Max The Magic Mouse

 

Max the Magic Mouse

The thought nagged me every day. I would go to bed every night leaving my PC shut down, the mouse and keyboard stored away in the drawer under the monitor. I was fastidious in this, yet every morning, the damn mouse would be sitting up on the desktop as proud as punch, as if smiling at me.

At first, I blamed my wife, Mary, for getting up in the middle of the night and going on the computer, and then not securing it on completion. But she flatly denied any knowledge and told me I was losing my mind.

I then sought to blame my eldest, Nicky, but was met with even more disdain for suggesting it, along with the obligatory “As if, Dad” which followed these teenage outbursts of wit and fact.

Then, naturally, both of them blamed it on my own paranoia, which could have been the case, given my recent history of mental illness. But I flatly denied this and became determined to find out why and how the mouse could be moved - in my house!

I gathered we had a goblin in our midst, and I wasn't too sure of its intention. You see, the computer was never left on overnight, and during this mouse phase, did not appear to be turned on at all either. We had us one heck of a mystery.

I stayed up the next night, determined to catch the mystery mouseketeer. But a hard day’s work and age caught up with me and I fell asleep at about one in the morning. Sure enough, the next day, the mouse was on the desk again, and I had seen or heard nothing to awaken me as to what was committing the dastardly deed.

This called for better monitoring techniques and methods and pretty soon I had the video camera charged up and ready to commence surveillance of the scene. By now, everyone was chortling over my paranoia, but they were also concerned as to how this phenomenon was taking place.

I set up the video camera and waited until one-thirty in the morning to turn it on as it would only record one and a half hours’ worth of tape, and I set my alarm for three so I could get up, review the recorded tape, change the battery, and all the while, keep an eye on proceedings around the PC.

At 3.00 am, my alarm woke me as planned, and gingerly rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I rewound the tape and commenced reviewing it on fast forward. I then realised that the mouse was still stowed away, so I rewound the tape, changed the battery on the video recorder, set it up again, and commenced recording with the knowledge that I would have to get up at 5.00 am to both review the tape and stay up in case the mouse was not out yet.

Well, my tiring night meant that I woke up at 7.00 am and a quick look at the PC confirmed the mouse had once again made it out to the same location, so, hopefully, the second tape had some evidence for me. I knew, however, that a gap existed between 5 and 7 am, so I wasn't too hopeful of finding any answers.

To compound matters, as I rewound the tape I noticed that it didn’t take long to rewind and when I checked the recording time, I noticed the battery had gone flat in only three-quarters of an hour! The batteries, I now remembered, were old, and one had not recharged fully, probably due to memory lag.

My next plan had me rigging up my video camera to the video sender, tuning the video into the sender, and recording a total of six hours on the video recorder. This should work admirably as there was no requirement for batteries in the system anywhere and, God help me, barring power cuts.

Pt II

Not long afterwards, at about 2.15 pm, Nicky, my daughter, called me into her room, which smelled to high heaven.

“I don’t know what you want, sweetheart, but Max's cage has to be cleaned out. It stinks in here!" I exclaimed.

"I know, I know, Dad," replied Nicky resignedly. "I'll do it later, okay? It's only mouse smell, you know, Dad, and you get used to it."

Then she looked at me pleadingly and pretty soon I was outside with the offending tank, placing the deposed Max in a spare container so I could give his tank the full Monty in the cleaning stakes to appease my miserably lazy daughter. I managed to clean out all the old urine and faeces covered paper, as well as remnants of shucked husks of corn and other seeds the mouse had not yet managed to consume.

I went to retrieve Max for the trip back to his permanent palace from his temporary digs, and he decided to play hard to get, as he usually did with me. I was an ogre to his minuscule eyeballs, and probably a fierce, angry one at that. I managed to snare the rambunctious rodent with a final grab and placed him delicately back into his newly cleaned abode.

I spent the next minute or two watching the mouse scurry around the new layout of his home, through the castle from the old fish tank, over the little ramp from the Lego car park set, through the two tubes and over the miniature softball with half the side gnawed away and the stuffing hanging out, and finally over the bridge, also from the fish tank, and into the feeding house to nibble at his replenished stocks.

He had a quick feed, then stood up on his hind legs and proceeded to clean and preen himself, using his front paws to do some of the work, and doing the rest with his tongue, similarly to our cats, Chloe and Tiger Lily.

I picked up the tank and transported it back to Nicky's room, where I was greeted by a big, smiling “Thank you! I love you, Dad” to which I responded with the usual “You're welcome, sweetie.”

I placed Max's cage down in its usual location, said, “See you later” and waved bye-bye to Nicky. I then went out to check my video set and do a test run, ready for the night to come.

***

The night appears to have gone well. I find the usual evidence of the mouse on the desktop again, and I head off to rewind and start reviewing six hours of videotape.

What I come across stops me dead in my tracks and leaves me sitting there with my mouth agape in disbelief. I watch the whole scene again to be sure that what I’d seen the first time was real. It sure was! But to get a different perspective, and perhaps be discredited, I called Mary into the lounge and ushered her into the chair. I tell her to make sure she is comfortable and to judge for herself what she is about to see.

I replay the tape for the third time, all the while watching my wife’s face, and start to see the disbelief spread across it, then the incredulous "Holy Shit! No bloody way!" as she watched the scene on the videotape unfurl.

"Let's go into Nicky’s room and confirm that he’s there, hon" I urge as I get up from the chair. Ordinarily, Mary would not go near Max thanks to her fear of mice, but this time her curiosity was piqued. We had never had a Twilight Zone situation happen to us, but human nature meant we had to know for sure and, besides, we also needed to know that Nicky was alright.

We opened the door and entered her room, Nicky’s soft snoring confirming she was all right. I turned on the lamp and played the light over Max's cage and, lo and behold, the lid was on tight and Max was also fast asleep.

We knew how he got through the door, and how he got to the computer, so we had to assume that he got out of his cage in the same manner, but we needed to see it with our own eyes. We now knew what time the deed was done, so we just needed to wait and see for ourselves.

***

Mary decided to sit in Nicky's bedroom while I sat in the lounge. We would be doing the watch between 5.30 and 6.30 am, the approximate time Max did his dastardly deed. We moved Nicky into her mother’s bed so as not to disturb her, and not frighten her if she woke up.

So, 5.30 am rolls around and approximately twenty-two minutes later, the following happens. The CD ROM drawer on the PC opens and the CD therein starts levitating off the carriage and flying effortlessly through the air, around the corner of the lounge and then straight through Nicky's bedroom door. I give a little cough to let Mary know it’s in there, and her explanation of what happens goes like this:

"The disk appeared through the door and made a beeline for the mouse’s cage, slowed a little as it approached it, then glided gently into the cage. As it entered the cage, Max woke up and was standing ready to climb onto the disk as it touched down on the edge of the bridge in the cage."

Mary takes a deep breath at this point before proceeding.

"Then Max climbed aboard the disk, and the disk started to hover upwards a little to clear the bridge, and then glided across to the glass, passed through the glass, as did Max, and then flew over to the door and glided effortlessly through into the lounge. It was amazing and I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't of seen it with me own eyes."

It was then that the disk made a reappearance in the lounge and this time the adventurous Max was onboard for the ride, just as he was in the videotape from the previous day. The disk drifted over to the desktop and gently touched down, allowing Max to jump off and start heading for the drawer with the PC mouse in it. The disk took off again and tilted slightly when approaching the drawer and then wedged itself in the drawer cavity, forcing the drawer open. At this point, it retreated to its CD Rom tray and settled down.

Max then leaned into the drawer, grabbed hold of the mouse lead and, by sheer force of will, pulled the larger mouse out of the drawer. After a few nibbles around where a real mouse’s ears would be, Max moved the ‘tail’ and set about trying to replicate his species, of course with no success.

When there was no response from his paramour, Max’s ardour flagged and at this point, disappointed, he got down from his cyber-sex kitten and waited as the disk alighted rose its tray and came down to uplift the jilted mouse. Both then repeated their previous journey and pretty soon the disk was back in its tray and secured for the morning. The whole episode took a startling fifteen minutes and left two very normally self-respecting and upright citizens of this planet wondering about everything we had read and seen over the years. The X-Files leapt to both our minds, as you would imagine.

My next move was to check out the disk in the CD tray, as Mary was not prepared to go near it, but she would get a paper towel to clean the mouse, just in case Max had left a residue.

Poor old Max. The lonely mouse never had a lady friend and hungered after some comfort. Okay, but why with our PC mouse, and how did the CD become involved?

I extracted the CD from the CD ROM drive and noticed it was a music CD Mary had been playing on the PC during the day whilst she was online. A smile started to creep onto my face when I read the title and artist.

"Hey, hon!" I yelled. "Guess which CD it is?"

"I wouldn't have a clue," she yelled back from the kitchen but was soon in the lounge with the Handy paper towel.

"None other than disk two of ‘In the Flesh’ by Roger Waters. Gosh, didn't we always say he was bloody magic!"

Epilogue

Max is a real character.
The humans are fictional.
The disk is real (and bloody magic)

This could go further, but I do not have the time.