by M. L. Ryan
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Book 1 of the Coursodon Dimension Series
By M.L. Ryan
Copyright © 2012, M.L. Ryan
3rd Edition, published August, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, either living or dead, business establishments, locales or events is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Linda Boulanger
www.telltalebookcovers.weebly.com
and M.L. Ryan
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my test readers, Amy and Shary (LY,BNLM), and my editors for finding all the errors I managed to miss.
Special thanks to my husband and son, who showed remarkable patience while I undertook this endeavor, and encouraged me to continue.
For my boys.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
About the author
~1~
If I had any inkling that my world would be irrevocably altered by a seemingly mundane purchase, I would have cut up my credit cards or sworn off the on-line shopping. But, like many things in life, you never realize at the time that one decision can alter everything.
The day started as mine usually did, being jolted awake at six a.m. by the alarm clock set to my favorite oldies radio station. I smacked the off button just as a The Presidents of the United States song was ending and I dragged myself out of bed with the lyrics, Movin’ to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches, lingering in my sleep-addled brain. It was still completely dark outside. Not that it’s unusual for January, but here in Arizona, where for some reason we never switch to Daylight Savings Time, the sun wasn’t going to rise for quite a while. There’s something very disconcerting about waking up before the sun comes up. Seriously, if God had wanted us to get up when it was still dark out, he wouldn’t have given us eyelids.
I shuffled in the dark towards the kitchen and robotically set about starting a pot of much- needed coffee. The task is so ingrained that I don’t ever remember measuring the grounds or filling the reservoir with water. But somehow each morning I manage to make a respectable brew.
As the aromatic deliciousness drifted through my tiny kitchen, my cat, Vinnie, wound himself around my ankles and made that insistent burr-ip sound that roughly translates into “good morning, I’m so happy you’re up, now feed me, you lazy tramp.” When I opened the upper cabinet to grab the bag of kibble, Vinnie jammed his head repeatedly into my ankles in an attempt to get me to move faster.
“Hold on you miserable beast. I’m still mostly asleep,” I scolded. It occurred to me as I shook some food into his bowl that Vinnie and I did this same thing every morning. Alarm, coffee, meowing, kibble all without me really being awake. Vinnie began to scarf down his breakfast with the utter abandon that only an eighteen-pound feline can muster.
You’d think he never ate the way he dove into the stuff. Maybe he was trying to compensate for the fact that he was sort of an anomaly in the animal world. Vinnie was one of the very few male calico cats. When I picked him out from a litter of kittens being sold at the Swap Meet, I naturally assumed that he was a she as 99.99% of calicos are girls. I was particularly drawn to the triangular patches of color that extended down over each eye, one black and one orange, that made the kitten look a bit like a pirate. It wasn’t until I took “her” to the vet the next day that Alvida, named after a medieval Norwegian female swashbuckler, became Alvin, aka, Vinnie.
The truth of it is, almost everything that I’m associated with is out of the ordinary. Case in point: I have an extra lumbar vertebra in my back and my father is missing one. The fact that I have six instead of five and my dad only has four didn’t make any difference to either of us physically, but it’s still pretty bizarre. Maybe there’s a familial quota for bones, and somewhere in the cosmic karma, my dad and I evened it out.
Then there’s my job. I got my master’s degree in physiology and was working for a few years in a research laboratory at the University. When the economy tanked, grant funding dried up and eventually my boss, a full professor, was arrested for pimping high-priced hookers while on University property. He had been using his ill-gotten gains mostly to keep the research going, but whatever his motivation, he’s currently doing time in the state prison. Just as well, as I was beginning to become burned out at work.
So after a brief period of wallowing in the despair of the unemployed, I landed a fairly well paying gig as a chinchilla milker at a small, local artisan cheese factory. Unbeknownst to me, apparently I am gifted with a talent for milking small, furry animals. And unbeknownst to me, there apparently is a previously untapped market for cheese made from the milk of unusual critters. Rich people will buy anything, won’t they? I suppose if someone in England can sell ice cream made from human milk, this isn’t all that strange. After all, why are the mammary secretions from lactating cows and goats standard fare, but milk from some other mammal seems gross?
I finally turned on the light over the sink and, when the coffee was ready, I poured a cup and looked around my house as I sipped. To say the place was small was an understatement. It was actually a guesthouse on the grounds of a much larger, mostly vacant main house. Two people could barely fit into the kitchen at the same time and while it was technically a one-bedroom, with a double-sized mattress, I was still forced to climb over it to get from the door into the bathroom.
The living room was accordingly miniscule and ceiling-high bookshelves were crammed along every available stretch of wall, books packed two or three deep on every shelf. I love to read, and I can’t bring myself to get rid of anything once I’ve finished it. It’s not that I really expect to re-read most of them. Yet somehow having them around gives me a—I don’t know—collective sense of who I am.
“I really have to do something about these books,” I said out loud. There wasn’t room for any more books or bookshelves unless I moved to a bigger place, but the thought of packing up all this stuff was too terrible to contemplate. Besides, the rent was reasonable and the location was fantastic; it was close to everything but felt like it was in the middle of nowhere.
Not wanting to waste any more under-caffeinated brainpower on this dilemma, I set my half-empty cup on an end table and opened up my laptop to check my email. There was one hawking penis enlargement, which I quickly deleted, one from my mother, which I ignored, and one from Amazon. I sometimes bought books through Amazon, so I figured this was probably one of those ‘here’s some books we think you will like based on your previous buying history’. I enjoyed going to bookstores to find new material, but I had to admit buying online was much more expedient.
I opened the email and was greeted with an ad for their latest Kindle eBook reader. The concept both intrigued and concerned me. A lot of people swear that reading from anything other than a “book” book is blasphemy and without the feel of the page, the experience is diminished. The idea that one could have thousands of books in one thin reader seemed like the answer to my problem of the ever-expanding boo
k collection, but I always thought one hundred and eighty-nine dollars for an eBook reader was a big investment. After all, I could get three cheap bookshelves at Target for that much. Well, if I had a place to put them, that is. Besides, my socially conscious side wondered if the widespread use of electronics for reading meant the end of bookstores.
As I perused the email, I noticed that now they were hawking a Kindle ‘with special offers’ for a mere seventy-nine dollars. Interesting. I clicked on the link that brought me to the Amazon website. For the reduced price, you got some sort of ads when the thing ‘sleeps’ instead of the pretty drawings. I always rather liked the art on my friend’s Kindles, but for that much in savings, I could definitely live without them.
I scanned the fine print to reassure myself that, indeed, there weren’t going to be ads popping up intermittently in the text. Pausing briefly, I let out a long sigh of resignation, said what the hell, and clicked the one-click-for-one-day shipping for three dollars and ninety-nine cents to order my way into the literary future. Vinnie picked this moment to walk across the keyboard and arch his back as if to let me know he thought I was a sellout.
“Hey, it was either this, or I’d have to put you on a diet to make more room in here,” I snapped.
He turned his chubby body, lifted his tail, and exposed his hind end to me before he leapt off the laptop and sauntered into the bedroom.
“Sure, everyone’s a critic,” I mumbled as I downed the last of the coffee.
~2~
I spent so long on-line I didn’t have enough time for my morning run. So I just showered and got ready for work. I also didn’t have time for my usual routine of straightening my long hair with a round brush and a blow dryer either, so I left it to dry naturally into a somewhat wild mass of curly brown ringlets.
That task accomplished, I pulled on my standard work attire—jeans and a t-shirt. That was the beauty of living in Tucson, where anything other than jeans was considered dressed up. At this time of year, it could be thirty-five degrees when I leave for work, but seventy-five by the time I go home. As an accommodation to the wide temperature swing, I opted for long-sleeved tees from December through March. It is easy to be spoiled by winters around here.
I glanced at myself in the mirror, taking in my self-described averageness. I was of average height for a woman with an average build. To be fair, people said I was pretty, and occasionally I did think I looked… not bad. Mostly, I considered myself to be fairly ordinary in the looks department.
My hair never seemed to do exactly what I wanted it to, although the frizz factor was definitely diminished here in the low humidity of the desert. Instead of some exotically colored eyes, mine were just brown. My skin was pretty nice, so I didn’t generally wear much makeup. I did usually use mascara—to accentuate my best feature—my extremely long, thick eyelashes. Unfortunately, this attribute caused swooning only from other women, and therefore wasn’t a big draw when it came to attracting members of the opposite sex. I gave myself a quick once over and, resigned to my unremarkable looks, headed out to work.
It was usually only a fifteen-minute drive, but because I managed to conveniently forgo my New Year’s resolution of daily morning exercise, it was early enough that traffic was light and I made it in ten. As usual, I was the first one in. I started a pot of coffee and checked the schedule to see how many chinchilla were scheduled for milking.
About six months ago, I was promoted to dairy manager, so I mostly just supervised a crew of four—three who worked during the week and one more that kept an eye on things over the weekend. I know some people think what we do is cruel, but the chinchilla are treated much like farm animals really. We socialized them from birth and they were used to us by the time we began the milking process. They didn’t seem to mind it much—they got special treats afterward. They weren’t stuck in cages either—we have free-range chinchilla. They live in an expansive temperature and humidity controlled indoor area with access to a safety-screened outdoor enclosure when it wasn’t too hot out. Chinchilla can’t sweat, so they can’t handle conditions over about seventy-eight degrees. Even when they couldn’t brave the desert bake, they could still look out the floor-level picture windows.
I moved through the door to their play area, flipped on the lights, and opened the barriers from the nesting rooms so the little beasties could scamper in. About five or six were already nibbling on some Manzanita branches by the time I lifted the last of the four metal panels that separated the two areas. One of my favorites, Bessie, wandered over and rubbed against my foot. As I bent down to scratch under her soft, silvery neck, I heard someone call out “Hey Hailey” from the other room.
I could see Rachel through the big glass window, between the animal area and the office, as she flung her backpack on her desk and turned to deposit her lunch into the fridge on the far side of the room.
Despite the fact that Rachel was drop-dead gorgeous, she was my best friend and confidant. She had every physical feature I would have killed for—straight, pale yellow hair, expressive emerald eyes, and full lips all atop a shapely figure propped up by long, slender legs. She was also unfailingly upbeat and the luckiest person I had ever met.
She met her current boyfriend, Harrison, when she called the Fire Department to dispose of a rattlesnake that was coiled on her front porch. They promptly sent four firemen, one of whom was Harrison, to catch the serpent. Firemen always seem to be hot, and Harrison was no exception—tall, dark, and handsome. Sparks flew, romance ensued, and they have been inseparable for months. Stuff like that would never happen to me. I’d get the grumpy, middle-aged fireman that had indigestion from the firehouse chili. All of which should provide ample grounds for jealous loathing, but I adored her nonetheless.
She grabbed her “Support Your Right to Arm Bears” mug from atop the coffee maker, poured herself a cup, and spooned in her usual three teaspoons of sugar. She gave it a couple of quick stirs and took a long sip.
Sighing with contentment, Rachel leaned against the desk. “You want some?” she asked, as I made my way into the office.
“Sure,” I responded, as I turned on my computer and plopped into my well-worn and blessedly comfy desk chair.
While I waited to boot up, I twisted my hair into a bun and secured it with some hair sticks to achieve my workday hairstyle; todays were made of rosewood with a fan shape carved at the end.
I loved using hair sticks; it was a fast, simple means to contain my often out-of-control hair, and it was more interesting than a plain ponytail. There were lots of ways to use them, and the variety of sticks was seemingly endless. Long, short, wood, metal, simple, and embellished—I had dozens. Basically, anything thin and pointy would suffice and sometimes, in a pinch, I resorted to using two pencils. Rachel liked to joke that I could use chopsticks, and then just yank them out of my hair when it was time to eat Chinese food. Harrison thought they could be useful in the unlikely event of a mugging.
Rachel handed me my mocha-java and proceeded to add yet another heaping spoonful of sweetness into her cup. I grimaced at the concoction.
“How can you taint perfectly good coffee like that? Adding anything to coffee is an abomination. Can you even taste anything other than the sugar?”
“I don’t know how you can stand to drink it black,” she countered. “Besides, it’s like having coffee and a doughnut all in one without the extra fat. It’s really a very sensible diet strategy.”
Before I could formulate a sarcastic retort, our co-workers, Chelsea and Daniel, swept in arguing about which local eatery had the best margaritas.
“Casa Arvizu, definitely,” pronounced Daniel while he set his water bottle on top of the fridge.
“Sure, if you define best as biggest. But quality-wise, no one can beat La Mariposa,” Chelsea immediately countered.
Chelsea and Daniel looked like they were brother and sister; both had short, straight, blue-black hair and grey eyes and had similar athletic builds. They were, however, not rela
ted, which was fortunate because they had been dating for the past three years and living together for two.
Chelsea set the rectangular plastic container she was holding on my desk and dramatically peeled off the cover. “Ta da! Brownies!” she proudly exclaimed.
I peered down at the pile of crumbly, grayish squares as Chelsea proceeded to inform us that she didn’t have the butter required for the recipe, so she substituted half and half for two percent milk to make up for it. Chelsea was well known for never having exactly everything needed to properly complete a dish. This meant she often came up with interesting replacement ingredients to make up for the missing items, with variable results. She used the same culinary philosophy to pair seemingly unpairable foods into bizarre concoctions. I still haven’t completely recovered from the peanut butter and hummus sandwiches she brought for a pot luck lunch last year.
Looking up, I smiled brightly and said “darn it, I just had a big breakfast. I’ll wait to have one after lunch.” I held them out toward Daniel, but somehow he had conveniently realized that work needed to be done and was nowhere to be found.
Rachel, who was too nice to craft a polite excuse, snagged one and courageously took a bite. She chewed for a long time, a contemplative look on her face. She tried to swallow unaided, but eventually was forced to gulp some coffee before she could speak.
“Not bad, Chelsea,” she managed to croak out, despite the remaining brownie wad that was making her look like she was using her cheek for winter food storage. “A little dry, but once you get past that, the flavor’s fine.”
Chelsea beamed at the non-critical review and left to start her tasks. When she was finally out of sight, Rachel whirled and spit the rest out into the garbage.
