THE  IMPROVED LUBRICANT                          

By Edward A. Rodosek

 

“Minnie,” said Carl Watson, “do you know what friction is?”

I glanced at him and shook my head.

He insisted. “I mean... how shall I put it... do you know what rubbing is?”

I looked at him. “Of course I know; do you think I'm stupid or something? Rubbing is when he and she by a very close dance–”

“No, no, I didn't mean that. Look--imagine you're pushing a ten-pound weight on a desk, right?”

My next-door neighbor Carl sometimes utters such nonsense I really don't know if he's normal. “Push a weight on the desk? Good heavens, why would I do such a stupid thing?”

“Okay, okay. Imagine I'm pushing that weight on the desk--just for an example.”

I looked askance at him. His ugly face, with its too-big nose and too-thick eyebrows, was inflamed. “All right, pal. But I warn you, Carl Watson, if you're trying to poke fun at me–”

“For heaven's sake, Minnie, I'm just trying to explain what I do at my job.”

I was a bit disappointed. So Carl just heaves some weights at Chemical United, the big factory not far from Albert's garage. He is a simple manual worker and his job isn’t a bit more important than mine--cleaning out the garage. Why does he carry his head so high, then? And his cocky girlfriend Susan is worse, with her high heels and low-cut tops…

“Hey, Minnie, are you listening at all?” Carl's voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Sure. Go on.”

“Look, it's quite simple. The table is rough and a bit uneven, so the weight can't slide on its surface well--the friction puts the brakes on its movement. But if I greased the table surface, the friction would be reduced and–”

“That's loony,” I interrupted him. “You don't grease the table; there's a special cleaning spray for it.”

He flung his arms up in desperation. “I'm not talking about cleaning. Minnie, sit down for awhile. If you'll listen to me for two minutes I'll buy you a big ice cream at Grover's, okay?”

“With whipped cream?”

He nodded. Actually, I didn't care about whipped cream, but it would mean that we'd be longer in Grover's Grocery and Saloon, and Susan, who's a waitress there, would be furious at Carl taking all that time to talk to me instead of her.

Carl leaned forward and his pock-marked face was radiant with excitement. “You know, I work in the lubricant development department. We try to invent  lubricants that cut friction as much as possible so the machines consume less energy, understand?”

All those unknown terms baffled me, but I nodded because of the promised ice cream and furious Susan.

“So far,” continued Carl, “we've managed to reach a friction coefficient of about–.” He paused, probably noticing my slack jaw. “Well then, let's forget the numbers. Let's just say the department chief has promised a promotion to the rank of supervisor and a special bonus to the first one of us who invents a lubricant that lessens friction substantially.”

“Swell,” I said. Carl was absorbed in thought and I just knew he was already imagining himself as a supervisor. He'd have a better income, he'd buy a new car and some fancy clothes–and, of course, then he'd propose marriage to that cocky Susan…

I got up, grabbed a dust-cloth and shook the dust off it right by Carl's face.

He stepped away in surprise. “What's the matter with you, Minnie?”

“Nothing. I simply won't give in to that damned ice cream, that’s all. And with whipped cream too! You want me to grow fat as a pig, don’t you? Go run to that crazy Susan of yours and let me alone.”
***
Our little town, Silver Creek, had about two-and-a–half-thousand inhabitants, and we all got on well with one another. The town was named after the narrow creek that flowed over the desert plain for only a few months in spring every year, and then dried up, leaving only a large, shallow pond at the end of Main Street.

Albert Ross had the only garage in our town and he wasn’t too demanding a boss. All the same, I liked to do my job properly. I saw that all the shelves were free of engine oil stains, the concrete floor was swept clean, and the sidewalk in front of the garage was hosed down thoroughly.

My only complaint was that there wasn’t any cleanser for the chrome surfaces. So one evening I went to the old, long-abandoned depot of Chemical United. First, I had to squeeze between the half-broken boards of the fence, and then I had to crouch down to get through a low, dark passage into a cellar, where stinking water trickled from somewhere upstairs. I knew there was a thick liquid in some black cistern down there that my late mother had praised as a perfect cleanser for all metal surfaces.

I was disappointed because I couldn’t turn the rusty closing wheel at the bottom of the cistern. Still, there was a good deal of the greasy liquid I wanted around the wheel axle, so I put on gloves, borrowed from Carl, and slopped most of the grease into a small plastic box. Then I went home and in passing I put Carl’s gloves in his mailbox so he’d find them the next morning.

***

I started my job each day at five in the afternoon, when our garage mechanics finished their work. The next day I was almost at the gate when I heard a raucous noise coming out of Grover’s Saloon. Among the men’s voices was a familiar woman’s giggle. Obviously Susan thought she was being paid to have fun. Through the wide open windows I saw her in her low-cut blouse, sitting next to Carl and smiling at him seductively.

“What’re they celebrating?” I asked Albert.

“Don’t you know? Watson was promoted. They say that he’s developed some miracle lubricant at Chemical United that’s much better than the existing ones.”

When I put on my overalls I noticed Carl was crossing the road, while Susan, that tart, was trying to hold him back. But he wrested himself away from her and then she got angry and returned to Grover’s. Carl went to his old car, opened the trunk and lifted out a two-gallon plastic jug.

Pretending not to be interested, I was preparing my tools, adding the little box with my new grease, when Carl entered the garage and proudly showed me his jug.

“Look, Minnie, this is my latest invention.” His face was glowing with excitement.

“Really? And what’s that?”

“It’s my revolutionary new lubricant oil. It reduces friction nearly by nearly two thirds--can you believe that?” He put his jug on the counter next to the basin in which our mechanics washed various machine parts in engine oil.

I ignored his boasting, put a tiny bit of my grease on a washrag, and began to clean the chromium parts of the locker. Oh, yes! After a few seconds my eyes glittered at the shine.

“Minnie!” Carl’s voice was imploring. “Why don’t you say anything? I got lucky and now I want to share my joy with my friends. You’re my friend, aren’t you?”

The words softened me. “Alright, tell me everything about your oil. Still, I have work to do here, understand?”

He opened the wide lid of his plastic jug and sniffed what was inside it. “It’s strange, but I don’t know exactly what makes this oil so different from all the others we’ve tested so far.” He shook his head and it seemed he was absorbed in thought. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t add anything special to the basic ingredients. Early in the morning I poured some of it into a container. I was in a hurry so it got all over my gloves--the ones you returned to me yesterday--but I didn’t mind because they were still a bit dirty from the–”

Carl paused in the middle of the sentence and looked me straight in the eye. “Listen, Minnie--what did you do with my gloves yesterday?” His voice was hoarse with excitement.

“What did I do?” His tone annoyed me. “I worked, that’s all. If I’d known these precious gloves of yours mustn’t get dirty I wouldn’t have asked for them in the first place.”

Angrily, I seized the plastic box that contained my grease, but I accidentally dropped it into the basin and at the same time knocked over Carl’s jug. That fell, and the oil flowed out and mingled with my grease. Carl and I shouted at the same time, both of us trying to save anything we could, but in vain--the mess in the basin rustled and foamed and out of it rose a cloud of translucent smoke, which quickly spread in all directions.

And that was my last normal moment in the normal world.

***

I felt my legs were moving away from the counter as if somebody were dragging a carpet out from under my feet. I tried to grab the counter but it was slippery as an eel, and as I crashed to the floor I heard Carl’s groan as my elbow jabbed his face.

I was lying helpless on the floor and it was so slippery that I couldn’t even lean on my elbows. All the tools on the counter began to fall to the floor, one after another. The drawers of the chest began to slide out slowly, as if pulled by ghosts, and fall on the slippery counter and then slide onto the slippery floor, which bit by bit was being covered with different tools, gearwheels, spanners, and spare parts. To my left I saw the hydraulic car jack, which held up a silver Pontiac, solemnly collapse, and I watched as the car glided at a leisurely pace onto the paved garage floor, through the open gate, over the sidewalk and, in passing, drag with it Albert’s advertisement stand. Several screams from the street told me the slithering plague was spreading outside, and then I heard the loud bang of two colliding cars, although, to my surprise, it was preceded by no screeching of brakes.

I felt as if someone had greased my entire body with melted butter and then laid me on a skating rink. Then I heard somebody tramp down the stairs and open the door into the garage. The door was behind my back so I couldn’t see him, but after he shouted I knew Albert was the one who’d made the fatal error. After he’d tried vainly to grab the doorknob, he arrived next to me, lying on his back helplessly like an overturned turtle. In the next instant the drifting curse expanded into Albert’s office, and soon all its contents fell to the floor--files, documents, bills, pencils, block-calendar, table lamp... Instinctively I seized the notebook computer that had floated out of the Albert's office, but it slipped out of my hands like a wet bar of soap and drifted up to the opposite wall, and after bouncing against that it slowly returned to me. While all this happened--as I watched things slide off surfaces and collect on one side of the floor--a silly thought occurred to me: how wrong we were to have believed that we could make any surface perfectly horizontal.

Together with all that debris, Carl, Albert and I slipped out of the garage, across the sidewalk onto Main Street, and began to float in a stately procession among several cars, bikes and market stalls.

I considered myself lucky because I was wearing my one-piece overalls, so only my shoes had come off and were travelling alongside me. Albert’s trousers glided down to his ankles and Carl’s shirt rolled up over his face and revealed his muscular chest. All three of us passed by Grover’s Pub, and at that instant through its open door glided several of the regular customers, in varying states of  undress. The screeching Susan was one of them and, despite my own desperate position, I noticed with spiteful satisfaction that she looked like she’d just escaped from a garbage disposal unit.

Our snail-like travel continued, and as we passed by Sandy’s drugstore, most of the objects in its vicinity that weren’t nailed down joined our undignified procession. In time, the flood separated me from my comrades, and I could hear Susan whining from somewhere behind me. The son of our pharmacist grabbed onto a young sycamore as he slid by it and he managed to hold onto it for awhile, but then the large chest from Mrs. Meyer’s boarding house knocked him free and washed him away. Alongside me a cat traveled, bursting with anger and trying vainly to affix its claws into the road.

When I passed by the mayor’s house a view opened up in the distance and I hoped somewhere there would be somebody who could stand upright and so could help us. Several hundred yards away I noticed the figure of a rotund man whom I recognized as our sheriff Pendell, standing next to his jeep. Oh, merciful God, thank you!

The incredible spreading curse reached him at the exact moment when he tried to enter his car. His legs churned, the jeep began to drift like an untied boat on a lake, and then he gradually, as though in slow-motion, collapsed to the ground.

By now I was surrounded by people in varying states of panic; we were all being carried along by the slow current and most of us had already stopped struggling against the unavoidable. I heard a volley of men’s oaths, the bitter weeping of a number of children, and several women’s voices praying. Simpson, the barber, pale with fright, was still grasping scissors in his hand; however, old Barney, the local drunk, sozzled as always, lay on his back, with eyes closed and a happy smile on his face.

The whole time, many smaller items from the houses, stores and courtyards on both sides of the street kept flowing into the stream. There were tables and chairs, cupboards and bookcases, tools and garden implements, half a dozen fluttering chickens, uncounted bottles and glasses, tableware and shaving kits, bunches of bananas, crates with oranges, apples and grapes, onions and potatoes--everything imagineable. It occurred to me that we were like a large market in which all the buyers and sellers lay down on the ground among the wares.

I could have never imagined what-all was hidden in such a small town as Silver Creek. More and more goods of all different sorts heaped up, and I had to watch that some heavy or hard object didn’t hit my head--the postman’s scooter and Mrs. Mendel’s birdcage with its parrots were especially unpleasant. Miller’s bakery contributed uncounted loaves of bread and cakes, and Branford’s butcher shop coughed up his huge mastiff Hugo, which drifted among several dozen culets to which the bewildered animal didn’t pay any attention.

Luckily, we were oozing at a slow pace, and now I realized that our odd march-past was heading towards the town’s pond, the lowest point of Silver Creek, our beloved but now so cruelly-humiliated little town. When we approached our church, the last building in town, my eyes caught a glimpse of the church clock--both its hands were hanging impotently downwards. Then I was forced to push a stinking wig away from my face, and a moment later tepid water enclosed me.

When I found my breath again and stopped coughing, I realized I was sitting in our pond, up to the neck in the muddy water. I was so weak I just sat still and rested, giving thanks to heaven for my salvation and for that splendid, peaceful repose.

All around me were people and floating articles, and all the time new ones were arriving. It was just a question of time until everybody drifted to the pond and fell into the water. They were arriving in irregular intervals now, and those who were already in the water greeted the newcomers with encouraging shouts; the most resounding 'plops' into the pond were rewarded with applause.

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around. Never in my life had I rejoiced so much at seeing Carl. His face was handsome, I thought, and his nose and nicely-shaped eyebrows gave him a masculine look.

“Minnie,” he said, “do you think we’re in the saddle again?”

I shook my head. “Bosh!”

“I mean, do you think our slithering trouble has ended? Just look around--what do you see?”

“What do I see? I see the entire population of Silver Creek sitting in the dirty water.”

“That’s exactly what I mean, Minnie! We’re sitting and not lying anymore, otherwise all of us would have been drowned by now! That means that this slime gas is powerless here in the water. Look, I’ll show you.”

He grabbed a floating lath, thrust it into the muddy bottom and scrambled up with difficulty; now, the water was no higher than his waist. At this very moment Susan glided into the pond, grunting like a pig. She hoisted herself onto all fours on the pond’s muddy bottom, wet strands of hair plastered to her face with green frogspawn and one of her false eyelashes hanging by a thread. She sniveled and sobbed loudly, and when I caught Carl’s gaze on her I realized that their romance was over for good.

“Hey, people!” shouted Carl, and many of them turned to look at him. “We’re saved, don’t you see? The water prevents that... that slippery gas from reaching the bottom! That mud could rescue us!” 

I hadn’t a clue what Carl was talking about but I was pleased when I saw that everyone in the pond recognized him as a leader. He was standing there proud and upright, and his handsome face reflected boldness and strength. If anybody had dared to say his nose was too big, I’d have scratched their eyes out.

Carl bent down, sank both his arms into the water, and lifted two handfuls of slime from the bottom. When he splashed it onto the shore and touched the muddy surface, he grinned triumphantly--it was no more slippery than any other thing covered with mud. With care, a person could stand on it and walk.

Now all of us began to wade toward the muddied shore, forming a narrow file and lending each other a hand. Some people helped themselves with sticks, thrusting them into the ground. I offered my hand to Susan because now I felt sorry for her. There were several stumbles that looked like pratfalls, and everyone who accidentally stepped outside the narrow borders of the  new pa th slipped into the pond again. We panted from the effort and tried to assess our bumps and bruises. Morelli, our barber, had a bloody scratch on his forehead, and Pendell’s little daughter, Erica, moaned with a sprained ankle, but it seemed that nobody was seriously hurt.

In time the path grew so long that the protective muddy coating thinned out. And once again Carl was the one who found a solution. He used the sharp end of a stick to scrape the dusty yellow surface of the road and that helped a bit.

“It seems,” he began to explain, “that the wind blew away most of the gas across the desert so the slick surface isn’t forming anymore.”

I hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about; but all the others seemed to understand and support him. Him, Carl Watson, the new hero of Silver Creek. 
***
It took us more than a week before we managed to put our little town in order again. With the authorization of our mayor, Mr. Metlock, Carl hired the professional fire brigade from Bullstock to come into Silver Creek, and they hosed everything down. Naturally, there were several nosy questions about how the area could possibly justify flooding the town in the middle of the dry season, but Sheriff Pendell cut them off firmly. “We‘ve paid for the service,” he said, “and we don’t want to hear any stupid questions.”

Then Mr. Metlock called Carl to a private meeting and told him that he considered himself too old to run in the next election. Metlock also insinuated that many citizens of the town considered Carl to be suitable mayoral material.

Yesterday Carl invited me to dinner in a swell restaurant in Bullstock.

When we opened the second bottle of champagne I tactfully broached the subject that I’d had on my mind for a long time

“Carl Watson, we’re alone now, so it’s high time you confess your responsibility for what happened, don’t you think?”

He stared at me like a stuck pig--I noted to myself that I would have to break him of that habit as soon as possible. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on, darling! You know my lips are sealed. But we both know your new oil started this whole thing the moment you poured it into that basin!”

His face was flushed with surprise. “The moment I poured it... Look, I experimented with that lubricant all that morning and I assure you it isn’t capable of causing any harm at all. It’s better than the other lubricants only because a tiny drop of your grease had gotten mixed in with it. I presume that acted like some kind of catalyst.”

“Stop talking nonsense. My grease is not any kind of cata... cata... what you said. It’s a good cleaning substance and I won’t allow you to–”

Minnie! A catalyst--a stimulator, if you like--is harmless when it’s isolated. But when this one was added in a microscopic quantity to my oil, it intensified the lubrication; it was like a booster of some sort. But when you threw a huge amount of it into my oil, it transformed it into a poison, and this catastrophe occurred.”

I inclined my head while I waited for Carl to grin and admit he was just kidding. But he remained serious, gazing boldly into my eyes. Now I was convinced that, in time, he would develop into a good politician, on condition that the right wife--that’s to say, me--guided him.

Finally, I couldn’t contain myself anymore, so I burst out laughing. “Carl Watson, I don’t believe a single word you say.”

He cast his eyes to the sky and gestured in frustration . “Oh, Minnie, let’s forget the whole matter if you don’t mind. If what happened has any good side at all, it’s that it drew us closer together. Agreed?”

“Very much closer, darling,” I said and smiled.

 Carl also smiled; he had such wonderful white teeth. He leaned forward and kissed me.

***
My beloved Carl and I announced our engagement the same day as he announced his decision to stand as a candidate for mayor.

I gave Carl another box of that cleaning grease, but I didn’t tell him about my secret source; he was convinced that it remained from some stock my late mother had had. Now he was producing his new oil independently of Chemical United, for he refused to sell the formula to them. Naturally, they fired him and threatened to sue him, but he didn’t care about that. He hired the best lawyers because the local bank offered him almost unlimited credit. Everyone thought he’d win the court case, because the crucial additive was not the company’s property.

Now we could afford to buy the luxurious mayor’s villa, and we planned to have our wedding there. Carl had ordered several huge steel tanks for his new lubricant in Bullstock, but, unfortunately, they wouldn’t arrive for a month. So, for the time being, we kept the improved oil in the empty swimming pool.

I was making all the preparations for our wedding, which would be the following Sunday, one day after the town elected its new mayor. Carl’s rival Simmons, the chemist, had no chance at all. So we could combine the wedding festivities with a party celebrating Carl’s election triumph, and with the public unveiling of his new lubricant. We expected many reporters from Bullstock and chemical-company managers from all over the state.

That was the main reason I had to take care of the wedding details myself. But many women in the neighborhood were helping me, and Susan was the most eager of them. It seemed we could become real friends, and I regretted that I’d thought harshly of her. She got very enthusiastic about my cleaning grease and she said we’d need much more than one box if we intended to clean our entire villa.

So we planned to visit the black cistern at my secret source together. But this time I’d take an iron bar with us to allow us to open that rusty closing wheel at the bottom of the cistern. Susan said we’d have to bring back a bucketful of the stuff, because all that chrome-rimmed surfaces and the stairs into the swimming pool had to glitter.

I hoped everything else would run smoothly, so to speak.

 

THE END

 

'The Improved Lubricant' was published in 'The Truth Magazine' in the January 2007 issue

 

Edward A. Rodosek is a Construction Engineer, Senior Professor in Faculty of Construction Engineering, Ljubljana, Slovenia, European Union. Beside his professional work he writes science fiction. He is author of four novels and twelve collections of short sci fi stories in Slovenia. More than fifty of his short stories have been published in SF magazines in USA,  UK, Australia and India. He has recently published in USA the collection of his short stories: 'Beyond Perception'.