EggHead & I Chapter LIII

Chapter LIII
by General (Uncle Claude) Xxaxx
& General (E.J. Gold) Nunan PFC 1st Class Ret.

Woo entered the factory complex from the west through a small double sash window, fortunately, set over a bare-top desk. The room was a small administrative office — the kind typically used for payroll. The desk (that Woo was crouching on), a chair and single filing cabinet was all that occupied the room. The office had two doors only — one leading in from the outside (still closed, locked and alarm intact) — another door on the opposite wall led into the factory complex proper. The outside door was solid metal with two deadbolts, no inset window, and double reinforced hinges. The door leading into the factory was a standard industrial type interoffice door — a large frosted glass window with chicken wire embedded in the glass. This door was locked from the inside. This was not the room into which the bosspersons had phase-shifted. There was not the psychic-stench. But they had been close. Unsetting the latch, Woo stepped through the office door into the adjoining room. The bosspersons had been here.

Standing in the doorway, Woo surveyed the room. There were masses of garbage and miscellaneous material scattered along the walls as if someone had cleared the center-floor in a hurry by pushing junk into a ring of piles along the walls. In the middle of the hastily created clearing was fresh scuff marks and traces of blood. A psychic reading of the room revealed pictures of Ja Mere and Little Roy beaten by half a dozen bosspersons. The strong psychic disturbance of the recent brutality imprinted an exceptionally strong psychometric reading on the space. Marveling at the clarity of the reading left on the room, Woo mused aloud, “the bosspersons couldn’t have chosen a more effective method of imprinting the room if they had tried.”

The hairs stood up on the back of Woo’s neck, “Perhaps they had tried.” Woo barely breathed not wanting to say it too loud for fear of recognizing its truth.

Steeling herself against the psychic moans of agony, Woo glanced about the room looking for the next clue. It was already too obvious that a trail was being left deliberately for her to follow. “Take it carefully, Woo ol’ gal, someone is breading a trail for you right into a trap.”

Two additional doors led from the room. Quick investigation confirmed the door to the left, led north into a small parking courtyard. This parking area was more than the usual taxi-stand. It must be a hold over from an earlier era when citizins could still be trusted to drive — this was an old section of town, that was for sure. Either that, or the owners of this company were successful enough to afford private chauffeurs.

The door to the east led further into the factory complex. This was the door Woo started to take. If she wasn’t so sure before, the broken key in the lock confirmed it. Someone has gone this way and doesn’t want anyone following. The broken lock was no deterrent for Woo; a simple application of dragon magic was all that was required to open the lock and door. Obviously, the bosspersons were expecting someone and didn’t mind trashing the lock to keep pursuers away. “They obviously didn’t calculate on a mage of dragon magic as the pursuit.”

Woo’s momentary arrogance at penetrating the door seems silly in retrospect, given the thin walls of this second office. If the door was too much of a problem, a determined thief could have just gone through the walls.

Coaxing the door open and looking inside, Woo had to refine her opinion on whether or not the bosspersons were leaving an adequate deterrent for would-be rescuers; the question of getting past the door or through the door became acedemic. The whole of the insides of the next room were covered in a mass of large striated tendrils that looked like a huge hair piece growing from the walls and floor. Strands of this hair-like material extended inward and upward toward the sky through the open ceiling. The hole in the ceiling had either been removed by a demolition crew or blown away in an industrial accident. As second nature, Woo scanned the surrounding area for ceiling debris — none visible. Not having the time to explore the room exhaustively, Woo wasn’t able to determine whether the roof was removed by an industrial accident or design. Perhaps it matters; perhaps it doesn’t? In any case, the factory room looks like one in a cartoon that has been hosed down with miracle grow hair restorer.

Woo whispered into the still wind, “An alien and unfriendly atmosphere as I’ve ever seen.” Coming from someone that has spent as much time with dragons as Woo has, this meant something. She has seen her quota of very alien environments and been exposed to some rather unfriendly atmospheres. Dragon magic is not for wimps.

Apart from the miracle of hair restorer, on the walls the room had three other dramatic features. There was no sign of Ja Mere or Little Roy. Their room was totally clean of any psychic traces — like a plate that has been licked clean. And, there was a swathe cut across the room from one side of the great hair piece to the other— a wide trail from the west door where Woo stood to a door on the opposite east wall. Whomever went through this room made no effort to hide their passage — a great beaconing path led across the room. At least the path would have been beaconing if not for the elaborate and expert booby-traps — seven in all. Not having the time or inclination to play around removing traps, Woo lifted her physical form floating over the intervening floor space and exited the open door to the east. Later, maybe, if she still needed a hobby to occupy her time, she might come back and attempt to dismantle the traps for challenge of it. The traps look to have been set by a Class V trapsetter, which means they would be impossible to dismantle with human technology.

The next room to the east was small, dark and filled with the overpowering odor of evil. Lying in the middle of the grease stained floor was a finger, bitten off and spit onto the floor. “This is getting too weird,” Woo affirmed, as if acknowledging it would lessen its impact. Scanning the room in the optical, astral and etheric spectra Woo found nothing. No hatred, no aggression — evil, yes — but nothing else. Whomever did this, did it without passion. In cold-blood, Little Roy’s finger was bitten off and left on the floor for someone to find.

Woo was being led on a horrific version of follow the leader. “Why are the bosspersons so intent on leaving a trail for me to follow? How could they be so sure I would come this way.”

Pausing a moment, Woo let a wave of revulsion pass through her body. This cruelty of the bosspersons was a new thing to her. She knew of cruelty and hatred. Eggheads have always suffered under the domination of Citizins. Bubblers feared and hated the eggheads. The emanations from this room are from cold, vicious killers. There is no fear, no hatred, only cruelty and malice. Woo turned to the east, made a sigil and spit onto the floor — spitting a large drop of something green and slimy — something that ate its way into the concrete fuming and bubbling. “I vow that these creatures will be stopped. There is no room for them on any planet where I can still tread.” As one can guess, this was not a minor form of vow-taking. Dragons are very serious about their vows, and this was one of the most sincere.

Looking about the room for other exits, Woo found another door to the east, “Ever toward the rising sun, is it?” A conviction was growing in Woo that she had to reach her friends before the sun rose. This, hopefully, last door, was solid metal, several inches thick, bolted and welded to the door frame by torches in professional hands; this door would not be opened easily — certainly not by any ordinary means. Not knowing who or what was on the other side, Woo didn’t dare blow the door open. Destruction and explosions were the easiest of the dragon magic to master — also the most unpredictable. The energies involved virtually guaranteed accidents. Either Woo could retrace her steps, try to gain entry into the adjoining room from the east side of the factory, or she would have to go through the door. Woo shuddered at the thought of the extra time and the increased likelihood of her friend’s death at the hands of these bosspersons. They would make lung cancer look gentle.

So through the door, Woo had to go. It would simply be a matter of shifting planes into nothingness stepping in the direction of “through the doorway” and shifting back. Simple, except for one small item, tolerating the abject nothingness of being here. Being here where there was not even a here to be. Being where there was nothing to reflect the process of being. All Woo had was a faint residue of intention to step “through the door.” Stepping in that direction Woo crossed a threshold and phased herself back into the room on the other side. Standing cat-like, ready to spring in any direction, Woo quickly looked around the room to orient herself for whatever circumstance she found herself in. Woo was surprised to find the room had three standard issue factory-type walls and a great gapping hole where the fourth east wall would have been. The floor was clear of any furnishings, any debris, and any dust, for that matter. It was swept totally clean as if by a great wind, which could explain the lack of an east wall. What could not be explained away so easily was the exposed landscape. It was not a landscape from the earth, or any other earth of which she was aware.

Standing on the edge of the floor at the brink of what would have been the east wall, Woo was staring into the eye of a great green and black solar disk, a sun setting below an amber horizon. Not the kind of thing that one expects to see on earth. At least not this time of year.

Woo could see no sign of a trail. No telltale clues that beckoned, “we went this way.” Woo sat her body on the floor,.made a sigil of protection about her form, and entered into deep trance. Leaving the body was easy — very few remaining hooks held her to this form. As usual, on the way, out Woo took an inventory of residual life-hooks. Surprisingly enough, Woo felt nothing holding her to the Happy Birthday Project or Project Levity. Apart from the small intentional hooks that Woo used to self-invoke herself into the current incarnation, the only hook that held her to any earthly form was a sharp sense of duty that she couldn’t even name, something to do with blue and pink self-luminous lights and a great swirling cloud of self — not the kind of thing that was easy to put into words — leastwise, not words that made any sense.

Exiting inventory, complete and released from her bio-machine Woo was free of its electrical buffering effect. Casting her attention about, Woo confirmed what she had suspected. No trace, whatsoever, of Ja Mere and or Little Woo. No trace of the bosspersons that have taken them or the horse they rode away on — metaphorically speaking, of course. As fas as that goes, there wasn’t any trace of bubblers Citizins or eggheads — no one. This was not an inhabited planet.

Returning to her body, Woo was chilled to the bone — more than deeply concerned she was terrified. Clearly, the bosspersons have been leaving Woo a trail. They had every expectation that someone would be following, and they have left clues sufficient. Given this and the sudden break in the trail, it was obvious that the bosspersons left Woo in the adjoining room — the only item that could help her find her friends — Little Roy’s finger. It required the highest and least talked about of magics to perform. No one other than the dragons and a few high mages even knew that such a magic existed, let alone, how to perform it. And yet, the bosspersons were leaving a clue that could only be bridged with that magic.

This recent revelation was unsettling in the extreme. The bosspersons have engineered a situation in which Woo had no recourse to find her friends other than the magics of transsubstantiation of flesh to flesh and the contamination of similars. To perform the ritual was simple. All Woo had to do was absorb Little Roy’s finger into her own body, disperse the cells throughout her structure, enzymatically dismantle the chromosomes, splice the unique identifying genes from Little Roy’s genetic structure into her own cellular DNA, enter into metaspace — standing where she was — explode her body into billions of separate cells, allow her sense of hereness to be attracted magnetically to the larger assemblage of genetic material, known as “Little Roy”, to which she has been attuned, let her cells recollect at that new location, then all that was left was to translate out of metaspace and, voila, there she was. Simple. Admittedly, there were a few drawbacks to the procedure, not the least of which was, “What happens if Little Roy is dead and buried?” Secrecy may have been one reason the dragons didn’t talk about this ritual. As for Woo, she didn’t talk about it because it gave her the creeps.

Apart from a few minor modifications to account for flux in the bio-current fieldlines, Woo carried out the ritual as described.

continued

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