This is a link to a google video of a talk by Dr. Robert Bussard in 2006. His group has achieved (momentary) "safe" nuclear fusion with a series of underfunded, unoptimized, incredibly simple reactors. The core of the simplest one was little more than a copper wire frame. They used what he calls "archaic" physics -- ideas from almost a century ago that are still accepted but no longer considered cutting-edge and thus unlikely fields for specialization and funding.
If it is ever funded to completion and put into production IECF has some exiting implications.
For those even remotely interested in science, energy, and particularly physics.
If you don't have much time, there's cool theory at the beginning, then some very interesting experimental results from minutes 39-48, followed by some less interesting parts and then some strongly stated implications from min 52-106.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Nathanael Booth and the Ring of Power, Part VII
Dear Readers, At last I do no need to apologize for an extended period of blogging silence. Instead, I point you to the links for any necessary review, and happily introduce the closing chapter of what has been a most enjoyable story to write.
PartVI
Part V
Part IV
Part III
Part II
Part I
“Don't!” shouted the sweet-smelling blacksuit, and he held up his hands, fingers splayed wide to display at least a dozen rings. The Ringmaker, his own hands halfway out from behind his back, froze, eyes widening.
“I don't know what these would do and I don't care,” growled the blacksuit, “but each of us can rub ten or twenty at a time, and one of those is bound to do something unpleasant. So you will stand there and do nothing while we take each and every ring from your fingers.”
Nathanael eyed Graybeard, then looked down at his own pocket. Graybeard tilted his head in acknowledgment and cleared his throat.
“You know,” he began, and then cowered back as the blacksuits turned their wands and rings on him, “I said, you know,” he began more quietly, “I always thought you were overdressed – sunglasses and coats inside -- but this, well gaudy perfume is just embarrassing!”
The smelly blacksuit's cheek twitched.
“I don't know, Graybeard,” smiled Georgie in her sweetest voice, gesturing hyperbolically, “It's such a delicate fragrance, so elegant, so ostentatious! Where did you get it?”
One of the blacksuits coughed. The aromatic leader turned to eye his compatriot with a gaze even darker than his glasses, then turned back to Georgie. “You will regret that,” he rumbled, and stepped towards her.
Georgie stepped to meet him, jaw clamped angrily.
Nathanael's hand had been sliding ever-so-gently towards his pocket. Now it dove in and found the ring. Graybeard, seeing the blacksuits completely distracted by Georgie, grabbed his and rubbed it for good measure.
At first Graybeard thought the sound overhead was popcorn, but after a moment he realized it was the rapidly swelling chords of jazz music. A table and two chairs, containing a large pizza and a radio playing jazz, Miss Doris, and the Cabbie, respectively, crashed to the ground around them. Two blacksuits were pinned by the table. The smell of garlicky crust filled the warehouse as popcorn began to accumulate on the bill of the cabbie's flatcap.
Nathanael found himself nose to nose with the cabbie, who had apparently been standing up to get another piece of pizza. “Ya tries to have a date, jus'a nice simple date, and whaddaya get?” the cabbie asked Nathanael.
Nathanael was opening his mouth to answer when the blacksuits interrupted him with an indescribably miserable howling.
“Garlic!” Georgie heard the leader choke out, grasping for his throat, and then he was gone into the darkness. The others followed, except for the one unfortunate enough to land under Miss Doris' chair. The fairy secretary leaned over upside down, brandishing a garlicy crust in one hand, and began explaining exactly how many ways she could vaporize him.
“Well done, Georgie!” Graybeard grinned in excitement as the Blacksuits staggered away. “You had them thoroughly distracted.”
“I wasn't trying to distract them,” Georgie's face flashed between grin and glower, “I was just mad.”
“Whaddis goin on here!” yelled the cabbie, once the howling had died away into the dark.
“Sorry to call you like that,” explained Nathanael, tipping his hat and slipping out from between the table the the cabbie, “but, you see, we were under considerable duress.”
“Du-ress!”
“And we need to take a look at all the rings you were given for the frequent user's special. Unless, of course,” he turned to the Ringmaker, “the proper ring was one of these two,” he held up his own ring, and motioned with his other hand to Graybeard's.
“The Incomparable Ring of the Magic Taxi? And The Popcorn Shower Circle? No, definitely not. Neither of these will be of any ultimate use against the blacksuits.”
“All we need,” exclaimed Georgie, exasperated, “is a ring of garlic!”
“Well, we, er, got rid of that one,” the Ringmaker raised his hand as if to scratch his head, but thought better of it. “There were too many complaints from users, even after we started marketing it as the Ring of Ensured Seclusion from All But the Severely Olfactorily Challenged.”
During this conversation the cabbie had eaten two more slices of pizza and washed them down from a bottle of beer. Now, grumbling, he snapped his fingers, at which gesture his taxi fell from somewhere above them and bounced on the floor a few feet from where they were all gathered. By the time everyone had climbed up from the floor, where they had hurled themselves in an effort to avoid being squashed, the cabbie had restored his stogie to its familiar position between his lips, and retrieved the container of rings from the taxicab.
“Why would you do that?” asked Nathanael, as he, Graybeard, and the Ringmaker went over to investigate the rings.
“Yes, you could have killed someone!” agreed Graybeard.
“No,” Nathanael interrupted the Cabbie's “whaddya mean...” by explaining, “I meant, Mr. Ringmaker, why on Earth – or, in this case, why on this particularly ridiculous world -- would you destroy the only ring sure to repel the blacksuits? How could you be so foolish?”
The Ringmaker wilted under Nathanael's remonstrations. “It was going to be a hard fight either way and we...the Council of Wise Fairy Tale Characters (we call it 'Cwyftyc' for short)...decided that we might stand a better chance of being sent some good users to help us if we put ourselves into an extra dire state.”
“You're joking.”
“I'm afraid not. There were some protests from the grandfatherly wing about the ethics of putting everyone more at risk to try to trigger some kind of happy fate, but the arch-villain party insisted this was a partisan argument and that in times like these we had to reach across the aisle.”
“You must have access to C-SPAN,” muttered Nathanael.
“As a matter of fact we do. Now, this ring here is capable of turning any food in any world into chicken....”
While the Ringmaker examined the rings and the cabbie stood with his arms crossed, puffing his stogie and glaring at the darkness surrounding them, Georgie went to talk to Miss Doris, who now had the blacksuit waiting upon her, though there was not much for him to do, since she was already within reach of the pizza and her bottled water.
“I love what you've done with your wings,” ventured Georgie, smiling boldly as she eyed Miss Doris' delicate wings, on which were painted curly-cues and flowers in shades of turquoise and aquamarine.
“Turn down the ra-di-o!” shouted the fairy to the blacksuit, then, her grimace of command changing to a sweet smile, “Awww, thanks deary,” she replied to Georgie's compliment. “The cabbie tells me you go to school. Whaddaya wanna be?”
“...and this one,” the Ringmaker said, “is the Temperature Indicator of Good and Bad Jokes,” he shook the empty can and his head. “None of these! None of these!” he once again made as if to rub his head, getting his hat off this time before realizing what he was doing and whipping his hands behind his back. The cabbie examined his floorboards with a shrug.
Nathanael stopped tapping his chin with the head of his umbrella. “I say, cabbie....”
Benjamin Dobbs stretched and yawned. He'd wasted most of the last half hour gazing emptily at the sunset out the window. Now it was dark and his head, which had started hurting hours ago, was beginning to protest loudly. The last students had passed through after dinner. A study group had formed at one of the tables, so he had moved to one of the couches beneath the television, books spread heavy and hot across his legs. His notebook was a mess of scribbled and many-times-erased calculus.
There was a presidential press conference on the news. He frowned at the screen, trying to discern from the cryptic statements on the ticker what was the current crisis. The president himself was no help, having paused to sneeze. Benjamin couldn't help but smile as the sneezing continued and intensified. How embarrassing, Benjamin though, allergies acting up on live tv.
Benjamin cocked his head and frowned. The president's sneezing was exceptionally powerful and constant. But even as Benjamin thought so, the president stopped, gasping for breath and pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket. Benjamin relaxed and sat back.
The sneezing recommenced.
Benjamin stopped to watch. The sneezing stopped.
He shook his head dismissively and looked down, pulling his ring out of his pocket where he had been absent-mindedly playing with it. The sneezing began again.
Benjamin wondered. He held the ring still. The president stopped sneezing, shoulders now heaving, aides whispering to each other in the background.
Benjamin rubbed the ring. The president sneezed.
Benjamin ignored his buzzing cell phone and repeated the test.
The president sneezed to the beat of Mission: Impossible before Benjamin believed it. He examined his ring closely, looked up at the televised view of the conference room, then back down at the ring. The tiny symbol against the background banner was indeed the presidential seal of the United States of America.
He glanced at his phone as it began to ring a second time. Seeing who it was, he snatched it up.
“Graybeard!”
“Benjamin, look...”
“My ring makes the president sneeze!”
“Really?” Graybeard asked intensely “(it makes the president sneeze!)” Benjamin heard him call.
“Listen, Benjamin,” we think your ring is the key to solving our problems. We're not sure how yet, just rub it and don't stop.”
“How would it help? The president looks pretty worn out, anyway...”
“Just rub it! Now!”
Benjamin closed his mouth and began rubbing.
“You really think it's the one, Ringmaker?” Graybeard inquired, covering the mouthpiece of his cellphone.
“There can be no doubt,” the Ringmaker said enthusiastically.
“But it makes the president sneeze.”
“Yes, it does at that.”
“Who thought that one up?”
The Ringmaker stared at Graybeard, and a thoughtful gaze full of curiosity filled his face. “I can't quite recall...”
“Oh, it doesn't matter. I just can't believe my cell phone got through,” said Graybeard.
“Yes,” Nathanael chuckled, “I don't blame you, but you can never tell in fairy tales, I guess.”
“Hold on,” Graybeard put a hand to one ear as he listened to his phone. “Benjamin says the press conference is canceled; the president is being taken to detox. They think it's some sort of poison or terrorist plot or something...”
Far above them there was a thunderous crash. Sunlight and the roar of jet engines poured in as pieces of the roof plummeted to the ground. Several metallic craft sank through the hole towards them.
“More Blacksuits!” Graybeard growled.
“Ringmaker, anything you can do?” inquired Nathanael.
“I'll hold them off for as long as I can. You had better run. This is the climax, so I bid you farewell!” The Ringmaker tossed his light ring to Graybeard and disappeared into the darkness. Blacksuits were already zipping down ropes into the dark around them, and soon there was the sound and flash of thunderbolts from the direction the Ringmaker had gone.
There was a shrill scream from behind them. They all whipped around.
“Georgie!” yelled Graybeard and Nathanael.
“Doris!” yelled the cabbie.
They rushed towards the sounds of violence, Graybeard rubbing the light ring furiously.
Their run brought the blacksuit into view. He was face down on the floor, at the feet of Georgie and Doris, who stood laughing, arms around each other's shoulders like old friends.
“Sorry for screaming,” said Georgie.
“He tried to make a break for it!” explained Miss Doris indignantly. “We had to smack'im.”
“Let's go!” suggested Nathanael vehemently, starting for the light that was the trailer door.
“Bub,” said the cabbie, not moving, “if yous think yous can get out on yous feet, be my guest. I'll be takin t'cab.”
“But how will you get out of here?” Nathanael changed his course and once again they all piled into the cab.
“I'll take care of that!” the cabbie rumbled, opening the passenger door for Miss Doris. The three friends in the back seat raised their eyebrows as he gave her a hand in.
“The latest word is that the president's sneezing attack continues...” entoned the news anchor.
“This is one of those things,” commented a student, standing behind Benjamin to watch the television, “that you can't help but laugh at, but might not turn out to be funny. They're acting like he could be dying.”
The study group had ended when someone noticed the television reporting that the president was being taken for emergency medical treatment. Now a number of students were clustered around Benjamin who, with a rising sense of guilt, tried to hide his ring hand and furiously rubbing thumb from view.
“Graybeard!” he hissed into his phone, “this could hurt him! Why in the world am I supposed to be doing this?”
“Look!” Graybeard shouted back over the phone, “It's the Ringmaker!”
As the cab flashed past, they saw that the Ringmaker was surrounded by a half-dozen protective auras and waving his hands in desperate ring-rubbing combinations that sent fire, ice, grandfather clocks, sea turtles, and yogurt hurting into the line of advancing blacksuits. Behind the line roared their dropships, jet turbines turned Earthwards to maintain their altitude. Streaks of orange light burst from the pods on their wings, and everyone ducked their heads as the first of the rockets exploded, having been detonated by the materialization of a giant snow globe around it, presumably brought about by a wave of the Ringmaker's hand. Fragments of what had probably been models of Santa and his reindeer swirled furiously in the few moments it took the globe to plummet to the Earth.
“The door's too narrow!” shouted Graybeard, peeling his eyes away from the fight behind them.
“Just buckle yous seatbelts,” growled the cabbie, and swerved to the side as a rocket blew a crater in the ground in front of them. Miss Doris screamed.
Georgie sank down as far as she could into her seat, feeling very carsick.
Graybeard clung to the interior of the car and watched the trailer door approach.
Nathanael glanced back in time to see one of the rockets hurl the Ringmaker to the ground, and the blacksuits rush to surround him, wands flashing blue. Another rocket shot towards the cab.
The cabbie, watching in his side view mirror, swerved out of its path; then, as the rocket nosed into the ground where they had just been, he swung the wheel over so that the cab swerved into the explosion.
Expanding air and shrapnel batted the cab onto its side, and, sparks flying and metal shrieking, the vehicle shot out the narrow opening of the trailer door and fell the few feet to the warehouse floor, rotating around its front fender before crashing down on all four wheels again.
“Well,” said Georgie from where she sat squashed between Graybeard and Nathanael, “that's awkward.”
Nathanael muttered about diamonds and Roger Moore as Graybeard and Georgie clambered off of him.
Miss Doris did not clamber off of the cabbie, but clung to his shoulder, scolding him.
The cabbie grumbled defensively as he unsuccessfully tried to restart the cab. Shrapnel had eaten chunks out of its front, and smoke was pouring from the mangled hood.
“Graybeard? Graybeard?” Benjamin's concerned voice came muffled from the floorboards where the cell phone had fallen.
Two more dropships landed beside them. Black sunglasses peered into the windows.
Graybeard picked up his cell phone.
“Benjamin, tell my family I love them,” he said cheerfully, “better tell all our families.”
But the blacksuits reached to their earbuds, listeneing attentively. Then they turned away, climbing back into their dropships.
The dropships rose and hurtled away through blasted holes in the roof of the warehouse. Everything but the hissing of the radiator became very quiet.
“Why are they leaving?” asked Georgie.
“Guys? Guys? Graybeard, what's happening?” hissed Benjamin.
“We seem to be fine now,” replied Graybeard, looking inquisitively at Nathanael for answers. His friend shrugged and shook his head.
“What's going on there?”
“They've locked down the White House. They think it may be a biological attack of some kind...um...they're moving the vice president and the joint chiefs of staff...the military is on high alert...the Secret Service has all been called up to secure....to secure...” Benjamin's face lit up in understanding just as everyone else's did.
“They look just like Secret Service agents!” Georgie giggled.
“Of course!” Nathanael slapped his knee.
“No. Not 'of course'. Why would the blacksuits have anything to do with the Secret Service?” asked Graybeard. “Are they the Secret Service?”
“Well,” reasoned Nathanael, “they probably have their fingers in as many governements as they can get them. What better way to know the pulse of a nation than to infiltrate its upper level of security? And when they were all called up just now, because the president cannot stop sneezing, they had to call off their attack or be found out by the government; or rather, not found by the government, which would mean the same thing -- the end of their infiltration.”
“Seriously?” asked Georgie. “That sounds pretty unlikely.”
“Well,” said Nathanael sadly, “I don't think we'll be able to ask the Ringmaker. He was right about not living through the end of the story.”
“I suppose he was the Christ-figure,” murmured Graybeard.
“When I was talking to him, when you two were climbing into the trailer,” said Georgie, “he told me he had a wife and three kids. He said I could come babysit sometime and he would pay me with custom rings.” She sighed.
“You count as a frequent user now, deary!” Miss Doris leaned back and patted her on the shoulder, searching for some way to comfort her “You'll get a ring.”
Georgie smiled politely back, but a sad silence still clung to them as they watched the cabbie work under the hood.
“And then!” Nathanael could hardly contain his laughter, “the cabbie gets back in the cab, starts it up, turns to Miss Doris, and says 'Whaddya say wes gets married, Doris?'”
The friends' table in the Great Hall erupted with astonished laughter. Benjamin leaned in to make himself heard.
“What did she say?”
Georgie took up the baton as Nathanael leaned back in his chair. “She slaps him,” she paused for a roar of laughter, “says 'Cabbie! Not in fronnadda fare!', takes off his hat, and gives him a big kiss.”
“She said she would invite me to the wedding!” she concluded proudly, as the laughter finally died down and the friends wiped the tears from their eyes.
“So we get to keep the rings?” Benjamin asked. “I still feel bad about mine. It took hours for everyone to calm down about the president.”
“I wouldn't worry too much,” Nathanael reassured him, “they're talking about giving him a Guinness world record for longest sneezing fit, and the news channels had their highest ratings this year,” he broke into a chuckle.
“I wish I'd gotten a ring,” Sheep said.
“You can have this one!” Graybeard handed it across the table, “I don't like popcorn, and I have the light ring anyway.”
“Thanks!” Sheep glanced around at the other tables and rubbed the ring enough to bring a few scattered kernels falling around them. He laughed “this could be great in the middle of class.”
“Well,” said Graybeard, “since this is a fairy tale there has to be a moral.”
“Don't use taxis?” chortled Nathanael, buttering his dinner roll.
“Don't stay home from a fairy world adventure to do homework?” suggested Graybeard, and Benjamin rolled his eyes.
“I know, I know. Next time I'll come, ok?”
“Good!” Graybeard nodded approvingly. “Now I'm going to get dessert, and when I get back I want to know what you all think. Was what they did ethical – the fairy council, I mean?”
“Creating a situation so bad that we would get drawn into it? Hmmm.” Nathanael fell into deep thought.
“I've got to go, guys,” Georgie smiled at them all as she stood. “It's been great.”
“Georgie,” Nathanael looked up from his thoughts to ask. “You said the cabbie let you pick a frequent user ring. What did you get?
Georgie grinned. “I don't think I want to tell anyone yet; you'll find out eventually.” she left in the middle of a chorus of disapproval and goodbyes.
Graybeard sat down with his milkshake. “So,” he said.
“So,” replied Nathanael, “there's a limited number of options when we're dealing with...”
The two philosophers argued ethics for some while, until finally Nathanael raised both hands with an air of finality. “Look, all I can say is that I'll be quite happy if no one ever puts a magic ring in my breakfast again.”
“Oh, I don't know,” laughed Benjamin, “it sounds like it was a lot of fun, and they were right, you know, you did save them.
“For now!” corrected Nathanael sternly, a finger and an eyebrow raised in caution. “We saved them for now! We never know when they'll come barging in again.” He glanced slyly at Graybeard, who was gazing thoughtfully past him, and, leaning across the table, drank his milkshake.
PartVI
Part V
Part IV
Part III
Part II
Part I
“Don't!” shouted the sweet-smelling blacksuit, and he held up his hands, fingers splayed wide to display at least a dozen rings. The Ringmaker, his own hands halfway out from behind his back, froze, eyes widening.
“I don't know what these would do and I don't care,” growled the blacksuit, “but each of us can rub ten or twenty at a time, and one of those is bound to do something unpleasant. So you will stand there and do nothing while we take each and every ring from your fingers.”
Nathanael eyed Graybeard, then looked down at his own pocket. Graybeard tilted his head in acknowledgment and cleared his throat.
“You know,” he began, and then cowered back as the blacksuits turned their wands and rings on him, “I said, you know,” he began more quietly, “I always thought you were overdressed – sunglasses and coats inside -- but this, well gaudy perfume is just embarrassing!”
The smelly blacksuit's cheek twitched.
“I don't know, Graybeard,” smiled Georgie in her sweetest voice, gesturing hyperbolically, “It's such a delicate fragrance, so elegant, so ostentatious! Where did you get it?”
One of the blacksuits coughed. The aromatic leader turned to eye his compatriot with a gaze even darker than his glasses, then turned back to Georgie. “You will regret that,” he rumbled, and stepped towards her.
Georgie stepped to meet him, jaw clamped angrily.
Nathanael's hand had been sliding ever-so-gently towards his pocket. Now it dove in and found the ring. Graybeard, seeing the blacksuits completely distracted by Georgie, grabbed his and rubbed it for good measure.
At first Graybeard thought the sound overhead was popcorn, but after a moment he realized it was the rapidly swelling chords of jazz music. A table and two chairs, containing a large pizza and a radio playing jazz, Miss Doris, and the Cabbie, respectively, crashed to the ground around them. Two blacksuits were pinned by the table. The smell of garlicky crust filled the warehouse as popcorn began to accumulate on the bill of the cabbie's flatcap.
Nathanael found himself nose to nose with the cabbie, who had apparently been standing up to get another piece of pizza. “Ya tries to have a date, jus'a nice simple date, and whaddaya get?” the cabbie asked Nathanael.
Nathanael was opening his mouth to answer when the blacksuits interrupted him with an indescribably miserable howling.
“Garlic!” Georgie heard the leader choke out, grasping for his throat, and then he was gone into the darkness. The others followed, except for the one unfortunate enough to land under Miss Doris' chair. The fairy secretary leaned over upside down, brandishing a garlicy crust in one hand, and began explaining exactly how many ways she could vaporize him.
“Well done, Georgie!” Graybeard grinned in excitement as the Blacksuits staggered away. “You had them thoroughly distracted.”
“I wasn't trying to distract them,” Georgie's face flashed between grin and glower, “I was just mad.”
“Whaddis goin on here!” yelled the cabbie, once the howling had died away into the dark.
“Sorry to call you like that,” explained Nathanael, tipping his hat and slipping out from between the table the the cabbie, “but, you see, we were under considerable duress.”
“Du-ress!”
“And we need to take a look at all the rings you were given for the frequent user's special. Unless, of course,” he turned to the Ringmaker, “the proper ring was one of these two,” he held up his own ring, and motioned with his other hand to Graybeard's.
“The Incomparable Ring of the Magic Taxi? And The Popcorn Shower Circle? No, definitely not. Neither of these will be of any ultimate use against the blacksuits.”
“All we need,” exclaimed Georgie, exasperated, “is a ring of garlic!”
“Well, we, er, got rid of that one,” the Ringmaker raised his hand as if to scratch his head, but thought better of it. “There were too many complaints from users, even after we started marketing it as the Ring of Ensured Seclusion from All But the Severely Olfactorily Challenged.”
During this conversation the cabbie had eaten two more slices of pizza and washed them down from a bottle of beer. Now, grumbling, he snapped his fingers, at which gesture his taxi fell from somewhere above them and bounced on the floor a few feet from where they were all gathered. By the time everyone had climbed up from the floor, where they had hurled themselves in an effort to avoid being squashed, the cabbie had restored his stogie to its familiar position between his lips, and retrieved the container of rings from the taxicab.
“Why would you do that?” asked Nathanael, as he, Graybeard, and the Ringmaker went over to investigate the rings.
“Yes, you could have killed someone!” agreed Graybeard.
“No,” Nathanael interrupted the Cabbie's “whaddya mean...” by explaining, “I meant, Mr. Ringmaker, why on Earth – or, in this case, why on this particularly ridiculous world -- would you destroy the only ring sure to repel the blacksuits? How could you be so foolish?”
The Ringmaker wilted under Nathanael's remonstrations. “It was going to be a hard fight either way and we...the Council of Wise Fairy Tale Characters (we call it 'Cwyftyc' for short)...decided that we might stand a better chance of being sent some good users to help us if we put ourselves into an extra dire state.”
“You're joking.”
“I'm afraid not. There were some protests from the grandfatherly wing about the ethics of putting everyone more at risk to try to trigger some kind of happy fate, but the arch-villain party insisted this was a partisan argument and that in times like these we had to reach across the aisle.”
“You must have access to C-SPAN,” muttered Nathanael.
“As a matter of fact we do. Now, this ring here is capable of turning any food in any world into chicken....”
While the Ringmaker examined the rings and the cabbie stood with his arms crossed, puffing his stogie and glaring at the darkness surrounding them, Georgie went to talk to Miss Doris, who now had the blacksuit waiting upon her, though there was not much for him to do, since she was already within reach of the pizza and her bottled water.
“I love what you've done with your wings,” ventured Georgie, smiling boldly as she eyed Miss Doris' delicate wings, on which were painted curly-cues and flowers in shades of turquoise and aquamarine.
“Turn down the ra-di-o!” shouted the fairy to the blacksuit, then, her grimace of command changing to a sweet smile, “Awww, thanks deary,” she replied to Georgie's compliment. “The cabbie tells me you go to school. Whaddaya wanna be?”
“...and this one,” the Ringmaker said, “is the Temperature Indicator of Good and Bad Jokes,” he shook the empty can and his head. “None of these! None of these!” he once again made as if to rub his head, getting his hat off this time before realizing what he was doing and whipping his hands behind his back. The cabbie examined his floorboards with a shrug.
Nathanael stopped tapping his chin with the head of his umbrella. “I say, cabbie....”
Benjamin Dobbs stretched and yawned. He'd wasted most of the last half hour gazing emptily at the sunset out the window. Now it was dark and his head, which had started hurting hours ago, was beginning to protest loudly. The last students had passed through after dinner. A study group had formed at one of the tables, so he had moved to one of the couches beneath the television, books spread heavy and hot across his legs. His notebook was a mess of scribbled and many-times-erased calculus.
There was a presidential press conference on the news. He frowned at the screen, trying to discern from the cryptic statements on the ticker what was the current crisis. The president himself was no help, having paused to sneeze. Benjamin couldn't help but smile as the sneezing continued and intensified. How embarrassing, Benjamin though, allergies acting up on live tv.
Benjamin cocked his head and frowned. The president's sneezing was exceptionally powerful and constant. But even as Benjamin thought so, the president stopped, gasping for breath and pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket. Benjamin relaxed and sat back.
The sneezing recommenced.
Benjamin stopped to watch. The sneezing stopped.
He shook his head dismissively and looked down, pulling his ring out of his pocket where he had been absent-mindedly playing with it. The sneezing began again.
Benjamin wondered. He held the ring still. The president stopped sneezing, shoulders now heaving, aides whispering to each other in the background.
Benjamin rubbed the ring. The president sneezed.
Benjamin ignored his buzzing cell phone and repeated the test.
The president sneezed to the beat of Mission: Impossible before Benjamin believed it. He examined his ring closely, looked up at the televised view of the conference room, then back down at the ring. The tiny symbol against the background banner was indeed the presidential seal of the United States of America.
He glanced at his phone as it began to ring a second time. Seeing who it was, he snatched it up.
“Graybeard!”
“Benjamin, look...”
“My ring makes the president sneeze!”
“Really?” Graybeard asked intensely “(it makes the president sneeze!)” Benjamin heard him call.
“Listen, Benjamin,” we think your ring is the key to solving our problems. We're not sure how yet, just rub it and don't stop.”
“How would it help? The president looks pretty worn out, anyway...”
“Just rub it! Now!”
Benjamin closed his mouth and began rubbing.
“You really think it's the one, Ringmaker?” Graybeard inquired, covering the mouthpiece of his cellphone.
“There can be no doubt,” the Ringmaker said enthusiastically.
“But it makes the president sneeze.”
“Yes, it does at that.”
“Who thought that one up?”
The Ringmaker stared at Graybeard, and a thoughtful gaze full of curiosity filled his face. “I can't quite recall...”
“Oh, it doesn't matter. I just can't believe my cell phone got through,” said Graybeard.
“Yes,” Nathanael chuckled, “I don't blame you, but you can never tell in fairy tales, I guess.”
“Hold on,” Graybeard put a hand to one ear as he listened to his phone. “Benjamin says the press conference is canceled; the president is being taken to detox. They think it's some sort of poison or terrorist plot or something...”
Far above them there was a thunderous crash. Sunlight and the roar of jet engines poured in as pieces of the roof plummeted to the ground. Several metallic craft sank through the hole towards them.
“More Blacksuits!” Graybeard growled.
“Ringmaker, anything you can do?” inquired Nathanael.
“I'll hold them off for as long as I can. You had better run. This is the climax, so I bid you farewell!” The Ringmaker tossed his light ring to Graybeard and disappeared into the darkness. Blacksuits were already zipping down ropes into the dark around them, and soon there was the sound and flash of thunderbolts from the direction the Ringmaker had gone.
There was a shrill scream from behind them. They all whipped around.
“Georgie!” yelled Graybeard and Nathanael.
“Doris!” yelled the cabbie.
They rushed towards the sounds of violence, Graybeard rubbing the light ring furiously.
Their run brought the blacksuit into view. He was face down on the floor, at the feet of Georgie and Doris, who stood laughing, arms around each other's shoulders like old friends.
“Sorry for screaming,” said Georgie.
“He tried to make a break for it!” explained Miss Doris indignantly. “We had to smack'im.”
“Let's go!” suggested Nathanael vehemently, starting for the light that was the trailer door.
“Bub,” said the cabbie, not moving, “if yous think yous can get out on yous feet, be my guest. I'll be takin t'cab.”
“But how will you get out of here?” Nathanael changed his course and once again they all piled into the cab.
“I'll take care of that!” the cabbie rumbled, opening the passenger door for Miss Doris. The three friends in the back seat raised their eyebrows as he gave her a hand in.
“The latest word is that the president's sneezing attack continues...” entoned the news anchor.
“This is one of those things,” commented a student, standing behind Benjamin to watch the television, “that you can't help but laugh at, but might not turn out to be funny. They're acting like he could be dying.”
The study group had ended when someone noticed the television reporting that the president was being taken for emergency medical treatment. Now a number of students were clustered around Benjamin who, with a rising sense of guilt, tried to hide his ring hand and furiously rubbing thumb from view.
“Graybeard!” he hissed into his phone, “this could hurt him! Why in the world am I supposed to be doing this?”
“Look!” Graybeard shouted back over the phone, “It's the Ringmaker!”
As the cab flashed past, they saw that the Ringmaker was surrounded by a half-dozen protective auras and waving his hands in desperate ring-rubbing combinations that sent fire, ice, grandfather clocks, sea turtles, and yogurt hurting into the line of advancing blacksuits. Behind the line roared their dropships, jet turbines turned Earthwards to maintain their altitude. Streaks of orange light burst from the pods on their wings, and everyone ducked their heads as the first of the rockets exploded, having been detonated by the materialization of a giant snow globe around it, presumably brought about by a wave of the Ringmaker's hand. Fragments of what had probably been models of Santa and his reindeer swirled furiously in the few moments it took the globe to plummet to the Earth.
“The door's too narrow!” shouted Graybeard, peeling his eyes away from the fight behind them.
“Just buckle yous seatbelts,” growled the cabbie, and swerved to the side as a rocket blew a crater in the ground in front of them. Miss Doris screamed.
Georgie sank down as far as she could into her seat, feeling very carsick.
Graybeard clung to the interior of the car and watched the trailer door approach.
Nathanael glanced back in time to see one of the rockets hurl the Ringmaker to the ground, and the blacksuits rush to surround him, wands flashing blue. Another rocket shot towards the cab.
The cabbie, watching in his side view mirror, swerved out of its path; then, as the rocket nosed into the ground where they had just been, he swung the wheel over so that the cab swerved into the explosion.
Expanding air and shrapnel batted the cab onto its side, and, sparks flying and metal shrieking, the vehicle shot out the narrow opening of the trailer door and fell the few feet to the warehouse floor, rotating around its front fender before crashing down on all four wheels again.
“Well,” said Georgie from where she sat squashed between Graybeard and Nathanael, “that's awkward.”
Nathanael muttered about diamonds and Roger Moore as Graybeard and Georgie clambered off of him.
Miss Doris did not clamber off of the cabbie, but clung to his shoulder, scolding him.
The cabbie grumbled defensively as he unsuccessfully tried to restart the cab. Shrapnel had eaten chunks out of its front, and smoke was pouring from the mangled hood.
“Graybeard? Graybeard?” Benjamin's concerned voice came muffled from the floorboards where the cell phone had fallen.
Two more dropships landed beside them. Black sunglasses peered into the windows.
Graybeard picked up his cell phone.
“Benjamin, tell my family I love them,” he said cheerfully, “better tell all our families.”
But the blacksuits reached to their earbuds, listeneing attentively. Then they turned away, climbing back into their dropships.
The dropships rose and hurtled away through blasted holes in the roof of the warehouse. Everything but the hissing of the radiator became very quiet.
“Why are they leaving?” asked Georgie.
“Guys? Guys? Graybeard, what's happening?” hissed Benjamin.
“We seem to be fine now,” replied Graybeard, looking inquisitively at Nathanael for answers. His friend shrugged and shook his head.
“What's going on there?”
“They've locked down the White House. They think it may be a biological attack of some kind...um...they're moving the vice president and the joint chiefs of staff...the military is on high alert...the Secret Service has all been called up to secure....to secure...” Benjamin's face lit up in understanding just as everyone else's did.
“They look just like Secret Service agents!” Georgie giggled.
“Of course!” Nathanael slapped his knee.
“No. Not 'of course'. Why would the blacksuits have anything to do with the Secret Service?” asked Graybeard. “Are they the Secret Service?”
“Well,” reasoned Nathanael, “they probably have their fingers in as many governements as they can get them. What better way to know the pulse of a nation than to infiltrate its upper level of security? And when they were all called up just now, because the president cannot stop sneezing, they had to call off their attack or be found out by the government; or rather, not found by the government, which would mean the same thing -- the end of their infiltration.”
“Seriously?” asked Georgie. “That sounds pretty unlikely.”
“Well,” said Nathanael sadly, “I don't think we'll be able to ask the Ringmaker. He was right about not living through the end of the story.”
“I suppose he was the Christ-figure,” murmured Graybeard.
“When I was talking to him, when you two were climbing into the trailer,” said Georgie, “he told me he had a wife and three kids. He said I could come babysit sometime and he would pay me with custom rings.” She sighed.
“You count as a frequent user now, deary!” Miss Doris leaned back and patted her on the shoulder, searching for some way to comfort her “You'll get a ring.”
Georgie smiled politely back, but a sad silence still clung to them as they watched the cabbie work under the hood.
“And then!” Nathanael could hardly contain his laughter, “the cabbie gets back in the cab, starts it up, turns to Miss Doris, and says 'Whaddya say wes gets married, Doris?'”
The friends' table in the Great Hall erupted with astonished laughter. Benjamin leaned in to make himself heard.
“What did she say?”
Georgie took up the baton as Nathanael leaned back in his chair. “She slaps him,” she paused for a roar of laughter, “says 'Cabbie! Not in fronnadda fare!', takes off his hat, and gives him a big kiss.”
“She said she would invite me to the wedding!” she concluded proudly, as the laughter finally died down and the friends wiped the tears from their eyes.
“So we get to keep the rings?” Benjamin asked. “I still feel bad about mine. It took hours for everyone to calm down about the president.”
“I wouldn't worry too much,” Nathanael reassured him, “they're talking about giving him a Guinness world record for longest sneezing fit, and the news channels had their highest ratings this year,” he broke into a chuckle.
“I wish I'd gotten a ring,” Sheep said.
“You can have this one!” Graybeard handed it across the table, “I don't like popcorn, and I have the light ring anyway.”
“Thanks!” Sheep glanced around at the other tables and rubbed the ring enough to bring a few scattered kernels falling around them. He laughed “this could be great in the middle of class.”
“Well,” said Graybeard, “since this is a fairy tale there has to be a moral.”
“Don't use taxis?” chortled Nathanael, buttering his dinner roll.
“Don't stay home from a fairy world adventure to do homework?” suggested Graybeard, and Benjamin rolled his eyes.
“I know, I know. Next time I'll come, ok?”
“Good!” Graybeard nodded approvingly. “Now I'm going to get dessert, and when I get back I want to know what you all think. Was what they did ethical – the fairy council, I mean?”
“Creating a situation so bad that we would get drawn into it? Hmmm.” Nathanael fell into deep thought.
“I've got to go, guys,” Georgie smiled at them all as she stood. “It's been great.”
“Georgie,” Nathanael looked up from his thoughts to ask. “You said the cabbie let you pick a frequent user ring. What did you get?
Georgie grinned. “I don't think I want to tell anyone yet; you'll find out eventually.” she left in the middle of a chorus of disapproval and goodbyes.
Graybeard sat down with his milkshake. “So,” he said.
“So,” replied Nathanael, “there's a limited number of options when we're dealing with...”
The two philosophers argued ethics for some while, until finally Nathanael raised both hands with an air of finality. “Look, all I can say is that I'll be quite happy if no one ever puts a magic ring in my breakfast again.”
“Oh, I don't know,” laughed Benjamin, “it sounds like it was a lot of fun, and they were right, you know, you did save them.
“For now!” corrected Nathanael sternly, a finger and an eyebrow raised in caution. “We saved them for now! We never know when they'll come barging in again.” He glanced slyly at Graybeard, who was gazing thoughtfully past him, and, leaning across the table, drank his milkshake.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Nathanael Booth and the Ring of Power, Part VI
Dear Readers,
Goodness it's been a while. Spring 2009 was a rather hectic semester, and I was recalled from the majority of my writing and public musing to working and musing with my friends, my family, and my heavenly Father. I cannot express how tickled I am that so many of you keep reminding me that Graybeard and Georgie are still surrounded by blacksuits. If you don't remember the details, here is what's happened so far (I recommend you re-read part V, if nothing else):
Part V
Part IV
Part III
Part II
Part I
And if you are interested in a little update and plans for summer writing, click here.
A little man in a striped suit with well-gelled hair and polished, long-toed dress shoes shuffled in behind the blacksuits.
“Ahem!” he coughed in a faint, squeaky voice, his hands behind his back.
All three blacksuits spun around, and all three, catching sight of the little man, stepped quickly backward, lightening shooting at him from their wands.
He whipped his hands forward, and, through a sheet of blue and yellow lightening bolts, Georgie and Graybeard saw rings of all shapes and sizes shining and flashing on his fingers. The lightening played around him like fireworks, but did not touch him.
The blacksuits continued backwards until the two on the floor were shoulder to shoulder with Graybeard, who, not trusting the staff, decided to wait and see what the little man did.
What he did was simply to cross two of his fingers and rub them together, setting half a dozen rings clinking.
The remaining lights and the purple fire went out instantly. The darkness was total, overwhelming. The blacksuits on either side of Graybeard blended into the black and were gone. He lost his balance and fell to his knees; the staff shattered in his hands. Georgie fell through the dark with the boxes and Styrofoam but stopped suddenly a few inches from the floor.
The lights came back on slowly, to reveal Nathanael Booth standing in the middle of a field of wilted fescue grass, umbrella under his arm, holding his hat in one hand, running his other through his hair. Graybeard was helping Georgie regain her feet. The little man's hands were behind his back again, his mouth grinning innocently behind his mustache and his eyes blinking rapidly behind his thin-rimmed spectacles. The blacksuits had blinked out with the lights.
“If anyone comes up with a better diversion than that, friends, I will drink his milkshake!” announced Nathanael. “Allow me to introduce the Ringmaker. Mr. Ringmaker, this is Miss Georgiana Vurner and Mr. Graybeard.
“We ran all the way over here to help you,” he explained to his friends.
“Just in time!” noted Graybeard, shaking hands with the Ringmaker. “We certainly weren't trying to be a diversion,” he complained, “but I think Mr. Jones was right, it looks like we are the protagonists. By the way, Georgie, nice pitching.”
“Thanks! And nice to meet you, Ringmaker!” said Georgie, “by the way, thanks for the soft landing.”
“Not at all, not at all,” he said faintly but energetically. “Nothing to it if you have these,” he waggled his fingers for a moment. “Now, we must be going. We have already wasted precious time.”
“What happened to the blacksuits?” asked Graybeard.
“They were repulsed but not destroyed,” sighed the Ringmaker sadly. “I fear they will be after us again in no time at all. Come now! Come.”
“Not so much like our last guide,” said Graybeard as they emerged into the warehouse at large from the scarred returns room.
“No!” laughed Georgie.
“Better taste in head wear,” murmured Nathanael.
They made their way through the maze of stockpiled magical items, marveling at the size and decor of the warehouse almost as much as at the purported powers of the items contained within.
“So where are we going?” asked Graybeard.
“Miss Doris said we could find the cabbie somewhere in the other direction,” added Georgie. “We were almost there when the blacksuits caught up with us.”
“We're going to save the world, of course,” explained Nathanael. Georgie and Graybeard eyed him thoughtfully. “Ask him! Ask him!” Nathanael motioned violently with his umbrella at the little man who moved briskly through the aisle ahead of them.
“Um, Mr. Ringmaker,” began Georgie.
“We were wondering what the dickens is going on!” Graybeard laughed with frustration.
“Oh, of course, your friend here knows, but I haven't told you two. Here, here, walk beside me and I will explain.” He smiled broadly at each of them, then cleared his throat with a sound like a woodwind.
“There are many rings in this place, created in time immemorial by me and my forebears. Each one has a past, and also a future. You see, the first rings were created for great purposes, but it was found that people became bored with rings that gave them three wishes, or made them powerful, or got them friends. And the Ringmakers, to be frank, grew tired of making them. So we branched out. We made rings of humor, rings of sadness, and rings of weakness. What we soon found was that all of these were just as worthy of being called rings of power as those that could move mountains. Each ring, you see, has its own destiny. Each ring, properly applied, can be so important that, to be concise, the world would end without it.
“Applying this principle to our present crisis, the solution to the blacksuit problem is simply to find the correct ring and to implement it in the correct fashion, you see? I know the power of each ring, and now I know you. It should not take me long to determine which ring has the destiny of winning this battle against the blacksuits. But here we are.”
“You're right, Graybeard,” Georgie whispered triumphantly “We are the protagonists. He finishes talking and we arrive. Our time isn't wasted!”
“Yes,” Nathanael mused, “Capital, really.”
While they were whispering to each other, the Ringmaker had put a ring into the keyhole of an iron padlock on the door of a whimsically decorated trailer. Graybeard chuckled and pointed out the license plate to Nathanael. In place of county it read “2nd circle unlawful good.” The Ringmaker swung the trailer door open with amazing vigor, his shined shoes scritching on the ground as he half- pushed on, half-hung from the handle. Then he leaped, coattails flying, into the dark mouth of the trailer.
Nathanael ran a gloved finger along the rusty trailer step and sniffed. Graybeard, voicing a question about why the Ringmaker and his compatriots had chosen a trailer from that particular circle in which to store their rings, clambered up onto the step and stood shakily, brushing rust from his clothes before offering Nathanael a hand. Nathanael set his hat and umbrella in the dark opening and took the proffered hand, scrambling up quickly and almost tipping Graybeard back over the edge.
Graybeard turned to give Georgie a hand up, and blinked in surprise.
“Oh,” he said, as he heard her voice somewhere inside the trailer, conversing with the Ringmaker, and the two young men followed their companions inside.
At the far end of the trailer there was a single light bulb dangling from a string and failing to illuminate anything besides the three travelers, the Ringmaker, and a circuit breaker with a gold-plated panel and runes on the individual breakers. The Ringmaker reached up with both hands and flipped the main. Every wall and shelf in the room lit up with a moon-like blue glow.
“Well I'll...I'll...I'll drink his milkshake,” Nathanael laughed in astonishment.
They were not, as they had believed, standing at the back of the trailer, but at a pillar in the middle of a large room. The door to the trailer was there, fluorescent light streaming in, yet around it rose walls stretching out of sight. The walls, pillars, and shelves were similar in design to the outer warehouse, except for the strange blue luminescence. The room was lined with shelves. Some of the rings were in open canisters, as if they were popcorn. Others were on strangely lifelike human or animal hands that stretched up from the shelves, some with fingers arched desperately, as if trying to get out, others straight and elegant, as if in greeting. Some of the rings sat on pillows of black velvet, their jewels glinting against the dark backdrop. Some hung from chains around the necks of dwarf and elf dummies.
All three students breathed in slowly as their eyes breathed in the rings.
The Ringmaker tapped one toe on the floor for a few moments, pursed mustache gazing along the near shelves.
“D17, I'd bet my tophat on it,” he cried, and took off into the depths of the shelves. The students followed him to D17, a particularly small shelf. There could not have been more than a hundred rings on it.
“The ring we need...I'm sorry, the ring you seek is almost assuredly one of these.” He smiled broadly at them.
“Well, which one?” asked Nathanael.
“Oh, I don't know; we'll have to look at each of them.”
“Then how can you know it's here?” Graybeard pressed.
“Well if I didn't you would be in a pretty tight spot, wouldn't you? No way to finish the story then!”
“That's a little ridiculous,” said Graybeard.
“It's my purpose to know these things. Don't blame me for it.”
“That's an interesting epistemology,” Graybeard complained.
“Yes,” Nathanael's eyes sparkled with the reflection of the rings. “Knowledge through purpose. But is it truth?” He and Graybeard glanced at each other thoughtfully, their minds working extra hard. Then they both started talking at once.
“What's that smell?” asked Georgie after the discussion had continued for a few moments.
“Hmmm?” pulled out of their philosophical musings, the two sniffed the air. “It doesn't smell any stranger than it did before,” said Nathanael.
“It's gone; but there was something...”
The Ringmaker was behind them, muttering and shaking his head as he examined each ring. “Here's one,” he called to them, his voice drifting with whimsy “to be used when milking cows. It pasteurizes the milk. And here's one,” he raised a big green one with a jade stone, “that causes trees to grow. But no, no, they aren't what you need, I don't think.”
Despite the number of rings on the shelf, the Ringmaker was already nearing the bottom of the shelf.
“Well?” Graybeard glanced back towards the trailer door. “Can't you find it?”
“Apparently it's not his purpose too,” chimed in Nathanael.
“I have smelled that before,” said Georgie emphatically. This time everyone crinkled his or her nose as they sniffed.
“It's like perfume,” Graybeard said incredulously.
“Bad perfume,” agreed Nathanael. “Did you happen to rub a ring of sickly-sweet smells, Mr. Ringmaker?”
“No, no, I wonder what that could be?”
The light from the trailer door seemed to blink for a moment. “Did you see that?” asked Graybeard, crouching down. Georgie and Nathanael nodded. The light blinked again.
“There's someone here, Mr. Ringmaker,” Georgie whispered, “and unless that perfume is a whole lot more popular than it ought to be, it's the blacksuits. Remember the one I hit with the jar?” she asked Graybeard, and he nodded violently in recognition. “That's it. It's got to be them.”
Then the lights went out. The echo of the circuit breaker being thrown lasted interminably, then a ring on the rinmaker's finger lit up.
“Is there another way out?” whispered Nathanael.
“No.”
“They'll be able to see us in that light...”
Even as Georgie spoke, a flash a blue lightening struck beside them, fragments of shelf, dummy, and ring singing past and into them. Graybeard held a hand to a cut on his temple as they darted deeper in amongst the shelves by the light of the Ringmaker's finger. Finally, they stopped to catch their breath. Just as the Ringmaker was extinguishing his light Nathanael noticed Georgie grimacing as she plucked a shard of silver shelf from her arm. “You all right?” he inquired.
“I'm fine. Ask Graybeard -- he's bleeding.”
“Nothing,” Graybeard hissed embarrassedly, and then spoke to the Ringmaker. “Did you find it?”
“No. No, and it wouldn't have helped if we had been able to stay, either,” exclaimed the little man. “That was the right shelf, I can feel it in my bones. But I checked every ring on it, and I'm just as certain that none of them are correct. I cannot understand it.”
“Then what do we do?” asked Graybeard and Georgie at the same time.
“There is nothing you can do!” boomed a deep voice from somewhere near the front, and a harsh snicker followed the voice, echoing out of the darkness on all sides of them. “We have you trapped. Your only hope is to give yourselves up.”
The three looked at the Ringmaker in the long silence that followed.
“Well?” asked Graybeard.
“Well what?” The Ringmaker snorted at them in his high voice, “I'm about ready to give up on you myself. Not much of a set of fairy-tale children, are you? Much too old, anyway. Fine! Give yourselves up.” He waved his be-ringed fingers at them dismissively.
The three stared into the dark, then back at him.
“I just wonder if it's safe...?” Graybeard explained.
“They will probably respect your world's notable neutrality in the matter,” the Ringmaker's emphasis on the word “notable” could only have been called bitter.
“You hold us responsible?” Nathanael's words were pitched high with disbelief.
“It's not like we could just send troops to help, even if we knew about it,” muttered Georgie. “But what will happen to you, Mr. Ringmaker?”
“Oh, they'll kill me, of course,” he replied.
“Oh!” they said.
“That settles it, then,” Graybeard shrugged, and Georgie nodded.
“We can't let them kill you. We'll just have to find a way out.”
“Could the ring have been moved?” asked Nathanael abruptly. He had spent the last few moments thinking and gasping with pain as he used a handkerchief to bind up a deep cut in his leg.
“Moved?” the Ringmaker cocked his head. “But I am notified of all in-use rings. But of course!” The Ringmaker hopped half a foot in the air in sheer excitement, shoes clattering in the dark. “That's it! There's a ringuser's special they just started. My helper elves haven't told me which rings they took for distribution yet. It must be one of those!”
“Ooooh,” said Graybeard, Georgie, and Nathanael.
“Too late,” said the deep voice, and the lights came back on to reveal that they were once again surrounded by blacksuits. A frog in dark glasses ribbitted its agreement from beside the men, and one of the blacksuits smelled sickly-sweet.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Stellar Solar Summer Days
What better way to break a several month's silence than by letting my readers know what I intend to publish during the next few!
To cut to the chase, I intend, no later than tomorrow, to upload the next installment of Nathanael Booth and the Ring of Power. I have written the end. How much longer can it take to publish it all?
After that I plan to work on posts every day. How often I will post depends on how much I get finished.
In the works are updates on Physics, Computer Science, sword-fighting, story-writing, a few historically-accurate Benjamin Dobbs episodes, and perhaps even something entirely new and science fiction-y...
And now, a brief update on my life, which will set the stage for some of those hopefully-pending physics and computer science related updates.
Today was my first day at work as an intern in the Astronomy department of South Carolina's beautiful Clemson University.
When I'm not learning about and hopefully contributing a tiny little bit back to astronomy, I plan to cook, write, read, study for the Physics GRE, and research graduate schools.
I will be working with IDL to learn, use, and, perhaps, improve a model of gas in what are believed to be protoplanetary accretion disks surrounding a class of observed stars known as Herbig Be stars.
This means I not only get work on real research using computer programming in an office in a physics department just a door down from real live physics graduate students and not very far at all from departments-full of living, breathing physicists, but I also get to live in my own apartment, shop for and cook my own food, and walk or use public transportation everywhere I go (all the italicized items are things that I think are just awesome, although I must admit that I may well be tired of quite a few of them by the end of the summer).
Nine weeks from now I will have, Lord willing, gained an entry-level knowledge of the field, written a paper and prepared a presentation on my particular work, spent a few nights at the SARA telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona, and gotten paid by the NSF to do it.
I am daunted, but, today, quite happy about the prospect. While excitement over my project is one reason for my enthusiasm, I must admit that I suspect some part of it is due to all the other good things that have happened to me today. Frisbee tossing an old friend and some new, a successful journey to Wal-Mart and back with the treasure of a week's supply of food, and the unexpected arrival of air conditioner repairmen who installed a thermostat that, while set 4 degrees higher than the former, keeps the apartment at least 8 degrees cooler (I don't think the needle on the old one could go higher than 80). I hope my contentedness and joy will not prove to depend on my circumstances.
To cut to the chase, I intend, no later than tomorrow, to upload the next installment of Nathanael Booth and the Ring of Power. I have written the end. How much longer can it take to publish it all?
After that I plan to work on posts every day. How often I will post depends on how much I get finished.
In the works are updates on Physics, Computer Science, sword-fighting, story-writing, a few historically-accurate Benjamin Dobbs episodes, and perhaps even something entirely new and science fiction-y...
And now, a brief update on my life, which will set the stage for some of those hopefully-pending physics and computer science related updates.
Today was my first day at work as an intern in the Astronomy department of South Carolina's beautiful Clemson University.
When I'm not learning about and hopefully contributing a tiny little bit back to astronomy, I plan to cook, write, read, study for the Physics GRE, and research graduate schools.
I will be working with IDL to learn, use, and, perhaps, improve a model of gas in what are believed to be protoplanetary accretion disks surrounding a class of observed stars known as Herbig Be stars.
This means I not only get work on real research using computer programming in an office in a physics department just a door down from real live physics graduate students and not very far at all from departments-full of living, breathing physicists, but I also get to live in my own apartment, shop for and cook my own food, and walk or use public transportation everywhere I go (all the italicized items are things that I think are just awesome, although I must admit that I may well be tired of quite a few of them by the end of the summer).
Nine weeks from now I will have, Lord willing, gained an entry-level knowledge of the field, written a paper and prepared a presentation on my particular work, spent a few nights at the SARA telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona, and gotten paid by the NSF to do it.
I am daunted, but, today, quite happy about the prospect. While excitement over my project is one reason for my enthusiasm, I must admit that I suspect some part of it is due to all the other good things that have happened to me today. Frisbee tossing an old friend and some new, a successful journey to Wal-Mart and back with the treasure of a week's supply of food, and the unexpected arrival of air conditioner repairmen who installed a thermostat that, while set 4 degrees higher than the former, keeps the apartment at least 8 degrees cooler (I don't think the needle on the old one could go higher than 80). I hope my contentedness and joy will not prove to depend on my circumstances.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Nathanael Booth and the Ring of Power, Part V
Dear Readers,
Here we are again! Another delay and another part of the story. I expect the next shall finish our little fairy tale, and, as always, would like it to be written and posted soon, but cannot promise as such.
Part IV
Part III
Part II
Part I
Benjamin slid a seven pound math textbook onto the table and grimaced at it. Twenty-seven homework problems grimaced back. He looked up from where he slouched in an uncomfortable chair as someone stuffed an empty package into the trashcan beside him. It would be so easy to just throw the book away. He laughed quietly too himself, and wondered why he had decided to study in the mail room in the first place.
“Change of scenery,” he muttered to himself, and shook his head. The walls in front of him were plastered with notices and advertisements. The walls behind him were filled with mailboxes. A television stared down at him from one side, informing him of the latest world crisis. Drink and snack machines stood, no doubt bored out of their minds, inviting students to buy exorbitantly priced flavored sugar in bottles and bags.
Benjamin couldn't help but laugh at himself again as his mind began to rebel against the injustice of the college life. He opened his notebook and started writing out the first problem.
His cellphone buzzed in his pocket. He sighed, whispered "works like a charm,” set down his pencil, and dug the phone out of his pocket.
“Hello?”
“Hey Benjamin, it's Sheep.”
“Hey man,” Benjamin greeted his other roommate. “What's up?”
“Aw, nothin. I was just calling to see if you had any plans for this evening.”
“I've got a boatload of Calculus, and then a boatload of physics. I'll probably be here in the mail room till pretty late. Sorry. Hey, if and when I wear my brain out, do you have any anime' you wanna watch?”
Sheep suggested a show that Benjamin had heard of, which was unusual, and a good sign for the evening's entertainment.
“That'll be great. I'll give you a call. What are your plans until then?”
“I...don't know,” Sheep replied. “Do you know where Graybeard is?”
“Yeah, he went to some fairy world with Nathanael and Georgie.”
“Why did he do that?”
“They were getting chased by these agent dudes.”
“Oh. Ok.”
“Well, I've gotta get back to it.”
“All right.”
“Bye.”
Benjamin hung up and stared miserably at his Calculus homework.
“I take back everything I said about this building's design. They're being attacked by evil forces. They have locks on the doors. But they don't have walls!” Graybeard fumed as they left Lilliput's office.
Nathanael peered out of the tower through a knothole roughly twice his height in diameter. “At least it helps us see how to get around. I suppose we should go for that bridge;” he pointed, “it looks like it's on this story.”
“Guys, it sounds like we're in some serious danger here.” Georgie was somber. “Are we sure we don't want to find the cabbie and ask him to take us back?”
“Positive,” replied Nathanael. “After all, why waste our only chance at a fairy tale we'll probably ever get?”
“She has a point, Nathanael,” said Graybeard. The two dissenters followed Nathanael to where one of the bridges led from the tower to the ring building. Thick wooden planks suspended by ropes rocked slowly in the breeze. As they started across they heard a sound like a jet engine growing louder overhead. One of the clouds popped like a balloon, revealing an angular, metallic craft hovering above them. The wind from whatever it used to suspend itself kicked up flower petals and tarantulas from the courtyard. Black cords uncoiled from its sides and blacksuits began to slide down them. Most landed in the courtyard.
“Look! Remember the spiders?” Graybeard pointed, and he and Nathanael watched, fascinated, as the insects swarmed toward the blacksuits.
“This is gonna be grose, guys,” warned Georgie.
But as the insects approached, the blacksuits pulled out their wands. Blue flashes lit up the courtyard, and insects flew back, making weird, insect noises as they crumpled up on the ground, miniature lightening bolts tracing their contorted legs. The blacksuits were holding their own when something happened to turn the students' attention away.
A blacksuit slid down his rope onto the bridge in front of them. Whipping out his wand, he started their way.
The students retreated around the corner.
“Maybe the cabbie's still downstairs,” said Georgie hopefully.
“Well, then, here's your chance to be useful,” Nathanael stopped running and stepped into a vacant office.
“What are you doing?” hissed Graybeard as his friend climbed under the desk.
“Hiding,” Nathanael grunted, frowning. He took off his hat and set it on the desk before squeezing down underneath it. “He'll follow you downstairs, and I'll be able to get across the bridge once he's passed. If you decide to help, meet up with me somewhere in the ring building. Now go; I can hear him coming.”
Graybeard and Georgie tumbled into the spacious antechamber and hesitantly approached the fairy Doris, still at her desk in the center of the room.
Before they could get up enough courage to speak, the secretary's gaze popped from her computer to drill into them. “What can I do for yas?”
“Yes, excuse me, we were wondering where the cabbie had gotten to?” inquired Graybeard as politely as panic would allow.
“Your guide went back to the transit sector of the ring building. Go out that door, across the lawn, second door on your right, you can't miss it.”
“There were these, er, large arachnids out there before, and some rather malevolent-looking men in black suits,” Graybeard tried to explain.
“Here, take these visitor badges. None of the ring monsters will pay any attention to you so long as you have those on. For the blacksuits, you'll have to speak to grounds; would you like their extension?”
“Well, there was a bit of a fight going on...” Graybeard said hesitantly.
The fairy sighed and leaned forward over her desk.
“Look, yous guys, I'm real sorry about the whole unsurmountable odds mo-teef, but it's there all the same. Youd'as better just get across quick, or I'll be the innocent bystander who gets killed to show how serious things are!
“Will you be safe?” asked Graybeard.
“Aw, sure. I've got training in self-defense magic with a concentration in vaporization.” she smiled and laced her fingers under her chin. “Good luck!”
“You all right?” Graybeard inquired of Georgie as they started across the lawn outside, pinning on their visitor badges.
Georgie snickered. “Sure, yeah, let's just hurry, I don't like spiders or creepy guys in sunglasses.”
Nathanael puffed for breath and adjusted his hat, crouching at the far end of the bridge after sprinting across. He peeked through the doorway and moved slowly forward until he came to the end of the floor. Beneath him was a massive room, filled with multi-story racks, catwalks, and the strangest assortment of magical objects he had ever heard of, much less seen. Thousands of items of clothing of all types and eras hung down from metal bars, labels sticking out here and there. Crates marked “treasure,” “m-food,” and “m-drink” were stacked twenty high along the walls. Construction materials filled shelves. Swords and other melee weapons lay scattered about tables. Chemical storage containers were stacked just below him, labeled “fireballs,” “lightening bolts,” and “m-cures,” -- “handle with care.” Voices and the far-away sounds of machinery and animals echoed back and forth from the walls. What little of the building interior he could see beneath its contents was skillfully carved or engraved.
Nathanael clattered down a narrow set of stairs into the middle of the room, running his hands over the swirling metal railing that drew pictures of animals and fairy creatures, and wishing that “all-purpose invulnerability” came in smaller containers so he could take some with him.
He had just reached the ground floor when he heard footsteps behind and above him. He slid up against a box labeled “worst nighmares,” and tried to ignore the growls and rustles from inside as he watched two blacksuits step out on the platform he had only recently vacated.
The box of worst nightmares picked that particular moment to give a savage jolt, throwing Booth out into the open. The blacksuits spotted him and started down the stairs as Booth took off at a run, deeper into the building, looking for any signs that could direct him to the Ringmaker.
Despite the sounds of machinery and people, the warehouse seemed deserted to Nathanael, with the notable exception of his pursuers. He reeled slightly as he turned down what he had thought to be a narrow aisle of vaulting shelves, stunned to see aisles shooting off in every possible direction, up, down, and diagonally. He bumped into something he could not see, and a huge mirror fell, shattering on the engraved concrete floor with an echoing crash.
“Ah!” he said, noting the label “m-mirror, inhabited by spirit of ancient Arab princess.” “My apologies, madam.”
“What have you done!” cried a girl's voice, with almost as much annoyance as horror, “Indeed, sir, even be you handsome as the gods and as fleet as the eagle, may they smite you with all the..all the...oh I hope they put you in one of these forever! Ahahaha!” she laughed, but Nathanael was already gone.
Knowing now what he was looking at, he focused on the one aisle that ran straight ahead, and, ignoring the reflections from what must be hundreds of magic mirrors, sprinted to the end of it. Looking back, he saw the blacksuits just turning the corner, skidding on the broken glass.
He started to jog again, breathing heavily now and muttering about using the bicycle in the gym more often. He darted down a few shorter aisles, hoping to loose his pursuers in a maze of m-animal crates. Then, joy of joys, he rounded a corner and came face to face with a large pillar in the middle of his path. Upon the pillar was a plastic sign illustrating the layout of the entire ring building.
“Ringmaker, Ringmaker...” Nathanael ran his fingers over the map, “ah!” He jabbed at a blue dot on the top of the ring that bore the appropriate title. “Now where am I...” he found himself, a small hat-shaped symbol about thirty degrees clockwise from the Ringmaker's. “Not too far!” he congratulated himself, but then, moving rapidly towards his symbol on the map, he saw two black dots.
“Dash it all!” But the worst was yet to come. Even as he was about to leave the map behind, he saw two more symbols, which he knew must be his two friends, on the far side of the ring. Even as he watched, he saw black dots moving to surround them.
Georgie ran back from the doorway to help Graybeard strip the long cardboard box off a wizard's staff.
“They're coming. Do you think you can make it work?” she asked, as her friend held up the staff and brushed off the last of the packing peanuts.
“I hope so. All those years of Dungeons and Dragons, you know. Better get behind the counter, unless you want to have a shot at it.”
“Oh, you'll do wonderfully!" Georgie reassured. "Can you believe they have a returns office in a fairy world?” she laughed from behind Graybeard, as he turned to face the door. The footsteps of several blacksuits approached slowly from outside.
“Now that I'm trapped inside it, yes,” Graybeard barked back, and tried to assume a wizard's stance.
“You know...” Georgie mused behind him, as shadows darkened the doorway, “...I wonder why that staff was in here in the first place.”
“Oh, no!” Graybeard gasped, even as two blacksuits turned the corner.
They were perhaps five feet from him as they stood in the doorway, and their wands were at the ready. Even as Graybeard flexed his hands on the staff and searched for some word of power, they snapped the wands forward sharply, bolts of blue lightening lancing out.
“Aaaaaaaaa-bracadabra!” Graybeard half yelled, half encanted. The staff made a disappointing “whiff” sound.
“Eep!” Georgie protested, as she fell eight feet to the ceiling. The blacksuits grunted in deep voices as they too plummeted to the roof, crushing hand-crafted fluorescent light fixtures.
Graybeard stood frozen on the floor, not even daring to look up, his eyes fixed on the doorway, where lightening bolts had gouged into the frame and wall.
“Gravity and polarity reversal, with full caster protection. Wow.” Graybeard's lips slowly turned up in a broad smile, and his eyes turned the same direction to observe the blacksuits, just getting to their feet on the ceiling.
“Let's see now...dematerialize?” Graybeard thrust his staff upward experimentally. The staff said “Zuzuzuzu” and the metal returns desk, still bolted firmly to the floor behind him, burst into purple flames.
The blacksuits looked down (up for them) at Graybeard, smirked, and turned their gaze to Georgie, who was untangling herself from a pile of packing peanuts where boxes of returns from behind the desk had fallen and burst open on the ceiling.
“Petrify!” Graybeard suggested to the staff. It chose instead to mutter “Wuuowww,” and cause a veritable thicket of fescue grass to sprout from the floor.
One of the blacksuits chuckled as he pointed his wand at Georgie, “abracadabra,” he mocked.
Georgie wound up and hurled an ancient-looking jar in the blacksuit's face.
Whatever was in the jar, it certainly belonged in the defectives box from which Georgie taken it. The blacksuit transformed into a shockingly fat bullfrog and fell into a deep sleep. Georgie couldn't help giggling at the absurd little creature, though she turned red trying to stifle it.
Georgie dug through the peanuts, found another unbroken jar, and flung it in at the other blacksuit. It shattered, drenching the blacksuit in a strange-smelling liquid.
The blacksuit hesitated, grimacing at his snoozing compatriot, to wipe from his face the sweet smelling liquid that had burst out of the jar, but failed to turn into anything less menacing.
Two more blacksuits burst through the door at that moment, and the gravity reversal spell had no affect on the new arrivals.
While Georgie tried desperately to find another unbroken jar, Graybeard retreated to the desk, purple flames heating his back, and prepared to risk trying to cast a meteor storm.
Here we are again! Another delay and another part of the story. I expect the next shall finish our little fairy tale, and, as always, would like it to be written and posted soon, but cannot promise as such.
Part IV
Part III
Part II
Part I
Benjamin slid a seven pound math textbook onto the table and grimaced at it. Twenty-seven homework problems grimaced back. He looked up from where he slouched in an uncomfortable chair as someone stuffed an empty package into the trashcan beside him. It would be so easy to just throw the book away. He laughed quietly too himself, and wondered why he had decided to study in the mail room in the first place.
“Change of scenery,” he muttered to himself, and shook his head. The walls in front of him were plastered with notices and advertisements. The walls behind him were filled with mailboxes. A television stared down at him from one side, informing him of the latest world crisis. Drink and snack machines stood, no doubt bored out of their minds, inviting students to buy exorbitantly priced flavored sugar in bottles and bags.
Benjamin couldn't help but laugh at himself again as his mind began to rebel against the injustice of the college life. He opened his notebook and started writing out the first problem.
His cellphone buzzed in his pocket. He sighed, whispered "works like a charm,” set down his pencil, and dug the phone out of his pocket.
“Hello?”
“Hey Benjamin, it's Sheep.”
“Hey man,” Benjamin greeted his other roommate. “What's up?”
“Aw, nothin. I was just calling to see if you had any plans for this evening.”
“I've got a boatload of Calculus, and then a boatload of physics. I'll probably be here in the mail room till pretty late. Sorry. Hey, if and when I wear my brain out, do you have any anime' you wanna watch?”
Sheep suggested a show that Benjamin had heard of, which was unusual, and a good sign for the evening's entertainment.
“That'll be great. I'll give you a call. What are your plans until then?”
“I...don't know,” Sheep replied. “Do you know where Graybeard is?”
“Yeah, he went to some fairy world with Nathanael and Georgie.”
“Why did he do that?”
“They were getting chased by these agent dudes.”
“Oh. Ok.”
“Well, I've gotta get back to it.”
“All right.”
“Bye.”
Benjamin hung up and stared miserably at his Calculus homework.
“I take back everything I said about this building's design. They're being attacked by evil forces. They have locks on the doors. But they don't have walls!” Graybeard fumed as they left Lilliput's office.
Nathanael peered out of the tower through a knothole roughly twice his height in diameter. “At least it helps us see how to get around. I suppose we should go for that bridge;” he pointed, “it looks like it's on this story.”
“Guys, it sounds like we're in some serious danger here.” Georgie was somber. “Are we sure we don't want to find the cabbie and ask him to take us back?”
“Positive,” replied Nathanael. “After all, why waste our only chance at a fairy tale we'll probably ever get?”
“She has a point, Nathanael,” said Graybeard. The two dissenters followed Nathanael to where one of the bridges led from the tower to the ring building. Thick wooden planks suspended by ropes rocked slowly in the breeze. As they started across they heard a sound like a jet engine growing louder overhead. One of the clouds popped like a balloon, revealing an angular, metallic craft hovering above them. The wind from whatever it used to suspend itself kicked up flower petals and tarantulas from the courtyard. Black cords uncoiled from its sides and blacksuits began to slide down them. Most landed in the courtyard.
“Look! Remember the spiders?” Graybeard pointed, and he and Nathanael watched, fascinated, as the insects swarmed toward the blacksuits.
“This is gonna be grose, guys,” warned Georgie.
But as the insects approached, the blacksuits pulled out their wands. Blue flashes lit up the courtyard, and insects flew back, making weird, insect noises as they crumpled up on the ground, miniature lightening bolts tracing their contorted legs. The blacksuits were holding their own when something happened to turn the students' attention away.
A blacksuit slid down his rope onto the bridge in front of them. Whipping out his wand, he started their way.
The students retreated around the corner.
“Maybe the cabbie's still downstairs,” said Georgie hopefully.
“Well, then, here's your chance to be useful,” Nathanael stopped running and stepped into a vacant office.
“What are you doing?” hissed Graybeard as his friend climbed under the desk.
“Hiding,” Nathanael grunted, frowning. He took off his hat and set it on the desk before squeezing down underneath it. “He'll follow you downstairs, and I'll be able to get across the bridge once he's passed. If you decide to help, meet up with me somewhere in the ring building. Now go; I can hear him coming.”
Graybeard and Georgie tumbled into the spacious antechamber and hesitantly approached the fairy Doris, still at her desk in the center of the room.
Before they could get up enough courage to speak, the secretary's gaze popped from her computer to drill into them. “What can I do for yas?”
“Yes, excuse me, we were wondering where the cabbie had gotten to?” inquired Graybeard as politely as panic would allow.
“Your guide went back to the transit sector of the ring building. Go out that door, across the lawn, second door on your right, you can't miss it.”
“There were these, er, large arachnids out there before, and some rather malevolent-looking men in black suits,” Graybeard tried to explain.
“Here, take these visitor badges. None of the ring monsters will pay any attention to you so long as you have those on. For the blacksuits, you'll have to speak to grounds; would you like their extension?”
“Well, there was a bit of a fight going on...” Graybeard said hesitantly.
The fairy sighed and leaned forward over her desk.
“Look, yous guys, I'm real sorry about the whole unsurmountable odds mo-teef, but it's there all the same. Youd'as better just get across quick, or I'll be the innocent bystander who gets killed to show how serious things are!
“Will you be safe?” asked Graybeard.
“Aw, sure. I've got training in self-defense magic with a concentration in vaporization.” she smiled and laced her fingers under her chin. “Good luck!”
“You all right?” Graybeard inquired of Georgie as they started across the lawn outside, pinning on their visitor badges.
Georgie snickered. “Sure, yeah, let's just hurry, I don't like spiders or creepy guys in sunglasses.”
Nathanael puffed for breath and adjusted his hat, crouching at the far end of the bridge after sprinting across. He peeked through the doorway and moved slowly forward until he came to the end of the floor. Beneath him was a massive room, filled with multi-story racks, catwalks, and the strangest assortment of magical objects he had ever heard of, much less seen. Thousands of items of clothing of all types and eras hung down from metal bars, labels sticking out here and there. Crates marked “treasure,” “m-food,” and “m-drink” were stacked twenty high along the walls. Construction materials filled shelves. Swords and other melee weapons lay scattered about tables. Chemical storage containers were stacked just below him, labeled “fireballs,” “lightening bolts,” and “m-cures,” -- “handle with care.” Voices and the far-away sounds of machinery and animals echoed back and forth from the walls. What little of the building interior he could see beneath its contents was skillfully carved or engraved.
Nathanael clattered down a narrow set of stairs into the middle of the room, running his hands over the swirling metal railing that drew pictures of animals and fairy creatures, and wishing that “all-purpose invulnerability” came in smaller containers so he could take some with him.
He had just reached the ground floor when he heard footsteps behind and above him. He slid up against a box labeled “worst nighmares,” and tried to ignore the growls and rustles from inside as he watched two blacksuits step out on the platform he had only recently vacated.
The box of worst nightmares picked that particular moment to give a savage jolt, throwing Booth out into the open. The blacksuits spotted him and started down the stairs as Booth took off at a run, deeper into the building, looking for any signs that could direct him to the Ringmaker.
Despite the sounds of machinery and people, the warehouse seemed deserted to Nathanael, with the notable exception of his pursuers. He reeled slightly as he turned down what he had thought to be a narrow aisle of vaulting shelves, stunned to see aisles shooting off in every possible direction, up, down, and diagonally. He bumped into something he could not see, and a huge mirror fell, shattering on the engraved concrete floor with an echoing crash.
“Ah!” he said, noting the label “m-mirror, inhabited by spirit of ancient Arab princess.” “My apologies, madam.”
“What have you done!” cried a girl's voice, with almost as much annoyance as horror, “Indeed, sir, even be you handsome as the gods and as fleet as the eagle, may they smite you with all the..all the...oh I hope they put you in one of these forever! Ahahaha!” she laughed, but Nathanael was already gone.
Knowing now what he was looking at, he focused on the one aisle that ran straight ahead, and, ignoring the reflections from what must be hundreds of magic mirrors, sprinted to the end of it. Looking back, he saw the blacksuits just turning the corner, skidding on the broken glass.
He started to jog again, breathing heavily now and muttering about using the bicycle in the gym more often. He darted down a few shorter aisles, hoping to loose his pursuers in a maze of m-animal crates. Then, joy of joys, he rounded a corner and came face to face with a large pillar in the middle of his path. Upon the pillar was a plastic sign illustrating the layout of the entire ring building.
“Ringmaker, Ringmaker...” Nathanael ran his fingers over the map, “ah!” He jabbed at a blue dot on the top of the ring that bore the appropriate title. “Now where am I...” he found himself, a small hat-shaped symbol about thirty degrees clockwise from the Ringmaker's. “Not too far!” he congratulated himself, but then, moving rapidly towards his symbol on the map, he saw two black dots.
“Dash it all!” But the worst was yet to come. Even as he was about to leave the map behind, he saw two more symbols, which he knew must be his two friends, on the far side of the ring. Even as he watched, he saw black dots moving to surround them.
Georgie ran back from the doorway to help Graybeard strip the long cardboard box off a wizard's staff.
“They're coming. Do you think you can make it work?” she asked, as her friend held up the staff and brushed off the last of the packing peanuts.
“I hope so. All those years of Dungeons and Dragons, you know. Better get behind the counter, unless you want to have a shot at it.”
“Oh, you'll do wonderfully!" Georgie reassured. "Can you believe they have a returns office in a fairy world?” she laughed from behind Graybeard, as he turned to face the door. The footsteps of several blacksuits approached slowly from outside.
“Now that I'm trapped inside it, yes,” Graybeard barked back, and tried to assume a wizard's stance.
“You know...” Georgie mused behind him, as shadows darkened the doorway, “...I wonder why that staff was in here in the first place.”
“Oh, no!” Graybeard gasped, even as two blacksuits turned the corner.
They were perhaps five feet from him as they stood in the doorway, and their wands were at the ready. Even as Graybeard flexed his hands on the staff and searched for some word of power, they snapped the wands forward sharply, bolts of blue lightening lancing out.
“Aaaaaaaaa-bracadabra!” Graybeard half yelled, half encanted. The staff made a disappointing “whiff” sound.
“Eep!” Georgie protested, as she fell eight feet to the ceiling. The blacksuits grunted in deep voices as they too plummeted to the roof, crushing hand-crafted fluorescent light fixtures.
Graybeard stood frozen on the floor, not even daring to look up, his eyes fixed on the doorway, where lightening bolts had gouged into the frame and wall.
“Gravity and polarity reversal, with full caster protection. Wow.” Graybeard's lips slowly turned up in a broad smile, and his eyes turned the same direction to observe the blacksuits, just getting to their feet on the ceiling.
“Let's see now...dematerialize?” Graybeard thrust his staff upward experimentally. The staff said “Zuzuzuzu” and the metal returns desk, still bolted firmly to the floor behind him, burst into purple flames.
The blacksuits looked down (up for them) at Graybeard, smirked, and turned their gaze to Georgie, who was untangling herself from a pile of packing peanuts where boxes of returns from behind the desk had fallen and burst open on the ceiling.
“Petrify!” Graybeard suggested to the staff. It chose instead to mutter “Wuuowww,” and cause a veritable thicket of fescue grass to sprout from the floor.
One of the blacksuits chuckled as he pointed his wand at Georgie, “abracadabra,” he mocked.
Georgie wound up and hurled an ancient-looking jar in the blacksuit's face.
Whatever was in the jar, it certainly belonged in the defectives box from which Georgie taken it. The blacksuit transformed into a shockingly fat bullfrog and fell into a deep sleep. Georgie couldn't help giggling at the absurd little creature, though she turned red trying to stifle it.
Georgie dug through the peanuts, found another unbroken jar, and flung it in at the other blacksuit. It shattered, drenching the blacksuit in a strange-smelling liquid.
The blacksuit hesitated, grimacing at his snoozing compatriot, to wipe from his face the sweet smelling liquid that had burst out of the jar, but failed to turn into anything less menacing.
Two more blacksuits burst through the door at that moment, and the gravity reversal spell had no affect on the new arrivals.
While Georgie tried desperately to find another unbroken jar, Graybeard retreated to the desk, purple flames heating his back, and prepared to risk trying to cast a meteor storm.
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