With deadline fast approaching, Elvis Grubecheck was beyond stressed. Ten televisions behind him whipped ten separate images at him, all sped up motion. The high-pitched sound track, sounding like a mad overlapping of chipmunk conversations, filled the room as well as Elvis' mind, making him more frantic. Assistants and staff lurking and scurrying in the shadows, the phones on his desk were ringing and beeping at him, and his computer even now too was flashing with a half dozen imminent matters, over each of which he held a distinct and individual sense of dread. And all of this before lunch.
He rang down to the receptionist. "Mr Grubecheck", she began speaking as soon as she picked up the call, "Please tell me that I can send in these guys from the Local Business Interest in, they've been in here almost an hour sir." Lowering her voice to a whisper, the receptionist then added, "Frankly, they're starting to stink up the showroom."
"Rosa, have you seen the lunch guy?" Elvis asked her, stressing each word to instill the importance he placed on eating right now.
"Oh yeah, he's on his way up", she replied aloof with contempt in her voice, "I was just thinking that since you're seeing people now, you might pick up one of these phones that have been waiting so patiently to talk to you".
There was a knock at the door, Elvis pressed a button and the door opened slightly. The lunch guy pushed his way quietly into the noisy office.
Rosa the receptionists voice still cut through the din of electronic media and alarms, a finely honed inflection and pitch specifically trained for this purpose, piped into Elvis over the office intercom, "This lawyer from Pepsi has been trying to reach you since this morning. He's called back six times after waiting each time as long as he possibly could. And then there are the people from MTV, they are very insistent that they speak to you before we air. I was just thinking that since you're taking a break,
"Im eating", Elvis interrupted her as soon as he found a chance, with his hand gesturing the delivery boy to his desk, "Tell them all to call back in an hour."
He tapped the button on the desk disconnecting his office from her, and regarded the man standing there, in the red and blue deliver jacket and holding a paper bag in his arm, gazing about the office in utter awe, completely overwhelmed.
"I've never been in a television studio before", the lunch guy said once he realized he had Mr. Grubecheck attention, "This is all pretty cool."
"This is hell, kid," Elvis replied dead-pan, "How much do I owe you?".
"Hell?" The lunch guy cracked a surprised smile, and handed the bag of food into Elvis' expectant hands, "I couldn't help over hearing your secretary, you get to talk to people from Pepsi, and MTV! I cant imagine that to hell."
"First of all she's not my secretary, she works for the station, she hates me." Elvis stated as he reached into his back pocket for his wallet. He felt no obligation to explain matters to kid, but was simply exhausted from ever working and isolated and in need to some verbal release, even if it was only venting the desperation of his situation to a restaurant delivery boy. "Second of all, the guy from Pepsi is a lawyer. It seems one of the local trees was near a garbage can, and in the background of the photo you can see a discarded Pepsi can on the ground, and if it is seen on the air tonight in the course of our programming they are going to sue me for millions."
"The guys from MTV", Elvis continued, not noticing that his stressed and angry gaze was slightly unnerving the boy, and that the more he ranted the more scared the boy became. "We have an hour long interview with a scientist from the local arboretum, it was shot in front of a rare Unverschamter tree, of which there is the only one in the western hemisphere. That particular tree has an abnormal knot that at a certain angle resembles the MTV logo, and they are quite adamant that if I want to show that interview in front of a Unverschamter , that I had better shoot it in Africa."
Elvis stood silent for a minute, seeing the glazed over look on the lunch guys face, who was unsure of how or if he should react.
"Aah, I never wanted any of this," Elvis resigned as he plopped himself down in the large control chair. "All I wanted was to save a few of the trees on my block, and in the neighborhood. A few of us got together a community ecology club, just trying to raise awareness really and maybe save a few of this towns quickly vanishing trees while we're at it. We've had over fifty species that used to be predominant in these hills completely disappear from this state in the last twenty years. Did you know that?"
The boy, still standing, shook his head quick and short.
"Anyway," Elvis continued, waving his arm in the air for emphasis, "Somehow as we got bigger, we got involved with this big nationwide ecological-political front; honestly, they flashed allot of cash around and we were taken. They promised us national exposure and lobby power in congress. We had our day in court, and somehow when all the smoke cleared, our town was left with this." Elvis waved around at the television equipment around him, still talking away to itself and beeping and whirring.
The delivery guy looked around for a few seconds, and then very carefully started, "Well, television is a great...
"They're still cutting down our trees." Elvis shouted, now, banging an open palm against his desk, "All we wanted was to protect a couple trees, and instead we half a court mandated week of television overriding all the local networks once a year. World Intervention Week, in which to teach the town about environmentalism. For one full week a year, one hundred and seventy two hours of quality ecology television programming, whether you like it or not. We're on every station."
"Well, okay", the delivery guy conceded. "I can see how that might not-
"I walked out of here last year after a week of trees, and tree talk, and movies with trees in them, and more interviews with trees- I walked out of here last year and have had my life threatened every damn day since. 'I better not have to sit thru another week of tree tv, I know where you live'".
Elvis Grubecheck was visibly shaken and sweating now. He wiped at his head with a sleeve, and tried to control his nearly hyper ventilating breath.
The lunch delivery guy reached into his coat and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He wrapped his lips around a smoke and pulled it from the pack, then offered the pack to Elvis, "What if I told you I could make it all go away?"
Elvis accepted a cigarette and paused. Eager for a solution, but also very skeptical, he asked "What do you mean?"
"I can change the past", the delivery guy stated very matter-of-factly, lighting his smoke and taking in a long drag, "I can redirect certain situations in history to make it so that you never got tied up in this mess."
"I am standing up to my neck in shit as it is, I do not need for you to come in here and insult my intelligence-
"Not at all." With a wave of his hand, the delivery guy interrupted, "I can prove it, I completely abide by the Pennsylvania State Time Continuum Code."
Elvis retorted, disgustedly, "Thats a stupid piece of beurocratic red tape that likens Day Light Savings Time to witchcraft or sorcery".
"I am speaking of the second part of the Code," the lunch boy continued, calm and poised now, "What they aptly call the Phil Dick clause: Any claims made by people to be able to either travel in time or change past occurances must, to be legitimately verified either way, must be challenged to the death. Only in this extreme trial can the validity of the claim be completely proven or denied. If the person making the claim allows himself to be killed; then he was surely bluffing, and hence was unable to affect time to even save himself- if he remains alive; he is and has the ability to tamper with the past. In any other attempt to demonstrate such phenomenal abilities, the claimant will be unable to completely convince any one of his abilities, as well as any spectator being unable to be completely free himself from doubt."
Elvis Grubecheck eyed the man, letting rings of lazy smoke fall from his mouth and climb up his face. Wondering to himself if he had snapped, if he was having some sort of psychotic hallunication, or was this really happening. Was this delivery boy really saying what he seemed to be saying, about to challenge Elvis to try to kill him.
"Before I came in to your office," the lunch man continued, again "I placed a nine millimeter hand gun on the little vestibule out in the hall. I knew coming in here where the sequence of events was headed, I knew you would confess some dire situation to me and that I would tell you of my gift. And I knew you would not believe me. So being a who believes in the law-
"That is not a law", Elvis muttered, getting up from behind his desk and heading toward the door, "It is license to shoot crazy people."
He went out of the office, and directly toward the little vestibule opposite the doorway. He wondered to himself how a man snaps like that, wakes up one day with the illusion that he could alter time, a delusion for which he is willing to die.
Opening the little drawer at the top, Elvis found the gun. As soon as he touched it, a jolt of adrenaline shot up his spine. Gripping its weight in his hands, he felt an odd power. I am going to kill that crazy bastard, the thought filled his head with an ugly sense of satisfaction. It may be the release I get to feel today.
Barging now back into the office, Elvis challenged the lunch man, "Why don't you go back in time and make it so trees never existed?"
"I could", the man offered calmly, "But the really sad part would be that you would never know they existed in the first place. You wouldn't even know to miss them."
Elvis sat back at his desk, aiming the gun across the desk at the delivery boy, but finding his arm to be impossible to steady now. "I don't know what kind of sick you are," he started on the boy, "But you really picked the wrong day to go crazy and come in here and unleash it on me. I have to be on the air in less than three hours and you come in here and insult my intelligence and eat up my time with this load of nonsense? Well, I'm not sorry for what I'm about to do, you've brought it on yourself."
Elvis pulled the tab back, and the contents of the can spat and fizzled out, splashing his face and wetting his desk. He tossed the still overflowing soda can into the waste basket by the side of his desk and went searching for paper towels. A strange chill swept through his body for a moment.
"Are you convinced, then?" the delivery boy asked.
Elvis stopped. "Are you still on that nonsense?" he demanded.
"Why did you just get up and leave your office a minute ago?"
"I told you, I was thirsty. I asked if you wanted a drink." Elvis recalled to the boy, but then he remembered going to the vestibule and grabbing a soda, and as he touched the can, he recalled that for an instant he was sure he was going to walk back into his office and kill the lunch guy with it. He shook his head in attempt to make his thoughts fall in proper order in his head, and sat himself back down behind his desk.
The lunch guy still sat there, looking expectantly at Elvis. So Elvis reflexively reached into his wallet to pay the man. Handing him the amount on the bill he said, "Look, whatever you are offering I don't want any part of it, if it is real or not. I am incredibly busy here, and I need to be left alone."
"No tip, then?" the delivery guy asked, counting the cash.
"Just get out." Elvis said, not looking again at his face, but trying to dive back into the mess around him. The week long television program he was legal binded to produce. The unending phone calls and alarms, the rat race of compiling a weeks worth of footage and all the technical difficulties related to it.
As the door closed behind the delivery guy, Elvis Grubecheck felt cold again, rush for an instant against his face. With it, an instant of memory of some nostalgic scent that he couldn't place in his mind. Like de ja vue, it left him out of sorts for a second.
He began flipping through his production notes, to reestablish his mind to the work ahead of him. As he read he came across a huge matter which had somehow eluded to him to this point. Occurring in almost every aspect of the show was this word, this item, which Elvis could not identify. It appeared to play a very pivotal part in the television program he was about to produce, but he had no idea for the life of him what it actually was.
He rang down receptionist, "Rosa, what the hell is a tree?"
"Never heard of it Mr Grubecheck", she replied in her condescending manner, "Now if you want to talk about the people here waiting to see you...
"T. R. E. E.", he spelled it out to her, this word that was riddled thru-out his notes.
"Would you like me to ask the people waiting to talk to you if they have ever heard of this tree thing?", she raised her voice at him now.
"Yes," he replied, "Do that." And disconnected the call.
Somehow he doubted that any of them would.
Elvis Grubecheck stood up from his desk and went over to his office window. Something has happened here today, he thought, although he could not for the life of him figure out what. Something to do with that crazy delivery guy, I better make sure we don't order from there again.
He gripped his production notes in his hand, a two thousand page document that he had just realized is mostly meaningless to him. How am I going to produce a week long uninterrupted show about something that I, and can almost assuredly say anyone else, has heard of. His heart skipped into a panicked beat. How could he miss something so glaring until now, when he was only two hours to show time.
He peered out his window, Passed the buildings of his small city, passed the brown sand of the surrounding hills, and off toward the flat yellow and gold deserts of North America. Wondering what to do, who could he call? Something in his bones told him that he could look for years and never find a human being who had ever heard of this thing, the tree.