The Buffalo Kid

By Réal Laplaine

Heralded as a story that should be part of school curriculums, with its inspiring message of hope, we follow 71-year-old John Ross, the oldest homeless man in Buffalo, New York; whom the locals call the Buffalo Kid. The Kid has been destitute for 31 years, enduring Buffalo's brutal winters, living in a cardboard box, and yet, never relinquishing his hope for a 2nd chance in life. This heart-warming story, inspired by real people, will touch your heart, because the Buffalo Kid could be anyone; your uncle, a friend, an associate - or, your father.

“The Buffalo Kid,” is tremendous.”

"Amazing take on modern human dilemmas."
Marina Osipova, author of The Cruel Romance

"Compelling and surprising. A must read."
Cynthia De Boer, author of Me, Myself and Eye

“It was impossible to stop reading once I picked it up...”

"You'll want to reread this one after finishing it. Yes, it is that good."
Vermont Reviewer

"This book opens your heart and your mind. Loved it."
Erin R

"I simply couldn’t put it down."
Tommy Ray

This surprising story of a human experiment is a thrilling masterpiece offering hope for us all!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Réal Laplaine
• Release date: Aug 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476286884

Réal Laplaine

I write in several genres; crime thrillers, speculative fiction thrillers (some would call it sci-fi but I prefer speculative fiction because my themes are more possible than not) and geopolitical thrillers.I have written a few books which classify as literary fiction - novels with an inspirational edge.My focus has always been on writing very contemporary novels, which, while entertaining, pull no punches on the state of the world we live in, or the potential futures facing us, thus, the speculative fiction aspect of my works.In the bookstore at www.reallaplaine.com you will find my books in eBook formats (ePub/PDF) which are instantly downloadable to your computer, smartphone or other device. Links are provided for each book if you prefer to order Kindle, Nook, paperback or other formats from other book retailers.You will also find a number of my short stories which are cost-free.Some of my titles are now in audio book format - more are coming.Abolishing nuclear weapons:In 2014 I published a book, Twilight Visitor, a geopolitical thriller about China invading Iran for its oil, wherein Iran retaliates by firing a nuclear warhead at Beijing. The book has garnered tremendous reviews, comparing it to the best of Dan Brown and other similar authors, but what is important is that the story impresses on the reader that nuclear war is just a button away. In several of my subsequent geopolitical thrillers this thread also weaves through the stories, to help raise awareness on this existential threat to the future of our kids.Please take a moment to visit the page entitled B.A.N. or Ban All Nukes at www.reallaplaine.comRéal LaplaineAuthor of Break Out Bookswww.reallaplaine.com

Book preview

The Buffalo Kid

A second chance at life becomes an inspiring story

by Réal Laplaine

The Buffalo Kid

Copyright © 2008 by Réal Laplaine

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the author.

First edition published 18 August 2009

Second edition published 13 November 2013

Third Edition published 6 August 2015

Fourth edition published 28 May 2018

Fifth edition published 15 Feb 2019

All the characters in this story are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people is purely coincidental and not intended.

Cover design by Cindy Anderson

Books by Réal Laplaine:

Intrusion: A Keeno Crime Thriller

Quantum Assault: A Keeno Crime Thriller

The One: A Keeno Crime Thriller

Finding Agnetha

See Me Not

Dead - But Not Gone

Twilight Visitor

The Deception People

Earth Escape

Woman EX

The Other

L.I.N.

When Gods Roar: The Awakening

The 9th Divinity

For more information or to purchase other books by the author go to www.reallaplaine.com

Dedication

To the homeless – not the hopeless.

1

Buffalo, New York, my town for the past seven decades, has not always been this way.

Ask anyone who has lived here for a while; I mean… twenty or thirty years while, not some Johnny-come-lately.

Those of us who have been here for most of, or the entirety of our lives, will tell you about a once thriving city, full of industry and commerce.

The days when the streets were lined with beautiful homes, built in the great American architectural style from before the turn of the 20th century; structures of fabulous artwork and craftsmanship that have never since been repeated - and possibly never will.

Buffalo was alive in those days; you could feel it, sense it. It was a growing, animated, and thriving metropolis.

I know, because I was there, and I still am – only now, my circumstances have drastically changed.

I have walked more streets of Buffalo and spent more time on them than most any human being alive today.

Why? You may ask.

I have been, until recently, a homeless man for over thirty years of my life.

I was not always destitute and abandoned to the streets. I once had a life – a good life, a family, two new babies whom I loved – and a wife, who, well, God bless her tortured soul, turned out to be a turncoat who walked out the door and abandoned me when the chips were down.

I’m not pointing any fingers.

Blame is for losers. It is a sign of weakness. When we blame others for our situation in life, we deprive ourselves of the power to do anything about it. And believe me, blame was a crutch I could easily have resorted to, and for a time, I did.

Losers point fingers at others – and in the end, there are always three fingers pointing back at you. The universe doesn’t equivocate when it comes to ultimate responsibility.

That is a lesson I learned the hard way.

And had it not been for the dynamics which were set in play in the story you are about to read, I would still be on those streets, bumming around for handouts, picking up cigarette butts and living in a cardboard box.

But, back to the city, Buffalo, New York, because this is the thematic core of this story.

Buffalo is a town, at least at the time of this writing, which was considered one of the poorest cities in America. And rightly so.

Once a boomtown, the center of the steel industry in America, along with its sister city, Pittsburgh, Buffalo was rolling in dough – a true success story.

However, all of that changed several decades ago when, for assorted reasons which I won’t bother to detail here, the steel industry pulled up its stakes – and with it went much of the lifeblood of this town.

Countless people lost their jobs. Businesses collapsed overnight, bankrupt and closed. And the port of Buffalo, once a thriving and dynamic hub, transformed to an abandoned ghost-town of its own.

A lot of people, out of necessity, left in a mass exodus.

Many stayed, but Buffalo was a different place after that time.

I consider myself, in a perverse way of course, an ambassador for the city, although, laughably, and no doubt others would laugh and scoff at the idea that such a man as myself, some street urchin who had been living in a cardboard box under a bridge overlooking Lake Erie, who owned nothing except the torn and dirty rags on his back, would become an ambassador for anything other than consummate failure?

The story you are about to read might change your mind about the destitute folk who lurk on dark corners and in dim alleyways, hidden from the general concourse of humanity.

It might very well change your entire perspective on the men and women, and sometimes, the children, which you see decorating the streets of your city.

You might consider the story entirely fictional, maybe even somewhat bordering on science fiction because of one facet of it, but I would urge you to give it time, and to let your bones and soul absorb it.

I did – and believe me, it took some steel on my part.

As to me, I landed on the streets, penniless and forgotten, some thirty-one years ago, at least that is what memory tells me.

Before my nosedive I worked as a senior sales representative for the automotive industry.

When the steel manufacturers up and left, the others soon did the same, and with it, went my life. I was faced with financial burdens I could no longer deal with and soon faced a crisis. Everyone, myself included, were desperately seeking-out jobs which simply did not exist anymore.

The banks, those smiling assholes who so amiably gave me the loan for my home and my two cars, showed up one day, like sharks in a feeding frenzy, and repossessed everything

I had two young babies then. And my wife, as I said, being less loyal than I had hoped, packed her bags and took off on me one day, with my two children.

A man can take only so much.

Maybe others are stronger than me, but I crashed – but good!

Life went out of me when I realized I no longer had anything left – that some forty years of work had just evaporated in the wind.

And so, with a bag slung over my shoulder, containing the remains of my worldly possessions, and no one else to turn to, I stepped onto the streets, and I remained there for over three decades.

I spent my nights staring up into the sky, watching the stars, and yes, even following the occasional odd objects moving about which to my mind could be nothing less than UFOs, but that could all just be chalked up to the conjuring of an old man – right?

In the morning, I would awake, and I would walk along the shoreline, watching as the sun began its daily dance, sending ambassadors out to announce the new day, those sparkling tentacles of light which performed their choreographed spectacle across the calm and rippling surfaces of Lake Erie.

And then, necessity would drive me to start looking for the means of sustenance.

There is no arguing with an empty stomach.

One eats, or one dies – it is a simple formula.

Begging for money became routine.

Over the years I developed certain haunts, places where I could usually find charity – some left-over bread, a warm cup of coffee and even the occasional pastry that was too old to sell to customers, but which soothed the ache in my stomach.

Despite my destitution, I never gave up hope.

I believed that something, someday, would change in my life.

Until that day, I dragged my sorry ass up and down the streets – a hollow and empty vessel in the eyes of those whom I passed – and yet, still very much a man deep inside.

After thirty-one years one might think that I would become disillusioned – right?

But, when you have nothing, the only thing you can bank your life on is a dream – that’s all that keeps one from the abyss of utter futility as a human being.

And that day did come – and this is the story which you are about to read.

My name is John Ross – but for three decades the folks of this city have called me The Buffalo Kid – the oldest street person in Buffalo.

2

I really resented having been selected to do this mission.

If it is a belligerent or warlike planet or system of planets, then of course a mission of this sort can be quite intriguing, simply because of the dynamics and the dangers involved.

If it is an advanced system of planets or worlds, there is the opportunity to find and catalogue something new, to discover novel technology which we have not yet codified.

On the other hand, if it is a tiny planet such as the one, I am now headed toward – it is hardly worth getting excited about.

I was supposed to be on vacation now – long overdue after many months in deep space on my last project. But for some reason, someone got this idea that I was well suited to this mission – and, since we were in the area, and by area, I mean, this galaxy, here I am.

It’s almost depressing.

Research missions, such as mine, are just what they sound like. We carefully detail life forms and cultural facets of a planet’s indigenous inhabitants. We also observe the mentality of the dominant sentient species, and all of it while not engaging with them during this phase – and that last bit is firm and inviolate law – we call it the Prime Mandate.

The Prime Mandate comes from extensive experience in our line of work. Indigenous peoples can get very agitated when they encounter strange ships flying through the sky above them, or worse, when off-world creatures of different shapes and types, are suddenly strolling through their backyards asking for directions. They tend to start religions and praying to non-existent gods, all of which can be very disorienting to an entire world.

But, back to this rather depressing planet to which I am now headed.

It had been some seventy or so of their years since our last survey mission came to this planet, and their report, which I had studied, was not very charitable.

Earth at that time was embroiled in a massive world-war, and they had just used atomic fission against their own race, leaving hundreds of thousands killed or mutilated.

Consequently, the planet had been labeled a Category 10 Culture (and there are only twelve categories, with 12th being the lowest); meaning -violent, self-destructive, with a suicidal proclivity and nowhere near ready for any advanced technology which we could have injected into its culture. That by the way is called the Second Mandate, which can, under certain circumstances, supersede the Prime Mandate. But more on that later.

The planet called Earth by its inhabitants, or TS-12-334 by our galactic records, was considered off the radar; Return later to see how they have progressed - VERY low priority – that was the notation made by the last surveyors.

Now, many years later, planet Earth was my newest mission. I was to establish the state of the culture and its people and report back with adequate support material, whether matters had advanced or worsened, and what the current classification should be.

The last mission, dated July 1945 by local calendar Earth-time, had landed on an island off the coast of China, now called Taiwan. I, on the other hand, am being sent to a city called Buffalo, located in the state of New York, within the United States of America. It is considered a median representation of a typical Earth cultural center.

I stretched my legs and leaned back into my chair.

Show me the most recent visuals of Earth, I said to the computer.

The holographic imagery appeared on the large screen in front of me, neatly categorized by subject. By taping an image, a panoply of others unfolded, revealing a three-dimensional re-creation of the world which was still just a mere speck far ahead.

The ship’s computer, by the way, is one of the most advanced to be found anywhere in the many galaxies.

It, or rather, she, as I like to think of this T-2315 Series, is an artificial intelligence to whom I can speak, discuss matters, and intellectually engage on almost any topic, except when it comes to emotions and the sensitivities and nuances of a truly sentient and living person. Although the computer is programmed to deal with and assess our emotional states quite objectively, it cannot truly understand nor have cognizance on the impalpable and untenable qualities which form our most quintessential matrix. Although, I was informed that the T-2315 Series was achieving higher levels of cognizance than its predecessors.

And, before you get the wrong idea, I am from a humanoid race, not Earth that is, but much the same as Earth people – which is why I was, unfortunately, selected for this mission. I can blend in as one of them. Ugh!

The corporation which employs me has some twenty-two thousand workers on its main ship alone – and within that collective exists at least 133 different sentient species from around the known galaxies –yes, plural, galaxies.

Not all of them look precisely humanoid – bearing unique features, such as longer or shorter arms, three fingered, four fingered, or five; different sized torsos, slits for ears, differently shaped noses, larger foreheads, differently shaped eyes, hues of skin from green to red and white, and even one species of females which possesses four breasts as opposed to the usual two. Rather interesting.

The cornucopia of life forms in just the known worlds is immense, but they all share the same sentience, intelligence, and potentials. None are more superior to any other, that being one of the great discoveries of ages long past when explorers first set out and made contact.

But, back to the more mundane issue – Earth!

My companion for this trip, who presents herself in the semblance of a rather attractive female – is Szu – the ship’s computer.

Szu’s engineers designed her with built-in options. We, the user, are permitted to create any holographic and two-dimensional image of how the computer should manifest itself – according to our individual preferences.

Some prefer a male, others female, such as myself. But the variations are endless.

Blond, brunette, black, white, green, short, tall, curvy, sexy, whatever suits one’s taste – we merely input our preferences and suddenly the circuitry manifests itself as a seemingly live presence.

It was discovered that without this option, long journeys between galactic worlds could cause disturbing imbalances. In short, we needed something tangible, something, or someone, whom we could see and talk to – even if it was just a computer-generated image.

Despite her computer essence, Szu is my only sense of connectivity to any other living presence out here in the void of deep space.

Once again, I am digressing.

Back to Earth and my mission.

My view of this tiny blue orb circling a small star on the far reaches of this galaxy, is not, in all honesty, a very positive one.

I must admit, although my opinion is not permitted to affect my final assessment, that its inhabitants must be somewhat mentally dysfunctional, if not lacking in certain sentient qualities, considering the number of wars which they have engaged to kill off one another, and the aggrandizement of nuclear weapons which they seem to threaten one another with, as if in using such there would be any victor left standing on the playing field.

Any child could see that such behavior was insane, so what was I to expect after only seventy years since the last survey mission?

You see – I am not too excited about spending upwards of one or two months of Earth time, studying a culture with such suicidal tendencies.

I could of course simply remain in my ship and deploy what we call SSTDs or Sentient-Sensitive-Terminal-Droids, which can be modified to look like the inhabitants of most any planet, earth included. But SSTDs, as convincing as they appear, lack a certain quality which cannot substitute for a real sentient person – the ability to sense and to judge.

But frankly, the prospect of just sitting in this ship for weeks, while documenting information sent in to me by droids was already giving me a headache.

Considering that this mission will probably be boring enough, I have decided to put my own boots on the ground and to look around this place called Buffalo.

My name is Kaeton Zsin and I am an employee of the NCCDA; a mouthful, I know. It stands for New Civilizations Contact & Documentation Agency.

My employer is a senior official in the CDA, the Cultural Development Agency.

Our job, in so many words, is to discreetly contact civilizations and worlds, particularly new ones and to document their culture and level of technology. Based on these studies, we categorize them as to their suitability for what we call Infusion or the Second Mandate.

Infusion comes in many packages and levels – depending on the state of the culture itself. For instance, if the culture is a hunter-gatherer society, minimalistic in nature, Infusion is quite easy