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