by Tom Hoffman
“Hi, Orville! Surprised to see me?”
Chapter 8
Pavorak Gorge
The next morning when Orville arrived at the Book Emporium, Sophia was waiting for him on the front steps.
“Hi, Orville!” Sophia glanced around to make certain no one was listening, then said in a low voice, “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you I was a member of the Metaphysical Adventurers, but I had to wait until Master Marloh told you about the group. Those are the rules. I was a member of the Shapers Guild on Quintari and was recruited by a member of the Metaphysical Adventurers. They brought me here for two years of advanced training and even found me a boarding house to stay in. I still have a lot to learn but Master Marloh says I’m one of the best students he’s ever had.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all. You know a million times more about all this than I do. How did you get here from Quintari anyway? Weren’t your parents afraid to let you go to another planet?”
“I came here through a spectral door that Master Marloh opened.”
“A what door?”
“A spectral door. It’s a kind of pathway that lets you travel between two worlds without having to go through the space between them. I don’t exactly understand the deep physics behind it, but I do know that only the most advanced shapers can open spectral doors. The Anarkkians used to have machines that could open spectral doors and I guess the more advanced civilizations must have devices like that on their interstellar ships.”
“Creekers, that sounds a little scary. Weren’t your parents worried? My Mum would never let me do something like that.”
“It’s kind of hard for me to talk about it, but both my parents are gone. My Mum died when I was a mouseling and Papa died a little over a year ago. I was living with my Mum’s sister when they recruited me.”
Orville desperately wished he hadn’t asked Sophia about her parents. “Oh. I’m sorry, Sophia. I didn’t know.” Orville stared awkwardly at the ground.
“That’s okay, there’s no way you could have known.”
Orville quickly changed the topic. “So, have you thought any more about the glowbirds?”
“I talked to Master Marloh and he feels the clockwork glowbirds are important, one link in a chain of events we need to follow. This is exactly the kind of mission Metaphysical Adventurers go on, and it will make a perfect first mission for you. It won’t be too dangerous or too scary. Master Marloh wants us to find out where the glowbirds are going and how they are connected to a possible future war. He said you could take a few days off work so we can follow the glowbirds. We’ll leave early tomorrow morning. I can start your shaping lessons during the mission, if you’d like.”
Orville was thrilled. He rubbed his paws together. “I can’t wait. My first big adventure and I’ll be learning about shaping!”
“I’m not sure how much of a big adventure it will be, but you never know what might happen. That’s what makes them fun. And sometimes scary.”
As the sun peeked up over the mountains the following morning it found Sophia and Orville heading due west through a dense forest, the falls several miles behind them.
“I brought my compass. Do we just keep heading west? How will we know if the birds change direction?”
Sophia swung her backpack off her shoulder. “I have something that will work a little better than a compass.” She flipped open her pack, rummaged around and pulled out a pair of brass goggles with fluorescent green lenses. There were two small dials and four silver tabs on the side panel. She tapped one of the tabs and a small light blinked on.
“What are those? What do they do?”
“Trackers use them on Quintari. Master Marloh had a box of them at the MA headquarters. It makes tracking a lot easier. Here, I’ll show you. Put them on.”
Orville took the heavy goggles from Sophia and strapped them on over his eyes. “I can’t see anything. Everything looks dark green.”
“How about now?” Sophia tapped several of the tabs and small blue light in the center of the goggles began blinking.
“Oh, that’s good. Whatever you did worked. Now I can see really clearly. How do I track something with them?”
“A glowbird’s electrical field affects both the atmosphere and the space it flies through. Its effect on the atmosphere dissipates quickly, but it can take a week for its effect on space to fade away. These goggles track the effect of their electrical field on space, relative to the position of Earth. I’m going to slowly turn this dial and when it matches the residual electronic signature of the birds, you’ll see something.”
Orville watched the sky closely as Sophia turned the small brass dial. Moments later Orville cried out, “I see it! I see their trail! There are seven orange lines going through the sky and heading west. This is amazing – it’s like magic!”
Sophia quickly corrected Orville. “You mean it’s like science. Magic is science that mice don’t understand.”
“I know you’re right, but it still seems like magic.”
Orville and Sophia continued heading west, following the orange trail lines of the seven glowbirds. Six hours later they were trudging along through the forest, both of them exhausted. Sophia came to a halt in a wide clearing at the top of a small hill.
“It will be getting dark soon. Let’s set up camp here and have dinner. We can get up with the sun and continue tracking the glowbirds.”
Orville set his pack down. “Whew, that was getting heavy. I can build the fire. I used to go camping a lot and I’m pretty good at making campfires.”
“No need for that.” There was a bright flash of light and a circle of stones appeared in the center of the clearing. Another flick of Sophia’s wrist and there was a roaring campfire inside the ring of stones.
“Creekers! That’s incredible!”
“Thanks. It won’t be long till you’ll be doing that. Are you ready for your first shaping lesson?”
“Sure. What do I have to do?”
“Let’s sit by the fire and I’ll tell you a little bit about how it works. It’s probably a lot simpler than you think.”
Orville unrolled his sleeping bag and plopped down on the ground next to Sophia.
“Okay, if you remember, Master Marloh told you it was your inner self who shaped the orange you found on your bedside table. It’s important to remember that, because shaping is always done by your inner self, not your outer self. Your inner self exists outside of space and time but is fully capable of manifesting physical objects into this world. In order to be a shaper, you must first be deeply aware of your inner self. You have to be able to hear your inner voice, the deeper self who knows so much more than you do. You understand this so far?”
“I think so. It was my inner voice who told me you were my true friend and it was safe to tell you about the orange in my room.”
Sophia smiled. “Yes, that’s the one, and I really am your true friend, just in case you were wondering. Now, back to shaping. I want you to think of a simple object, something you own which holds great sentimental value. It could be something that belonged to your Papa.”
“Umm... let me think. I know, Papa gave me a big blue marble he found and told me it was magic. I still have it even though I never really did believe it was magic. It was the last thing he gave me before he went away.”
“I’m sorry. I knew your Papa was gone but I was afraid to ask you about it. What happened to him?”
“He was a fishermouse. He only took me out once because Mum said the Vesarak Sea was too dangerous. Almost two years ago he went out and there was a terrible storm. He never came back.”
Sophia put her paw on Orville’s shoulder.
“What happened to your Papa, Sophia?”
Sophia hesitated, and Orville instantly sensed she did not want to talk about it. An icy chill shot through him, something he had never sensed from Sophia before. “You don’t have to tell me, it’s okay. I know how hard it is to talk about it.”
Sophia gave a weak
smile and the chill faded away.
“Thanks. One day I’ll tell you everything, but I can’t talk about it now, not even to my best friend in the world.” There was a long silence, the pair of adventurers gazing into the flickering flames, lost in their own thoughts.
Finally Sophia said, “All right, back to business. I want you to close your eyes and imagine that magic blue marble your Papa gave you. See it as clearly as you can in your mind, move it around, turn it, examine it closely. What you’re really doing is creating a good dense thought cloud. I’ll be able to see it and in time so will you. When you clearly see the marble I want you to ask your inner self to bring the marble into this world. Then just let go and relax. Don’t try to help. Let your inner self take over completely.”
“Okay, here goes.” Orville closed his eyes and began to visualize the marble. After several minutes it felt as though he could almost touch it. He smiled to himself. All those years of clearly imagining other worlds had not been a waste of time after all. When he was satisfied with what he saw he said, “Inner self, I would like you to bring this marble into the world. Please convert my thought cloud into physical matter.” He opened his eyes but saw nothing. “No marble.”
“Shhhh. Just wait, I’m watching your thought cloud now. It’s a good one, nice and solid. It’s bright red which means there’s a lot of love in it. That should help. Okay, it’s swirling around like a little tornado, getting denser.”
There was a sudden flash of light and a sparkling blue marble appeared on the ground in front of Orville. He turned to Sophia with a look of astonishment. “Did I really do that?”
Sophia had a wide grin on her face. “Congratulations, you’re officially a member of the Shapers Guild!”
The following day as they were making their way across a broad rocky pass, Sophia said, “I think I’ve figured out why you were able to shape that marble on your first try, a feat which takes most shapers many years to master. You’ve been unwittingly practicing the necessary skills for most of your life. All your years of imagining and visualizing complex worlds, plus listening to your inner voice since you were a mouseling.”
“I was thinking the same thing. Maybe part of me knew what skills I should be practicing.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me at all. Hey, put these on and make sure we’re still following the glowbirds.”
Sophia handed Orville the tracking goggles. Orville slipped them on and tapped the tabs on the side panel and slowly turned the brass dial.
“Still there, heading west, but one of the glowbird trails has veered off from the others. It looks as though it may have landed. Maybe it was running low on power and stopped at one of those blue triangles.”
“Maybe. Let’s go see. We might get a good close look at one.”
Orville and Sophia finally reached the end of the boulder strewn terrain, arriving at a small forest of tall spruce trees. Orville eyed the forest floor. “The orange trail ended right around here, but I don’t see a glowbird anywhere.”
It was Sophia who solved the puzzle. “Look up, not down.”
Orville turned his gaze to the towering trees above him, immediately spotting the iridescent blue glowbird wedged between two branches. “It’s not moving. It must have just stopped working.”
Orville clambered up the tree, gingerly retrieving the fallen glowbird. He hopped down and held it out for Sophia to examine. “What do you think? It’s really light.”
“Look at the feathers, they’re made of a synthetic material. This bird was fabricated, that’s why it’s so light. A real glowbird would weigh four or five times as much as this one. I’ve seen bio-form creations like this before, automatons made to resemble all manner of creatures. The Anarkkians used them extensively during the war. Papa showed me images of huge metallic spiders they created. They would drop thousands of the deadly silver spiders onto the surface of whatever planet they were invading. The Anarkkians weren’t alone in this tactic either. The Elders had huge autonomous A6 Warrior Rabbitons which were virtually indestructible and armed with powerful vaporizing particle beam systems. It was a very dangerous time to be alive.” Sophia gave a long sigh. “Enough about that dreadful war. These glowbirds were not meant for warfare, they have another purpose entirely. We just have to discover what it is, or what it was. Let’s keep moving west and see where it takes us.”
Sophia and Orville hiked through the dense forest for most of the day, reaching the end of it late that afternoon when they stepped out only a few hundred feet from the edge of an enormous gorge.
“Creekers. There’s no way we can cross that.” Orville stared at the mammoth chasm, three or four miles across and well over a mile deep. Orville pulled a wrinkled map from his backpack and unfolded it. “This old map doesn’t help us much, but it does show a gray area marked Pavorak Gorge.”
“Can you see where the glowbirds went?”
Orville slipped on the brass goggles and twisted the small dial. “There are only six orange trails now. They veer down to the bottom of the gorge, head north for about a mile, then turn into a narrow ravine on the far wall.”
Sophia stood motionless for several moments, her eyes closed. Orville did not interrupt her. Finally she turned to him and said, “We should head back to Muridaan Falls. We’ll have to find another way to reach that ravine. Any attempt we make to climb down into the gorge would be far too risky. I might be able to blink myself to the bottom of the gorge, but that would be even more of a risk. Master Marloh says I need a lot more blinking practice before I can safely use it on a mission.”
Sophia eyed the iridescent glowbird lying on the ground next to her pack. “Orville, I think it’s time I paid a visit to the Mad Mouse of Muridaan.”
Chapter 9
The Mad Mouse of Muridaan
The next month was a hectic one for Orville. During the day he worked at the Book Emporium and in the evenings he was tutored by Sophia, an unrelenting taskmaster who pushed Orville harder than his teachers at school ever had. She told him over and over that one day his life would depend on the skills he was now learning.
Master Marloh had cleared out a small practice room for Orville at the rear of the store. It was in the confines of this room that Sophia had him shape the blue marble again and again until he could shape it in a split second. Once he had mastered the marble, he began shaping larger, more complex objects. After three weeks of exhausting practice, Orville was able to shape almost any object Sophia requested.
“This is excellent. Master Marloh was right about you. I’ve never seen anyone advance so rapidly.”
“How large an object can I shape? Could I shape a house?”
“No, there’s not a shaper alive who could do that. There is a limit to the size and the mass of an object a single mouse can shape, just as there is a limit to how much weight one mouse can lift. The greater your skill, the larger the object you can shape. There are some esoteric shaping techniques which involve two or more mice linking minds to magnify their shaping power, but that’s well beyond my skill level. I’m not even sure if Master Marloh can do that.”
Sophia reached into a basket filled with blue marbles shaped by Orville. She plucked one of them out and placed it on the floor in front of her.
“You have learned to create a thought cloud and compress it into a physical object, also known as a thought form. Now you will learn to convert a thought form back into a thought cloud. Watch, please.”
Sophia flicked her wrist and with a small flash of light the blue marble vanished. “I have converted the marble from its physical form back to a thought cloud. The process involved is simply the reverse of shaping the marble. Now you try.”
“Umm, so I look at the marble and imagine it as a thought cloud and then ask my inner self to convert it back to an energy field?”
“Precisely.” Sophia set a blue marble down on the floor in front of Orville.
Orville focused on the glassy sphere and imagined all the compressed energy used to create
the marble being released back into a field of energy. Once he had an image of the vaporous thought cloud clear in his mind he asked his inner self to convert the marble back to an energy field.
Five seconds later there was a flash of light and the marble vanished.
“Excellent, but far, far too slow. You have to be able to convert objects back and forth so quickly it looks as though they’re blinking on and off.”
Sophia pointed to the basket of marbles. “I want you to convert all these marbles back to thought clouds, and keep doing it until you can do it with barely a thought. I know this seems tedious, but at some point I guarantee this skill will save your life.”
Three days later Sophia watched as Orville set out a row of fifty marbles and converted them one at a time to thought clouds, all in less than three seconds.
“Well done. You’re ready for the next lesson, which combines everything you have learned so far. I’m going to teach you a skill which is commonly referred to as ‘blinking’.
“There are three steps to blinking a marble. You have mastered each of the steps individually, but now you must combine them into one fluid motion. First, convert the marble to a thought cloud. Second, move the thought cloud across the room with your mind. Third, convert the thought cloud back to the physical form of the marble at its new location. You are essentially moving, or ‘blinking’ an object across the room.
“Once you are proficient at blinking an object around the room, you will learn how to blink your own physical form around the room. This is the skill which allows advanced shapers to blink themselves across great distances, something you must not attempt at this time under any circumstances. For now, I want you to practice with this marble. You must be able to blink it instantly from one point to another.”
It took some time for Orville to grasp the rhythm of blinking an object across the room, but once he was comfortable with it he progressed quickly. He practiced relentlessly for many days, often late into the night, until at last he could make the marble fairly hop around the room, blinking from place to place.