THE RETURN OF MINDOS
By; Speaker Gerald A. Polley

THE ANCIENT ONE WAS EXTREMELY BUSY ON ALL FRONTS. It was holiday season at his regular job, and every day was busy. One afternoon he was hurrying to get the dishes done so he could rush home and work on some other things. As he was spraying off one dish with another one under it, the dish suddenly made a cracking sound and exploded with a BOOM! Small bits of ceremic flew in all directions.
"What to hell?!" The Ancient One cried.
The cook ran in. "What happened?" he asked.
"The dish just exploded!" The Ancient One explained to him, "Just disentegrated! Look at it!"
The cook shook his head in bewilderment. The Ancient One cleaned up the pieces and went back to work, but noticed he had a great deal of intestinal distress. "There was something very odd about that," he told his Spirit Worker, "get some help and check the area."
He finished working and went home. It wasn't until the next day that his Worker came back and informed him that he had been hit by an ultrasonic transdimensional pulse.
"What?" The Ancient One muttered. "I thought we'd taken care of that little problem."
That evening he informed his mate "What are we going to do?" she asked.
"Hunt down the source," The Ancient One told her.
That evening as they went to sleep they gathered their traveling companion The Ancient One sped to a nearby university, materialized in one of its offices, and turned on its computer, asking if there was any mail for a certain student. His regular traveling companion looked at the name he was using and laughed.
The Ancient One ignored him. There were three messages, two were merely confirmations from his federal contacts that information he had provided them had been acted on. The third was the message he'd been looking for.
"Old friend," it said, "as to your correspondence yesterday, you were positively correct! Barely had we received it than a messenger arrived from my wife's family, informing her they wished her to return home immediately. She told them she would not, and they said if she didn't they would send a retrieval squad for her. They gave her coordinances where she was to be tonight at 11 p.m.. If you do not arrive by ten this evening I will take my family to the safe haven you suggested. Col. White."
The Ancient One turned off the computer. "Got plenty of time," he muttered. "They're an hour behind us. Let's go!"
The Ancient One proceeded to a pet supply store, got three fly trap bottles, handed one to each of his companions, and they hurried off.
They arrived at the Colonel's residence shortly before ten. A child of two played on the floor, a younger one, perhaps one, was near it, and the Colonel's wife was obviously quite pregnant.
"Shouldn't you spread these out a little?" The Ancient One muttered.
"We try," the Colonel answered.
The Colonel's wife stared at The Ancient One's female companion.
"I'm going to ask a tremendous favor," The Ancient One continued. "I need to take your wife to the coordinances that she was given, but I promise I'll have her safely back before the end of the night."
The Colonel looked to his wife. "I know I will be perfectly safe with him," she remarked. "We'd better get going. Get something warm."
The woman donned a heavy coat. They went outside The Ancient One went to pick the woman up, but his female companion grabbed his arm. "Uh uh!" she remarked. "You lead the way. I'll lug the lady."
She spun her shield, put her arm around the woman, and they lifted skyward. In a few minutes they landed in a secluded area.
"Over there behind that rock!" The Ancient One told the woman. Barely had she concealed herself than a humming sound began. A little shimmering spot of light suddenly appeared in the middle of the clearing. It became about an inch in diameter then something shot out of it.
"Get that!" The Ancient One told his male companion. He quickly did so. Another object shot out of the light. The Ancient One's female companion caught that. Then The Ancient One caught one. This continued til each of them had three buzzing flies in their jars, no more came out of the light.
"Flies?" The Ancient One's male companion asked.
"Observation drones," The Ancient One explained, "made to look like common insects.
"You mean they're machines?" his female companion muttered holding up her jar.
"Totally mechanicle," The Ancient One answered.
One of the flies in his jar began to flash rhymathicly, and The Ancient One watched it. "Very well!" The Ancient One finally remarked, "But only one."
He carefully opened the lid of his jar and a single fly flew out. It rose a little bit, then a beam of light shot from it. The shape of a man appeared, then he became as solid as anyone there. "Where is my daughter?" he demanded. "She was supposed to be here."
"I am here, father!" the woman they had brought with them cried, and came to The Ancient One's side. The man looked at her, bewildered.
"Now, some explainations," The Ancient One demanded. "How did you get your portal going again?"
"The reaction you caused was slow," the man answered, "the very first test unit which we use to send drones into dimensions we were scouting for conquest was on the very edge of the complex. We were able to dismantle it, expand it's capabilities, so we have been able to make contact with some of our people. Everything it took us 4,000 years to build is collapsing. Our transdimensional empire is collapsing. Somehow the barbarians in the other dimensions found out our agents there have been cut off and have risen up against them and their native overlords. With this unit we can evacuate them. I consider my daughter one of those individuals now trapped at the mercy of barbarians. I want her returned.
We tried to contact our allies in this dimension and found that you had butchered them. That they can no longer help us. Now, I will signal the portal. It will open, and my daughter can leave. Please, you have punished her enough! Let her return where she belongs. How could this have happened? How?"
"I did it," The Ancient One answered.
"What?" the man cried. "How?"
The Ancient One held up his jar. "The drones?" the man gasped.
"We had very similar technology," The Ancient One explained. "I simply reprogrammed one, instructed it to reprogram the drones going into the other dimensions to inform the residents of what was happening. I used your own devices against you. Now, I'm only going to ask this once...you wouldn't have gone to all this trouble just to bring your daughter back, especially considering, by your beliefs, she's contaminated, defiled. I'll give you one opportunity to tell the truth, and only one. If you do not, I will destroy this portal also."
"NO! NO!" the man screamed. "Please, it is our only hope of retrieving those who are trapped! Please! Don't! I beg of you, have mercy! All right! All right! When you destroyed the main portal the computers were destroyed. All the coordinances are gone. We have managed to gather four people who remember four-fifths of the coordinances. We have reestablished contact with those dimensions. My daughter has the coordinances for the rest. The coordinances to reach hundreds of thousands of our people. She must return with us. She must!"
The Ancient one shook his head. "No!" he snapped sharply. "She will not! But, I will permit you to continue to operate this portal. You can send a drone to her whenever you need information. We are not a merciless people. I will permit you to recover those who are trapped. Your daughter will help. I'm sure she wants to. But it will be on my terms. You will withdraw your people. When they are all safely out of the dimensions they are now in, and home, you will destroy this remaining portal, and you will never build another one. And if I ever find out you have, I will reduce your home world to ashes! Nothing will ever be able to live on it again! Do you understand me?"
The man looked to his daughter. "You really wish to stay here?" he moaned. "You do not love your home any more? You prefer these savages to your own kind?"
His daughter shook her head. "Father," she began, "our people have a terrible sickness that I hope someday they will grow out of. These are not savages. They have their strengths and weaknesses just like all peoples, just like our people. It took me a little while to understand that. But now I am loved here, and I love. I could not live again, the way I used to live, so self-centered, believing so little truth, living amongst great beauty but being filled only with darkness. This might be a hard world, but The Light is here. "
The man's head sank, and he nodded. "You are right," he told The Ancient One. "She is lost to us. She has gone beyond us. Very well, I will abide by your conditions because I know full well your words are true. If we disobey you will destroy us without the slightest hesitation. Release the drones!"
"Before we do," The Ancient One contineud, "one question. Why did you attack me at work?"
The man looked startled. "An accident," he answered, "we were trying to communicate with you, but we had the frequency and the oscillations wrong. We could not believe you had survived! I swear to you, we were merely trying to contact you, gain your assistance. We would know better than to deliberately attack you."
The Ancient One nodded. He released his drones. His companions did likewise, and they shot back through the portal.
"I will come in a couple of days, daughter," the man concluded, "to get the coordinances. Once we are done I will never bother you again."
He faded and the last drone flew through the portal and it closed. They delivered the woman home.
"Is everything all right?" her husband asked.
"Fine," The Ancient One assured. "Her relatives will be visiting from time to time, but they will cause no problems.
Nodding to his companions they soared homeward. The Axe Man came to his side.
"Pretty clever!" he remarked. "Could you actually destroy their world?"
The Ancient One shook his head. "I could make a mess of it," he answered, "I couldn't destroy it. But they think I can. And that's all that matters. They'll obey because they think I can."
The Axe Man nodded. "Not much fun tonight," he remarked.
"There'll be fun other nights," The Ancient One answered. "I'm just glad things went so smoothly, I'm just VERY glad they went so smoothly!"
"Amen!" his female companion muttered, "Amen!"

THE END

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