Area 42: Code Word, Cracker 10

Chapter Four. While the Oblivious Amanda is feeding the chickens and making biscuits, she is playing with fire in her mind

What follows is a science fiction romp co-authored by Adelia Ritchie, PhD and D.A. Lee. A romp because we don’t know what will happen next, but we hope it entertains you as much as it entertains us. Link to Chapter One:

“Did you record that dream?” Flavio asked

“I record everything,” Joe Lee said, “so that I don’t have to think about it. I can trust it.”

“We’ve got the pictures,” Flavio said, then he laughed, asked, “What is this feeling that’s come over me? This is amazing. I feel so … refined.”

“It’s the partial materialization,” Joe Lee said. “Steady in the hara, heart light as a feather, find a still point. We can’t actually use muscles so we propel ourselves with intention. Like this.” He glided across the space of the underground materialization chamber. “If you imagine you are walking then it looks like you’re walking. Observe.” This time the gliding was broken into a pattern which resembled walking. “Nobody sees what can’t be there. Far from staring at us when we walk, they will carefully look somewhere else. You’ll see.”

The Bdelians began to form in Amanda’s mind as if they were thoughts rising to the surface. It’s how the Bdelians travel when they make light, as they say. Sometimes they have work to do and they materialize with animal bodies, oxen shoulders, the grip of Beowulf, the enveloping sensuality of the barnyard at dawn, and the humor of John Quincy Adams, but now, in this circumstance, they make themselves less solid, and they refocus on finding the crystal. “She’s aware of us all right,” Flavio said, reviewing the recordings. “She’s seeing green dicks from space everywhere.”

Joe Lee reviewed the footage with him. “My god,” he said. “Jesus. The book went under the bed.”

The book and the crystal were not supposed to be separated. Worlds didn’t collapse if they were, or at least, not right away. It’s a more subtle thing. The words form around the crystal, and so long as they are in touch with it, they have a bit of the crystal’s energy in them. It jumps to the eye of the reader, and energizes.

Without the words the crystal is too fierce for most humans. They can’t look at it directly and not be seized with a fear of madness. Amanda does not realize this because she was able to look directly at the crystal without feeling the madness. Her boots were firmly in the chicken yard.

She was her father’s daughter, and he’d built the landing site for the Bdelians here when she was a little girl. She had forgotten, as she’d been instructed to forget. Until she dug up the cable. That was not conscious but it was getting closer. She was in possession of the crystal but she had forgotten the book that tells her how to use it.

They had to expose themselves to Amanda. Or maybe, they had to appear to Amanda, is better wording. Even if they were not all there.

They’d not expected to appear as apparitions but there was no help for it now. Today they would make themselves known to her. From the materialization chamber they followed an underground passage back beneath the farm house, up to the space beneath the stairs.

Amanda had not opened that door. She had been instructed to not see it, so she had looked past it, before today. Today she saw it clearly in her mind’s eye. It was open. As if in a trance, she left the kitchen and opened the door that led down to the basement. She waited, listening.

Amanda races toward her destiny as Adelia Ritchie, PhD puts on clean jeans and begins to remember that her father had some friends who were odd. At least they walked funny.