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“Look, I know what you’re all thinking,” Fido continued. “And I have to tell you that when I first learned of this theory, I was a little skeptical myself. But my own research on the internet has proven that we’ve all been lied to! The earth isn’t round. The earth is in fact a flat disk, just like all the other disks that surround us. Like the sun, which is also a flat disk, and the moon, and in fact all the planets. So we need to ask ourselves: why the lies? And the simple answer is: because most people aren’t ready for the truth. But the fact that you’re all here tells me that you are—and that makes me very happy!”

“So what’s the truth, Fido!” someone yelled.

“Well, the truth is…” Fido had walked over to a flip chart which he’d set up, and now flipped over the first page to reveal a large disk crudely drawn with a magic marker, dangling from a string. It looked like one of those UFOs from a sci-fi movie from the sixties, where the UFOs were plastic disks dangling from clearly visible iron wires. “This is the planet we’re living on,” Fido explained as he pointed to the disk. “And this…” He drew a square around the disk. “Is our corner of the universe.” He proceeded to draw other squares next to the first one, and in each square he drew another disk. “That’s right. We’re not alone in the universe, folks. In fact we’re all part of a gigantic network of connected disks…” He flipped over the page, and now a maze of cubicles became visible, and in each cubicle a disk was hanging, suspended from a wire. “This is the matrix,” said Fido, “and we’re all part of it.” He flipped over another page, and the maze had grown and now looked like a beehive, with hundreds of tiny cubicles with hundreds of disks inside them. “This is the universe,” he said. “This is what we are. Bees!”

Murmurs of mirth rose up from the audience.

“We’re all part of a big, very big beehive, and we’re the busy bees working and slaving away every day, producing…”

“Honey,” a voice suggested from the crowd, to much laughter.

“Something a lot more valuable than honey. Anyone? Entertainment!” said Fido, really getting going now, as he jotted down the word entertainment on the flip chart. “The beekeepers who are masters of the universe have created this gigantic beehive for their entertainment. And they like to watch us—in fact they’re watching us right now! And they’re laughing, and crying, and generally looking at us the way we watch television. And that’s it, folks. That’s the big secret nobody’s telling you. We’re all actors in a big reality show—only for us it’s real!”

“Oh, dear,” I said quietly.

“It’s worse than I thought, Max,” said Dooley.

“Yeah, the guy is clearly delusional.”

“Poor Fido,” Buster breathed.

“Poor you,” said Harriet.

“Yeah,” Brutus chimed in. “Once Fido has been admitted to a mental institution, who’s going to take care of you, Buster?”

“We can always ask Odelia to adopt you,” Dooley suggested. “I’m sure she would do it in a heartbeat.”

“Hold your horses, you guys,” I said. “The patient might be sick, but there’s still hope.”

“And if you want to know what the beekeeper looks like—the master of our universe?” Fido was saying. “The monster that’s created us and is watching us?” On the next page a crudely drawn hairy monster was featured. Oddly enough it looked a lot like… the Cookie Monster. “This is the ruler of our universe! The monster who rules us all! And his name is Roger! That’s right. Roger!”

“On second thought,” I said. “Maybe we should ask Odelia if she’ll consider adopting you, Buster.”

“That might be a good idea,” Buster whispered, looking dejected as the room erupted into loud and confused chatter.

15

That night, after they’d returned from Fido’s presentation, Marge had just washed her face and brushed her teeth when she came upon her husband, seated on the bed bench and staring at his favorite painting of a gnome. Gnome #16, the artist had christened it, and even though Marge wasn’t exactly a big fan of the painting, she’d allowed her husband to hang it in the bedroom, but only on the condition that it be used to hide the wall safe they’d had installed. Her reasoning was that thieves would see the gnome and be so unnerved they’d immediately totter back out the window and run off screaming. Though of course she hadn’t mentioned her thought process to Tex, since he’d have been devastated to know that his wife didn’t share his passion for gnome art.

“Everything all right, honey?” she asked as she took a seat next to her husband and rubbed his back. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she had a feeling not all was well with the man she married twenty-five years ago.

“What? Oh, sure,” said Tex, as if emerging from a dream. “Absolutely. Say, do you think that diamond is safe in there?”

“Nobody knows that we have it, honey,” she said. “So it’s absolutely safe.”