The Magic Phone Box
a Mini-Peter Adventure transcribed by Nikki, 2008

3 June, 2008: Why do such strange things always happen in phone booths?

     Superman changed his clothes in one. Bill and Ted's time machine was made from one. And when Real Peter toured the world in 1993, each show started with a single red telephone kiosk rising from the stage floor. After singing a few verses of Come Talk to Me from inside, he would burst out and play tug-of-war with the phone cord for the rest of the song.

     Obviously, Mini-Peter wanted one of his own to play with. It wasn't easy, but I tracked one down that was almost his size. Despite some graffiti and the fact that it was a little bit too small, Mini-Peter was thrilled with it!

     He knocked the poor thing over a few times pulling too hard on the phone cord, until I finally hot-glued it down to my desk.

     Now that he could pull as hard as he wanted on the phone, he started bugging me about some appropriate wardrobe to go with his new toy. I hadn't sewn anything for a few months, so I agreed that it was time for a new outfit.

     "Armbands and everything," he exclaimed as he tried it on.
     "Don't forget the jacket," I reminded him. "You have to wear the jacket for this song."
     "Yes, I know that," he assured me, slipping into the jacket before pressing Play on the CD player and closing himself into the phone box for a test run. The music faded up and Mini-Peter sang along from inside the box, and I just laughed to myself and turned on the computer to check my e-mail. As the chorus came around, Mini-Peter burst out of the phone box, and when I looked over at him, my chin nearly fell right off.

     "Mini-Peter?!" I asked in shock as I paused the music.
     "Hey!" he objected. "It was just getting to the best bit!"
     "What happened to you?"
     "What are you talking about?"
     "Look!" I said, handing him a mirror, and the phone fell from his hand as he saw himself.

     "Wha...?" he was virtually speechless. "How? Wow..."
     "Are you okay?" I asked.
     "Okay? Sure... I didn't feel a thing! I just - this is..." he touched his face, feeling the goatee, then grinned. "Look at me, this is brilliant! I look just like Real Peter on the Secret World Tour!!" He jumped around ecstatically, turning the music back on and singing more gleefully than ever. He very nearly pulled the phone box right off the glue as he sang and danced twirled himself up in the phone cord. I was truly speechless. I examined the phone box on my desk but found nothing unusual about it. I looked under the desk and all around it, but everything seemed perfectly normal. Apart from the goatee and the longer hair, Mini-Peter seemed perfectly normal.

When the song was over, I paused the CD again.
     "We need to figure this out," I insisted, "before you play with this thing anymore."
     "What's there to figure?" he asked.
     "What just happened? And HOW?"
     "I don't know. I guess it's a magic phone box!"
     "But you've been playing with it for days and this didn't happen. Why did it happen now?"
     "It must be the clothes," he decided. "I put on the clothes and went into the box and came out looking like Real Peter when he wore these clothes."
     "How can that be?" I wondered. "This is too weird. Are you sure you feel okay?"
     "You ask too many questions. It didn't hurt, I'm perfectly fine. In fact, I feel wonderful! Look at me!" He bounded around a bit more to prove that he was healthy.
     "I don't know about this..." I worried, but he ignored me completely and ran to his mini-wardrobe, grabbing the first outfit that caught his eye - his Monkey Man costume from Halloween.
     "What do you think?" he asked me a few moments later as he emerged from behind his dressing screens.
     "I really wish you wouldn't," I pleaded, but to no avail. He clambered into the phone box, closed the door, then after a few seconds let himself out again.
     "Well?!" he asked me.
     "Ummm..." I narrowed my eyes. "It... didn't work."
     "It didn't?" He looked in the mirror again and frowned as he saw that he still looked like Secret World Real Peter. "Oh dear..."
     "I told you this isn't a good idea. Maybe we should just forget--"
     "The music!" he shouted. "We forgot the music!"
     "Music? What--"
     "Shock the Monkey! Would you put it on, please? I'll go back in, then press play, and I'll come out again."
     "Uh, okay..." I switched discs in the CD player and cued up Shock the Monkey, then pressed play. Mini-Peter emerged hopefully, and sure enough:

     "HA!" He shouted. "That's it! It's the box, the clothes and the music, all together, and it changes me, just like that! Isn't this fantastic?!"
     I couldn't help but smile. His make-up was immaculate, and his hair was just the right length and style: longer than his usual buzz-cut and a bit shaggy, just like Real Peter's when he wore those clothes onstage in late 1982. Mini-Peter showed no signs of harm. He was as healthy as ever, and absolutely thrilled. He scampered back to the mini-wardrobe and pulled out his tracksuit.
     "I wonder what this will do?" he asked as he changed into it. He selected Real Peter's third album, started it up, and went back into the phone box. I watched carefully to see exactly what happened, and the change was instantaneous. There was no flash of light or anything dramatic. The very second that the door was closed, the face paint just vanished, though his hair stayed pretty much the same, and he came out again looking just like Real Peter circa 1980. Pure, unbelievable, inexplicable magic.

     After changing back and forth between his special outfits, he put his original clothes back on, deposited the second album into the player, and emerged looking like the day I'd made him. Right back to normal, as if nothing had ever happened.

     "Fantastic," he sighed with a smile.
We discovered that the box didn't work with casual clothes - only with mini-replicas of outfits that Real Peter had worn on stage. However, Mini-Peter could change his clothes as often as he liked once he was out of the box and his new look would remain. It only changed when he was in the box, in stage clothes, with the appropriate music playing. If, for instance, he went in wearing his Secret World Live outfit but playing Moribund the Burgermeister, nothing would happen. But as long as the album coincided with the clothes worn for the that album's tour, the magical change happened every time, and Mini-Peter maintained that he never felt a thing. He didn't even know if it had worked until he felt his hair or looked in the mirror.

     Naturally, Mini-Peter has now made a list of clothes that he would like for me to make, so he can test them out in his Magic Phone Box. I've warned him that I will be extremely busy for the next few months so I might not have time to sew until late summer, but at least he has a few good outfits to keep him busy for now. He wasn't too bothered by this - as he reminded me, Wall-E and Big Blue Ball will be out later this month, both featuring contributions from Real Peter, so he has plenty of exciting things to look forward to. I am absolutely certain that a trip to the movies will be an adventure-worthy outing, so come back after the 27th to see what happens!