My Neighbors Have Ray Guns

I received a phone call from a woman who identified herself as Nancy Hutchison. Nancy’s husband, world renown (never heard of him) scientist John Hutchison, had designed a device to remove radioactivity from the Pacific Ocean and installed it next to our vacation rental property in Gold Beach, OR. Kellie and I decided to make a quick thousand-mile jaunt up the coast to investigate. 

In the lot next to our building sat an old white sheriff’s bus. Mounted on top was a strange looking electrical contraption that could have come straight from a Ray Bradbury novel. The entire apparatus was buzzing and humming, whirring and thumping, occasionally emitting an assortment extraterrestrial musical tones. 

I decided to make a call on my new neighbors. Nancy, a plump, forty-something woman with a yellow bird’s nest for a hairdo, didn’t invite me inside for a cup of coffee. She looked tired, grumpy and none too happy to see me, less so when she realized that I was the guy who had hung up on her yesterday after she started babbling on about some secret organization above the CIA. 

According to Nancy, the Fukushima accident delivered a lethal radiation dose to the entire northern hemisphere; her Geiger counter readings were off scale. I doubt she understands the meaning of the word lethal, and if we are all going die anyway, then why doesn’t she shutdown her damn contraption and let us all go in peace? Nancy refused to breakout her Geiger counter, explaining that the ray guns (she actually calls them ray guns) had created an expanding bubble of protection that had reduced local radiation levels below those seen before the dawn of the atomic age. It would seem that her ray guns are also very effective at reducing camel and white elephant populations, too; neither of those species have been spotted since the ray guns began operating. Unfortunately, the ray guns are not as effective against Sasquatch; reported sightings of Bigfoot in this region of the country continue unabated.

“Modern science doesn’t know everything,” Nancy insisted. Her husband's invention makes use of a phenomena he named after himself: the Hutchison Effect. She tried explaining John's discovery, raving on about scalar waves, sound waves, radio waves, purifying frequencies, universal harmonies, jellification of metals, antigravity, levitation, cancer, and radioactivity. I couldn't decide if she was just crazy or a complete fraud. Interlaced with her pseudoscientific gibberish were incoherent rantings about government conspiracies. I really don't mind crazy, except when it moves in next door and starts zapping me with ray guns.

“Are you f%#$ing mad?” That’s what I wanted to say, but I was there to gather information, so I refrained. 

Before coming to Gold Beach, Nancy and John employed their ray guns to clean the Gulf Mexico following the BP oil spill. Then, after the Fukushima accident, they attempted to decontaminate the Pacific Ocean from their base in Minnesota, but the Rocky Mountains kept getting in the way. They moved to the Southern Oregon to target the source of the problem itself, Fukushima, Japan. Apparently, the beam from their ray gun can’t climb mountains but it has no trouble bending around the Earth.

My skepticism must have been showing, Nancy was getting quite irritated with me. She didn’t care about me or my vacation rental and threatened to turn up the volume on the device to 90 decibels. She asked me to leave her property. I wanted to continue the discussion, but with her Rottweiler-Doberman-Boxer mutt sniffing at my crotch I thought it best to honor her request. I left without meeting the great scientist himself. 

I’ve contacted a plethora of Federal, State, and local agencies, but I get the same answer everywhere I turn: It’s not illegal to be crazy. Today, my neighbors and I will descend upon City Hall to loudly express our irritation with the town’s newest inhabitants. I’ll keep you informed.

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