Friends Underground

By DON LANCASTER

Mikey finds himself in a strange and unfamiliar place after a magical ride off the rocket ship slide at the park. He soon starts to explore and meets a boy from this underground world, and they become friends. The boys spend the day playing and exploring before Mikey returns home back above the ground. Mikey awakes the next morning, thinking that he is remembering a dream but soon realizes that he is not dreaming, and he makes plans to return to find this world under the ground. He remembers that he was on the rocket ship slide when he ended up in the underground world. He plans a return to find Ukie and meets Bixie while trying to locate Ukie. Bixie tells him about his missing son, Rixie, and that he thinks that he has gone aboveground and that something has happened to him. Bixie asks Mikey to look for his son, and he agrees to help. After Mikey finds Ukie, he tells him about meeting Bixie and how he agreed to try to find his son. Mikey and Ukie devise a plan to find Rixie and the adventure soon begins. Will the boys find Rixie, and what more will happen during their adventure together?

5

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637107782

DON LANCASTER

Don Lancaster heads Synergetics-Arizona, an electronics design and consulting firm. He is the author of many best-selling books, including TTL Cookbook, Active-Filter Cookbook, and AppleWriter Cookbook.

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Friends Underground

Don Lancaster

Copyright © 2021 Don Lancaster

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books, Inc.

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2021

ISBN 978-1-63710-777-5 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88505-268-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63710-778-2 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Text

To Tanner, Colby, Alex, and Jordan. You live on in my memory! I hope that you enjoy reading Friends Underground and will watch for more of my writing in the future!

Earth People (Aboveground)

Mikey: He is about twelve with red hair, thin build, about five feet.

Michael: Mikey's dad. He is about thirty-five and an adult version of Mikey, about six feet.

Rachael: Mikey's mom. She is about thirty-five, thin, with brown hair, about five feet six.

The Circus Crew

Ralph: He is the ringmaster, about six feet, overweight, loves to show his authority, and is a mean person!

Ira: A worker at the circus. He is about six feet tall and thin, but strong, has brown hair, and is always dirty.

Rye: Another worker. He is tall and thin, bald, always dirty.

Jess: Another worker. He is tall and thin.

The Underground People

All are a combination in looks as human with mouselike features. They are smaller, but not tiny, like a mouse.

Ukie: About twelve years old, brown in coloring.

Udie: Ukie's dad, same appearance but an adult.

Adie: Ukie's mom, a little smaller than Udie.

Rixie: He is about the same as Ukie other than being a slightly different color.

Bixie: Rixie's dad, same coloring as Rixie, looks tired and a little overweight in comparison to the other adults.

April 21, 2013

At about 2:00 a.m., I had a dream that woke me up. I got out of bed and went into the kitchen where I wrote myself a single-word note and returned to bed. The word was underground . The next day when I awoke, I went into the kitchen where I saw the note from the previous night. I sat down and started to write. Before I knew it, I had written two full pages from memory and only from memory.

In this dream, there were two young boys. One was typical looking, like the people from our world. His name is Mikey. He had fallen into a hole in the ground. He then found himself under the ground in a tunnel-like atmosphere. While feeling lost and confused, he spotted a boy playing nearby. He approached the boy to ask for help. When he got closer to the boy, he noticed the difference in his appearance.

This boy was not normal or like him! He was small in size with a mouselike human appearance. His face was humanlike, but he had ears like a mouse.

The underground boy's name was Ukie, and the aboveground boy's name was Mikey. The two quickly became friends. Ukie invited Mikey to stay and play. He told Mikey that he would show him around where he lived. The space was very large, like a town underground. However, there were not any streets or sidewalks. There were trails that ran through the town with a parklike feeling. It seemed to Mikey to be a very happy and pleasant place.

Now before I go further into this story, I need to ask you to open your imagination. Your imagination will be a very important part of bringing this story to life. You will need to decide for yourself in your own thinking a lot of the story.

One of the things that you will need to decide will be is it dark or light in the underground world. As for my thinking, I believe that Ukie's world has a night and day, just like our world. How could this be if they are under the ground? I think that there are rock formations that radiate light into the underground world. If this is so, then the underground world will have a night and day, just like our world. However, I think that it would not be quite the same as in our world. The daytime would be lighter than the nighttime but not the same as the aboveground world. I think that you would be able to see, but it would not be very bright. We already know that a lot of the water in our world is under the ground. Right! If this is correct, then why can't there be other similarities as well?

Let's get back to the story. Hanging from the top, or ceiling (their sky) maybe, were the roots of the plants and the trees from Mikey's world above the ground. Ukie showed Mikey how to swing hand-over-hand style from root to root to travel around his city. Off the boys went on their adventure together.

The two boys played for a while and then Mikey started to get homesick and asked Ukie how he could return back to his own world. Ukie hesitated at first, then he decided to help Mikey. So Ukie made Mikey pinky swear to not share the secret location of where to return to the aboveground world. After Mikey pinky swore to not share the entrance to Ukie's world, he then showed Mikey how to come and go from his world. Mikey thanked Ukie and promised to return again soon, and Mikey was gone. Ukie returned to his own home very lonely and missing his new friend.

The next morning, Mikey awoke and began thinking about a dream that he had during the night. Then Mikey started picking up his dirty clothes. When he reached into his dirty pants pocket, he found a present that Ukie had given him during his visit to the underground world. It was then that Mikey knew that it was not a dream that he was remembering.

He then started to remember Ukie and all the fun that they had the day before. While thinking about the day before, he began missing his new friend. It was then that he made the decision to return to Ukie's world. He then started making plans to return to Ukie's world the next day.

He packed his backpack with a few of his special toys to take to Ukie. He could