The Children’s Orchestra of the Clouds

The President of the Universe loved music. In fact, music was one of the things for which he was most grateful to human beings. Yes, they caused wars.

Yes, they enslaved, massacred, tortured, and regularly blew themselves to pieces. But not all of them. And not all the time. They were also responsible for painting Sistine Chapels, writing Shakespearean plays, drafting the Magna Carta, and endowing mankind with Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs.

The thing that the President of the Universe most admired about Homo sapiens, though, was music. He loved George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” And everything written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter. But his all-time favorites were Light Operas—particularly those written by Sigmund Romberg, Victor Herbert, Franz Lehár.

And since the President of the Universe was a doer rather than a dreamer, it did not come as a surprise to dwellers of clouds in the vicinity of his home that he decided to share his love of music by organizing an orchestra…one exclusively for children. “I will start small,” he said, “with just two concerts a year that will consist of songs with modernized arrangements from my favorite operettas.”

During rehearsals on the first day of the first meeting of his Children’s Orchestra, the President of the Universe pointed his baton to his juvenile pianist, and indicated that she should begin. However, just as her hands began to pound out Sigmund Romberg’s “Stout Hearted Men“ (a look of joy softened the blunt angles of the President’s often-stern but likeable face), his bliss was interrupted by his favorite celestial assistant.

Her name was Gloribell, and she rushed up the aisle of their rehearsal space waving her hands to get his attention. Gloribell’s job title was Assistant in Charge of Monitoring the Peculiar Things That Human Beings Do, and her job description was exactly that. The President of the Universe liked her, but realized that Gloribell seemed to have been put together from swatches of velvet, glitter, spangles, and lace, like a patchwork quilt.

One of her eyes was blue. The other green. Her shoulders were too narrow. Her legs were too long. And she had big feet. Yet, she had a pretty face and a voice as soft as bunny rabbit’s ears. And when she looked at him (as she often did) with total devotion, he could barely resist an impulse to pat her on the head like an affectionate pup.

But…as I was saying, Gloribell loped up to the President of the Universe (she moved like a newborn giraffe) and breathlessly confided, “Boss. Down below. In the big yard in front of the main entrance to the library, something…maybe a flying dinosaur…laid a dozen huge…um…gargantuan eggs.”

The President of the Universe lowered his baton. One by one, the young musicians in the Children’s Orchestra of the Clouds stopped playing. He asked, “What did you say, Gloribell?”

Not bothering to repeat herself, she grabbed at his hand, “Come on, Boss!” The words tumbled out.

“You’ve got to see this!” And in the blink of an eye—not metaphorically. Literally; the President of the Universe blinked twice—he and Gloribell found themselves standing on a cloud above the manifestations that she had described. For scattered on the grass inside the oak-lined entrance to the main library of Middle Valley Community College were…eggs. Each was about the size of a refrigerator lying on its side. But ovoid. Like…well…like an egg.

One. Two. Three. Some were off by themselves under the trees; others were clustered in twos and threes. He continued counting. Five. Six. Seven…Twelve in all.
“I guess,” he said cheerfully, eyebrows raised, “That eggs should come by the dozen.” His eyes roved over the gigantic ovoids and added, “Even flying-dinosaur eggs!”
Gloribell opened her mouth to speak, but with a quick shake of his head in her direction, she held her tongue. Meanwhile, college students, dog walkers, joggers, and teachers started to gather around the perimeter of the grassy expanse, murmuring: “What are they?” “U.F.O.s.?” “I think that one’s moving!” “This is very scary!” “Do you think this is an invasion?” “I swear I saw…”

As members of the crowd instinctively drew closer, both to the eggs and to each other, the President of the Universe noted the arrival of television vans, cameramen, and journalists all beginning to breach the dividing line between the sidewalk and the expanse of lawn bearing the oversized eggs.

One of the cameramen said to a TV reporter beside him, who was looking into a tiny mirror and reapplying lipstick, “This is going to be big, Marsha. By 2:00 p.m., it will be national. By four we’ll be on Sky News Australia. By five, there will be panic in the streets.”

Staring down at the giant eggs from his cloud, the President of the Universe scowled. He liked a joke as much as the next guy (although his sense of humor was better than most). But when he overheard the cameraman uttering “panic in the streets,” his mind circled back to damage done by famous hoaxes from the past.

In the 1800s, there was “The Cardiff Giant,” a 10-foot long “petrified human” unearthed by businessman George Hull. Hull exhibited his amazing curiosity for 10 years and earned a fortune before skeptics proved that it was Hull himself, who had commissioned construction of, and then buried, the bogus behemoth in the ground.

Then, in 1908, the Piltdown Man was discovered. Allegedly the “missing link” between man and ape, this hoax was engineered by amateur fossil hunter Charles Dawson. Not until 1953 was it proved to be cleverly combined fragments of human, orangutan, and chimpanzee bones.

Most recent were crop circles. As reported in the December 15, 2009 issue of the Smithsonian Magazine, when Doug Bower and co-conspirator Dave Chorley created their ”flying saucer nest” in a wheat field in England in 1976, they had not foreseen that their hoax would become a “cultural phenomenon” followed by “mystical and magical thinking, scientific and pseudoscientific research, conspiracy theories…evidence of secret weapons testing, and, of course, aliens.”

The President of the Universe gazed down as crowds rapidly moved closer and closer to the enormous eggs… their hands outstretched to touch, to poke, to explore. Fearful of calamitous consequences if news of the hoax was allowed to spread, he roared “Be Gone!” inside his head, and then snapped his fingers. Although inaudible to everyone else, Gloribell heard the silent command, and to her, the sound of his voice was as loud as the crack of a whip.

At the first snap of his fingers, all of the giant eggs instantly disappeared. At the second, all images recorded on all devices held by people occupying the lawn in front of the library vanished. Even the ones in the satellite cameras circling overhead.

As the President of the Universe was deciding what to do next—“Humans have already gotten themselves into too much of a muddle. I can’t allow egg-laying flying dinosaurs to be added to the mix”—he made certain observations that led him to conclude who was responsible for the hoax.

First, there were distinctive tire tracks leading to and from the lawn in front of the library. He instantly recognized them as having come from a Jeep that he had encountered previously, when two delightfully roguish department store display artists delivered a huge winged hippopotamus float to last year’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

But it was the scent of popcorn that nailed the culprits. For in the studio where brothers Perquil and Lothard Danniboux created their giant displays and fabrications, they had their own theater-style popcorn popping machine. Not only did Perquil and Lothard–addicted to mischief and easily bored—always smell of popcorn, so did everything they touched. Therefore, the President of the Universe decided to stop in at their warehouse on his way back home.

His entrance (Gloribell waited outside) was unspectacular. He silently opened the studio door and walked inside. The scene before him was more or less what he had expected. In the middle of a vast space were Perquil and Lothard, gleefully adding dabs of paint to the last of 10 giant mushrooms, nine of which were lined up against a back wall. The President of the Universe said, “Ahem.”

Both men—24-year-old carrot-topped twins with ingratiating smiles—looked up. They did not know who had just walked into their studio. On the other hand (if you know what I mean), they did. The eyes of both sprang open, and their tools clattered to the floor.

Jerking his head toward the behemoth mushrooms, the President of the Universe asked, his voice a loud and echoing basso profundo, “Where were you planning on putting them?” Perquil croaked out, “Hawthorn Beach.” Lothard added. “On the north side of the boardwalk, where the Ferris Wheel was before the hurricane.”

The President of the Universe nodded. He raised a hand, snapped his fingers, and all of the mushrooms disappeared. He continued, “Really, boys. Can’t you think of something better to do?”

Then, like the mushrooms, he, too, disappeared. When the President of the Universe got back to Altocumulus # 1 where his young musicians were awaiting him, he was, to all appearances, no different than he had been before he left. But Gloribell, who had long experience working with her boss, knew that, although he enjoyed a good joke, the humans below had taken it too far…and that with just seconds to spare, he had averted chaos, panic, and disaster.

He raised his baton. “Franz Lehár,” he announced.
“The Merry Widow.”

All members of the juvenile orchestra dropped their eyes to their sheet music and turned the page. He pointed his baton at little Caroline Periwinkle sitting at the piano (long blond braids and big brown eyes), and in no time at all, the Children’s Orchestra of the Clouds burst forth with enchanting music, created by frequently irresponsible, sometimes terrible, often spectacular, and ultimately quite miraculous… human beings. G&S

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