Make way for tomorrow!

(Upstart) Please don’t bother me with calls for the next few weeks. I’m working on something secret that might, just might, be bigger than the Internet.

Or maybe as big.

Well, anyway, it’s got “Ginger” beat. I know. I caught a sneak peek at Ginger, the hush-hush invention from millionaire inventor Dean Kamen, when lab security was off on a smoke break, and no way is Ginger bigger than my project. It is to laugh.

Sure, Kamen got Jeff Bezos to go on record as saying that Ginger will be “really big.” John Doerr and Credit Suisse are investors. Harvard Business School is paying a $250,000 advance for a book about the invention.

I still say mine’s bigger. In fact, I’ve code-named my secret invention “Skipper” because it’s bigger than Ginger, the Professor and the Howells combined. It’s the biggest damn thing on the island, except for when the Harlem Globetrotters dropped in.

Here are some other things Skipper will dwarf: artificial heart valves; evolution; the Macarena; blue M&Ms ; Eminem himself; and the designated hitter rule. The jury’s still out on that new planet 2500 times the size of Earth, but I’m betting yes, Skipper will make that look sick, too.

Not that I’m talking to you about Skipper. No sir. We’re not having this conversation, if you know what I mean. Things are way too premature, and I still have a lot of development work to do just to get to beta tests.

Besides, too many specifics would ruin the surprise. Just be prepared to wake up in a few weeks and have your whole universe shaken to its suddenly puny core.

So don’t ask me about it, because I’m not at liberty to give out any details right now. Don’t ask what those midnight deliveries of old Frogger machines are all about. Don’t inquire why I’ve been on eBay, quietly buying up every George Foreman Grill I can get my hands on--often at $5 over market value. Ignore the slag heap of spent uranium in my back yard.

To my neighbors, that wasn’t a particle accelerator you heard in my basement last night--just my Chuck Taylors banging around in the dryer. And that tanker truck of Bag Balm should be out of my parking spot in a few weeks.

I’ve had my book offers, too, multimillion dollar offers from publishers who know the New New Thing when they’re not allowed to see it. I’m considering them carefully. Right now, it’s a jump ball between Tom (“Gotta latch onto the New Economy before it’s dead as disco”) Wolfe and the guy who writes the TV Guide crossword puzzles. Any other scribes out there itching to hitch a ride on the future?

Of course, just because I’m not revealing any details about Skipper doesn’t mean you can’t invest in it.

Heck, invest a whole lot and I might even let you grease the first otter. (Oops, I’m revealing too much already.)

To those who object that this tendency to pump every new product as a paradigm shift has gotten us into a nasty little cycle of boom and bust, where minor, marginal and even silly technology is inflated to gigantic proportions only to explode, leaving the landscape littered with more debris than a five year old’s birthday party—to those skeptics, I say: Shut up.

Go ahead and sit on your hands. You’re the schlubs who thought fluoridation was a fad and Polaroid would never make it. Be my guest to miss out on the biggest thing since Steve Jobs said to Woz, “Which one’s the door to the garage?”

Go back to sleep and let the rest of us get in on the ground floor of tomorrow.

We’re not communists here, thank goodness. We have every right to risk our capital and get our just desserts—um, rewards.

So my advice to you is to send me cash by the fistful. Then sit back and get the off-shore account ready for one big binge-feed.

Enough chin music. I’m heading back down to the lab now. Hold my calls, and get ready for your lives to be changed, changed utterly--by Skipper!

Oh, by the way, does anyone know where to find the hood release on a ’92 Suzuki Samurai?

Editor-in-Chief Brian Quinton does not intend this column to be an offering of stock, which can only be made by prospectus. Or by prospectors. Or in Prospect Park. Whatever. Email him at brian_quinton@intertec.com.