LARGE LANGUAGE LOVE, DIVINE
Boom Boom In The Room
…Claire entertained fantasies about her Dalton tutor looking like Richard Gere and resulting romance…
Boom Boom In The Room
Thursday finally came and so did her Dalton tutor. He wore a pine green polo shirt. A braided belt held up mud-colored chinos that bagged over Nike sneakers. He did not look like Richard Gere. Formless brown hair stopped just short of his aviator glasses. His face was doughy and possessed no jawline. His a massive double chin was dotted with pimples.
She tried not to look completely disappointed as she showed him to her mother's office.
"Kinda like a cave in here." He looked as though he was wary of bats. "Huh. This is a neat space. It's cool how it's tucked away. You got some some cool stuff going on in here.”
Claire shrugged helplessly. “This'll be private. My mom owns a catering company.”
“Oh, no kidding. And your dad was saying our cover story is I’m teaching you calculus?”
"I guess so."
"Hopefully you're better at calculus than I was. I don't even think I can spell calculus, let alone, you know..." He gave a strained grin.
Claire said, "Uh huh."
An uncomfortable silence took over that bordered on oppressive. His pear-shaped body mirrored her father's. Was this the Dalton body type? Did women have the same proportions? Did this explain her big ass?
Finally he said, “So, uh, my Dalton name's Boom Boom.”
“What?”
“Did your dad tell you about Dalton names? Oh wait – probably not cause he didn’t go full. Okay, so if you go full Dalton then you get to choose a name for yourself. It’s supposed to be kind of ridiculous because that shows we’re so cool we don’t have to try to be cool. And it’s got to be two words. Don’t ask me why. It's tradition. Daltons are big on tradition, even though we're not big on the past. Daltons like to say we record the future. Are you alright? Did I lose you?”
Claire's was thinking about how superiority must actually be as contextual as everything else. “I’m sorry. I’m just like – it’s a lot. Am I going to be tested on this?”
Boom Boom offered more of a smile. He took a package of gummy bears from his satchel and offered her some. Claire looked at the package and told herself she wouldn't eat any, and felt more secure and collected.
"No thank you."
Boom Boom nodded and tossed some gummy bears into his mouth. “Naw, no tests. I’m just here to get you up to speed on what the Dalton world is all about and help you with your talents. I'll teach you all about transmitting, but I want you to know right now I'm not going to pull from your head without your permission. Unless there's an emergency. When I do pull we'll keep it very specific so you're in total control."
"I appreciate that."
"I’m also going to counsel you so you can make an informed decision about going full or not. Does that sound okay to you?"
Not Richard Gere. Not romance. Here was reality, once again, and once again there was nothing she could do about it. And he wanted to help. He seemed to be a nice guy, or alien, or whatever. "It sounds fine," Claire said. "Thank you, Boom Boom."
"Respect to Respect. Okay, let's jump in. Start with the history, which is short and sweet, cause like I said, Daltons are all about that forward gaze. Basically, Daltons landed in the wastelands of southeast China around the end of the 14th century. Don’t know where we were coming from or why, or what happened to the spaceship. Maybe we crash landed. Maybe it was intentional. It doesn't matter. Here we are, and we got a mission. Traditions are important not because we're trying to keep the past alive, but because they support the mission. So there you go. You wanna hear about the mission?"
"For sure," Claire said.
…The great Dalton mission, and more gummy bears…