"My God!" shouted Maraharishi¹. "I don’t understand any of you people!"
DeGana ran over to Anderson. "What do you have, Igmar?"
"I’m....oh. Right." The doctor regained his composure. "Well, do you remember the problem we were working on in the first place?"
DeGana thought back. "As I recall, it was comparing weather fluctuations from month to month."
"Right. Do you remember what our sample city was?"
DeGana thought again. "Wasn’t it...Spearfish, South Dakota?"
"Right again. Now, do you remember how we coded the program, in regards to the months?"
This time DeGana strained his thoughts considerably. "Um, wasn’t it with integers?"
"Exactly. With January being 1, February being 2, etc."
"So, the numbers..."
Both scientists finished. "Correspond to the months!"
DeGana got a sheet of paper. "Let me see...9 101110 264 11 982 1011 / 38 12. Okay, 9 is September. And the next one is 1."
"No, the next one is 10. There is no 0 month."
"Okay...so all the numbers in that row are probably two digit."
"Right."
"So 10 is October. 11 is November. 10 is October again."
"Keep going..."
"Why? Where is it leading?"
"Just keep going."
DeGana sighed. "2 is February. 6 is June. 4 is April. Now, spaces seem to indicate a change from single to double digit. So 11 is November again. 9 is September. 8 is August. 2 is February. 10 is October. 11 is November. Then a slash. Then 3 is March. 8 is August. and 12 is December."
"Right."
"But...what does it mean?"
A twinkle in Anderson’s eyes lit up the room. "Take the first letter of those months."
"S ONO FJA NSAF ON / MA D?"
"Or..."
"Son of Jan Safon / Mad."
"Bingo."
Meanwhile, Yolanda and Ziggy looked at each other longingly, as if their memories threatened to tear them apart. How could they have forgotten? The scientists looked at each other as well, and all four remembered back to a point almost ten years ago.
"Mrs. Safon?" Master Spy Jannette Safon looked up from her dossier to look at her friend Admiral Lymon. "I’m going to keep this brief. We need you. We need you now like we’ve never needed you before."
"You’d better be referring to me as a spy, Admiral." Jan drank slowly from her coffee.
"I am. Do you recall the shuttle disaster?"
"Of course. It’s impossible to forget; it’s been the news lately. Why?"
"We have reason to believe that it was caused by roaches." Some lengthy explanations later about theories of roach evolutions, motivations, and battle strategies finally led to more personal matters.
Admiral Lymon inhaled on his cigar. "We are assembling a team of five. The Burbank Five. And we need you to play an integral role in the protection of earth. We feel we may have less than five years before a full assault."
"I’m sorry, Admiral, but I can’t. I love my two children and Ziggy too much to..."
"If you don’t do this, Jan, then those you love won’t have a place to live in."
Admiral Lymon only called her ‘Jan’ when things were really serious. Jan frowned as she realized that the Admiral was truly scared for the safety of the planet. His hunches were always correct in the past, and there was no reason to feel that they weren’t now. "What am I going to do?" she asked.
"You will undergo extensive training at a top-secret base up until the day of the invasion. Then the team will go and hopefully prevail."
"But what about me? What about my life? My family?"
"Your children will be safe with Mr. Safon, won’t they?"
"Well..." Jan hesitated. "I have reason to believe that the children are psychic."
"What?! How do you know if a five-year-old and a six-year old are..."
"Just trust me, okay?" She was loathe to tell him about Ziggy’s abilities.
"Well, that complicates things. We may very well need them as a back up should we fail."
"But how can we protect them?"
Admiral Lymon thought for a moment. "Well, we can split them up. Hide them."
"All three of them? How safe is that?"
"They will be more difficult to trace if they are apart."
"But if one is captured, won’t they be able to use them to get to the other?"
"No...we’ll implant powerful hypnotic blocks on all four of you."
"But won’t the children be easy to spot? They are so similar"
Lymon thought again for a moment. "We can disguise one of them. The boy. We’ll make him MAD."
"What?!?"
"MAD," Lymon explained. "Male Anachronically Displaced."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It’s a process developed by Chet and...by Dr. DeGana and...by the two scientists. It means that we’ll lock him at five years old until we reverse the process. Then we can hypnotize the scientists as well."
"And my daughter?"
"Will grow up normally. That way, no one will ever suspect that they are related.
"What will break the hypnotic conditioning?"
"Well, your son is a psionic receiver, so let’s say that when he senses the approach of the roaches, he can give a keyword."
"What keyword?"
"’Nine.’"
And thus the plans were made; Jonathan Safon lived in Ohio, Raindrop Jannette (Nicknamed Raindrop, or R.J.) Safon moved to New York, Zigmund Safon (who changed his name to Frye) moved to South Carolina, and Janette Safon changed her name to Yolanda Win. And upon the successful repulsion of the first roach invasion, Jan remained on active duty as a spy, where she received the assignment from Admiral Lymon to keep an eye on the Safon boy, ironically posing as his mother, with her co-worker, Uiop Povashanko.
Unfortunately, the single most devastating effect of Kopra’s forgotten headlights was that the hypnotic bonds refused to be acknowledged by the keyword ‘nine’. Not until the effects were negated were their actual minds returned.
The only man who knew the whole truth gave his life defeating cockroaches.
The whole truth being revealed, of all places and times, now.
In Clyde Millers’ house, during the most confusing and hectic moments of Earth’s history.
Jan could hardly contain herself. "Raindrop! Jonathan! I’m so happy to have you back in my arms!" She hugged and kissed the children, much to Jonathan’s delight and Raindrop’s disgust. "Mommmmm..." whined Raindrop.
Suddenly Anderson entered the living room from the kitchen. "Here, Jonathan, eat this."
"What is it?" asked Jon, questioningly.
"Bagel and cream cheese."
Jonathan took it and nibbled it apprehensively and made a face. Suddenly he grew...and grew..until he was about 5’ 10" tall, and the form that was a five-year-old Jonathan was replaced with a fifteen-year-old Jonathan. "I wanna kiss a girl," he said.
DeGana nodded knowingly. "The cream cheese was the catalyst to reverse the MAD process. Ah, to undergo three years of puberty in five seconds. Fascinating, really."
Jan looked at Chet. "But, why did you choose cream cheese as the catalyst for reversing the MAD process? I mean, how did you know Jonathan wouldn’t eat any cream cheese?"
"Well," said Chet. "Have you ever known any five-year-old who ate cream cheese?"
Jan chuckled and threw her arms around Ziggy, separated for so long and yet together again at last. "Well, we’re finally together again!"
And everyone laughed good-naturedly.
Then Clyde Pennet reappeared. "Hello. Let’s try this again. I’m Clyde Pennet."
And everyone stopped laughing.
¹ In Hindi.