“If you will just sign here and the loan for your museum is yours,” said the Mr. Bankman who was the loan officer in charge of Norman.
“How about that? Just need to write the eleven letters that make up Norman Agate?” Norman replied, wiping the mucus from his nose out of habit. “Now I will finally be able to break ground on the future home for Steve and all of his little companions.”
“Pardon? This loan is for a museum, Norman.”
“Oh no, Steve is–,” but Norman was not able to finish his thought because at that moment two men in extravagant suits burst into the room.
The suits each had a matching tie and vest; it looked as if these men were pulled directly from the pages of GQ. Norman immediately knew that these men would never be the kind to ask for a ride from him on his pedicab. He was positive that these men would have been more likely to speak into a watch to summon a helicopter than to climb on to the back of his cab. Norman, given the opportunity, would have done the same.
“What is going on here? I’m busy with a customer, you can’t just barge in like that,” yelled Mr. Bankman.
“We can’t let you do it Norman. It isn’t meant to be,” the two men spoke calmly in unison.
“What do you mean? What can’t I do? And, and why can’t I do it?”
“It’s what you plan to do with your museum Norman,” the men continued in unison. “We know that you don’t intend it to be the geological sensation like you tell everyone. We know you intend to use it to house all of the pebbles you call friends. But if you do this, if you build this museum, a few very powerful people will become quite angry because they have big plans for land you are about to purchase. These are the kind of people you don’t want to make angry.”
“How, how do you know what I am planning to do?” stammered Norman?
“We’ve been following you Norman, ever since you started looking into the land. Our employer had us do an extensive background search on you. There are things about you that we would never need to know, like how you remember being born, but we still know them. Some of these things were not hard to find out, like how you dropped out of geology school, but we are ready to use any and every bit of information that we know to stop you.”
“Well how about that? But what you don’t know is that I am willing to risk it all for the sake of Geology. For the sake of Steve, the papers Mr. Bankman.”
At that, Norman seized the loan agreement and hastily scrawled Norman Agate onto the paper before the suited men could stop him.
Unfortunately for Norman, the suited men who knew far too much about him weren’t racing to stop him from signing the document. Instead they each calmly reached inside their expensive black suits and pulled out a handgun, saying in unison, “We were afraid it would come to this,” while doing so. The moment Norman put down the pen and turned to them with a smile of triumph on his face, they shot him.
Norman didn’t see it coming, but once he was hit he saw everything. He saw every corner of the room, every detail of every object. Had he thought to do it, he could have counted the threads on the suit. Two hundred Italian wool threads he would have counted.
But as Norman hit the floor, he only saw one thing. He saw his pebble, Steve, fall from his pocket and land between the floorboards.
“Steve!” cried Norman.
“If you would have done anything to build this museum, Norman, this was the easiest way to stop you.” With that, the suited men walked out of the room, each with a slight touch to their watches.