The Old Plank Road
It was late May in 1915. The smell of bacon and fresh biscuits drifted amongst the tents inviting the crew to Cookie’s makeshift table. Four rough planks bridged the gap between the tailgates of two wagons forming a large table. A dented pan piled high with biscuits straddled the gap between two of the planks. Two blackened frying pans sat on one of the wagon tailgates, one with a mass of scrambled eggs, the other heaped high with bacon. Cookie plopped a pail of knives and fork along with several tin plates on the table, grabbed a large triangle, and walked amongst the tents clanging out a call to breakfast.
It was a large meal for a work crew of four, but Ezek, the boss, was planning to work the crew extra hard today. They had made excellent progress laying down the plank road across the desert sands. The old German, Hans, was a good worker, and to Ezek’s surprise, even Mathew and his crippled cousin, Eleven-finger Jake, were doing more than expected. If they completed their portion of the road by week’s end, they would all be in for a nice bonus. There were enough planks loaded on the row of wagons trailing off into the dunes to finish their part of the road; it was only a matter of pushing a little harder. With luck, they might even finish tonight, leaving a day to spare for the bonus.
Ezek finished washing up, turned and shouted at the cook, “Stop the ga’damn racket, you old Chinaman.” Cookie bowed, turned, and with a big smile gave the triangle one last loud jangle as he scurried off. Ezek shook his fist in mock anger. They worked many jobs together, and Ezek considered Cookie his closest friend, but he never let the work-crew know.
Hans, the German, walked over and surveyed the breakfast. He was almost seven feet tall with legs like small tree trunks and hands the size of spades. An always-smiling face, with sparkling blue eyes, framed by ragged blond hair, topped this monstrous frame. He could handle one of the large planks by himself, and was probably the main reason they would collect the bonus. Hans picked up a plate, filled it, sat down at the rough table, and began devouring the food. Ezek smiled. It would not be the last helping the giant would eat before they started the day’s work.
Ezek grabbed a plate and looked at Hans. “Where’re Mathew and ol’ Eleven-finger Jake?”
Hans looked up, opened his mouth, and a large piece of bacon dropped out. “Augh, they went off that way.” He pointed to a trail leading off over a dune. “I think maybe they go for da shit. D’know…they been gone for quite a while. Maybe they find da gold, huh?” Hans smiled.
“Ga’damn it!” Ezek said. “If they hold us up today with their stupid prospecting, I’ll kick their asses all the way back to San Diego. Cookie. Hey, Cookie. Go up on that ga’damn dune and play that triangle of yours as loud as you can. Those two need to get here before I finish my breakfast, or they’ll go without.”
Cookie was about halfway up the dune when Mathew and Jake came running back along the track they’d made on their way out. They were waving wildly. Mathew stumbled in the loose sand, and Eleven-finger Jake landed on top of him. Jake pushed Mathew deep into the sand as they fought to regain their feet.
Jake was up first and ran across the plank road shouting, “We found a mine. We found a mine.”
Hans took another spoonful of eggs. “Again, yah? Hah, where’s da gold, huh?”
Mathew ran up, spitting out sand. “No, we did. We did. We honestly found a gold mine. Jake found it. We were about our business, me on one side of a dune and Jake on the other. I finished, and all of a sudden, Jake, he starts shoutin’ blue murder. So I climbs the dune, and there’s Jake, head hanging over the mineshaft. Sand is right up to the edge, and it’s starting to trickle in, so I tells Jake to get the hell away so he don’t fall in. Then, we hi-tail it back here for a rope and a lantern.”
“I’ll get’em.” Jake ran toward the supply wagon.
“Whoa,” Ezek said. “You ain’t takin’ no ropes or lanterns nowhere. You sit down here and eat breakfast, and then get to road building. We ain’t goin’ to risk our bonus on any wild goose chase,”
“But the mine!” Mathew said.
“Probably not even a mine. More likely an old well, or just a hole.”
“No, Ezek, it’s not a hole. It’s got a door,” Jake said.
“A door?”
“Yah, a door. I was taking a crap. I put my hand down to steady myself and I just pushed the door open. It’s got to be a mine.”
“Wells have covers,” Ezek said. “It’s probably just a well. We don’t have time. Eat your breakfast.”
“But, what if it’s a mine?” Mathew said. “It could be a mine.”
“Tell you what, if we finish the road today or tomorrow and get back to Yuma for our bonus, I’ll let you take one of the wagons and all the ropes and lanterns you need. You can come back here and search for your mine. Hans can come with you.”
“Yah, I like da gold. I will help you with da ropes.”
Ezek looked at Mathew and Jake. “Deal?”
They nodded and sat down to eat their breakfast.
The work went faster than expected. By the end of the day, the road was complete, and they headed for Yuma.
Ezek honored his promise. Hans, Mathew, and Jake went back to find their gold mine while Cookie and Ezek waited in Yuma.
Three days passed with no sign of the trio.
“Ezek, we go find them,” Cookie said. “They been gone long time?”
“I think so. We need to get on to the next job.”
Ezek and Cookie arrived at the gold-hunters’ campsite at dusk.
“Look, there the wagon—but tent blow down,” Cookie said. “Where are they?”
Ezek shrugged. “The horses don’t have any water or food. We’ll look after them first then we’ll find those fools.”
Cookie and Ezek tended to the horses and then followed a trail up, down, and around a number of dunes. They found a pile of ropes at the bottom of one of the dunes, but there was no sign of the trio.
“It’s getting dark,” Ezek said. “Let’s go back to their camp. If they don’t show up tonight, we’ll look for them again tomorrow.”
While Ezek repaired the tent, Cookie lit a fire, prepared a pot of beans, and warmed some sourdough biscuits.
Cookie took his triangle and clanged it loudly. “They come back when they hear this,” he said.
Ezek’s head popped out of the tent. “Ring that some more, Cookie, but louder.”
Cookie smiled at Ezek, then dropped the triangle, and screamed, “I-eeeee.”
Ezek turned to see Eleven-finger Jake, an axe lodged in his forehead, rising out of the sand. Hans and Mathew followed him. Without looking at Ezek or Cookie, they climbed the path leading up the dune. When they were about halfway up the dune, they faded and disappeared, only to rise out of the sand again and walk off in a different direction.
Cookie fell over Ezek as he rushed to hide behind the tent. “They ghosts,” Cookie whispered. “Ezek, we not stay, go…we must go.”
“Yep, let’s get the horses hitched. You can drive our wagon; I’ll drive the other one. Hurry, we’ll leave the damn tent.”
They left, and the trio’s bodies were never found. But dear readers, if you are out in the desert on a moonless night, you may see Ezek’s crew wandering the Old Plank Road, just as they did that night of May 28, 1915—Eleven-finger Jake in the lead, an axe stuck in his forehead, and the others, following, with their ropes and shovels, looking for the lost mine.
Notes on “The Old Plank Road.”
This short story is part of the action adventure novel titled “The Bloodline Artifacts.”
Learn more here.
http://howieerickson.com/the-bloodline-artifacts/
Intentions
Zardot was in the Office of Citizen Services for the mandatory census. The attending bureaucrat, or ‘crat’ as he liked to call them, sat opposite him. She did not acknowledge him but simply stared into her computer terminal. He waited.
“Ah,” she said, “name?”
“Zardot.”
“No, that’s it. One name, Zardot.”
She looked up at him and smiled. Not a real smile, one that matched her eyes. No, just one of those beauty queen smiles they teach to little girls in the belief that it will make people like them.
“You must have two names. The system requires it.”
“No, that’s it. One name: Zardot. Put it in both spots if you like.”
She tried that. The system came up with an error message and locked up. He knew it would. All the government systems used the same registration module. It had a number of flaws that caused the system to hang.
The smile looked at him. “I will have to get my supervisor to unlock the system.”
She left in search of her supervisor. Zardot took a wireless network node out of his backpack and plugged it into the power bar under her desk. The node had a fake sticker on it. DO NOT REMOVE: Federal Department of Crisis Management. This one would probably be the safest of all his installations. No crat would mess with something with that sticker on it. He finished the installation by linking his device to her computer via an unused port. He would access SecureNet through her computer, behind the firewall.
He sat there and waited. After several minutes, the smile came back, another smile in tow.
“This is my supervisor. She says you must have two names and they cannot be the same.” The second smile nodded as she typed in a reset password. They looked at him with blank eyes and toothy smiles.
“Well?” the supervising smile asked.
“Just put a dash in for the second name. It worked before,” Zardot said.
He had discovered this flaw in the system when registering online for the worldwide intention experiments. He’d accidentally inserted a dash for his last name. Surprisingly, it was accepted. He was sure it was that feature which allowed him to escape when they had begun rounding up the Intents.
The first smile typed. “Zardot, followed by a dash. Good, that works,” she said. “Address?”
She entered the rest of his information. “Fine, you can go now, Mr., ah…”
“Dash.” Zardot smiled as he left.
Yes, it was truly fine, Zardot thought, as he hurried home to activate the new connection. His best previous attempts to hack into SecureNet had run a maximum of five days before the Internet Security Directorate detected the intrusion. Once that happened, he had to shut down all his links before they backtracked the installations to him. That left him without a SecureNet connection for days. But, this current setup was behind the firewall and should remain undetected.
****
“Coffee for the new girl?”
Raleigh nodded.
Detective Dean Flannigan tipped the cup as he set it down on Raleigh’s desk.
“Oops.”
It spilled over the single sheet of paper she was looking at.
“Sorry, was that important?” he said.
“It was the computer access codes you just gave me. The one for the five Intents we haven’t located yet.” She held up the sheet, ink blurred by the coffee. “What do you think?”
“Here have my coffee. I haven’t touched it yet. I’ll print a new sheet for you and get another coffee for myself,” he said.
While she waited, Raleigh Graham leaned back and tried to digest what she had heard at the briefing she’d just attended. She was new to the group, transferring in from FBI Psychic Countermeasures. Her primary duty there was to find and inhibit any remote viewers who were not working for the government. She had been told that ‘inhibit’ meant anything up to and including assassination. That didn’t sit well with her since the FBI was limited to domestic duty. Killing foreign remote viewers, maybe, but killing citizens? Thankfully, that problem had not yet arisen. She had never found a remote viewer. How would I have known one if I had seen one? she wondered. Now she was probably in another dead-end project: tracking down Intents. She had heard of them in her old job. Some thought that Intents and remote viewers might be one and the same, or have similar powers, but she had believed in neither until today.
In the briefing, she had been introduced to three Intents—well not actually introduced, since they spoke to her; but they were in the next room, behind a one-way mirror and their voices were distorted.
They described how intentioning worked The Intents would first meditate and get their minds in a reduced state of activity. From there, they could slow their heart rates or lower their body temperatures like Buddhist monks; they could heal like Reiki Masters, or they could simply interact with the universe’s power and state their intention. At this point, she had whispered to her new partner, Dean Flannigan, “Like the Jedi Masters.” He didn’t smile and just stared at her.
“A demonstration perhaps?” one of the Intents asked.
“Sure, yeah, sure, that would be nice,” Raleigh said.
“Mr. Flannigan, the bag, please.”
Dean handed Raleigh a small cloth bag and a deck of cards.
“Ms. Graham,” the Intent said, “Remove the cellophane and verify that you have been given a normal deck of fifty-two cards. Discard the jokers. Once you are satisfied, dump the cards into the bag, pull the drawstrings and hold them firmly for five minutes. Then, open the bag and without looking, reach in and pull out a card. It will be the five of diamonds. Reach in a second time, and pull out a second card. It will be the ace of spades. And finally, you will reach in and pull out a card that will be of your choice. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Five minutes and then pull out the cards.” She checked the deck and then dumped it into the bag and drew the drawstrings.
“What is your choice of card, Ms. Graham?” the distorted voice said.
“Two of hearts.”
“Fine, two of hearts. No talking for the five minutes, please.”
Raleigh looked at Dean; an unstated question stuck in her throat. He tipped his head to one side, smiled, and handed her a stopwatch.
Four minutes thirty-eight seconds. Her grip on the drawstrings tightened as time ran down. Her fingers began to throb: twenty seconds, ten, five, two, one, zero. She loosened the drawstrings and stuck her hand into the bag. She withdrew the first card; it was the five of diamonds. Again she put her hand in and this time pulled out the ace of spades.
“This can’t be, the odds…, the odds against this happening are too high. It’s a trick, right Dean?”
Dean just nodded at the bag.
She reached in and pulled out the two of hearts—her choice. Then she dumped the bag out on the table and began checking the other cards.
“I assure you, Ms. Graham, it is not a trick. But, now we have other important work to do for our government. Mr. Flannigan will answer any additional questions you have.”
Dean watched as Raleigh sorted the remaining cards by suit. The three she had picked were missing. “How did they do that? It has to be a trick?”
Dean shook his head. “Nope. They’re the real thing.”
“How…? They can’t control the future. Can they?”
“They just intentioned it,” Dean said
“Intentioned?”
“Well, that’s what they say they do. They meditate until they are in this super state of communion with the universe, and then they let their intentions be known. They visualize the outcome and let the universe’s power do the rest. It's as simple as that.”
“Simple? The universe’s power? Are you for real?” Raleigh said, as she rolled her eyes back. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Nope, and our job, for Presidential Special Projects, is to track down the rest of the Intents, and either bring them into government service, or inhibit their actions.”
“Inhibit?”
“Yep, inhibit; whatever it takes. I think you know the drill.”
Raleigh nodded. “Okay, what else? You were supposed to elaborate.”
“Well, do you know anything about the intention experiments that have been running on PublicNet
?”
“No, I’ve been just too busy looking for remote viewers to follow all the crap on PublicNet. Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Raleigh said.
“Okay, from the beginning. A researcher named Dr. Oscar Swenson had been running various studies on intention for years. He decided to try a grand experiment. He signed up as many individuals as possible to do a mass consciousness type of intentioning. He got several hundred thousand individuals signed up. They tried to get one of two virtually identical tomato plants in the same pot to produce more flowers than the other. Well, guess what?”
Dean didn’t wait for an answer. “The one they intentioned produced so many flowers they had to provide it with extra supports when the tomatoes developed. And, the other plant produced almost no flowers. So, being a good citizen and recognizing the strategic importance of this, Dr. Swenson called us. Well, not us, but because of that call, this group was established.”
“Okay, but how—”
Dean raised his hand and cut Raleigh off.
“Patience. From the beginning, remember?” Dean said. “After thinking about the results for a while, we concluded that we couldn’t be sure if the results were due to mass consciousness, or if one true Intent was mixed in with thousands of people who were just along for the ride. So, we began slicing the group up and running more experiments. And, guess what we found?”
Dean leaned back in his chair and waited.
Raleigh stared at him. “The beginning’s okay, but, ‘guess what we found,' really sucks as an ending. Finish the damn story!”
Dean smiled.
“Well, we slowly eliminated the people just along for the ride. Finally, we got it down to a group of thirty people who could give us the same results with the tomatoes’ flowers. We decided it was time to bring them in and convince them to work for their country. We’ve collected twenty-five from that group of thirty. Four were duds, and we’ve let them go. Of the twenty-one, eighteen have agreed to work for us.”
Not As It Seems Page 3
