When the sun shone on the rock all day, it became pleasantly warm. Morgan was basking in the sun feeling the rock press against the back of his head. “This right here is my favorite spot in the world.” he said.
“Mine too” Tracy answered. She was looking up at fluffy clouds watching them roll past and thinking nothing in particular. She turned sideways on the blanket and put her head on his stomach. She started to doze off. He was watching a falcon circle high overhead. The bird watched him looking up.
A horn honked over and over. Tracy sat up with a start, “That’s got to be Uncle Robbie.” she got up and ran toward the driveway. Morgan followed. She waved at his truck and he pulled to a stop by them. Perry started barking and she opened the door. His tail wagged wildly and he danced in a circle around Tracy, then plowed into Morgan’s legs. Morgan slapped Perry’s side and gave him a good rub down.
“Hey guys!” Robbie said through the open window.
“Hey Robbie! how was the drive?” Morgan asked.
“Not bad. I was going hammer and tongs the whole way. But too long to do straight through. We stopped overnight near the Blue Ridge Parkway. Had breakfast in a great little diner down there with such an awesome view. Let me park this heap and get out!”
He parked the truck behind the house and Perry went romping off into the woods. Tracy and Morgan carried his bags into the house. He opened a beer, “you guys want one? let’s go for a walk! my ass is flat!”
They followed him out into the yard. He put his arms akimbo and looked up to the sky. “I’m planning to stay a while, kiddo. I hope I don’t cramp your style too much! It’s good to be home.”
“It’s so good to have you back,” she hugged him.
“It’s good to see you, and you too Morgan, how’s your family?”
“They’re alright. My mom’s got a new job. I’ve been working at the garage a lot this past week.”
“Really? after school?”
“Nope. He got suspended for two weeks!” Tracy laughed. Morgan’s cheeks went a little red.
“Ha! Oh, don’t be embarrassed. I was no saint! If you’re not getting in trouble, you’re not trying hard enough.”
“Good way to think about it.”
“Well that’s the ‘lite’ version.” He stopped, and smiled broadly. “It’s great that you guys are finally adult-ish. I can tell you stories now that would have twisted your young pure minds.” He laughed. “Let’s grill some steaks for dinner. You staying, Morgan?”
“Sure that sounds great.”
Chapter Seven
“Hey Morgan can you help me?” When Robbie walked fast, his limp was most noticeable. He went toward the pole barn. Morgan followed along.
“Can you drive the tractor?” he asked.
“Um, I think so.”
“Let’s slide the doors open.” He shoved his door open with one arm. The heavy door slid out of the way. Morgan tugged a little on his side of the door till it started moving then heavily walked it open.
“Yeah just pull the tractor out there out of the way. There’s a grill back here, I think.”
Morgan climbed up on the old Ford. It had a front loader bucket that was down on the floor of the barn. An excavator arm was on the back. It was a heavy duty piece of farm equipment. He nervously turned the key, the diesel sputtered a couple of times then roared to life and settled into a pop-pop-pop.
Robbie was digging around looking for the propane tanks for the grill. Morgan took a minute to look at the levers that controlled the buckets. Four levers for the front end loader were on the right side of the steering wheel. The labels for the controls were long faded to smooth shiny metal. Robbie heard the engine rev, then go idle. He went around to the right side of the tractor. Morgan looked a little bewildered.
He pointed and shouted, “Throttle, brake, gear, bucket up and down, bucket tip up down.” and gave a quick thumb’s up then went back around. Morgan nudged the up bucket lever. It popped off the ground and the tractor rocked front and back. He nudged it again and the bucket rose to just level with his line of sight. The brake was set, so he shoved it down, and he felt a spring release. The tractor rolled forward slowly so he gave it some gas and it surged out. He pulled it off onto the lawn and re-engaged the brake and shut it off.
“That’s my first time driving one of those in case you couldn’t tell.”
“You’re a natural! That’s a great machine. It’s older than me but I think it actually works better than I do! An absolute must for a place like this. Here take these.” He handed the propane tanks to Morgan. “Can you throw the empty in my truck? I think the other one’s still full.”
Morgan walked over toward the truck and put the light container in the back. Robbie was wheeling the huge grill toward the back of the house on a dolly. There was a brick stand for the barrel next to an old stone patio. The patio was in the shade of a big old maple tree, and moss had grown over most of the stones.
“If you can help me guide this thing, it’d be a lot easier.” Morgan grabbed one side of the barrel and they hoisted it onto the stand. Robbie beamed and patted the grill. “I made this last year. Check out those welds. Ever weld? Hardest part was cleaning the barrel. Hook that up.” he handed the hose over to Morgan and Robbie started vigorously scrubbing the grill with a wire brush.
“I’ve never welded anything.” Morgan answered.
“We’ll have to build something this fall.” Robbie said. He patted Morgan’s shoulder then jogged over to the truck and grabbed a cooler. “Free range, grass fed,” he mentioned as he walked into the house.
He grabbed an oval serving plate from the kitchen cupboards. “Hey Tracy!” he called out. She was walking back from the master bedroom. “I was getting you some flannel sheets and airing the room out. It was stale in there.”
“Thanks! Hey, want to help with the steaks?”
“Sure.”
“We could just throw these on the grill, but they’ll be a lot better this way.” They massaged salt into the meat then let it sit on the counter. “It’ll sit for about 40 minutes. Makes a huge difference.”
Morgan stepped inside. “The grill’s ready. I think I’ll head back into the library.”
“Oh excellent.” Robbie led the way to the room and thumbed through the stack of notes. “You guys are doing some research… For school?” Tracy and Morgan struggled to put an answer together. “Have you spent much time in here?” he asked Tracy.
“Well, yeah, just recently.” she said.
“I was looking at these books,” Morgan said. “My notes there. Trying to figure this out.” he handed over the coin.
“Oh wow, what’s that?” Robbie checked it out. He hefted in in his hand.
“I found it, believe it or not.”
“Found? Where?”
“In the woooods….” he trailed off embarrassed. “In the wall at school.” he said matter of factly.
“Hmmmm……” Robbie scratched his beard and tipped his hat back. “That’s really freaky.”
“I hadn’t even thought how weird it is that it was just jammed into the wall.” Morgan said. “I just noticed it there on the first day of school.”
Tracy said, “speaking of weird, an old friend of yours stopped by… David something...”
“Oh! David Mathis? I didn’t even know he was in town.” Robbie rubbed his beard.
“Yeah that’s it… Oh yeah, more weird: I passed out, dreamed about Mom and Dad, then started remembering things about the collection. David tried explaining some things for us, but woosh…” she zinged a hand over her head.
“Oh, wow….” He looked slightly stunned. The gears of his mind were churning.
“Do you know what he was talking about?” she asked him.
“I can explain this better if you’ve seen Star Wars.”
Morgan enthused, “Oh yeah.” and mimed a light saber and made the sound effect. Robbie pointed, “yep, good.”
“Well, I haven’t for a long time.” Tracy s
aid.
“Star Wars is sorta like our bible. I mean for my generation.” Robbie said. He gestured around the room. “This. This is the plans for the Death Star.”
“That’s no moon.” Morgan said, pointing up at the Moon sculpture. Robbie chuckled.
Tracy scrunched up her nose. “What? Death Star plans. I don’t think there are any Death Star plans here...”
“I mean if you were in the Rebel Alliance, you’d be able to blow up the metaphorical Death Star with what’s in here.”
“Like this?” Robbie picked up the copy of “Finance and Belief” and handed it to him.
Robbie nodded and shook the book in his right hand. “This book made France go broke in the 18th century. There’s shit in this room that’d curl your hair”
“Why haven’t I heard any of this before?” Tracy asked. “David said it is the family business.”
“Oh you did hear it in bits and pieces. Nobody ever hid this from you. But nobody presented it to you. You were just too young. You didn’t have any context to understand this stuff. Also, I need to point out that ‘family business’ is misleading. It’s not the family business. You can choose this life--anyone can.”
“Well what about this?” she pointed at her head. “I didn’t chose this.”
“What?” he was puzzled.
Morgan answered, “She’s like a human search engine.”
“Oh shit, he didn’t.” he rapped the table a couple of the times with his fist.
“Didn’t what?”
“I think your Dad basically transferred an index of this place to you.”
“How? I don’t even remember.”
“I don’t really know exactly. I’ve studied the information in here since I was your age, but I just take what I need and apply it. Matt, your Dad, did the deep dive and extended and improved on what he found. He probably used some method he discovered in here. There are a bunch of memory techniques that can be used to recall huge amounts of data--and presumably to transfer huge amounts of data from person to person. At some point, he must have done that to you.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Beats me.”
Morgan leaned forward and asked, “So are you? I mean, are you in the Rebel Alliance?”
Robbie laughed. “Yes, yes, in fact I am.”
“Like a Jedi?”
“Ohhhh man. Well, yeah, I guess. The problem with communicating this information through movies is it needs to be visually dramatic. In the movie, the Rebels get the Death Star plans, then pew-pew shoot a couple of bombs into it and it explodes. The reality’s so much less dramatic--well, most of the time--and usually more subtle.” They heard the clacking of Perry’s nails on the kitchen tile. “In here!” Robbie called. Perry walked back and flopped down in a sun beam on the floor.
“So there’s an Empire?”
“Yeah--this story goes way back, really thousands of years--maybe longer. The real history of the world is almost impossibly weird.” he sat back and rubbed his eyes. “Alright, we’re gonna cook the steaks and I’ll just blab.”
Chapter Eight
The sun was dropping toward the Western horizon as Robbie started cooking the steaks on the grill. Perry waited patiently for his share.
“You guys both had world history, right?”
Tracy nodded. “Yeah with, Mr. Trouper. He’s a cool teacher.”
Morgan laughed. “Oh man, remember that movie we watched about medieval history, ‘It’s not my clothes that smell, it’s me!’” Morgan said acting the part of one of the peasants.
Robbie flipped the steaks and took a sip of his beer, thinking about a way to dive into the discussion. “In a nutshell, some of what you learned might be actually be true. But the overall story is wildly distorted and missing major actors and events.”
“Like what?” Tracy asked.
“This is going to sound crazy, but we think, and by ‘we’ I mean the ‘rebel alliance’, think that history is driven by the interaction between men and--how to put it... For lack of a better word these things are supernatural entities.”
“You mean like ghosts?” Tracy was incredulous.
“A problem we’re going to run into again and again is that myths and Hollywood versions of myths have provided a visually dramatic representation of these things. When you imagine a ghost, you pull up some mental footage of Patrick Swayze and imagine a disembodied person that you could ‘see’ with your eyes under the right circumstances. Right?”
“Yeah, I think so.” she answered.
“Well, these supernatural entities, they are really more like idea beings. Humans connect to them through our brain--maybe with some type of sense organ---rather than through our eyes or ears. That connection brings them into this world.” he made a pulling motion with the spatula.
“But they’re just ideas...” Morgan was following along.
Robbie was thrilled Morgan was following along, and he pointed at him emphatically. “And so harmless, like an imaginary friend, or fake, just a comic book villain? That what you’re thinking?”
Morgan nodded. “Yeah.”
“Well, we discovered they actually have an independent existence apart from human beings, but become 3D real by attaching to the human world.”
Tracy rubbed her forehead and said, “Egregore.”
Morgan asked, “E-gree what?”
“Well, if you wanted to read about it here, you’d read about Egregore.” She shrugged.
“Yeah, that’s one of the terms used for these critters. They’ve often been perceived and dramatized as gods, or angels, or demons. Since they really don’t have a visual form, artistic or poetic interpretations give them monster like or angelic appearance depending on the being.”
“So how does ‘the Empire’ fit into this.” Morgan said, air quoting it.
Robbie put Perry’s steak on a plate and set it down on the patio. Perry ate it remarkably slowly for a dog. He put the rest on a serving plate, and they sat down at the table to eat. They had steak, corn on the cob, and mashed potatoes.
“There’s a seeming two way relationship with these entities--they need us to enter this world, and some men believe they can use these beings to gain power. The men believe they’re going to use the secrets the being whispers to them to achieve glory, fame, power. But in fact, the men give up their soul--they’re emptied and refilled with one of these entities. And these entities worked to build ‘the Empire’. I wish I could tell you more, but it’d take hours. That’s the rough outline.”
“Soul?” Tracy arched an eyebrow and looked at Morgan. “When did we ever go to church?”
Morgan added, “yeah, I’m not the religious type either.”
“Well, like I said, life’s weird and life’s complicated. Churches and souls ain’t got a lot to do with each other in my experience.”
The kids both nodded.
“And the idea that we’re just animated meat--the materialist view of human life--is currently the dogma of the Empire. It’s our modern mythology.”
“So what about The Rebels?” Morgan asked.
“So, just as there are men who attempt to harness these entities to gain power, there are men and women, heck even plants and animals, who fight to keep the planet free and try to break the grip these beasts have on our world. Hell, some of these entities are benign. The struggle’s been going for thousands of years. I’m sad to say we’re not doing as well as I’d like.”
“You said fight--is it a war?” Morgan wondered.
Robbie waggled his hand. “Most of the wars have actually been struggles between these entities and their servants. History’s full of Empires expanding, clashing, collapsing and being replaced with yet another machine of dumb domination--countless lives wasted and lived on behalf of collective hallucinations. The rebels are a subtle group, a totally disorganized set of people.”
“Well, if it was organized, how would it be different than the Empire?” Tracy said. “Makes sense.”
�
�Bingo. We’re all over, even working in the Empire from the inside, just poking holes, trying to get people out. There are writers, actors, people in TV, movies, teachers, professors, engineers, philosophers, musicians all doing their bit.”
“Wow.” Tracy said.
Robbie sensed she was overloaded. “Well, I know it’s a lot to take in all at once, so let’s just leave it at that for now.”
“It’s getting dark, I probably need to head home. Could I get a lift?” Morgan said. He took his notes and his bike and put everything in the back of Robbie’s truck. As they pulled out of the driveway, a black helicopter flew overhead.
The Chardon Chronicles: Season One -- The Harvest Festival Page 7
