Seasons' Banquet: Part I

By Mildred Louise Cooper

One very cold winter morning, Pitney Kee Knowles arrives at work and prepares to give a briefing to her management team. Her mind isnt on her presentation because she keeps thinking about the bad weather. To regain focus, she decides to take a ten-minute break to try and forget the nagging questions percolating in her head about the weather.

Before her break is over, Pitney finds herself sitting under a willow tree and sees a strange creature called Weather approaching her. Weather has four different personalitiesSpring, Summer, Fall, and Winterand is the mastermind, guide, and host of the Seasons Banquet. The guests of this banquet will undergo a physical transformation in preparation to inherit their place beyond the confines of the stars.

Pitneys summons to this banquet is the beginning of her transformation and journey to the outer reaches of the universe, where she and others of her kind will find the reason for their existence.

Before her break is over, Pitney finds herself sitting under a willow tree and sees a strange creature called Weather approaching her. Weather has four different personalities-Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter-and is the mastermind, guide, and host of the Seasons' Banquet. The guests of this banquet will undergo a physical transformation in preparation to inherit their place beyond the confines of the stars.

Pitney's summons to this banquet is the beginning of her transformation and journey to the outer reaches of the universe, where she and others of her kind will find the reason for their existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 22, 2005
• ISBN: 9780595820726

Mildred Louise Cooper

For over twenty years, Mildred Louise Cooper has been an executive secretary in the engineering profession. She lives with her family in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has a passion for acting and writing.

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SEASONS’ BANQUET

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PART I

Mildred Louise Cooper

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

SEASONS’ BANQUET

PART I

Copyright © 2006 by Mildred L. Cooper

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-595-37690-2 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-82072-6 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-37690-8 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-82072-7 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

One Second

Two Seconds

Three Seconds

Four Seconds

Five Seconds

Six Seconds

Seven Seconds

Epilogue

One moment is all it takes

Unexpected, unchallenged

Awakening, enlightening

Transferring, transforming

Beyond mortal’s horizons

To a place they truly belong.

Introduction

My name is Pitney Kee Knowles. I worked as a human resource specialist at the Gene Tracking and Cloning Research Center in the heart of Philadelphia. On January 20, 1980, at 9:45 AM, I took a ten-minute break. During my break, something strange but wonderful happened to me. In fact, that would be the last ten-minute break I would ever have in this world.

I want to share with you the series of events that led up to this sublime moment. It took exactly seven seconds to record what happened to me. Don’t ask me how I was able to do this in such a short period of time. It’s just the way time worked in that strange place.

The reason I have to tell this story right now is that in a few moments my thoughts and passions will no longer be of a terrestrial nature.

One Second

It was Monday morning, January 20, one of the coldest days on record in Philadelphia. The roads were icy, and it had been snowing since 6:00 PM the previous day. The morning traffic was a nightmare. Once I had arrived at work, I was not emotionally ready to brief management at 10:00 AM on ways to improve employee morale in the workplace.

There had been rumors that two employees were ready to quit because they were tired of the negative hype in the news media over the morality of human gene tracking, and they were afraid because of the threats from special interest groups to put a stop to our research. Gene tracking is the search for and destruction of genes that harbor unwanted physical attributes or traits. Once the offending genes are removed and replaced with good ones, then and only then can the human cell be cloned. The question on everyone’s mind was whether anyone with a clear conscience could define an undesirable trait without bringing their personal prejudices to the table.

The controversy over gene tracking was so intense that management needed to restore the employees’ confidence that the research they were performing on human beings was a good thing; at the same time, management had to convince the public and special interest groups that this research would benefit mankind by speeding up the human species’ evolutionary quest to become perfect and independent—that is, independent of any higher, more intelligent source.

When I wrote my briefing the night before, I was confident that if management followed the strategy I presented to them, they would not only make the employees feel empowered again, but they would also satisfy the public’s curiosity and the media’s relentless inquiries, and they would put to rest the protests of the special interest groups once and for all. Management would come out smelling like a rose.

But the snowstorm had disturbed me to the point that I wasn’t looking forward to briefing management. Winter storms were a reminder of two incidents in my life that, no matter what I did or where I went, I just couldn’t seem to forget. These traumatic memories wouldn’t leave me alone. Oh, how I hated the winter months! I wished that this season never existed. I needed a boost for my own morale that particular morning.

I hurried to my office and peeled off the layers of thick, warm clothing that protected me from the biting cold and penetrating wind. I made a hot cup of coffee and sat down to take a final look at my presentation, but I just couldn’t concentrate on my work. I turned around in my squeaky, hand-me-down executive swivel chair and gazed out the office window. The never-ending snowstorm was pounding the daylights out of Philadelphia. I wondered what would happen if we had only one season. An eternal spring would be my season of choice.

I was born and raised in St. Louis, and after graduating from the University of Missouri with a master’s degree