Our Story Begins

Julie glanced again at the clock. Hanging opposite the blackboard, it gazed down on a bulletin board of waxed fall leaves with the benevolence of a harvest moon. Four-thirty. She loved the peace of the empty classroom, but she really should be getting home. Besides, the wind whipping through the branches outside, invigorating as it was, was probably also a sign of impending rain. She glanced around for something else that needed to be straightened up, and reluctantly had to conclude that there wasn’t anything. The clock face beamed approval. She reached for her coat, then placed it back on the desk and went to do one final check on the class pets.

[...]

Cursing under her breath – and feeling slightly guilty about doing so in a grade-school classroom, even with no students around to hear – she slammed the door shut behind her and shoved a nearby cloth into the space under it. Taking a deep breath, she looked around. All she really knew about hamsters was that they ran very fast and could fit through ridiculously small spaces, and that her students would be absolutely devastated if she lost this one. Checking the cloth under the door again to make sure it was secure, she glanced around the room, wondering where on earth to look first. The classroom was positively bursting with nooks and crannies, piles of art supplies and other odds and ends that she was sure a small rodent would be able to exploit to its full advantage.

There was a book on the shelf on pet care; she grabbed it in relief and leafed through it, always watching out of the corner of her eye for high-speed furry movement. There was evidently a whole litany of ways that hamsters could escape – chewing through things, pushing things aside, squeezing through impossibly small openings. It was sort of like Jurassic Park, except presumably the hamster wouldn’t return and eat you. But it was getting dark and it was getting late and lonely and here she was in an empty fluorescent-lit classroom trying to match wits with a rodent that had its own agenda and all the odds on its side. It seemed like a nice illustration of futility.

The book recommended either waiting for the hamster to return on its own, or putting food in a bucket and making a ramp, so that the hamster would fall in and be unable to get out. She wasn’t willing to risk someone else letting the hamster out before it felt inclined to return, and she didn’t have a bucket. She decided she would just have to put food out and try to catch it herself. Seeing as hamsters were nocturnal, this could mean a long, unsettling night – and not, she reflected, really that acceptable an alternative either. And the custodian would probably come kick her out. But she had to try.

There was some peanut butter in the refrigerator from when one of the younger grades had made pinecone birdfeeders; she used a popsicle stick to spread some on a paper plate, placed it on the middle of the floor, and sat to wait. She hoped her presence wouldn’t keep the hamster away, but then if she wasn’t there, she obviously couldn’t catch it when it came. She rested her head in her hands and tried to sigh quietly.

She sat for what seemed like a long, long time, wondering whether anything about her strategy made any sense, and whether she should have brought a book. She should really, she thought, just give up and go home, but she couldn’t stand the thought of all those students upset. And would she ever earn their respect as a student teacher if word got out that she let one of their favorite pets escape?

And all of a sudden, there it was – the hamster, sitting in plain sight on the linoleum in front of her, sniffing experimentally and eyeing her warily. Or was it curiously? She sat frozen, afraid that if she moved she would startle it and have to start the whole ordeal over. She watched the hamster, and it watched her back.

There was something oddly cathartic about trying to stare down a hamster, she thought. She was going to have to remember that one – hopefully, in more controlled circumstances.

She glanced away suddenly, then lunged forward, succeeding against probability in grabbing the hamster. Something exploded soundlessly, throwing her backward.

Strong hands grabbed her shoulders, steadying her. She made a quick slapdash effort at pulling herself together, and then she stared. She was sitting facing, and more or less in the arms of, a very concerned-looking young man of about her own age, on the pudgy side of muscular, with tufty reddish-blond hair that fuzzed down the sides of his face and looked like it would be covering more surface area if that were socially acceptable.. "Are you alright?" he asked, in a pleasant voice with a slight unplaceable accent.

"…What?" she managed after a moment.

"Are you alright?" he repeated, looking even more concerned. "Did you hit your head? I’m so sorry for startling you. And for worrying you. But I absolutely refuse to spend one more day being poked by inquisitive second graders. Trust me, if you tried it, you’d understand."

"That’s quite alright," Julie said, eyeing him cautiously. "Are you an enchanted prince?" she asked, then immediately realized how ridiculous that sounded. But really, what else was she supposed to say?

He blinked, and shook his head. "No," he said apologetically. "What do you need one for? I suppose I could try to find you one, but I really wouldn’t know where to look."

This was just getting more and more confusing. There was clearly no point in skirting the apparently obvious.

"Were you just a hamster?" she asked, not quite able to believe what she was saying.

He blinked again. "Yes."

Julie realized she could find nothing to say in response to that. She reached to rub her eyes, then stopped. If this was a dream, it was an interesting one, and she wanted to see where it went.

"And now you’re a person?" she managed finally.

"No…"

"You certainly look like one."

"I’m good like that. But I’m not."

She shook her head, blinking herself. "So what ARE you, then?"

"Still a hamster." He reflected for a moment. "Actually, I’m the hamster."

"…What?"

He knitted his eyebrows. "Are you at all familiar with Plato?"

"A little bit…why?"

"Platonic forms? The notion that if you synthesize all examples of a certain object in the world into one, you would have an image of the essence and ideal prototype on which they are all based? I’m sort of like that."

This all sounded vaguely familiar, but she’d read it a long time ago, for a class assignment, and not much had stuck around. She decided not to mention this – she didn’t like the idea of being outclassed by a hamster, even an ideal one. But then – "If you’re the ideal hamster, why do you look like a person?"

He shrugged. "I’m an elemental. I am hamster by nature, but I can take any form I feel like. This one is more convenient at the moment."

"Convenient for what?"

"For explaining to you that I have no intention of not escaping from being your class’s pet hamster, and that for that matter you can’t stop me. So you should go home and make yourself some hot chocolate and stop feeling bad about it, and I’ll find your kids a replacement hamster and they’ll never know the difference."

"Umm…thank you," she said. "But first you’re going to explain." She wasn’t sure where she got off telling an elemental hamster what to do, but why not? There was a first time for everything.

"I just did explain."

"No, you didn’t."

The hamster sighed and pondered for a moment. "I suppose I owe it to you to try to explain again. But I can’t guarantee it will make any more sense." He glanced at the clock. "Actually, would you mind talking over food? I don’t need to eat…but I get really hungry anyway." He wrinkled his nose apologetically.

Julie burst out laughing. "Do you want the peanut butter?" He shook his head. "I try to limit my consumption by species. If I lapse now I’ll get out of the habit and get all sorts of strange looks."

The sky over the parking lot was cloudy and glowering; the hamster eyed it nervously. "Hamsters hate getting wet," he explained, sounding a bit embarrassed.

Julie let the friction of the pavement against her shoes drag her to a stop, and stood in place for a moment, pondering in the midst of her inertia. "You’re a hamster. Were a hamster. In the classroom down the hall."

"I keep telling you that."

"I’m standing in the middle of a day-school parking lot talking to an immortal hamster in human form."

"Pretty much, yes."

"My brain is having serious problems with this."

"Understandable…do you want me to leave?"

"No, please don’t," she said quickly. "Then I’ll really think I’ve gone insane. As long as I’m still talking to you, the fact that I have been talking to you at least seems plausible. But aside from the fact that there was a hamster there one minute and you the next – or whatever – and you’re still here, there’s no good reason why I should be believing ANY of this. It’s probably a delusion to distract me from the fact that I lost the class hamster."

The hamster watched her, levelly but sympathetically, then strolled over to a very dusty SUV, casually grasped the bumper in one hand and lifted the rear wheels a few feet off the ground. He gently put the vehicle back in place and stepped back, regarding the rear windshield for a moment. With a grin, he reached forward and traced letters with his finger in the accumulated dust: "Beware the Flying Hamster of Doom."

"That’ll make ‘em wonder. Or wash their windshield." He grinned wistfully. "I wish I could fly."

"You can’t fly, but you can lift cars?"

"Apparently. It’s an elemental thing, not a hamster thing. Exerting force on matter is relatively easy, but you need wings to fly."

"And you couldn’t grow wings, or something, if you wanted to?"

"Of course not. I’m a hamster." Under the circumstances this didn’t seem to Julie to explain anything, but since it seemed to strike the hamster as obvious, she decided to leave it at that. Or not – "But if you can be a person; why not a bird?"

He shrugged. "I suppose I could. But humans are easier; they’re more variable. You can be anything and be human. Not as counter to one’s nature. But anyway, as a hamster I can’t fly."

"So you’re the Non-Flying Hamster of Doom, then?"

"I suppose so. Maybe except for the doom part."

"We seem to have a problem."

"Yeah. Mine is that I’m standing in a parking lot arguing with an immortal hamster."

"Well, strictly speaking that’s not entirely true."

"Oh?"

"Well, I’m not immortal. I’ll only last as long as there are hamsters. As far as you’re concerned, might as well be forever. But it’s not."

"And then what? Do you die? Vanish?"

He shrugged. "I cease to exist in the world as we know it. As to whether there are any others, your guess is as good as mine. It’s not something I worry too much about. But you seem to like using the term, so I figured I’d clarify."

"But you aren’t killable in the meantime though, right?"

"Right. I’m the world’s only microwave-safe hamster." He looked perversely proud, and she laughed in spite of herself. "But," he added, "I really do not want to get rained on. Can we find somewhere indoors to go? And go there quickly? It’s going to pour any minute now."

"How do you know?"

"I know lots of things. And I’ve seen a lot of weather. Though more in Syria than here," he said, reflecting.

"Syria?"

"Where I’m from originally. Can we go indoors?"

They ducked into a small café, the sort with black-and-white squared linoleum, slightly battered twisted-iron furniture, and glass cases full of iced tea. As Julie plunked her bag by the table nearest the front window, the sky exploded in rain. A point for the hamster, she thought. Or whatever he was.

"What’s your name, anyway?" she inquired as they settled in their chairs. "I mean, do you have one?"

"Nope. Why should I? There’s only one of me."

"So?" she asked. "I have a friend who named her poncho, and it’s not even human."

"Neither am I."

"You know what I mean!"

"So why did she name her poncho? Does she talk to it?"

"Not that I know of. But it’s sort of impossible to describe. So she decided to name it instead."

"So you want a name for me because I’m impossible to describe?"

"Well, yes. But I was thinking more of having something to call you in conversation. I’m not calling you Sparky."

"Appreciated." He wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. "How about Mortimer?"

"Umm…why?"

"Why not?"

"Well…" She thought for a moment. "Can I call you Tim?"

He shrugged. "Sure. Whatever works for you." He glanced around. "Do they sell beer here?"

"They might; I’ve never asked. Do you have an ID?"

"A what?"

"An identification card. Like a driver’s license. To prove you’re over twenty-one. Otherwise they won’t let you purchase alcohol." To be fair, he looked like he could be older than twenty-one, but he could plausibly be much younger. At the moment, he also looked highly confused. "Maybe it would be easier if I just bought it for you," she offered, fumbling through her tote bag in search of her wallet.

He shook his head. "Not worth the trouble," he said, reaching into his pants pocket and producing what seemed to be a beer bottle. Now SHE blinked.

"What just happened?"

"I carry extra; I just prefer it cold," he replied as if that explained anything.

"You had a bottle of beer in your pocket?!"

"More than one." By way of demonstration, he produced another of a different brand, then shrugged and put it back. No visible change occurred in the dimensions of the pocket. She stared.

"…Why beer?" She didn’t understand the rest of it either, but this question at least seemed like it might have a fighting chance of having an answer to go with it.

"Why not? You never know when you’ll need it," Tim said, twisting the cap open with his shirt. Okay, no such luck there.

"…Do you have anything else in your pockets?"

"Most things. Well, limited to what I’ve put there, of course." He took a swig of beer and held the liquid in puffed-out cheeks, looking for an instant much like an actual hamster. He glanced at her bemusedly, swallowed and grinned. Meddle not in the affairs of hamsters, she thought ruefully. She wondered if they made a bumper-sticker with that one.

"Besides," he offered helpfully, "it tastes better than rubbing alcohol. Well, most of the time, anyway," he amended.

"You’ve tasted rubbing alcohol?!"

"Sure. I wouldn’t recommend it, of course. But it’s better than nothing."

"That may be a matter of opinion." She watched him in disbelief for a moment. "I’d never thought of hamsters as drunks, I think."

"I’m not a drunk," he replied. "A hamster has about forty times the alcohol tolerance of a person, proportionally. It’s pretty much impossible to get drunk that way, no matter how strong the proof. We just like alcohol." He took another swig, then glanced at his watch. It was large-screened and digital, and looked like the sort of thing one would have gotten for free in the 1980s with the purchase of sneakers. "Drat!"

"What?"

He cast her an abstrusely apologetic look. "I’m really sorry, but I have to cut this short. I just realized I need to be in Japan within thirty-six hours, and I don’t know how I’m getting there yet. I totally lost track of the time." He stood up and screeched his chair in, and she automatically followed suit. He held out his hand. "A pleasure meeting you in person, though. And I’ll see what I can do to find your class a replacement hamster."

A bit dazed, she returned his handshake. "Japan?"

"Yup," he replied in his usual blissfully uninformative manner. He bowed again, started to walk out, then turned. "I’ll catch up with you at some point – and thank you for being so understanding. I owe you a favor." He toasted her with his bottle of beer and was gone.

Julie watched him duck out of the café and out of sight, speechless. She supposed she should be flattered that he found her understanding; it implied she understood something, which she wasn’t personally so sure of.

She ordered a hot chocolate like she’d been told, waiting for a lull in the rain before attempting to get back to her car. She wondered what Tim had done; maybe he kept an umbrella in one of his pockets. She made a run for it when it the rain seemed briefly to stop, ducking inside her car as the first drops hit, and drove home with windshield wipers splashing and mind whirling. She ran a web search and determined that hamsters were indeed native to Syria, and not known for their connections with Japan. But no other clarification was forthcoming.

When she got to school early the next morning, there was an identical-looking hamster asleep in the cage. It didn’t respond when she talked to it, so she decided that if she wasn’t going insane this was probably the replacement the hamster – the other hamster – had mentioned. Otherwise, there was no further sign of him at all.

Finally, she decided that if she were going to have any chance at grading and returning her class’s quizzes quickly enough to be helpful to them, she was going to have to put the matter out of her mind until it brought itself up again. And that – more or less – was that.