The TV News

 

“Well, Jessie, what do you think?” said Aunt Julia. 

“Well, ladies,” said Jessie. “I think that’s a pretty good idea, depending on the opinion of the mine! If the mine is willing it could be a great thing. As soon as the weather is better, I would like to just get in there and look around. I need to do some research also. You know, I have never been in a gold mine, even to look around. Uncle John didn’t take me down there. I don’t know how to go about selling gold. Essentially, I don’t know much at all about mining gold, and I have a lot to learn.

“But it’s a natural. Any gold down there belongs to you Auntie, but you could let us have a percentage for doing the work, if that sounds reasonable.”

“Let’s do fifty/fifty,” said Aunt Julia with a little grin. “If you don’t dig it out, it will stay there forever, I believe!” 

Gold in quartz.

TV News

Like a lot of elderly people, Aunt Julia had a TV, and she watched the news, and some reality shows to pass the time. She admitted that she was well aware that most TV programing was nonsense.

Jessie and I had driven the old pickup into Joseph City, looking for a heat lamp and an extension cord for the chicken house. The trading post didn’t have one, so we went on into Winthrop. Partly we just felt like taking a drive. We had lunch and found what we needed at the Walmart, of course. It’s a miracle they don’t put every other store out of business, I thought to myself.

Fortunately, there was an external electrical outlet on the mobile, so it was only the work of a few minutes to hang the heat lamp in the chicken’s little house and plug in the cord. While we were setting it up the girls came around to inspect. Since it was daytime we didn’t close them up in there.

There was one cold egg in the box I had left in there. I wished we had bought a bale of straw to make things cozier. Well, next time. In fact, I was thinking of a much more deluxe hen house when we got around to it. I was beginning to really love those little chickens.

Jessie picked up an armful of firewood and we stepped into the house. He put the firewood down and stuck a couple of pieces in the stove. I started thinking about making dinner, running what we had over in my mind.

“Jessie,” said his aunt, “I saw a very strange story on the news about that town you kids used to live in. I have a hard time believing it could be true. The story was that the landlord at a certain house went out to inspect it because his last renters had vacated the place. He found a large official looking van from some organization he had never heard of parked in the driveway. Not only that! There was a kind of robot in a human uniform on the ground with its head beaten to bits! The landlord, George something or other, said he was glad the renters had left before whatever happened there happened!”

She looked from Jessie to me, and back to Jessie.

“I can’t help but think this story has to be related to what happened to you Beth. But how?”

“I can only hope and pray that you made a clean getaway,” she said slowly. Her black eyes stayed on us as she thought aloud.

“I think we did, Aunt Julia,” Jessie said. “I believe we did. Our car is gone, God knows where. We haven’t used a credit card. We haven’t turned on our computers, and we no longer possess cellphones.

“I think we are in the best possible place for us.”

She was pleased to hear that. We had another pleasant evening with dinner together around the little table in the kitchen. Billy got some bites off of Julia’s plate and everything seemed right with the world. Who knew that Tom cats relish spicy meatballs!

Later that night I mentioned to Jessie that it was quite a good point, for our purposes, that George thought we were long gone before whatever he thought happened in the driveway happened.

I wondered if the local police would call the FBI, just because no one had heard of the organization whose name was on the paperwork in the van, with the complicating factor of the destroyed manbot lying on the ground. Jessie wondered if the FBI was well aware of the whole thing, or maybe some even higher up section of the government. Maybe NuvoMundo was some black operation of our own government.

We had no way of knowing for sure. But I had heard of NuvoMundo. I had a way of talking to strangers. One of those strangers was a guy who wanted to impress me with his knowledge. He said he was working with them. He used that name. He said they were a world-wide covert organization preparing to replace all nations. During our conversation at the coffee shop I pretended that was a perfectly reasonable and admirable goal. I did not give him my number, but someone passing by said “hi Beth, how is Jessie?”

He seemed like he might have thought he said too much. A nervous man. And now he was angry with me.

Nevertheless, this is probably why I was arrested by Garcia and Wiggles, who was no more. That, and the fact that I had gone around spreading the news. I had thought that if the people knew, maybe some sort of resistance could develop. 

Well, I was spreading the word no more. I was living in Arizona with Jessie, his sweet old auntie, a Tom cat, six hens, and the whole Navajo Reservation to call home. We were ghosts in our own nation.

I called it a good trade.

Link to the whole thing; They haven't taken my phone yet.docx