory.”

“We need at least 2.0 x 10^22 ergs of energy for the device to initialize.”

Johnny scratched his chin, scowled, and jacked up his Southern accent. “The brain scanner I can buy, the quantum computer I can lease, but the nuke we’re gonna have to steal — ”

BAM!

Johnny recoiled as his freshly polished Colt .45 accidentally discharged. The blast woke Bernie and sent him leaping frantically into the air, the Prof reacting with a mere reflex blink.

The bullet struck a full yard away from the still pristine face of Nikola Tesla, defiantly staring into eternity.

“Fuck that guy,” said Johnny Fazoolie, blowing smoke from the barrel.

Asking for a Favor

A big part of Johnny’s mystifying success was simply knowing whom to call whenever he needed something. Building bridges and then burning them, his rolodex was always in flux.

“Salami lick ‘em!” shouted Johnny into his smartphone, excited to finally get through to one of his most distrusted yet useful frenemies. “I’m so happy you didn’t die in the war and invasion.”

“Which invasion?” a resonant, Middle Eastern accented voice answered. “Which war? Oh, you mean that invasion!” Booming laughter forced Johnny to pop out his ear pods until it stopped.

Ephraim Abu “Habibi” Netan-Yahoo was half Lebanese, half Israeli, and all trouble. Born in the Golan Heights, he was a natural who rose from Halal cart to international arms dealer by age 28.

Effie’s claim to fame was the Shoe Story, which Johnny had told a million times to his friends while high on DMT. “Nobody can get out of sales tax like this guy,” said Johnny. “Nobody.”

As Johnny would tell it, Abu Yahoo had a large shipment of luxury Italian shoes he needed to import into Israel. Allergic to taxation, he was always on the lookout for schemes to evade the G.

“Taxation is theft,” the mercantile renegade declared. “And no one is a better thief than me!”

He divided the shipment of ten thousand pairs of shoes of many sizes into two lots: The first consisted entirely of ten thousand left shoes, and the second entirely of ten thousand right shoes.

The ten thousand left shoes he shipped tax-free to Haifa; the ten thousand right shoes went tax-free to Ashdod. Both shipments were confiscated at their respective ports and put on auction.

Since the individual lots were worthless on their own, Effie showed up in one city and then another, nonchalantly won each bid for a few new shekels, and united all the pairs tax-free in Tel Aviv.

That level of chutzpah impressed and intimidated Johnny. “I have a very special job for you, Eff,” he teased. “Super exciting import. You’re just the right guy. You’ll have fun. I’ll pay cash.”

His greed commensurate to his lack of ethics, Habibi Netan-Yahoo gleefully bought and sold, imported and exported, anything and everything — from assault weapons to endangered species.

But a fully armed thermonuclear weapon was new to him. “How about a Russian one?” he asked. “Belarus to Saint Petersburg to somewhere in Minsk. I can get you fifty kilotons, no big deal.”

“So sorry, Habibs,” said Johnny. “I need ten times that, about five hundred kilotons, give or take a few. Uses hydrogen gases, you know. The standard nuke is just the trigger. Boom-boom!”

“I’ll call you right back…” said Effie, the line going dead.

Livestreaming the Beef

Johnny’s manic restlessness fueled his competitiveness and flavored his charm, giving both a uniquely Fazooli-esque zing. He exhausted people within ten minutes by simply breathing.

Chronically incapable of sitting still for more than ten minutes, his drug-enhanced moods were back asswards: Downers riled him up, uppers calmed him down, and weed brought him focus.

His #1 enemy was serenity, since that forced Johnny into self-reflection. He fought back with an endless barrage of chemicals and crisis. Nothing distressed him more than peace of mind.

With millions already banked and Patty’s experiments humming along, Johnny finally got a few seconds to relax — utterly freaking him out. With nothing broken, he had no emergency to fix.

So he created a cataclysm, inspired by a billboard he saw on the highway: “The 72 Oz. Steak Challenge,” a 4.5 lb. throw-down by The Big Texan Steak Ranch Restaurant along Interstate 40.

Taking place on a raised table in the main dining room, participants agreed to pay $72 up front, their money refunded if they could complete the steak, potato, rolls, and salad in an hour or less.

Bored by the T.R.E. project, and famished from an all-night poker game in Big Slick, Johnny insisted the Professor join him for lunch. “They livestream the contest on YouTube!” he beamed.

Johnny ordered the steak medium-rare, and was allowed to taste it before diving in. After the clock started, he couldn’t stand, leave the table, or let anyone else touch the meal until done.

The world record holder was a 500-pound Siberian tiger, clocking in at 90 seconds. The human champion was 125-pound speed eater Molly Schuyler, with a time of 4 minutes 18 seconds.

“I doubt I’ll top Molly,” acquiesced Johnny, eager to chow. “But lemme take a shot at Joey Chestnut’s record of just under nine minutes. You ready? I’m ready. Fuck it. Smile everyone!”

The digital cameras rolled as Johnny went for it. But as was usually the case, his eyes were bigger than his stomach, and his bold promises far in excess of his fleeting ability to keep them.

Less than five minutes in, Johnny felt like he was going to puke. Patty, staring at a chair, had a barf bag at the ready. Rather than being saved by the bell, Johnny was saved by a truck horn.

Patty watched the rental van pull into the parking lot of the bright yellow building with blue trim, then stop near the side entrance. The horn sounded again, followed by a shout-out, “Fa-ZOOL!”

“Wha’?” mumbled Johnny, looking through the window, his face full of steak. Out of the van cab leaped none other than his shady importer Abu Yahoo, inexplicably wearing an orange jumpsuit.

The crazy Arab-Israeli jumped up and down, waving his arms, trying to get Johnny’s attention and succeeding. “Jesus Christ,” said Johnny Fazoolie. “Look what the Mossad dragged in.”

Effie pointed to his van. Johnny winked at the cameras and shrugged, having factored in the possibility that his dealer had just delivered a live thermonuclear warhead to a Texas steakhouse.

“Lousy timing,” he said, pushing his unfinished meal away and nodding into the livestream. “I retreat to fight another day!” He stood and asked the waiter, “can I have the rest to go?”

The loss of $72 and his pride was quickly mitigated by the gain of a hydrogen bomb. In the parking lot, Johnny and Patty watched in awe as Effie unlatched and swung open the van doors.

“Voila!” said Abu Yahoo, leaping into the truck and caressing the tip of the sleek black cone. Nearly his size, the thing was about six feet long and two feet across at the base. “You like it?”

“Habibi!” exclaimed Johnny, taking off his cowboy hat. “I can’t believe you did it.” At over seven hundred pounds, the thermonuclear warhead lay on a palette secured by nylon ropes.

“Looks like a W88 series,” said Patty, climbing up onto the bed and examining the device. “Are the primaries and secondaries activated? Has the tritium booster gas canister been replaced?”

“You ask for a bomb, I get you a bomb,” said Effie, shaking his head. “Are you a man or a woman? Either way, you must be a British because your skin is paler than mountain goat’s milk.”

“What’s the yield?” asked Patty, ignoring him. The Professor’s portable geiger counter crackled like a popcorn maker as it moved up and down, flush with the smooth geometric surface.

“A little bird told me 475 kilotons,” said Effie. “The same little bird also told me they’ll be missing it soon on the submarine, so best if I leave you the car keys.” He tossed them to Johnny.

“Enough boom for the T.R.E.?” asked Johnny, catching the keys and putting his cowboy hat back on. Patty nodded, as Effie jumped from the van and gave Johnny a big bear hug. “Mazel Tov!”

“I’ll Venmo you,” said Johnny as a car pulled up to whisk Abu Yahoo away. “Kiss my ass,” yelled Effie through the closing window. “Swiss bank only. No PayPal, bitch. I love you!”

Racing the Storm

Patty couldn’t drive, Johnny behind the wheel all the way back to the compound. The last thing they needed was to be pulled over by the Texas Highway Patrol, so he kept it under the limit.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Better Business Bureau all had Johnny on watch lists, so choosing to hide within the vast Panhandle felt safe.

A creature of pure intuition, Johnny hardly ever researched such bold decisions, and that hardly ever mattered. This time, though, a bit of homework might have helped him avoid disaster.

That’s because unbeknownst to Our Hero, his Amarillo neighbors not only included The Peace Farm advocacy group for denuclearization, but the Pantex Plant where all the nukes were made.

About 17 miles northeast of the city and just off Route 60, for decades the 18,000 acre site was the country’s primary assembly, disassembly, and retrofit plant for the nation’s nuclear stockpile.

With restricted airspace and its own multi-level security forces, a fly didn’t buzz or a cow fart within twenty clicks of Pantex without tripping an alarm or alerting armed troops on standby.

As Johnny and Patty nondescriptly barreled across the plain carrying a detonation ready thermonuclear warhead, the powers-that-be noticed a blip and monitored their progress.

Rolling east on Interstate 40, they coasted seven miles due south of the nuke factory when their signal got warm. By the time they made a left onto Route 207 nine miles away, things got hot.

Johnny was singing Led Zeppelin’s version of Willie Dixon’s “Whole Lotta Love” when Patty tugged on his sleeve. At first he didn’t even notice, accustomed to ignoring Patty altogether.

“You need coolin’,” sang Johnny Fazoolie. “Baby, I’m not — What?” he smirked, annoyed at the interruption. He wore Douglas MacArthur aviator sunglasses and squinted into the Texas glare.

“I see a formation of black helicopters and a fleet of black SUVs,” said Patty without a hint of emotion. “I calculate that they will overtake us within 13 minutes if we maintain this trajectory.”

“Holy fuck!” shouted Johnny, frantically looking all about, almost running the van off the road. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just did,” said Patty, staring at the plastic sliding cup holder between their seats.

The approaching security caravan roared across County Road 6, the formation of choppers low overhead. They were trying to cut them off between the junction and the seat of Carson County.

Their compound was about five miles north, halfway between them and the town of Panhandle. Johnny made a sharp right onto Road 5, and headed toward their secret underground location.

“This is good enough for government work!” yelled Johnny through the wind and noise. “Maybe they’ll lose us along this dusty out of the way shitty little nowheresville country fucking road.”

“Don’t count on it. They have the best surveillance gear in the world,” said Patty, opening, closing, opening the glove compartment. “Besides: If we can see them, then they can see us.”

“Good points,” said Johnny, flooring it. Getting livestreamed on YouTube probably didn’t help the cause, he thought. “Jeez, what was I thinking?” Not much was usually his correct answer.

Their situation would have been hopeless had Johnny’s uncanny winning streak not kept on streaking. Vegas fortunes and misfortunes aside, Johnny was a stubborn, relentless survivor.

He kept beating the longest odds. Even Johnny fessed up to his chronic good luck, a trend that thrilled and terrified him as if he were a compulsive slot machine player who just hit the jackpot.

How many more times would he have to pull on the lever to prime the machine for another win? When would he reach that cross-over point between being a lucky bastard vs. a broke loser?

Who knew? Apparently not yet: The moment he could see the stern faces behind the windshields of the SUVs, and hear the whirling blades of the choppers, a Blue Norther hit out of nowhere.

Within minutes the temperature dropped thirty degrees and the sunny skies became dark as ink. Billowing clouds streamed in from the Oklahoma horizon and shrouded the day into night.

The sudden cold and dark was intense but wouldn’t have saved them — that was left to the torrents of sleet and then hail the size of golf balls. The new year arrived in Texas in a Texan way: Yuge.

Under cover of the sky seeming to explode, Johnny disappeared into the maelstrom as the SUVs were forced to slow down and the helicopters retreated to the south. He couldn’t see the road.

“Am I driving OK?” asked Johnny, refusing to take off his sunglasses. “Time to put out the fire and call in the dogs,” he added, not waiting for a reply. The world had finally caught up to him.

Patty watched the wiper blades swoosh back and forth then forth and back across the windshield. Rinse, repeat.

Diving for Cover

Hauling ass along Route 5, Johnny felt like this was the end of the road. He’d sold in a fantasy, spent millions of other people’s money on building a compound, stocking it with exotic toys.

He bought advanced bioimaging equipment, leased time on a quantum computer, and stole a live nuke. If the Feds didn’t catch and lock him up, then the creditors would take everything away.

The more he sold the more he spent, his startup pyramid scheme crescendoing into this moment where everything was set up, nothing actually worked, and the authorities were headed his way.

Although his thoughts were grim his good luck persisted, maybe just to piss him off. Right when Johnny felt he had nowhere left to go, Patty spotted the abandoned oil well at the top of the shaft.

The Prof pointed to the silhouette of the tower, barely visible through the sleet and hail. “I see it!” yelled Johnny, squinting through the downpour. “Let’s unload the nuke and plug her in.”

After all, Johnny figured, what was left to lose? Maybe the live nuke could give him some leverage, room to negotiate with the Feds. Losing it was embarrassing, an explosion inexcusable.

Despite the mayhem, Patty was completely onboard. The Professor considered the T.R.E. like every other project they’d ever worked on: A problem to be solved, science moving forward.

In stark contrast to Johnny, the Professor believed real progress had been made, the thing might actually work. Otherwise Patty would have left Fazoolie’s shit show long before it got this far.

They leaped into action the second the van slid to a stop near the mine shaft’s elevator door. Johnny looked for a hydraulic dolly while Patty untied the nylon restraints, freeing the warhead.

Both of them had to push with all their might to slide the seven hundred pound cone off the van bed and onto the dolly, raised flush to the truck’s height. Patty resecured it with the ropes.

One on either side, they pushed the dolly a few yards and into the elevator. Johnny hit the red DOWN button as the doors closed and they made direct eye contact for only the third time.

The sudden vulnerability freaked them both out, a tremor in the force that made Bernie Sanders jump on top of the cone. “Meow,” said the black cat, its white mittens pawing at the bomb.

Johnny used the distraction to look away from Patty, and rub the ears of their unexpected team member. “Hey, Fuckface,” said Johnny. “What’re you doing way over here? Mousing a nuke?”

The elevator continued to descend into the shaft, gears turning and metal screeching as the temperature, humidity, and pressure noticeably changed with every few meters of movement.

“I need to run logistics prior to integration,” said Patty, notebook out. “I need to calibrate the warhead, and determine its exact yield. Orientation of the W88 will also be vitally important.”

“Important for what?’’ asked Johnny, still convinced the only convincing that mattered was the money people. “What’s the resale value you think? For now, it’ll at least keep the cops away.”

The elevator ground to a jarring stop, and the doors opened into the repurposed concrete bunker. Rows of bright white lights turned on in quick succession, revealing the T.R.E. in all its glory.

The egg-shaped device was hollow, its shell covered by powerful electromagnets. Through an opening stood the PET scanner and its gurney, with a round indentation in the floor at the base.

“Wow,” said Johnny, impressed. “We’ve howdied, but haven’t shook. Looking cool, almost sellable.” Patty helped him roll the dolly close enough to the device to unload the warhead.

They lowered the hydraulics and slowly angled the bomb to slide as gently as possible into its receptacle. Johnny audibly gasped as the several hundred pound cone fell in with a thunk.

Patty instantly got to work with what seemed like a dozen tasks at once: Turning things on, plugging them in, twisting wires apart, screwing parts together. Bernie leaped onto the gurney.

“Well don’t you look like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” said Johnny, his North Texas drawl returning out of nowhere like the Blue Norther that just struck up top.

Commotion and yelling from the stairwell adjacent to the elevator sent Bernie leaping behind a computer console. Johnny frowned and shook his head at Patty. “The gig is up. They’re onto us.”

Hooching the Fazoolie

“You’ve got no place to go!” shouted a voice from above, the words ricocheting down the long stairwell and into the concrete research crypt. “Give it up, Fazoolie. We’re on our way down.”

“Let’s surrender,” shrugged Johnny. “We can trade the nuke for probation, maybe a lien on all the VC money we burned through. I’ll call my trusted attorney, Schlomo Shakur. He’s amazing.”

“Get in,” said Professor Flannery, pointing to the opening facing them at the front of the Transfinite Reality Engine. “I’ve already begun initializing the qubits of the quantum computer.”

“Now’s not the time to goof around,” said Johnny, gesturing to the stairwell. “We’re cornered, owe tens of millions of dollars, have tons of bad receipts, and a stolen thermonuclear warhead.”

“I said get in,” repeated the Professor, pushing Johnny into the egg and on top of the gurney. “I’ve tweaked the settings to accommodate a lower yield of 475 kilotons, plus or minus 15.”

“Now wait a second,” insisted Johnny, trying to stand. “You’re not actually going to try and turn this thing on, are you? I mean, my song and dance was primo, but nobody ever really thought — ”

Patty pushed Johnny back onto the gurney, restrained him with belts, plugged in headphones and a mic, and wheeled him directly into the advanced positron emission tomography brain scanner.

“The sensing device is ready, the qubits are initialized, and the W88 is sequenced,” announced the Prof. “I’ve spent six months of my career working on this, and you’re not pulling the plug.”

Johnny rocked himself back and forth and clawed at his restraints trying to get out. Patty closed the hatch door of the egg and monitored the readouts on multiple panels surrounding the T.R.E.

Shrouded in darkness, Johnny yelled into his mic. “Unplug me right now!” Patty ignored him, the increasing racket and louder shouts from the stairwell, and put on the Prof’s own headphones.

“Do you copy?” asked Patty, checking the levels.

“Are you mad at me?” asked Johnny, reading loud and clear. “Leftovers from the steak dinner are in the van, I think. I know I’m a selfish, greedy son of a bitch. Please forgive me.”

“On my signal, you will concentrate on a clear, unambiguous desire.”

“I’m ready to do that now: Lemme outta here!”

“T-minus 20 seconds until scan, and counting…”

Bernie Sanders leaped onto a console and watched the Professor twist dials, flick switches, press buttons, and tap screens.

Glowing turquoise light from the PET scanner illuminated the inside of the Transfinite Reality Engine, enabling Johnny to see the electromagnets along the shell prepare for their calibration.

“T-minus 10 seconds…” continued the Professor. “Now’s the time to imagine something that you want, Johnny. Anything that you’ve passionately desired since this project first began…”

The monotonous tone of Patty’s voice calmed Johnny down, got him thinking. Without realizing it, he almost immediately said out loud: “I want this goddamned thing to work.”

“Right!” said the Prof. “We have a clear signal. Data is processing… algorithm has been compiled and sent to the quantum computer… Six seconds until magnetic synchronization…”

Vibrations swept through the equipment and reverberated throughout the subterranean chamber. “I feel like a goat on astroturf,” thought Johnny, as Bernie Sanders hid beneath a mainframe.

The turquoise light faded as Johnny saw the superconducting electromagnets reorient themselves into stunning geometric configurations all around him. “Activating the flux field,” said Patty.

Looming next to him, at the exact second foci of the egg-shaped ellipsoid, the six foot tall, jet black cone fueling the Transfinite Reality Engine made a clicking sound. “Three, two, one…”

“Hooch your Fazoolie, motherfuckers!” yelled Johnny, a billionth of a second before —

Going on a Date

At the center of the Hofgarten in Munich is the Diana Temple, a twelve-sided Renaissance era gazebo with eight open arcades offering amazing views into the gorgeous city park.

Less than a five minute walk from the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, the spot was Dr. Basine Felderhossen’s favorite getaway for lunch breaks and afternoon meditation.

This day was no different, although the weather was exceptional, making it more difficult than usual for Basine to head back to the stack of grant proposals waiting in her office at the Institute.

So she let her mind drift, staring into one of the shell fountains inside the gazebo. Uncertain how much time passed, Basine’s reverie was suddenly broken by a gruff, distinctly American voice.

“You gave me a great idea and a whole barnyard full of doubts, Doc,” said the Southern accented man. “But let me tell you, ever since we met I’ve been riding a gravy train with biscuit wheels!”

Startled, Basine turned around to discover a tall blonde Yank wearing a large cowboy hat, leather vest, jeans and chaps, and knee-length snakeskin boots. He held a white cat with black mittens.

“I do not believe we have ever met,” said Basine, nonetheless experiencing a nearly incapacitating feeling of deja vu.

“I’m Johnny Fazoolie,” he said, using the cat’s paw to playfully shake Basine’s hand. “And this is Sandy Berns. You and I met in another Universe, and made a bet. I won, so now you owe me a date in this Universe.”

“What utter nonsense,” scowled and smiled Basine, irritated and titillated. “And why, pray tell, would I ever want to go on a date with you — in this Universe or any other?”

“It’ll be fun!”

“That’s all?”

“What’s the point of doing a deal,” winked Johnny Fazoolie. “If you don’t have any fun?”

Meow.

Stay tuned for the next chapter of Fazoolie and the T.R.E. #comingsoon