"Did you see today's paper?" Bobbie asked. "Not a word about us."
"Nothing in the Burlington paper either," Wooley said.
"Nothing on radio, TV or the Internet," Steve added.
"It's like the whole day just got wiped out," Bobbie said.
"Not even a blogger?" I asked.
"That's a good thing," Donny said. "I don't like being in the news."
"Dude," I complained, "Do you realize how much business we could have gained from something like that? We'd have to hire a second shift."
"Maybe a third," Steve said.
"Too many problems," Donny said.
"Those are the kinds of problems we want to have," Wooley said.
"He's just camera shy," I explained. "He's even shy that I've written him into this story."
"Donny, shy?" Bobbie laughed. "I would have never knew it."
"So Donny," Lemar asked, "we've all been wondering how you knew to use Bobbie's remote control to unlock the bread ties on Marikay?"
"Yeah," John asked, "Are you some kind of mad scientist or something?"
Donny explained that as Bobbie was flying the helicopter to the roof with the bucket full of smoke grenades that he was jumping back and forth between cameras trying to keep track of everything that was going on inside and outside and that he thought he had seen Marikay almost get loose while the chopper was going up. So while we were in the room struggling to free her he found the videos and replayed them comparing the time stamps to one another and guessed the interference from the remote control was overriding the controls for the bread ties.
"So while we were risking getting shot at," John said, "you were watching movies."
"And thank goodness he was!" Lemar shouted. "Thank goodness he was!"
"Okay," Donny said, "enough talking, we've got a customer expecting to pick up a Wackemall Tadpole Trike tomorrow and it's not finished. Everybody back to work."
_________
I was hesitant to record this chapter. I feared people reading someday might think me literally insane. Up until now all the communications with Interdimensional Beings had been by others. The Tall Whites and the Grey Alien we captured? They could have been in costume. And who was to say Veggie Head Stalker's story was real, I just wrote what he told me to write and everyone knew it. Was he a plant or a guy wearing green makeup? But this time it was different, this time it was I who actually talked with the Interdimensional Beings. Before I could always claim only to be the messenger passing along what I had been told but now I'm the one everybody will view with skepticism. As one who has spent much of his life trying to establish and maintain credibility, telling the world that you have actually met and spoken to Interdimensional Beings is not an easy sell.
At least not in this dimension.
In Greensboro, North Carolina the Downtown Greensboro Interdimensionals had long flaunted their interdimensional status in the face of the entire city. It was over the heads of most people so most never caught on but it quickly caught the attention of politicians, Grey Aliens and other white collar criminals who were constantly on the lookout for new means to power. So they gave money and power to the Downtown Greensboro Interdimensionals in the hopes of getting what they wanted.
In the case of the Grey Aliens, they wanted the ability to easily move between dimensions without disrupting entire planets and never knowing when and where they'd end up but the Downtown Greensboro Interdimensionals, like other Tall Whites that had been banned from their own dimension kept secret the fact that they no longer possessed the technology to accurately travel between dimensions. What had long been a truce between the Tall White traitors and the Grey Aliens was now beginning to unravel.
The effects were being felt by the politicans and other white collar criminals as well. With influence fading, the Downtown Greensboro Interdimensionals and other traitorous Tall Whites could no longer keep the Greys at bay. And the Greys cared nothing of Humans or Tall Whites. They were here solely to exploit the Earth's resources and had they not happened upon the Tall Whites ability to travel between dimensions at will they would have wiped out both races thousands of years ago. The ability to maintain reliable interdimensional pathways would give them the ability to transport materials and resources faster than they could collect or process them and provide what would seem like endless supply at almost zero cost. A race with that kind of technology could become the master race if they so wanted to and the Grey Aliens wanted to.
We should consider ourselves lucky the benevolent Tall Whites considered such practices forever forbidden.
An announcement was made that the FredX conference would be coming to Greensboro and speakers were chosen. When I first heard of it I checked it out and discovered the financial backing was coming from the Knitter Foundation, a group with close ties to the Downtown Greensboro Interdimensionals and Auction Greensboro as well as the Guilford Partnership. I knew it was another dog and pony show but didn't say anything. When the speakers were announced the only one anyone wanted to see was Josephus III. Other than Josephus it was all the same thing that had been killing our city for the last 50 years.
________
We were busy working on the trike when the Veggicycle started shouting, "Incoming, incoming! Ready weapons, take cover! incoming!"
We checked the windows, checked the moniters and saw nothing out of the ordinary. "Are you sure?" Bobbie asked, her sawed-off 20 gauge pump gun at the ready. "There's nothing out there."
"It's out there," the Veggiecycle said, "and now it's in here!" We looked around to see ourselves surrounded by Tall Whites all heavily armed, weapons pointing in our direction.
"That's an interesting machine," one of the Tall Whites spoke. "It seems to see from one dimension to the next. Does it also travel between dimensions?"
"First I heard of it," I answered.
"You will not need your weapons," the Tall White stated. "Had we planned to kill you we would have begun firing from another dimension and arrived after you were dead."
"So why all the high tech hardware?" Bobbie asked.
"In case we run into our mutual friends, the ones who kidnapped your city councilwoman yesterday," the Tall White answered. "They seldom give us time to talk before firing on us and they sometimes manage to cross dimensions. They are quite the annoyance."
"You got that right," Wooley said.
"Ah," the Tall White said, "I see you and Steve did find your way back. Good."
"We're slightly out of time," Steve said, "but we made it back safe and sound."
"Yes, we were all slightly out of time because of the Alien disruption," the Tall White explained. "I got home just in time to watch my mother being born. Of course, unlike you I was able to get back into the proper time eventually."
"It doesn't matter," Wooley said, "we know enough to change some of the things that went wrong."
"Sadly, so do they," the Tall White said. "So is this one Bobbie?"
"Why do you ask?" I questioned.
"They will come for her again," the Tall White cautioned. "You cannot protect her forever. We would like to take her with us to a safer place where they cannot find her and train her in our advanced ways of government and technology."
"Ah, I don't think so," Bobbie said, "I'd rather stay here.
"Does she have a choice?" I asked.
"Of course she has a choice," The Tall White said. "Like your kind we believe in free will. We came to let her know the offer stands today and will always stand. She will be a great leader and we intend to do our part to make sure that happens but great leaders cannot be forced to become great leaders, they must chose it. When she is ready to make that choice we will return for her.
"Thanks," Bobbie said, "but I'm only 23, can my being a great leader wait a while longer?"
"Of course it can," he smiled. Then, he looked at us and with the rest of the Tall Whites began to sing.
"See you around, Dude."
Continue to Beach Trip
