"Yellow Submarine" by Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara

Here is an excerpt from "Recovering Ruthless" the third book in the BryonySeries Ruthless triology by Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara.

The main character is Ed himself, who is a time-traveling dyslexic Irish vampire with Deep Time Psychosis and a wild imagination. As a real human (as in a person you could actually meet), Ed really is dyslexic, and he delivers newspapers in the middle of the night. As a vampire character, Ed also delivers newspapers in the middle of the night... with the help of his brownie crew, led by brownie Ramon.

His sidesick is Glorna, a defiant and disobedient wood sprite (Ed says imp) and former changeling who reverted back to wood sprite status when his human part John-Peter died. As a changeling, he was in love with his best friend Karla (although he realized that too late to act on it - a very human mistake). Glorna spent way too much time watching Ed's spaghetti Westerns and fancies himself a cowboy (he's not).

Cah is you the reader.

The mission: a vampire named Susan Betts has escaped Lake Munson in the fictional fishing village of Munsonville in Northern Michigan, and is rumored to be somewhere deep in the ocean near Greenland.

Ed wishes he had a submarine - and that's where our excerpt of literary nonsense begins.

Think of it as Lewis Carroll for adults.

Enjoy the ride!

CHAPTER 14: YELLOW SUBMARINE

 

 

What the hell, Cah, is this? Yes, I know, it’s a very large box…too large to put in my van and it’s marked with my address, unit number, and name. It’s left there outside the common doorway because it wouldn’t fit in the hallway, but it’s tossed beside the walkway as if the delivery driver had enough of the thing. The brown cardboard box has a plastic wrap attachment large enough for a paperback text book.

 

Please tell me this isn’t the nuclear submarine I was advised to imagine. But to my chagrin that’s pretty much the way the label reads.

 

“WARNING: RADIOACTIVE AND FLAMMABLE”

 

“WE-ALL-LIVE-YELLOW- Nuke Sub. is the very latest nuclear submarine technology and fun for the whole family! You will be warm beneath the storm! Under sea or ice, see any octopus’s garden or hide where bill collectors or Jehovah witnesses can never find you. Comes in seventeen different shades. Some assembly requited.”

 

I’m groaning as I open the plastic bag. It’s a book entitled “Nuclear Submarine Construction for Dummies.” I’m groaning some more.

 

Cah, you know me by now. Can you see why I’m not to happy with my Deep Time Psychosis right now? My mental disorder isn’t supposed to work this way. The way it’s supposed to work; if I can imagine it, then it is real… not just to me, but to everyone else.

 

You don’t get it, do you? You think that because I was to imagine a nuclear submarine and one came through the mail, that everything is status quo. Look, my imagination is supposed to be powerful, but it was never convenient or cooperating. Now, it’s also lazy. I used to believe that my imagining created a thing. So, maybe I’ve been wrong all this time and my “dreaming things up” was really just stealing things from another time/place, all without letting the rest of me know. I could live with that, as long as the rest of my mind can reasonable assume I came by the imagined thing on the up and up. But now this!

 

 Is the way it’s going to happen this way now? One might expect that if I imagine something, at least my mental illness would go to the right time/place where such a thing can be found, acquiring said thing as the imagination of a Deep Time Psychotic traditionally do, and deliver to the place and time as specified by said mental image. This time, my imagination merely went on-line to some distance future website and selected yesterday delivery. Let this be a lesson too you, Cah: if you need something from the future, go to a future showroom and buy (or steal) it off the lot.

 

Suddenly, I realized we weren’t alone.

 

“Glorna! What are you doing here! Go hide in the forest or something so John-Peter doesn’t have to meet half of his future self.”

 

He still looked the part of a western film actor, minus the long, unkempt red hair and green-tinted skin. Cowboy hat and poncho framed arms and chest: slim, solid, and steady. Long fingered hands rested with ease near the pistols, left and right, in his gun belt. He seemed to nod ever so slightly at his weapons at the ready.

 

“Sorry, Uncle Ed, but I’m on a quest. Reckon I need to be as helpful an imp…er…wood sprite can be. It’s the only way I’ll ever be a …you know.

 

He just stood there with that wide-brimmed hat, leather vest and chaps, hip double hoisters, and that cocky grin you’d expect of any wood sprite trying to be a cowboy. I know, Cah. I had the same thought. He’s not here to help. He’s here to see the mature Karla. He’s obviously dressed for her.

 

“No, I’m not dressed for Karla,” Glorna said, as if he could read my mind, which he can’t. He can only read Karla’s. “I’m dressed to assemble nuclear submarines. The only question is this: how are we going to get it to the right ocean? Now, I reckon we could drive it to some Michigan beach and sail out through the St Lawrence channel into the open Atlantic. I hope we don’t get lost. But I don’t see a trailer to haul it with. Can we drag it with your van? It’s twice as big as to fit in the thing.”

 

I think, which is hard to do with Glorna staring me down.

 

“Maybe we can,” I said slowly. “We don’t have to take it to Michigan if Karla can find the same portal Susan Betts used to escape to Lake Munson. That kind of dragging seems like lot less friction on something that has a nuclear reactor.”

 

I study the box while fingering my beard. I noticed a message on the groundward part.

 

“DANGER: NUCLEAR REACTOR INSIDE!

DO NOT DRAG!

GUIDE CAREFULLY AND GENTLY!”

 

Glorna noticed it too. So together we tried to lift, him grabbing one side and me the other. We couldn’t get it to budge. How did they deliver this thing? Now, Cah, you might be asking yourself, “Why don’t you just transport it or open a portal from here to the edge of the lake?” Well, you see, portals are easy to open, but they’re hard to shut. Besides, any portal that sucks this thing is…well a portal that really sucks… as in every living and undead right along with this heavy inanimate object. The whole village of Munsonville could find themselves at the bank in close – but uncertain – proximity to a futuristic nuclear submarine. I don’t want to have to explain that.

 

As far as teleporting goes, I can’t do that unless I’m holding or carrying the object. Even with the undead strength of a vampire, I can’t carry this. Still, if something alive or undead could lift this off the ground and I were to touch that thing…

 

“Glorna, how large can you become?”

 

“Forget it, Uncle Ed. If you can’t carry it, I can’t get big enough to carry it. Maybe if Karla were watching...” He looked around hopefully to see if she were somewhere near.

 

“Well, forget that. Karla is in jail right now and she stays there till she goes into the submarine. Wait, is that why you’re helping me? You know she’s coming, and you want to make sure the boat is safe so she’s safe!”

 

Glorna touched the brim of his hat.

 

“That’s one theory,” he admitted. “Maybe, I really liked that mushroom stew the merrows served me and I figured I still owed them for it.”

 

“Was it better than your last meal in Trudy’s dream when you were supposed to hang for killing me?” I cleared my throat. “No hard feelings, by the way.”

 

“Well you know what they say about being hung in a dream. Everything is better about a last meal because it’s in a dream. So, no, and I don’t have any hard feelings either about killing you the first time.”

 

“But when you killed me the second time, you lost Karla,” I persisted, ignoring – for now – the fact we were standing next to a futuristic nuclear submarine.  “Glorna, you’ve got to let her go. You’re a wood sprite; she’s a gambler. Do you even know what gambling is?”

 

“I know that when she does it, it has something to do with ‘shooting.’” He pointed to his holsters.

 

“And have you ever shot at anything?”

 

“Are we going to chat all day or are we going to assemble a submarine?”

 

I was out of ideas. So I trudged to my white cargo van and drove it close to the large box. I always keep bungee cords and chains in my van to put out carriers’ vehicles should they slip off the road. Carefully, I probed the box with the steel hooks trying to find a place where I could secure the unassembled nuclear vessel. But Glorna grabbed my arm and said, “Might blow the state to kingdom come.”

 

I added with a smile that Glorna didn’t understand. “Which would vaporize me AND my imagination.”

 

It wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve done.

 

At first, I tried to pull the box, but I only spun my tires. The box didn’t budge. Then, I spun my tires with Glorna growing twice in size and pushing the box with all his might. It still didn’t budge. Remember, I live at the top of Pike Street. So we were uphill. So if we could just get the box to start moving, it wouldn’t be impossible to keep it moving. Without disconnecting the chains and bungee cords, I decided to push the box with my front bumper instead of pulling it. No help. We tried with Glorna pushing. No use. We tried with a bungeed gas pedal down and Glorna and I both pushing.

 

And it moved!

 

Fast!

 

Inexplicably fast…

Before I could stop it, both box and van were racing down the hill as if the two were racing each other. While the van got the early start, the box was catching up. Mrs. Marly, who was walking her dog, saw that firsthand; she froze watching the driverless van try to keep up. Her German Shepard Fritz, who was in the box’s way, wasn’t as impressed and took off running, pulling the old lady to the ground and getting her wrist tangled in the leash. I’d credit the dog for saving her life, but he kept running, making Mrs. Marly an unlikely dog sled for the next sixty yards.

 

Soon the box wasn’t just winning the race but overtook the van and pulled the vehicle rear end first.  The vans wheels spun uselessly while the weight pulled downward like a demented off-track train that bounced off of trees on either side of the street. The pair became airborne briefly when the box took out a street lamp, which smashed onto a parked car, giving the pole an incline. No matter. Both box and truck were on solid street again as my van in backward roll approached the intersection of Main Street.

 

Then I did something that could have earned me a ticket. I used my vampire power to teleport into the driver’s seat to follow truck and box in the downward trajectory toward the bottom of Lake Munson. All that meant was, when the spinning red lights came to look for a driver of the sinking van, they’d find me. Had I not done that, I could have teleported in Lake Munson, removed my plates, and hoped they didn’t look for me when law enforcement tried to explain the accident.

 

As flawed as that plan might have been, luck had a better idea. The law wasn’t going to need to puzzle as to who and how. The box, still pulling the van across Main Street, just missed the squad car on its way to the lake. The van, however, didn’t miss at all and found the front wheel diver side of Officer Marsha’s cruiser and kept going, severing the cruiser’s front end.

 

It was an awkward meeting at the edge of the lake. My wheels, still spinning and spewing dirt and grass everywhere, behaved as if they were digging a grave for both rider and truck. The box, now in three feet of water was still mostly exposed but showed no signs of “blowing us to kingdom come,” which would have been my preference right now. Marsha’s cruiser still had the fresh squad car look, back end unscathed with exhaust huffing from the tail pipes. The dome lights worked just fine when Marsha turned them on, as did the driver side door when she stepped out of the cruiser.

 

The only slight problem was that the rear of my van was now where the cruiser’s front had been and that the front end lay bank-ward like some bizarre sculpture by some would-be artist with too many car parts, too much time, and too little artistic aesthetics.

 

With difficulty, I forced the trans into park and shut the van down. If Glorna had half a mind (or a lot less loyalty). he’d have stayed on the hill until the flashing lights stopped flashing, but he was running full steam Main Street, where the crash site was still unfolding. I worried about what Officer Marsha would think of his clearly visible six shooters.

 

Marsha rapped on my window.

 

“Mister Calkins, how are you today?” Her voice was less than pleasant.

 

“Uh…er…that is…ah…”

 

“You need to do better than that. Let’s see your driver’s license and proof of insurance.”

 

Is there such a thing as a driver’s license for the undead? Cah, help me out here. Do I have a driver’s license? What about insurance? Can the undead get insured? Insured of what? Being dead? I’m not very good at conversing with angry cops but I do know what I always tell them: “Uh…er…I…ah…that is…”

 

“How many tickets do you think I should write you?”

 

“Um…er…I think…really, I’m very sorry.”

 

“What is in that box turned ramrod that almost killed six people?”

 

“Six? I only counted two. One cop, one old lady – and a frightened dog.”

 

“You’ll have plenty of time to count, Mister Calkins. Just answer the question.”

 

“Er…well…you know…that submarine that I was going to imagine. There it is.” I was grateful I didn’t mention that it was a nuclear submarine.

 

“And why, pray tell, did you not imagine it on the bank like a good vampire should have?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“You don’t know,” she repeated waiting for me to say something else. I couldn’t think of anything. What about you Cah? Can you think of anything that will make this less…unpleasant?

 

“And since you don’t seem to have insurance, how are you going to replace all the property you’ve carelessly destroyed?” Marsha impatiently tapped her pen against her ticket book.

 

“I’ll pay for it all, eventually,” I promised and then added hopefully, “Or I could imagine it all repaired or replaced.”

 

“You better start imagining a whole bunch of money to pay all the tickets you just earned.”

 

“That never works out well,” I warned her.

 

“I’m calling Sheriff Matt.” Marsha walked to the decapitated cruiser and confirmed that the radio still worked. My enhanced vampire hearing picked up both ends of the conversation.

 

“Are you issuing any tickets?” the despatcher asked.

 

“I don’t have a pad big enough.”

 

“I’m sorry, didn’t copy.”

 

“Disregard. Let me talk to Sheriff Matt.”

 

It was a long, contentious conversation between deputy and sheriff. Marsha kept sighing about all my violations, while Matt insisted that neither her, him, nor the entire Beulah County had any jurisdiction over the undead. Marsha pointed out that the evidence was plentiful, obvious, and laying all over the beach. Matt complained that any presenting of that evidence would draw unwanted attention to Beulah County, the state of Michigan, and, most importantly, Sheriff Matt while he was seeking reelection. He also reminded her that he had a grown up woman in his lockup that was the same person as the teen living in Munsonville; something he’d rather not explain to authorities. In the end, Matt left any actions up to Marsha, who rethought her initial severity.

 

She walked back to my van, tapped on the window, and pointed towards the bank.

 

              “If one hint of this mess is still here at sunrise tomorrow, I’m going to write you so many tickets…”

 

              She never finished. Another squad appeared to take Marsha back to the office.

 

              Glorna was already on top of the box in three feet of water. He had ripped the outer cardboard to reveal a metallic cylinder exoskeleton which had already expanded. When I walked to where he sat reading, he read the title and instructions aloud for my benefit, “Easy-Simple-Live-Yellow Instructions and Diagram.”

 

              Step one: Active the enclosed four pilot drones included to carry your We-All-Live-Yellow construction kit to the nearest suitable body of water.

 

              Step two: Confirm the partially submerged We-All-Live-Yellow construction kit is in at least two feet of saltwater or three feet of fresh water to begin assembly.

 

              Step three: Ensure all 234,503 listed tools and parts are included. Should any tools or parts prove missing, abort construction immediately and inform local health authorities of an eminent nuclear explosion. WARNING: DO NOT DRAG We-All-Live-yellow construction kit under any circumstances. We-All-Live-Yellow inc. is not responsible for any thermo-nuclear reactions due to stupidity or failure to comply with provided simple instructions.

 

              Step four: Find We-All-Live-Yellow-Easy-Simple 26 page construction map and simply assemble parts as shown in Easy-Simple map’s 142 diagrams.

 

              Step five: There should be no parts left over. If any parts remain after construction is complete, inform local health authorities of an eminent nuclear explosion. IMPORTANT: In the case of a thermos-nuclear reaction, We-All-Live-Yellow inc. or its associates, affiliates, mental health providers, or contractors cannot be held liable for the incompetence or stupidity of its customers.

 

              Step six: Enjoy exploring the undersea with the whole family. Take the trip from which you never have to return. Everything you’ll ever need is supplied in your brand new We-All-Live-Yellow-Nuke-Sub. Thank you for your business.

 

              “How far in the future is this submarine?” Glorna asked me in a very this cowboy-is-concerned but still very macho voice. Of course, I have no idea. Then he asked. “Do they sell this thing to their customers, or give them away to their competitors?”

 

              It was a disturbing idea.

 

              The Easy-Simple construction map wasn’t any of those, but it was 26 pages of very small print. Quickly, we quit trying to make hide or hare of the diagram map and turned instead to the “Nuclear Submarine Construction for Dummies,” which let us know that if we paid attention to our pre-kindergarten caretakers, we’d know all this already.

 

              The sun was setting by the Glorna and I sat on the nuclear submarine exoskeleton to which we had not successfully attached one included piece. If this was an assembly nightmare, its assembling team was even worse. Can you think of a worse case than a dyslexic vampire and a defiant wood sprite trying to or refusing to follow instructions? Every time we thought we understood what the book told us to do, either Glorna, who rebelled against being told what to do, did the opposite or I did the opposite, thinking I did the reverse.

 

              “How about this,” I finally asked Glorna as daylight disappeared from view. “I’ll do all the reading, and you do what I tell you to do.”

 

              “But you read so poorly. Everything you tell me will be backwards or upside down. Wait, that way I do the opposite…”

 

              I nodded my head, beaming.

 

              “But if I let you read, and I construct, I’ll be doing what you told me to do.”

 

              Damn!

 

              Suddenly we were surrounded.

 

              “Who’s there?” Glorna called out, in his cowboy-is-concerned-but-not-macho-anymore voice. In fact, he squeaked more than spoke, but he did draw his six shooters.

 

              I was alarmed as well.

 

              “Why Steward reading book? Work time. Steward and lazy wood sprite should make metal underwater log.”

 

              It was Ramon and company. Ramon is a brownie from my vacation imagination Tara. What was he doing here, Cah? I asked him, but I’m sure I know the answer.

 

              “Brownies want more brownie points!” Ramon demanded. “Brownies put metal underwater log together. But Steward has to give this many brownie points to each brownie. (He showed all his fingers.) and this many more to Ramon.” (He showed five fingers.)

 

              “Ten brownie points to each!” I complained as if the asking price was outrageous. Since I’m the one that makes them and I’m the one that keeps track of them, ten was no more to me than one thousand, but I had to haggle to keep the idea of “brownie points” a valuable commodity.

 

              “I know a river nymph that would do it for half that,” Glorna bluffed loftily.

 

              “River nymph not do as well as Ramon’s troop!” Ramon cried indignantly.

 

The brownies, standing in formation behind him, nodded solemnly.

 

              I said nothing. Glorna said nothing. Each moment of silence seemed to reduce the brownie troop’s confidence. Finally, Ramon spoke.

 

              “Brownies put together, but Steward give this many to each brownie and this many to Ramon…” (He showed one less finger than his previous offer). “…but brownies get to steal this many babies from humans (three) and Steward no make fun of brownies…no funny pretty words!” (No limericks mocking brownies.)

 

              Glorna looked at me, expectantly. He wanted to take that deal,

 

              “How about brownies get as many brownie points as Ramon said before (nine) and brownies get to steal baby’s weight in honey, baby’s weight in butter, and baby’s weight in beer?”

 

              The troop cheered, but Ramon looked skeptical.

 

              “How brownies find so much honey, butter, and beer?”

 

              Just as he asked that, pots of honey, tubs of butter, and jugs of beer materialized on the bank in the agreed upon quantity with the bonus in reusable ceramic pots and jugs, along with the tin tubs that exceeded the packages weight of three babies.

 

              It was already dark when the submarine was finished with no parts to spare. The pots of honey, tubs of butter, jugs of beer, and the lakefront sculpture wreckage of a squad car all disappeared with the brownies. A small, wooden dingy took their place on the bank, where the squad’s front end had previously lain. Also, from where I stood, I could see the streetlamp that had been a launching ramp for the submarine assembly kit now standing straight and delivering adequate amounts of light. Did I imagine repairs to all the damage, Cah? Do you remember me imagining? Or did I just imagine that I never did anything other than what the instructions required?

 

              With only Glorna, myself, and a lemon-yellow nuclear submarine as clues, I’ll never really know. Asking Glorna or anyone else wouldn’t produce knowledge worth the cost in my credibility.

"Much to do About Nothing or What to do About Glorna" by Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara

Good morning!

Enjoy this excerpt from the BryonySeries literary nonsense novel Ruthless by Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara.

 

              It’s never a good thing when I’m suddenly sitting in my fourth-floor office that overlooks Filiocht Hill during a time where my Stewardship controls only the sidhe, and not humans. My secretary is just outside the open door and if I needed to ask where I was and what I was supposed to be doing, the attractive blond merrow would answer without the slightest pause. She was older than most, but she hardly looked so. Never mind her true age. She had the looks of a teen, the mind of a thirty-something, and the wisdom of a sixty-something. She hid all of this under smiles and makeup…when she wanted to.

              Actually, I know exactly why I’m here. Business has the 20-80 rule. Maybe you know it: 80 percent of all my problems come for 20 percent of my workers, customers, or locations…whatever the case. In newspaper delivery, which is where I should be, it’s more like 10/90, and in ruthless business, well, it’s the Glorna rule.

              “So, Marci,” I called to her. “I seem to have an unscheduled interview. Would I be right in assuming it’s with a wood sprite?”

              “Right you are,” she called back cheerfully.

              “And of the one hundred forty-seven wood sprites that work the trees, can I assume that I know this one by his first name as he is the only wood sprite whose first name I know?”

              “For all the trouble that Glorna is, I’m surprised you keep the wood sprites in existence.”

              It was a tempting thought. Maybe if the currency of the realm were other than maple leaves and oak leaves, I could tell all of them that I’ve stopped imagining they existed, forcing them to change their beliefs, which they’d never do, or disappear. As it is, I could never do that.

              “What about inflation?” I shot back at Marci. “How could I regulate the economy here where money literally grows on trees! Without wood sprites, the sidhe would grab leaves from trees until there were no more to grab…the trees would die, and the economy would follow. I work very hard to make sure the right number of leaves get picked and that’s why only I get to pick leaves.”

              Marci couldn’t take it. She craned her neck through the doorway and looked at me with a wry expression.

              “You pick leaves every time you want to spend,” she accused.

              I had to nod. That’s what I like about Marci. Next Friday, I’ll be picking two extra maples and one oak for her new raise.

              The front door opened, and Marci shrieked, so I came out of the office and saw why: two male merrows flanked Glorna. While female merrows are as beautiful as mermaids with legs, male merrow are terrifying and resemble the monster in “The Creature from the Blackish Lagoon.” Male and female merrows don’t get along much and kind of have the same relationship that male and female leprechauns have: the females absolutely refuse to mate with the males. Family reunions are a big problem, but not as big as the one in front of me.

              “Glorna kill woodsman!” one of them thundered. “Eat his flesh and drink his blood!”

              “I was guarding my tree,” Glorna smiled with a shrug, completely undisturbed by the hostiles bordering him or the Steward facing him, which could imagine him out of existence. If I could only had such courage.

              “In my office,” I told Glorna. To the sea monster merrows, I dismissed them with, “You can go.”

              But they weren’t ready.

              “Big problems outside. Many angry. Leprechauns want Glorna punished. Wood sprites want Glorna released. They all come here to see Steward.”

              “I’ll address them from my balcony later. Don’t let anyone inside the building.”

              But it was too late. By the time I was back in my office, Marci was struggling to restore order among the petitioners, all wanting to “discuss” my handling of Glorna. Marci tried to hold the noise down to a low roar while assigning the numbers and noting the subject of their business with the Steward of Tara.

              I could hear the shouts from the outside as well.

              “If the Steward executes Glorna, we’ll execute him!” an angry wood sprite declared. “Glorna was just doing his job!”

              The threat was aimed at the leprechauns more than me. Believing that everything was a figment of my imagination, killing me would wipe everyone and everything into non-existence.

              But the leprechauns didn’t believe the same.

              “Go ahead,” they taunted. “We’ll supply the rope.”

              Leprechauns and wood sprites have always had their differences. Wood sprites, without any solid evidence, always accuse leprechauns of lurking by oak trees for a chance to steal leaves when the wood sprites go to feed. The leprechauns always took afront to this slam on their honor.

              With the leprechauns outnumbered one hundred forty-six to sixty-nine, one would think that they’d be less enthusiastic about a brawl. But two words describe a leprechaun’s temper: short and stout. It would be the leprechauns throwing the first punches if I didn’t do something.

              The male merrows had called for backup in their attempts to push the warring side away from each other, but they were losing ground. Marci was having the same trouble keeping the petitioners from storming through the door.

              The protests turned to scuffles outside my office. The leprechauns had the loudest voices, but the other sidhe had taken sides mostly against the wood sprites, claiming that wood sprites nip at the pixies, merrows, and brownies alike when no wrongdoing is done. What if they were merely climbing a tree, getting an apple, or just admiring the tree’s beauty? Truth be told, that seemed unlikely. An oak leaf can be pretty tempting when you have thousands of trees and not nearly as many wood sprites.

              The male merrows hadn’t left yet, expecting some other orders from me and not looking happy (although they never look anything but angry) and not letting Glorna out of their hold.

              “Keep order!” I told the merrows. They looked back at me as if keeping order might have something to do with tearing my limbs from my body. To Glorna I said, “Why don’t you go watch TV for a while?”

              I told him to visit my bedroom where he would find DVDs of spaghetti western films. He flipped me off, saying spaghetti doesn’t interest him. I spent another fifteen minutes trying to sell my plan to have him not be present to agitate the mobs. I told him about cowboys and how they were gunslingers that didn’t play by the rules and took the law as well as their horses, fortunes, and lives into their own hands in the name of independent adventure. Glorna took the bait.

              At the time, I considered it my good fortune that my goals aligned with his interests, but I would regret it later. Nonetheless, with him out of the way, I could now address the restless crowd of petitioners in my hallway, waiting for an audience.

              Under my instructions, Marci left them in, one at a time. Each one gave me an earful, insisting on behalf of one side or the other. Some complained bitterly about wood sprite harassment, violence, and overreach. Others complained about how dangerous the job of a wood sprite is, especially when the Steward who imagined them wouldn’t support their law enforcement efforts.

              Outside, the noise kept getting louder. The leprechauns chanted, “Screw the wood sprites, save the Gauls! The Steward of Tara has no balls!” The wood sprites were less creative but promised full retaliation to “any drunken leprechaun foolish enough to be caught near a tree.” A riot seemed in the making.

              Then I heard something that terrified me. From the back of the hallway and talking insistently to Marci who was wrestling with the crowd, I heard the voice of a two-year-old girl. Yes, 42!

            “I want an update on the prince he promised me months ago.”

            Well, I had no such update,

            “The Steward would love to chat with you,” Marci said breathlessly, but kindly, over the din. “But today is a bad day. Perhaps come back tomorrow when things are less complicated.”

            “Today’s gonna get a lot worse for him if he doesn’t talk to me today!”

             The brownie slammed his fist on my desk, perhaps doubly unhappy that I wasn’t giving his wise words their due attention. “Steward should do something!” He was now twice the size of the three feet he was when he walked in. “Wood sprites mean. Glorna bad!”

              “Yes, let’s see…that was wood sprites mean, Glorna bad… Did I get that right?”

              I was pretending to take notes, but I don’t think I fooled him with my pencil markings on a legal pad. If he weren’t fooled, the leprechauns certainly wouldn’t be either as brownies can’t read.

              “If that’s all you have to say, I will certainly consider this very important point of view. I…”

              But the brownie had left and was replaced by a six foot tall pixie, who was just as angry. Christ, they grow when they want to be heard. The parade of petitioners went on for hours with additional protests about how long they had to wait to yell at me. Marci did her best to sound firm, telling the complainers that if they didn’t like the long lines, they should all come back tomorrow. More than one responded that if they did come back tomorrow it wouldn’t be to talk…it would be to burn down the building and everyone in it.

              Somewhere outside, a fire did start and sounds of muskets were the thunder to a perfect storm. I had to think of something, I just didn’t know what.

              “Call the Council of Scantily Clothed Merrows to an emergency hearing,” I told Marci as she walked in to inform me about my next petitioner.

              She looked daggers at me. That did it. I had offended the last person in the realm that didn’t want to string me up. I realized, too late, that it was the right idea for the wrong Tara in time. When she did start talking, I realized the possibility of starting a sexual harassment riot in the midst of a police brutality riot, and all in a time when I had offended my personal guards.

              “…and if you’re going to imagine such a thing into existence,” she promised me, “you’re going to wish that you were the woodsman.”

              “Please, Marci…could you reject my apology another time?”

              “Forty-two is here to see you,” she informed me as she walked away.

              “Tell her I’m not here.”

              But Marci wasn’t listening. So, I did what I thought any ruthless dictator would do. I hid under my desk.

              “Sure he’s here,” Marci told her gently, holding her hand when she walked her back into the room with the tenderness that a parent uses to show her that there was no monster underneath the bed. At that moment, I envied the little girl. My monsters were my parents. I could fool 42, but not Marci.

              “Maybe he’s just feeling shy today,” she amended. “Just leave the office for a second, 42. I’ll call you when I find him and make him not so shy.”

              The little girl did as she was told. As soon as 42 left, , Marci pulled the chair away and knelt to where I was crouching and shaking.

              “What’s wrong with you?” Her voice was almost the same one that she had just used with 42. “I’ve never seen you so scared. People should be scared of you. Don’t you think they’re afraid that you might not like them? You always insisted that they were. Why are you acting so differently today? Remember, you’re a ruthless dictator that can enforce his will with the power of his limericks.”

              “I’m not that guy,” I admitted. “I’m that guy before I became a ruthless dictator.”

              She understood me. I wasn’t expecting that.

              “Oh. You’re from the past then? What are you doing here?”

              “I’ve got a few things to wrap up before I face something terrible that I did before I became a vampire. I’m filling in for the Ed Calkins that you know in case that Ed Calkins doesn’t make it here. Trust me, it could happen.”

              “Well, of course it could happen, but if you’re filling in for your future self, you’ve got to act like your future self.”

              “You mean like a self-deluded fool?”

              She gave me a cross look but nodded yes.

              “Look,” she told me. “You’re being afraid over nothing. None of this exists except in your imagination. Glorna isn’t real. Those leprechauns out there, they only exist because you imagined them. If you wanted to, you could image them as bunnies, elks, or donkeys…or worse.”

              I couldn’t lie to her anymore. I confessed about imagining the whole time and place of Tara at a time when humans would have abandoned its mythical powers, but I did not imagine the people here. They moved in before I could and brought their problems with them. It always happens in my imagination. I create the place and time, but other folks raid the place before I can get there myself. Also, I was very good at imagining, but I could never unimagine. I never learned that skill.

              “But I can’t imagine other people,” I promised her. “They are created elsewhere. If I ever stopped existing, they would merely be pulled to the place they belonged in before.”

              “You were so confident that if anyone ever got out of line, you’d write an unflattering limerick that would shame them thousands of years after their time.”

              “Did it ever work?” I asked, still shivering in fear.

              “Well, I wouldn’t say it never worked.”

              “Does it work with the leprechauns?”

              “Well, no, but…”

              “Does it work with Glorna?”

              “Of course not.”

              “Does it work with anyone? How about you?”

              “Yes. Sure, It works with me,” Marci lied. “I worry about you writing a negative limerick. That’s the reason I do what you say.”

              “Is that what I need to do right now? Read limericks to the rioters?”

              Cries to burn the Stewardship to the ground were coming loudly through the balcony windows. Flame torches were being lit. The merrow looked unnervingly at where the shouts were coming from. Then she looked at me.

              “You need to give a speech that will put the fear of the Steward into them,” she told me. “I’ll go tell the crowd that you’re going to set things right in a few minutes. But before I do, you should get a little confidence. Handle 42.”

              “I’ll handle 42. You tell the rioters that I’m going to give a speech very soon.”

              “Right!”

              “…after you write it for me.”

              Forty-two replaced Marci at the office threshold. Trying to look confident and adult-like, I sat up straight in my office chair as if I had been working on something very adult-like that would be more important than anything a two-year-old girl could have to say.

              “We had a deal,” she told me, pulling off the very adult-like importance better than I did. I remembered the way she acted before she sat on my lap for what should have been her scolding for bad behavior all year. She didn’t forget to negotiate just because her position was weak.

              “Have a seat,” I told her without looking up, pretending that the blank spot on my desk had some very important papers to read. She crossed her arms in a firm parental way that told me she wasn’t settling for any nonsense.

              “You wanted to be Steward of Tara; I wanted a boy. Now you are Steward of Tara. People here even believe that they are a figment of your imagination…”

              “Not the leprechauns!”

              “No, not the leprechauns or me. We’re too smart for that. The point is, I have no boy.”

              “That’s because I’ve been busy. Finding the right boy takes time. You wouldn’t want me to get any boy I could find, would you?”

              “You wouldn’t want me to start lying again so everyone will know you’re a silly old man and not a ruthless dictator, would you?”

            Faint sounds came from my bedroom where Glorna was watching “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” and repeating one of the lines, “What a waste of so many good men.” That gave me an idea.

              “Look, 42. You’ve just started to be good. I don’t owe you a boy until Christmas.”

            “Hey, that wasn’t the deal. You…”

            But I didn’t let her finish.

              “I found a prince that’s perfect for you, but I’ve got to make him a boy again, because right now, he’s a man. You wouldn’t want him to be an old man by the time you grow up now, would you?”

              “No.” She still had her arms crossed, but her stern expression was failing her.

              “Now, if you’re going to be a good girl instead of threatening the Steward, I just might let you see him right now, but you’ve got to be quiet. He’s brave, but shy.”

              “Ok.”

              “Come with me.”

Together, we tiptoed to my bedroom door that was just beyond my office. With a crack of the door, we could both see him. He had taken the appearance of one of the movies actors, complete with gun belt and cowboy hat.”

              “There are two kinds of people in this world…” he recited. I knew it would work. She had seen enough. I gently closed the door.

              “Well?” I demanded, sitting at my desk again.

              She tried looking unimpressed. She failed.

              “Does he have to wear that stupid hat?” was the only complaint she could voice.

              “You can see him through the stream waters some time before Christmas. So, if there’s nothing else for you to bother me with, I need to get back to ruthless business.”

              “He still has to kill that ruthless dictator like you promised me.”

              “He will. Now go. I’ve got a speech to give.”

 

              “Hear ye, Hear ye,” Marci announced from the office balcony to the rioters below, trying to sound authoritative. “His Ruthlessness will address ye commoners to decree his decision on the recent troubles.”

              All eyes on the ground raised up to Marci the second she called for their attention. Before I made my dramatic entrance, I glanced at Marci’s speech. It was a good one…logical, elegant, authoritative, and believable. Yeah, I wouldn’t be reading this speech.

              I stepped onto the balcony with my nose as high into the air as I could point it and still be looking down at the wretches who disturbed me. Invariably, this caused my eyes to cross, but I hoped from their vantage point, they would only see up my nose.

              “It has come to my attention that many of you are concerned about the recent demise of two woodcutters who attempted to chop a tree down that my wood sprite, Glorna, was guarding. There has been much disagreement as to how this unimportant matter should be handled with only two common points from each side…that something must be done and that it must be done quickly. To both of these points I can only conclude that my subjects have too much time on their hands, where I have not. By rights, I should be writing cruel limericks about each of you for pulling my attention on such trivial matters, but as I said, my time is short, and I must be on more important ruthless business.”

              “Wondering what to do about Glorna is much to do about nothing! Glorna is leaving the realm on his own behest from matters not concerning the recent troubles. He has…well, taken paternity leave…yes, that’s it. As a new father, he needs to raise his child for the next eighteen years or so. We will deal with him then. For the immediate time, we will consider better policies regarding the guarding of trees. But before we do that, we must consider how to best wake the two corpses that used to be woodsmen. Such a wake shall last one full week, and all shall be required to attend. If we held that wake here, the local inns would require labor to keep the mourners feed, liquored, and bedded. I therefore declare a provincial holiday from this realm and shall open a portal from this time of Tara, to another time in its history when humans and sidhe lived together. You will find that your money is no good there, as humans will insist on paying your inn fees, be they food, drink, or leisure. I will keep this portal open during that week, so you can travel freely between realms but be advised: no human is to follow you to this realm, nor should you linger in the other beyond the week afforded. That is all.”

              They were cheering by the time I finished. No sidhe can resist a wake if it’s a closed casket and open bar. As for the other side of the portal, which is the side my vacation property holds, humans have been disappointed that leprechauns and pixies are so shy in that realm. The inns there will joyfully pick up the tab for such guests, who will be just as interested to meet humans.

              There was one flaw to the speech I gave.

              “Not the speech I wrote for you,” Marci told me.

              “No, it wasn’t. The speech you wrote was logical, elegant, authoritative, and believable. It was a really good speech.”

              “Then why didn’t you use it?”

              “I want to save it for when the stakes are higher.”

              She gave me a double-take, as if she might comment that the speech might not match another circumstance. Instead she gestured towards the office door.

              “Some wood sprites are here to see you…all of them in fact.”

              “Send them in.”

              “One at a time?”

              “No, all at once.”

              And so all at once my office was overcrowded with wood sprites who weren’t buying the paternity leave idea that I snatched out of thin air. They were demanding (in many loud, differing voices) the truth. They wanted to see Glorna and have proof of my pledge that no harm would come to him.

              Then, my Irish luck kicked in. Everyone fell quiet for a single moment, just long enough to hear something from my bedroom door. It sounded like a baby crying.

              In the next moment, Glorna thundered into my office to confront his stunned counterparts.

              “What the hell, guys?” Glorna complained. “I just got the kid to sleep.”

              Jaws fell open. In Glorna’s arms was a newborn baby.

              “Well, don’t just stand there staring. The kid is hungry. Get a wet nurse to feed the fella. Come on guys, be quick about it. There has got to be a pair of unused nipples somewhere in this realm.”

              But nobody moved. It was as if they were too stunned. One of them asked where the mother was, which didn’t appease Glorna’s patience.

              “Well, golly, folks,” he mocked. “I’ve had so many human women I don’t rightly know who the mother is! She died at birth, you morons!”

              One of them could have left in search of a wet nurse. It wouldn’t have been hard to find as brownies and pixies were plagued with still births at about three times the rate of human mothers. Instead, they all left. That left Glorna and I staring at each other.

              “Did you use my bedroom mirror as a portal to another time?” I accused, thinking this realm had far too many portals. Then I remembered how I hoped to end this realm.

              “What did you want me to do? The kid was hungry, and its mother’s body was getting cold. The poor thing was calling to me. I had to rip him from the corpse’s womb, or he would have died.”

              “Babies die when their mothers die before they can be born, Glorna. You can’t go ripping babies out of corpses if it’s going to change the past too much. I like my history the way it is, Glorna. I don’t recall tales of Glorna the Midwife Ripper.”

              “Not every baby,” Glorna protested. “Just this one. I could hear the poor thing’s thoughts. What was I supposed to do?”

              “How are you going to raise a human baby?”

              I asked the question, but the answer was obvious. In a realm where there are brownies and pixies, too many babies is never a problem, especially if that baby is human. Then, I got another great idea!

              “No!” he told me before I could float it. “You’re not giving this baby to John Simons!”

              “Yes! I am!”

              “No, you’re not! The baby doesn’t want John Simons to be his father, and that’s the end if it!”

              “Why not?” But then my vampire nose started to work as did TAM’s about the baby’s mother. She was the wife of John Simons, the famed Bryony, but the baby’s father was not her husband. Glorna was holding the last descendant of Henry Matthews, the famed author and vampire. John and Henry became vampires the day their love triangle exploded while Bryony died trying to give birth. Her death caused so much pain, neither of them thought to try and save the unborn baby. Henry Matthews killed John and hanged himself but they both respawned. So it was that the vampire duet was born of friendship, sex, lies, and hatred.

              “You’re right.” I told Glorna. “Hold the fort. I have a ruthless journey to embark on. Marci! You and Glorna are in charge. I’ve got an errand to run…I don’t know how long it will take, but it’s for the baby.”

              “What are you getting?” they asked.

              “An electronic womb!”

              “What is that?” Marci asked.

              “I have no idea.” But I was gone.

 

              Hot and feeling like hell, I lay face up. I was too weak to move and too dead to die. Even if a fleshy animal walked right over me, endured some open wound, and bled right into my mouth, I had not enough energy to digest it. I was a skeleton now with just enough rotting flesh to cover the white of my bones. I had made it this far, all the way from hell and back of barren molten rock to the lush greens of my imaginary Tara only to have the last of my energies fail as I tried to mount the hill to my palace. The double irony was that every time I imagined a place and time, people of some sort would settle there, with all their problems, mind you, and they would get there before I could, forcing me to immigrate into my own creation; but this time, I saw no one who could help me. Everyone was enjoying that free vacation that I provided them in the other realm of Tara, where Trudy was taken as sacrifice and Ramon ruled the brownies. There, food and drink were almost too plentiful, and the raiders that settled before I could accepted the vacationers as kings because even the worst at the game couldn’t be as bad at ‘king’ as the native humans.

              They would feast. I would starve.

              Oh, I should quit whining. It’s really not so bad. I don’t have enough energy in my body to feel pain anymore, and at least nobody would disturb my thoughts. It’s not like flies interrupted me, as I didn’t have enough flesh for them to show interest. All my life I’ve craved alone time, a break from the constant fear of other people not approving…expecting more than I could do, of me thinking that things that were impossible for me should be easy for me to do while also thinking that the things I could do were too impossible for anyone to give me credit. Yes, a staving vampire could be grateful.

              But I was lonely. Isn’t that strange, literary genius who’s reading this? Do you think there is some meaning to all of this, with me dying an undead life in a place deep within my own imagination? Do you have any thoughts you could share? Surely, you must give me a little credit for taking the burden of staving so lightly…

              “Oh my God! What happened it you?” the merrow called in alarm.

              Not now, Marci! I’m in the middle of being admired for my stoic nature by my fan base. Of course, I hadn’t the energy to speak, and I was so light that she could drag me uphill to where my Stewardship abode lorded over the hill. Apparently, she hadn’t figured out that I was incapable of answering her increasingly frantic inquires as to my skeleton state as she kept on repeating them. Funny it never occurred to her that I was a deceased decomposing corpse, but then, when I think of it, I realize that her own existence made the wrong of that obvious.

              Marci is a pretty sharp merrow, and she never hesitated some indecision as what to do with me. The electronica generator I had could power my DVD set or a refrigerator, but not both, so I kept an icebox in my bedroom. With no ice houses or mountains near, I had to be careful to imagine ice replacing the melted water, lest the bags of blood stored in it would go bad. Marci barged into my bedroom to the protests of Glorna, who was trying to watch another Clint Eastwood film while the infant slept in his arms. The baby woke crying, and Glorna jumped on the bed at the sight of me.

              “What!”

              “The Steward,” Marci explained. “He’s starved and needs blood.”

              Carefully, she punctured a plastic bag with her long nails and let the contents slowly drip into my mouth. At first, I hadn’t the energy to consume it, but gradually the cold blood…which by the way tastes much better when it’s warm, started to take. I tried to speak.

              “Eeeeeyyyyaaaa…eeeeeyyyyaaaa.”

              “He’s trying say something,” Glorna stated.

              “Don’t talk,” Marci instructed. “Save your strength.”

              “Eeeeeyyyaaa”

              “Quiet now,” she cooed. “Whatever it is, it can wait.”

              “He wouldn’t be trying to talk if it wasn’t important,” Glorna argued.

              But the blood was working. My body grew its flesh back to my previous form, and I wiggled my fingers and toes. Still, I wanted more. Marci let the blood continue to drip till I had emptied six pints. I motioned for a seventh and then an eighth.

“Vampires were here looking for you,” Glorna informed me.

“Can you be more specific?”

“Nope.”

Quicker than she could had done it, I grabbed two more pints, ripped holes into the plastic, and gulped them down. Marci watched me. When I looked back at her, I saw her, for a split second, as delicious prey. Fear filled her eyes in the brief conversation between hunter and hunted, but I gripped my self-control, and the terror left her eyes as if it never had been there.

              “You seem different from the Steward that just gave a speech,” she told me. “Are you still an early Ed, seven seconds away from death, or are you a later version of yourself?”

              I didn’t know until I rattled my head. The bullet was still in there, so I was seven second Ed still. And I had a question for Marci.

              “I ordered a week’s vacation for all my subjects with free food, drink, and luxurious lodging. Glorna has a newborn to take care of, but I’m surprised to find my secretary here. Don’t you like your vacation?”

              Marci gave me a reproving look.

              “I met the Consul of Scantily Clothed Merrows,” she told me. “You are a pig!”

              I admitted that I was. She admitted that the real reason she was here was to check on wet nurses for Glorna. Rumor had gotten out of Glorna’s new appearance and female volunteers were too numerous for the mission of feeding an infant. Many of my female subject were all too willing to take time off from their vacation to be a wet nurse, but only if the new “father” would sit in the same room. Glorna needed a chaperone.

              “And what were you trying to tell us earlier?” Glorna asked, rocking the infant as a gently swaying tree might.

              “I remember nothing about my little trip except I got lost in time in a place before…or maybe after plants and animals exist. Now I have to go back.”

              The pair was more outraged then stunned and asked in unison, “Why?”

              Oh, what I would have given for a clever answer! Other reasons, much cooler than the real one, would present themselves later. I would have liked to say, “I’ve been through the world’s history and I have to go back and set it right.” Or I could have said, “The world’s future needs adjusting, and I must go there to correct it all.” Instead, I had to go back because I forgot the one thing that I’d made the trip for in the first place.

I had forgotten to snatch the electronic womb.

              This time, I took a cooler filled with all the blood I could get my hands on. I also took a legal pad with me so I could write down anything I might not remember about what happened/will happen on my trip through time. Thinking I was prepared for anything, I departed through the portal.

              When I returned, my memory was blank, the cooler was empty, I had no legal pad, but I had in my hand, some kind of futuristic device. It was the size of a DVD player with a number pad on its side. Other than the number pad, the box was featureless.

              Marci lost interest in the first five minutes of my investigation. She returned to her vacation; I like to think that she enjoyed hobnobbing with the Consul. But Glorna stuck around, holding the infant and making unhelpful comments.

              Wishing I had also snatched some kind of manual, I did the only thing the device allowed and started keying in random sequences of numbers, in a manner as to not repeat any sequence that produced a very unsatisfying electronic chirper. It was two days before I got anything else, which was quite maddening. The password proved to be “1234567890.”

              Once in, however, the device grew to the size of a phone booth and sucked me inside as if I might lack the intelligence to open the zipper door. Once inside, the purpose of the device became clearer. It seemed to be a health care unit for anyone that was completely paralyzed. Some kind of tutor program explained that this model was made during the social media wars where millions of people went catatonic and were unable to perform basic functions or interact with any that might put them in their care.

The display screen was the size of a small TV with a touch screen keyboard on the bottom and a row of icons I did not understand. The screen informed me that it was scanning for internet and human connection. After a few seconds, the screen informed me that there was no detectible internet connection but that I could run a few basic games already in the system’s cache. I played some of them. Once the game determined I was not paralyzed, blind, or deaf, it gave me a panoramic view of a world the game took place in. Whatever I did with my body, the character I controlled did as well, complete with the sounds and smells of the gaming world I was interacting with.

              “Hey, Glorna, check this out,” I shouted from inside the box. I did not hear the baby crying and Glorna cursing until both were inside with me.

              But what I wanted to show him wasn’t there anymore.

              “Baby detected,” the system announced. “Scanning for suitable parents. Two mythical creatures detected but neither is suitable for parental responsibility. Power source required as well as internet connection. Please comply with infant health care system’s needs.”

              A tutorial video followed.  It claimed that it could provide any and all of an infant’s needs for the first eighteen years of a human life. All the device required was sunlight on its solar panel and a source of carbon to convert to food. Once these things where in place, all unsuitable mythical beings would be expelled lest their corrupting influence damage the child.

              “I wonder if tree sap could fill that requirement,” Glorna mused. “Then, I wouldn’t have to chase down wet nurses.”

              “Get to work!” a mechanical voice commanded, startling both of us. Before we could react, a virtual crib floated down to the level of Glorna’s arm, where he was holding the baby. The crib cradled the baby but, at the same time, pushed both Glorna and me out of the box and none too gently.

              “Now what?” I looked at Glorna.

              “Help me with this box. I’ll take it to an oak tree that owes me a favor. It will know what to do.”

              “Aren’t you afraid that the box won’t take proper care of the little guy?”

              “He’s completely content right now. If there is a problem, I’ll know about it.”

              We discussed the new development at length while we both carried the box and lifted it high into the branches of a well-meaning tree.

              But what about human interaction? While Glorna was insisting that humans weren’t all that interesting to “his” infant, I worried about a youth without any parental contact besides the likes of a rogue wood sprite. And education…while Glorna insisted that he could teach the child anything worth knowing, I didn’t think he had the academic background to play professor.

              “What about the internet? Don’t you have it on that computer?”

“What computer?”

“In the office of that funeral parlor the vampire owns?”

              For the next half hour, I tried to explain to Glorna the notion of connectivity.

“If the child was going to stay here,” I explained, “in the safety of this time and space where troubles were few, unless you were in charge, he wouldn’t have internet access as communication satellites hadn’t been invented yet, let alone launched. I don’t know much about satellites. Now I admit I could imagine a communication satellite orbiting the earth in the seventh century to the bafflement of any telescope that might caught is reflective light years later, but it would be a very lonely satellite with no others to talk to. Any communication satellite would need some meaningful signal to bounce off of it to some other satellite not only on the other side of the world, but also a decade or so into the future. Even that wouldn’t matter if there weren’t a whole line of such time traveling satellites bouncing signals back and forth from millions of miles, hundreds of years, and gigabits of data. Why, it would be dizzying to think of all the work, materials, and expertise to get a single internet connection this far back in time.”

              Then something strange happened in a realm where “strange” had a very high bar. My cellphone always laid helplessly in my pocket. It was hardly worth taking the chance of forgetting it somewhere, so I kept it always with me wherever I went or imagined I was going.

              Now it rang.

              First, it was someone informing me that my computer had expired. Not six seconds later, it was to inform me that the FBI was looking for me. Then it rang again with someone wanting to help with my erection problem….I shut the phone down cursing.

              “Quick, something strange is happening!” Glorna shouted. “The baby program…we have to go into the box.”

              Just then, the box sucked us in. On a large display, about monitor size, the words “internet detected” stood where they could not be missed. But there was something else…some kind of progress bar was in motion, although I wasn’t sure where, but it was clear that the program wasn’t finished looking for something else. Then it stopped.

              “Device detected” replaced the other message. All at once the panoramic view changed to what seemed to be a maternity ward.

“Commencing the expulsion of harmful influences…get out and stay out.” The box kicked us out again.

It would take me a few more days to understand what had happened. I understood right away that the time traveling interactive satellites, which science would never invent, had been imagined into existence through my musing that they were impossible. What I hadn’t figured out is what device did the electronic womb connected with? Only my Irish luck could make that the 360 oakwood unit that Eircheard would/had made as a changeling child.

              “Oh, he likes this so much better.” Glorna gushed.

He was content to leave the box in care of the oak tree and forget about it. But I had to wonder; how did it get internet? What device did it connect to? Why was this easy thing of living in my imagination so hard? Why was fixing the real world with an imagination so easy?