The Shiny Thing: An Uncle Wil Sequel

By Paul Schoaff

The narrator, Uncle Wil's nephew, having attained a comfortable living in the mid 21st century, seeks to learn the origin of a very strange and wonderful object Uncle Wil discovered beside a flattened patch in his neighbor's pasture. He and his life partner, Riley, decide the origin must have been from an alien ship and set out across the North American Union to gather evidence. They are shadowed and helped and sometimes held back by the agents of a government who tracks the DNA of every person in the country. The investigation is punctuated by revelations to the reader of how the world has changed by the mid century and how people have adapted to it. There are new power sources, modes of transport, drugs, diets, and an upheaval in the Holy Roman Catholic Church to explore. The conclusion, set in Costa Rica, will answer many questions and raise many others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Schoaff
• Release date: Nov 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463537688

Paul Schoaff

Thank you for the unexpected amount of success my books have attained...I thought people would read them, but the degree of acceptance is gratifying.I write from an island of clay in the sandpine country of North Carolina. I woke from a dream one night with the story of Twin Beeches fighting to get out of my fingers and into the computer screen. Rural Justice, the fight against the deprivations of strip mining, is based on the experience of many people who found their lives uprooted by the monstrous shovels, trucks and loaders needed to fuel our ever expanding electrical appetite. Rural Murder contrasts the traditional values and practices of former days against the inroads of more liberal activities.... Martha jo and her extended family are the consistent protaginal threads.My memories of all those people and institutions of my youth who made up the matrix of rich and poor, young and old, ambitious and idle, pious and hell-raising....all are used to create startlingly true to life characters.Adding my imagination, I created stories worthy of the players, ones I hope will leave you moved and wanting to know if there is still a quiet town named Woodland you can visit, sit in the park and try to beat the world's best checker players, or try your hand at finding the spot where Fay Rawley and his Cadillac are truly hidden.May you, too, be blessed with a background to which you can hearken back when you need to think how far we have come, and whether we've really made progress.Your comments, positive or not, are appreciated.

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THE SHINY THING

(another Uncle Wil fantasy)

A short novel or long short story

by Paul Schoaff

2019

author's note:

Shiny Thing is an extrapolation of current events and trends into the not too distant future, facilitated by a tale involving aliens, strange and beneficial talents, and eventual revelation. No violence, no nudity or sex scenes, no completely unbelievable events. If you suggest that the chance of any of this coming true are one in a billion, I have to reply, Then, you agree, there is a chance.

The Shiny Thing

Chapter One

Uncle Wil's Shiny Thing

One summer, newly arrived for my annual visit, Uncle Wilson and Aunt Cora helped carry my suitcase and camera case and guitar into their home on the Illinois Prairie. They waved goodbye to the driver who had picked me up in Abington and driven me down to their farm, then fed me a late lunch and let me rest a bit and get settled the remainder of the long sunny afternoon.

After chores (I took care of the chickens and carried in the eggs) Uncle Wilson mysteriously used his head to jerk-point to the corncrib. He put his finger next to his nose and whispered, Aunt Cora doesn't need to know about this....she thinks I disposed of it.

My curiosity meter peaked in the red zone, and I followed him into the crib where the last time I'd seen it he told me about keeping pups in there behind a few boards from the door sill to about 18 inches so the mother dog could come and go, and the pups couldn't follow her until they were a bit older. He told me to wait at the door, while he slowly and quietly slipped over to a chair next to the old crank operated corn sheller. A cardboard box, maybe 10 inches long and 6 inches high and wide rested on the seat of the chair. I could see straw sticking out of a crack or two. Uncle Wilson put on a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket. I could hardly understand what might be in the box.... maybe a strange baby animal from the woods behind the barn? Something very delicate, like an old plate or cup from colonial days?

He slowly reached in and then withdrew a large shiny object, carefully walked back to the door and, with a strong admonition not to touch it or even breath on it, held it out for me to examine. There wasn't much light in that part of the barn, only a little fading daylight from a high window. I may have imagined it, but it seemed to me the object was actually glowing, just a tiny bit, just enough to be clearly seen.

The object was shiny, like mercury, shaped something like a computer mouse, but somewhat bigger, maybe twice as large. It didn't have any buttons, or lights or scroll wheels or markings of any sort. Featureless, is what I've learned to say about it, except for the flat bottom where there was a single, almost invisible opening.

What the heck is it?, I reflexively stammered.

You won't believe it, said Uncle Wilson, you honest to onions won't believe your eyes.

He used the box on the chair, and an iron spoke of the corn sheller flywheel/crank to show me what he meant. He took, first, a corn stalk from a small stack in the corner, put it across between the spoke and the box, and said, now watch this.

He'd slipped off his right hand glove by pulling on the fingers with his teeth. Then he used his bare hand to grasp the object on the rounded side. He slowly lowered it down to the corn stalk and then, suddenly, I saw a sort of plasma like glow shooting out of the hole on the bottom, and the corn stalk was slice off like a paper cutter had just done its worst, clean and almost like there was no gap between the ends whatsoever. The plasma like flow ceased as soon as the last bit of cut or slice was finished.

Well, maybe I didn't see it all clearly the first time, but by the time Uncle Wil had sliced off a dozen dime thick pieces off the stalk ends, it was clear how the darned thing worked.

It didn't do anything at all unless it was in contact with Uncle Wilson's hand. It only cut something when it was in contact with something to be cut. It seemed to be completely inactive otherwise.

Uncle Wil proceeded to first, check Aunt Cora had stayed put in the house, and then, put a short piece of 1 by 2 lumber where the cornstalk had been. I had been amazed before, but sort of had a notion this thing was some new cutting tool for thin organic material, but I was gobstruck by the next demonstration, as the board separated just as cleanly and easily as had the cornstalk! I can't believe it, Uncle, I gasped, what is that thing?

I just about sunk to my knees when he then said, OK, watch this..., and he swung the object down the length of the scrap wood too fast for my eyes to follow. The wood, again, separated just as cleanly and without splinter, or sound, or heat, as had the cornstalk.

Where did you get that thing?!, I almost shouted. There ain't nothing anywhere like I've ever heard of. How does it cut so clean?!

Uncle Wilson had a two foot length of galvanized pipe under his workbench, a 1 pipesize piece he used as a 'cheater' when a nut needed extra torque to get it off a bolt, for example, or even to extend the shaft of a small pipe wrench. In a flick of the wrist, then a series of flicks, Uncle Wilson produced 1/8 inch thick washers off the end of the pipe. Precisely 1/8. I measured them later. Then he sliced off some 3/16" washers.....

Where did it come from?, I blurted, where did you buy something like that?!

"Didn't buy it. Found it. Found it on Homer's (a neighbor) flat piece next to our house. Cora and I came home from her sister Pearl's a few weeks ago. We'd had a bit of car trouble so we stayed over at her place, she let us use her bed and she slept on her blow up mattress.... Then, I got the fuel filter changed the next morning, got one at Western Auto in Farmington, and we hustled home with all the inventory. (They were Amway dealers) As we pulled into the driveway, I saw the tall grass on Homer's pasture next to our house had been flattened down right to the ground out about 100 feet from the big catalpa tree. After I helped Cora restock the shelves in the summer kitchen, I slipped through the bobwire fence to take a look....

"It looked weird there where the grass and weeds were flattened out. Nothing looked alive, but it looked like there was a 20 foot circle where everything had been pressed and dried like when the ladies used to put flowers in a big book to dry them and preserve them. I won't kid you, I thought maybe some scouts had had a campout there, Homer wouldn't have minded, he would have just started telling them about the gypsy's who used to camp down the road near Cox Hollow., until Edith told him to 'shut up, you old coot'....anyway, I finally said to myself, 'Nope, no, this isn't a campsite. Nothing like a campsite.

'So', I said to myself, 'what could have made this?

And I said, A flying saucer?.

He slowly nodded, and said, I don't see what else it could have been. Then he proceeded to tell me that he saw something shiny just off the pressed grass area....and it was the object. When he began to pick it up to look at it more closely, the little hole on the flat side was pointed away from him, so he didn't see it at first. He picked it up and decided to set it down on an old limb. Well, as he positioned it on the old limb so it wouldn't fall off, it must have begun cutting, for suddenly, the limb just fell apart and the object fell to the ground with it.

"It was about then that I began to realize that it wasn't just a strange piece of metal, it was a tool of some sort. Well, maybe I didn't really quite catch on completely, but after I tried to set it down again, and the next limb I used did the same way? Then I began to think, 'I'd better throw this thing over the side of the hill before somebody gets hurt!' For a few minutes, I was just afraid to pick it up again, even.

"Then I thought, if this belonged to something from a UFO? Well, what stops them from remembering where they used it and coming back for it? If they are like me, they probably can't remember where they used it last, but I suspect they must be a lot smarter than I am. So, I decided to think it over, and I left the thing lay in the circle while I watched night and day, keeping my Kodak handy all the while. If I could get a good picture of a UFO? Might be worth a lot of money!

"A week went by...maybe 10 days, and I finally decided what I was doing wasn't working. I asked around and got ahold of a friend of Jim Easily uptown, a guy with a motion sensing camera and he borrowed it to me in exchange for my last harvest of gensing. I think he felt like he got the better deal. I think I told him I wanted to get a picture of a herd of deer that grazed in that pasture after midnight, and he thought I was a bit daffy to trade all the gensing for a picture or two. But, no problem.

"Another week went by, and I just gave up. I bet they realized that if someone found their missing tool, they might set a trap, or they would tell someone and the government would come and take it away to see what it was. They were screwed, and I bet someone got their behind chewed out, assuming they have behinds, for putting them in a bad situation.

"I finally took it into the barn and started experimenting with it. I learned that it only worked, for sure, when I had ahold of it with my bare skin. I testing it on the web of my thumb and first finger, and, sure enough, I was able to notch it without any bleeding. (He showed me the notch on his left hand after taking off his glove.)

"I also found out that it would only cut through the stuff it was resting on. Put a coat of paint on something, it would cut through the paint, and leave the something stuff under it. Try it on the same something without paint? It immediately cut right through all the way to the