Priya Echo's Adventure - Part 9

CHAPTER 33 - PHANTOMESS AND THE PARENTS

Phantomess reclined against the driver’s seat, attuned to the whisper of the falling rain as it tapped against the windshield. A dense sheet rolled overhead as the portion’s skies wrung water from its roiling heights. In all directions huddled a traffic jam of cars, the casual rude horn pealing before its consequence faded away, as some eagerly squeezed through narrow spaces. Joining the ranks of others in anonymity never failed to be an unsung enticement. And every so often a patron could foster their idleness with a good ride, rather than exerting themselves through phenomenological motion. Tiny paths of droplet water weaved their way to the bottom. Not much could be seen without effort. The pitter pat worked its way through, constant, softening the memory of discontinuous labors that had come before. Cilia from another vehicle brushed against her driver’s side door, but before long she had descended through the architectural pillars of the inner city to where a parking lot beckoned to wet, lonesome portioners. Near the entrance an attendant in a rubber smock offered her a mint from a bowl, which she took to shield the skin from stray raindrops. Besides him a wooly partner wrapped in the comfort of his own beard procured a flashlight, directing a blue cone of light to the floor. Throwing a handful of sand, a fraction of it stayed in the grip of the beam rather than falling. He wiggled his fingers, causing the sand to fashion itself into the frame of an umbrella. Phantomess made haste across five blocks and an intersection to the building that would host the local chapter of Concerned Parents, a group of ladies dedicated to sharing their own narratives in the art of childrearing. As they all were dueling with a common obstacle. Greeting her, a circle of empty chairs occupied the center of the room. Around the periphery, loose confederations of society clumped. “Okay everyone, it’s eight o’clock, get to your chairs and we’ll begin, '' the moderator squawked. By now the mint’s effects began to wane, and so steering her nervousness the patron took a seat among the other ladies. For some unknown reason, none of them recognized her. “Before we begin, I just want to welcome a new entry. Phan, can you stand up and introduce yourself?” she mentioned. “First of all, I’m just looking to ace the test in motherhood, and be bold and agile like a hawk. A hawk-mother if you will”. One of them on the other side of the circle shot up and flapped her arms like a bird, earning her a second round. For the first half of the evening the talk proceeded at an even pace with the recruits trading anecdotes, sharing strong and certain wisdom. The moderator certainly had moxie, the patron thought. Her questions were riveting, multifaceted. But then things took a hasty turn. “Can anyone give us some highlights on discipline?” the moderator inquired, pointing to one of the more reticent mothers that had not been eager enough to contribute. “Um … I guess I take his phone away when he doesn’t do what I ask” she shared politely. Phantomess couldn’t for the life of her understand why people used phones so often instead of just sending thoughts through the fiefdom, but that wasn’t on the docket today. Most treated that aspect as if it was old fashioned etiquette. And to be honest, the patrons did as well, as such intimacy is rarely needed in the daily frolic of social cares. “Ha! If you want results honey you have to take their spells away. “Hmm … I’m not sure that is such a good idea” Phantomess thought quietly to herself. Then the lady beside the speaker, her green shawl still dripping, let go of all her bottled-up angst in one quick pass, “Have you heard of Tame Yonder Frisbee? You know how they do that spell, turning frisbees into big platforms that hover above the ground and spin around. Whole groups of them ride the platform. They try to hold on instead of spinning off, and if one gets to the middle they transform into a strange geometric object with a bunch of vertices. Every week they keep thinking up other games. Of course, I had to take that one away from Danny when he crashed a frisbee into grandad’s house. We had to completely remodel the kitchen”. Phatnomess was starting to become concerned with how much magic these parents were willing to take away, but couldn’t help but keep from listening. The lady on the third chair to the left had one to even top that, “So, I’ll tell you what I did for my Jenny when she wasted her whole allowance. If you’d ever visit my house, you’d see those nature posters in her room, all these fields of beautiful sunflowers … tall and yellow and bright …. and she is a vegetarian. So, one day I told her we were going on a road trip. You should have seen her bouncing when she saw out the window where I was taking her. First time myself, but I couldn’t get distracted. In the middle there’s this little picnic area where the trail leads to. When she was done spinning around, looking at all the happy faces she came over to me and said, ‘Mom, what are we having for lunch?’. Oh ladies, that was my que. I took out the chart of all the onsurus she wasted that month so she knew I had pinned her down good. Then I took out of my purse a bag of sunflower seeds. Not only is she a vegetarian, my daughter loves sunflowers so much she won’t even eat the seeds. ‘Except for today’ I said, ‘you have to eat this whole bag or I’ll never give you an allowance again’. Jenny stood a few feet away. I sat on the picnic table and watched her, slowly filling her mouth with the seeds, handful after handful, crying like a puppy. At the end, I couldn’t help myself!” and she started laughing with the rest of them, manically like an evil mastermind. “Wait a second, that is really cruel!” Phan protested, leaping from her chair. Directly across the moderator turned to face the woman who had the nerve to cripple the progress of the proceedings, “Phan, you had your turn a minute ago. Maybe you should grow up and be a real mother, rather than standing there whining”. “I thought you were being impartial but I guess eventually the truth comes out. My son would never get that hard discipline. We have an understanding, and he’s too good for that” Phantomess lashed back, tired of their simple-minded remedies. “He’s probably a grown child!” the moderator hurled back, smiled audaciously. Phantomess shook, red-faced with countless eons of quiet restraint boiling to the surface. “I’ll give you one that’s so good you’ll never forget it. Try doing this for one week, Phan, and I’ll let you join our spell society without dues for a year. From the look of you it's clear you’re a real outsider. Maybe you came to the portion recently, but you don’t have to be alone, so listen. Ladies, this is real talk. My son Hobby didn’t bring back what I told him to from the store, so guess what I did next. All of his magic. Gone! That’s right honey, if you want to punish him good, you have to take all the spells away. Drain them dry” the moderator declared, keen beyond words. At that Phantomess had enough of the common rhetoric, and stood to leave. “I thought I would get something useful here, but I suppose I was wrong” and shunned the alpha as she swept to the doorway. Down the corridor there was a lunch area with snack counters where she stopped to rest, taking a deep breath. “Perhaps if I had just disciplined Catcher by taking away all his magic … then maybe he would have grown as normal and I would not have waited endlessly through all those long ages. Perhaps if I had done things differently. But would that have worked? Any other remedy may have been effective for a child patron in his condition. Every day in perpetual youth … Never! No, I would not have hurt him like that. It goes too far. My pain was the price for that, so how dare she say otherwise! I’m going to have a word to that so-called moderator’s face” she proscribed, catching her breath with both hands gripping the head-cushion of a booth table. Phantomess headed back into the room where the other had continued onto another topic. “Look who it is … come back to apologize mam?” the moderator offered generously. “When I said it was cruel to take away your kid’s magic, I was giving my honest opinion, so actually I think it’s you who needs to apologize to me” the newcomer countered, feeling sure of herself. The chair screeched slightly as the moderator rose, walked through the circle to the outside where the other woman stood patiently. For some reason the moderator thought it right to stick her nose quite close to her own, “You wanna rumble lady?”. Along the circle of chairs, the concerned mothers glanced at each other, expectantly. “What do you mean …” Phan began, except her sentence was cut short by a hard strike with the palm of a hand, reddening her cheek like a beet. “Nothing can happen, so I have to extinguish all my magic” the patron thought before returning the gift. By the way she had not taken her spectacles off, the moderator was clearly not expecting that. They crashed to the floor, shattering the glass. Zestfully the circle of concerned mothers cheered them on as they brawled across the room. The patron shouted back at the other person in her way, as every brush of hands endowed pain to her face and chest. More people from the other floors began to flock in to witness the scene, crowding the room, until a cultic officer barged through. “Enough of this, mam!” he cried, locking her arms behind and walking her back. “Don’t get me, she is full of hopscotch!” Phan hollered as the crowd of people huddled in the room belted out in reply. Most of the people on the left side, to where her back faced were rooting her on, while those on the right favored the moderator. Escorted from the room to the hallway, the newcomer was calmed and sent back to the parking deck. It was just a little better on the road, with much less spoiling traffic. Despite that, the rain had not ceased an undying flow of monotony, drumming against the windshield. Thoughts of Catcher and making breakfast day after day flashed in her mind like a spotlight. Cereal and bowls and spoons and pouring. Phantomess grumbled, awaiting the turn that would veer away to the west. It was something else, however, that could not melt away from all the sights and sounds. It stuck in her brain, an impenetrable tack, “Very annoying! If I had taken his magic away, this never would have happened”.

CHAPTER 34 - CRILLI AND DELK IN THE ATTIC

In the middle of the afternoon there came a very annoying tap on the door. “My sweater is so warm, I don’t even want to get up,” thought the girl on the couch. She had stuffed herself into the cushions at just the right angle, that it was now almost inconceivable to get out. But then the tapping came again. “Uhhh” groaned Crilli Feranorme, sliding out of the indentation. At the door was Delk Northway, her best friend from academy, in a muted yellow, her hair tied into a long braid. Looking down, Delk could see her friend was grasping onto a pint of Major General Tim’s Smushy Cream Ice Cream and watched with sorrow as she lodged a spoonful into her mouth. “Did you come here to tell me it’s going to be okay, because it’s not” Crilli mumbled and returned to the couch, laying on it like a life-raft. Earlier that day, they had the quarterly assessments. Delk passed with flying colors. Crilli did not. “Girl, I know how hard you worked for this. I’m just … really sorry” Delk offered whilst trying to separate her friend from the pint unsuccessfully. “He didn’t even give me a chance to look over the answers” she moaned, tossing a pillow onto the floor. “Well … just don’t think about it for a minute. Did I tell you about what me and my cousin did at her house last weekend? You’ll like it, I promise” she redirected. “Isn’t her name Lessy or something” Crilli recalled, trying to picture them together. “That’s my father’s side of the family. She’s Mell Lessy” Delk explained while watching her friend wiggle her sock-covered toes as she rested her feet on her lap. “Ohhh” Crilli answered, authorizing her to continue with the story for the sake of killing time. Consciously, the friend tried to wipe the traces of solace from her voice and returned to her tale, “Anyway … We were both going to my grandmother’s house to clean out her attic, and dad was going to pay us both twenty onsurus. He dropped us off and gave us the key and the whole place was abandoned, since she was away with mom in London. So, we went upstairs to the attic, and it was filled with cardboard boxes, all dim and musty and gross”. “Wow, this is so freezing exciting” Crill whined dramatically, and then winked at her friend with one eye to keep going. “Let's see … we had been working for about an hour and a half when we started to get really bored. About a third of the room was still left, when we noticed that sitting on a cardboard box was an old dusty desk lamp, the type with a lampshade, and sitting across from it about two feet away was a tiny side-table with another lamp on it” Delk related, half lost in the story, half present. Her chin resting on the pint, Crilli thought to herself as she stared blankly at her friend, “Darn, is this like … reverse therapy?” then blurted out, “… so, how much did you get for them?”. Delk pushed her feet off of her lap mercilessly and gave her friend a look that made her slap the lid back on the pint and pay attention, “Mell and I didn’t take it, and don’t interrupt when I just got to the good part. Anyways, before I could pick up the lamp Mell threw her arm out and stopped me in my tracks, then kneeled down between the two of them, looking into like, thin air or something”. “What did she see, was it a ghost of some kid that was haunting the attic?” Crilli anticipated, finally leaning up from the indentation. “No, it wasn’t that. Mell kneeled down and saw that there was a thin thread, like a thread of dust or a spider’s web or something connecting the two lightbulbs. The lampshades were missing, long gone probably” Northway described, while picking up the pace of the story with a new swagger. As the visual sank in Crilli could see the line connecting the two nondescript lamps in the decaying attic, and felt a thrill pop up as she realized that the boredom of the beginning was merely a setup, a ploy for the fancy part, “That means! Yes! You and Mell used that spell, didn’t you!”. Delk began again, saying, “Better believe it. Just the one we learned in homeroom. So, Mell and I used it as we jumped up onto the one on the right, and we were as tiny as little ants, but still people. The glass was like a hill, and looking across to the other side, it was like a mile. At first, I was really getting vertigo until Mell was all, ‘This is easy, Delk. Just blink and I’ll be on the other side”. She went first, and she had really good form, with her arms stretched out for balance. Mell’s the best tightrope walker”. “Then what happened! Did she fall?” gasped the couch potato. “I was cheering her on the entire time, but it was like a breeze to her. Step by step by step. And I was all ‘Oh my flipping flop!’ and she was on the other side and threw up both hands and gave the thumbs up with both” Delk said, laughing and then grinning as her friend slapped her leg with surprise. “Then, it was my turn. First, I tried looking down and I was really scared and ran back up to the top. I was laying on my side, just like you for like five minutes. Mell shouted over across. I heard her say, “don’t be scared, Delk! You can get over”. The glass was really opaque and it was hard to see through but I could. For a second, I had forgotten that I was tiny and that it was a lightbulb, but then I got my grip. The first step was really the hardest. The thread bent under my weight and I tried not to look down. Instead I looked over across the expanse to the other side, where Mell was waving at me to go faster. When I finally got to the other side, and stepped onto the other hill, it lit up, and then we looked across and the other hill had lit up too” she bragged a bit as she recalled the feat. “That sounds so fun, Delk. That’s so mega-flamboyant. And I bet you were really brave, just like a tightrope walker. But did I tell you what happened to me and my brother last Monday?” Crilli asked, springing back to life. “No, you didn’t tell me” Delk admitted, grabbing her braid and twisting out the loose trickster mist before throwing it back over her shoulder and slouching back herself. “Greg and I found the old trampoline in the closet, hidden away in some chest so we couldn’t find it. We put it back together, then my brother ran down to the shed and came back up with a chainsaw and went around the edges cutting off the fabric until the circle dropped down. Then we climbed on and started jumping up and down onto the empty air that was really bouncy, and it was a lot of fun. Then Greg got to jump higher than me during the game, so later I told him that the door in the third-floor walkway had coins in it. I stood back. That’s the closet that mom stores all her presents in, and when he opened it, they all came tumbling down over him, burying him in like a hill of those big ugly gift-wrapped presents, and I laughed as he looked up at me with those dorky glasses” Crilli chuckled to herself, remembering the con. “You mean glasses like mine?” Delk exclaimed, playfully taking it as an insult. Getting up, Crilli grabbed her friend’s glasses and put them on, then leaned over her intensely, “girl, can you tutor me, so I can be smart and freezing good like you?”. Knowing her work was almost done, Delk slid a pillow over the pint, hiding it from sight, “alright … if it means that much to you”. Crilli smiled and offered back the glasses, “thank you, girl”. Breathing a sigh of relief, Delk put them back on, seeing the smudge materialize. It was her friend.

CHAPTER 35 - DGU BRAIN MOUNTAIN

Around the study hall of David Gold University, the usual crowd were tending to their studies. Some strode along the bookshelves, picking up tomes of their liking. Others bent over their papers at the many oaken tables clustered together in the middle of the hall itself. Here and there, students were distracted by various happenings on their laptops, abandoning their papers for the time being. Near the right-hand side, Silvana Newcomb grazed over the titles of volumes pertaining to Euclidian Husbandry. Near her were her friends Jefferson India Lane and Vibonee Roe, who spoke about what a tiresome old hack their law professor was. Fields Felicity kneeled to tie her shoes, but it was a feint to hide from a boy who just walked into the hall. By the café Algebra Crepe-Batter and Flammable Plants discussed their plans for the weekend, and traded calculus secrets. Far off in the corner of the south-east end two medical students flirted, Lilly Waterfall-Climber and Noah Invoice. Long ago, her grandfather had climbed a waterfall as if it were a ladder and became a lantern. Still others were scattered about, tending to their own various tasks. But what they didn’t realize, was the north-west end of the study hall, where an unexpected visitor was tending to a more urgent investigation. Unnoticed by the locals, the empress Echo slid her fingers around the smooth insides of a student’s cranial chamber, lifted the organ of the mind, the brain itself, and threw it over her shoulder at the mounting pile of brains behind her. It landed on the top but slowly rolled down to the bottom, as the gelatinous hill undulated with its slow rolling descent. “Looks like this one’s empty also” Echo said to herself. The university students were completely unaware, as she had emit a spell of concealment into the light of echoes, so that they would not notice her or any of her doings but go about their normal routine. Echo walked to another of the oak tables, lifted off the top of the scalp of another student and felt her hands over the brain, taking in its memories and knowledge, but finding nothing, then walked away as the covering restored itself. “This is impossible” the investigator protested as she made a lap around the study hall, “There are but glimpses of them and mundane conversation. It’s as though no one knows who they are or where they came from”. Although the patroness had searched for years for the remotest rumor of the past of her parents, the enlightened ones Melina Dreamer and Linden Dream, the search had come to naught. Even though time acted differently around the university that housed the chamber in portion Valco, there was not one trace of their history. There were some that seemed to go about their studies as if the phenomenon had never occurred, and different times blended into one around here. Even at the coffee shop, there was no-one of significant note, but mere faces in the crowd that may have been there yesterday or the day before. Not wanting to stay in a room where no answers had been found, Echo strode out of the room, and walked through the corridors to the principal’s office. As she opened the door, Put-Another-Quarter-In-The-Machine Anderson was sitting at his desk, going over the semester’s budget proposal. Even with her appearance concealed to a humble melody, the patron’s features were almost immediately distinguishable. Anderson: “Grand Empress! What gives me the honor of your visit today?”. Echo: “It’s good to see you Anderson, you don’t have to be formal with me today”. Anderson: “I see, is there something about the university that doesn’t suit your ideals?”. Echo: “The university is doing admirable, its welfare from its patrons is everlasting”. Anderson scratched his beard, not knowing what the empress intended to discuss, and why she was being so un-straightforward, as the opposite was the prime feature of her personality, “What brings you to our neck of the woods then?” Echo: “I’m just having a difficult time lately. I’ve been trying to investigate the origins of my parents, the enlightened ones, who attended this very university before the phenomenon, but it’s almost as if they had no past at all, and their history is like a ghost that never existed. My parents may have done everything to erase their past after their return, and they won’t admit to anything although I’ve asked and asked”. Anderson: “Parents can be like that empress”. Echo: “More than you realize, Anderson. And I don’t really understand my relationship with my father. To make things worse, there isn’t a shred of record about their studies or how they received their grant to build the chamber in the first place. I really don’t know what’s going on”. Anderson: “My recollection of my life before the event does have me signing the grant for the chamber, but it was a routine meeting to say the least ''. Echo: “Do you remember anything else about them or the chamber itself?”. Anderson: “It was a normal time; the two researchers Linden Dream and Melina Dreamer did not stand out as anything other than ordinary. That is all I can remember''. Echo: “Think again, Anderson, there has to be something. They are the enlightened ones after all”. Anderson: “The world had only a whisper of magic back then, empress”. Echo: “I have been looking through the university for clues all day. It’s emotionally exhausting. I’ve extracted every student’s brain and searched through their memories but couldn’t find anything. There are piles of brains in most of the rooms. Don’t worry, I will put all of them back, and no one will be hurt or remember anything in the least. To make things worse the universe is going to change for about the five hundredth time, but we’ve been through so many of those calamities that it’s starting to get boring. And the Alliance is at war with us to stop it, and the patrons will probably be forced to fight their Reflectants, and I can’t blame them. I just wish I knew what was actually going on”. Anderson: “So, you’re not a wiseguy. Good to know”. Echo: “Very funny … if you knew the things that Falzar told me the other day. Did you know that there are five alien races that we didn’t even know about? There is even an alien race that is made of brown sugar. I don’t say this regularly, but brown sugar is making a comeback. And did you know about the white picket fences in the park outside the university? There are creatures sleeping just underground that leave the fingers of their hands above ground to absorb sunlight. These things have been listening to us argue since the American Revolution, and they have ten fence posts for fingers. There’s one named Glug, and another named Blibber”. Anderson: “It sounds like you need a drink” he said, and turned around to his cabinet, and took out a glass whisky bottle. Echo: “No thank you, not in the mood”. Anderson: “Ah … not a drinker. There’s your problem”. Echo: “I’m just under a lot of stress and pressure. Why can’t we all just see reality as it really is?”. Anderson: “Then it wouldn’t be a mystery, I presume”. Echo: “You know what … I think I will have a glass, but just this one time” she said, and he poured her a glass of whisky, which was downed slowly. Anderson: “Feel better?”. Echo: “Taste goods … is it okay if I inspect your brain, don’t worry about it at all, I’ll be very gentle and put it back afterwards and you won’t feel a thing and I’ll erase your memory”. Anderson: “Go right ahead, although you don’t really have to do that last part, I trust your judgement”. Echo: “Anderson, either you or the whisky have really helped me out today. Thank you”. The dream-girl snapped her fingers to push him into insensitivity, and gently took off the top of his head. At first, she pushed her fingers into the substance itself, as if it was a bowl of oatmeal. After wiggling her fingers about for some time, she kneaded the brain-stuff until it was very small and threw it into her mouth. Echo sat back down on the chair and blew bubbles with the brain like chewing gum, letting the memories slowly sink into her consciousness. “What a disappointment” she sighed, and spat out the little piece of chewing gum, throwing it back into the hollow skull-case of the principal, where it expanded again into the proper organ. As she closed the door behind her the man’s head regenerated and he went back to work. Echo continued down the corridor back to the study hall, when her vision was abruptly halted. “Did I forget that one?” she thought as she saw Reclusive Watercolors, or Lusi as she was known in a furry blue sweater. Time began to slow as the girl opened a greeting card. Echo peered at the student, and as she did time almost ceased until it lumbered along like thick magma at the bottom of a volcano. Lusi smiled at first as she opened the greeting card, but then started to giggle. The patron watched as her fingers curled slowly around the side in amusement. Echo returned time to normal and revealed herself to the girl. Astonished, she ran off down the corridor, leaving the card laying open on the side table. Picking it up the investigator read the inside, “It must be quiet in there” and below was the signature “-Dramatic”. “Thank you, Mr. Dramatic. I am being very dramatic, or rather Mrs. Dramatic” Echo thought to herself, and threw the card back on the table, cursed the futility of the hunt and made her way back to the dream-castle of Valco where the patrons were discussing tactics. It was after all, a certainty that her stress had manifested the card as a message to herself.

Chapter end