Adventures in the Land of Nod

Professor Otto Graffenberg was what a lot of people think of as a typical mad professor. He was always getting new ideas to solve the major problems of the world. From time to time, some of these went wrong - some disastrously so. Such was the case when he tried to invent a system to throw a magnetic field around a country to keep out enemy missiles.

Unfortunately he couldn’t get any responsible government to fund his scheme, so he decided to go it alone hoping to sell his invention later on for vast sums of money to any country anxious to protect its boundaries.

He managed to persuade a number of farmers to rent him space on the highest places on their farms where he installed sub-atomic accelerotor platforms. These took several years to construct but, eventually, came the big day when he was to turn on his system.

He employed seven laborartory assistants and technicians, and on the big day, one of them was to launch a rocket to try to penetrate his magnetic shield. He and the other assistants would operate the defensive system to prevent the entry of the rocket. After a massive build-up of electrons the shield was in place to cover an area of half a million square miles, and the rocket was launched.

Unfortunately the rocket penetrated the shield without any hesitation but landed safely in the sea. That was the only part of his experiment which worked. The Professor and his enthusiastic team held an immediate meeting to find out what went wrong. After a lot of opinons were aired and a lot of notes made, they decided to call it a day.

The Professor went home to his wife and children whom he had not seen for several days. He had twin sons who were eight years old and a daughter of twelve. They came tearing down the drive of his house as soon as the professor’s car entered.

“Daddy! Daddy!” they chorused as they threw their arms around him.

“Where’s mummy?” asked the Professor.

“She’s upstairs getting changed,” they told him. He went straight up and into the arms of his pretty young wife who was nine years his junior. He explained about the miserable failure of his plan as he sat disconsolately on the edge of the bed.

“So you did not get any positive results at all?” she asked. He shook his head sadly.

“So will you be trying again?” she asked.

“Oh, quite definitely!” he responded with a vigorous nod of his head. And at that very moment he felt a tremble inside him and noticed that all the clothes his wife was wearing fell off and landed on the bedroom floor. Five seconds later, they had completely vanished.

He stood up in amazement wondering what on earth had happened, while his wife, after uttering a loud screech, looked down absolutely speechless. She was standing there completely naked. She looked around her but there was no sign of her clothes. Just in case the children might come in, she grabbed her dressing gown from the back of the bedroom door and flung it over her, but seconds later, that too had vanished. At this she burst into tears.

“Oh, Otto! What is happening?” she yelled.

“I have no idea, my love,” he replied, except that all your clothes have disappeared.” He went over to the wardrobe and took out one of his wife’s dresses. “Put this on, Jenny.”

She quickly pulled it over her head but within seconds, that had also disappeared. This was too much. She broke down in fits of sobbing, naked on the bed.

Just then the telephone rang downstairs. The Professor went down to answer it. It was Karl, one of his lab technicians. In great alarm he told the Professor that his wife’s clothes had completely disappeared and that the same thing had happened to any others she tried to put on. Both men were astounded and had no explanation for what had occurred.

Within ten minutes, two more married members of Professor Graffenberg’s team phoned him with the same news. This convinced him that it must be connecetd in some way with his recent experiment. Realising that he would have to do something about it, he phoned every member of his team and called an urgent meeting at his laboratory in town in an hour’s time.

Otto, knowing that they would be looking to him for some sort of explanation, decided to go to his study and re-read his notes on his methods of procedure. Three-quarters of an hour later, he was none the wiser; he just sat at his desk deep in thought.

Suddenly there was a great cry from his wife who was stranded naked upstairs in their bedroom. Immediately he rushed up the stairs wondering what new disaster awaited him, but on entering the bedroom he found his wife standing there with her clothes, the dressing gown and the dress around her on the floor.

“Look, Otto. My clothes have all returned.” His wife was astounded. She put on the clothes and they stayed on.

“I must rush my love,” said the Professor. “I’m meeting the team at my laboratory in fifteen minutes.”

“It was only a ten minute drive, so the Professor decided to call into the newsagent’s to buy a paper. He hadn’t had time to read one for days.

Mr and Mrs Harding kept the local newsagents and they both greeted him with a smile as he enteterd the shop.

“Usual paper, Professor?” asked Mrs Harding.

“Yes, please,” he replied nodding in her direction. He felt another slight tremble and seconds later Mrs Harding was standing naked behind the counter. She let out a mighty yell and ran into the nearby stock room. Her husband, completely taken aback by all this, rushed after her. Professor Graffenberg took the opportunity to beat a hasty retreat back to his car.

The Professor’s team met in an air of great excitement. Four of them had witnessed the strange happening and three had not, but they were very interested in the effect. After sharing every detail of what had happened, all four men realised that it was after nodding at their wives that the clothes had fallen off and disappeared. They also established that the clothes had reappeared in about an hour. Obviously the effect, however caused, was temporary.

Alan, the youngest member of the team, asked to be excused for a moment. He went outside only to return in great excitment less than a minute later.

“It works! It works!” he cried. I went outside and stood in the doorway. There was a young woman walking down the other side of the street, so I nodded in her direction and all her clothes fell off and then disappeared. She screamed and ran down an alleyway.”

All the team went over to the window which overlooked the street to see if they could catch sight of the woman in question. Their amazement was utter when they saw quite a commotion, and three naked women running down the street, one with a man following, vainly trying to cover her with his coat.

The eight men once more sat around the table. “Let’s see what we have,” said the Professor in a business-like tone. “It only happens when a man nods in the direction of a woman. The clothes disappear together with anything else she tries to put on, and the effect lasts about an hour. And it isn’t only caused by us, because we didn’t nod at any of those women running down the street. It must apply to any man nodding in the direction of any woman. And she has to stay naked for an hour or so; there’s nothing she can do about it.”

The team then decided to experiment to find out whether all females were affected. They split into twos and went outside where they nodded at younger women, older women and even young girls. When they met, minutes later, to discuss their findings they were unanimous that the effect only applied to females who looked to be about twenty years of age and above.

Suddenly,the Professor suggested that they listen to the local radio to see whether there were any reports on the matter. When they tuned in, it was bedlam. Dozens of women in towns in the area had lost their clothes for no accountable reason. The team made a note of the towns affected and the time it took for the clothes to reappear.

“It must be something to do with the magnetic field we created in this area of the country,” said the Professor.

He then made further observations: “So, it seems to apply to an area of hundreds of square miles, and it only affects women who are twenty or above.”

Alan added, “And it can take almost two hours in some cases for the clothes to return.”

When the full realisation of all this became apparent, the team began smiling at each other. The Professor addressed them all.

“It seems, gentlemen, that we will be living in the land of ‘nod’. I think we are the only ones who know this at the moment, but the whole situation looks full of possibilities. Of course, we don’t know how long it will last, so I suggest we make the most of it.”

Young Alan looked at Professor Graffenberg. “Do you mind if I go now, Professor? The pubs will be closing soon and when I have a drink at the King’s Head, I often give that rather attractive blond barmaid a lift home in my car.”

They all smiled. “Oh yes,” said the Professor. “And I suppose tonight you’ll be giving her a wink and a nod.”

There are many interesting stories I could tell you about the Land of ‘nod’. Some of them are hilarious.

All characters in this story are fictitous, and any resemblance between them and any person living (or for that matter dead) is entirely coincidental.