Forging the necessary Social Security card and Alaska state driver’s license had been easy enough and the two documents had been sufficient to open a bank account in Chicago. The checks from the sale of the gold to several small businesses specializing in precious metals had added up to a cool $260,000. However, Paul would soon need to declare some of that to the IRS and pay a nice chunk in taxes. But that didn’t bother him much. He had squirreled away a few additional pounds of gold in a safety deposit box in a second bank and there was always more gold to be had from the Nevada mountain.
With the gold sold and the bank account established, Paul had found the house on Kildare Ave, rented it and furnished the place with the standard set of furniture and appliances. He had also added quite a few items of clothing to his new wardrobe closet, all carefully chosen to accommodate his new size, of course. The one and only item he had forgone the acquisition of was a car. Buying a car, even a used one, would take a hefty chunk of cash. Plus, he would need an Illinois driver’s license and that raised his profile level more than he cared for. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had the need to really go anywhere that a portal couldn’t take him.
All these activities had consumed the two last months. Well, except for the last week, wherein Paul had declared for himself a small vacation, taking a break from everything to recharge his “mental batteries.”
And during the last week, Paul had accomplished little else but to rest. Ever since he acquired magical powers, his life had been turned up-side down, threatened with death, while he was chased clear around the world. Now he was even accused of “murdering” two men. There was no telling what his work colleagues back at Edwards Air Force Base thought, nor the other members of his church or his neighbors. No doubt that they were all shaking their heads and wondering how he managed to get to Mexico City, let alone what had happened to drive him “postal” and murder other people. It was just one more reason why he would never be able to go back to Mojave again since it was unlikely that he could ever explain the circumstances to anyone who knew him. His old life was definitively over with.
A short vacation break to recover his equilibrium was exactly what he had needed both physically and mentally and now he was itching to do some serious planning. Paul had no intention of living in hiding any longer than need be. And to make those plans, he needed the advice and counsel of some super-intelligences.
After opening and heating a can of beef stew, he lowered himself into a chair at the dining room table and solemnly chewed on his meal, contemplating the kind of help he would need. Should he call forth a policeman, a soldier, the CIA guy, Albert Einstein, Sherlock Holmes, Merlin or someone else? What sort of expertise did he need?
The answer to that was a multitude of different types of counsel. But generally what he decided he most needed was a strategist. Yes, someone to help him plan things from a strategic point of view.
He laid the spoon down, thoughtfully staring into thin air, formulating the words he would need.
“In the names of Ike Eisenhower, George Patton, Napoleon Bonaparte, Stonewall Jackson, Erwin Rommel, George Washington, Horatio Nelson, Alexander the Great, Sun Tzu, Hannibal Smith and Nate Ford, let there appear an amalgamation of every brilliant military strategist and tactician in history in the form of Uncle Sam, combining all of their best talents and training.”
A small ball of gray smoke appeared again in mid-air, growing in size to form a tall, distinguished older looking man with white hair, a red/white/blue top hat with white stars, a white shirt, a bright red bowtie and a dark blue suit with long coat tails.
The apparition blinked and looked around the dining room. And snorted in distain.
Then the hologram pulled up a virtual reality chair, placed his top hat on the table next to Paul’s half eaten bowl of stew and sat down.
“Let me guess,” the renowned image announced in a grim voice. “You are finally serious about doing something about your situation. And that’s why you have called on me.”
Paul nodded, pushing his bowl even further away.
“Yes,” he admitted, a grim twist to his mouth. “Please. You know my situation. All the wizards in the world want to capture or kill me. I desperately need a plan. What should I do? Should I try to find a wizard that won’t kill me, to join his organization? Or are there other options open to me?”
Uncle Same looked down his nose at Paul and shook his head.
“Paul,” he said slowly. “There is something you must understand. Strategy and tactics only exist for one reason: to reach a goal. Without a good obtainable goal, all the strategy or tactics in the world means nothing.”
Paul nodded in understanding. “It’s simple. My first goal is to stay alive.”
“A worthy goal, in and of itself,” the white bearded man replied. “But as an engineer, is that all you want? For your designs to function as long as possible? Have you no other goal for them?”
Paul rubbed the back of his neck before replying. “I totally agree with you. Yes, there are other considerations too when designing a new piece of equipment, not just life span or reliability. Life cycle costs, user friendly operations, the elegance of the design, the cost to build it and several other factors are all important too. And yes, likewise, I want my life to mean something, more than just simply existing. But I can’t think of any other choices open to me. Nothing workable, that is. That is why I need your advice.”
With a very small smile, Uncle Sam nodded. “We agree then that the quality of your life should matter to you too as well as your contributions to others, not just maximizing your life span. Tell me also, how do you feel, knowing that the vast majority of humanity has been manipulated and used throughout most of human history? All the death and destruction, all in the name of wars among a handful of wizards. Doesn’t that matter to you?”
Paul’s jaw clenched. “It…it…well, I just can’t think of the right word. I’m enraged. And infuriated too. That answer your question?”
“And quite right you should feel that way. Until recently, you were a Normal living in ignorance, manipulated as one of the “unwashed masses.” You and everyone you have ever known have lived as worthless pawns under the control of a tiny group of people. But now, for the first time in the last several centuries of this planet’s history, you exist as a unique individual, a man who was first a Normal and now a wizard. That should count for something. No one else stands where you are. No one else has ever been where you are now.” Uncle Sam’s eyes flamed. “Make it count, Paul Armstead. Remember your American heritage, the courage of the Founders, the will of the American people. You once said that you wanted to be a wizard in order to help people. Think of the good that you could do now!”
Paul did a double take, staring at the specter in growing disbelief—and even horror.
“What are you saying, exactly?” Paul asked him. “That I should take on all of the wizards of the world? All at once? Freakin’ leaping lizards, are you daft? It was all I could do to escape from two of them! They have all the police and all the armies of the world at their disposal! I wouldn’t survive five seconds against all of them!!”
Uncle Sam waved an arm. “Paul, I am not suggesting that you go up against them as you are—”
Paul averted his gaze and wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I should hope not! This is the worst advice I have ever been given, bar none! No, sir! I feel terrible about how Normals are treated too but it wouldn’t help them to throw my life away! No, I need some other solution, not suicide! Be gone! Just leave me alone!”
• • • •
His anger simmered for hours. Never had his magic failed him before as utterly as it had during that discussion. Uncle Sam’s advice made no sense to Paul whatsoever. Go up against the whole world! One man, just him? He couldn’t think of a worse idea than that. Guaranteed instant suicide.
Later in the afternoon, he ventured outside for a walk. The weather had improved somewhat. At least the snow had stopped falling and the wi
nd was blowing at less than gale force, though it was still chilly.
Could it really be that there were only two options? Either hide for the rest of his life or go down swinging? Was there no middle ground? Some solution that would let him contribute to the good of people everywhere without endangering his life?
Paul had hoped that Uncle Sam could give him that third option. After all, the conjured image was supposed to represent the genius of all military strategy. Did it mean that he too could not see any other possibilities? Or did it mean that he did see them but thought they were inferior to the goal of starting a revolution to liberate Normals?
Paul shook his head in confusion. Just where did he go from here?
Moodily, he stared at the leaden sky.
Well, there was time to think about all this. At least another month or so as he finished regenerating his arm.
• • • •
Two days later, Saturday, was shopping day. The weather improved dramatically, the temperature actually climbed above 50 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time in the new year. Paul walked to the nearest neighborhood grocery store and spent a few dollars on basic supplies and food.
With two bags held snugly in the crook of his right arm, he made his way back eastward along W 31st street, nearing the corner of S Kolin Ave, not three blocks from home.
The whole neighborhood around this area was populated mostly by Hispanics. The majority of the people here were hard working if lowly paid and while Paul knew he didn’t fit into their culture, nevertheless he wasn’t uncomfortable in the neighborhood nor with the people he met.
He rounded the corner at Kildare Ave and headed north. His rental home was only several hundred feet away now.
When he was less than a half a block from home, Paul began to sense that there was something different. Nothing around him appeared to be unusual but there just seemed to be something in the air.
Cautiously, he cast a spell up the street, to see what lay ahead but he detected nothing amiss.
And then, when he drew even with a small walkway between two houses, a blur of motion leapt from the narrow gap and smashed into Paul. He was suddenly jerked around full circle by a very strong hand, his groceries flying everywhere. Wrenched to a stop, Paul came face-to-face with two evil grinning countenances. But before he could react, one of the men shoved a shank knife into Paul’s stomach. The pain was stunning and, to Paul’s horror, his strength instantly fled his body.
And then he was falling, the light fading from his sight.
TWENTY-TWO
Chicago, Illinois
Saint Anthony Hospital
West 19th Street
March
Saturday, 3:12 p.m. CST
The ambulance, with its brakes squealing in protest, came to a halt at the emergency entrance of Saint Anthony Hospital, its rear doors flying open and an EMT-Paramedic leaping out.
The glass double doors of the hospital sprung open, a trained orderly and a nurse dashing forth to assist in the removal of the gurney and its stricken patient from the ambulance. The team raised the gurney on its scissor-like legs, locked it into place, and launched it through the open doors to the hospital corridor beyond.
“ER Two!” screamed a nurse, and the gurney shot through the doorway, coming to a sudden stop in front of a trauma team.
One of the doctors took a fast glance at the blood seeping through the emergency bandage and shouted, “Plasma, STAT! CBC, CHEM-7, and cross-matching! Pulse oximeter! And vitals!”
A nurse strapped a cuff around the patient’s right arm. Another snapped an oximeter onto the patient’s right pinky.
“Tachycardia!” barked a third nurse, her fingers on the neck of the patient. “Pulse, 130 and weak. Tachypnea too! 32 bpm!”
“Blood pressure, 80 over 55,” grunted the nurse with the stethoscope and the blood pressure cuff.
The EMT-Paramedic was still in the room. “It was 90 over 60 in the ambulance!”
“No reading on the oximeter!” another voice shouted.
The trauma surgeon ripped open the patient’s shirt, and with her fingers, she quickly studied the abdomen and the area of the wound. “Juxtahepatic venous injury penetration of the peritoneum. Probable peritonitis and retroperitoneal hemorrhaging!” she barked. “He’s in hypovolemic shock, possible stage 3!”
The other surgeon nodded. “Let’s do a FAST,” he recommended, using the acronym for Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma.
“No time!” snarled the first surgeon. “He’s exsanguinating now!” She turned to one of the nurses. “Set up for the Pringle maneuver, STAT! We’re going in!”
• • • •
Slowly, Paul opened his eyes, becoming aware of a light gray fog surrounding him. Nothing else was visible, but in the far distance, there was a murmur of voices.
“...Right thoracoabdominal stab injury penetrating the liver...ascites...possible laceration of the inferior vena cava....”
Physically, Paul couldn’t feel anything. Emotionally, he felt confused and perplexed, with no memory of how he had arrived in this strange and alien place.
He turned and saw below him a brightly lit operating room, several people dressed in green surgical garb and white masks, their gloves stained with blood, all frantically working on a patient that was stretched out on an operating table. The patient’s face was hidden by a large ventilation mask, which was held in place by the hand of a nurse.
Paul blinked several times, deeply troubled by the image.
“‘Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome,’” he sadly muttered, quoting the famed science-fiction author Isaac Asimov.
“Paul?” asked a very familiar female voice.
He turned, his jaw dropping, his eyes opening wide in shock.
His mother stood before him.
“Mom? Mom!” Paul shouted, and then he leapt to her side, embracing the frail woman in a near bear hug. In return, she put her arms around him and tightly hugged him back, as any mother would do with her only child.
“Paul!” she whispered fiercely in his ear. “I’ve missed your hugs!” And she leaned back a little to give him an affectionate peck on the cheek.
“Hello, Son,” a baritone voice firmly said.
Paul broke his grip on his mother and turned to face the newcomer.
“Dad?”
His father, Kenneth “Claw” Armstead, stood there proudly, dressed in his full Marine Corps Dress Blues, the many stripes signified his rank as a Master Gunnery Sergeant.
It was the very same uniform he had worn when he was buried, fifteen—no, sixteen years ago. In fact, now that Paul thought about it—he turned back to face his mother. Yep, that was the same dress she had been buried in eight years previously.
“How...?” he began, but his voice failed him.
“Hush, now,” his mother urged him. “It’s not your time yet.”
“You have to go back, Son,” Paul’s father said. “There is still much you need to do before you can join us.”
Paul’s mother smiled and hugged him again, even more tightly than before. “Know this, Paul. We have every confidence in you! We will always be close by, standing beside you, supporting you, urging you onward, praying for your success. Our love will be with you wherever you go. We will always be there for you.”
Paul hugged her back fiercely, before he freed himself to reach over and hug his father too. The tight grip of his father’s arms said all the things that Paul had not heard from the Marine in his lifetime.
With daggers stabbing at his heart, Paul cried out. “I’ll never forget you. Either one of you. I love you both!” he managed to stammer through a veil of tears. Then he was pulled away by an unknown and irresistible force.
• • • •
“Pulse is now 150 ppm and extremely weak!” a nurse was shouting.
“Pressure is 60 over 20!” another nurse snapped.
“Pump the blood!” ordered the surgeon, the
nurses gently squeezing the blood bags, forcing the vital liquid into Paul’s veins at a faster rate.
The surgeon was immersed in a difficult race for time. The shank knife had indeed reached the inferior vena cava, the largest vein in the human body, nicking it and releasing a copious amount of blood into the victim’s abdomen. Unfortunately, the vena cava was behind the liver, making it a very dangerous proposition for the surgeon to repair the damaged section.
She had successfully completed the first task, namely, emplacing an atriocaval shunt on the vein. This had slowed the blood loss, yes, but now the right atrium of the heart had nothing to pump.
The vein had to be repaired quickly. Atrial fibrillation was imminent, no more than a minute or so away, with death following soon after that.
And the surgeon knew she was going to lose the race.
• • • •
The pain was incredible, and Paul slipped toward unconsciousness.
He thought of his mother, his father, and he knew he could not let them down.
His right hand slowly reached out, gently squeezing the side of the operating table.
“In the name of Doctors Leonard McCoy, Beverly Crusher, and Julian Bashir, and in the name of the Emergency Medical Hologram, may my blood loss cease immediately and my circulatory system be held together until the surgeon can finish her work.”
With another magical spell, Paul rerouted his blood internally, forcing his heart to beat slower and his breathing to slow as well.
• • • •
The trauma surgeon’s eyes opened wide in disbelief as the blood leaking out from the side of the vein suddenly stopped, the laceration folding itself back into place. In all her years as a practicing surgeon, she had never seen anything like it, but she thanked whatever deity that had given her this opportunity and proceeded to suture the vein closed.
“Pulse is now 120! Breathing is better too!” a nurse noted, a hint of hopefulness in her voice.
“I’m pulling the two shunts now,” the second surgeon announced. “Vascular integrity has been re-established!”
Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard Page 23
