Flights of fancy characters

Ron stood in line for Security for gates 1-2 at the San Diego airport. He had not flown for a few years and was feeling a bit uncomfortable at the thought of open public spaces. Filing forward with the rest of the cattle on a Saturday morning, Ron looked across the terminal counters in time to see a cartoony monk mascot walking towards him from the security line for gates 3-10.

He had been in line for 20 minutes giving him enough time to see the security line preparation video with the large lego man and monk helping people prepare for a speedy walk through the security line to their gates. Being a bit paranoid about handing his bag to strangers, Ron had decided to carry on and admittedly over-sized bag. He felt the mascot's eye target in on him.

With a goofy cartoon-like voice, the monk walked directly upto Ron and shouted the way a man with a giant foamy head who can't hear well would. "Awfully big bag you've got there, friend. Are you sure you wouldn't rather check that?"

"No." Ron stared forward in an attempt not to continue the conversation. The attempt would fail.

"You know, everyone has a right to have space on the plane for regulation sized baggage and the ability to move through security quickly." The freakishly large head with the friar tuck style bald spot wobbled left and right as Ron was judged by a man paid to wander an airport dressed like an idiot.

"What about my right to not be hassled by a moron in a giant head? Maybe I only own one bag and this one has my medication in it that I will need during the flight. Very logical reasoning to me, but you don't look to be a man who has made all the necessary intellectual decisions in life not to end up here." Ron stepped forward with the line movement. The mascot took two sideways steps with his comically large shoes and continued in the silly voice.

"That's too bad, sir. I'd hate to see someone as pleasant as you in bad physical health. Maybe I can help you carry your bag through." A large hand made of a mixture of cloth and foam reached for Ron's bag before being slapped away.

"No. I can take my own bag." The man two spaces in line ahead of Ron looked back with some concern. A man two spaces back from Ron looked on with amusement. The rest of the line seemed unfazed by the conversation.

"Well, maybe I can help you prepare for the x-ray machine. Your watch should be in a bin. Let's get that off." The big hands waggled chunky fingers at Ron's wrist. Ron turned to face the oversized puppet man for the first time.

"I said no." His tone left no uncertainty to his aggrevation. The monk put his hands on his hips mimicking Ron as the two men watching before now shared a concerned glance towards each other.

"Well, that's a might large belt. That buckle will surely set off the metal detector. Let's get that off of you." Before he could turn away, two giant gloves had grasped onto Ron's belt and begun tugging as if to rip the belt off like a cheap band for a bar's drink specials.

Ron reached up without thinking and slammed both fists down on top of the mascot head. "Routabegga!" Ron shouted at the mascot as he knocked the mascot's hands from his belt and the two men watching earlier tackled the giant monk to the ground and secured him in handcuffs.

Ron found himself dragged from the line by a member of airport security where he was lead with the mascot dragged by the two men from the line into a secured interrogation room.

The mascot was tossed to the floor across from Ron. The two men stood with hands on the gun holsters on their hips staring at the crumpled cosutmed character. "Were you just going to let him take me off to meet his parents before you stepped in on this guy? What the hell?"

The man closest to Ron with the name Rodgers etched on his holster cleared his throat. "We had the situation within our control. This man had no weapon on him or a way of retrieving on from within the suit without being obvious about it. We are sorry if you do not think this way too. We're only here to protect you from real threats, not from any asshole bugging you today."

The man next to Rodgers with Smith etched on his holster snickered at his partner's comments. The TSA representative walked to the mascot and reached for the head.

"I'm sorry about this guy. The airport usually screens these guys pretty regularly for the signs that they have lost the patience for a surly customer or the sense to leave them alone." TSA agent Tonga grabbed onto the large nose of the mask and hoisted it off quickly possibly expecting a dramatic Scooby Doo-like reveal of a villain.

The beheaded monk squinted his eyes at the bright lights in the room and began rubbed the back of fis head with his large cuffed hands. The motion made the cowlick of hair in the back stick up even worse than usual. Rodgers and Jones thumbed the safety snap off of their holsters when the cuffed hands went up initially, but Ron waved them back while shaking his head.

"Jimmy! What in the hell are you doing here?"

Once Upon A Not So Green Lawn...

"Time travel." Jimmy Tiffin stared wide eyed as he said two words to his neighbor Ron Canton. The spray from the nozzle on the hose continued its attack on the flower bed as Ron let the words sink in. The water began to fill up the open tulip bulbs before the assault was cut off at the source.

"What are you talking about?" Ron had moved into the Payton Estates neighborhood with his wife two months back and Jimmy Tiffin has been the first one to greet him as he arrived. Likewise, he had started the conversation off with similar randomness.

"You've seen my sister, Sheila. She's married to Jack Kenton from the auto body shop. I've told you about him. He's a bit off sometimes, but he's faithful, so she doesn't complain. She's sure she can bring him more into the social scene, but it's going to take a little time."

"Yeah. I get it. The whole Rome wasn't built on the bay thing." A barrage of water slaps at the chain link fence at the edge of the yard as Ron squeezes the trigger a couple of times to feed the browning grass connecting his yard to Jimmy's yard.

"I think you mean Rome wasn't built in a day, but yeah. She thinks she can change him. I don't think there's anything wrong with him myself. I've stopped by and seen him laughing it up with the other guys at the shop without any awkwardness, so I always figured it might just be he's not yet comfortable completely being himself around new people."

"Not everyone is as upfront to everyone they meet as you are, Jimmy."

"You don't have to tell me that." Ron's mocking tone falls on deaf ears once again. "Well, I go to talk to him minutes after he's done joking around and he's stiff as a board again. I start talking to him about how my boss, Fran, just laid into me about being too social at work. She says it puts other people off and that I don't stop talking long enough to let other people tell me they have work to do. I think that's crap, but I can't tell my boss or she'll fire me or make me work second shift where only the nutties come out. You know what I'm talking about."

"I know the type." Ron stares more intently trying to allow his body language to tell Jimmy to walk away, but Jimmy continues on with his story.

"Exactly, so I'm going on about Fran and I say to Jack, 'Can you believe that?' and he just stares past me and yells, 'That thing's gonna fall on you, Trent!' like I'm not even there. After that he looks back at me and says, 'What were you saying? I don't remember what you just said.' Can you believe that? He can't remember what I said over the past three minutes. So I'm about to lay into him when I hear a loud noise behind and one of the other guys yells out in pain. Turns out this guy Trent had hung a quarter panel of a Buick on a hook on the wall to paint and the hook pulled out of the wall and dropped the chunk of metal onto his foot. Crushed his left foot and he's been in an air cast for a week now."

"I guess he should have listened to Jack then."

"Yeah. But why listen to the guy when you've done something that way so many times before. So I looked at Jack and said, 'How did you know that was going to happen?' You know what he says to me? He says, 'I just saw it coming.' Can you believe that? Saw it coming!"

Ron stood watching the water drip out of the bottom of the tulips before looking up and realizing Jimmy had stopped talking. He wondered how long he could stand there before Jimmy forced the conversation forward again, but he figured Jimmy could wait longer than Ron's patience. "And?"

"What do you mean 'And?' It's so obvious. He drifted off into the future for a few minutes and saw what was going to happen. He stood there as I spoke and the world opened up its chest of secrets to him and looked in wide eyed. He saw, in those minutes, what was going to happen to Trent before it happened. He saw it. Don't you see? He can see into the future."

"You think he's tele...kinectic or whatever?"

"Clairvoyant is the word and yeah. I do. Think about it. He lost the time while I was talking and he gained the time coming after that where Trent was going to have the quarter panel fall on him. It's like the Golden Man story or more notably like that show Lost."

"You mean he's really on an island no one can find?"

"No. His mind shifted times. While I was talking to him, his current mind switched with his future mind so he was able to see the things he would remember seeing later, but because his future mind was there while I was talking and likely confused by the situation, he lost the entire conversation. His current mind wouldn't remember it because it never happened for that mind. It's less confusing on the show, trust me."

A crash is heard behind Ron as he turns to see the paper boy lob a newspaper and decapitate three stems from his rose bushes in front of the house. Ron takes the hose with his right hand and aims it under his left arm spraying mercilessly into the face of the paperboy. Swerving to regain his site, the front tire of his bike slams into the fire hydrant and tosses him headlong into the side of Jimmy's truck. The boy lay there clutching his head while Jimmy stared.

"So you think he can see into the future?" Unfazed, Ron tries to speed the conversation to a conclusion.

"Uhh. Yeah. I figure that's why he's so weird around people because he knows he may not be there completely while they talk and then he'll just be the asshole that hears but never really listens to other people. So I'm thinking we should have a poker night and invite him over. I'll tape the game in secret and watch his face. To make sure I can track if he knows what I'll have, I will mouth what cards I have to the camera so I'll remember later. Then we'll see if he can see into the future."

You're going to do all of this while we're playing for real money?"

"Of course. How else could I convince him it's real?"

"In that case, I'll be there. Not to spoil this perfect plan, but why don't you just ask him if he can see the future or, more directly, ask him in more detail about the incident at the shop. That way you wouldn't have to ponder these things with other people around and you could put your mind at ease." The paperboy stood up rubbing the back of his head and flipped off Ron as he grabbed his bike. With deft accuracy, Ron sprayed him again in the face and he slipped sideways smacking forehead on the bumper of the truck and fell to the ground again.

"Why would I deprive you of these conversations, Ron? I don't see you socialize yourself with anyone on the street. I fear I'm your only friend." Jimmy smiled a proud smile at the thought of being so important in someone else's life.

"This conversation makes me want to slit your wrists." Ron shakes his head incredulously.

"I think you meant slit YOUR wrists."

"I said what I meant. So if I'm so antisocial like Jack, why don't you think I can see into the future too?"

Jimmy tilted his head confused. "I don't know. I guess I've never seen an instance where that would have been called into question. Are you able to see into the future?"

Ron laughed heartily and openly at Jimmy. "Of course not, Jimmy. If I could, I would see you coming."

"I don't get it."

"I know you don't, buddy. Talk to you later." Ron walked towards his front porch dragging the hose behind him. Reaching into the rose bushes, he scoops the devastated roses into his left hand and, dropping the hose, grabs the paper with his right. Standing on the porch looking at the reflection in the glass of the front door, he hears the paperboy's bike ticking along and racing to a higher speed to get away. Ron turns and spirals the newspaper through the front get and into the front tire of the bike. He's halfway way through the front door as hears the paperboy swearing loudly on the front sidewalk.

Another Saturday Night

The red light flickering in the corner of Ted's phone indicates a message has arrived on the phone. Bruce knows this even without asking. Ted drops by the apartment once or twice each week to visit and each time lays the blackberry device on the coffee table. It could have been for effect or Ted may honestly not feel comfortable with the phone in his pocket. Bruce doesn't read minds, so he wouldn't know. If were a mind reader, hemight make mroe money. Bruce works a teller job at Franklin Street Bank. He's had the job for three weeks and the routine is beginning to settle into his brain.

--Show up on time to be let in through the back door by the manager.
--Walk to your station and unlock the drawer.
--Pull the rack of the cash from the drawer and walk back to the vault with the manager.
--Silently count out the bills as the manager counts them into each tray for each teller working that day.
--Return the filled trays to the drawer and lock the drawer.
--If he is the primary teller for the day, pull the shades up and place all of the cardboard advertisements for checking and savings accounts. Make sure the standing cut out for CDs is facing the front door.
--Make sure all of the lights are on and all of the deposit and withdrawal slips are in the correct bins and that the pens have ink to write with.

Day in and day out for three weeks, Bruce has been working without break beyond Sundays off to secure enough cash to keep the apartment and amenities to which he has become accustomed. Before this job, Bruce had worked retail at a video game store in the local strip mall until the holiday rush died out. Before that, he worked in a cardboard cutting facility outside of the city for three months before the repetitive assembly line labor drove him to quit.

For the six years Bruce lived in the neighborhood a couple miles north of downtown, he had not kept a job for longer than six months. That single job was a contract position working on a programming project for a marketing company to track projects within for gaining efficiencies. After the contact was up, Bruce found himself struggling to find another opportunity in his field of study. Programming jobs within the city did not have any need for him as a new graduate. Each position required three to five years of experience with programming languages that had only been out for four years and which Bruce had not experience with in his time in school.

His girlfriend, Tara, pushed him to get a job in the short term to avoid living in his car. Obligingly, Bruce started at Radio Shack for a few months before quitting to take a course in a new technical field opening up. After a solid week of training, Bruce found himself further in debt for the training and no more experienced than before. His employment spiral continued downward and Bruce had not found another job to the one that brought him to the city. The closest he came was a two week effort designing a website for a local company that he is now confident has been replaced with someone else's efforts.

Bruce had slowly run out of options in the city until Ted put in a word with the local Franklin Street branch. Ted works in the corporate offices of Franklin Street's parent bank, American Streets Financial, as a finance executive. He routinely walks away from gatherings with friends to take important calls and constantly scans his email on his phone while talking with friends. Bruce hated this. He would complain to shared friends of the pretentious aspect of not giving full attention to the person speaking making the person feel like they are less important than an incoming sales report on a Saturday evening. In truth, Bruce was mostly jealous.

Ted was a family man and a supportive friend if one is to get beyond the second most important thing in the room to Ted. He lived for his job. Every update in every conversation included the bank. "How's it going, Ted?" "Great. We just moved into the top ten of banks in the tri-state area thanks to some number crunching I was involved in, so I'm hoping more good things are on their way." His family came up less often. The kids were always doing cute things the kids under four years old tend to do according to his wife, Trina, but Ted was less likely to notice. He was busy being the job and making the money to support his family. Bruce envied being the job.

After approximately ten flashes, Ted returned from the kitchen with a fresh beer in his hand. Crossing to the couch, Ted grabbed the blinking device and began flipping through emails before he sat down next to Bruce.

"So how are you liking the branch so far? Think it'll take? I know you've been through quite a few jobs, but give the bank a chance. At the teller position, you get solid hours and enjoy bank holidays as well as a solid paycheck and a bottom rung start into the Street's corporate ladder. A little initiative shown in taking more responsibility will get you up that ladder in no time." Bruce glanced up from the tiny screen only for the last few words and brought his eyes back to the screen before Bruce would answer.

"It's fine." His words came with reverberating clicking from Ted's phone as Ted responded to an email in the midst of the conversation. "I like the cardboard cut outs. I may bring the one of the woman ecstatic about 15% APR on the credit cards. Might even get rid of Tara and just introduce the cut out as my new love. We'll have a fantastic life at fine restaurants for half the price. I can order kids for us from the marketing catalog and I won't even need a 19 year old when I turn 50 because she won't age. I think it's a solid plan."

Ted continued clicking letters and staring intently at the screen a minute after Bruce stopped talking. He picked up his empty bottle and shook it in front of him to see if any beer would magically appear in the empty bottle. Not surprisingly, none appeared. The clicking stopped and Ted was watching Bruce shake his bottle.

"Would your new wife be jealous whenever you walked by one of those models in cardboard form hocking beer at the corner store?" Bruce smiled at Ted's ability to do multiple tasks and still not miss the conversation. Even if it was a bit off putting.

"Nah. We have an open relationship. I may have a weekly visit from the beer wench from the St Paulie Girl signs and she can see the deodorant cutouts every so often."

Ted tilted the beer back and watched the red light o his phone begin blinking again before he finished his drink. "Whomever you end up with, do you think they prefer you as a banker?"

"I told you the job was fine. It's not stressful and the people make it less repetitive throughout the day." He stood to walk to the kitchen for another beer. "It's really the downtime that gets to me. I was training for working on computer. I paid thousands of dollars over four years to be taught how to build applications on machines that don't require me to be at an office or anyplace beyond my couch in my underwear and there I am for roughly fours hours of each day sitting on a stool staring out into the open space and wondering why my new wife's ass is a flat chunk of cardboard."

Ted moved through the open doorway into his kitchen and pulled the handle on the 20 year old white monster of a refrigerator to grab another beer. Slamming the door shut, Ted grabs the bottle opener from the door and flicks the cap off in one smooth motion. Maybe I should have been a bartender. At least then I could drink when I get bored. By the time he returned to the living room, Ted was typing again on his phone. Chances were good this had happened at least once more before Bruce could return from the kitchen.

"Like I was saying, Bruce. Initiative. If you talk to the manager when things are slow and ask what you could do that might help you move up more quickly and fill the downtime, I'm sure you wouldn't be bored. At least, not from a lack of things to do. Give it time and stay focused and we could be sending our kids to the same schools and carpooling to the corporate tower. You do plan on sending your kids to schools, right?"

"I don't know yet. My cardboard love and I are still arguing over public schooling versus private schooling versus home schooling the fake kids. I'll talk to the manager on Monday if I find myself bored for a period of time again and see how that goes. I just know myself and I don't feel the value of the job yet. I still have that piece of my brain telling me I'll find a job coding something somewhere someday and that keeps my brain from accepting the need to pay attention to the details of the job."

"Even after five years away from it?" Ted had a way of stating things in painful perspective. "I may be working in finance just like I hoped when I went through business school, but I didn't always have this. I had to work through less than proper finance positions and some non-finance ones to get where I am. I'm just saying to give it a real chance. You might find it speaks to you after all. Might even find a career in it."

Ted smiled to hide the gritted teeth. He hated being told what to do in life even by a guy who had it all worked out. Maybe he resented authority too much to accept a new opportunity when it presented itself, but he had serious doubts this job would satisfy his need to do something he felt mattered in life. He did not look down on the job itself, he looked down on himself in that role of filling a spot to live his life from day to day.

Bruce's phone began buzzing on the table the minute he set it down. "It's probably Trina. We have dinner plans tonight. Mind if I head out and we catch up some more later in the week?"

Bruce sighed deeply at the chance to not talking about work anymore. "That's fine. Tell the wife I said hello. Go back to your perfect life and leave me to my squalor. Come to think of it, you're a pretty lousy friend. Why don't I live in your house with you? You wouldn't even know I was there in all of that space."

Ted chuckled as he pressed the send button on his phone. "I'll be sure to ask Trina and get right back to you on that." With a wave and another laugh, Ted walked out the door leaving Bruce to clean up the bottles on the table.

Bruce went back to his desktop keyboard and began typing up lines of code for some home projects. He had been working on teaching himself the new technologies he had no experience with in hopes of using that as experience on his resume. Tara would be home in an hour and hated when she found beer bottles on the table. She likes Ted, but felt the time he spent at their apartment was time away from Bruce finding the job he really wanted. She was ball of stress every time she came home to find out Bruce had quit another job. After so many years together, Bruce knew she wanted to get married but also knew it was unlikely while Bruce was job hopping and finances were so unstable.

His fingers stopped tapping the logic statements for a few minutes and he found himself unwilling to continue as he thought of how Ted's success always made him feel unfocused in his life. Pondering where he had gone wrong, Bruce moved back to the couch and knew he would still be there with a beer in his hand when Tara came home. So be it.

79: Mistaken Identity

"Sammy boy, I haven't seen you in three weeks. Where have you been hiding yourself? They've been sending us some worthless snot with the morning bagels. I swear he's been bringing us two day old bagels as bad as they've been."

A man in a navy blue double breasted suit steps into the elevator. He sees me with the box of bagelsand assumes I'm the bagel delivery guy. He doesn't notice I'm wearing a finer quality suit than he is or that I've seen this Sammy before and I don't have the piercings nor the unkept hair to make the confusion valid. The only thing I have is the box of bagels I took off of Sammy this morning.

"Hey, boss. Big weekend planned?" I mimick the excited nervousness Sammy exuded when I apprached him. He would definitely use the same tone for Dave Merrit even if he doesn't know he's the CFO of the company.

"You know it, my pastry peddling friend! I've got a 90 foot yacht waiting for me on Lake Superior. It's a bit colder up there in the winter, but just as nice as anyplace else in the summer. I take a few sick days each July and just sit out there with a margarita in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. There's almost nothing like it." He laughs at his own story wide enough that I can see the gold cap in a molar in the back.

"Do they charge that much less up there for docking and storage to make it worth the drive?" I shift the box awkwardly trying to draw any attention to the fact that I'm wearing a suit. Dave doesn't notice.

Dave leans in close to me and glances at the corners of the elevator as if spies lie in every corner. "Between you, me and the fence posts, Sammy, I'm hiding it up there. There's less chance someone from the office will see me all the way up there to question me aboutthe boat. The less they know, the better my life is."

The smile I give him is genuine. "They get jealous because you make the big bucks to afford it."

"Well, I don't make quite that much, but nobody buys what they can actually afford these days, right? Granted, I'm not taking out a mortgage for my BMW or the Rolex. I have my ways of making the money I deserve here. I'm the CFO. I know what we're going to do before the market does and I have friends very appreciative of that knowledge. Over the past 10 years, I've made an extra two million dollars through investments thanks to my position here. Like Mel Brooks said, it's good to be the king."

I smile and end the game. "Is the CFO king? I thought the CEO was the big boss."

Dave laughs just condescending enough to confirm that I'm still not recognizable to him. "Well, that's an appointed position by the board. I'm CFO. I earned this role. I control the finances here and that makes me the big boss. Besides, they just appointed a new CEO this past week. Some snivelling pain in the ass from one of the oil companies. I haven't met him yet, but I don't expect him to affect how I work here."

The doors opened to the 38th floor. Debbie, the finance department's administrative assistant, looked through the doors at the two men exiting. "Oh good. Mr Philips found you, Mr Merrit. He was hoping to get on your calendar to discuss his new role as CEO."

Dave Merrit, in all of his well kept persona and fine clothing, fell apart. He stammered out a few syllables before I cut him off. "Yes, Debbie. I now know my new role. Can you post an opening at the CFO position? I believe we are about to have an opening. Bagel?"

The Line

"Whenever I see someone pull a cigarette from a pack at a party, I'm always reminded of my college days where I once ate a cigarette on a bet. Many people ask me what I got for that and I tell them that the cigarette entered my blood stream through my stomach and I becamse immune to cigarette smoke. Unfortunately, the only place I could make use of my super power was at dance clubs and, unfortunately, I wasn't immune to the ear splitting volume or willing to put up with the bullshit pretentiousness of most of the people I met there. Of course, that was back in college when everyone went places in groups and just got hammered for the sake of it. Now I find myself single and dating people that keep pushing me back to the clubs like there is anything appealing about them. The only reason people go there is to be able to feel free to dance in whatever way they please that would make them look weird at a party. It all just ends up looking like a sea of people with no personal space swinging their arms wildly and rocking their hips."

The red head in the short skirt sucking on a Marlboro exhaled loudly in plume of nicotine enriched air. Standing next to her was a man in his late thirties with a buzzcut and a faded blue t-shirt that used to hold a Cubs logo long ago lost in the pain of seasons failed. He stared wide eyed at her waiting for a response to his unsolicited soliloquy. She smiled a patronizing smile with more than a little lipstick on her front teeth before hissing, "Go away."

"Statistics state that cigarette smokers are more likely to be under-educated or high school drop outs. 20% of white women smoke and I'd say roughly 95% of the men here are not speaking to you right now. You have no ring on your finger and have been sitting alone here for the past 20 minutes. Even if someone is just around the corner coming to meet you, you should heed sage advice no matter what moment in time you find yourself in. If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with."

The stare the odd man received was meant to melt him to the puddle of nothingness she had already imagined him being before she dropped her gaze to her ash tray and glanced around the room at the single men not coming to see her. She turned her head to the table next to her in time to see a very attractive man in his late twenties glancing her way. She smiled and exhaled another stream of smoke as he frowned back, waved the smoke away from his head and walked away to the bar leaving his table empty. Turning back to her unwanted conversationalist, she found nothing but a hazy view of an empty space in front of the bar. When she turned back to her ash tray, she found him sitting next to her on the now abandoned stool left from the next table.

"I'm Allen. You'll want to remember my name when you call me later." Laying a business card on the table with a phone number scrawled across the front, Allen turned to the door and walked away. He managed to get to the curb before his cell phone rang. He let it go to voicemail and waved for a cab.

Not So Hidden Treasure

Thanis McGuffin presses the round plastic power button on his PC and blows the steam off of his coffee cup as the monitor lights up. He sips the cup apprehensively and swears out loud at his impatience. His lips sting with the burning sensation from the ghost of boiling coffee past that is not upsetting his stomach. As the sensation returns to his lips, he begins to taste where the scalding has now past his tongue and reaches for another packet of cream.

Dumping the small cup of cream into his mug, he spills a few drops on the keyboard as he attempts to login while attending to his coffee. He feigns a sense of confidence as if he does this sort of multi-tasking all of the time even though no one is watching him. The status bar slowly ticks towards 100% loading as he thinks to himself how much he needed a newer computer if this job pans out. He glances at the post-it note on his desk with the name Gregory Larker. A study of the last name gives him more comfort as it is not a common sounding last name and it looks American enough not to be a common name with which he is not familiar.

The speakers shriek a triumphant, high pitched tada noise causing Than to nearly knock over his coffee onto the stack of papers on his desk. The papers don't have any meaning, but the mere sight of them legitimizes him as a private detective with experience and plenty of cases to show for it. He couldn't let the man in the $1,000 suit not cut quite wide enough to conceal the bulge of what he assumed was a gun that had shown up that morning think he was a rookie. He had been fired from his job as a computer lab monitor for abusing his computer rights and ignoring his responsibilities. Coincidentally, he was caught while printing out the certificate for completing the at home private investigation online course. He had aced the forensics question and was able to correctly guess what Occam's razor indicated. The certificate was now hung in his office with a phone notary seal he made with sunflower seed impressions and a pin.

Than clicked on the small blue icon to launch a web browser. He thought about how much easier the PI business would have been 50 years back if they could have googled their suspects to find them. After the search results for Gregory Larker asked him if he meant Gregory Parker or the Gregorian Lark, a web page from an old geocities space came up. The page listed itself as the home space for Gregory Larker of Bulmot, Massachusetts. This was turning out to be easier than he had imagined. The site had no pictures, but listed a link to his facebook profile.

Than clicked the link and watched as the picture loaded showing a man in his mid-twenties with curly black hair and a day's worth of facial hair. He listed his hometown as Bulmot, but he had himself listed under the San Francisco network of contacts. Even his bio matched perfectly and then some to the story told to him be the gun toting suit he met that morning.

"Greg was a pharmaceutical lab assistant working on a breakthrough cure for various forms of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma when his lab caught fire taking all of the data and research in the lab. Luckily, Greg held onto the backups of the research, but went into hiding when he discovered the fire was set intentionally. I am currently in hiding and can not be found anymore. I will continue my research outside of the reaches of those wishing me harm. My cell is 510-833-6868 if you need to reach me."

If only every case could be this easy, Than thought to himself. Jumping onto the Southwest.com site to book a cheap flight to San Francisco, Than began mentally packing his bags and shopping for a new laptop.

Levitation

Levitation comes from the Latin word levitas meaning "lightness". It is described in Webster's dictionary as the act or process of levitating especially the rising or lifting of a person or thing by means held to be supernatural. Some heroes may use high tech devices to mimic a sort of anti-gravity or a propulsion system giving the body release from the bonds of gravity, but true levitation comes from the constant stable suspension beyond the earth's gravitational forces. Some super small objects maybe be able to be levitated by the use of the Casimir effect by equalizing the force between two plates causing no field of magnetic force. Human beings are incapable of levitation without mechanical means.

---

Tony awoke from a dream of kittens leaping from a cliff into the icy blue water of the Pacific ocean. He had fallen asleep 45 minutes earlier on the bus watching the billboards in the city go by leading him to this strange imagery. He now sees puppies chasing giant red tennis balls in an empty swimming pool. Before long he's back to the cliff watching the kittens leap only now they don't reach the water. They've begun to soar into the clouds followed by the tennis balls and followed by the chasing puppies. A psychiatrist would see a simple mind looking for the simple pleasures of childhood. A 28 year old man should not be thinking of such odd things.

This thought is still floating in his mind when he opens his eyes to a bus load of people watching him. They stare up at him confused by the 5 foot 8 inch man. Even the tall biker looking man with the severe handlebar mustache is staring up at him. His butt is not numb from the hard seat like his typical 2 hour bus ride's usual results. He looks to his shoes and sees his shoelace is untied and dangling over the back of the seat in front of him. The tips barely touch the seat back as Tony is floating four feet above his seat.

His head is pressing against the bars on the ceiling for a few seconds before he comes crashing to his seat. His left ankle lands on the seat back in front of him and his head bangs into the plexiglass window. He is still swearing under his breath when the bus slams to a halt and the bus driver demands he get off the bus.

"How do you expect me to get home? I'm in the middle of nowhere at least an hour from my stop!"

"Why should I care you freak? Fly home for all I care, just get off my damn bus." The bus driver now has the large biker guy behind him supporting the intimidation factor. Tony takes the hint and grabs his bag before walking to the rear doors and pressing his way onto the shoulder of highway 98. After an hour of walking, he arrived at a small roadside motel. After arguing with the young man behind the counter reading a comic, Tony was forced to get a room until the morning bus could arrive. His sleep would not be as sound as the bus trip.