Stonefist dropped his packs on the ground and leaned back against the cool green bark of the apuwah tree, sliding down it’s smooth surface to squat at its base. Long slender branches swept out eight feet from the trunk before extending into broad leafy tendrils that hung all the way to the ground. This circular wall of green leaves formed a spacious shaded area and provided Grey and Stonefist something of a natural barrier from the elements. Grey lay back on his pack without bothering to take it off, and lifted his feet onto one of Stonefist’s packs.

“What I don’t understand, if you don’t mind my saying,” Stonefist said, “is why we just don’t fly or magically appear, or something like that. You’re always coming and going by some strange means, can’t you just conjure us some transport?”

Grey lay with his eyes closed, listening to Stonefist’s question, and did not open them when he answered. “It’s possible. I might be able to lift us up in the air and walk on the wind. I know where all the ley lines are, so I could probably move us about fairly easily.”

“Lay lines?” Stonefist asked, puzzled.

“Come on! After all these years hanging out with wizards and sorcerers in parties that I bring to visit you, you never heard them talk about the lines of magic, the threads of power that hold this world together?” Grey turned his head to see Stonefist respond.

“Can’t say as I have,” Stonefist replied. “Fight that guy Stonefist, hit that monster Stonefist, cut off his head Stonefist,” he said while counting off the remarks on his fingers. He looked at his hand as if reviewing a list. “No sir. Nothing about lay lines there.”

“Well, trust me,” Grey said chuckling, “the world is full of them. They run through this forest, through this tree, under our feet.” As Grey spoke, Stonefist began looking around, trying to see what he was talking about. “They aren’t visible my friend. You can’t see them. You have to feel them, sense them. This is how the magic users in Thraveon wield their powers. Wizards use a certain set of ley lines, sorcerers a different set, and conjurors another set altogether. Weirders are able to use multiple sets simultaneously.”

At the mention of wierders, Stonefist shuddered. “I’ll thank you not to mention those monstrosities if you don’t mind.”

“Sorry,” Grey said. “I forgot about your past associations with them.”

“Associations. Hah! Don’t get me started.” He paused a moment, then looked back towards Grey. What about you?” he asked. “Which set of lines do you use?”

Grey looked down at the ground and sighed. “Until recently, I used them all. More importantly until recently, I could alter them all. Add to them, shape them, take them away. After all, I…”

“Lemme guess, you put them there in the first place,” Stonefist finished.

“Yes,” Grey said, looking back at Stonefist. “But when I tried to follow a ley line to cross back through the nexus, it was like it didn’t go anywhere. When I tried to affect your mind, the ley lines that run to you seemed…I’m not sure of a good word…untouchable I guess. I couldn’t affect the line and therefore, I couldn’t affect you. Lines around me are still intact, but as they get farther away, I’m a bit unsure. So in theory, I could lift us up to altitude and speed us to our destination, but there is no certainly that the line wouldn’t just disappear somewhere over Thraveon.” Grey slapped one hand down onto the other to illustrate.

Stonefist shuddered at the thought.

“Couldn’t we just get horses?” Stonefist asked.

“What if I couldn’t control them and they disappeared while we were riding them?” Grey replied.

“I’ve been riding for several hundred years and I’ve never had a pony disappear under me yet,” Stonefist offered. “Well, that one time in Mawdor on the magic ponies the elves gave us, but that was a special case. If we just buy horses they should be no less stable than I am, not that everyone I’ve known would claim me to be stable mind, but that’s…”

“What did you say?” Grey asked.

“I said, not many I’ve known would say that I’m…”

“No. The other part. Did you say buy horses?” Grey sat up suddenly.

“Well…yes…that’s the way we normally do it your majesty…oh high and mighty lord of…”

“Stonefist you’re a genius! I’ve been thinking like the game master. What can I control? What can I make? What can I alter? I can buy horses for us! We don’t have to walk! We’re perfectly safe on a horse that is already in the world!” Grey rolled over to his knees and stood up quickly. “Let’s get to the next town before dark! Buy horses. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Okay…now you’re starting to scare me.” Stonefist said. “I liked you better when you were mostly all powerful but riddled with self-doubt,” he said, getting to his feet. “Why do I get the feeling there will be fewer breaks now?”

Grey laughed. It felt good to laugh. He had been so filled with worry and anxiety. Passing back and forth through the nexus without attempting to, not being able to return when he wanted, not having full control of his environment, it had been starting to get to him. The misplaced items were puzzling as well. No, puzzling was too weak a word. Stunning? Stupefying? Grey turned to Stonefist and waited for the dwarf to twist into his packs. He reached over to lend a hand and Stonefist cringed away in mock terror.

“Don’t touch me,” he said jokingly, “I might disappear.”

Grey shook his head at the joke and turned to part the curtain of leaves that hung down before him. “At the rate things have been going,” Grey said, “it’s far more likely that I would disappear.” He turned to step through the opening and looked down at the green leaves of the apuwah. He had never noticed before how closely the leaves resembled the color and pattern of his Army Combat Uniform (ACU). That was a subconscious choice if I ever made one, he thought. I don’t even like that pattern very much.

“What’s that?” Stonefist called from behind him.

“What’s that? Kelly Richardson called from his outer office.

Grey froze and looked over his shoulder to where his arm still held the portal open. Stonefist was fumbling with a leather strap across his chest, his massive battle axe balanced against his side. He struggled with two large hands to buckle the tiny brass buckle. “Be right there,” Stonefist called, “just hang on a moment.”

Grey looked back to and through the open doorway of his office. Computers sat on his desk and on tables in the outer office beyond. No spinning room. No nausea. No time or space or distance between the worlds. The nexus lay open between his reality and his imagination. This…can…not…be…happening, he thought.

“May I come in Grey?” Kelly called from the outer office, “Or do you have a visitor already?” Because of the various compartments of classified information, Kelly would not even look into Grey’s office without his go ahead. This was a courtesy practiced by most, but unfortunately not all of Grey’s coworkers at the embassy.

“Uh. Hang on a sec,” Grey called. Think fast. He looked down and found that he was wearing his ACUs, tan combat boots. Everything normal here. He stuck his head into the opening that still hung in mid air around his hand. “So then I’ll call you again a bit later okay?” He tried to say it loud enough to get Stonefist’s attention. “I have someone in my office now, so I have to go, okay?” Stonefist looked up from his buckling and stared open mouthed at the light pouring from the other side of the apuwah leaves. Grey gave Stonefist an urgent questioning glance. “Okay then. Great to talk to you. Have a good day. Out here.” Stonefist still stared dumbfounded as Grey pulled his hand into reality.

He took a deep breath to regain his sense of place and leaned quickly over his desk, picking up and then putting down the phone receiver loudly. “Sorry about that Kelly,” he called, “had to finish an important call.” He looked around his office quickly to ensure there were no anachronisms lurking on his desk or computer side table, then strode swiftly toward the office door, trying to instill confidence he wasn’t sure he had.

Kelly Richardson was a twenty-eight year old foreign service officer who had completed tours in Iraq and Washington before volunteering for a year in Kabul. As friendly and unassuming as she was intelligent and insightful, Grey had begun to look forward to their visits. She would drop by in the early morning and again in the afternoon whenever he was in the embassy and they would discuss classified reports, the insurgency, and increasingly, life in general. Her views on the world were often refreshingly different than his own, owing in part to the fact that she was a young African American woman navigating through a world that was dominated principally by older white men like Grey. He enjoyed her insights, her frequent irreverent comments about “the system,” and her youthful tendency to say exactly what was on her mind. Grey smiled as he approached her and reached for the papers she was carrying. She smiled back as she looked up from reviewing her reports, then she seemed to notice something unusual about Grey. Her eyes widened. Grey cringed inwardly as he realized what was wrong.

With her eyes fixed on Grey below his waist she asked, “Uhm…did I miss an invitation to a party or something?” She stared at Grey’s face for a reaction. Grey feigned momentary ignorance to buy himself time to think.

“Excuse me?” he asked. “Is that how we greet our friends now?” Think man, think. This could get ugly.

She fixed her stare on his eyes, her whole expression demanding an explanation. “It is when they are playing dress up in their offices,” she said. “Or do you have a better explanation for wearing that sword in the embassy?”

Pardon me for getting off track for a moment.  I suppose that first of all I have to give some excuse for not writing for days, busy week, busier weekend (putting up that darned misplaced wall again), blah blah blah.  Actually, maybe I don’t need to apologize, since it is my BLOG.  In any case, let me rant a moment, or not, as you prefer.  (If you choose, not, just go up to your browser and go to another favorite site).

House full of girl scouts tonight.  My son and I were able to escape most of it by going to worship at the temple of Home Improvement.  We bought wooooood, and naaaaaaaiiiiils.  Tomorrow, since he is out of school and I took a day of leave, we are going to finish framing the basement bathroom.  I just can’t wait to Blog about all of the mistakes I will probably make on the pocket door frame I’m going to install.  But, as usual, I digress.

The girl scouts had a late gift exchange, you know, for Christmas?  Tonight.  So one girl got something I’ve never seen before called Moon Sand, which, according to the package “never dries out.”  Okay, this is my rant.  First of all, if that is true, if it NEVER dries out, isn’t that kind of creepy?  I mean, everything dries out eventually right?  I could buy some moon sand today and when I’m ninety and shriveled up and hunched over because my joints are drying out and my bones are brittle, the moon sand would still be wet?  Isn’t that wrong somehow?

The truth is it probably will dry out, and probably within the first few months after it’s opened.  Which leads me to the second part of this –  how many advertising slogans are there that as soon as you see them on a package you KNOW absolutely that the company is lying.  Here are the handful I can think of right off the bat.  These slogans have all been laboratory tested (in my home) through practical trial and error.

Won’t make a mess.  Doesn’t leave stains.  Never needs ironing.  Lasts six months.  Tastes just like the real thing.  Has no unpleasant odor.  Food won’t stick.  Easy to assemble.  Never dries out.   Simple and fun.  Adheres instantly.  Fast acting.  No side effects.  Dries in minutes.

Ready for your additions….

The hot water of the shower coursed down Grey’s body, rinsing away the sweat and easing some of his tension. He knew it would only last for a minute, maybe two, as the small water heater under the sink in his modified shipping container could not supply more than a few gallons of hot water at a time. Just over fifteen feet by six feet, the small apartment had a micro-shower, a toilet, a sink, a television and slow but adequate internet access. All the comforts of home crammed into one hundred square feet. Because he was a full Colonel, Grey did not have to share the container with anyone else and was able to use the top mattress of his metal bunkbeds as storage. Others were not so lucky. More than one married couple at the Embassy lived in similar containers, testing the true meaning of togetherness.

Grey twisted the stainless steel handle to shut off the water as soon as he felt it coming in cold, grabbed his towel from a hook over the toilet, and tried to towel off without leaning against any of the four wet shower walls. His five-foot ten athletic frame did not squeeze so well into the two foot by two foot space, but he knew he had it better than most of the US military training Afghan soldiers in the provinces and far better than any of the special forces guys who were out hunting Taliban and Al Qaeda. Except that none of them are having out of body experiences, he thought. He wondered for a moment which would be worse, getting shot at by the Taliban, or being stuck again in his imaginary world.

He stepped through a small door to the main area of the “apartment” and opened the tiny wall locker that stood in the corner. His eye happened upon the golden dog tag resting on the desk in front of the television. That can’t be real. He looked through the wall locker for his grey suit, a white shirt, a maroon tie. He had to be at the Ambassador’s apartment in fifteen minutes for a meeting with an Afghan Minister and didn’t want to be late. I know it’s real, but it shouldn’t be here. How could it have ended up here? Perhaps I picked it up thinking it was a coin?

While he dressed, Grey tried to recall picking anything up in the embassy compound this morning but could think of nothing. In any case, while many cats roamed free on the compound and ate scraps thrown by sympathetic cat-loving Americans, there were no dogs. Grey had seen pie-dogs in the streets and alleys of Kabul from time to time, but had never noticed a license on any of them. He didn’t even know if the Afghan government had an animal control agency. Doubtful.

Ensuring his weapon was securely in the concealed holster in his waistband, he buckled his belt and attached a few extra magazines to it behind his back. The SIG Sauer nine millimeter was invisible to the untrained eye once he had his suit jacket on, but he turned and checked in the wall locker mirror to be sure. It was like the wild west here. Everyone in uniform was visibly armed; soldiers, marines, security guards, police. Everyone not in uniform was either carrying concealed weapons or was being escorted by someone with visible or concealed weapons, or both. Whenever he ate a meal with a foreign Attache’ in a Kabul restaurant, Grey wondered what would happen if the Taliban attacked. Would I be hit by a Taliban bullet, or a stray from tables three, six, or nine?

Grabbing his keys, his business cards, and his Embassy badge, Grey turned to exit his hooch. He stopped at the door and reached back for the dog tag. Best not to leave it here, he thought. The walk from his hooch door to the Ambassador’s elevator in the housing building was less than five minutes. He greeted several colleagues waiting for the elevator and got a warm response from both of them.

“Another day, another dollar,” said Sally Romero, the Ambassador’s political counselor. Sally was career foreign service officer, a tough, intelligent grandmother who had volunteered for the one year assignment to Kabul.

“More like a dollar-fifty, with our Kabul per diem,” replied Peter Swanson, the Legal Attache’. Pete had served twenty-three years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation before volunteering to spend a year away from his wife and college aged kids serving Uncle Sam abroad. Grey marveled at the patriotism and selflessness that surrounded him every day. In the military you came to expect that kind of behavior, but it surprised you to find that it was prevalent in a lot of government agencies. More proof that stereotypes were usually wrong.

“What dollar-fifty? Did I miss a sign-up sheet?” Grey joked. They all chuckled. None of the quips were new, just part of the routine. I’m here, you’re here, we’re still alive, everything is fine. The smiles slowly melted away as elevator protocol took over. Quiet during the approach to the Ambassador’s residence.

The three of them rode up in the elevator in silence, each contemplating their own agency, office and personal problems. Each seemed to bear a burden of the day’s issues but they were too professional to share what may have really been bothering them in public. I’m sure they aren’t dealing with issues like mine, Grey thought. He reached into his pocket and found the tag, and was both comforted and troubled that it was still there.

As the elevator doors opened the three agency heads came to life, putting on business faces and turning on their professional extroversion. There would be fifty or more guests at the reception tonight and there was much business to attend to. A broad corridor led them from the elevator to the Ambassador’s residence, a stately multi-roomed apartment befitting the Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary of the United States. Grey loved the official title but knew that the Ambassador loathed it even more than he loathed being called “your Excellency” by foreign dignitaries. From time to time Grey would refer to “his Excellency” within earshot just to watch the Ambassador’s eyes roll. It was a private joke shared by two professionals, but Grey never pushed his luck. “His Excellency” was the boss and could send him, well, just about anywhere he wanted.

“Colonel Connor, good to see you!” the Ambassador called across the room with a slight raise of his scotch glass. Sally and Pete took that as a cue and moved in opposite directions to find colleagues and guests scattered throughout the crowd. As he approached the Ambassador, Grey quickly made a mental note of the location of each of the Embassy Protection Detail agents on duty that night. He gave a quick smile or head bob of recognition to each, unremarked by anyone but the agents themselves. Another professional courtesy, they knew that Grey would ensure that he never obstructed their line of sight to the Ambassador. Everyone has a job to do. Grey smiled as he approached the Ambassador, shook his hand and said, “Good evening sir.”

“Minister,” the Ambassador began, “have you met Colonel Connor, our Defense Attache’?”

The Minister was tall for an Afghan, and wore a charcoal pinstripe suit that looked custom made. “I have not had the pleasure,” he said, thrusting out his hand towards Grey. Grey took it and returned a firm but warm handshake as he looked into the Minister’s eyes.

“Salaam alaikum, sir. Shoma chitor hasten?” Grey said in fluent Dari. He only spoke a few words, but those he knew were pronounced with absolutely no American accent.

The Minister’s eye widened immediately. “Alaikum salaam! How am I? I am amazed to meet an American who speaks Dari! Pleased to meet you Colonel…?”

“Please call me Grey, sir. And I’m afraid I speak but a few words of your beautiful language. The Ambassador keeps me very busy.” The Ambassador loved the fact that Grey could put just about anyone at ease, it made having difficult conversations easier. “Do I remember that you are the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, sir? I seem to recall a picture from a ministry brochure.”

The Minister turned to the Ambassador with a broad smile. “You train them well Mr. Ambassador! He speaks Dari and knows the ministers on sight. Can you spot a Talib as well, Grey?” he asked, looking back for a response.

“Let’s hope I don’t have to show you that skill tonight sir,” Grey quipped. The Ambassador laughed.

“Very good, Grey. I hope as well.”

“Minister Adbullah says that the fiber optic cables for the national telecommunications network should be complete by the end of the year, Grey.” The Minister nodded. “The only problem is moving several large pieces of equipment from Bagram to the west. I was hoping you could work with him to find a reasonable solution.” Missions came twenty-four hours a day, sometimes via telephone, sometimes over a glass of scotch in the Ambassador’s residence. This one would be challenging, but hardly beyond Grey’s capabilities. Pulling a business card from his inner suit pocket, Grey extended it to the Minister with both hands.

“I’d be happy to call upon you whenever you have the time sir. We can discuss the details of your dilemma and possible solutions.” He pointed to the number at the bottom of the card. “This is my mobile number, you can call me any time of day or night.”

“Thank you Grey, I will call you tomorrow if you don’t mind,” the Minister responded. He handed his own card to Grey, who pocketed it quickly and smiled at the Minister.

“Certainly sir,” Grey replied. He took a slight step backwards, allowing the Minister to move on to other guests if he so desired, without actually severing the conversation. The Ambassador took this as an opportunity.

“Excuse me Mr. Minister, I must attend to other guests,” the Ambassador said, while backing away and turning adeptly towards another group of people.

The Minister did not take the opportunity to leave, but instead turned to face Grey head on. “Might I ask you a question Colonel Connor?” Minister Abdullah asked.

“Yes sir, of course.” Grey said with a smile.

“I notice the Ambassador has a nice collection of antiques and paintings from the United States, and several pieces from Africa and Europe as well,” the Minister said, looking about the large living room.

“Yes he does,” Grey said as he turned to look as well. “He has picked up items of interest at most of his former duty locations.”

“I was wondering if you knew the origin or background of any of them? I am something of a collector myself,” the Minister said.

“I know that mask on the wall is from Burundi, his last duty station, and I think that vase is from China, but I’m afraid I’m no expert. I could ask the Ambassador if you like,” Grey offered.

“I was wondering about the piece on the piano actually. Have you looked at it before? I can’t say as I’ve ever seen anything like it.” The Minister moved towards the grand piano in the corner of the Ambassador’s living room and gestured towards the large candelabra that sat upon it. The multi-tiered candelabra was so covered with verdigris, that Grey could not tell from a distance if it was copper, brass or bronze. More than thirty green metallic arms radiated out at varying heights from a central stand and each held a small white candle, making the whole appear more like a fanciful tree than a piece of formal furniture. Grey slowed as he approached it.

“It is really exquisite,” the Minister remarked, “perhaps you can ask him about it later for me? We have nothing like it here in Afghanistan.”

“I can certainly ask him sir,” Grey replied helpfully. He glanced again at the candelabra then turned to face the Minister. Oh no!

The Minister’s face began to melt and stretch as the room began to spin. Grey knew that The metal that comprised that candelabra was not brass, bronze or copper, but viridium, a rare element of greenish hue that could be found only in Grey’s imagination. He had seen that very candelabra before in the dining room of the High King of Mawdor. He first saw it when he created it, placed it, and described it to players in his world. It could not be here. It can not be here.

Grey tried to concentrate on the Minister’s face, but it had become part of the massive swirl of color and sound that assaulted Grey’s vision. He could feel pressure at the back of his neck and heard a keening sound in his ears. He felt as though his stomach was being pressed into his backbone as some unseen force pushed him rapidly backwards. All sense of time and location vanished and Grey found himself floating gently in a warm pool of water. After the severe shock to his system, it was comfortable to just lie motionless in the water, free from Embassy troubles, from Taliban attacks, from disturbing anachronisms in his alternate realities. Perhaps he could just lie here a while and contemplate the problems he was facing. Just a few minutes.

” You going to lie there all day lad?” Stonefist asked. “We’re not getting any closer to the coast with you lying about in the tall grass.”

Grey opened his eyes and saw the dwarf standing over him, peering down and tugging on his braids with a large grin. Dirlonian sweet grass waved all around him and tickled his bare arms and legs. He could smell the warm, slightly metallic smell of Dirlonian soil beneath him and saw that the sun had progressed several hours across the sky.

“Oh no.” He didn’t move to get up.

“Well, you almost caught the thing. Too bad it was faster than you.” Stonefist extended his hand to help his friend up and Grey took it. “I picked up your things when you ran off,” he said, “though I really wish you’d try to keep your trousers on. At least promise you’ll not do that when we are in towns…” Stonefist was still grinning.

“I have to get my powers back under control,” Grey said.

“Why, so you can get back through your Nexus?” Stonefist asked.

“No,” Grey replied, taking his things from the grinning dwarf, “So I can shut you up!”

Grey couldn’t believe what was happening. He should have complete control. He shouldn’t have slipped so suddenly into Thraveon in the first place. He shouldn’t have arrived somewhere that he hadn’t planned to visit. He certainly shouldn’t have arrived half-dressed. He glanced once more at his clothing and equipment.

“Do I look different to you in any way?” he asked the dwarf.

“Blessedly so I would say,” answered Stonefist, “now that ye have clothes on.” Stonefist chuckled at his own joke.

“No. Seriously. Is there anything unusual about me?” Grey asked.

“No. Nothing unusual about ye at all. Ye take me away from fighting and adventuring - the only things I’ve ever really enjoyed or known aught about, ye bring me to an empty field and cause this inn to appear out of thin air, then ye set me up as proprietor where suddenly I know everything there is to know about running a business. Ye pop in from time to time out of nowhere and on the rare occasion when you are under-dressed, why you wriggle your nose, or wave your hand, or I don’t know what…and you’re fully dressed and fat with gold to boot. Oh you’re a normal one alright. Nothing unusual at all.”

“You finished?” Grey asked with a tone reserved for displeased parents.

“Yes,” Stonefist replied, unremorseful. “You had that coming, however.”

“Fine. You’re right. I had it coming. Now look again please. I’m serious. Is there anything about me that is different than the last time you saw me? I think there is something terribly wrong, though I cannot fathom what.”

Stonefist stared at Grey’s face, his posture, his clothing. He walked around him in a slow deliberate circle. Once behind Grey he inhaled deeply, as if surprised. “Ahhhhh.”

“What?!” Grey asked. “What is it? Do you see something?”

“You’ve put on some weight haven’t ye?” Stonefist asked. Grey turned and glared at the dwarf. Stonefist chuckled again. “Look lad, I don’t mean to be difficult, but the only thing that seems different to me is that ye’ve let me crack several jokes without shutting me up. Even folks that don’t have the ability to conjure often…”

Grey cut him off. “What did you say?”

“I said you’re putting on weight.”

“No, after that. About not shutting you up,” Grey replied.

“Lad. I always crack jokes and you always let me get away with one, maybe two, but then ye do that thing where I can’t talk any more and I…”

“I can’t control you?” Grey asked. “I didn’t even realize I did that to you. Keep talking.”

“About what?” Stonefist asked.

“I don’t care. Tell me about your business. Anything,” Grey responded.

Stonefist began to talk about the recent shipment of Dirlonian white wine that had turned sour in the casks on the way to the Spilled Chalice. While he spoke, Grey concentrated on him and tried to make him stop. It should only take a glance. Stonefist kept talking. “I could’ve killed that merchant, but he was a fast talker. He sold me the wine at half price as vinegar. Said I’d get my shipment of wine next week at a reduced price.” Stonefist stopped talking. “I guess it’s not working, eh lad?”

Grey sighed, “no it’s not. I don’t know what’s wrong. I can conjure gold, and clothes. He willed himself a longsword in a dark green leather scabbard. It appeared in his outstretched hands. “With gold fittings,” Grey said. The scabbard instantly became more elaborate. “And a golden belt to hang it from.” He felt it wrap snugly around his waist.

“That’s still a handy trick if ye ask me,” Stonefist said, tugging at the loose grey whiskers of his beard. “Personally, I’d be conjuring wenches, but…” he trailed off, realizing his joke wasn’t really amusing his friend.

Grey considered the facts. He couldn’t affect Stonefist for some reason, but he could still conjure items. He looked around the inn and then at Stonefist. “What do you think about the layout of the Chalice?”

“Honestly?” Stonefist asked.

“I can’t seem to have it otherwise,” Grey remarked blandly.

“Well, I’ve often thought that whoever designed this place, no offense mind you, but whoever designed this place had no mind for the proper running of an inn. The hearth is too narrow and too short to be of great use to the cooks, and doesn’t put off much heat in winter.”

Grey looked at the east wall of the inn where the fireplace stood and had to admit it seemed undersized for the scale of the inn. It began to stretch to the left and right and the mantle began to raise until it almost filled the entire wall. Above the inn, the chimney grew appropriately to vent the volume of smoke that would now be produced. Grey looked back at Stonefist who stood nodding in satisfaction.

“The keg rack is smaller than it ought to be considering the number of tables that we have in here.” Stonefist smiled and rubbed his hands together.

Grey looked behind the bar at the four kegs. He stretched the inn wall, added four oaken kegs of the same size and one of linden in gargantuan proportions.

“Giantish Ale!! However did ye…” Stonefist looked back at Grey. “You’ve still got it laddie. You’ve still got it.”

“Some of it, it seems,” Grey agreed. He looked around at the empty inn. He needed to test the limits of his control, and he needed to figure out how to get back through the nexus. Who knew what was going on with his body in the real world. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps he really was sick and had passed out. Perhaps he was sleeping at his desk in the embassy and this was all a dream. Hopefully the Ambassador hadn’t wandered in to find him unconscious. He would have to find someway to wake up.

“Can you close the inn for a few hours Stonefist? I need some help. ”

“Close the inn?” The dwarf looked dumbfounded. “It hasn’t been closed since ye put me here. What if a customer comes?

“Put up a sign. Say you are on vacation.” The dwarf looked at Grey with uncertainty. “I can’t force you it seems. But I really do need your help old friend. I think the nexus is broken.”

Stonefist gaped. “The way ye bring the out-worlders in? It’s broken?”

“It could be. I think so. I’m not sure really. I just don’t know. Will you help me?”

“Of course. But if you think I’m heading off in the world in an apron, you’ve got another thing coming…” Stonefist ventured.

Grey took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He imagined Stonefist as he had once appeared to so many groups of adventurers; well muscled and middle-aged for a dwarf, armored head to toe in dwarven chain, and wielding an oversize double-bladed battle-axe. Grey opened his eyes and Stonefist stood before him grinning from ear to middle-aged ear in full battle regalia. Stonefist hefted the massive axe in one hand while pulling deliberately at one of several dark brown braids that composed his beard with the other.

“If all my equipment is this new again,” he said, “I’ll go wherever ye need, for as long as ye need. Lookout world, here I come!” He began to swing the axe around his head in mighty arcs as he sang a Dwarven war song about Oakheart the Unforgettable. Grey backed to the edge of the room, pondering out loud.

“I can change my physical situation but I can’t will myself home. I can change your physical situation and even your attributes, but I can’t get you to shut up…” he considered.

Stonefist kept swinging the axe as he moved about the inn, careful not to hit any furniture. “Ye could ask politely. I might shut up.” Grey looked up and met his gaze. “Then again,” the dwarf said mischievously, “I might not.”

Grey shook his head. It was hard to get mad at his friend, regardless of the severity of his situation. Better to keep his sense of humor anyway. He’d need it if he woke up with the Ambassador standing over him.

“Pack us some food and drink while I put up a sign,” Grey said, placing several packs and bags on the tables.

“You can conjure food whenever we need it,” Stonefist argued, “Why carry the weight? And where are we going, anyway?”

“I don’t want to waste what little control I may have on conjuring food if we can carry it with us,” Grey replied. “And I don’t know where we are going. We’ll have to play it by ear.” He thought signs onto the outer doors of the inn that were written in a rough hand: “Closed for an unforeseeable incident. Be back as soon as possible. Trespassers will be tracked down and roughed up severely.” Grey then mentally nailed all but one of the doors shut.

“Ready,” Stonefist said, loaded down with several bulging packs.

“I can carry one of those,” Grey offered.

“And waste this energy and stamina?” Stonefist laughed, “not on your life! You worry about your problem and let me do the carrying.”

Grey allowed the dwarf his gesture. They departed the inn and as they stood in the street before it, Grey barred the door from within. Stonefist sighed as he took in the fresh late-morning air. “Just like old times,” he said wistfully.

The sun was approaching mid-day as they turned from the inn to head south towards the coast. It was still autumn in Dirlon, so the air was cool without being cold. Leaves had begun to change from bright green and dark green to yellow and amber. A lone greyhound crossed the road about thirty meters in front of them. Grey stopped.

“What was that?” he asked.

Stonefist looked at him querulously. “A dog perhaps?” He glanced sideways at Grey, waiting for the rest of the joke.

“What kind of dog?” Grey said, moving more quickly down the road.

“How should I know what kind of dog?” Stonefist replied, moving quickly to keep up with Grey. The packs began to jostle and bounce as he endeavored to keep up with Grey’s increasing pace. “When I offered to carry the packs I didn’t know we’d be in a race,” he said.

“I think that was a Greyhound,” Grey explained.

“Grey, black, brown, what does it matter? A hound is a hound,” Stonefist panted as he fell farther behind.

“Not a Grey hound! A greyhound! Don’t you see?” He spun quickly around once, running backwards while looking back at the dwarf. “I never put any greyhounds in Thraveon! That dog shouldn’t exist!”

“Well…that may be,” Stonefist panted, “but there….it goes…again!” He pointed behind Grey.

Grey spun back around and saw the dog, a sleek greyhound with a glossy coat, it’s muscular head pointed forward and down as it began to pick up speed. “What are you doing here?” Grey whispered to the air as he watched the hound run. “How did you get in my world?” He took deep breath. “My world,” he said. “This is my world. I created every rock and tree and creature in it. The air is mine. The earth is mine. ”

Grey Connor mentally shook off his equipment as he began to run forwards after the dog. Gone were the sword and breastplate and heavy boots. In their place was a loincloth and soft leather boots of the type worn by the Cords, the fastest humans in Thraveon. Grey focused on the hound ahead of him as he picked up speed, his feet hitting the earth lightly and sending him forward. He chanted to himself as he ran, “My world. My path. My speed. My air. ” He began to gain on the hound as the world passed by him in a blur, his feet pounding harder and more rapidly as he ran.

The hound looked back over it’s shoulder once took off suddenly in a burst of energy and speed. Grey knew in the real world he would have no chance of catching the dog. Greyhounds could reach speeds in excess of forty-five miles and hour. No human being could achieve even half that. But here in Thraveon Grey could do anything, almost anything, he corrected himself. He increased his speed effortlessly. So did the hound. He stretched the length of his stride and the greyhound appeared to do the same instinctively, pulling farther and farther ahead of him. Grey was beginning to get discouraged as more distance grew between the two of them.

“My world,” he thought. “In my control.” He continued to run forward as fast as his two legs would carry him. TWO LEGS! Of course!! He leaned forward suddenly and willed himself into the shape of a massive black greyhound, bounding forward in a series of long powerful strides. “My world,” he thought. “In my control.”

Grey raced forward, gaining rapidly on the speeding hound. The surprised dog looked back at Grey and there was a sudden look of slight acknowledgment in it’s eyes, not-quite a surrender, but an understanding. Grey came abreast of the hound and paced it for several strides, locking eyes with the other. There was a message there, but Grey could not fathom it. He tried to sense the creature’s thoughts, but could ascertain nothing.

The two continued to run, side by side across the plains as the sun rose higher in the sky and Grey began to think the hound would never tire. A message? A clue? He looked again at the tag and collar. Tag and collar? There were no dog tags in Thraveon! He lunged at the throat of hound with his human hand as he changed form, grasping the metal tag and wrenching it from the small ring that held it to the collar. Man and beast tumbled over and over on the ground as they slowly came to a stop in a twisted jumble of canine and human limbs. Grey closed his eyes to protect them from the cloud of dust the sudden stop was creating and rubbed his hand across his forehead to wipe the sweat from his brow as he tried to regain his breath. Sweat? He didn’t sweat in Thraveon! And he certainly didn’t get out of breath. This day was getting worse and worse.

He opened his eyes to untangle himself from the dog and found himself wrapped around the bars of the treadmill in the embassy gym. He was panting from exertion and dripping with sweat as he heard the motor of the treadmill winding down beneath him. His legs moved forward methodically, numbly, achingly, sweat pouring down his legs to wet the athletic socks and Nikes he was wearing.

“Never seen anyone put that thing on high before sir,” the marine guard said as he swung his arms and legs back and forth to the rhythm of the elliptical machine. “certainly not for as long as you were on it.”

Grey looked over at the Lance Corporal and smiled vacantly. “Long?” he asked. “How long have I been running?”

“How long?” the marine asked. “Man sir, you are a machine. You got on it just before lunch and you’ve been running the whole hour! Can’t believe you didn’t even time yourself.”

Grey only half heard the answer. He was too busy focusing on the metal tag in his hand. It appeared to be made of solid gold and was neatly stamped with the name “Argus.”

“Wonderful,” Grey thought. “Odysseus’ dog. As if things weren’t confusing enough.”

Colonel Grey Connor was having a bad day and it didn’t look like it was going to get any better. He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes in hopes of relieving the pressure that was building there. I have enough headaches to deal with, he thought, I don’t need a migraine as well. He exhaled deeply and looked back at the notes in front of him. Ambassador Forrest had given him four separate tasks in as many minutes, the movement control officer had called to say that all seven of the rotator flights had been shifted one hour behind schedule, and the Afghan Minister of Defense wanted to see him later that afternoon. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet and his day was turning out to be a challenge. Well, he thought, at least no one is shooting at me.

His day had started out routine enough, meetings with his office staff, a short update briefing to the Ambassador, more meetings with agency heads. In the past five minutes he had taken three phone calls that were going to change the course of his day, and he hadn’t even begun to check email yet. Who knew what wondrous challenges lay waiting within that helpful box on his desk? There were times when he really wished that email hadn’t even been invented yet. How much simpler life would be. He looked out the window of his third floor embassy office and caught a glimpse of two birds, hawks perhaps, making wide circles under the rising sun, coming at times, within meters of him. They flew close enough that he could see the outlines of several golden brown feathers, but his mind immediately twisted the image. He smiled as he imagined them to be golden dragons, circling each other over the peaks of Ered Glemor, far above the routine of normal life, and literally worlds away in his imaginary Thraveon.

He felt himself slipping into the nexus. How easy it would be to just let his mind wander there. More and more often he found himself sliding easily from this world of protective vests and improvised explosive devices, IEDs, to one of his own creation. Thraveon. The game world and system he had created as a young man more than twenty years before. How many friends had joined him there for a few hours, or a full day, or that glorious three day weekend gaming extravaganza a few years back. How many hours of excitement and thrills had he led his friends through. Now, stationed here in Afghanistan, he used his imaginary world as a crutch.

Grey had always had a wild imagination and a fairly vast talent for telling stories. He would look around the room, or the shopping mall, or at the world around him, and his eye would select several objects at random to weave into a story. Within moments, what he had seen in the real world would instantly become something different, sometimes something very different and extraordinary in his imaginary world of Thraveon. Now, more than twenty years after this game had begun, Grey’s mind contained the descriptions and details of every map, every kingdom, every mountain, and every major character in his world. All his creations, all his children, he could mold them in his mind at will, and change them as necessary to meet the needs of whatever group was gaming with him at that moment in his life.

With no gaming group at his disposal in the embassy, he had begun to turn to Thraveon for his own amusement and in difficult moments. He hated flying in helicopters, was adverse to certain roads known to be littered with IEDs, and abhorred boring meetings absolutely. When those instances occurred, as they did too frequently, he would mentally identify a few objects or people in the real world and use them to craft a portal that opened the nexus into Thraveon. Just a few minutes in his imagination and all his mental wounds were healed, all his fatigue drained away, and his spirit renewed.

Most recently, he had begun to post blogs on a personal website, describing the manner in which he created his world, and although he surprised himself by doing so, openly discussing the nexus. He had never shared that part of his mind with anyone before. Certainly, his friends knew that he had created a game world and that he had a decent imagination, but he wondered if any of them had ever guessed that the world of Thraveon was made completely and wholly out of the fabric of the real world around them. Life was the raw material and his mind the factory that churned out imaginary places and politics, monsters and maidens, heroes and wizards. How many former bosses in real life had Grey turned into one-eyed ogres or evil wizards or foul giants? Too many to recall really.

Colonel Grey Conner chuckled to himself at the thought. How many of his colleagues thought him to be a serious soldier, a professional to be emulated, an officer to be looked up to? If they only knew the truth, he thought. He had enlisted in the army because he had procrastinated too long to be accepted into any colleges or universities. Once he learned that he tolerate any pain the drill sergeants dished out by slipping into Thraveon, he found himself mistakenly being labeled “tough,” and “resilient.” He was promoted rapidly to sergeant.

Soon discovering that enlisted men actually have to work for a living, whereas officers get to sit unmolested for hours at a time thinking “big thoughts,” Grey took the tests that would get him into Officer Candidate School and away from a life of hard work. His plan had backfired somewhat as he found that once people believed that you were “tough” or “smart” or “hard-working” they expected behavior that would allow them to continue believing it. So when he was assigned to a unit he worked as efficiently as he could all day so that he could have his evenings and some weekends free to let his mind run free.

He had graduated first in every class of every military school he had ever attended, not because he was motivated to be the best, but because he wanted to get back to his game as quickly as possible. Labeled a “good student,” he spent more than twice the number of years as most officers attending military schools for advanced training. At the same time Grey learned, those who tested out of a subject at the beginning of a block of instruction were given the time back to use at their discretion. Grey studied hard the night before every pre-test and was given a lot of discretionary time. The sooner all requirements were completed, the sooner he could be back inside Thraveon.

What he never quite realized was that the real joke was on him. The years of work and creativity and imagination that he had put into building Thraveon, coupled with the years of study he done to get out of classes had actually made him a fairly knowledgeable and creative officer as Army officers go. He was always concerned that his colleagues and supervisors might learn the true nature of his lack of military motivation, so he tried to be as friendly as possible with those he liked, to build consensus when he could with those he didn’t, and to take care of his subordinates so that they would take care of him by getting the job done. What he didn’t know, or failed to see, was that these behaviors and attributes created an aura of leadership that made others look up to him in good times and tolerate him in bad. For all intents and purposes, he was being what the Army expected him to be.

He turned away from the window and glanced back at the notes on his desk. Prepare to brief the Congressional Delegation - CODEL, request an office call with a new Deputy Minister, request some information from the Norwegian Defense Attache; it was going to be a busy day. He moved his notebook across the desk as he turned in his chair to begin checking email and noticed the remains of a broken pencil on the edge of his desk. He briefly recalled stepping on it last night while leaving, but he thought he had picked it up and thrown the pieces in the trash. Now, the longest part of the pencil, with the point still intact, looked like an arrow from…STOP! Grey blinked and shook his head. He had work to do. Thraveon would have to wait. He admitted a slight concern that he was having greater difficulties keeping his two worlds separate. It was just a pencil, ordinary in every way except for the slight greenish corona that encased it and…greenish corona? Grey blinked again and looked harder at the pencil fragment. It still glowed a subtle luminescent green.

“I’ve been playing too many computer games,” Grey said out loud.

“Did you say something sir?” asked his Operations Coordinator from the next room. Chief Andrew Rhodes was an Army Warrant Officer, a good one, very professional, and very attentive.

“No Chief,” Grey called out, “Just talking to myself.”

“What did I tell you about that sir?” Chief Rhodes answered. “The girls don’t like guys that talk to themselves.”

“My wife likes me just fine Andy. You stop worrying about me and I’ll stop talking to myself,” Grey quipped.

“You stop talking to yourself, and I’ll stop worrying about you sir!” Andy replied. He stuck his head in Grey’s door. “I’m going to go grab a soda sir, you want anything?” he asked.

“No Chief, I have to watch my figure. The girls don’t like guys with big guts!” He looked at the Warrant Officer’s bulging waistline and smiled.

“Ouch! That was a low blow sir! Guess I better make it a diet soda!” He chuckled as he departed the office.

Grey closed his eyes and reached for the pencil. It was just a pencil, nothing more. He opened his eyes. Just an ordinary, number two yellow pencil. An ordinary, number two yellow pencil with a corona of green light emanating from every facet! He threw it at the wall and watched, amazed, as it stuck like an arrow in a target. It vibrated slightly for a few seconds then stopped, but it still glowed green. Grey turned in his chair and began to rise, then stopped suddenly and sat back fully to stare at the over-sized map of Afghanistan on his office wall. Every province had been shaded in a different color by the mapmakers, but Helmand Province in the South of Afghanistan was clearly glowing green. He stared at the map a second then looked around the office completely. His coffee cup, his protective vest, his boots… all glowed green.

What could it mean? A virus? A biotoxin? Maybe he should ask Chief when he returned. No, that would be asking for a whole round of crap. Maybe he was just tired. He had been out very late the night before with the Spanish Attache, maybe this was some bizarre after affect of eating too much Manchego cheese and drinking too many sangrias. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

The nexus never came like this; bright green and glowing with light rushing past him on all sides. It was normally a subtle shift of his imagination from the real world to his fantasy world, completely controlled by his conscious efforts, not a stomach wrenching race on a twisting roller coaster of green strobe lights. This was not normal. He felt the room begin to spin and wondered if he had in fact picked up an infection of the inner ear. He had suffered these vertigo effects before during a sever bout of Dengue fever. He could feel his heart racing and thought he could hear himself gasping for breath. He was about to vomit. He leaned forward and reached out for his office trash can as he opened his eyes, afraid that he might hit his head on the desk in front of him.

As quickly as the nausea had come, it vanished, though he could feel a cold sweat on his forehead as he took in his surroundings. He was in an inn, one he knew well, an ale-filled mug sat before him on a thick oaken table. He closed his eyes to return through the nexus, but the ale called to him. He picked up the mug and drank deeply.

“Oakheart Stout,” the dwarven innkeep called to him, “your favorite. Just be sure to be paying me this time.”

“Stonefist!” Grey exclaimed, happy to see an old friend, in spite of the confusion of the moment. Grey had taken the aging dwarf out of action several game iterations ago and made him proprietor of the Spilled Chalice Inn in Southern Dirlon. Once a great dwarven warrior and in-game companion to players in Thraveon, he was now relegated to waiting tables and passing on the occasional rumor to those who happened to enter the Chalice. Grey looked up at Stonefist, who seemed to be busy cleaning up a mess from the evening before. “I’m sorry for the intrusion, Stonefist. I hadn’t planned on visiting, I just…”

“O course you didn’t lad. If ye had planned to visit, you wouldn’t be sitting at my table in breastplate and boots now would ye?” The dwarve pointed at Grey and raised his eyebrows. He let out a loud belly laugh. “Chasing the ladies at Mare’s End were ye?”

Grey looked down and realized he was wearing nothing but trousers, boots and a breastplate of polished steel. Where were the rest of his clothes? He never entered the nexus like this. Something was definitely wrong. He closed his eyes and willed a shirt, a tunic, a belt and money pouch. They came easily, though no one seemed to notice.

“I’ll never understand why I can see you all the time and others only sometimes lad,” Stonefist said.

Grey looked at him with discomfort. They had been through this a dozen times before. Now was not the time.

“Let’s just say I have special powers, shall we?” Grey asked.

“Obviously,” Stonefist replied, eying Grey’s new clothing. “You staying long this time?”

“Actually, I have to leave right away,” Grey said, flipping a silver coin from his pouch towards the dwarf. Stonefist caught it, bit it, and placed it in a bowl on the counter. “See you again soon old friend.” Grey said. He closed his eyes and willed himself back through the nexus. He felt the mental shift, began the slide from fantasy to reality and sensed that he had come back into his frame of reality, a simple passage he had made thousands of times before. He sighed relief and opened his eyes.

“I thought you were going back,” Stonefist said. “Did ye want another ale perhaps?”

Simple Bargain.  Ten comments from ten people are all I need, one word per person each, then I’ll enter the nexus and tell you how it goes.  I’m a bit concerned since I haven’t been back in a while, but I do have to venture inside to prepare for this weekend.  With several chosen coming to the house, I have to put some threads back in place.  I fear they may begin to notice the wear and tear, the slight unraveling.

Will you help me?   Ten comments….ten words.  These will help me weave the spell to open the portal to Thraveon…

First Post:  A Color

Second Post: An animal

Third Post: A household object

Fourth Post: A Gender  (this is the easy one, you only have to pick from two)

Fifth Post:  A number under ten

Sixth Post: Any English Word

Seventh Post:  A weather event
Eighth Post: A Medieval weapon

Ninth Post: A foodstuff

Tenth Post: An occupation

I await the magic words…

Would someone care to explain when it became my responsibility to cater to myself when I go to a store? I enter an establishment prepared to pay good money for merchandise and find, in an ever-increasing selection of stores, that I have to go through a tortuous ordeal called self-service to pay for my choices.

I suppose it started with gasoline. Our parents used to get full service, check the oil, wash the windows, pump the gas and would you prefer a free set of glasses or a toy gas truck with that sir? All for a reasonable price. Then the stations began to go to self-service, ostensibly to lower the price of gasoline for us. We learned to pump the gas ourselves and watched as some fools continued to pay full price for service while we saved two cents a gallon. Two cents a gallon you idiots! I just saved twenty-six cents filling up my tank! Woo-hoo! This self-service stuff rocks!!

Anyone paid for gas recently? What do we get now? Pump it yourself if the pump is working or come inside and see the attendant if she is awake, check your own oil if you brought a paper towel with you in your car, try to wash your windows with the squeegee sponge that was left from the last time your father got full-service, and press here if you want to pay $6.50 for a car wash that might break off your antenna or dent your roof when the dryer wheel crashes on it. And what low price are we paying for this wonderful privilege? It’s all the way down to about $2.97 a gallon where I live, how about you? Woo-hoo! Thank you self service! I just paid $58.00 to fill up the minivan!!

Okay. Back to my point. Now I go to Target, or Lowe’s, or Home Depot, or Wal Mart, or any one of several grocery stores in my area and they expect me to perform my own checkout service! I DON’T WORK HERE! I’m not paying any less for this deodorant or these oranges, so why do I have to work in your store? I don’t remember filling out a job application! I don’t get health benefits! I don’t recall you asking my opinion! Meanwhile thousands of people are out of work because I am now expected to do their jobs. Please forward my paycheck to my home address, I don’t want the Army to know that I am moonlighting.

Now, I want to go on record as saying I’m not falling for this scam twice. Remember the thing with the gas pumps? Fool me once, shame on you and so forth. I will NOT check myself out.

Here’s the part that really gets me. Have you noticed that they started with one self-checkout? Then, as more than one person in a hundred could actually figure out how to use it (five in a hundred are scamming the store anyway, so get ready for the price hikes), they added more? Now some stores have one checkout aisle with a line to the back of the store and all the rest are self-service. I look over and see some teenager who doesn’t know what stores used to be like, and he’s looking back at me with a get-with-the-times-dude look of smug self-checkout-satisfaction on his face, and I’m thinking, just wait. Soon there will be outdoor, drive-thru, self-checkout mega grocery stores with one attendant in a locked booth is the middle of a parking lot. Is that what you want? And pull up your pants for goodness sake.

The Ikea in my area has gone all the way self-serve. There are NO humans left at the checkout lane except the one that stands between four registers helping the computer illiterate. When I get to the register I call her over. “Please check out my things,” I say. “You have to check yourself out sir.” “You didn’t lower my prices,” I say. “I don’t work for you,” I say. She stares at me. “Please call your manager,” I say. She stares harder. “Now,” I say firmly. Other people in line back away from me. They see that I have a new frying pan in my cart and fear that I may use it.

I move out of the way to allow the Lemming family to check themselves out as I wait for the manager to appear. “May I help you sir?” he asks in a friendly manner. “Yes you may,” I answer, “I want a human being to run my cash register. I don’t want to do myself in your store.” I wait. He looks to see if I am serious. “Certainly sir,” he says with a smile. “We want you to be happy.” “If you want me to be happy,” I say, “put at least one register back with a cashier.” Other people in line nod their heads in agreement, but don’t say anything. I pay for my things and rush to exit the store, angered that I have to deal with this on an increasingly more frequent basis. Before I can exit I am stopped by two other people. “I like what you did back there. I’m sick of these self-service things.” I nod thanks and smile. “Fight back,” I say. “Don’t be a lemming.” They laugh and walk away.

What if we started a movement? The “I’m mad and I’m not going to use self-service aisles without remuneration movement!” You want us to check ourselves out? Pay us! Reduce your prices! Give us the profits you got by firing all your cashiers! Maybe we could pick one day out of a month and refuse to use ANY self-service aisles. Maybe one day a year we could all stop going to stores that have no human cashiers!! Maybe we could actually get some human beings back on the telephone when we call the bank!! (Okay, that’s an impossible fantasy that I just threw in there for effect). Seriously though, how long are we going to allow ourselves to be dragged along to the self-service slaughterhouse without even putting up a fight? Are you with me?!!

It’s funny how some things in life seem to come full circle. In 1981 I was a brand new Private First Class stationed in the Washington D.C. area with the Presidential Honor Guard, The Old Guard. Today, stationed here again in a different capacity as a full Colonel, I happened to drive down a small street I hadn’t been down since I walked it twenty-seven years ago.

When I was a Private, I had no real financial responsibilities. The Army housed me, clothed me, gave me three meals a day (four if I had night duty), and provided various sorts of athletics and recreation free of charge. My girlfriend lived in another state, my car insurance was paid six months in advance, and gas was relatively inexpensive. Though I didn’t understand it at the time, I had it made.

One payday, with exactly four hundred and ten dollars in my pocket, nearly a month’s pay, I walked past a shop I had never seen before, something called a “Computer Boutique.” You have to recall that at that time, there were no real PCs available to the masses. Most of my friends were gaming geeks and computer nerds (imagine that) and knew practically everything there was to know about the most recent advances in “data processing.” Two of them were even computer programmers for the military, which means they could speak in obscure languages like FORTRAN and COBOL (I still don’t know what those words mean, but you should remember the languages spoken by your friends, even if you can’t speak them yourself).

One of my friends had a miracle of modern science in his barracks room, a Radio Shack TRS 80 that he had built for himself from a kit. It had one game program, a primitive version of lunar lander where you used voice to accelerate and decelerate the rocket motors on a crudely depicted version of the Apollo Landing Module. We spent night after night watching Ken adjust the program, trying to ascertain whose voice was most readable by the machine (mine), and watching the lander crash into snowy black and white lunar cathode ray geography. I listened to them use computer related words and, because I actually had a girlfriend, even though she was hundreds of miles away, I could never really understand what they were talking about. Nonetheless, as an early Foreign Area Expert, one who could move freely between the worlds of nerds and jocks and brains, I thought that I had mastered the vocabulary of the time, even if I hadn’t.

On the day in question, which incidentally is probably the last time in my life I can remember having four hundred dollars cash in my pocket, I confidently entered the boutique to talk to a salesman. How much can something like that cost anyway, I thought? There were no computers on tables, or banks of monitors, or walls filled with boxed software. In fact, as I looked around the neatly decorated store that looked pretty much like someone’s living room, I thought perhaps I has misread the sign out front. I turned to leave. “May I help you young man?” a guy who couldn’t have himself been more than twenty-one asked from a desk in the corner. “I thought this was a computing shop,” I said, “but I don’t see any data processors or programmable calculators or anything.” If a twenty-something can raise their chin in a snobbish manner, this fellow did. “This is not a computing shoP,” he said, accent on the “P.” “It is a BoutiQue!” Accent on the “K!”

What I had been hoping to find, for under four hundred and ten dollars, was a ready built computer like Ken’s, only better. So I asked for exactly what I thought I wanted. “I want to look at some good software,” I said, as though the emphasis on the word software would let him know that I had friends who were computer geeks and that, while I wasn’t actually a member of the computer literate, I knew some people who were. I didn’t know what I was asking, but he did. “What, exactly, did you want your application to do?” he asked. Did he say application? I rolled through my mental rolodex - job application, application of medicine, application of liquor…nope…no personal understanding of application in reference to data processing.

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to sound insulted.

“We can assemble code for any contextual application you require, but you have to be specific in your design parameters.” He looked at me and waited. Code? Design parameters? I was in way over my head. I just wanted some kind of game you could play on a screen, which is incidentally what 99% of people still want from computers nearly three decades later. “I don’t need an application,” I said, “I need a program.” He looked at me and realized I was in way over my head. He glared. I looked at the floor and then back at him, admitting through body language that I had little real clue what I was talking about. He raised his chin still higher. It actually got easier from there. (This is where I first learned that if you are honest up front about your computer illiteracy, or even your technical incompetence, you may actually be befriended by a kind, all-knowing and all-powerful geek. Actually, befriended comes later in life, this is where I learned about being intellectually bested by a snobbish prat).

“Do you have a computer?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“We custom build computing machines here for businesses and organizations and affluent customers. Do you know what you want us to build for you?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Do you have at least five thousand dollars?” he smiled, knowingly, triumphantly.

“No,” I said flatly.

“You might be interested in the music shop next door,” he said, pointing helpfully while grinning like the lion after its meal.

I thanked him for his time, and because I didn’t want him to think I had been too dense to understand his suggestion, I actually went next door to the music store.

It wasn’t a music store, it was a music boutique.

It didn’t sell music, it sold instruments. Oh brother!

Twice in one day I had walked into a shop I really had no business being in. At that age however, there is too much teenage pride coursing through the veins to ever openly admit that a mistake had been made. I could have turned around and walked back out. Instead, I looked around the shop quickly and pointed to the instrument closest to me. “How much is that mandolin?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see young man. Do you play?” This gentleman was older, clearly wiser, and already seemed to know the answer. Mistakes are only bad if you don’t learn from them. He was still waiting for my answer. “Do you play son? Would you like to?”

“No sir,” I said. “I don’t play any instrument. I’ve held one once or twice, but I don’t read music and I have to admit, I don’t know a thing about it. I’d like to though.”

“Well son,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes, “an instrument can be a friend to you when you most need it.” He reached for the price tag and pulled his glasses farther down his nose to read the price. “Good choice by the way. This one here is not quite as pricey as some of these others. It’s only four hundred and ten dollars with tax.” He stopped and looked me in the eye again. “I’ll throw in a book and a few picks if you want it,” he added. I stared at him, stunned.

“Did you say four hundred and ten dollars?” I asked.

“Including tax,” he said. He smiled as if he knew what was in my pocket.

“I’ll take it,” I said, “and thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Hope it brings you luck son.” I never went back.

Several years and several girlfriends later, when I could play eight or nine chords and pick a few notes, I serenaded my lady with an original song, accompanied by that mandolin. She loved it, and me apparently, enough to marry me less than a year later. During our first Christmas together, she bought me an antique mandolin from a flea market in Germany. Over the years several other mandolins have ended up hanging from the ceiling in what we call the music room. The original was stolen during a move from Europe in 1999, and we’ve since replaced it with one that was similar, though not exactly the same. I still like to play them occasionally but hadn’t really thought in many years about how I had chanced upon the first one. Until today.

Some things change and some things stay the same. I passed down that street today driving, not walking, with slightly more than four dollars and ten cents in my pocket. The computer boutique and music boutique are both gone, long since converted into pricey row houses. I still have friends who know much more about computers than I do, but I don’t try and pretend I understand things I don’t. Unfortunately, I tend to know more about computers than most of the salespeople working in the Computer Mega-boutiques, emphasis on the “Mega.”

I am happier now than I ever could have imagined being at that time in my life. Some of my computer friends still don’t have girlfriends. Some of them are married with children. Some of them play the mandolin better than I do. I can’t imagine that many people are as happy as I am, though I hope they are. I sat in front of those two houses and wondered what would have happened in life if I had entered the music store first…

I’m doing what I promised myself. I’m writing more. I have a lot of past experiences to put down in writing, a lot of current thoughts to share, a lot of future plans to explore. I’m still very excited and somewhat daunted about how much I have to write about. The problem is not knowing what I want to write, but deciding what I want to write next. I don’t really want to write travel memories every night (though there are scores of them, maybe hundreds), and I don’t want to delve into gaming worlds so deeply that my other “normal” friends are afraid to talk to me in public.

Talking to my techno-pal Jeffrey tonight about things we might be able to do to improve the readability of the Blog, apart form teaching me how to punctuate, I admitted that I’m not certain what I want to write about today. I mentioned that I thought it was probably okay if I didn’t write every night, though that would kind of defeat the purpose of a New Year’s resolution. The less than helpful Jeffrey said “Well, it would be kind of hard to keep up with the pace you’ve been going.” That is definitely NOT what friends are for!

“No Jervis,” I said, coaching Jeffrey in what he should have said, “it’s easy to do, anyone can do it. Get back to work.” That sort of thing. Such a simple thing to do, right? So he made the attempt. “How about…uh…GET TO WORK! We’ve got deadlines here! I’ve got a morning edition to get out in only hours, and I’VE GOT NO PHOTOS OF SPIDERMAN! Oh wait, wrong publication.”

But it’s NOT the wrong publication. That’s what I need to get me writing. A writing drill instructor. A personal trainer for blogging. That and an occasional comment or question or visitor rant and I’m all set.

Meanwhile, my discussion with Jeffrey led me to some discoveries that apparently everyone but me already knows. I asked if blaaaahhg was what you had when you didn’t feel like writing. The resident Technorati informed me that a blaaaaahhg is written by someone without anything worth saying. (oops, hope this doesn’t qualify). When you don’t feel like writing or have writer’s block, it’s called a webslog or slog or a bslog (with a silent b). I guess if you tell a tall tale that would be a BSlog.

Meanwhile, I guess I need to sit down and make a long list of all the things I want to write about and then just get to it. Requests anyone?

The Hong Kong Hospital Authority manages 41 hospitals, of which 14 are have Accident and Emergency clinics. All other clinics in Hong Kong are apparently run outside of the hospital system and are structured for routine medical care. As I made my way towards the airport clinic in search of band-aids, I stopped at several news stands and gift shops hoping to find them on my own. At each stop the salesperson was polite, friendly, helpful and eager to point me towards the medical clinic.

The clinic waiting area was much like that of a doctor’s office anywhere in the western world. The receptionist first asked me to have a seat and pointed me towards a wall of chairs. Some magazines in both English and Chinese had been scattered around to ease the waiting time, but I really had no interest in reading at that time. I was the only person in the waiting room. I smiled at the receptionist. She smiled back at me. “Are you ready now?” she asked. What? I looked at her quizzically. “Did you want to be seen?” “Well, yes,” I began, “you see I…” She handed me a form and asked me to fill out the nature of my complaint. “We only cater to departing passengers,” she said. “If you are arriving, you should proceed to the nearest hospital.” “I just need a couple of band-aids. My knees are bleeding.” She looked down at my knees briefly and gave me a smile of pity. “Do you have a boarding pass?” What? “Uh….yes…I do…right here,” I handed it to her and she checked my personal information and began typing it into a computer. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said, “I just need some band-aids, and there don’t seem to be any in the…”

The Doctor came out of the patient area and smiled at me, holding the ends of stethoscope around his neck with both hands, like a boxer holds a towel. “How are we today?” he asked, without waiting for an answer. He took my boarding pass and asked me to follow him. A short well-lit corridor, a small office off to one side filled with medical books, and we quickly entered a patient examination room complete with a stainless steel tabl, medicine cabinets and a cute little Asian nurse straight out of one of my son’s manga novels. “Please sit here,” nurse Cutie said as she stuck a thermometer in my mouth. “I don’t have a temperature,” I protested, taking the thermometer out, “I just need a couple of…” “Do you have a cough?” the doctor asked. A cough? A COUGH?! “No, I just need…” The sound of the doctor putting on latex gloves made me turn to look at him. The gloves were a light reddish color. Strange.

Nurse Cutie put a blood pressure cuff around my arm while she smiled and looked into my eyes with compassion. Doctor Strangegloves began to listen to my chest. “Breathe!” he commanded. I did so. Each time I tried to explain that I just needed to get a couple of…he would move the stethoscope and tell me to breathe. He checked my breathing from the front and from the back. He examined my head for bumps. He looked into my eyes with a small light. Nurse Cutie finished taking my blood pressure and removed the cuff. She then started stroking my arm gently where the cuff had been and telling me that “Everything will be all right.”

In retrospect, I could have been angry. I could have exploded. I could have made a fuss and demanded to have a few band-aids. I just found the whole situation to be so otherworldly, so unreal, that I just decided to ride it out. And nurse Cutie was massaging my arm after all. “How long have you been sick?” Doctor Strangegloves asked. “Just since the broken cart flipped me onto the concrete,” I replied. The doctor and nurse exchanged glances. He looked down at my knees, noticing them for the first time. “You seem to be bleeding,” he said. “I AM bleeding,” I replied calmly. “Ahhh,” he said.

The doctor left the room without a sound and only a slight glance at nurse Cutie. She stopped rubbing my arm and went to assemble a tray. I thought, you have got to be kidding. I watched intently as she placed a small bowl with betadine or iodine or some other orange foul-smelling substance, cotton balls, some gauze, and finally…a few band-aids. She placed the cart on a rolling stand and brought it back over to the table.

She looked at my pants and began to blush, pointing towards my legs. “May I?” I assumed she meant roll up my pants legs. “I can roll them up for you if you prefer,” I offered. She smiled broadly in a wash of relief and said “Yes thank you!” I rolled up my suit pants past the knees while she grimaced and winced sympathetically. “It’s not that bad,” I said. She placed her hand on my arm and looked into my eyes. “Does it hurt much?” she asked. Inside I was laughing hysterically. Outside I smiled and assured her I would live.

If I had ever had a fantasy about a cute sympathetic Asian nurse tending to my wounds in an exotic location, not that I ever did mind you, but if I had…this episode would have crushed it. She was gentle, she was compassionate, she was kind, and she was incredibly, amazingly, unbearably sloooooooow. She spent ten minutes washing the wounds. She wiped up every bit of blood anywhere on my legs. She strategically placed band-aids over the scrapes after conducting what must have been five minutes of preliminary mental measuring and adjustments. Finally she was finished. She rolled my pants legs back down for me and in spite of my anxiousness and agitation, I suddenly felt as though we had reached a new plateau in our patient-nurse inter-cultural relationship. “Are you married?” she asked. What? I mean, WHAT?! “Yes,” I smiled. “Very happily so.” I showed her the ring on my left hand, the +5 Wedding Ring of Protection against cute Asian nurses. She pouted and left the room.

The moment she left, and while I was trying to puzzle through what had happened, the doctor returned. “I’m sorry for the mix-up earlier,” he said. “We thought you had SARS.” I looked at him stunned. He was holding two pieces of paper in his hands, a bill, and my boarding pass. I reached for the boarding pass. He handed me the bill. I did a quick calculation at the current exchange rate and it was…WHAT?…”TWENTY-EIGHT DOLLARS?!!” He gently fanned himself with my boarding pass and waited for me to come to my senses.

“I really don’t think I should have to pay for DOCTOR CONSULTATION and MEDICAL TESTS when all I needed was a band-aid!” He smiled at me. Nurse Cutie came back in and seemed to glare at me with a sort of “Did the time we spent together mean nothing to you?” glare. The receptionist came in with the cash box and a complaint form. “If you are unhappy with the service sir, after you pay and leave Hong Kong, you may fill out this form and send it back to the airport authority,” she said. I looked at the three of them standing there. They had had no patients since the time I arrived. My plane was already boarding. My boarding pass was right there. I would write the complaint form to end all complaint forms. I paid the twenty-eight dollars and left. “Thank you for your business sir,” the receptionist said as I departed.

Only two important parts remain to this tale of woe. First, I went through three security checkpoints without ever being stopped, or questioned, or even scrutinized. Seventy-three year old grandmothers were being pulled from the line for full-body searches and small children were being separated from their parents to have their teddy-bear backpacks searched by men with hands larger than their heads. I was wearing torn blood-stained clothing, was clearly annoyed and disheveled, but no one gave me a second look. Within minutes I was sitting in business class, sipping champagne, talking to my traveling companions and getting the sympathetic ear of a former playboy bunny in the seat in front of me, (don’t ask now…that’s a different story altogether).

Second, I did fill out the complaint form and send it in. Normally I suppose, the officials hope that you will never get around to filling out the forms and actually mailing them, but I was moved to action. I wrote several pages about the faulty cart, the vanishing monks, the helpful security apparatus, my ordeal in the medical clinic and sent it via post. Within six weeks I received an email from the Hong Kong Airport Authority Chief of Security and Investigations. Hong Kong was very sorry for any trouble that I had been caused, it read, but after a lengthy investigation involving the checking of numerous luggage carts, no faulty brakes had been discovered. Thank you for your interest in Hong Kong Airport Safety. There was a break in the email and then it began again. In light of the fact that you endured such mental hardship while traveling here in Hong Kong, we wish to compensate you for your troubles. If you will kindly fill out this complaint form and sign the sworn affidavit below that you will never, ever talk about this incident to anyone, ever, anywhere, we will send you (quick exchange rate conversion) sixty dollars. What? The government of Hong Kong wishes to buy my silence for sixty dollars!? Unbelievable!!

As you can see by this posting I did NOT sign the form. Next time I travel, I’m bringing my own band-aids.