[Rock Lobster]

I shook my head and walked to the next door. It was labelled, "Nate the Great." Below that there was a hand printed sign that said, "Hello. I'm not taking your visit right now, but you can imprint your presence into the holocube at the tone and I'll ignore it at my leisure. Beep."

"He always this friendly?" I asked Zippy.

"Only when he's in a good mood. We try not to bother him when he gets a new gadget that doesn't meet his expectations."

I looked around for a cube, but only found a small pile of string with a yellow sticky that had "holocube" written on it. I arched my eyebrow at Zippy.

"Holocubes were a definite no-go on his list."

I opened the door and immediately felt like I had been transported to the set of one of those Star Thingie (TM) movies. The ones with the robots. The place was crammed full of electronic equipment. Centered in the mass of hissing and zapping metal and plastic was the large eyed bird I'd seen earlier. He was busy pulling on the end of a long string.

"You Nate?" I asked

"Yes. Here hold this," he said handing me the string. He went to a panel and punched buttons furiously. I dropped the string just in time to avoid the surge of electricity that I coud actually see coming from the ball it was being pulled from. "Good reflexes. What can I do for you?"

Wiping my hand on my trousers, I asked him, "Do you know anything about the murder that happened earlier today?"

"I understand that pshrynk took one on the head. Nasty business. But then, he didn't know that much about electronics." The bird shrugged, which was quite the sight to behold.

"You wouldn't happen to know who did it, would you?"

"Well he was a psychiatrist. Odds are that it was a suicide. The statistics are quite high in that regard. Here, hold this keyboard while I look them up."

I avoided touching the proffered weapon and said, "I'll take your word on it. So you think that someone would bean themselves with a crow bar to shuffle off this mortal sphere?"

"He's done stranger things. Have you read his stories?"

"Recursive tales aren't my thing. What about the string that's lying around all over the place. Everyone tells me that you can tell me what it's all about."

"That would be my 'String Theory.'" The bird managed to look proud, in spite of the eyes.

"String theory?"

"No, String Theory. You have to capitalize it."

"Right. So what's this String Theory you have?"

"Everything is held together by string."

"And?" I have to admit that my head was feeling like it could use a bit of string attached to keep it from spinning at this point.

"That's it. It holds everything together. Any more complex and it becomes too easy to disprove. I would point to my 'Big Bang With a Few Extra Flower Detonations Just to Make things More Interesting and the Occasional Trailing Sparkly Theory.' That one just went right down the tubes faster than anything, let me tell you."

"It must be comforting that you have that theory nailed down, so to speak."

The bird rolled his eyes, which was a definite sight to behold.

"So aside from pshrynk possibly killing himself, is there anyone else who might have been involved?"

"That guy who carries around the compass all the time and the penguin were in the room, too. Now, if you don't mind, I need to start working on my Relatives Theory. Which reminds me, do you have anyone related to you who is in a time warp at this time?"

Behind me, Zippy gasped. Again.