The Ill-Advised Adventures
of Jim-Jam O’Neily

by Channie Greenberg

Table of Contents

Epilogue: The Essential Quality of Charm

The local newspapers were full of reportage on the denouement of the year’s final senior dance. That coverage, though, was hidden at the bottom of columns, which, in turn, were located in the middle of each rag. The full story went missing, which included descriptions of Doris Giskin, Square Dance Queen; Benny Laurence, square dance caller; and Laurence’s near relative, Bobby Lou Giskin. Bobby Lou Giskin would have told anyone who asked that there were advantages to working for Congressman Preenberry.

What the local publications did contain were captioned likenesses of the senior class’s valedictorian and salutatorian. The fish face that Lima had made upon learning that she was second to Jim-Jam O’Neily was uglier than the mugshot for which she posed at the local police station. On balance, Jim-Jam’s picture and mugshot were grainier than hers.

Near the reportage about the goings-on at the dance and about the senior class’s academic frontrunners were terse pieces about the reappearance of Ralph Dupas. He had been restored to his parents pro tem and then had been sent to the local hospital’s locked ward.

What neither the journalists nor their readers knew was that on that ward, Ralph battled, daily, with Barbra Quinn for a turn to read The Mop, The Pail, and The Puppy. His favorite section was the one in which Little Avi Merriweather, a vegetarian, dices, spices, and in other ways vivisections tofu in an attempt to make something good enough to barter with an ice cream truck driver.

Again and again, Ralph could be heard quoting Avi Merriweather’s mom say, “batter’s up.” He intended to follow his hero’s footsteps and to become a vegetarian. Unluckily for Ralph, the nutritionist assigned to him neither offered to procure substitutes for that floor’s meat-based menu nor was willing to help relocate him to a less secure part of the hospital.

* * *

Lima Quinn knew nothing of Barbra and Ralph’s book battle as she had stopped visiting her mother. Barbra was so zoned out from medication that she no longer recognized her daughter. Almost as problematic as Barbra’s emotional abandonment of her was that Lima often ran into Jim-Jam O’Neily on that ward. It had never occurred to Sebastian Quinn’s niece that her greatest enemy might be able to leave his house for the school dance, let alone to visit a hospitalized relative.

Even more excruciating was that Lima might soon have to make nice-nice to Jim-Jam. Mrs. O’Neily, who was the lawyer serving Sebastian and his wife, was urging Lima to try again to visit Barbra and to try, again, to be civil to the most wretched teen that ever existed. Documentable benevolence, that counselor had argued, would help the lawyer speed through the paperwork that would enable Lima to be adopted by Sebastian and his wife before her eighteenth birthday.

It seemed that the same feds who were damaging Jim-Jam’s life had caught up with Lima’s electronic trail. Although those grownups had deemed Lima guilty of many crimes, the least of which was her theft of the Komodo dragon from the local zoo, they were treating her with atypical kindness because of her near-orphan status and because Jim-Jam’s mother was getting better at defending young, wayward intellects.

That woman had explained that the government would probably drop all charges against Lima. Publicly, the officials would state that it would be a pity to prosecute a minor who was a first offender and who showed promise of contributing to society. Privately, they’d make her aunt and uncle sign all sorts of papers attesting to their willingness to take responsibility for Lima’s future actions. Lima would have to engage in government-prescribed behaviors, too.

All the same, it was weird that O’Neily’s mom was the one, among the world’s multitude of lawyers, who was helping Lima navigate legal woes and find a new home. Lima wished her happy endings could have been sourced from anyone else. It was worse than awful that her good results were hinged, in part, on her ceasing to hurt the nerd she most hated. She had thought that her aunt and uncle were too smart to employ any professional whom her crazed mom had recommended.

* * *

Others of Upper Buckwheat County’s youngsters were experiencing similarly heartening aftermaths. For instance, the young 4Hers, who had sheltered and fed Jim-Jam’s Komodo dragons and who had brought chaos to the dance, had not been charged for their crimes. In fact, their parents had taken the advice of the school district’s psychologist and, instead of giving those kids additional punishments, had rewarded them with season passes to Lake Mercurial Amusement Park. While it was known that those elementary schoolers stood barely stood four feet high, it remains unknown as to whether their parents were aware of the dangers of the park’s gigacoster.

Meanwhile, Snorkel Preenberry finished his stay at boarding school. Although his school’s officials, Congressman Preenberry’s pressures notwithstanding, had been unable to include the portion of Connecticut in which the boarding school was licensed appear to be part of Upper Buckwheat County and, thus, unable to create the needed circumstances for Snorkel to receive a scholarship, Snorkel’s life had changed for the better.

For one, Mrs. Preenberry was happier than she had been in months. Her baby, that sweet gentle creature whom she had birthed, had been returned to her bosom.

She was so restored in functionality that she demanded that Lima’s aunt and uncle reimburse her for all the costs incurred in preparing Lima for the last senior class dance. Mrs. Preenberry rescinded her earlier generosity after she deduced that Lima, who had brought the oversized lizard to that event, might have been culpable for Scooter’s problems.

It never occurred to Mrs. Preenberry that Lima hadn’t lived in Upper Buckwheat at the time of Snorkel’s expulsion or that Lima had never met him. Mrs. Preenberry also conveniently forgot that the giant lizard had been brought to the United States by Jim-Jam O’Neily.

* * *

Lima consoled herself. Mrs. Preenberry had provided her with the kinds of sacred encounters she might not have otherwise experienced. More exactly, Mrs. Preenberry had introduced her to contouring and highlighting, had always remembered her name, and had often given her hugs. She had also filled Lima’s life with large amounts of processed cheese spread products and pot roast, sometimes even together.

It was a pity that Snorkel had returned. Given that Mrs. Preenberry had, maybe, a quarter of the IQ of Barbra or of Sebastian, she never snooped around Lima’s computer files. Mrs. Preenberry, what’s more, would never have suggested hiring Counselor O’Neily to represent Lima. “Church and state ought to mix.” O’Neily, who was reputed to be a good lawyer as well as a friend of Mrs. Preenberry, was not a believer.

Either way, the adoption court’s judge had confiscated Lima’s computer before Lima could clear or copy it. Thereafter, although Lima had been acquitted, her aunt and uncle acted strangely toward her. Those future parents of hers had urged her to follow up on Mr. Weaver’s suggestion to work at a science camp rather than to remain in their home that summer.

Lima, emphatically, didn’t want to become a counselor at Physical Sciences Hike In. Having accepted a full scholarship to MIT, she had thought that she would be using July and August to accrue a decent amount of money.

Plus, the camp’s forest-based program was boring and any wages earned there, tips inclusive, would be insufficient to pay for her university’s room and board. Additionally, the camp’s constraints would have made her miserable. Staff members were not allowed to engage in individual research nor to extrapolate from any earlier, personal investigations. All work completed on the premises had to be group efforts.

If Lima had spent her summer at Physical Sciences Hike In, she would never have been able to restore her YouTube Kingdom or rebuild her chemistry files. What’s more, color wars were stupid, swimming lessons were last century, and the camp’s magnetic molecule shed and its biodiversity lab were rumored to boast plaques honoring Jim-Jam O’Neily’s findings.

During the second week of July, Lima would turn eighteen. No well-meaning relative or former teacher would be able to keep her at science camp. Until then, she hoped to convince her relatives to allow her to stay home.

* * *

Back at Swill and Bales, Billy Lou Giskin picked his teeth with the barbed end of a turkey feather. Working with the state congressman’s security force had not been as lucrative or fun as he had anticipated. His future looked good, though; Billy Lou had received a special email from Captain Albatross.

That seafaring adviser had urged Billy Lou to save, to bundle, and to then sell for a significant return his turkeys’ discarded plumes. Apparently, both milliners and oboe players valued turkey tail feathers.

* * *

Drinking yet another mug of coffee, Mom seemed more bleary-eyed than usual. Although her team had been able to settle, out of court, most of the federal counts against her son, she had yet to pack him up and to dispatch him to the NSA, where he would be indentured for a couple of months. She also hadn’t bought him any university gear for his stay in La Jolla, California, where he would be living after his short stint at Fort Meade.

Mom shook her head. In her decades of advocacy, she had never heard of a deal the likes of which the government had brokered on behalf of Jim-Jam. Apparently, she wasn’t the only adult who believed that undisciplined scientific knowhow could and should be harnessed for the common good. Unlike the government’s agents, though, Mom lacked the resources needed to guarantee that her child’s energies would be suitably directed.

She sighed as she typed up another shopping list. Even if the NSA could keep her kid in test tubes and Bunsen burners, or whatever was the state-of-the-art equivalent, probably no one at the agency would make sure that he had adequate amounts of clean socks. Those scholars wouldn’t know his favorite type of toothpaste, either. Perhaps, though, securing toiletries was the least of her problems. She didn’t know too much about and was told not to inquire regarding the powers that would be shepherding her child.

* * *

Because the government meant to monitor James Jackson Ariel O’Neily’s activities for an indeterminate time, Scripps Research Institute had had to withdraw its offer of a scholarship and had had to modify his acceptance. Instead of placing him in the Institute’s prestigious Chemistry Department, the school would be locating him in its less famous Department of Computation Biology and Bioformatics. That, up to this point, the school’s Department of Computation Biology and Bioformatics had been closed to undergraduates seemed to have made no difference.

For Scripps to keep an annually renewable, seven-digit grant, which the NSA posed as a babysitting fee, the school had to put O’Neily in an environment where he was likely to try hacking the school’s systems. What the NSA most wanted was for O’Neily to route through open systems, like the Internet, and closed ones, like Scripps’ private network. They were even going to station operatives at Scripps to observe him.

Scripps, in exchange, had full discretion on how to use the gifted money. The vice-president, whose office was in liaison with the NSA, decided to nourish many projects, including an endowed chair named for either the administrator’s favorite nephew, Sebastian, or for his favorite niece, Barbra.

While vacillating on the specifics of that endowment, that vice-president deputized a handful of untenured professors. They were directed to find busy work for, or be prepared to tutor, a special incoming student. Those young academics were given censored copies of that student’s records. Mostly, they were told that the kid was keen about molecular biology, physical structures, and chemistry. The vice-president additionally reminded his new deputies that neither he nor the school’s newest major benefactor, on whose coattails that student was entering, cared whether or not that kid took any formal courses.

Whereas he wouldn’t be matriculating in an ordinary fashion, that freshman was to be admitted to any and all classes that interested him and to be awarded the same level of status granted other auditors. Bizarrely, into the bargain, since he had also been given the highest level of government clearance, that kid was to be allowed to participate in any of the school’s research that caught his fancy. More precisely, any faculty member that tried to herd that youngster away from any sort of formal learning or less structured investigations would be in trouble. The vice-president insisted that his faculty make the newcomer feel broadly welcomed.

That executive’s subordinates nodded and hummed among themselves before scattering to their respective labs. It was possible that tenure might be easier to attain if they helped the new arrival than not. It was a pity that they had only two months to prepare for his advent.

In private, the vice-president turned his head left and then right. He remembered his own tenure fight. He had heard his underlings whisper about mentoring O’Neily as a boost to their process and he hadn’t wanted to dispossess them of that idea. As long as he had the NSA’s paycheck, he would be able to keep all of them at his school, regardless of their merit.

The man also didn’t care that his NSA contacts had asked him to urge O’Neily to try to reset the school’s network. He would neither encourage nor discourage that boy.

Sometimes, a little push from a ledge is needed to learn to fly; sometimes, not. Moreover, the administrator’s staff contained many computer cowboys who were smarter and more experienced than O’Neily and who could secretly marshal him while not-so-surreptitiously teaching him about error-correcting code.

The vice-president laughed. Among his NSA contacts were children of his former colleagues. Some of his own shenanigans and, later, some of the mischiefs of his nephew and niece, respectively, Sebastian Quinn, and Barbra Quinn, had helped the USA compete against the Soviet Union during the Space Race and had helped the USA stare down all of the Cold War’s biochemical threats. It was sad that Barbra’s service had received less credit than had that of her brother; drugging water supplies and contaminating farmlands remained more politically uncomfortable than employing ingenious arms.

* * *

During the sparse hours before Jim-Jam caught the airport train and then flew to the Atlantic Seaboard, a mundane issue, literally, came knocking at his door: Snorkel had showed up at the Thinker-Tinker’s cabin.

That brute had no interest in discussing the dance that he had missed or the Kitty Khleen fashions that been inaccessible to him while he was at boarding school. Like Jim-Jam, Snorkel had been visiting Ralph at the county hospital. Unlike Ralph, Snorkel blamed Jim-Jam for all his troubles.

The fist that splintered the hideaway’s door was the first sign that Snorkel was not making a friendly visit. Other indicators of his lack of affability included: his spitting at the Soon-To-Be-Relocated-Genius, his upending Jim-Jam’s desk chair, while Jim-Jam was sitting on it, and his quickly and randomly destroying most of Jim-Jam’s test tubes.

“They were not copperheads, and my father can have a mistress if he wants,” was all that Snorkel said before kicking over an exhibit of preserved raccoon guts and smashing to smithereens a recycled gramophone, a repurposed UHPLC column heater, and a fairly new Cheshire collimator. He likewise tossed Jim-Jam’s laptop against a wall and, apart from that, damaged a few two-component reagents, a pair of tissue thumb forceps with 3 x 4 teeth, and the molecule modeling kit that Mom had bought Jim-Jam for his seventh birthday. Satisfied that he had ruined Jim-Jam O’Neily’s workstation once and for all, Snorkel left. Such a mess wasn’t worth a second look.

Jim-Jam triaged the remains of his analyses. He ascertained that his backup disc held most of his expansive data and that many of his prized bits and pieces could be mended. He’d have to wait until his Labor Day vacation to get back to those projects, though, since that long weekend would be the only time when he would be neither at Fort Meade nor at La Jolla.

As for his research, there would be opportunities at the coastal university for him to fool around with Higgs bosons, with single-photon emission computed tomography, and with communications with the space lobsters of Jupiter. Jim-Jam did not care that he had been assigned to a computer science department; rubrics never stymied him. Maybe, once he officially became part of Scripps, he’d finally receive help getting his ideas into print.

Copyright © 2020 by Channie Greenberg

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