Rick Carter's First Big Adventure (Pete's Barbecue Book 1) (9 page)

       “What?”  Mel popped his head out again.

       “It was white.  The car was white.”  He said slowly.

       The excitement grew on Mel’s face.  “Told ya!  It takes a while, I know.  But, you get used to it.  You’re in the bubble now.  Working for the Company puts you in the bubble.  It’s called the Prime Sphere.  Reality, time, common events remain in your memory but for everyone else around you things can change, but they won’t notice the change.  You see the true thread of reality, even if it’s bent.”

      Rick looked up at Mel “How come you didn’t notice my watch.”

      Mel shrugged.  “Hey, cut me some slack.  I smelled coffee….and then there were the donuts.  I got a little distracted.”

     Rick’s shoulders drooped when the weight of the realization struck him. “All that stuff you were saying.  All that stuff is true isn’t it?”

      “Yeah, duh!” Mel said sarcastically. ”Did you think I would just randomly pop up in your life without seeing you for nearly thirty years and lie to you?”

     “We have to find Roger,” Rick muttered.

     “That’s what I’ve been saying, old friend!  But, it’s a little bit of a trip.  We will have to fly.  Like I said, I don’t want the Managers knowing about this just yet.   When’s the last time you enjoyed a long plane trip?”  He left Rick sitting alone as he popped back into the bathroom to get his dirty old shirt and long tattered coat, leaning out of the door only once to ask, “Do you think we can stop by a 7/11 on the way to the airport and pick up some snacks?”

    It all can be explained in a many ways, but one of the best illustrations is the one used in the Company field agent training manual.  It can be found on page 36 under the title “Reality is a lot more weird then you thought” and it goes something like the following: Think of reality as a ball of string.  Now imagine that there are hundreds of strings side by side, each one a separate reality differing in only small details.  Now imagine all of these strings are crumpled up together into one massive ball of string.  The individual strings start to become intertwined with other strings, crossing each other here, there, or bending back on itself there.  This causes certain points in each reality to overlap or intersect.  Sometimes this has no effect at all.  Other times the effects are only minimal and do not cause any massive disruptions.  Now imagine that these intersections cause things to fall out of one reality to another reality.  Imagine these things are people.  A person could fall out of one reality and into another with no way of continuing in their native reality.  If enough of these people were lost than the strings themselves might begin to unravel, to cascade down the length of the string affecting everything along the way.  It would be a cataclysmic event on a universal scale.  But, if there were a special person, a person chosen to act as a transporter for these people, a person who was immune to the effects of the reality vortices, they could make sure that people got to where they were from.  But intersecting reality strings is only one part of this complex puzzle.  The second, and by far more significant aspect, is choice. 

      Now, you may ask, am I talking about time travel here?  The answer to that is: no.  I am talking about reality travel here.  Time travel doesn’t exist.  Please get used to that idea.  Time is the measurement of an event.  It is something that evolves from an atomic level when matter and energy intersect.  It is the measurement of the processes of matter and energy as related to a standard event, such as 60 seconds, or a 24 hour day.  Reality is different.  It cannot be measured.  It can only be perceived.  It is entirely relative to the individuals perceiving it.  Now, time is an aspect of this but not the whole package.  It is only a piece of the equation.  Reality is perceived by sentient beings capable of understanding the flow of one event to another event and capable of discerning the patterns these events create.  And these sentient beings make choices in their everyday lives based on the patterns of reality.  The greatest and most important part about sentience is the freedom of choice.  When sentient beings exercise this freedom it can warp, alter and deflect reality into all kinds of interesting directions.  Reality strings touching and intersecting can cause things to fall out of one reality to another.  Freedom of choice can cause reality to fracture, or to disrupt the flow of reality in a way far more significant and detrimental than the odd random person falling out of one reality into another.   That is why the Company was formed in the first place.  The Transporter escorts people from one reality to another.  The Fixer repairs major disruptions along the way and the Seer watches it all and responds to the patterns and a failure to maintain one.  Sometimes, however, the strain of so many realities is more than a single Seer can handle.  They have been known to slip mentally a little in the process. To put it bluntly, it can drive someone insane trying to keep up with it all.  And sometimes the rips in reality get so big that a single Fixer can’t do the job.  Things have gotten so bad in the past that Warriors have had to be used.  But, that’s only in rare instances and when things have reached a critical point.  In fact, it had only been done twice in the history of the whole of reality.

     “Where are we going?”  Rick asked, not understanding why he so readily agreed to stuff his shorts and shirts into the only duffel bag he could find. “I only ask ‘cause I don’t have anything for cold weather.”

      Mel seemed momentarily distracted by the small black device on his wrist, the one that looked like an over grown watch.  They hadn’t even left the apartment yet.  “Um, Roger is in Guam.  We have to go to Guam.”  He pressed a few more small buttons and little lights seemed to dance in response.

     “Guam!  That’s like halfway round the world!   That’ll cost a lot of money.”

    “Don’t worry about it.”  Mel looked up smiling, “It’s being taken care of.  Everything will be ready by the time we get to the airport.  Besides,” he chuckled, patting Rick’s duffel bag, “look on the bright side.  It is tropical.”

   “I just hope there’s something good to eat there.”  Rick pushed a few socks into the already bulging bag, never straying far from his first great passion, eating.  Not even reality travelers and space-time continuum thingies could dislodge his love of food.

    “As a matter of fact, there is.  There’s a great barbecue place there called Pete’s Barbecue.  It’s down by the beach.  You’ll love it.  In fact, we have to see Pete first before Roger.”  Mel looked up.

     “How did Roger get in Guam anyway?”  Rick asked absentmindedly as he continued to stuff things into his duffel bag. 

     “Um, that’s another long story.  I’ll have to explain that one along the way.  It involves the US Navy, a load of spoiled milk and some really big spiders.”  Mel spoke quickly, the sugar in his system kicking into overdrive.

       Rick finally finished stuffing the bag in his hand and pulled it together so he could zip it up.  “This sounds wonderful.  Can’t wait to hear this one.”

       “I got us first class tickets, too.  I only fly first class; that is WHEN I fly.   Not a lot of need for me to fly any more.” Mel said, tapping the black box on his wrist.

      They closed the door, and Rick locked it with an ominous click, not sure if he would ever see the place again.  He was going out into the world with a sugared-up lunatic he hadn’t seen or heard from in twenty-six years, and he had no clear way of knowing what might happen next.  In just a little over twenty-four hours he had gone from being a perfectly ordinary taxi driver with childhood issues to having to face those very same childhood issues head on all will becoming a transporter for people falling out of reality.  His missing friend wasn’t dead after all.  He lost his watch, and now he was on his way to an island way out in the Pacific that he had only barely heard of before.  Despite all of this, he could, at least, take comfort in one small constant.  He still had his red Crown Victoria to drive to the airport.

CHAPTER THREE

An Insanity Syndrome

    Hello.  My name is Roger Parcel, not like ‘parcel post’, but like Par-cell.  And I’m crazy, or so they say.  But, I wasn’t always that way.  Instead of explaining all of that and how I got crazy, I thought I would just throw in these nifty little snippets from my diary I kept while I was at the sanitarium.  Please enjoy.  I’ll see you again in chapter four.

Entry One, 14 Mar 2010:

    
I’ve always hated the word crazy.  Crazy is a very uneducated way of saying something is not right with someone’s behavior.   I don’t think people are crazy.  I think they’re just out of sync with reality.  By that definition, I’m not crazy.  I know this because I have some very special friends that have told me so.  Now, some might insist that this isn’t true.  Some might say that I have imagined that.  Now, these are the people I think might be out of sync with reality.  They simply don’t understand how things really work.  But, I do.  I have for a very long time.  I think that may be why I feel the way I do.  There has to be a connection there.  Because I feel there is.  Sometimes I also feel like tree moss, but that’s usually only on Tuesdays.

     There’s a danger in getting lost in things like that.  I didn’t want to start this diary to ramble on about these little distractions.  I wanted to set the record straight about some things before I left.  I am leaving soon.  I was told that, too.  So I have been preparing for my get out of jail day.   Well, not jail, but it might as well be.  I live in the loony bin.  This is my home.  I’m a certified nut case that being the word of Doctor Marples.   My name is Roger.  I am Roger, the certified nut case.  But, I wasn’t always like this.  And even now, I have some days that are better than others.  Anyway, I am leaving, and I wanted to clear the air about some things I supposedly did and some things that I was blamed for, and I didn’t do.  We lost South America once.  That wasn’t my fault.  It showed back up later on anyway.  Let’s get started, shall we?

      I have been in the Talafofo, Mother of Mercy Sanitarium for seven years now.  Being here isn’t all that bad if you don’t mind tapioca and lots of medication, and the lunatics that live here.  Boy, let me tell you there’s some real winners in here.  You would not believe what I have to put up with.  There’s the fun kind who think they’re Abraham Lincoln, and  there’re some that just stare off into space and don’t speak, and then there’s some that talk all the time and babble, babble, babble.  I just mind my own business and stay away from them.  They’re harmless enough, but I stay clear.  Now the ones that frighten me are the hall walkers.  They are always moving, mouths open, spit running down their chins and a mad look in their eyes.  I stay way clear of those.  I think they’re trying to take me to a dark place, and I don’t like dark places.

      I don’t belong in here with all these cartoon characters.  Just because I had a small incident a few years back, the judge seemed to think I was ready for “some treatment.”  Dr. Marples agrees with me.  She thinks I’m ok.  I’m a type of inspector for reality.  You may not have any idea what that means.  That’s ok, neither do I.  They call me a Seer, but what I do is inspect.  I look for cracks.  Things get cracked, like birds flying upside down, day turning instantly to night, a woman from 18
th
century colonial America falling out of her time, and cars changing color.  I see these things happening.  I watch for them.  I can see them in my head, but I see them all at once.  Sometimes it gets very hard to sort it all out.  But, I don’t belong here.  I do like the tapioca, though. And the color blue.

Entry Two, 15 Mar 2010

     I got to see the doc today.  But she wasn’t in a very good mood.  She seemed irritated by something, and she wouldn’t tell me what it was.  I did my best to listen to her.  I tried to act nice, but I think I just made her even madder when I took out a nail file and ripped up my seat.  She didn’t take that well at all.   “You see,” she said, “this is why we can’t get anywhere, you keep doing things like this!”  Boy was she seeing red.  But, it wasn’t my fault.  I was only doing what I was told.  Rufus told me to do something to freak her out, like tear up my seat.  So I did.  Maybe today isn’t such a good day to be writing this stuff down.  I think I may lie down for a while.

Entry Three, 16 Mar2010

     I feel a little better today.  The bush outside my window is blooming red and white blooms.  It’s a pretty little flower, but I have no idea what it’s called.  The sun is out; it’s not raining.  Sometimes they let me go outside.  I like the tropical breezes.  Guam is a very pretty place.  I wish I could leave and go see some of my favorite places.  I used to love to go with my son down to Haputo beach.  Better not think about that now.  Every time I start thinking about my kids I get really sad.  It’s been so long since I saw them last.  But, that will change soon.  Rufus reminded me today that get out day is just around the corner.  It’s coming soon.  Let me tell you a little about Rufus.