HYlon hiccupped, and then said, “No, the meatloaf is the real deal. The QUalz ate bugs and bug larvae and mushrooms. But what happened was during one of our visits we sampled some of your food preservation methods. It involved the use of salt, actually, the use of sodium.”
I looked confused.
“We crave certain chemicals and salt, sodium is one of them. It is like candy to us. But it is also necessary for our metabolism.”
I still did not get it.
“Have you ever looked at the contents of a can of Spam, or Beef-a-Roni, or really almost any other canned or prepared food?” KHriz interjected.
I thought for a moment, then the light went on, high levels of sodium, salt, MSG.
“Okay, that explains the why, but not the how.” I said.
“Oh, well early on we stuck with salt pork, brined meats or beef jerky. But during visits in the period of your WWII we discovered the idea of canned foods, particularly Spam. Did you know that was said to be what saved the Soviet Union in that war?” KHriz told me.
I just stared at him.
“We read the labels and as time went on your country, the USA and other countries mandated content labeling it made it easier and easier for us.”
“I see,” and as I looked at his plate with the corned beef hash and added salt, I got it. “So you would make special trips to get this stuff, alien midnight grocery runs?”
“Oh, we did not have to even do it at midnight, we were able to do it during the day, remember, you gave us the holo-projectors to make our appearances seem human,” hiccupped KHriz.
“So I did,” I said with a big smile, “But what about the Boone’s Farm and bad wines?”
“Oh, that was the other chemical in the equations. For us another necessary element was sulfides. You see lots of it in cheap wine.”
I thought for a moment, then said, “So it was not the food itself but the chemical content in them that you crave.”
“Bango” exclaimed KHriz.
“It is Bingo KHriz, the term is Bingo,” said HYlon between hiccups.
“Yes, Bingo,” replied KHriz, “and the forms of the chemicals in your canned and brined food were a great deal more palatable than the mushroom larvae meals that we ate most of the time.”
At that moment there was a bell, a jingle at the door of the diner. It was there to alert the waitress of a new customer. I turned to see who was coming in. It looked like a truck driver. I turned back to HYlon and KHriz, but they were gone, disappeared.
I smiled to myself, this has happened before, and I am thinking will be occurring again.
I heard the waitress from the other end of the counter greet the trucker in disheveled work clothes, “Hey Jack, how is it going today?”
The pudgy truck driver just replied “I am so happy I could just shit.”
I left the tab and a few extra dollars at the counter and walked out of the diner. I wondered who would be next to visit me.
Shrooms
It was a HHH, hazy, hot and humid day and one that I had no desire or intentions of going very far out of the house. I had spent the morning writing my blog entry for the day and then moved on to cleaning; a little laundry, mopping floors and the rest of the usual stuff.
As I worked my way down my to-do list, yeah, I am pretty anal about such things, but as we age it becomes easy to forget what I have to do. I think we all have those moments where we walk into a room to grab some object or take care of some simple chore and 45 minutes later three other things are accomplished but the original goal had been undone.
So anyway, dusting was done and now it was water the plants time. They were a little dry and as I watered into the Peace Lily from my Mom’s funeral all those years ago, I noticed that that there was a bunch of yellow balls in the soil around one of the other plants.
When I looked at them closer, mushrooms, they were mushrooms. I had never seen that happen before. I figured I would look them up in one of my Audubon books and see if I could identify them when I finished the watering.
As I futzed along, I thought about it. Why were there mushrooms in a plant that had never had them before?
The phone rang and when I saw that it was from Washington DC, I figured that it was another auto-dial “Hillary call” telling me that Donald Trump had raised millions and if I wanted a special supporter button I could help her urgent need to raise money. I didn’t pick it up.
I poured another coffee and sat down checking my Face Book page, sending out a couple of funny meme and then recalled that I had been watering my plants.
As I got to the cactus done, can’t really water them too much, I turned to the Wandering Jew. That was the one that had the mushrooms. The more I thought about it the more I figured it might not be a bad idea to put it out on the back deck. I just had this little voice telling me that the spores might be bad for me.
So I did, and of course in the doing I bumped it and one of the little yellow balls poofed. There was a little tiny cloud of yellow dust. Oh well, at least it was outside.
Back in the house, back to the coffee and Face Book. Oh, first I need to check my on line banking, I do that every day, make sure that my account is not hacked or I am going to bounce any checks. I see that my royalty check from my first three books has hit my account, looks like a Subway 6 Inch is on the table for lunch today. And while I am at it I should check my e-mail. There is all the usual stuff, drug/med saving from Canada, a few recipes, some travel ideas, but nothing of real importance.
The memes have all been sent out with care and now it is time to settle in and do some writing for the day. I have a list of topics that I want to cover for the ‘Book 4’ but as I stare at the screen, I saw something on the edge of my sight. I am not sure, it is just something popping in and out of the edge of my view.
Then across the screen marches a little kind of cartoon character, it looked like something out of Fantasia. It, a, wow, a mushroom, with eyes, and a mouth, and an attitude. It is standing in the middle of the screen, with hands on his hip, glaring at me.
“We wanted more time!” he told me.
I stared, and at least in my mind, I answered him. “Time?”
“Yes, time, you talked about us, a little, you mentioned us, but we never got the credit you should have given us. You talked about Spam, and crappy canned foods, and cheapo wines, but left us hangin’,” spouted the fungus.
“I, ah, well, you weren’t that important,” I replied.
I tried to get up, to shake loose from this hallucination, but it was a no go. The recliner, where I do my writing had somehow absorbed me, wrapped its arms around my lower body. I was unable to get up. But then, really, I was so comfortable, so relaxed.
“Important, we weren’t important, Mikey, do you hear this dope?”
Suddenly there was a second mushroom on the screen, a little fatter, and kind of dopey looking.
“Yeah, boss, I heards him. He makes me feel unwanted, I think I’z was important.”
“Of course, you were Mikey, we all were,” said the first mushroom.
Wait, I am sitting in my living room, writing and have two mushrooms who look like they are from a Disney cartoon talking to me. This is normal how?
“Okay, Mr. Author Man, let me explain the thing to you, sees we was important, we was part of the story, and we was what keep the little lizard guys going….. for years.”
I am not sure if I said it, or thought it, but “Yes, but what is it that made you important?”
“Mikey, do you hears this guy? I just told him we feed the lizard guys, what’d you call them, the QUalz? And then in the later part of the book were a food source for the survivors in the friggin’ Archive, and finally we feeds the clones…….Hey, Hey, Mikey, send in the clones…..Oh, I crack myself up……and was there any thanks, any respect, any mushroom recipes from Nick or what was his name…..Stumpy? No, just…….we ate mushrooms and friggin’ bugs.”
By this point I was reduced to a drooling lump. I just s
tared at the screen, the colors, the whir of the fan in the computer. Have you ever tasted a color?
“Hey, Hey, stay wit me here, don’t you be getting all weirded out on me. I am just sayin’ you should do something about us mushrooms in the book, this book, maybe a recipe or two, or maybe how in the cold of one of the winters we kept them people alive.”
Luncheon meat, I think that is how I would be best able to describe my tongue, a big chunk of spam, or bologna. It wouldn’t really work, I couldn’t talk back to this image on the screen. The best I could do was weakly nod my head.
“Good, Good, I think you are gettin it.” said the first mushroom.
“Yeah, Yeah, that’s it. He’s gettin it.” said Mikey.
Then the screen began to blur, and swirl, colors, spinning colors, I couldn’t look away, and then I was just looking into eternity, into the essence, the void, the blackness, the………..
It was dark outside, it was night, I have no idea what time. I feel a little fuzzy, thirsty, a little hungry, real hungry, kind of like a hangover, but not so painful. I sat and thought for a bit. Mushrooms, yes they did play a part in the The Event. They play a part in life on the planet, an important part.
I picked up the phone, 860-647-5329 and dialed………ring, ring……
The voice on the other end, “Hello, CJ’s”
“Yeah, I would like to order a small pizza, with Hamburg and make it double mushrooms. The name is Larson!”
(Note: the mushrooms never visited again, the little yellow balls in the plant were gone, I am not sure if the birds, or squirrels raided them while I was ‘out’. But they were gone.)
Little Kingdoms
I have never been a fan of on-line gaming, but every once an again I would try it. When I do the on-lines it was usually poker, Texas Hold’em. I mean I don’t count Word with Friends or Trivia Crack, they are different. I am talking like Warcraft, or Strike Force or whatever. But every once and again, yeah I will jump in.
It was a Tuesday, a snowy Tuesday, and I had planned in advance by laying in my supply of bread and milk, and maybe a few bags of chips and some ice cream, coconut, my new favorite flavor. Have you ever had it with fudge sauce, it is sinfully delicious. But alas, I digress.
I chose a game called “Little Kingdoms’. It is one of those typical strategy games based on a post-apocalyptic world that involve starting with a small area and building it up. You add forts and outposts while gathering materials with the goal of building your little kingdom into a larger one by means of coalition, negotiation, or combat. So it is not necessarily always just a shoot’em up or hacking with swords.
The one interesting aspect of the game is that you have your choice of where you want to start, or what sort of terrain your kingdom begins in. All of the terrain is based on a continent that gives eventual access to the other potential kingdoms.
There are the options of what kingdom you might begin with, Forest People, Mountain People, Horse People, Swamp People, Lake / Shore / Ocean People, Farm People or Nomads. By their title you get the idea of where they are located and perhaps their strengths and weaknesses.
For my first venture I opted for the Forest People. It seemed to fit best to what I know, being from the Northeastern part of the country. The other thing was I decided that the best way for me to start out was to play in ‘solo’ mode. It left me the option of not joining an in-progress game where I might end up as mere cannon fodder or an easy target to an established kingdom. The AI in the game kept the other kingdoms at a pace with the growth rate of mine.
So I began with my little band, a family or clan of 25 people, and built and bred, expanding the kingdom. Each clan has basic knowledge, and weapons, like spears, knives, as well as simple necessities like pots, pans, clothing appropriate to your territorial climate. As time moves on you are able to find and adapt modern things like guns, radios, transportation, and most importantly, knowledge.
So I happily built and added to my clan. I stopped at noon to make a sandwich, and as I reached for ingredients, smiled thinking of little lizard guys, I was having a Spam sandwich.
By 2 pm the snow still swirled outside and the wind was howling. I had grown my clan to 100 people by opening the clan up to ‘stragglers’, roaming people who wandered by and our children who were being born. My clan, the ‘Thomerian Tribe’ was doing well. We were not bothered by anyone, and had a thriving agriculture going. The fields were full with wheat and corn, the cattle herds and sheep were growing fat and we were well stocked for winter.
It was by accident that the old cave was discovered and ‘unlocked’ to me. Some of the children were playing in a rock ridge area a little north of our village. It was closer to the hovels and wall because the village had expanded over time to come closer to the ridge, and although they were told not to play there, well, kids will be kids.
I call it a cave but it was more a man-made underground structure. It had things called books in a language that was strange. Remember that although I am literate, the game puts that little twist in there that requires someone to break the code of the language; then we can have access to the knowledge contained in those tomes.
The long story short is that the Forest People, my clan, who broke the code and received a lot of knowledge about making things. The big key was that it explained how to get further beyond barriers in the underground structure. It also gave background information of the other Little Kingdoms that might be out there.
One of the things that was in that deeper part of the cave was a magic pool, it was flat, and dark, and still. It was clear that it was not a drinking pool, but had some strange quality about it. The Learned One of the tribe studied the writings, the books that were there. She figured out what it was. She called it a ‘seeing pool’, but was not clear on how to use it. She spent time, hours working on trying to understand it, to make it work. Her character was running on a background program loop and would cause a pop-up to periodically hit the screen with a question or to require an action like, ‘Touch Water?’ or ‘Talk to Water’.
It was the Mountain People that were first contacted; actually, more it was they who contacted us. The video screen of my computer changed to a scene in which I watched the learned Sim character, Pindar, that was her name, sitting by the pool. There was a light, a small glow at first, which grew, and soon the pool was a turquoise blue and there was sound, voice actually, asking for those who might hear to answer. Pindar was at first reluctant to do so, but finally, timidly, offered a simple “Hello”.
A chatter of excitement flowed out of the turquoise pool, question of who is this, where are you, are you friend foe, all of which were overwhelming to Pindar.
“Tom, aren’t you curious?” a voice came out of the computer, it was different from the turquoise pool, the pool was still with this voice, but when it spoke to Pindar there were ripples.
At first I did not think about it much.
“Don’t we get to find out what happened to Cheyenne Mountain after your characters left?” continued the voice.
It was an authoritative voice, a commanding male voice, one used to being in charge by the sounds of it.
I sat for a moment, “But I am in a game, you can’t talk with me, only the Sims.”
“Really? I think you need to reconsider that for a moment. You left us high and dry so to speak, your characters left, there were hints of what might have happened, what our friends at Fort Knox were up to, but then, it all just went away” the voice pointed out.
“I didn’t think it was important to the story, I mean really, were the readers that interested in what happened?” I replied, wait, I am talking to a computer, a screen, a voice.
“For some, maybe, but more important, you created a world, and people, and characters. Like Asuna told you, there is a responsibility to them, to us. We can’t be just left here in limbo, forgotten in time, in nowhere land.”
As I stared at the screen, I thought about what he, wait, who is he?
“Hey, who are you?” I asked.
A kind of sigh, then, “It is General Osgood, remember him, or did you have to go back to find out who I was in the books.”
I chuckled, busted, that was what I had done while we were talking. “Yeah, you got me!” I replied.
He laughed, and said to someone, “Okay Welles, you win again, I have to stop betting with you.”
A second voice, I am guessing it was Welles, General Welles, “So what happened to us and what about that asshat De Soto from Fort Knox?”
“Yeah, what did happen to me, the asshat as you called me?” a third voice chuckled; it had to be De Soto.
“Okay, I never really got too carried away with the actual putting fingers to keyboard on that but what I saw going down was this.” I mumbled.
I told them that after we delivered the medication that was supposed to save the world, and it didn’t, but before the Carrington Event took place, your locations, your facilities, had a little contest to see who would be the new high command.
General De Soto, beside his efforts to take out non-American shipping, he had the idea of rolling his troops cross country and going for a full assault on Cheyenne. The down side of that was fuel, bridges and time were not his friends. Unlike Cheyenne he had no long range equipment; best he and his men could muster were 40 Chinook helicopters with some support Apaches. The attack was a failure, he were out-gunned; it was doomed from the start.
“Welles’ infantry held you at bay, and then Osgood sent half dozen Tomahawks, the nuclear kind, to Knox, game, set, match, Cheyenne,” I told the computer screen.
“Damn” said De Soto.
“Well, there were a few of your men who survived the blasts, mostly down deep in the gold vaults, but their end was even uglier, the troops who still had some of their body left changed, and came to get them. You were one of the last to go General De Soto.” I told him
“Crap, and those yahoos at Cheyenne got an easy pass, lived long and prospered.” He muttered.
“Yeah, well, not really, they did okay, but the problem was that without computers, and trucks and such due to the Carrington EM burst they were kind of stuck. Some tried to move out and make it above ground. The others stayed hunkered down in the mountain. Welles, it was your troops who tried it outside. Over time the group died off, although your men and women lasted about 25 years before the last one passed.” I explained. “Mostly natural causes, a little bit of disease, some accidents and occasional zombie but no replacements, that was the problem, there were no new people, no babies.”
The Event Series (Book 4): Filling in the Cracks Page 3