Earth's First Galactic Citizen: The Finder's Fee

By Attila Gf. Matuschka

IddiKlu's crash landing spaceship's computer pilot finds David, age 8, a California boy, to help. David's reward, he becomes Earth's first Galactic. Imbued with inhuman powers, life with hometown, parents, school mates, alien friends and visitors strains the boys emotions to the limit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781623099510

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9781623099510

Prologue

Iddi Klu in his scout ship got information from its ship control chip that the ship had serious problems, needing repairs immediately. The scout vessel was passing through a solar system unknown to the Galactic civilization. The control chip informed Iddi that there was a planet with one citizen who not only seemed to have the mental quality needed for repairs, but a mind superior in comparison to Galactic’s it had looked at before anywhere. Iddi gave the ship discretion to make land close to the Galactic. With erratic flight entering the atmosphere the ship settled in the hillside yard of a structure which may well have been the residence of the Galactic.

A two legged creature walked up the incline of the hill and the ship recognized it as the Galactic by its mental activity. By its telepathic transmission to its passenger the ship advised Iddi that the visible individual was the Galactic it discovered from space before landing in its vicinity. Iddi got out of the scout vessel and walked to what the ship’s chip had advised him to be a Galactic. The eight year old David was looking at the bloodhound head of Iddi who via its teleamp communicated with him telepathically: ‘I need your help to fix my vessel, David.’ pathed Iddi. David unaware that the communication was a transfer of thought shook his head as he answered Iddi in spoken words: My dad is an engineer and he comes home about five. I will bring him here to help you. David still looked at Iddi with wonder at his dog face as he turned to walk up the hill to his home.

The ship’s controller advised Iddi: ‘Iddi if you do not get this Galactic to help you fix the ship you will be stranded here for a hundred revolutions of this planet or more.’ The blood hound was not happy but found that he had no choice but; Iddi teleported David back to his ship. David’s curiosity displayed on his face at how he found himself back under the tree on the east side of the yard from which he had walked away just moments earlier. The question going through his mind was, how could that happen?

Iddi explained to David: ‘David, please I need your help, and only yours, to fix my ship.’ Iddi looked at David who to him looked like a cub, but instead of a dog, a humanoid creature. David looking at what seemed a dog that talked, wearing a suit, and standing on two legs instead of on all four. He nodded at the creature: Okay show me what is wrong and I will see if I can help you. As he saw Iddi walk through the wall of the vessel he followed him and found himself inside a large pot shaped vessel, as if he had walked through a door instead of through a wall.

David looked around for what he expected like a console and found nothing except walls through which he could look as if they were glass. He asked: So where is your machine or whatever you want me to fix? Iddi looked at him communicating with the ship: ‘what is wrong here?’ That was where the ship took over amplifying the size of its computer chip in David’s view. David was startled for just a moment till he saw the scramble in the connections of the vastly enlarged chip. I do not have any tools to help. He argued. The ship telepath’s to him,: ‘Just think at it and it will correct itself.’ David thought about a wrong connection and saw how the machine straightened itself out as if it were alive. David found it so amazing he saw it more like a game to play, not work. And piece by piece the apparatus gradually seemed to straighten itself out.

The ship saw bodily requirements of David’s body and supplied what nourishment it needed. Time went by David without his awareness and he had no idea that he sat there in Iddi Klu’s spacecraft day after day for a long week. Finally David saw that all was in order and his head snapped around at Iddi, asking: Well that is all I can see here. Are you satisfied? Iddi who had seen the progress from time to time and had input from the ship computer nodded at him: ‘Yes David you did it all; now you can go.’ The two walked outside through the wall just as they came in days earlier.

CHAPTER 1

The alien bloodhound thoughtfully scrutinized his little assistant, wondering. David, the eight year-old Californian human cub he had abducted for need of a second brain, had been an amazing companion and helper. Now that the problem was found and fixed he still had some troubling thoughts.

Iddi still ignored the ship’s signal, telling him, ready to leave Terra. The seconds ticked by, and the little alien and his ship, were still on the ground. The signal of course, came from the repaired ship’s master. Iddi Klu scratching his jowls with his paw like hand, was searching his mind, what, in his best judgment was the correct action to take.

He, she, it, neither term was totally correct since the Klu change sex by choice, was mulling over what to do with the Galactic cub outside the ship. A Galactic living among animals.

The Klu were neither Earlies nor Lates to the galactic civilization. They were a canine race, and as such the only one in the Galaxy. There were sub races amongst them ranging from a dog somewhere between a Dachshund and a Beagle right up to the tall, majestic Groders, which easily reached five hundred pounds, and may have looked like anything from a Great Dane to an Irish wolfhound. Iddi’s’ clan hailed from an island where his bloodlines were pure. The shape and appearance would have fooled most Earth people to accept him for a Bloodhound.

Iddi was young for a galactic citizen. In earth revs his age amounted to barely a hundred thousand which divided by three hundred sixty five comes to less than three hundred years. The Klu were a semi nomadic race, so much so, you could consider them the Gypsies of the Galaxy.

As was so often the case with island residents, the nation Iddi stemmed from was obsessed with national pride. This pride was not so much a subject for display, as it was an internal affair of their personal selbstbild.

In galactic terminology, an animal was generally considered to be a mobile intelligent organism not capable of leaving its solar system. These creatures fell into category one or two. One being, zero technology, number two, included pre-evolved species in possession of technology, short of space travel. The latter were usually not in contact with the galactic civilization in the real sense of the word. What little contact existed served as food for superstition at worst, some reasonable acceptance or at least speculation that the Universe housed others than themselves, at best.

Iddi Klu was in a hurry but, there were still a few seconds to spare. Besides, who was counting time when it was a matter of honor, to pay ones debt, even if you wanted to disregard galactic law. His ship had been stranded for seven revolutions of this planet and recovery could easily have taken another twenty. Already two appointments had been canceled. Iddi’s schedule was shredded by this malfunction of his vessel’s solid state command processor. It was a fiasco.

Iddi Klu could leave the usual finders’ fee, one twelfth of the recouped financial loss and no one would check the accuracy since no one bothered to check rewards to animals. The finder’s fee was not really a requirement when dealing with an animal. The fee was an ancient custom of his people from before they had been people. It was also the law, but that was half a galaxy away, and only between people. Usefully performing animals were petted, fed, maybe adopted into a household. That was reward enough. But David was more than an animal.

This humanoid specimen had not reacted to the stimulation of mental petting. For IddiKlu to stick around and take care of the beast was out of the question. Adoption, Iddi scrutinized the cub, was impossible. The skinny creature, an eight-year-old cub of the species, out-massed him by five kilos already now. Adopting, the cub in itself would force Iddi Klu into a heavy adjustment aboard the ship, which was where it spent two thirds of its time.

Leaving without providing some reward was, Iddi Klu felt, to be beneath its stature. It would cause no financial hardship to pay the finder’s fee.

The furthest thing from his mind was what the next ten minutes would do to all his plans. The changes this meeting with the Earthling David would bring to his life, were beyond his wildest imagination.

At the moment one question however remained. What would David Boulder, Iddi Klu knew that the little beast had a name, and what it was, what would David Boulder do with a credit account at his disposal with the United Cluster Trust. The credit would sit there till doomsday.

Iddi Klu dwelled on this problem for a few seconds and developed the necessary strategies to circumvent the obstacles to David’s admission to the Galactic University. The first roadblock was a lack of interface capability with the school. Without the personal teleport amplifier, even a regular citizen of the galactic civilization, would be hard put, to avail himself of any of the many services peddled around the spiral arm, and these days, far beyond. Iddi Klu had been thinking of replacing its personal teleport amplifier for some time, with one of the new intergalactic Mark IIIY specials, no less.

Well, first things first. Iddi Klu opened the account in David Boulder’s name. Once that was accomplished, David was enrolled in the University Spiral Center. This needed a touch of creativity to compensate for David’s total lack of galactic cultural indoctrination.

Iddi’s first attempt brought him a refusal from the university admissions dean. The enrollment of a freshmen student from a pre-evolved race had to be approved by a sentient. Iddi gave this some thought, then unperturbed he decided, it would have to be a matter of getting to Siggi Klu a third level cousin. Yes Siggi, who was a member of the board of education.

Siggi shook his head at Iddi’s plan to provide the humanoid cub of the earth animal species with a galactic education. Iddi would not be denied. First of all it was a debt of honor, he explained, second it was the law on the Klus’ planet. Bluntly he asked Siggi whether it was suggested he break the law. Siggi didn’t want any of this bag of apples.

So, Iddi Klu, in order to facilitate an easy transition, recorded David with the university as an accident victim in need of medical attention. Iddi chuckled to itself; the university computer was about to be taxed to the limit with this student. Iddi had been searching for brainpower while coming in for a near crash-landing. His search engine had set sights on David without delay. Fact was David lit up on Iddi’s screen like a quasar. A quick scan established that, the mind capacity of this human cub pushed the evaluation algorithm past the end of its scale. The week Iddi had spent with the earth cub was not anything like being with an animal. Outside of the search for the glitch, the boy had been an amusing, interesting, and yes, fascinating companion. Iddi the loner had for the first time in his life found someone to make him reconsider his desire for solitude. For the Klu it was a revelation.

Now, that all the necessities with the outside galaxy had been dealt with, the final touch, without which none of this could work, was due. Iddi Klu teleported its own well-dated teleport amplifier out of his head. This was done with directions to move straight into the skull of David Boulder. Iddi felt somewhat naked and lonely without the hardware in his head.

For Earth this was an absolute first. No dweller of Terra possessed a personal teleport amplifier. The very existence of the galactic civilization was not even suspected. The technology to develop a three dimensional integrated device with less than three atom line width, which amounts to about three angstrom, in itself would have been considered an impossibility by the engineers in Silicon Valley or on Route 128.

The personal teleport amplifier was vastly more than the name implied. A standard model, readily available to anyone without restriction, would boost telepathic, teleportation and telekinetic talent, or potential, from a completely useless level to a perfectly workable strength. That capability was the original purpose for the teleport amplifier’s development. A crutch for the weak, the disabled and for those members of the galactic civilization that had joined before genetic equivalence to the galactic norm, in the areas of mental development in general, and kinetic power in particular, had been achieved.

That was in the far past. Now, was an entirely different story. The personal teleport amplifier, called teleamp in daily use, had grown in competence and reach beyond anything the original designers had ever envisioned. No citizen of the galaxy would be without it because it resembled nothing short of a supermarket of transportation and communication with half a dozen extras thrown in, not the least of which was the gravity controller.

The Klus were well suited for warp prospecting. Their small body mass made for cheap travel. Their temperament relaxed to the point of laziness allowed for long periods of solitude in good health while searching the galaxy for warps to order, or in lean times on spec.

Iddi Klu felt somewhat ill at ease. Iddi was also happy, with the conclusion of his involuntary stay on Terra. Ill at ease, because of the absence of the micro-miniature teleamp, he gave up to David. And he was happy and pleased to have managed to cut short the delay, caused by the unexpected breakdown of his scout class space vessel. Iddi was proud to some degree, about solving the problem, how to reasonably square its debt to David Boulder. It should be mentioned here that even amongst the Klu, where eccentricity was more a norm than an exception this latest act of generosity would have been considered bizarre, if not unwise.

CHAPTER 2

A man who looked to be in his twenties sat on a rock, a quarter mile from the spot amongst the trees and bushes on the hillside, where Iddi Klu and his space vessel lifted off, ending their unscheduled stay on Earth. There was something strikingly familiar about him. He had been sitting on the rock and observing the goings on from this considerable distance with interest, but without display of excitement or concern. Now that alien and ship were gone, and David had started on his way down the hill towards his home, he got up from his perch on the rock and leisurely strolled along a deer trail and suddenly he was out of sight.

A few minutes later the only creatures remaining in sight were the two chicken hawks that have been riding the thermal above the hillside to gain altitude. Then they had reached the limit of the free ride, letting the wind carry them to the next ridge with another updraft.

David Boulder had been missing since the evening of Saturday seven days ago. At first, William Boulder, who was David’s father, when he found out about his missing boy, was merely annoyed. When the eight-year-old David still had not turned up by midnight, Boulder reminded himself that he too, at the age of seven, had pulled a disappearing act. Mid morning the following day, phone calls to the school, it was closed, and some of the Boulder boy’s friend’s homes had brought no results, a degree of panic had set in at the house of the missing boy. Yes, the older Boulder conceded, at first silently to himself and then finally to his wife, David, was in fact gone and could not be found without help.

With a heavy heart William Boulder picked up the phone and reported his son missing. The Sheriff’s dispatcher stamped the report at seven minutes after one.

At a quarter to two a Deputy arrived at the Boulder home to fill out the missing person report form. Over the next five days the Sheriff’s office and the police department of the city of San Rafael, Larkspur and Novato made every effort in the routine and some outside the routine to find David Boulder. It should be said, it was to no avail.

Routine investigation disclosed that David had told of his taking hikes in an unincorporated area of Marin County some two miles from his home. By the fourth day of David’s disappearance, the hillside above and around the Los Ranchitos subdivision and the southern part of the county had been combed thoroughly. First by the Sheriff’s horse patrol and then by a group of volunteers made up in part by members of the Fire Departments of San Rafael and Kentfield, and in part by boys and girls from Redwood High.

Iddi Klu had seen the search parties, determined them to be straightforward biological units of the local species, devoid of technical amplification. Even though both parties practically fell over David and rode into Iddi Klu’s scout vessel, the telepathic shield provided by the alien permitted not one member of the searchers group to recognize the boy or take note of the alien’s craft.

David had been aware of the activity around the scout-craft. It did not distract him. His total conscious attention was focused on the repair-job, to the exclusion of all else. Iddi had no problem with the help of the ship nourishment facility, to take care of David’s eating needs. The teleamp checking the mix of carbon, metals, salts minerals and water, provided with perfection. One thing was missing. David had lost track of time. He was still unaware of the lost week.

The processing of a new student at the Galactic University usually was a totally automated sequence of events. Millions of citizens enrolled in any single week. Credit was established, the curriculum presented, the counselor provided a simple table of the student’s level of aptitude in each of the schools subjects, requested a choice and debited the cost of the course from the enrollee’s bank. The snag in David’s case was something akin to amnesia, and a rather dated personal teleport amplifier requiring some troubleshooting, in particular with the interface to the brain.

Within a few seconds David was connected up to the University clinic. It was immediately diagnosed, that the teleport amplifier needed repairs as well as updates. The two jobs were started at once. Cases like this were rare, but a few were in the memory bank. The procedure was similar to the repairs, on the ship’s computers David had just completed.

The program of updating, interfacing and repair was done with David’s assistance, but did not require the concentration that had been necessary while he worked on the ship’s master. David had learned a lot about this kind of work in the last seven days. He understood, that the minute material he manipulated, without ever of course touching it with his hands, were the building blocks of matter, molecules and atoms. The mind of the child accepted this without prejudice. It was so easy, to detect the flaws in the latticework of matter, and rearrange it with a minimum of logic, it was fun. David enjoyed it as much as he enjoyed jigsaw puzzles.

CHAPTER 3

David was almost home, when he met Susan Crane. She was the first person to see him, since his disappearance. Susan was a classmate of David’s, and lives across the gully a hundred feet down the hill, from the Boulder home.

Susan had been caught up in the excitement over David’s disappearance for all of last week. It had brought not only David, but her as well, to prominence. In the process she had realized that she had a crush on him and his being lost made her feel a loss of her own. Now, after her mom had warned her to stay away from strangers, since for sure that was what happened to David, trust in a stranger caused wicked things to happen to him. Here he was whole and unhurt.

Mom, look here he is, she pauses, to look for some sign of abuse, torn cloth, scratches, dirt, blood. Yes blood was a sure sign of harm. But nothing; no matter how she scrutinized the Boulder boy he looked sound, healthy and relaxed. Mrs. Crane caught a hint of the excitement in Susan’s voice.

Yes Susan who is here? But Susan was already up and running out the door, which slammed close behind her with a resounding bang. The way Susan sounded to her mother, and the urgency with which she had gone out of the house, got her mother’s curiosity up enough to leave her kitchen for the rear porch. There she would be able to look out on the hill and find the ‘he’, who got her little girl to leap up and run out of the house. When she recognized the he coming down the hill, was David, she understood the excitement. She joined her daughter to welcome the Boulder boy. After the past weeks upheaval over David’s abduction, Joyce Crane felt curious, about where the boy had spent all of last week, and why he had caused his parents such worry.

Where have you been all week? Susan hammered at David with her fists. The boy was bewildered.

Are you nuts? I’ve only been gone for a couple of hours.

Are you nuts, Susan aped him. It was a week since everybody started looking for you. She yelled at him in exasperation. David looked at her, bewildered at first and then with a frown of concentration. The microchip present in his head informed David.

‘Yes David you were indeed gone all week. Look! This is what you were doing.’

It does it not just by telling him but by creating a picture of Iddi and the scout vessel David had spent the last seven days with. Like a flash the missing week was there in full, with color, sound, smell and touch. There was no escaping it, when he saw the alien Iddi and his scout ship. All at once, he replaced the frown on his face with an embarrassed grin. The impression the telepathic message he got made him believe what he had been told. But wondering who by, he looked up and down the hill, asking.

Where are you? Who are you?

The teleamp responded by explaining.

‘I am Iddi Klu’s teleamp; or rather I am David Boulder’s teleamp now. I am part of the finder’s fee Iddi gave you for finding his processor’s glitches. Here!’

The microchip replayed the final minute’s transactions. David just experienced the first function of his personal teleport amplifier. With the little machine in his head he had better than a good memory, he had acquired total recall. The clouded memories of the past were gone forever from his life. From this second on, impeccable, perfect and total recall was his, just for the asking, or rather for a moment of concentration. All this David got from a unit of dated technology, less than perfectly interfaced, operated by the most inexperienced user in the galaxy. David stared at Susan, now aware there was no one talking to him.

How am I going to explain this?

The teleamp transmits to David while David is questioning.

‘There is no need to verbalize David, this kind of surface communication is very easy to read and your spoken words just create an echo.’

‘You can hear me think?’

David shook his head. Susan had looked to see what David had been turning to look at. Not seeing anything, she turned back to the boy.

Yes, where have you been all week long?

Here Susan’s mother Joyce took over with what she considered to be her motherly instinct. She was close enough to be easily heard without the need of raising her voice:

Come in David you must be starved, poor dear. Come on, have a piece of fresh pie!

The children had almost reached her, and she turned back into the house with that typical air of the adult toward the next generation, which never quite allows a choice. David had little choice in the matter, since Susan kept pulling him by the hand impatiently, curious, excited and somewhat eager for a piece of pie, she admitted to herself. It wasn’t exactly what David had planned. So what was a fellow to do? David allowed himself to be dragged into the Crane’s kitchen to sit down and have a piece of fresh pie. It turned out to be apricot pie, delicious, and still warm from the oven.

David tried to use the time while munching at the kitchen table to think about a plausible explanation for his week long absence. David was trying it on, in his mind.

‘My Mom, no way, maybe my Dad?’

‘They would never believe it, me sitting up there with the funny little bloodhound guy fixing his flying saucer like in the cartoons. I’ll have to invent something to explain my not coming home for a whole week.’

‘This is going to be tough, real tough’. He was kicking it around in his head, ‘I’ll tell them, I’ll not tell them, I’ll tell them.’

But nothing came to mind.

‘I guess I am gonna be grounded for a day, a week? No, two weeks? Maybe a month! Dad’ll take my bike away!’

David groaned with a full mouth. The Cranes both took it to be hunger. ‘I am going to get it good.’ He was sure, ready to give up the search for an explanation that would get him off. Not off, like off scot-free, but off like a light. Somehow the apricot pie just didn’t taste quite that good anymore.

While David ate her pie with an occasional groan, Susan’s mother inspected him, looking for signs of wear, damage, despair, anything. She kept on shaking her head, trying to unravel the mystery. How could an eight-year-old boy disappear, and be gone for a week, a whole week. And then show up, damn it, unharmed? No not just unharmed but with not a single hair out of place. You wonder how the mother took it, were her thoughts. It roused her curiosity.

What does your mother say to you coming back?

David’s cheeks were bulging. All he could do was shake his head.

The Crane woman had the phone off the hook and was dialing. Four One One; there were two rings.

What city please? The operator asked. San Rafael, Boulder, William I think.

Susan’s mother memorized the number just well enough to punch it into the phone. This time it took five rings before David’s mother answered the phone.

Hello, Sharon, this is Joyce Crane. I’ve got good news for you, David just walked into the house and he is all right, really all right. She hung up the telephone because her last words had gone into a dead line. Sharon had hung up.

Susan’s mother felt for the boy’s mother and with the feeling of understanding what the Boulder woman must have been going through in the last seven days; she knew the first question on the mother’s mind, ‘how would her son be, what had happened to him, was he all right?’

Sharon, interrupting her, had said no more, than: I am coming over, before breaking the connection. While waiting for the mother, it began to sink in. It struck her that somehow the boy looked all wrong. David just sat there, stuffing his mouth with apricot pie, sipping from the milk she had poured him, but even though he was only on the second piece of pie he had already slowed down considerably. It just didn’t look like the kid had been starving for a week. Where had he been? Who fed him? Who had taken care of him? It was all very puzzling.

More than that, she thought that her woman’s intuition told her something more than that, David Boulder was all right. He looked better than just all right, and that’s what puzzled her. She felt it was decidedly odd, when a boy had been gone from his mother’s care and attention for a week, he should look as good, and clean, and sharp as David did. She thought of the care and attention she gave to Susan and for that matter to her husband and how quickly any neglect showed up in her daughter’s appearance, her dress, her hair, her shoes. It must be David, the boy looked capable, even mature. She scoffed at her own thought; an eight-year old, mature?

The University Hospital section found a way to channel through David’s synapses and build up the power-flow so very necessary to the proper functioning of a teleport amplifier. The machine that was looking after setting up his brain’s interface to the teleamp had been close to requesting a check by a sentient. This particular problem needed extra attention and some possible override instructions. Every time it neared the decision to call for help, the obstruction in the brain seemed to loosen sufficiently to abort such a call. The apparatus decided instead to run a check on its own programming for possible faults.

One of the side effects of the machine’s repair-work on David was that he had flashes of vision as if the picture of the world outside were thrown on the wall of the kitchen. An added strange feature was that, right through the wall, he saw his mother coming down the hill to the Crane’s house, her face strangely tense.

That is how he saw that her next step would bring her foot squarely on the skateboard and he could already see her falling. He shot up from his chair his face intent with a shout on his lips.

Mom! The anticipation of pain made him wince and with intensity, driven by the desire to stop the accident, it forced to clear the path in the newly built interface. This was the final push, this time from his side and it cleared the circuits between the student, patient and the teleamp IC implanted in his skull.

Animal and machine became one. This primeval strength growing from his terror, this powerful cry of his mind from want and need to stop the pain from happening, pushed against the suddenly open line. The kinetic force of his first chance ever, to exercise, of his own volition, a function of his brain that was atrophied beyond recognition in every kind of animal known to exist in the Galaxy, was overpowering. It was a moment where the danger of a mere fall down the hill, was insignificant when compared to the danger of a fifty ton crane, of relatively unlimited reach, with an inexperienced boy of eight years at the controls. This parallel to the situation was quite conservative.

The feed back instantaneous and well tuned brought this strange new condition of his mind to his awareness as suddenly as it was brought to the attention of the hospital. The computer registered an out of alignment condition, either due to a gain in the bio-computer signal feedback of the teleport amplifier, which by now was at a seventy four point operating level, or an over-functioning of the teleport amplifier. Last but not least it could be a temporary glitch of over-stimulation due to the clinics work on the apparatus to affect repair towards conversion.

The present degree of over-function was a new high. The nearest, in potential over-control, in the memory of the hospital was a person who in the process of full kinetic force teleamp application had pushed himself right through the permawall of a space freighter.

At that time the death of the citizen was a problem beyond the hospitals capability. Today the hospital was equipped to deal with even such severe an accident. Then, instant frying of the body, made repairs, at the then existing state of the art in medicine, impossible.

The safeties had been advanced for the duration of the repairs and therefore cut out the amplifier just short of its instantaneous destruction. The retrieve was enough to save Mrs. Boulder’s life. The minute remainder of the projected kinetic force hit the woman exactly where David’s hands would have hit her, had he stood in front of her, namely in the stomach.

No one other than David saw the accident. Sharon was thrown about a hundred feet up into the air and then she came crashing down. In falling she twisted her torso, and on impact she crushed her spine in the lower area of L4 and L5. The result was a partial paralysis. One of her legs, and three fingers of her right hand had turned stiff. She didn’t know about that at this particular moment, because she had lost consciousness.

David sat frozen by fear, unable to move hands still up in the air. The teleamp neutralized the adrenaline, and David was ready to take action. It was nothing more than jumping off the stool and running out of the kitchen across the deck down the stairs and up the hill.

David had never run as fast as he did in these seconds. Since he, in his eagerness, lost balance five, six times the teleamp cut in with enough teleportation to avoid a fall. This caused some of his steps to become kangaroo jumps. The Cranes, mother daughter pair tried to follow David, but by the time they came out the door onto the porch, David was standing by his mother’s side bending over her shouting. I am sorry, mom; I didn’t mean to do it. Please wake up mommy! Please get up mommy! Mommy? He touched