His longtime hobby had been to research the possibility of using them. This intense exploration into the little-known subject had finally paid off when he discovered a website that dealt specifically with such things on the dark web. His wife, on the other hand, had considered his spending so much time on something so trivial and nonsensible, said it was a complete waste of time, and had often said so. It was because of this that he had been pottering about in the garden for so long, going over a recently discovered enchantment that he could use to show her how very wrong she had been about his investigations into the subject.
It was almost dark when he came in from the garden.
“You’ve been working out there for such a long time, dear,” she said, as he came through the back door.
He nodded. “Yes. All done now.” He grinned. “I think I’ll just get changed into something more comfortable,” he said.
“OK, dear,” she said and turned to leave the room. As she did, she heard a loud pop. She looked back, just in time to see a cloud of blue smoke where, moments before, her husband had stood.
In his place, there was a large, comfortable armchair.
His eyes opened and he spent time looking around, taking in the strange surroundings.
He seemed to understand everything he was seeing. This sense of newly found enlightenment was, he thought, perfectly natural. It seemed to be quite obvious that it had been given to him to know that human studies had shown that in the light, rats tend to sleep with there eyes closed. He wasn’t sure how he knew that; he just did. He knew a lot more than this. He knew that the small bowl of water and the bowl of seeds, nuts and green scraps beside it, had been placed there. In fact, the environment itself was not at all normal, but artificial, constructed, prepared deliberately. He knew all this. Moreover, he could see that this entire setting was enclosed in a glass tank.
Scrabbling closer to one of the glass panels, he could see several papers on the benchtop beyond. The heading on one clearly read Artificial Intelligence Programme. There was nothing unusual about the fact that he was perfectly capable of both reading and understanding what this meant!
He was turning his situation, and the part he was playing in it, over in his mind when a much greater source of light, beyond that of his tank, flooded the room. This was followed by two men, wearing white laboratory coats and carrying clipboards, who approached the tank with great interest.
After looking over the notes in front of the tank and referring to their clipboards, they discussed the project’s progress briefly before leaving the room. He understood everything they were saying. They seemed to be very happy with the results. They both agreed that the serum that they had created was most successful. All up, they really were very excited about how it was all going.
After this, he watched them go.
They were absolutely right, of course.
However, he was left with the nagging thought… how could they possibly know?
They got chatting. At first, it was interesting, just listening to his ideas about what was happening in the world. He spoke for some time. He suggested that it all began way back in 1776 in a place called Bavaria, with the formation of the Illuminati. He said they were a powerful elite group. It was a secret society that aimed to establish their own globalist agenda. He said it was a clandestine gathering of people that aimed to create a totalitarian world government. He said this was known as the New World Order. He said they were conspiring to eventually rule the world. He went on at length about their ideology. He said that it had continued, down through the generations and was still active today.
He was impressed with how the man’s take on all of it was so detailed.
The other went on to say that they were powerful figures; a cabal that operated, using organisations as a front to manipulate major political and financial events today. He said they were still there, still controlling world events, still aiming to achieve world domination.
It was at this point, that it became painfully obvious that what he was saying made him angry. Finally, he shrugged and finished up by saying that, of course, it was all only a conspiracy theory…
After thanking him for explaining all this, he left the pub and made his way to where he had parked his car. He walked along very slowly. Thinking about all that he’d been told.
It had all been very interesting, but from what he already knew, by watching news reports, reading articles and following modern-day politics, he couldn’t understand why anybody would regard it as just a theory!
He drove slowly past the house that was in darkness, then parked around the block.
Returning on foot, he made his way back along the dimly lit footpaths. As instructed, he silently climbed over the gate and crept down the side of the house. He jimmied open the back door and made his way in. Using a small torch, he went through the ground floor rooms, pulling open draws and cupboards, and disturbing a few things. Satisfied that he’d made it look like a regular robbery, he climbed the stairs to find the main prize. In the designated room he found the safe tucked away behind a picture. Sitting on the bed, he took out the slip of paper that he’d received in the mail. It read: 17 Glitch Street. 5 to R, 2 to L, 3 to R 1 to L. Family returns 10:00pm. He checked the time; a little after nine.
He smiled. So far, so good.
Holding the torch between his teeth, he went to work on the dial. There was no rush. He carefully followed the information he’d been given. Moving the dial with expert precision, he completed the sequence. The handle didn’t move!
In the time that remained for him to be there safely, without interruption, several further attempts were made, before trying alternative sequences. However, it was obvious that the information he’d received was incorrect.
Finally, being a great deal less than happy, he left the house and returned to his car.
Meanwhile, the house at number 19, remained inviolate.
As a young boy, his father would sometimes say that ‘the moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on’. The origin of these words was not fully known until, during his school years, he had immersed himself in anything he could find on Greek Mythology from the town’s library. In his lifetime, looking back, he had never really known how the book first came into his readings. No doubt this happened while searching in that well-frequented library. His discovery of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a wonderful poem translated from Persian to English, had opened something in him. Quite apart from its dealing with the age-old questions of life and death, the tongue-in-cheek references to God and spirituality appealed to his young mind. Within the verses, despite their dealing with weighty topics, he found the poetic approach, along with a humorous slant, had made the reading of it enjoyable.
That joy had remained with him throughout his long life. This tatty, soft-covered version is now held tight.
This morning the carer found him and tears welled in her eyes. This gentle old man had been one of her favourites. Because of his failing sight, she had read the quatrains to him of an evening.
Now, in his endless sleep, its time to ‘turn down an empty Glass.’
There are so many examples, it’s hard to know where to start.
Take the supermarket for instance, pork pies and scotch eggs not available for weeks on end. They tell you at the counter the factory is closed temporarily or they just can’t get the workers or covid has wiped out the staff or it’s all about transport issues. What are you supposed to believe? None of the above, that’s for sure. Then there’s this business of trying to figure out why anybody would willingly spend their money on clothes that are made to look worn and have holes in them? If you ask, you’ll be told it’s the fashion. Give us a break! Inexplicable, right?
It can be a surprisingly personal thing, something being inexplicable, because there are some people that really couldn’t care less.
Of course, dig deep enough, you know, really deep, and you come up with tetraneutrons, what are you going to do? These little trouble-makers can’t possibly exist… Detected by a particle accelerator in a concrete bunker in France, these four neutrons, bound together in a way that defies all known laws of physics, were there, but there again, they simply can’t be! These nuclear physicists that are trying to make sense of this apparent new form of nuclear matter, regard the whole thing as pretty significant.
Fair enough, but if there’s no reasonable explanation for the unavailability of pork pies and scotch eggs, what chance have they got?
From the second story, he had a clear view of his objective. Picking up his binoculars he looked again. He could easily make out the small cluster of trees with a small patch of grass in front of it. He smiled. It was way up there, on the far ridge, across the lake, from where they lived, that he saw the place he would need to be. Yes, that would be the ideal spot. He had made up his mind. Tomorrow he would do what he’d always said he would do, finally, in his retirement. He and his wife had often been up there for walks when the weather was good. They had frequently paused to look back to where they live. The light colour of the house’s brickwork had made it easy to locate. Now, with his plan well advanced, he would do it.
She, despite thinking that his idea was quite silly, went along with it. After all, it would do no harm, and it seemed to mean a lot for him to do it. Tomorrow would be the day and she would give whatever support he needed to carry out his plan.
Early tomorrow morning, he would detach the mirror from the dresser and place it so that it sat square with the bedroom window. When the sun rose above the distant ridge, it would light it up. At that point, he would be there, on the small patch of grass with his camera. It would make quite a spectacular shot!
As planned, next morning, with the mirror in place, he was there, at the very place, with his camera, waiting patiently for the sun to rise behind him…
He was pouring his half glass of malt whiskey, not knowing it would be his last.
The rest of the family were downs stairs, watching a movie. As was the custom, the lounge room lights were off, making it feel more like a cinema. A large bowl of homemade popcorn sat on the table in font of them. It was an action-packed crime show and it had been planned for days. The father, in his upstairs study, couldn’t be bothered to join them. In fact, he had as little to do with the family as possible. He had never wanted children and he now had three of them. He had no love for any of them. Especially his youngest. He had almost given up trying to knock any sense into him.
Likewise, his wife had given up encouraging him to cut down on his drinking long ago and was happy that he spent so little time with them.
Nobody noticed the youngest leave the room, but they all heard the bang!
In the days and months that followed, there was one simple question that nobody was able to answer.
No one could figure it out.
How did the seven-year-old manage to get hold of a gun?
Allowing her to move in to his small apartment in town was a big mistake. It only took a few days before he fully realised the fact. Although they were both office workers, their jobs, along with their interests, were very different. She had a tendency to become angry at the drop of a hat, and her ongoing mood swings were hard to live with. In the evenings they rarely agreed on what tv shows to watch, and they had very different dietary needs. To make matters worse, she had her own ideas about where things around the flat should be kept. It was only during the second week that he learnt that her lease had been about to expire. She had obviously seen him as some kind of saviour. Moving in with him had solved all her problems.
It was then that things changed. The tiny creature first appeared in the kitchen. It was nibbling on something near the fridge when she began to scream! It was probably the noise alone that had the mouse dart across the floor and disappear through a hole in the skirting. Needless to say, she was extremely upset and demanded that the hole was plugged. Although this was done, over the following day or two, the creature made appearances again around the place. Each time, she went berserk, telling him that he was to blame for leaving the place dirty.
It all came to a head when she found the offending rodent curled up on her pillow! At this point she demanded that he buy mouse traps so that the thing could be got rid of completely.
The following day, on his way back from work, he bought six mouse traps for Monty; it was around this time that he thought of him as Monty. That evening, he carefully removed all of the springs, loaded each one with food scraps and placed them around the apartment.
Without going into details, three days later, she packed up her stuff and left.
On the internet, after a short spell of research, he found out that sugary and high fat foods should be avoided. He understood that they liked to nibble on all sorts of things, like fruit, vegetables, chickpeas, beans, grains and seeds, along with a regular supply of fresh water. He could easily manage all that.
On the evening that followed her departure, he settles down in his armchair to watch one of his favourite shows on tv. On his lap he has a large tea tray, draped with a fluffy hand towel. On it, a dish of food scraps at one end and a bowl of water at the other. In the middle, his new friend is curled up on a comfy pillow.
