The Meritocracy of Imagination

In general, the President of the Universe concentrated on the things that he enjoyed most, such as listening to music, creating seasons, and nudging human creativity a little bit this way or that. Every so often, though, he drifted into the area of the dreams and ambitions of comparative strangers.

Like Jimmy Elfman.
Jimmy was an incredibly likeable man with a pretty girlfriend named Sally Dadigan. Sally, who was very protective, resented people who assumed skeptical “Can you believe this guy?” expressions on their faces after hearing him expound upon one of his innumerable ideas.

And Jimmy had ideas. So many! So juicy! So delectable! And all had value…if only in the meritocracy of imagination.

He invented a fountain pen that removed ink from handwritten documents, an umbrella that the wind could not turn inside out, a candle that recycles its own wax, and something he called “Luggage Jewelry” to affix to suitcases to differentiate them from look-alike bags belonging to someone else.

The prototypes for most of Jimmy’s inventions cost more to produce than they ever could make in sales, but he earned enough at his day job—he was the creative director of a firm that made snow globes, ships in bottles, crystal ornaments, and other high end decorative items—to subsidize his expeditions into “The Land of I-Have-an-Idea.”

Sally Dadigan, who loved all her boyfriend’s brainchildren, was a tall and pretty aspiring actress with chorus girl legs, pale ivory skin, a quick temper, and blue eyes that emitted sapphire sparks when something or someone raised her ire.
Jimmy was short, dark (skin, hair, and eyes), and as easy-going as a grandpa sipping lemonade on a porch swing in the summer, even though he was only 26 years old.

At around the time that Sally Dadigan was auditioning for the part of Marian the Librarian in a Broadway revival of The Music Man, Jimmy got an idea that, other than being magical, was surprisingly practical.

His idea was this:
Jimmy would invent or discover a material that glowed of its own accord, with self-generating light that required no external power source.

It would be of a substance that he could compress into a sphere about the size of a ball bearing and insert into a snow globe (one without snow). Once there—like the sun—it would rise in the morning and set at night over a miniature farmhouse nestled among verdant grasses, with a sugar maple flaring behind the roofline, a beech tree to the house’s left, and a quaking aspen to its right.

As it rose and fell within the snow globe (renamed “day globe” by Jimmy), the sun would change color from egg shell white, to daffodil yellow, to carrot orange.

Arcing across the sky, it would cast vivid shadows of light and dark on the lawn. It would shine like flames of fire against the farmhouse windows. It would back-light leaves so they looked as translucent as dragonfly wings. And before night, the itty-bitty sun would set within the globe in a dazzling extravagance of color.

Jimmy Elfman already had all of the variables necessary to manufacture these globes: diminutive farmhouses, trees, lawns, gardens (miniscule tulips, daffodils, and irises), wee glass puddles, and even tiny mailboxes for outside the front doors. He had fans, magnets, and batteries to propel an illuminated orb in its odyssey across the sky. He even had chemicals to coat the inside of the globe so that it would go dark after sunset.

But what Jimmy did not have, despite months of grinding thought and experimentation, was the stuff and substance of the sun itself: the ingredient needed to transform the day globe of his imagination into a commercially viable reality.

During his research, Jimmy learned about bioluminescence in fireflies, fungi, jelly fish, bacteria, and squid. However, there was no way he could alter the interior of his globe to create the environment necessary for an organism to sustain life.
He studied radium and plutonium, but they would be difficult to handle and too expensive to obtain.

As for phosphorous, tritium, radon, and even fluorescent coral, none had the necessary properties or malleability to produce the desired effect.

Most important in eliminating those options, though, was one simple fact: they glowed only in the dark, whereas Jimmy’s sun, like the real sun, had to produce light and glow all day.

So there was he was, with a wonderful idea on how to expand his company’s product line, but lacking the most important component of all: a self-illuminating sun to arc across the sky.

And this is where the President of the Universe came in. Not because he was alert to Jimmy Elfman’s dilemma, but because he had always been a fan of American musical comedies.

Sitting behind the desk of his celestial office one lazy afternoon, he was gazing down through a layer of stratocumulus clouds at a rehearsal studio off Broadway on 48th Street, and very much enjoying auditions for the part of Marian the Librarian in The Music Man.

Of the actresses trying out for the role, Sally Dadigan—long legs, huge voice, pretty face, and irrepressible vivacity—outshone them all. The President of the Universe found her intriguing, not just because of her talent, but also because seconds after her audition, Sally’s brow furrowed and her mood changed from joyous to fretful.

Curious as to the cause, he followed her with his eyes as she walked down Broadway, descended into the 42nd Street subway, and continued on to the home of her boyfriend, Jimmy Elfman.

Once the President of the Universe was inside Jimmy’s house, all of the young inventor’s dreams, innovations, fabrications, and frustrations were instantly revealed, including his dilemma with the day globe. So captivated was the President of the Universe by Jimmy’s imagination that he decided there and then, he would provide him with the raw material he needed to create his little suns.

Therefore…
Before dawn the next day (Jimmy was an early riser) he looked out his kitchen window into his backyard and saw what seemed to be a pulsating glow. Captivated, intrigued, and excited, he rushed outside, galloped across the lawn, and lifted his hand to shield his eyes from unrelenting radiance emanating from a large mound about 18 inches from his backyard fence.

It was gorgeous. It was mind-boggling. It was impossible. But it was real. And it looked very much…very, very much…like a huge heap of Leprechaun gold.
Without thinking, Jimmy plunged a hand into the pile, scooped out a palmful of whatever it was, and instinctively began to shape it into a sphere.

From that point on, things went as they might be expected to go in an ideal world, which is what Jimmy Elfman’s life began to resemble.

Every day, he brought a bucket of the substance—he called it gold mud—to work and handed it to his plant foreman. In the factory, it was converted into tiny suns that were inserted into hundreds and thousands of day globes manufactured, distributed, and sold by Jimmy’s firm.

You may not remember the cultural phenomenon they became, but that is often the case with items that never exactly become a fashion craze, but imperceptibly ingratiate themselves into our lives…like mobile phones, flat screen TVs, and luggage on wheels.

In time, day globes became more popular than snow globes, and additional seasons were introduced to the line.

Which brings our story to an end, except for three things.
ONE: In the home-decor version of industrial espionage, Jimmy Elfman was often followed by spies seeking to discover the source of the material he used to make his miniature suns. But even for those who succeeded in learning his home address, the anthill-size pile of gold mud in his backyard was imperceptible, as only Jimmy could see it. The President of the Universe made sure of that.

He also somehow manipulated reality so that neither chemical analysis nor spectrographic diagnosis would reveal the gold mud’s molecular composition.
TWO: The President of the Universe acquired four day globes for his personal use. He kept three in the drawer of his desk at his office in the clouds, and one, depending upon the season, on top of his desk, so that he could always watch tiny suns in their progression across the sky.

THREE: Sally got the part of Marian the Librarian in the Broadway revival of The Music Man, and at curtain call, received a standing ovation, repeated every night until the show closed. The Monday after opening night, Jimmy Elfman and Sally Dadigan got married in a small but charming ceremony attended by friends at City Hall.

Unbeknownst to them, the President of the Universe officiated. G&S

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2025. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com