A/N: Whatever became of Maxwell Smart?

Zzyzx Greetings

"Someone to see you, sir" the butler announced in a cultured British tone. Henry Buck wasn't from England at all, but from Brooklyn. He invented the accent because it got him a higher starting salary.

"Who is it?" the man in the smoking jacket asked, as he put down his newspaper. Maxwell Smart didn't get many visitors these days; the twins were at college and 99 was visiting her mother who was shopping around for a retirement village in Florida. Max told them to buy Tallahassee.

"I don't know sir; he says to tell you 'a metal friend' is calling."

"Hymie! Show him in Henry, please" Max said, rising from his chair. The butler left the study to retrieve the visitor. Shortly afterward he returned with a man walking in a somewhat stiff, upright condition.

"Hello Max, you have a very nice place. A lot bigger than the closet I stay in. It is good to see you again" Hymie said in a voice that was much more melodic than his old monotone.

"Hymie, my old friend. You don't look a day older than when I last saw you fifteen years ago. Do you use a moisturizer?"

"No, that would make me rust. I am trying a new paint thinner."

"And your voice sounds a lot different."

"Dr. Moog at CONTROL has been adjusting my voice circuits. He hopes to perfect it one day into a commercial recording product he calls 'autotune' but it is not ready yet" Hymie said.

"Wow," Max exclaimed "fifteen years since I left CONTROL. Even after all that time I've still got the lightning-fast reflexes" he said as he spun around as if to shoot. He knocked a vase off the reading table and it crashed to the floor."

"As good as always" Hymie said. Max looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Dr. Moog also installed an irony circuit in me a few years ago" Hymie explained.

"So you're still with CONTROL" Max stated. "What ever became of the Chief? Don't tell me he's still working at his old job."

"He is."

"I asked you not to tell me that."

"After you left his hair grew back in, he stopped having those headaches, and his worry lines disappeared. He even got married and has three children now. He's always in the office whistling and smiling."

"It must some new vitamins or nutritional thing he's trying. I didn't know the Chief could even smile."

"He smiles all the time now. He even takes an assignment out in the field occasionally now just for fun. So tell me, how are you Max? It took me a year to find you after I started looking. I searched old personnel records, travel lists, death records, social security, everything. It is as though you just disappeared."

"Quite the contrary. When I left CONTROL, I completely severed all ties with the place. Changed my address, turned in my shoe phone, even got my own credit card instead of using the company one. Had my DMV records wiped, my magazine subscriptions canceled, I eat in different restaurants, changed my hair color and even added an extra 'L' on the end of my name just to be sure."

"So it is now Maxwelll Smart?"

"Exactly. No one would think it was the same person; just who is stupid enough to just repeat another letter on the end of their name to hide?" Hymie rolled his eyes, a subroutine built into the irony circuit; Max didn't notice. "So I used every trick in the spy business to detach myself from CONTROL. How did you ever manage to find me anyway?"

"I looked you up on the CONTROL bowling league."

"Ah, the old bowling league roster trick. As a matter of fact I still owe my dues from last week's games. Would you believe I rolled a 300 game last month?"

"I find that hard to believe. No perfect games have been scored in two years" Hymie said, reviewing the records in his head.

"Would you believe I averaged 237 in October?"

"The highest average is by Agent 34 who holds a 187 average."

"How about I kept it out of the gutter the whole game?"

"Max, why did you leave?"

"You'll never have little robots of your own Hymie, but when my twins were growing up I decided I needed to get into a safer line of work for them. Do you remember when Siegfried was spraying all the crops to make the potatoes hollow?"

"Yes. You stopped him before all the crops were destroyed."

"While I was at the farm visiting 99's mother, my cover story was that I worked in a greeting card company with her and the Chief. Five or six years later I was discussing it with the Chief that maybe CONTROL could start a legitimate company that could be used for agent cover from time to time. He loved the idea, and insisted I was the man to own and head the company. He also insisted that for safety reasons I should have no contact with him or CONTROL, and that we should start it up as soon as possible."

"How could you be a cover for agents if you had no contact with CONTROL?"

"Eh, how's that?" Max asked.

"If you have no contact with CONTROL, then you could never arrange cover for an agent or coordinate plans. Then you would just be…wait…sorry, the irony circuit just kicked in. Nevermind."

"Forget I asked" Max said, still in the dark.

"Forget what?" Hymie said, memory of the question now erased. "So how did the greeting card business go?"

"Not good at first" Max lamented. "The Chief set it up as 'Zzyzx Greeting Card Company' because he said being last in the phonebook would have a lower profile, and that it didn't matter if anyone could pronounce the name. I wrote a bunch of cards for various occasions and found an old police sketch artist to draw pictures for them. Like for Arbor Day; it was a drawing of a bare tree and when you opened up the card and it said 'Leaf me alone'." Max chuckled.

"I do not get it."

"Don't feel bad Hymie, most people didn't either. But it turns out Siegfried thought I was trying to pass coded messages with nonsensical sayings so he started his own card company. CHAOS Kard Kompany went into competition with us, making up their own sayings trying to confuse our agents."

"You are talking about the agents that were not using your cards anyway" Hymie clarified.

"Yup. I have one of his here as a keepsake." Max handed the card to Hymie. On the outside was a group singing Happy Birthday. Inside they were all tied up to chairs and gagged. The caption read 'This is CHAOS…we don't "Happy Birthday" here!'.

"I guess I do not understand greeting cards." Hymie looked around at the mansion they were standing in; it was impressive inside and out. "Your cards must have become popular for you to afford this place."

"They eventually did start to catch on, when people wanted to send cards to really confuse others. Maybe they though the recipient would then call up to ask what it meant, I don't know. Then by complete chance someone in Hollywood wanted to make a movie about a small card company that became popular and I had money practically being thrown at me to be a consultant. The movie became a hit, and the next thing I knew a major greeting card maker came knocking at my door and bought out the whole company and all the ideas I hadn't printed yet; I ended up making millions on the sale and I still collect royalties."

"If you did not do anything after that then you are retired?"

"Retired…and loving it."

"And the card company you used to run?"

"I haven't paid much attention since then. They were going to call them 'Shoephone' or 'Shoebox' cards, something like that" Max said as he waved his hand dismissively. "Once I got out of the business Siegfried wasn't interested either; in fact I think he was a little jealous of how much money I made. He had Starker invest all their money in a movie to make their fortune; unfortunately it was in the film Ishtar."

"I am happy everything worked out for you Max. I hope to visit you again soon. In the meantime, good luck on bowling your next perfect game."

"That irony chip still working, eh Hymie?"

The End

A/N: I loved the original episodes and wanted to do a short tribute to the show. So I started thinking what Max would do after he left CONTROL and figured he wouldn't get 'The Prisoner' treatment. But he had to do something so I looked into another line of work for him. The last I read, the Shoebox section of cards was Hallmark's most popular.

I also owe a debt of thanks for Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. My father died when I was six, and my widowed mother of three didn't find a whole lot of joy in the world. Then one day she was watching the show and started laughing; she said after that things didn't look so bad and she started to get on with life again.