The Near-Marvels of Malt So

“What do you mean ‘Someone already invented it’?” Malt So asked. He pressed his cell phone against his ear.

“I’m sorry, Malt,” Ned Baws said. His voice crackled from the cell phone’s speaker. “Ace F. Plirst patented the same contraption over a month ago.”

Malt felt the color drain from his face. He paced his living room, ignored his ten-year-old son, who complained whenever Malt blocked his view of the television.

“I spent years designing this device,” Malt said. “How can Plirst just jump out of the shadows with the exact same invention?”

“It’s the nature of the beast,” Ned said. “A common need generates every great idea. You and Plirst—and probably countless other science professors—saw the same need and thought of the same way to fulfill it. Someone had to complete the project first. It wasn’t you.”

Malt felt sick. “It’s Edward Scissorhands all over again.”

“ . . . Pardon?”

“Edward Scissorhands,” Malt said. He increased the speed of his pacing, stomped harder than necessary. “I spent two years writing this great screenplay called Eddie Staplerfeet. Then, when I tried to pitch the project to producers, they all told me that some hack already started a project called Edward Scissorhand. Can you believe that?”

“I can’t,” Ned confessed. “I really can’t.”

Malt threw his free hand into the air. “What do I do now, Ned?”

Malt’s ten-year-old spoke from the sofa. “Invent something else.”

Malt glanced at his son. “That’s your advice? Just let it go and move onto the next project?”

His son rolled his eyes. “Or not. Whatever. Just move so I can watch Firefly.”

Malt spent the next few weeks experimenting in his basement. He mixed chemicals, tested soils, and studied the stem cells of bananas (yes, bananas).

After he discovered success, he called the university at which he worked, asked the operator to connect him with Wreer T. Goer, the head of the agriculture studies department.

“It’s kind of late, Malt,” Wreer said. “I nearly left my office for the day.”

“Good thing you didn’t.” Malt spoke in rushed, excited sentences. “I’ve invented the greatest chemical compound imaginable.”

Wreer moaned. “Not more juice to help people regrow their hair! I can’t deal with another one of those ‘discoveries.’”

“No, no, no,” Malt said. He paced about his basement/laboratory. “That sort of snake oil always sat beneath me. I’ve created something far more exciting.”

“Well?” Wreer yawned. “Out with it, already. My wife’s waiting with a pot roast.”

“I’ve created a serum that allows us to grow an entire banana tree from a scrap of banana peel. The tree reaches fruit-bearing adulthood in merely—”

“—Two weeks?” Wreer asked, unimpressed.

Malt deflated, slowed to a stop. “How . . . how did you know that?”

Wreer’s sigh echoed from Malt’s phone. “One of you colleagues patented that same serum two days ago. Try to keep up.” Click. Wreer disconnected.

Malt stood, frozen. The phone, too heavy to hold, slipped from his hand, crashed against the ground.

He swallowed, stared at the table upon which his latest work sat. Potted, juvenile, banana trees. Microscopes. Charts. He swung his arm, swept everything off the table and onto the floor.

His palms slapped the table. He leaned forward, fought to control his breath.

His anger evolved into wild laughter. Of course, someone else invented such an obvious idea.

“That’s the trouble with you, Malt,” he whispered to himself. “You’re too predictable. You have to invent something so crazy, nobody else in the world would’ve ever thought to construct it.”

His eyes danced with a curiously sweet madness.

He went to work immediately. Three sleepless days later, Malt invited every news organization in America to the début of his amazing, crazy invention.

With heavy, black bags under his eyes and no fewer than a hundred television cameras pointed at him, he took the stage in his university’s auditorium.

He raised his hands for silence (nobody had said a word prior). “I’ve called you all here today to announce my latest, completely original invention, unlike anything anyone ever thought to make.”

He reached beneath a black blanket, and lifted from it a large, assault rifle. “This. Is. The. Spork Gun.” He pulled its trigger, fired a high-speed, plastic spork at a target set across the stage.

The spork slammed through the target’s bull’s-eye.

Malt laughed a bit too long. “Any questions?”

A reporter lifted her hand. “How does your Spork Gun differ from the one invented last Friday by that Korean kid?”

Malt froze. “ . . . Come again?”

Another reporter explained. “A ten-year-old from Korea invented this exact same nonsense less than a week ago.”

Another reporter asked Malt, “Do you always steal other people’s ideas?”

Malt’s wild, wide eyes darted from one reporter to the next. He read the same bored expression on every face.

“O . . . kay,” Malt whispered. His hands trembled. “Maybe the Spork Gun isn’t all that original. But you know what is?” He aimed his weapon at the crowd. “Using it to take you all hostage! That’s right. I am taking you all hostage with a Spork Gun!”

One reporter cheerfully asked, “Like that guy did in New Jersey over the weekend?”

“What?” Malt asked. “Well. Um. For what did he exchange his hostages? Money? Ha! I’ll trade you all for a football helmet filled with cottage cheese.”

“Didn’t that happen in the movie Airheads?” someone asked.

“No!” Malt roared. “I’ll trade you all for Pogs. Remember pogs?”

“Of course we do,” an elderly reporter said. “A hostage negotiator in Miami just traded a chest filled with Pogs for a room full of hostages. I believe they were all reporters, imprisoned at gunpoint inside a university auditorium.”

“You know what, then?” Malt asked. He tossed aside his Spork Gun and unsheathed a sword he had for some reason. “I’m not taking anyone hostage. I’m going to cut off my arm, instead.” He did. “How’s that for original?”

A reporter rolled her eyes. “Why does everyone want to copycat that woman who used a sword to cut off her arm?”

“I’m confused,” another reporter said. “Are we still hostages?”

Malt (who felt a bit lightheaded), sat in a deepening puddle of his blood. “I think I’ll just go to jail, please.”

That night:

MSNBC: “Today, another man used a Spork Gun to take hostages in a school. When will our government pass stricter, Spork Gun regulations to prevent these tragedies?”

Fox News: “Thanks to unnecessary, nanny-state, gun regulations, not a single reporter taken hostage today had a Spork Gun with which to protect him- or herself.”

CNN: “Justin Bieber has a new hair cut! More at eleven.”