I was sitting at a picnic table visiting with my father. He was taking a break from a site manager/foreman convention. A truck pulled up. It had a toilet on the back and a liquid reservoir. It stunk a bit, but the seals were good, so not too bad. The driver got out and walked into the convention hall, and I left to go back to work.
I was working at a pool that had current generation, and I was teaching techniques for swimming against current, but that was a side job. My real job was as part of an investigative team made up of geniuses. I was the least brilliant person on the team.
I got a call from the team that a kidnapping had been reported, and the victim or victims might not have long to live. A woman's ex-husband had apparently kidnapped at least one of her two daughters, and had her locked up somewhere. We had to find her fast, and it wasn't clear whether or not her sister was with her, and the mother couldn't be contacted either, so she might also be in danger. So my team had to get to work.
We identified the stepfather and determined that he owned a work truck with a large liquid reservoir. We used stoplight cameras to track him to the convention, and bumper height to calculate that his reservoir wasn't full, but was carrying about the weight of the two missing girls. We got to the convention, and couldn't find him, but we took over his truck, and yelled for the girls to see if they were in there and could hear us. One muffled voice answered, and we set about trying to get them out, but the usual hatches had been sealed shut, and blow torches were too dangerous with the gasses that had built up. Finally I suggested that the weakest point would be the ceramic toilet mounted on back, and we smashed it off.
One of the girls came crawling out, pulling her unconscious sister with her. We rushed them to the hospital, where they were treated and cleaned up. The one had to stay in critical care, but the other came with us to help track down her mother.
She told us her mother was traveling in South America with her fiancé, but we weren't sure. This crazy young woman with long, straight, strawberry blond hair that she kept pulling back in a ponytail, then letting drop into her face, accosted us on the street, and insisted vehemently that the mother was traveling, and wouldn't want to be called. The rescued girl half recognized her as a distant cousin of the ex-husband and believed her and got spooked away from trying to contact her mother, but the woman made us doubt even more that the mother was all right.
The team put me in charge of calming and persuading the girl. First we watched my VeggieTales Top Ten Silly Songs video. The Hairbrush Song finally got her to laugh and relax. Then we went to Popeyes to eat because she wanted fried chicken.
There was a television showing the news, and her story was on. I pointed out how if her mother saw any of this, she would be so worried, and we really did need to try to contact her. The girl finally agreed, and thank goodness her mother really was traveling, was perfectly all right, and would be coming home on the next flight. Then I woke up.
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