Backteria and Other Improbable Tales Read Free

he was Captain of a Navy Minesweeper in World War Two. Another aging beldame returned to the days when she was a chorus girl in a long-running Broadway Musical. And many more. The effect was state and worldwide. Consider the case of Bjorn Lutefisk who chose to return to his Uncle Olaf’s herring factory as the floor manager. Unhappily, the smell reduced Mr. Lutefisk to a gibbering segment of his former self. Consequently, he ended up in an asylum. Uncle Olaf began to drink again since he had to contend with two versions of his nephew.
    Strangely enough – or, perhaps understandably – a number of BU-1 victims went nowhere. They suffered their mild temperature elevation for a few days and, on occasion, a limited period of mental disorientation. From this, one is drawn to the conclusion that either the infection was not severe enough, or the victim involved had no particular spot in the past they yearned for.
    None of which convinced me especially. Notably, the idea of time being flexible. Perhaps so but I was from Missouri on that point. Still, the evidence was there, irrefutable in every detail.
    The ongoing and increasing – enigma was not clarified when some media wag in a National Enquirer type article defined it as the PUZZLE OF BACKTERIA. Ignoring the facts of the “puzzle,” he claimed that all its victims went back to a time to a more genial environment. That this was not statistically accurate was shunted aside. So Bacteria Unknown-1 became, permanently labeled as BACKTERIA.
    Not being a professional historian, I will make no attempt to enlarge on the subject. Suffice to say that the number of Backteria victims increased in the hundreds then, in a matter of months, to the thousands and, ultimately ten thousands. The increase, in other words, was geometric. This over the scope of every continent and island in the known world, including the Arctic zones. Not that every victim, as indicated, vanished. Many of them did however, a few of them “reporting in” – as one journalist expressed it – “via the medium of mediums.”
    Why this method was utilized was probably self-evident. There was, simply put, no other means of communication available, as obscure as the method proved to be. There was no other way to let those “left behind” know where their vanishing relatives or friends had gone. Especially perplexed by the process – although perfectly willing to “cash in” on it, was the multiple array of mediums throughout the world. Vanderloop alone became so well-to-do that he made a formal bid to purchase Holland in whole or in parts. I will not enumerate the many other mediums who acquired wealth through their intercessions. Most of them never really knew whether their “communications” were alive or dead. Not that it mattered to them.
    The most uniquely peculiar occurrence in this Panoply of Plaguaries , as they came to be called, was the incident of Dimitri R. Mupphinsky of Vladivostok. (Middle name Raga) His medium (name unintelligible) reported that Comrade Mupphinsky vanished from his place of business at the end of March. When he communicated with his Uncle Vanya in June, it was to state that he had gone back to his fathers’ farm only to discover that his memory had erred and that life there was intolerable. Which established the conundrum that memory was, perhaps, fragile and not essentially reliable. However, if this “Backfire,” as it came to be known, was in effect in other plague victims, I never found out.
    My ill-advised participation in the Backteria Mystery took place approximately thirteen months following inception. By then, the disease (we felt obliged to term it so) was widespread. Every country on the globe suffered its share of the bizarre affliction. The Svennington Laboratory was deluged with involvement. That we had no more explanation for the dilemma than any other source didn’t seem to matter. We were the first to be engaged in the “Vanishing Chaos” as it also