The INVISIBLE GUY a real soundtrack for an imaginary spy film Episode Forty-Six - PLASTICVILLE   Copyright © 2002 - 2005  Arthur Jarvinen

Suggested Procedure: READ FIRST, then CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

Note that this is sort of a demo version, with a lot of MIDI until we can find time to record the real instruments...

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After months of searching, inquiring, and investigating, having followed countless cold trails to dead ends and somehow surviving disappointments too numerous to enumerate, yet insistently persisting – not to be defeated! – in his determination to find a way out of his personal prison, The Invisible Guy has entrusted himself to a scientist who has convinced him that he can restore his visibility, if not permanently at first, then at least for periods of time that should get progressively longer with subsequent treatments. Thus it is that we find The Invisible guy in the heart of an elaborate state-of-the-art private scientific and medical research laboratory on the estate of one Dr. Rojo, who is known to his friends and associates as “Dr. O” due to his predilection for “post-nitials” (as opposed to initials), as he calls them, a personal quirk that those who work with him have learned to silently accept since he is the boss, it’s his lab, and he pays fairly well especially considering that none of his employees could legally get work anywhere else, at least not in their chosen professions.

The Invisible Guy, stripped naked and shaved clean all over – a neat trick in itself, considering – enters the stainless steel-framed glass pod and makes himself as comfortable as possible as the hatch closes, latches, and locks.

“Gotcha now, Mr. Y” he half-hears, fading into unconsciousness as the pod fills with a yellowish mist smelling faintly of almonds.

“Oh man, what the hell was I drinking?!” The Invisible Guy thinks out loud, waking with the worst hangover of his life, then remembers – the treatment. But before he has time to get his head on straight he is startled by the sound of clattering metal approaching him from behind. He turns to see a steam locomotive charging down the tracks at top speed, directly at him. Scrambling to get out of the way he trips over the track and just barely avoids getting pulverized by the cowcatcher, then is fairly deafened by what sounds like thunder or heavy artillery but is in fact the bellowing laughter of the evil Dr. Rojo. “Howdaya like them apples?” Rojo chides as he flips a few switches and tweaks some knobs.

Looking all around, The Invisible Guy doesn’t see his antagonist, but it would seem that he is in some sort of small town or village. There are buildings of various kinds, cars and other vehicles and machinery, trees and shrubs, animals, and people. But something is strange, very strange indeed. No one is moving, as if all were frozen in time and space.

“What do you think of my layout?” a voice booms out, and The Invisible Guy, his ears ringing, looks up to see the monstrously huge face of Dr. Rojo, big as a mountain, looming over him. He suddenly understands. The Dr. has in fact restored The Invisible Guy’s visual parameters, but he has also reduced him to precisely 1/87^th his normal size, and The Invisible Guy is now trapped in the middle of Rojo’s HO scale model railroad and the town of Plasticville.

“Oh shit!” declaims The Invisible Guy. “This really bites.”

“Not that you could have known, The Invisible Guy, but Mojo Stang was my cousin, on my mother’s side. I was in charge of the Nerd Gas project on the Inevitably Exploding Island, before it exploded and destroyed all my beautiful work. And now, on behalf of Mojo and myself, I exact my revenge!”

With that Rojo rotates a couple of dials, and The Invisible Guy hears the crackling of something resembling a Tesla coil as a zillion volts of electricity zap through the air, the lightning just missing The Invisible Guy and charring the steeple of the model church, leaving the pungent smells of ozone and melting plastic hanging thick in the air. A split second later the turf around him is chewed up, bits of foam and lichen flying everywhere, as The Invisible Guy is strafed by the tiny machine gun fire of a Viet Nam era attack helicopter, launched from a vintage Lionel helicopter car just down the track. “I paid a little too much for that gizmo” admits Dr. Rojo, “but they’re getting hard to find, and it’s paying for itself now. Ha ha!”

Scrambling for cover, The Invisible Guy ducks down an alley, only to be confronted by a phalanx of robots, scooting rapidly towards him in tight formation on their little rubber treads, ray guns blasting in all directions.

“This is truly suckful” observes The Invisible Guy frankly, dashing into “Independence Hall” to catch his breath.

As he ponders his strategy, The Invisible Guy is suddenly wracked with pain, cramping up and buckling over, then thrusting bolt upright. He sees his ankles swelling then feels his whole body start to expand, like a balloon man inflating. He is growing, at an alarming rate.

The plastic panels of Independence Hall snap and fall away as The Invisible Guy towers taller and taller above the tiny town, like a monster in a 1950s B movie.

“Damn!, I thought the effect would last longer” laments Dr. Rojo. I didn’t have a chance to use the…hey, what are you doing?! O man, no!

Now at about half his normal size, looking like a deformed child and already starting to fade from sight again, The Invisible Guy suddenly has to take a leak like you wouldn’t believe. “Just call me Lemuel” he says sarcastically as he lets go all over Plasticville and Dr. Rojo’s meticulously crafted hand-painted and weathered models, scenery, and collectible vintage trains.

His relief complete and victory assured, just to rub it in The Invisible Guy picks up Dr. Rojo’s favorite locomotive, a Bachmann Spectrum 2-10-0 "Russian" Decapod recently won at auction on e-Bay, and casually drops it to the floor.

“Oh, no…nooo….not the Russian” sobs Dr. Rojo pitifully, as The Invisible Guy fades from sight and makes his silent exit.

) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( (

Claude, smirking, and having just polished off the dregs of a bottle of Cusano Rojo, eats the worm, then opens the book to Chapter V of A Voyage To Lilliput, in Gulliver’s Travels.

PLASTICVILLE

There is a town called Plasticville
And we have all been there
They got a mall on the road through town
And a Village Square
But in that town of Plasticville
You had best take care
Little plastic people
Church with a steeple
‘Lectric chair!