The Voyage of Hank Farley

A story by Keith Croes

Several weeks after the explosion a young reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer discovered that a certain Japanese manufacturer of high-tech microchips had only six customers: the United States government, four NATO countries, and Hank Farley, formerly of 121 Lafayette Avenue in the city's northeast. By then the disappearance of the high school science teacher was old news. Her story ran on page four of the metropolitan section beneath an item on Gentle George, the newest gibbon on the zoo's Forest Walk, which is something of an outdoor primate heaven at least until fall, when the baboons, the drills, and George and his gibbon friends are presumably coaxed inside for the winter.

Hank chose the hottest Fourth of July since 1963 to blow himself up, so the street was quickly filled with sweating neighbors, many of whom were already convinced that the gangly teacher with the huge Adam's apple was the worst kind of dangerous oddball. It took Rosie DiSanctis of Channel 3 news all afternoon to find someone to say, "He seemed like a nice, quiet man. Kind of a loner, though. Didn't know him that well. Is this hard to believe or what?" It was Hank's mother, and Rosie put it together in time for the early report at 5:30.

But there were others, including Hank's landlord, who held to the strange insistence that Hank had been working on a spaceship in his basement. Indeed, investigators found the basement a shambles, and it appeared that something had penetrated the floor of the living room, the ceiling of the living room, the floor of the upstairs bedroom, the ceiling of the upstairs bedroom, and had passed cleanly through the attic and the roof. When the flames were doused, fire officials stood in the basement and looked up through the roof, went up to the roof and looked down into the basement, and finally stood at each level and looked up and down at each other, waving and grinning.

The local press had fun with it, and there was even some national attention. A tabloid ran the headline, SCIENCE TEACHER RIDES HOMEMADE SHIP TO VENUS. Referring to the ship as "Philly's largest firecracker since the Constitution's bicentennial celebration," the story accurately reported that a terrarium containing several turtles was damaged in the blast. There was no mention, however, of the official result of the investigation: Hank Farley was missing and presumed dead.

And no one could know that Hank had another destination in mind.

I am making this recording in Chelonian, for reasons that I will explain, in the waning hope that someone, somehow will come up with a translation and get me out of here! Forgive me if the narrative is disjointed, but I have to do this in one take as I am having difficulty operating the tape recorder. I was lucky to get the thing turned on, actually.

I have no idea how I came to know of the existence of Chelonia or its location. It all just...came to me. But it went a whole lot further than that. I mean, I had to build the ship and I had to go there. It was madness, I see that now, but...it seemed the thing to do at the time. Go to Chelonia, go to Chelonia--it was my only thought for months and months and months. And to tell the truth, it had its rewards.

The trip out was nearly disastrous as I forgot to make provisions for water and air, though I did pack a few sandwiches. Fortunately, near the limit of my endurance, the ship did a flawless turn into a time tube, and I'd guess that I arrived at Chelonia about ten minutes later. Don't ask me how I know about time tubes, either.

The Chelonian's appearance was a shock, but I've always thought that in a universe of infinite possibilities, what right do you have to be surprised? At first I couldn't see them at all. I thought they were rocks. You see, nothing much moves on Chelonia--at least that's what I thought then. After a couple hours of watching out the portholes, I realized that the rocks were surrounding the ship. I also realized I could speak Chelonian. I was telepathic with them.

They were very polite and had a good sense of humor. That's why I agreed to a body transformation. For me to be Chelonian, they said, would be the only way to enjoy the full beauty of Chelonia. It made a lot of sense and, as I said, they were very polite about it.

And they were right. I was soon darting, agile as a nymph, over the idyllic Chelonian landscape--the warm beaches, lush fields, tranquil hills. The Chelonians are, simply, ideally adapted to their planet, much more so, in my opinion, than man is to earth. Of the boundless variety of animal species there, they are the most nimble, the quickest, the strongest, sleek and beautiful of form, yet they don't lord it over the others as man is wont to do. Though they eat several types of animals, as does man, they kill only to eat and they eat whatever they kill. Not one that I saw could match the predatory zeal of your average insurance salesman.

They are truly the wise and benevolent masters of their planet.

But, infinite possibilities or no, I later got another shock--how much later I'm not sure, as my enjoyment of this bountiful planet veiled my sense of time, which may have been further clouded in that Chelonians can live to be hundreds of years old. For all their merits, though, it seems they haven't yet figured out a way to reverse body transformation.

Well, I was a little upset to hear that. If I didn't know them better, it would be easy to think that that little detail was something they could've told me beforehand. Looking back on it, though, I realize how characteristic, how typical it is of them. Given the opportunity to be a Chelonian, why would anyone want to be changed back? They probably haven't even worked on it.

Fortunately, I had programmed the ship's controls for an automatic return to earth and I made it back just before liftoff. You see, inside I'm still Hank Farley, a science teacher in the Philadelphia public school system, and at this point I'd rather be an insurance salesman than a Chelonian. I really have nothing against insurance salesmen, in case I gave you the wrong impression back there. It's just the way they are--the way we are.

I can't reach the controls now, but I can see that I'm slightly off course. The tape is running out. I'm sorry I can't provide any details about the body transformation process---only that I had to crawl in a cubicle shaped like a big egg and that it felt as though unseen hands were putting me in a football uniform. And there's something else that may be helpful. It's probably just a coincidence, but I started getting this image of Chelonia about the same time that I bought a terrarium at a pet store in Germantown. I remember the first time--I was feeding the...

Grounds manager Norm Dindlemeier screwed up his face behind the black plastic frames of his glasses, trying to couple incredulity with suspicion and throw it in a heap on a young man with a bristly chin and a rattail standing on the other side of his cluttered desk.

"Hey, I'm just telling you there's seven, Mr. Dindlemeier."

He relaxed a bit, dwindling in his chair. "First I get a call in the middle of the night from the curator telling me the Air Force is scrambling the zoo. Then I'm up all night calming down the animals while the military hauls off a meteor that looks like a giant piece of char-broiled galvanized drain pipe. And now, Joe, you're telling me we have an extra tortoise."

"Yep. Seven. Is that crazy or what?"

"Seven."

"Between six and eight."

"Feed it."

"What?"

"Feed it."

"I don't know which one it is. They all look alike to me."

"Feed them all, Joe."

Joe shrugged. "Sure."

Norm watched him exit the small office and turned the volume back up on the radio, which was tuned to KYW, Philadelphia's all-news channel.

THE END

MORE STORIES BY KEITH CROES

keith@croes.com