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?
