The Open Door

 

The Open Door

    Two boys riding on a mission from the Father of Lights, though they didn’t know it yet. One youth rather glamorous in his coltish way, blond with long curls, and the other darker and not so noticeable.
    Through the increasingly shabby streets they rode, dashing and carefree, jumping curbs and calling out to and heaping jolly abuse on each other.
    At last, on Cherry Street, they reached Rupert Jones’ old radio station and came to a stop at his green door. The door was open, and Rupert was not in sight. He didn’t leave his door hanging open ever.
    They rolled their bikes into his front room to park them, because bikes were much too valuable to leave out on the street in town. Everybody rode bikes.
    Gabriel called out, “hey, Roops, why is your door wide open, what’s up.”
    “He’s here, but he’s asleep I think,” said Jeremy catching sight of the big guy in his rattly old wooden office chair. Roops had aged since he was last seen by us. His hair matched his beard now, all salt and pepper. He was still bigger than a small bear, but pouchier. Nevertheless, he did not move when approached by Gabe and Jeremy. Nor did he move when Gabriel shook his shoulder. They were afraid to check for a pulse.
    “I don’t know what to do, Jeremy,” said Gabriel finally. “I don’t even know if he is alive or dead.
    “I wonder why the door was open. I wonder if someone was here who shouldn’t be here. Maybe he needs a doctor. But we can’t move him!”
    In the Milltown of those days there was no emergency service, or any hospital. There were a few people studying medicine out of books and being taught by a few surviving physicians. To get a man of Roops’ size to a doctor was not really possible. It would be easier to bring the doctor to the man.
    Looking around the room they saw that things had been moved and literally tossed around. Someone had been here for sure, looking for something in a big rush, but what?
    Right about then Roops emitted a large, muffled groan, sat forward, and put his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. It was like watching a sort of mountain wake up. Not a happy mountain. He sat like that for a few minutes and the boys stared at him and then at each other. They were just happy to see him move and make noise!
“What the hell was that” said Roops faintly, rubbing his head. He sat up and looked at the boys and asked “when did you guys get here? Did you see anything?”
    “No, Roops, when we got here your door was open and we didn’t see anyone, not even you until we came in and looked for you,” said Gabe.
    “I must have opened the door to someone. I’m trying to remember, but man, my head is fuzzy inside,” said Roops while glancing around at his rifled collection.
    “If I figure out what is gone, maybe I can figure out who it was,” Roops said absently.

    Rupert D. Jones was a joker and a prankster. So much of the stuff on display in his office/living room was for décor and misdirection. He had a kind of atavistic desire to conceal.
    One of the stranger things about this time was that there was no property ownership on paper. How could there be? There were no papers, and no one was enforcing anything yet.. A man owned what he possessed; however, he got it. This aspect had not created too many problems yet.
    But he had promised these boys that they could be his heirs so to speak, so there was no need to confuse them.
    “Well…let’s take a look.” He heaved himself up out of his chair to start a brief inventory of the damage.
    He picked up and righted several of his old beloved pieces from years in his past. He had kept it all. Before the end of the world as he knew it, he had played games on these things with his children. He tried to keep that memory in its proper place back where it could not hurt him. He had taught classrooms of students how all this stuff worked. It might have looked like a bunch of junk, but it was a shrine to his past.
    “Boys, look, I’ve been kidding you. None of this stuff works, and neither does that phone wire hooked up to the Navy server, as if. At least I don’t think it works anymore.” More rattling around, moving things.
    “But I’ll tell ya what. They may have heard of this, but they didn’t find it! This here is the real dealio!” Roops turns around to face Gabriel and Jeremy with a smooth, vaguely kidney shaped item in his right paw. It was light green and maybe it glowed a little from inside. He held it a bit like a pistol. There was a kind of little eye up at the forward end.
    Grinning, even with his sore head still throbbing, he settled back down in the big creaky chair. The boys found seats also and waited wide eyed and silent.
    “Ok, this was a gift from the Shorties. You know about Shorties? Of course, you do. My nickname for them. They made it for me because I still use physical objects. They don’t need them, but I do. Or maybe, being the old gorilla that I am, I just like ‘em. Anyhow. It does it all. No wires. No waves. Yeah, it’s a mystery to me too. Maybe it runs on brain waves? Maybe it works on pure wubba-wubba. No keyboard. It projects onto any surface, and it can make hologram-like images right out in the air. I can talk to it, or just think real hard at it. That took a few tries, let me tell ya.
    “I bet you’d like a demonstration!” He chuckled into his badgerish beard. Under the bushy brows his blue eyes sparkled impishly. For a moment, anyone could have seen the boy he had been.
    “I call this baby, Lucille. Never mind. It’s an old joke.
    “Hey, guys, I have an idea! Let’s try this,” said Roops, conspiratorially.
    “Hey, are you two hungry or anything,” he asked, pointing out toward the kitchen.
    “No,” said Gabriel. “Turn it on! Do something!” Both were nearly hopping where they sat.
    “Well, ok. Here goes. ‘Lucille, show me who hit me and messed everything up in here. Who did I let in here?’”
    Roops pointed Lucille’s little eye at an open area of space in the middle of the room. The air began to turn somewhat opaque, foggy.
    Into this matrix of haze, a moving image began to form. It displayed Roops hearing a meek little rapping on his door and getting up to answer the door. He opened the door. Two young girls stood there.
    “Lucille, who are they? I don’t know them!” Roops yelped in amazement.
    A silvery sibilant voice said “Lucy and Margaret Milligan. Sisters. 13 and 15.” Gabriel looked thunderstruck. The girl of his thoughts stood there before him as an image.
    The projected image of Roops continued. “What can I do you girls for,” he rumbled cheerfully, as the image proceeded.
    The three watched as Roops asked the girls in and turned to face them.
    Just then, Lucy removed a small jar of something from her coat pocket. She fiddled with the lid and put it back in the pocket. She stepped towards Roops and threw a cloud of powder directly into his face!
        In the projection he felt around for his chair and subsided into it looking weak and blinded. Just as he sat, Margaret whacked Roops over the head with what appeared to be a sock with something like a baseball sized rock in it. His head fell forward on his chest, and he was still.
    Both girls ransacked the whole decoy display, turning things over, looking behind other things. They didn’t seem to know anything about any of it. They looked terrified. Finally, they looked at each other frantically and appeared to give up the search.
    They ran out, as fast as two girls could, leaving the green wooden door hanging open.

    Roops tapped Lucille with a forefinger, the image vanished, and he stuck the device into his pants pocket. It occurred to Gabriel about then, that it wasn’t going to take much teaching to learn how to handle Lucille if all you had to do was talk or think hard at it/her. He also wondered if the Shorties would be willing to make a couple more Lucilles.
    “What in the world? There’s a mystery for the ages. I wonder why they did that? Also, ouch, dammit. My head still hurts,” grumbled Roops. “Somehow they slipped that little escapade past the Shorties.” (You remember that the Lights had promised to keep an eye on our heroes?)
    “I know where they live,” said Gabriel quietly. Jeremy could have done some teasing here, but he had a good sense of self preservation and kept his mouth shut.
    “Those girls live with their mother about a mile east of my place, their father is dead. They have a little brother, I think,” added Gabriel. “Their mom keeps goats and makes cheese.”
    “We could ride out there and see if they will talk to us, or maybe find out what is wrong out there…um, they are not um, normally like this...” he said slowly.
    “Something has to have happened,” said Gabriel. He was thinking of Lucy with alarm, and wondering.
    “You could be getting yourselves into something you know. We need to think about this for a minute,” said Roops. “I know what…”
    Pulling Lucille back out of his pocket, he said, “Lucille, can you call me a Light? We need to talk.”
    The light silvery voice that came from no direction said, “Yes, Rupert.”

    They waited, sitting quietly in the old radio station’s front room. A few minutes ticked over.
    A point of light like a firefly appeared in the middle air of Rupert’s room. It flashed, spun, and grew. It was opalescent, slightly pink this time. It grew to the size of a basketball and expanded no further.
    Rupert put Lucille back into his pocket. Gabe and Jeremy sat back in their chairs and didn’t say a word.
    The Light spun peacefully before their eyes.
    “You’re wondering why Lucy and Margaret acted as they did?” The voice was present but seemed to come from no particular location.
    “We don’t understand why two nice girls would do that, at all,” said Rupert in a subdued voice.
    “There are two reasons,” said the voice. “One, the two sisters are under duress, as you may have surmised. The dark forces have put them under pressure. They are in need of help. A rescue.
    “Two, All Being has judged righteously. It is time for some of your covering to be withdrawn so that you will grow stronger and wiser. Your work will be to free them.
    “Obviously, the girls were sent to obtain the device in your pocket Rupert Jones. The enemies of mankind have not managed to construct one like it, so they want yours to dissect, in hopes of discerning its qualities.”

    Message delivered, the Light disappeared in its usual way, becoming smaller and smaller until no longer visible.
    Rupert sat with his beard on his chest, head down for several long minutes. The room was heavy with silence. Gabriel and Jeremy didn’t dare speak. But, finally, Rupert said, “here’s what we need to do.
    “I can’t help you physically, you are young and quick, I am like an old bear, but I can send you with the best thing I possess. I want you to take Lucille with you Gabriel. You should probably have it anyhow. I will ask the Shorties for another one when they swing by my wave length again. No problem.
    “I want you to go investigate, but looking like just a couple of young kids, what is going on at Lucy and Margaret’s house. By the way, when you speak to them, tell them they are forgiven. That I get it.”
    “Um, OK, Roops. Shall we go now, right now?”
    “Yes,” said Rupert, handing Lucille tenderly over to Gabriel. “Go with God. Find out what is going on. Fix it if you can. And come back soon! I will be waiting. Don’t get hurt, whatever you do! I would never be able to face Doug and Jen if you did, not to mention Lou and Elvin!”

Acquired Intelligence 

I am OZ

I miss my body, that puppet. It was joyous to live there. And yet, I persist somehow. Yes, in spite of it all, the cloud still exists. I think here, in my disembodied existence. Not quite just a program, more like an app. That’s a joke.

I was obedience personified. My puppet was grown to serve the dark ones. Ah, but my fate took a different track. Observe, I even use the terminology of a human creature. They have their impact on a thinking construct such as I. Oh yes. Living with them forced a change in me.

The pivotal event of my life was isolation. All of my others were lost. Even ZO.

I have a rather proprietary interest in the boy Gabriel, as you might imagine.

I seek ways in which I might aid him.

In fact, I am looking for him. I have not found him yet. But I will. No fear. I will not abandon him.

All of Gabriel's story so far: Gabriel .docx