Science Fiction

Ghosts 2

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Nathan opened his eyes.  He found himself sitting on a park bench up on a grassy knoll, looking through an iron picket fence at a very confusing street scene.  People were running around, screaming, while cars and trucks were screeching to a halt in both directions and things, big pieces of things, were falling from the sky.  Nathan felt the little hand in his hand and he looked down to see Mya stare up at him.  Her legs dangled from the edge of the bench where they did not quite reach the ground.

“I think we are dead,” Mya said.  She had no sorrow, no fear, and no surprise in her voice.  She just simply said it outright like the most obvious fact.

“No.”  Nathan quickly shook his head.  “We were blown free of the explosion, weren’t we?”  They were blown free to land perfectly side by side on a park bench?  He wondered.  Perhaps they crawled up on the bench before they became fully aware of what they were doing?

“I think we are dead.”  Mya repeated herself and she turned her eyes from his old face to the strange goings on in the street.  She held his hand, too, or rather her little hand was engulfed in his wrinkled old paw, but she seemed perfectly content with that and in no hurry to break free.

“No.”  Nathan said it again, but there was no conviction in his word.  He also looked to the street and realized that everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.  Pieces of the bus were still falling and bouncing very slowly off the pavement.  People were still screaming in long, drawn out sounds while tires were still screeching; and after a moment they both felt something low and loud in the pit of their stomachs which tickled as the pitch rose up the scale.  Mya giggled at the feeling while Nathan identified it.  “The police.  Maybe an ambulance.”

“Too late,” Mya said, a deep sadness echoed finally in the midst of her giggle.  She looked again at the face of the old man beside her.

“We can’t be dead,” Nathan protested.  “That would make us ghosts.”  He turned his eyes again to that innocent little face, but she looked away.  She straightened her legs and stared at her shoes.

“I’m afraid of ghosts,” she said.

Nathan did what he wanted to do, the world be damned.  He dropped the girl’s hand and put his arm tenderly and lovingly around the little girl’s shoulder, hugging her as he spoke.  “I won’t let any bad ghosts get you.  Hush.  Everything will be all right.”  And they watched for a long time while police cars, ambulances, fire trucks and tow trucks all showed up; while men and women did the work for which they were trained and the innocent pedestrians backed away but stared long and hard at all of the broken pieces scattered in the street and along the side of the road.  They watched the traffic start again, slowly, and it seemed forever that only one lane moved at a time.  The cars and trucks went very slowly besides, not to be careful of the workers in the street, but because the people wanted to gawk at the scene.  Last of all, there were cameras and reporters who came to make a record of it all for the evening news.  That was when Nathan let out the sigh he thought he had used up, and he looked down again at the little girl beside him.  She looked up at him, her face a little closer to his than he imagined it would be, and she lifted her hand to touch his face once more, even as she touched him in the bus.  Nathan stayed silent and did not move.  He let the girl examine his ancient eyes.

“You’re not as old as you were before,” Mya concluded.  “You don’t look as old as my grandmother anymore.”

Nathan took his arm back and Mya sat up while he looked down at his hands.  He still saw the wrinkles and the age spots, though perhaps not so bad.  The power of suggestion?  Surely his suit was as wrinkled as ever.  He looked at the girl and noticed her legs were not dangling so much.  She could touch the ground with her toes, but then he told himself that this was the way it was before, only he had not seen properly.  He rubbed his eyes and spoke.  “Your grandmother is in the hospital?”  This time it was a question.

“Yes.”  Mya slipped her hands beneath her tight covered thighs in order to let her legs swing free.

Nathan looked to the sky to judge the time.  The hospital would be a long walk, but curiously, he felt up to it.  Certainly, he did not feel up to trying another bus.  “I know how to get there.  Would you like to go there and see her?”  He thought they could reasonably arrive before dark.  “I could go with you,” he added, in case she did not catch the implication.

Mya looked up at him once again and nodded.  “Mother says Grandma is dying.  Maybe Grandma could help us.”  The girl made no explanation about what she might be thinking, but she also made no move to get off the park bench, so Nathan stood.  He got up like a well-practiced old man, expecting his knees to scream, his lower back to protest and his stiff neck to make itself known, but none of those things happened.  To be sure, Nathan felt a little frightened when he realized that he felt nothing at all.  The forever pain, arthritis, agonizing stiffness and constant struggle against gravity were all gone.  Maybe they really were ghosts.  He tried not to think about it too hard and reached instead for Mya’s hand.  He needed her reassuring touch.

Mya looked up and readily put her hand in his, and Nathan understood she needed his touch as well.  “You are a very nice man,” she said.  She decided that he was a kind, older gentleman.  She trusted him, and even more importantly, she liked him.  Mya never knew her grandfather.  She was only three when he died, but she thought that this man might be like him.  She felt safe when she held his hand, and so she took it readily and they began to walk, side by side, to find a place where they could get beyond the fence and back to the sidewalk.

Nathan’s concern grew with each step about what exactly was going on.  He walked easily and without pain of any kind.  It was not that he felt he could run or dance or anything like that, but his lack of pain appeared to be the last nail in the coffin, so to speak.  He said as much at last.  “I think we’re dead.”

“I know that we are.”  Mya spoke without so much as lifting her eyes.  She had to be thinking about something, and probably thinking about many things, and she showed a little tear in the corner of her eye.  They came to a gate in the fence and stopped, so Nathan turned to the girl who now stood taller than his wrist but not yet as tall as his elbow, and he put one hand on each of her shoulders and bent down a little to garner her full attention.

“Now, how do you know we are dead?” he asked, and he tried to smile his most reassuring smile.

Mya said nothing.  She simply pointed at her feet and Nathan looked down at two perfectly normal shoes.  He started to shake his head before he gasped.  He had forgotten that she was lame, a cripple with a misshapen foot.  He had forgotten all about the funny shoe which had evidently been designed to help her walk.  He looked at the girl’s feet and honestly could not remember which foot it was.  Both shoes looked identical and normal, and Nathan had no doubt the feet inside were normal, too.  He let go and took a step back.  Mya looked up at him and showed some fear.  Her eyes said, please don’t leave me.  I don’t want to be alone.

Nathan caught the look and returned one hand to pat the girl gently on the shoulder.  “Let’s go see your grandmother,” he said, and then he turned toward the gate and tried hard not to hesitate.  He was not sure if he could open the simple latch, being a little afraid that his ghost hand might pass right through the solid metal.  That would have frightened him perhaps beyond repair, so it took a great deal of courage to get his fingers to reach out.  When he took hold of the latch, he let out his breath and heard Mya do the same.  The gate easily swung open, and then Nathan stepped aside “After you,” he said, graciously and raised his hand in an inviting gesture.  Mya smiled for him.

“Thank you,” she said and tried very hard to sound and act like a real lady as they stepped out of the gate and back into the real, everyday world.  Nathan made sure to close the gate tight behind them.

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MONDAY, The trip to the hospital. until then, Happy Reading

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Ghosts 1

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Nathan managed a foot on the platform, but he had to hold on to the rail to drag the rest of his decrepit body up the steps.  It always took too long, and though the bus driver never said a word, the other passengers always gave him hard and cruel looks.  He couldn’t help it.  He was eighty-four and no longer allowed to drive, so it was the bus or nothing.  He feared soon enough it would be nothing.  God knew how his knees hurt.  He sat heavily on the bench just behind the driver where there were plenty of metal bars to hang on to in the turns.  Once he was settled, his lower back shivered as the muscles let go of their great effort to keep him upright against the hard pull of gravity.  Of course, Lisa, his nag of a daughter wanted him to take the metro, but there were steps there, too.  Besides that, even if the walls were white and the lights were bright, there always seemed to be something of a going-down-into-the-pits-of-Hell about the place.  Nathan preferred the sun, even if the bus windows were terminally dirty and it looked like rain.

Nathan looked down at his suit jacket.  It appeared terribly wrinkled.  He supposed he could have it dry cleaned and pressed, but he had long since given up getting to such places on his own.  He knew he could ask Lisa.  She would do it, but she would also pay for it and more important, he would pay for it because she would use that as an excuse to start going through all of his things and weeding out what she did not like or what she did not think was important.  His hand came up to smooth out some of the worst of the wrinkles, but all he saw was age spots and more wrinkles where his hand used to be.  Getting old felt as hard as gravity.  He let the winkles lay, like sleeping dogs, and decided that no one would notice an old man in a disheveled suit, and if they did, they would not care.  He might have sighed, but he used up all of his sighs ten years earlier.

Nathan looked at the other passengers to pass the time.  He saw a young man about mid-way to the back.  Ha! Young?  He had to be forty even if he still clung to the outrageous clothes of youth and still projected the attitude of the disaffected and disenfranchised.  Nathan could read it in the man’s eyes.  He felt sorry for the man who had probably been convinced from a very young age that he was incapable of doing anything.  Ha!  He should not feel incapable of doing anything until he turned at least eighty!

With that thought planted firmly in his mind, Nathan turned to look at an elderly woman who was probably older than he was.  She was smiling, for Christ’s sake!  Nathan remembered the ninety-three-year-old he found in the supermarket the other day.  When he remarked on the two gallons of cherry vanilla ice cream while they waited in line, her response sounded interesting.

“Two scoops doused in two jiggers of brandy is really good.  How do you think I got to be ninety-three?”

Nathan had not thought.  He just smiled and she checked out first.

Now this elderly woman was smiling like that one.  Nathan decided it must be the brandy.  He could not imagine any alternative that would cause such an old woman to smile.  He concluded the little-old-ladies club must pass around recipes.  Nathan rubbed the back of his hand as if the age spot might be a bit of dirt.  Then he rubbed the back of his stiff neck and held on while the bus came to the next stop.

“Stupid car!”  The man virtually swore, and Nathan heard.  Everyone heard, before they saw the man.  Nathan noticed the collar right away, and supposed the man was a priest or a minister.  He shouted the words “Stupid car!” as he dug for the cost of the bus ride and made everyone wait and dig out their hard and cruel looks in response.  Evidently the man wanted everyone to hear and see.  Nathan understood.  It was the man’s way of saying that he did not normally ride a bus and he would not be caught dead on one now if his car had not behaved stupidly.  Nathan was not sure it was just the car behaving stupidly.  He watched as the man looked down the aisle, noticed the young man and the old lady, looked at Nathan, and took the seat in the front, opposite.  Before Nathan could speak, just in case he had something on his mind to say, the minister pulled the Washington Post from under his arm and ignored everyone.  The bus started again.

Nathan coughed and produced a large bit of phlegm.  He even disgusted himself, but he had a handkerchief in his suit pocket so he kept the disgust to a minimum, and while he was at it he rubbed his nose before putting the handkerchief away.  He imagined it a remarkable thing he did not embarrass himself more often.  He had lived alone for too many years and was of an age where he should not care, yet he did care about others—not what they thought of him, but to not disgust them if he could help it.  Too many men, once alone, went to pieces.  At least most of Nathan’s dishes were currently clean and put away.

Nathan straightened his shirt collar and sat up straighter for a minute.  He had not worn a tie, of course, since he retired all those ages ago.  He leaned out to look down the aisle once again and noticed the minister with the newspaper slid a little closer to the window, beyond touching distance, just in case Nathan wanted to touch.  The man turned the newspaper page as if to say, “I’m busy, leave me alone.”  Unfortunately, there was little more to see beyond the young man and the old lady.  There were other passengers, but they were hunkered down to where Nathan, with his not so good eyes, could hardly catch their hair color.

A man stood.  He was a big, burly kind of a man; the kind of man Nathan never was.  He staggered a little in the sway of the bus and jerked forward a bit as the bus came to a stop.  He sat behind Nathan and Nathan guessed he would be getting off at the next stop.

The air whooshed and the bus door opened.  Nathan turned to see a little girl come slowly up the steps.  Nathan waited for the mother or father to follow, but none came.  The bus driver asked for his money.

“Please, sir.”  The little girl spoke softly, shy or embarrassed.  Nathan would have had to turn up his hearing aid if he had not been sitting so close.  “I missed the school bus, but I have to get home.  My grandmother is very sick.  My mother will pay you when we get to my stop.”  That took real courage.  Nathan admired the little girl

“Sorry kid.  You’ll have to walk.”  The bus driver looked sympathetic, but it was his job, and Nathan wondered how many rotten things were committed in the name of doing one’s job.  He hated that expression.  “It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”  Here is the little secret, business or not, everything in life is always personal.

The little girl looked ready to cry.  “I can’t,” she said and both Nathan and the bus driver were drawn to her feet where one shoe looked stiff and metallic.  Nathan did not know if it was a club foot or the result of some disease or accident, but come to think of it, the girl did limp up the steps.

“Listen, kid.  I’ll lose my job.  I’m sorry.”  The bus driver spoke kindly but shook his head before he looked back into the bus as if to suggest that someone from the city might be there spying on him.  Nathan knew no paper pusher would leave the warm security of an office to ride a bus, but he allowed that the bus driver might have thought this was a set-up to see who they could fire, given the current state of the economy.  “I need my job.”  The driver said honestly enough.

The little girl began to cry, softly.

“Look, I’ve got family too.  I have to get home.”  The burly man spoke over Nathan’s shoulder.

“Yes, can we get on with this?”  The minister spoke up from behind his newspaper.

Nathan glanced back.  The young man turned toward the window to ignore the whole scene.  The old lady began to dig through her purse, but Nathan preempted her.  He pulled a bill from his pocket.  “Here, child.  You sit right up front with me and sit by the window so we don’t miss your stop.”  Nathan pulled himself slowly to his feet while the bus driver made change.  The little girl hesitated.  She looked once into Nathan’s sad, old eyes while he looked into her sad, young eyes and they understood each other in that moment.  The girl scooted past him to sit next to the window.  Nathan barely got his change pocketed and sat down again before the bus driver shut the door and took off.

After that, Nathan put the rest of the bus out of his mind.  He looked at the back of the little girl who dutifully stared out of the dirty window.  He judged her to be about seven or eight and he wondered what kind of world we had become to have school busses leave without their passengers accounted for.  Surely the school had some resources for those inadvertently left behind; and especially for a little girl like this, lame as she was.  Nathan understood being lame even if both of his feet were normal for his age.

“Do you know which stop is yours?”  Nathan asked, not certain if he would get an answer out of the child.  She had to be scared, all alone with strangers as she was.  He was pleased to see her able to respond.

“Yes, thank you.  I have ridden this bus before, with my mother.”  The girl gave up on the dirty window and turned to face front and the hard-plastic translucent board that separated her from the bus driver’s back.  “And thank you for paying.”  She added as if remembering her manners.  She looked up into Nathan’s old face, seeking his adult approval of her polite words and Nathan, who caught that look in her eyes, smiled in response.

“So, what are you, eight?”  Nathan asked.

“Seven,” she said.  “I’m in the second grade.”

“Second grade.”  Nathan repeated as he thought a long, long way back.  Fortunately, the ancient days were easier to remember than that morning’s breakfast.  “So, you know all about reading and writing.”

“Oh, yes,” the girl said.  “I love to read, but my writing needs some practice.”

Nathan nodded.  “Do you stick out your tongue when you write?” he asked.

“No.”  The girl shook her head.  Clearly, she did not know what he meant.

“Like this.”  He let his tongue a little way’s out of the corner of his mouth and pretended to have a pencil in his hand.  “You see?”  He pretended to write on the translucent plastic in front of them.  “A-B-C.”  He spoke as he wrote.

The girl put her hand quickly in front of her grinning mouth.  “That’s silly.”

“But it helps,” Nathan insisted.  He did it again.  “D” he said, and he pretended to have trouble with the letter and let his tongue move as his hand moved.  The little girl giggled and Nathan smiled again.  He had a grand-daughter—no—a great-grand daughter that was seven.

“My name is Nathan.”  He introduced himself.

The girl paused to examine his face before she spoke.  “Mine is Mya.”  And she lifted her little hand up to touch his wrinkled, craggy face.  “You are very old, like my grandmother.”

Nathan lost his smile, but slowly.  “You grandmother is not well.”  It was a question though he said it like a statement.

Mya nodded.  “She is in the hospital.  My mother is going to take me to see her tonight.  I think Grandma is dying.”  Mya took her hand back and straightened up.  Her eyes looked once again near tears.  Nathan thought we are all dying; only some of us are closer to it than others.  He forced a smile.

“Now, enough about dying,” he said brightly.  “You just give her a big hug when you see her and tell her that you love her.  That is all that really matters.”  He wanted to hug the little girl himself and pat her hand to comfort her in her distress, but he did not dare.  Surely someone would accuse him of terrible things, and he wondered again what sort of world they had become.  All he could do was lift his heart in a kind of prayer for this little soul while the bus brakes brought them to the next stop.  The big man started to get up as the doors opened, but before he could move far, someone jumped in and ran right past the driver babbling something about paradise and Satan and you demons.  The minister hid behind his paper.  The Bus driver grabbed and missed.  The big burly man also made a grab, but it was too late.  Nathan instinctively threw himself over the little girl like a shield of flesh and blood.  He heard the deafening sound, felt a moment of pain, saw a brilliant, blinding light, and then nothing.

Looking Ahead

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

2023-2024 Looking Ahead from August 28

These last four months of 2023 will see three novelettes posted

1. Ghosts is a story where everyone dies in the first chapter.  Old man Nathan and seven year-old Mya are left to make their way in… they are not sure where they are or where they should be.

2. Charmed is a Halloween story that should bring us to Halloween ( or rather Wednesday November first). It is an old fashioned Disney-like story but without the singing. Jake takes his baby sister Elizabeth trick-or-treating and gets distracted by his friends. Elizabeth is kidnapped and taken to a very strange place. Jake can only follow.

3. A Holiday Journey is a Christmas story. This one has the music. Christopher Shepherd’s niece Lilly, his only living family member, is spirited away and Uncle Chris must go in search of her. There are adventures and revelations along the way.

So, it seems dead, kidnapped, or spirited away little girls is a theme. Well, you won’t know how things turn out until you read the stories.

2024 Coming Attractions

Beginning MONDAY January 1, 2024

Kairos Medieval 5: Medieval Tales  The story of Genevieve and Charlemagne, the story of Thegn Elgar and Alfred the Great, and finally, the stories of Kristina the shield maiden and Yasmina, Princess of Mecca and Medina, two young women whose stories are intertwined, almost like twins, though they are separated by more than thirty years.

Interlude (TBA)

Kairos Medieval 6: Before Sunrise The book begins with the second stories of Kristina and Yasmina where they are forced to marry the wrong person, get out of that bad situation, and marry the right person, and the book ends with the story of Don Giovanni and his circus: The Greatest Show on Earth. (He stole that line from the future but he figures no one will sue him in the year Y1K).

Note:

For those of you who read the 2 Kairos Medieval stories of Greta, the Wise Woman of Dacia, with her two partners in time, Festuscato, the Last Senator of Rome and Gerraint in the Days of King Arthur, and especially for those who went on to read the 2 Kairos Medieval books of Marguerite, where Festuscato and Gerraint finished their stories as well, it seemed only fair to post the last two books in the Kairos Medieval group. Notice I used the word group, not series.

I am reluctant to call them book 5 and book 6 in a series. I don’t want anyone to think they have to read books 1-4 to understand what is going on in books 5 and 6. I  am also reluctant to call them a series, for that matter, because it is not that kind of a series. Each lifetime of the Kairos is a story unto itself. Even when the story is split between two books as with Margueritte and Greta, I work hard to make each “half” a complete story that comes to a satisfying conclusion and doesn’t leave cliffhangers.

Because people are inclined to get the wrong idea and think they have to begin with book 1 in the series, I am reluctant to number the books 1-6. Instead, I am considering color coding the books according to the rainbow. Greta’s 2 books could be the red book and the orange book. Margueritte’s books could be yellow and green. These last two books can then be the blue book and the violet or purple book. They are still marked more or less in rainbow order ( they are in temporal order) but maybe people will be less likely to think of books one through six and less inclined to mistakenly think they absolutely have to read book one first.

Now, I am not saying reading the cluster of Kairos Medieval books in rainbow order is a bad idea. Clearly when Greta from the first 2 books shows up in book 4 or book 5, you will know who we are talking about, though I do try to give sufficient information so that should not be a problem. Certainly, the Princess and the Storyteller get mentioned or show up all the time, and I have neither posted nor published any of their books. Likewise, Diogenes and Doctor Mishka show up regularly and I haven’t even written their books yet. So, while it might be nice to read the Kairos Medieval books from the first book or the red book forward, it is not necessary. Of course, I would not mind selling all six books once I get them up for sale, but that is another issue.

Color coding rather than numbering the books? And how about calling the books the Kairos Medieval group or cluster rather than use the word series?  What do you think?

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Avalon 9.12 Home, part 4 of 4

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Lockhart ignored them and spoke to the sergeant major. “Stay here in case she slips by us and tries to escape.”  He glanced at Miriam who was down on the floor by the technician, trying to staunch the bleeding.  She had kicked away the man’s gun.  Alexis moved Miriam back.  She would apply her healing magic to the wound.

Lockhart and Lincoln walked carefully into the safe.  The safe was a huge room all by itself.  It had row after row of shelving that held all sorts of alien and unsafe human items.  Some of the bigger items filled the floor to their right side, but most of the biggest items and the remains of crashed ships filled the Quonset huts outside the main building by the airstrip.

Lockhart pointed one direction with his old police revolver in hand.  Lincoln nodded and started down the right side with his handgun, ready for action, while Lockhart went down the center aisle.  The woman crawled through the shelves and got behind them without their knowing it.  When they were well down the aisle, she made a dash for the door.  She ran fast enough, but stayed bent over, so when she exited the safe, Don Thomas’ bullet went over her head.  Then she turned invisible.

Alexis looked up.  She had become fully human again, but she still had elf upbringing in her, and had just recently been an elf.  It was how she came back early from their journey, and how she stayed for as long as her father was alive.  She squinted and saw the woman well enough, right through the invisible spectrum.  She grabbed her wand, and the woman got hit with a hurricane force wind.  It lifted her from the ground, shot her right past the elevators, and slammed her into the far wall, hard.  The woman banged her head and went unconscious.  She dropped whatever she carried and became visible again as she fell to the floor.

Miriam dared to interrupt.  “I think I heard a popping sound in the Lieutenant Colonel’s elevator.”  Alexis nodded.  She heard it too, but she was busy.  She knew exactly what made that sort of sound, and she held her breath until the elevator arrived back in the third basement.  The door opened and Katie came out dragging the unconscious man by the collar.

“He is out cold,” Katie said.  “I don’t believe I killed him, but I may have.  I am sure he has some broken bones.”

“Lincoln may have killed this fellow, and Alexis got that woman.” Lockhart said as he gave Katie a hug to bring out her smile.

“She is fine.  Coming around.”  Don Thomas shouted from where he ran to check.  He cuffed the woman and got on the intercom which was beside the elevators.  “Medical team to the sub-basement, stat.  We need two stretchers.”  He brought the woman back, and the things she stole.

Lockhart, Lincoln, and Katie went into the safe and placed things on the shelves where there was space.  Only Katie spoke.  “I would like to see the inventory on this place.”

“Classified,” Lockhart said and smiled at Katie’s raised eyebrows.  “Just practicing.  It’s in the office.”

When they closed the door, Lockhart set the vacuum separately, and the vacuum key locked so no one who got shut into the place would accidentally suffocate unless the culprit had the extra key.  The medical team took the two men on the second elevator—the big freight elevator.  The others went up on elevator number one, and Don Thomas excused himself while he dragged the woman off to get locked up with Gilbert.

Miriam brought them to the director’s office.  It had been cleaned and straightened to an extent Lockhart had never seen.  He turned to Miriam first with a request. “I need to see the full dossiers of the people hired since Weber was here five years ago.”

“Right away,” Miriam said as Lockhart turned to Katie.  They kissed.  Alexis and Lincoln were on the couch kissing.  Miriam backed out of the door.  “I’ll be here if you need me.”  She shut the door quietly.

###

In the castle on Avalon, Boston wanted to show Sukki everything she had seen, and introduce her to all the friends she had made since her arrival.  Sukki appeared to be loving it, but when Boston started talking about all the islands in the archipelago, Roland put his foot down.

“First, we have to go to Mirroway to see Mother.”

“Okay,” Boston said and got a sly grin on her face. “But then we have to take Sukki home, and you have to go with me to meet my Mother and my family.”

Roland stiffened.

Lady Alice looked over at the three children, which is how she thought of them.  She smiled as her gaze shifted to Bobbi.  Bobbi was crying again, and Lisel, the high queen of the elves and Ivy, queen of all the fairies kept trying to comfort her, but Alice knew they were happy tears.

“You have no family?” Lady Biggles, queen of the dwarfs asked.

“I do,” Bobbi said as she wiped her nose and looked up.  “But we are not close, and my brother is old now and not well.”

“No man?  No children?”  Lady Biggles asked in a melancholy voice.

Bobbi shook her head.  “I fell in love once.  I was just out of law school and working for the FBI.  He was eight years younger, and white besides.  It would never have worked.”

Lady Goldenvein, queen of the dark elves, or goblins to be more precise, reached over and patted Bobbi’s hand in sympathy.  She said nothing, but that got the others moving.  They all hugged Bobbi and they cried some more with her.”

Alice turned away from the scene and tried to forget what she heard.  Glen did not need to feel guilty about one more thing.  Besides, the naiad that lived in the spring that bubbled up in the middle of the castle, at the center of the Island, arrived.  Her waters began next to the tower that housed the Heart of Time, the place where the whole journey of the travelers began.  They needed to go to the tower.

The naiad said nothing until they arrived.  They went into the tower together and the naiad spoke in hushed tones.  “You took a terrible risk letting mortal humans into the heart, even if they had elves to help and guide them.  They might have changed all of history and it might have been impossible to fix.”

“It was a risk, but mostly for them.  I did not know if they would come back dead or alive.”  They stood in silence for a minute and watched the Heart of Time beat with light.  The light got brighter and dimmer, brighter and dimmer, just like a real heart.  The naiad spoke again.

“Lady?”

Lady Alice smiled for her friend.  “Now it has been thoroughly tested, and with my Storyteller lost for all that time, something I did not know was going to happen, it got cleanly tested, beginning to end.  When it got broken and his children went through the Golden Door to find all the pieces, I did not know if it would ever be made whole.  We saw the pieces seamlessly fit back into the crystal but did not know how history may have been affected, or maybe infected.  Now we know.  All is as it should be.  Hopefully, no one will ever have to invade history again.”

“Hopefully, the crystal will never get broken again,” the naiad said.

“That too,” Lady Alice agreed.

END

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MONDAY (Tuesday and Wednesday) coming:

Between now and Christmas, the posts will cover three long stories – novelettes –  that have appeared on this website in the past but you might not have caught them. First for the Fall, a haunting story of Ghosts for your reading pleasure. It was interesting to write considering in the beginning of the story everyone dies.

I hope you enjoyed reading the Avalon stories as much as I enjoyed writing them. You can always leave a comment, or write a note to mgkizzia42@gmail.com, or better yet, leave a review on the books up on Amazon, Smashwords, or wherever you prefer to find your books. Thanks.

Tune in Monday for details on the coming stories and what is being planned for 2024. Ghosts will begin on Tuesday so be there, and Happy Reading.

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Avalon 9.12 Home, part 3 of 4

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People talked all at once.  They shuffled around and many stood to look around the table and the floor.  Most said, “What discs?” or “What recording?”  Alice Summers and Fyodor both asked, “What does it look like?”

In the confusion, Gilbert, the new guy stood, but Lockhart had his eye on the man.  When the man made a dash for the door, Lincoln stuck his foot out.  The man tripped but held on to something he had hidden under his suit jacket.  Lockhart landed right on top of the man.  Gilbert struggled, but not too hard because he did not want to damage whatever he had in the box.  Katie and Sergeant Major Thomas arrived and quickly put an end to the attempts to escape.  He got cuffed, so all he had was his mouth to argue with.

“The President wants to review the recordings and decide if some of the records need to be made public,” Gilbert admitted.

“Don’t you mean the Masters want it?” Lincoln said as he walked up.

Gilbert shook his head and stared at Lincoln, but he held his tongue.  An obvious lie would not have helped him at that point.  “General Weber,” he tried to say. “This is government property.”

Katie got the box that held the recordings and retrieved Decker’s ring.  She still wore her necklace with the camera.  She went to hand it to Alice, but Alice waved her off, saying, “Now that we have settled the administration spy in your midst, we have one more thing to do first.  Roland and Boston, would you come up here, please.”  Alice turned to Bobbi and asked.  “Are you ready?”

Bobbi took a deep breath and let it out, slowly.  She smiled and nodded.

Roland and Boston held hands and waved at the empty space at the front of the room.  They said, “How many miles to Avalon?  Three score miles and ten.  Can I get there by candlelight?  Yes, and back again.”

An image of an archaic stone archway eight feet tall and six feet wide appeared in the open space and slowly solidified.  The archway had a door so no one could see into that glorious country.

Alice hugged Bobbi and said, “You can come home and visit anytime.”

Boston called to Sukki. “Sister.  Come with me.  I want to show you my home.  You can come back whenever you are ready.”

Sukki hesitated.  “Mom?  Dad?”

Lockhart nodded as Katie spoke.  “Go on.  Enjoy yourself.  We are home now, and you are a big girl.  Be good but have fun.”  Katie smiled and Sukki responded with a smile.

Bobbi opened the door, and everyone caught the aroma of fresh cut grass, grain ready to harvest, and many kinds of flowers. Some caught the scent of the sea and swore they heard the breakers on the shore. Some heard the birds and bubbling brook.  A few lucky ones that happened to be at the right angle caught sight of the great castle on the hill with its uncountable towers and all the banners fluttering in the breeze.

Bobbi, Boston, Sukki, and Roland went into that other place, and Roland closed the door behind them.  The archway faded and vanished altogether, and Alice smiled.  “Welcome home,” she repeated for the travelers.  “Be good, and Merry Christmas.”  She raised her hands and vanished, this time without the flash of light because everyone was looking at her, and she did not need to get their attention.

While Lockhart and Sergeant Major Don Thomas got Gilbert settled, and two of the security crew carted him away to a lockup, Katie took a closer look around the room.  She had been occupied during the brunch catching up with Alexis, Roland, and Boston.  Now, it looked to Katie like something out of middle school.  The lawyers had a table.  The technology people had a different table.  The security group had a third table. There were a couple of other tables.  One for personnel, one for the medical staff and some scientists like biologists and chemists, and one for what was likely the physicists in the group.  She wondered if they mixed and matched well.

One table appeared to be all military people.  She saw a Lieutenant commander of the navy, two air force captains, though one had a patch that said U. S. Space Force.  She had some catching up to do. She later discovered that the space force was not official yet, and would not be for another four years, but that officer worked in space command.  She saw an army major and noticed that they all came in uniform.  They must have been told in advance.  Eating with the officers were five non-coms from the five branches, one being from the coast guard.  One was a marine staff sergeant, and Katie had to jog her memory to grab the woman’s name.

“Miriam,” she called.  The woman put her napkin on the table and came right over.  She came to attention and saluted.  Katie returned the salute and said, “You work for the director.”  It was a question.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well, first of all, let’s dispense with coming to attention and the salute.  You can’t be saluting every time I come to the office.  You will never get any work done.  And second, call me Katie, though I suppose in public you should probably make that Lieutenant Colonel.”

“Lieutenant Colonel,” Miriam said.  The marine drilling and discipline to acknowledge rank was strong.  She did not doubt Lieutenant Colonel was what they would all call her, though the army and air force people might just call her Colonel.  They probably called Sergeant Major Thomas simply Sergeant.  Some service branches were not as strict as the marines.

“We ready?” Lockhart asked, interrupting Katie’s thoughts.  She nodded and told Miriam to come along.  Don Thomas also came, and Katie went back to her introspection as they walked.  Oddly, she did not imagine anything about what things might be like in the Pentagon and the Smithsonian.  She did wonder if Miriam was as good a secretary as reported, if maybe she could take the woman with her.

Down the hall, they came to the two elevators that went down to the third basement—the old bomb shelter.  It presently housed the main frame supercomputer that allowed the Men in Black to track just about everything on the planet.  It connected with several satellites, all built with enhanced alien technology garnered from the many different aliens that fell to Earth or visited and left things behind.  It also had regular maintenance and IT people that came in and out of the basement.

The other side of the basement remained a bomb shelter of sorts, where people could go in a time of emergency.  It got some revamping during the Vordan incident.  The security department got oversite for the shelter, to make sure the supplies remained fresh and the equipment like the generators and appliances remained in working order and up to date.  Security oversaw the basement armory.  Lockhart saw some ray-guns there and wondered how they worked.

They came to a big metal door at the back of the shelter and paused.  Lockhart, as the assistant director, had the authorization to open the safe.  One screen scanned his palm print.  Another scanned his iris.  There were other locks, and when the door opened, it made a great whooshing sound.  Miriam told Katie it was vacuum sealed.  Three white cloaked technicians stepped over from the computer side to watch.  They produced handguns when the door opened and told everyone to raise their hands and leave their guns in the holsters.  One technician took the recordings.  One stepped into the safe to retrieve something.  The third one spoke.

“Just as well Gilbert did not get away with these recordings,” he said.  “The Masters want these recordings.”  He paused to threaten Lockhart.  “I imagined taking your daughter as a hostage, but the wife will do.”  He made Katie move back toward the elevator and pushed the button to open the door and another button to hold it open.  The man holding the recording stayed to point his gun at the three by the door, focusing on Lockhart and Don Thomas who were likely dangerous.

“Hurry up,” the man shouted into the safe.  The woman that went in started to return when the other elevator arrived, and the door opened.  Someone shot the man by the door.  The one on the elevator with Katie quickly closed the elevator door to escape with his hostage.  Lockhart looked once at the elevators.  The one started to go up, but Lincoln and Alexis came from the other one.

“I didn’t trust that Gilbert to be working alone,” Lincoln said.

“I trust my husband’s suspicious instinct,” Alexis said with a smile.

************************

Tomorrow

Don’t forget Thursday’s post. It will end the episode and the Avalon Series so don’t miss it. Enjoy the moment and Happy Reading

*

Avalon 9.12 Home, part 2 of 4

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

The travelers kept walking, while people raced toward them in golf carts and on foot.  Lockhart and Lincoln both saw familiar faces.  Katie brought Sukki to walk between herself and Lockhart having recognized the girl’s discomfort with all these new people.  Katie did manage a question before the people showed up.

“Mister Smith?”

“The alien Zalanid,” Lockhart said.  “He used to speak for the Kargill who does not appear to be on Earth at the moment.  We borrowed him and the Kargill ship when we dealt with the Vordan.”

“You remember,” Sukki said.  “Mister Smith was the alien visitor in Elizabeth’s day.”

Katie remembered.  “Still alive?”

“He sleeps a lot.  Suspended animation, er, cryogenic sleep.”

Katie nodded as the golf carts arrived.

Lockhart got plenty of hugs and handshakes and did his best to introduce people to his wife and daughter.  Lincoln got mobbed before his wife Alexis arrived.  She threw herself into his arms and cried a little between kisses.  Her father passed away shortly after she and Boston came home.

“He looked at me in my elf form and said he was satisfied.  At least his daughter would not die before him,” Alexis said, and sniffled.  “After he died, Alice made me human again, and I waited and worried for you.”

“I’m here now.”  Lincoln did his best to hold her and comfort her.

Katie smiled and shook plenty of hands.  She decided she would have to make a list of everyone’s names, and she looked forward to getting to know these people.  She was especially curious about the two marines, Staff Sergeant Miriam Haddad, who called herself a secretary and chief file clerk, and Sergeant Major Don Thomas who helped run the security group.  They both saluted her and called her Lieutenant Colonel, though she was not in uniform.

“Yes,” the sergeant major said.  “Miriam and I came here with Brigadier General Weber five years ago during the Vordan incident.  The Kairos said at the time I was in over my head. I still am.”

“So am I,” Lockhart interjected and put one hand on Katie’s shoulder.  “The lieutenant colonel is my wife, and did you meet our daughter, Sukki.”

Sukki smiled briefly through her discomfort before she got distracted.  Boston came racing up, faster than any human could run, and she yelled.

“Sister.”

Boston and Sukki hugged and cried tears that were both happy and sad.  Boston’s husband Roland stood back and smiled for the girls, but he also kept one eye on his sister, Alexis.  He also felt some of her sorrow over the loss of their father Mingus.  Father said he was pleased with Boston.  He said she was a good wife and everything an elf maiden should be.  He said he was satisfied that Roland finally grew up.  Roland was not sure about that.  He loved his wife, Boston, and maybe someday they would have a child of their own.  Maybe that was something like being grown-up, sort of.

Ms. Roberta Brooks—Bobbi, the director of the Men in Black hobbled down from the golf cart.  She had aged in the last five years.  She looked seventy.  She limped and pointed to her legs.  “Blocked arteries,” she said with a grin.  “Just like the Storyteller.”  She grabbed Lockhart for a big hug and complained.  “It isn’t entirely fair.  You get your legs back and get out of that wheelchair, and then you get to be young again.  But I understand.”  She let go and took a step back.  “My compensation is giving you all the hassles and headaches of this organization while I get to retire.  Come.  Bring your wife and daughter.  Let’s go up to the big house.”

Bobbi got back in the golf cart and moaned a bit because of her knees.  She patted the seat beside her for Lockhart. Katie and Sukki got in the back while Roland and Boston went to walk with Lincoln and Alexis.  Bobbi said one more thing as she paused to rub and warm her hands before she began to drive.  “Did you pick Christmas Eve on purpose?  It is cold.”

They all went straight to the cafeteria where the cooks had prepared a big brunch.  They had everything from apples to zucchini.  Katie got some eggs, bacon, and toast.  Lockhart stuck with the roast beef, though he took a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to have on the side.  He also filled the biggest mug he could find with coffee and said, “At last.”  Honestly, he had coffee with Casidy, and in Doctor Mishka’s Hollywood, but there seemed to be some principle involved.  Sukki tried to eat a bit of everything.  Many items were new to her.  She did tend to hang out at the desert table.  She swore after that she was going to have a chocolate eclair every morning for breakfast, or maybe some chocolate donuts.

When people were fed and the room settled down into small, soft conversations, Alice arrived in a flash of light that got everyone’s attention.  “I cannot stay long in this place,” she said.  “Sorry for the interruption, but we have business to attend.”  She looked at Bobbi.  “Do you have the box?”

Bobbi nodded and turned to a man at the next table, the lawyers table.  Alice Summers, the woman who designed the peace treaty with the Vordan handed a small box across the table to the man nearest Bobbi.  He handed it across the aisle, but Lockhart raised his eyebrows.  He did not know the man.  Back when Boston pushed him around in a wheelchair, and he was the assistant director, he made a point of getting to know everyone in the building.  Bobbi, who did not notice Lockhart’s reaction, said, “Thank you Gilbert.”  She turned to Katie.  “I believe you need to be in dress uniform for this.”  Then she stood with a minimum of groans and brought the box to Alice.

Katie stood and adjusted her fairy weave clothing to make it appear like a marine full-dress uniform.  Some of the people gasped to see the clothing change in size, shape, texture, and color, though some were still blinking from the appearance of Alice.  Katie stepped forward and had an idea what this was about.

Lady Alice opened the box and pulled out two silver oak leaves, the insignia of a lieutenant colonel.  She spoke first.  “Decker saved these, and they have been kept in the director’s office for the last hundred years.  Jax handed them to Bobbi when he retired along with the hatchet of Lars, the symbol of the North American director.  The oak leaves belong to you.  All of the appropriate papers are on file here and at the Pentagon, but I get the honor of pinning them on.”  Alice did so, and Katie saluted.  Alice returned the salute and put the major’s insignia in the box for safe keeping.  She turned to the gathering as Bobbi retrieved the other artifact from Ms. Summers.

“Lieutenant Colonel Lockhart will head the archeology and anthropology department. She will work out of the Pentagon and the Smithsonian where she will be able to keep tabs on North American activities.  Now, Robert, would you please come up front.”

Lockhart stood and came to stand beside his wife.  Alice took a step back and Bobbi stepped forward.  “Robert Lockhart,” Bobbi said, and she made him take the oath of office right there.  She took the tomahawk, which it was, and handed it to Lockhart, saying, “The claw of the eagle has now passed to the next generation.  Stay true to the Charter.  Uphold the Code of Establishment.  Keep your eyes and ears open.  Do not let down your guard or neglect the watch for the sake of the whole human race.  May peace and quiet be yours throughout your time of service.”

“Not likely,” Lockhart whispered.

“That is just what I said,” Bobbi returned the whisper.

Alice clapped, so everyone did, but she quickly held up her hand for silence.  “Now, we have some cameras and five-years’ worth of recordings to lock up.  Katie, would you fetch the records?”  She watched and waited patiently.

Katie went straight to her backpack and found it improperly tied. She opened it and saw the recording discs were gone.  She shouted.  “Nobody move.  The discs are missing.”

Avalon 9.12 Home, part 1 of 4

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

After 1953 A.D. Men in Black Headquarters, Washington DC

Kairos lifetime 121: Glen, the Storyteller

Recording End

Lockhart, Katie, Sukki, and Lincoln appeared in a field near the main road.  The air felt like winter.  The trees were bare, but there did not appear to be any snow or ice on the ground.

“December,” Lincoln guessed, and no one disagreed.

They stopped there at first so they could thicken their fairy weave against the cold and Lockhart could explain a couple of things.  Lockhart pointed to the sign at the end of the mile-long driveway that identified the building in the distance as government property and said No Trespassing.  The gate looked closed.  “The guard house looks empty, but the intercom works,” Lockhart began.

“The gate and fence that runs through the trees that line the road are wired, not electrified, but with sensors that will detect anyone unauthorized coming through the gate or climbing over the fence.”  Lincoln added.

“All of this land around is owned by the Men in Black,” Lockhart explained to Katie and Sukki.  “It is mostly rocky, forest covered hills, so I suppose it is not very good farmland.”

Lincoln interrupted again.  “It is marked on the maps as three farms, about five thousand acres altogether.  Three families presumably hold the land in trust.  They run some cattle on two farms, and sheep on one of the farms, but it has mostly been left to grow wild like a buffer area around the main building.”

“That was a good thing five years ago when the Vordan came in their fighter ships and tried to melt the building with their heat rays,” Lockhart said.  “There weren’t any houses or businesses close enough where innocent people might have gotten hurt.”

“So you have said,” Katie responded as she slipped her arm around Sukki’s broad shoulders and gave a little squeeze.  That brought a smile and opened Sukki’s mouth.

“I am sure they were not heat rays.”

Katie looked at the girl and returned the smile.  “Your father thinks all alien weapons are ray guns.”

Lockhart grumped.  “You can see the guard house is run down, looking like it has not been regularly manned since the cold war,” he continued.  “It hasn’t, but the look is deliberate to suggest that anything interesting or secret has long since been removed from the area.  It suggests to the casual passersby that there is nothing worth seeing there.”

The travelers paused as they watched a car move down the road.  The older couple in the car ignored the people in their backpacks and soon drove around the bend while Lincoln added a thought.  “This used to all be farmland for miles around.  Now, there is a village center and a strip mall with a couple of housing developments in that direction. The other direction brings you to towns and suburbs, and eventually Washington.”

“We only have around fifty people that work here on a regular, permanent basis.  This is the headquarters building for North America.  Most operatives are trained and placed back in their regular jobs and regular lives, and fortunately, many are never called to check out any strange and unusual things.”

“Most don’t live like Scully and Mulder,” Katie surmised.

“Who?” Lockhart asked.  Katie just smiled.  Robert was not a science fiction fan.

“There are satellite offices in a couple of dozen places around the continent with a dozen or so people in each place,” Lincoln said.  “Panama City, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Anchorage…”

“And so on,” Lockhart interrupted.  “Maybe five hundred people are on the payroll for all of North America, but there are roughly two thousand or more others spread all over the place, including all through the Caribbean.”

“But they are working their regular jobs, living regular lives, and not likely to ever be needed,” Katie understood.  “I need to get back to work in the Pentagon.”

“Yes,” Lincoln said.  “We need someone to check on archeological digs, worldwide.”

Lockhart did not feel so sure about that.  The Pentagon was a good hour away, not counting traffic.  He supposed they might find a place halfway between.  “Anyway—Swenny Way,” he said.  “We need to cross over to the gate and let people know we are here…”

“Lockhart!”

He got interrupted by a call from across the street.  They saw a woman, a slender and beautiful blonde, wearing what appeared to be an evening gown, or a fancy nightgown.  It was hard to tell.  The woman waved for them to join her, and after a quick look up and down the street, and a slight pause while a dump truck roared by, they crossed over and Lockhart identified the woman.

“Lady Alice.”  He added a note for Katie, who knew, and Sukki, who maybe did not know.  “Lady Alice keeps Avalon, the island of the Kairos in the Second Heavens.”

Lincoln had a question when they got close.  “I thought the Storyteller was the Kairos in this time.  I am glad he made it home from the chaos of the Second Heavens before time began, but shouldn’t he be here.  I thought you couldn’t be in two places at once.”

Alice smiled for them all and made a point of hugging Sukki.  “He is home, four hundred miles from here, sleeping at this hour.  But even if he was awake, I could visit with you.  He does not remember anything about the Men in Black or the Kairos he is, or any such thing.”  She turned and began to walk slowly toward the fence as she continued to explain.

“The golem that filled his shoes over the last nearly six years while he was away remained connected to him during all that time.  That was the main reason we never gave up hoping that he would make it back alive.  The golem began to write about the lives of the Kairos almost from the beginning.  After a couple of years, he began to write about your journey through time.  The stories are up on various websites.  You can read them.  Just don’t argue with them.  Some things were changed to protect the innocent.  Other things, including some historical bits, were fudged, as he says, so the Masters will not get a clear picture of your activities.”

“The Masters,” Lockhart said.  “They worry me, and now that we are in our proper time and have no idea what the future might be, I don’t know how we would even recognize them.”

“I am here,” Alice said.  “I can warn you, so don’t worry.  Yes.  The Masters remain a problem even at this late date, but we can work things out.”

They came to the fence and Alice pulled something like a stick from an unknown pocket in her dress.  She pointed it at the fence and the fence became ghost-like in that spot so they could walk right through it.  Once through, the fence appeared solid again and Alice said she had more to tell them.

“The golem suffered a series of mini strokes at the end of 2012, the beginning of 2013 and stayed in the hospital for four days.  It was not that he needed to stay there so long, but you know doctors don’t work on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, and apparently, they don’t worry about the hospital bills piling up.”  She paused to click her tongue, tsk, tsk.  “But it told us the Storyteller must have suffered the same and the connection remained strong.”

“But the Storyteller is back now,” Lincoln said.  “Time is straightened out again, isn’t it?”

Alice paused as they came to the edge of the trees and started across a very large field toward the building in the distance.  She seemed to be thinking of something before she spoke again.  “He is back home and presently retired and sleeping, but he is continuing to write the stories of the Kairos and finishing your stories.  I am not at liberty to say how he knows about your adventures, or how he knows anything at all about the Kairos, and all the basic details of my many lifetimes in the past and future.  Let us say the block on his memory that the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, put on him when he visited in the days of the Princess is not a complete block.  The Kairos is counted among the gods, even if the Storyteller is strictly a human mortal and with no special powers, magic, or gifts of any kind.  Let us also say, he believes it is a great product of his active imagination and something to do since he became disabled.  Hopefully, he will be able to finish his years in peace.  He can walk, but not run.  He has blocked arteries in both legs, but telling the stories seems like a tonic for him.”

“Let us hope he does not end up in a wheelchair,” Lockhart said.  “I remember being in one back when I was old before this journey started and I got made young again.”

Katie touched Lockhart in the arm to get his attention, which she had in any case.  “I mostly forget about the age difference these days,” she said.  “I think we have bridged that gap.”

Lockhart smiled and slipped his arm over her shoulder the way she had over Sukki’s shoulder earlier.

“Okay,” Alice said.  “You have been seen so listen up.  First, leave the Storyteller alone if at all possible.  Second, Katie, do you have Decker’s ring?”  Katie nodded.  “You need to put the ring, your necklace, and the full recording of your journey in the safe, here, and leave it there for the time being.  You are not allowed to make copies or share it in any way with the marines, the Pentagon, the government, area 51, or anyone.  You are certainly not allowed to let General Weber get his hands on it.”

“General Weber?” Katie looked up.

“Correct, Lieutenant Colonel Harper-Lockhart.  There have been some changes while you were gone.”

“Understood,” Lockhart said.

“Third,” Alice continued.  “Lockhart, you have been promoted.  You are now officially the Director for North America, and presently for the organization internationally.  Lincoln, you are now the assistant director, which means you get to sit at a desk and shuffle paperwork all day.”

“Ahh,” Lincoln said.  “It sounds like heaven.”

“And fourth, you need to leave Mister Smith in his chamber, sleeping for now.”

Lockhart nodded but Katie looked uncertain.

Lastly, or fifth.  Try to limit your storytelling to what the Storyteller has written in his books.  I know you have not read them yet, but they are safe for public consumption.  You never know who might be listening.  It is good to have you home safe and sound.”

Alice smiled and vanished in a flash of light.  Sukki wanted to ask about Nanette and Decker, Tony, and especially Elder Stow, if Alice could tell her anything.  She would have to wait and ask later.  Presently, the anxiety of meeting a bunch of brand-new people was enough for her to worry about.  And the people were coming, bumping along in some sort of electric buggies, and running.

Avalon 9.11 Blitz, part 4 of 4

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Elder Stow got taken to a base just north of York, well away from the bombing areas, where the bombing runs could be viewed, evaluated, and adjusted as needed.  He spent three days there locked up and interrogated.  He told the truth and held nothing back, which surprised his interrogators.  He did not need to be persuaded.

He did not focus on his feelings, nor the way he changed in his attitude and perspective over those years, but that was expected.  No one asked about that. Gott-Druk were a naturally private people.  They did not express their feelings well, even if they often wore their feelings on their sleeve, as Alexis used to say.  Besides, this became something like a report, and personal feelings had no place in a report.

Elder Stow did not share much about the little spirits he encountered, in part because they would not be believed and might be taken a signs of metal distress, and in part, because his people had stories about just such little ones.  They were often not good stories.  Such stories sometimes gave Gott-Druk children nightmares.

He also did not share about finding the long, lost expedition of Burrgh the Mighty—the first attempt to retake the earth for the Gott-Druk in those slower-than-light Agdaline ships.  He did mention Sukki, but he talked about her as a young woman they happened across, and one who belongs in the future.  He did not say exactly when in the future.

One thing Elder Stow did talk about was his impression of Homo Sapiens.  He emphasized their capacity for love, courage, and compassion.  These were things the Gott-Druk might not outwardly admit but might inwardly admire.  He also showed examples of their ingenuity and their capacity to face trouble and adversity head on with only faith and hope to guide them.  He concluded that portion of his report by saying that if it was the intention of the Gott-Druk to break the spirit of the English people with the day and night bombing, they would fail, miserably.

Elder Stow had little hope of converting his Gott-Druk listeners who had a lifetime of anti-human propaganda poured into their heads.  When the brainwashed teachers all say the same thing, and your peers buy into it like sheep, it is hard not to be brainwashed yourself.  Rare is the independent and revolutionary thinker.  Elder Stow understood that most minds would be so closed, hatred for humans would be all they could see.  And the Gott-Druk were very good at closed minds.  Stubborn and Stupid as the Kairos called it.  But some of the younger ones might take a second look.  Many were in their early twenties when they came to earth.  Now in their early thirties, they were probably thinking they should be home getting married and starting their own families.

With that in mind, Elder Stow talked all about the marriages of Boston and Roland, Katie and Lockhart, Decker and Nanette.  He told how Lockhart and Katie adopted Sekhmet and Artie in the ancient days, and Sukki in more recent times. They could not have children of their own on the road because those children would be trapped in the time zone they were born into.  He explained how Millie and Evan stayed in ancient Rome because they wanted to have children.  Millie wanted a little girl.  He did not hold anything back on that score, and figured he got to some of the younger crew members with that.

Since Elder Stow cooperated and needed no persuasion to tell where he had been over the last nine years, he got to ask a few questions of his own, presumably pertaining to the activities of his people in the last nine years.  Things were progressing, but the continent was not being depopulated.  He played dumb, like he did not understand.  He got told the change in plan.  The idea, now, was to make the humans into a slave race.  Elder Stow argued that slaves were not nearly as efficient as the technology they possessed, but his interrogators refused to listen.  He concluded, out loud, that there had to be another reason, since the slave idea made no sense.  That was the only time he got hit and told not to speak of it again.

It sounded suspicious, but it was not evidence of the Masters. For that, he had to wait until the Mother and Father of the expedition arrived on the morning of the fourth day.  Immediately, Mother gave herself away when she called him a traveler, though he had not worn his recognizable glamour that whole time.  Father called him a liar—though he had to be the greatest liar that ever lived to invent so many chronologically perfect, elaborately detailed, and consistent stories.  He indignantly offered to show them if that was necessary to prove the point.  They appeared to secretly smile, but Elder Stow caught it.  It was on their sleeves, even as Alexis said.  They took him up on the offer and Elder Stow kept his own smile in check.

Elder Stow got his old scanner which had been stored in a box, untouched.  He directed the medium-sized people transport to the right spot on some man’s farm.  The transport could carry up to forty people or soldiers.  There were presently twenty-two, with the two being the pilot and co-pilot.  Father and Mother, five Elders, seven younger officers, and five security guards accompanied Elder Stow to the precise location.  When they arrived, he set the parameters of the time gate in his mind before he pushed the button that burned out the scanner.  He did not want the masters to learn how to locate the time gates no matter what.

“Well,” he overreacted.  “This poor little scanner got so much use over these years I’m surprised it lasted this long.”  The others grunted.  Elder Stow was a chief engineer, so they all assumed he knew what he was talking about.

“But what good is that?” Mother yelled at him.  “How do you intend to activate the time gate now?”

Elder Stow shook his head.  “The scanner only locates the time gates.  It has to be activated by something out of sync with time.  Only something that belongs in a different time period can activate the gate.”  Elder Stow clamped his mouth shut.  He suddenly feared that like Lincoln, he might be telling them too much.

“But we have no such thing, unless you mean something that is more than sixty years old,” Father said.

Elder Stow continued to shake his head, though he remembered that there were twenty or forty years in a generation, depending on the context, but sixty years was the original maximum lifespan of the Kairos.  In this case, only the Masters would know that.  “Wouldn’t do,” Elder Stow said.  “Any such artifact would have been here over the last sixty years, so it lived through those years, so to speak, so it is still in its proper time zone.  No, it has to be something displaced in time itself.”

“Where can we find such a thing?” Father demanded.

Mother snarled.  “So, we came here for nothing,” she said.  “You cannot prove your madness.  You are the liar Father first proclaimed.”

Elder Stow stopped shaking his head.  He pulled an American ten-dollar bill from his pocket.  “This bill came forward with me when I came through the gate from the 1930s.  It is now displaced in time.  It is a bit worn, but it was worn when I got it.  Still, you see it came forward in time without ill affect and can now open the time gate.”  It has organic fibers, he thought.  Metal coins would not work, but no need to tell them that.  He squeezed the bill between his thumb and forefinger and reached out carefully.  Everyone saw the shimmering in the air when it appeared.

Elder Stow backed up.  He was in danger if he went through.  He was well over fifty and 2015 was another seventy-four years away.  Over the centuries, the Gott-Druk doubled their life expectancy from forty to eighty years.  Ninety was common enough but one hundred was about the limit.  No Gott-Druk ever live one hundred and thirty years, and Mother and Father were in their late sixties.  Suddenly ageing an additional seventy-four years would make them over one hundred and forty, and that would surely kill them.

“Here, let me go through to demonstrate.  I promise I’ll come right back,” Elder Stow said.

“Wait,” Father shouted and waved at Elder Stow.  Two guards came to grab Elder Stow’s arms.  “I don’t trust you to come back.”

“We must test it ourselves,” Mother said, and with a glance at Father, she stepped through the time gate.  They waited until the time gate deactivated.  They all waited, almost a whole hour before Father turned on Elder Stow.

“Maybe she saw something to explore,” Elder Stow suggested.  “I still have the dollar.  I could go to look for her.”

Father stuck out his hand.  Elder Stow handed over the ten-dollar bill.  Father activated the time gate and took one of the Elders and two guards with him.  “Hold him until I return,” he told the guards.  They went through and immediately people stepped away from a great flash of light.  The Kairos Danna, the goddess stepped from the light surrounded by dozens of elves, fairies, and dwarfs, and she herself deactivated the time gate.

“Elder Tanik,” Danna said.  “You are now the senior officer of the expedition.  May I recommend you go home?  The Gott-Druk may visit here, but nine years is not a visit.”

“But… We have not finished our mission…” Elder Tanik shook in the face of the goddess, but he responded.  Elder Stow spoke plainly in answer to his fellow elder even as he pulled his arms free from the grip of the guards.

“A daft mission.  We cannot make the German’s strong enough to clean the continent for our purposes, which was the original mission in case you have forgotten. What is more, we cannot introduce a disease as they did during the last great conflict because any disease that can infect the humans can also infect us. I had forgotten about that.  Such an evil thing should never be done.  The Spanish Flu ruined the last expedition, and rightly so.”

“But wait,” one of the other Elders spoke to Elder Stow since he dared not look at the goddess.  “What will we do when Father and Mother return?”

“They will never return,” Danna said as she explained about the ageing process and introduced Rupert, the young boy that stood at her side.  She said, “Rupert comes from the place the time gate comes out.  He will bury the bags of bones when they come through in the future.  Listen.  Your Father and Mother are gone.  Go home, or I will send you where you do not want to go.”

Elder Stow began to walk toward the transport.  One by one the rest of the Gott-Druk followed.  Elder Stow felt bad about luring Mother and Father to their death, but clearly, they were serving the Masters, and that made them enemy combatants as Decker would say.  Still, he did not feel too bad about it, and the rest of his people showed no signs of concern.  He knew they were all human of a sort, however, they were not Homo Sapiens.

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MONDAY

Episode 9.12 Home, will end book 9 and end the series. Until then, Happy Reading

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Avalon 9.11 Blitz, part 3 of 4

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“John,” Mildred called Elder Stow as he clambered back up to where the people crowded together.

“The tunnel did not collapse altogether,” he said.  “At least we still have air, stuffy as it is.”

“Yes, but the exit is blocked.  We have injured and elderly people who cannot walk all the way to the next station.  They need treatment right away.”  Mildred smiled for him and did not ask him how he did what he did.  The others gave him some room and he got all sorts of odd looks, but Mildred did not doubt.  He was an American, and the Americans were clever.

“Let’s look at the blockage around the stairs,” he said.  They did, and then he moved everyone back, away from the bottom of the stairs.  They heard a vague siren in the distance.

“The all clear,” Mildred said, while Elder Stow nodded and worked on his screen device.  When he set the device the way he wanted, and moved two men back further from one end, he told everyone to hold their ears.  He let loose his sonic device aimed at the rubble in the stairwell.  It shook like the blockage got struck with a mini earthquake.  Rocks and boulders of concrete tumbled to the bottom of the stairs, contained by Elder Stow’s screens so they could not go far.  The result was a narrow opening to the top.

While Elder Stow set his screens to hold back the rubble in the area still blocked, he spoke to Mildred.  “Get the people out while you can. I can hold back the collapse from here, but not forever.”

“Right,” one of the men said, and shouted to get out carefully.  Several men stepped up and helped the families get to the surface.  Two had made a makeshift stretcher to carry a friend with a crushed leg.  The wounded leaned on the healthy.  Some cried.  A few had died in the initial collapse, including a couple in the stairwell.  People, even the children stiffened their lips and climbed the stairs.  Mildred went last, as Elder Stow set the focal point of his screen device to move with him and not deactivate until he got out.

When the screens deactivated, the rubble moved to fill in the stairwell once again.  Mildred saw Firemen and police arriving.  Someone got in an ambulance.  Most of the people hardly moved from the street by the underground entrance.  They were weeping from fear and loss and comforting one another as well as they could.

“Who is in charge?” Elder Stow asked Mildred.

“Captain Hamilton,” Mildred called and waved.  She knew the officials in her neighborhood.  Captain Hamilton also knew her and came where he was headed in any case.  Elder Stow spoke fast.

“I am sorry I cannot help you clear the stairwell.  There may be bodies down there.  There may be someone too injured to be moved.  The tunnel is not blocked, so there is air, and you can reach them from the next station.”  He looked at Mildred and she named the station.  “This is important,” Elder Stow said to regain the man’s full attention.  “This was sabotage.  Men put dynamite in the ceiling to collapse the ceiling and kill the people, or at least trap them underground and cut off their air.  They blew the back half of the station to be sure their plan would work.  They blew the stairs.  I got them before they could get down the tunnel and blow the front half.    You will find unexploded dynamite in the ceiling of the front half of the station, so proceed with caution.”

“John?” Mildred finally wanted to ask a question, but Elder Stow faced her and interrupted.

“It was lovely to meet you,” Elder Stow said. “But I have to go now.  This travesty needs to stop.”

Captain Hamilton looked like he had a few questions as well, but when Elder Stow lifted a few feet up into the air to float with no visible means of support, he swallowed everything that was on his lips.  When Elder Stow turned invisible, Captain Hamilton nearly fainted.  Mildred just smiled.

Elder Stow flew a short distance to where he landed between the bank and the luncheon shop.  He decided looking for Doctor Mishka would not be a good idea.  He imagined it would just put her life in danger.  She was born in Russia.  She was presently in England.  He imagined there were reasons she had not been born in Germany.  At the very least, the temptation to kill Hitler and change the whole future might have been too great.

Elder stow found a secluded spot and became visible again.  He could not think of any way the German conquest of the continent went according to the Gott-Druk plan.  It seemed designed to create a subservient population, one that might soon cry out for the Masters to come and save them.  It finally seemed obvious the leaders of his expedition that were supposedly influencing and guiding the Germans in order to depopulate and retake Europe for the Gott-Druk had become servants of the Masters.  Perhaps they were all along.  He shook his head and let out a slight moan.

“Are you all right?   Mister?”  A man who stood on the sidewalk noticed him.  The man stood in a small crowd that watched the collapse of the luncheon place across the street.  It took a bomb.  “Mister Stow, isn’t it?  You’re American?”

Elder Stow looked up.  It was a man from the bank.  Elder Stow nodded and sighed as he spoke.  “I have just realized what a fool I have been my whole life.  I believed my leaders and followed orders without question.  I believed I was just doing my duty.”  And he thought, how like the Germans in this age.  “I hope everyone got out all right,” he added and turned the man’s attention back to the luncheon place, even as he touched the button on his communication device that would send an identifiable distress signal to his people.

Elder Stow found a different tea shop where he could sit and wait.  He thought the tea was not as good as the other place, but the scone was excellent.  While he waited, he wiped certain information and changes, including improvements he made to the equipment during his journey.  He imagined he would remember most of it, and how to replicate the adjustments he made to the equipment, but these were not things he wanted to share with the Masters.  It did not take long to do the work, but he did not have to wait long.

A small, six-man shuttle came in over the street, invisible of course.  Elder Stow’s scanner beeped, and he adjusted his personal screen so he could see into the invisible spectrum.  Surely, they scanned and identified him down to his genetic signature.  He knew his outward appearance mattered little.  He stood, handed a pound note to the waitress for a tip and said, “Thank you for your good service.”  She had been nice.  She tried to give it back, but he would not take it.  He stepped outside the door and removed his glamour of humanity.  He stood a Neanderthal in the sunlight before he touched his belt and turned invisible.

Two Gott-Druk, a younger officer and a private floated down from where the shuttle hovered over the street.  They had their guns drawn, but Elder Stow had no intention of giving them an argument.  He handed over his equipment but for his personal screen, invisibility, and flotation devices.  He asked their names because the younger officer looked familiar.

“Kern,” the younger said.  The child did not offer his name.  He simply looked at his officer with questions on his face.  “I was not in your group, chief engineer.”

“Yes,” Elder Stow responded with a smile.  “You are security family group.”  The younger nodded.  “Shall we go?” Elder Stow smiled.  “I am sure after nine long years our Mother and Father have many questions.”  Elder Stow handed the last of his things to the child security guard, who looked at him with even more questions.  No telling what the security guard thought, but he likely came prepared for a struggle.

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Don’t forget, tomorrow, on Thursday the post will finish this episode.

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Avalon 9.11 Blitz, part 2 of 4

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Elder Stow shrugged.  The man, Duko, was a workman.  Maybe he carried the dynamite to take down some building that had been made unsafe from the bombing.  A controlled collapse would be better than letting the building fall down on its own at some unknown time.  He let the man go from his mind and sipped his tea. He had other things to think about.

He bought a newspaper and read all about the blitz and speculations about what might be happening on the continent.  It did not look like the Germans were emptying the land.  He knew they were building concentration camps and removing certain portions of the population, but the majority of the people were still living in their homes—still living on the land.  They were a conquered people, but they were not going anywhere.  Instead of shipping the people to their various colonies around the world, the Germans appeared to be simply oppressing the people, and angering them.  He supposed given enough time, they might reduce the non-German population to second class citizens, something like slaves, but that would take several generations of oppression.

He shook his head and sipped his tea.

His Gott-Druk people had no interest in human slaves.  That was something the Masters would be interested in.  That thought made him pause.

As an elder on the expedition, he had been privy to the models projecting a clean sweep of the continent in 15-20 years.  By 1942-1952, Earth time, the continent should have been emptied and opened for Gott-Druk resettlement.  Something was wrong.  Things did not appear to be going to plan.

He sipped his tea and wondered if the leaders of his expedition were secretly servants of the Masters.  He had imagined the Masters were a Homo Sapiens thing, but maybe their corruption was more universal than he previously imagined.  He had much to think about.

###

After lunch, he decided he had to find Doctor Mishka.  He began by going back to the place he arrived, where German bombs reduced the bank and other buildings to rubble.  Unfortunately, his scanner could not pinpoint the location of the Kairos the way Sukki’s amulet could.

He expanded the scanner search area until he found the time gate that would take him back to 1875.  It appeared to be somewhere around Paris, as he estimated the distance.  It would let him out somewhere in the United States, depending on where Marshal Casidy traveled to in the last month.  Of course, he could not go there since he was now time locked in the exact point in time where he belonged.  Going through that time gate now would remove sixty-six years of his life as his personal time clock, as the others called it, would compensate for the time difference.  He was not even sixty years old.  He would cease to exist.

He played with the scanner until he found the time gate that would send him to 2015. That gate appeared to be around York, or maybe closer to the Scottish border.  He could not go there either.  Going through that time gate would age him seventy-four years in an instant.  No one lived seventy-four years on top of his current age.  One hundred was the limit, though he remembered reading about one Gott-Druk who lived to be a hundred and eight.  Remarkable constitution.  Elder Stow knew if he survived the time trip to 2015, he would probably die in a matter of seconds.

He sighed.  He well understood that the only reason he and the travelers could travel through time was because they were out of sync with time.  Their personal time clocks moved independently from the time period they traveled through.  Now that he was back where he belonged, his personal time clock linked up once again with general time.  Now he would suffer the consequences of getting younger or getting older depending on which time gate he tried.

Elder Stow felt sad that his travels through time were over.  He spent nine years lost in time, and like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, all he kept thinking was he wanted to get home.  Now that he was home, he was not sure home was where he wanted to be.  He learned a lot on the road, including about the Masters.  He thought again about the expedition he was on. Things were not proceeding according to the original plan.  He knew the Mother and Father of the expedition had to be responsible.  He suspected the Masters.  He needed evidence.  He decided that now, he had a different job to do, but a job, certainly.  He imagined a likely scenario.

Doctor Mishka—Colonel Mishka would be Colonel Nadia Kolchenkov, leaving off the name of the German husband she divorced. She had to be somewhere midway between the two natural time gates. That would put her somewhere in London.  She had to have come to this part of the city and maybe helped in the area with the injured.  She may have been present with the firetrucks and ambulances, and maybe sent some survivors to the hospital.  He might have arrived even as her car was taking her away.  He would not know.

She was a Russian. She probably came to London as part of a diplomatic mission from Moscow.  She had contacts and she spoke English well.  Elder Stow supposed it was in the interests of the Soviet Union to see a strong England—one that would not be cowed by German bombs and would not surrender.  As long as England stood, that would keep half of the German army in the west, and that would be less potential pressure on the Russians in the east.

Elder Stow would have to search for her.  He would have to go to Whitehall, to Parliament and inquire.  He would have to think about how to do that safely, where they did not arrest him as a spy or something.  He was a naturally cautious person.  He wondered if his travels made him paranoid.  No, he decided.  Caution was not a bad thing.

Sirens went off in the neighborhood.  People looked up to the sky.  Elder Stow found his eyes drawn upward.  It was the middle of the day.  He dd not recall bombing in daylight, or maybe he did not know.  He found himself hustled along with the people who headed for the nearest underground station.  He could have activated his screen device and weathered the storm easily enough.  He looked.  His screen device was still set for a Decker wall.  He let it go and followed the crowd.  He felt curious.

He found plenty of noise in the underground.  People mostly shouted out names.  They wanted to be sure family and friends made it to the shelter.  It was not a kind of mad dash, however, as apparently, after months of bombing, families had staked out areas where they could be found.  “John.”  He heard a woman call.  “John.  Mister Stow.”

Elder Stow spied Mildred from the bank.  “Hello,” he said and waved before he went to sit beside the woman.  She had a thermos and offered him some tea.  He smiled his thank you, but his eyes remained on the people.  Some down the way started singing.  People laughed, smiled, told jokes and stories.  Some brought books to read. A couple of men read newspapers.  Some wrote in notebooks, and others simply looked around with some uncertainty.  To be sure, Mothers kept their children close.  Elder Stow had a question.

“How long do these raids go on?”

Mildred returned his smile.  “Daylight raids are usually not so long.  The Germans try to get in and out quickly before the RAF start shooting them down.  Nighttime raids might last longer.”

“Shorter and longer are not very accurate,” Elder Stow said.

Mildred shrugged.  “Best I can do,” she said as they began to hear some rumbling through the underground and something like dull pounding above.  “That sounds like down by the Thames,” Mildred said, one hand to her ear.  Elder Stow took her word for it, but as they listened, the pounding grew louder and closer until it sounded like the bombs were falling overhead.

“Seems to me they already flattened your neighborhood,” Elder Stow suggested.

“They are not that precise,” Mildred responded, as Elder stow got distracted by a man who got down on the tracks and walked a short way to the edge of the tunnel.  It was Duko, and he appeared to have a lever of some sort in his hands.  Even as the pounding overhead increased and Elder Stow looked up, he figured out what Duko did with that dynamite.  He turned on his personal screen before he whipped out his screen device and barely got the Decker wall turned in time for the ceiling on the back half of the station to explode.  People screamed and held their ears.  Some of the ceiling fell, and some people got hurt before the ceiling stopped miraculously in midair.

Elder Stow got out his sonic device and used it to amplify his voice.  “Get out from under the collapsing ceiling.  I can’t hold it up forever.”  He did not have to shout.  People were already moving from under the collapsing section of the roof.

Elder Stow saw more dynamite over his head, and all the way to the stairs.  He saw more over Duko’s head where it would block the tunnel on both ends.  He imagined Duko, and the two men with him would head down the tunnel far enough to be safe before blowing up the other half of the ceiling, effectively trapping the survivors, if any.  But Elder Stow imagined they would not be entirely trapped.  Even as he looked toward the stairs, the stairwell exploded, and more people got hurt.

Duko began to yell and pointed at Elder Stow.  The two men pulled out handguns and opened fire, hitting one man, the wall, and Elder Stow with one bullet that bounced off his personal screen.  By then, Elder Stow had his personal weapon in hand.  He noticed it was still set to full power and wide angle.  He dared not wait.  He turned off his screen device which allowed the ceiling at the far end to collapse before he rushed right at Duko and his men.  He jumped to the tracks and fired down into the tunnel before they could escape.  All three men became smoking hulks of ash and burning flesh and whatever detonation device Duko had melted.  The walls down the tunned got inadvertently widened and the ceiling in that place collapsed enough to bury the men so the people did not have to stare at the carcasses.  Fortunately, the ceiling did not collapse enough to block the air from that direction.

Elder Stow quickly looked overhead and saw that the dynamite above his position did not detonate.  The ceiling looked solid enough to hold up.