Becca The Viking & The Heavenly Runebook Book 5

By R.D. Ginther

Becca The Viking & The Heavenly Runes Book 5, is a brand new start of adventures of a different kind. No longer mercenaries for hire on the high seas, Becca and his comrades are up against a new enemy, a hidden entity that is infiltrating world rulers and even a genius boy called Mu. But first Becca and his men must learn to adapt to the new era they found themselves in, which is wrought with many surprises, from flying machines to metallic avocados that go boom. Their encounter with Yara, though she expected them, were a surprise for them, especially when she wanted to accompany them on their travels to Jerusalem. Becca had to learn to adapt to a new way of life but found himself, along with his men, in numerous military attacks, the reasons why were unknown to them. Yet they were delivered each and every time and in the most miraculous ways. However, the true adventures are yet to begin, but first the rebirth of the Sigrida and the crew of fifty!

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.A.Edwards
• Release date: Oct 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223238508

Book preview

Prologue

"If you don’t know where you’re going,

Any road will get you there."

—Lewis Carroll, British Author, Children’s Poet, Mathematician,

Daresbury, Cheshire, England, 19th century

Yeshua declared, "Enter through the narrow gate,

For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to

Destruction, and many enter through it.

But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads

To life, and only a few find it."

—Matthew 7:13-14,

The Heavenly Rune Book

"Two roads diverged in a wood and I—

I took the one less traveled by, and that has

Made all the difference."

—Robert Frost, 20th Century poet

"So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness.

And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full

Of the names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns."

—Revelation 17: 3

"And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each

Hailstone the weight of a talent [56.9 pounds, or 25.8kg].

Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since

The plague was exceedingly great."

—Revelation 16: 21

Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go in unto Pharaoh

and tell him, Thus saith the LORD,

God of the Hebrews, Let my people go that they may serve me...!"

—Exodus 9:1, Book of the

Wars of Heaven and Earth

Becca The Viking & The Heavenly Runes

BOOK V

Voyage to the Golden Gate

1.

Far, but not so far , on the other side, but really just an atom (or anti-atom) away, a world that was Earth I teetered on the edge of a gigantic scientific break-through.

Following closely after Michael Jayson, the American pop star expatriate turned European Union-based peace mogul, achieved a break-through on his own behalf, as he succeeded in positioning himself to seize the reins of world power.

Nobody in the music industry ever imagined someone like Michael Jayson, notorious for grabbing his genitals during concerts, would ever rise to being a political leader, much less a world leader. 

As for science, the same degree of improbability applied to a particular, virtually unknown research station on the Sunda Continental Shelf of Southeast Asia. 

Cousteau A1, a Pilkington-designed, CIA-initiated, research station for deep-sea mineral-extraction installation under the Pacific in the CCFZ, wasn’t meant to draw attention.  It was intended only to produce supporting evidence for profitable deepsea mining operations, that could compete with those of the Chinese, Japanese, Russians, and other chief rivals of American economic and political interests in the Pacific.

Who could have foreseen that an intellectual luminary, as bright as a Newton, or an Einstein, or Hawking, would arise in this underwater research station, which had as its chief purpose the study of feasible mining of manganese nodules, which exist in vast quantities? 

Located on the Sunda Shelf, in the midst of the landmasses of Borneo, Bali, Java, Madura, and Sumatra, Cousteau A-1 Station’s epochal scientific break-through was not at all apparent at the onset.

After all, its study was meant for the development of mining, not on the Sunda Shelf, which hadn’t the abundance of manganese nodules the mid-Pacific Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone CCFZ evidenced, but for seabed extraction harvesting in the CCFZ, once the issues of environmental concern were ruled upon by the International Seabed Authority, an agency that administered the CCFZ. 

Mu Gan Yong was a Junior High student at the station, and he could not have cared less about studying such matters as mining the seabed.  That was what concerned his parents.  They held jobs in the research departments.  Turning his mind in an entirely different direction, he had done a lot of anti-matter (AM) research for college credit.

Ten years old, his amazing test scores advanced him year after year, so he really was top college material, only the system restrained him by requiring he satisfy its sequence of set requirements.  He couldn’t just challenge courses, pass all the final exams with an A and leave the station to enter Yale, Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Stanford, or the Sorbonne.

Oh, he could ace them all, and maybe receive clearance from the station school board, but leave the station?  What about his parents?  He was only ten years of age.  They would have to accompany him, and then what would happen to their accumulated tenure and positions?  Would they be able to find comparable employment elsewhere?  How many places needed specialists in research of manganese nodule mining?  Would any be located near the university that offered Mu the juiciest scholarship? 

The deciding factor was his LiS (Locked-in-Syndrome).  Part of his brainstem had been damaged before birth, when his mother was involved in an accident.  She had slipped on an oil spilled on metal steps of the pump station, when she was pregnant with him at six months.  They both survived her fall.  She recovered from a concussion and a broken arm, but to save the child, he was delivered prematurely by Caesarean Section.  Kept in the infirmary until he was judged fit enough to be flown out, his mother went with him to Hawaii’s Catholic Children’s hospital on Molokai, recommended to her by the station chaplain for special care and treatment.  Baby Mu’s injury was detected there, when he showed signs of reduced motor ability.  Usually a stroke causes LiS, but his was different in origin, and so unlike others with LiS, he did not experience total paralysis.  Most people with LiS can communicate only with eye movements.  Their mental abilities are not impaired. 

Diagnosed with this irreversible syndrome, his father and mother made the decision at the Children’s Hospital, that their son would not be separated from the family or normal children’s experiences, but somehow be fitted into as much of regular life despite his LiS.  That was a noble goal, but it could not be obtained, they discovered later, much to their dismay.  What was realistic was the development of his intellectual pursuits.  In these he was not held back at all by his physical limitations.  This alone gave the parents hope that their son could still achieve a meaningful life, even if it could never be a normal one.

They investigated every type of prosthetic aid and finally narrowed their choice to an Israeli invention, that had enabled many paralyzed individuals to engage in most all normal activities as adults.  Children, too, could benefit. 

Mu could be taught to operate a prosthetic, robotic exo-skeleton that attached to his body and limbs, to give him support as well as mobility.  AI enabled the exo-skeleton to mimic a human body’s movements, even though they weren’t generated by the person to which it was fitted.  In other words, AI operated on a data bank of human movements that covered the full range of human mobility, which included sitting, standing, lying down, raising arms, grasping with the hand, feeding oneself, turning around when standing, walking forwards, backwards, etc.  It could speak for him too, but he still had vocal abilities, eye movements, swallowing on his own, and the ability to chew, etc. 

But his major physical activities were all subject to limitation, as the exo-skeleton was too easily damaged, if too much stress was put upon it.  Mu could command it to throw the ball hard or throw the ball high to hit the playing field ceiling, but it could not do it without a red light flashing, and the AI Companion appearing as a holograph, telling him it was not permitted. 

He could walk fast but not run, he could throw a ball a short distance, but not run and catch a ball, or bat one on a playing field.  He soon found out he wouldn’t experience a boy’s normal life with the exo-skeleton, so when he turned six years of age he told his parents not to bother getting him another, after outgrowing his previous exo-skeleton.

His parents were relieved when he said that.  The insurance policy had been drawn to the maximum, and would not fund further replacements to account for his growth.  They would have been forced to draw on their pensions in advance.  The next best thing was to customize a motorized scooter for him.  Mu loved the idea.  Shipped from a company in Singapore, it became his chief tool and modus operandi, his link to the world.  With it he soon found he could do many things and go places he was otherwise shut out of.

Possessing an IQ that easily placed him in the category of genius, he found no subject particularly challenging enough to gain his attention, except for physics in which he grappled with problems the world physics community thought were insoluble, but which he somehow sensed he had the ability to resolve.

Academically, he surpassed his most gifted peers in the Special Ed class created just for them at the Halley Sector school.

Socially, he did not fare so well at Cousteau A-1.  Outside of class, anyone so nerdish as Mu, found himself completely an alien in a workaday, largely blue-collar habitat, with poor air-conditioning and walls beaded with moisture.

Mu wasn’t thinking about the deteriorating station environment, which others of the aging underwater research station found so depressing.  Increasingly excited, he had started a ball rolling that he already guessed nobody would be able to stop.

Flashing a red light for general emergency service, he signaled the teacher of his advanced physics and exo-astronomy class at Pump Station X-2-00001, Halley Sector Education Center’s annex.

A dank, poorly lit, grease-stained place with all sorts of exposed plumbing, it was a grim, utilitarian venue for a small class of gifted learners such as Mu and five other students. 

Were they bored or neglected, passed over for less gifted students?  No, not at all.  The station paid top wages to draw the best teachers.  The teachers, every one of them, had to be highly educated and highly dedicated to go and assist, mentor, and encourage their young charges on the Sunda Shelf.  They loved their work, and it showed in how their students loved to please their teachers with superior performances.

Normally, on the mainland, gifted students would have been held back to fit into the norm of the less gifted students—but on this station, which could not afford to be so inclusive of underachievers, the brightest needed to be encouraged, if the station was to continue its government funding for education at the station.

Test results from the classes were always the best proofs to send to Congress, that the Cousteau station schools were superior models of public education, and were worthy of increased funding, not cuts.

If the schools failed to shine, the station would inevitably decline and ultimately have to close, as personnel and staff would flee with their families.  Pik van Krumpp the station manager, knew it was vital that parents be pleased by the high quality of education being given their children.  For that motivated them in most cases to stay on working at the station, rather than take more appealing jobs on the mainland, that offered a better environment even if the pay was probably not as good. 

Keeping brain drain at a minimum, was primary survival mode here, not gender identification and socialization that mattered above academics stateside.  That was the chief advantage they held as students at the station schools, that they were ever going to be dumbed down with the common herd of American students!

Up to the Mu’s tenth year of life, the station practiced this philosophy and policy. The test scores continued to soar higher than the best schools at the same academic level stateside.  Then Cousteau A-1’s salad days abruptly ended.

America suffered a severe shrinkage of the GNP by a number of reverses that struck the economy.  Economists, citing another S & P credit rating that dropped, had warned Congress that the debt level was far too high. Yet Congress kept authorizing extravagant, pork-barrel expenditures, based on loans that they knew perfectly well could never be paid back by America. 

Default on the nation’s debt and bankruptcy had set in, not all at once, but government funding of  sector after sector had to be cut back—there simply was no loan money left after paying the colossal due interest accrued on the national debt.

At Cousteau the effects were almost immediately felt and even seen.  The Special Education class for gifted children felt a chill.  It lost its star status, and dropped into the category of one of the frills that had to suffer first, in order to spare the main part of the schools, the less gifted, general student body.

The station manager kept promising the parents of the gifted students class, that they would be put with the others in the main Dependents Education module, that offered better quarters, but so far they had only promises—the needed changes stalled again and again. 

From the bare looks of the place, neither this miserable annex nor even Halley, where mu’s parents worked and they lived, could be the main thrust of the facility. Funding had gone elsewhere and left them high and dry.  Now they all knew, students and parents, any improvement in housing and upgrading of equipment would never happen. 

Halley’s sector work force had to make do, with the lack of  administrative support and funding for secret classified projects of late, too, resulting in cutting overtime pay his parents counted on.  The now understaffed school, (the brain drain had begun!), knew better than to object too strenuously to the hard-pressed manager.

As in the past, the station engaged in mining to keep its place in the know from practical experience.  The money from the sale of  nodules, sea-water mineral and gold extraction, was considerable.  Now it became a matter of bread and butter, yet it wasn’t ever going to equal the output of a major, trans-national mining corporation.

Mainly, the station’s mining crews and equipment, went after manganese nodules, but they were not restricted to manganese, as the sea contained every known mineral, either in the water, or in the sediments, or the underlying crust.  Yet because the investment was so enormous, research and development took decades to produce anything near to a profit.  In the meantime, bills for the cost of research still needed to be paid. Who had the deepest pockets other than the U.S. government that created Cousteau A-1 in the first place?

Yet government funding was always problematic, a real headache, sometimes a migraine, for the station manager. Government bureaucracy and its escalating demands for reportage in a multitude of forms and procedures, added to politicized environmental issues. It became increasingly the problem, when it came to the budget and needed outlays. This jeopardized the station manager’s efforts,  to keep vital personnel at the station from pulling their children out of the schools and fleeing  stateside, to seek better opportunities. 

Thanks to the severe economic downturn of the U.S. economy, pay promotions were curtailed, overtime pay cancelled, shifts cut to fewer hours, (32 hours qualified as Part Time, which eliminated expensive entitlements, even health coverage insurance paid by the station). 

The upshot of the contracting government budget and outlays, to R&D facilities such as Cousteau A-1, was immediate and devastating.  Families began to hurt financially, as the station’s income and ability to pay them sharply declined.

The day all too soon came when the manager, at a general meeting held in each of the sectors of the station, was forced to ask all administrative personnel and plant workers to accept their hourly wages being reduced.  Married men and women were treated with more compassion, but singles were abruptly thrown under the bus. 

Treated increasingly as unwanted and unneeded, the gifted students in Halley’s Special Ed class felt sidelined. 

This boded no good in regard to their upcoming  test scores.  As the next quarter’s exam results were  published, the gifted students class’ overall performance dropped twenty points.  At that rate, if it continued, they would soon flat-line on the median, the average of the scores of  the general student body.  It simply no longer profited  Mu’s peers to excel in scholastics, and their faces in class showed they were just as discouraged and apathetic as their teachers.  Their salaries had been cut, and all possibility of bonuses for outstanding work of any kind by their students was cancelled.  It no longer paid to do anything beyond lackluster. 

Besides, if students wanted to transfer now to better schools on the mainland, then they might be turned down as educationally and socially suspect, because they applied from the Halley school system of Cousteau A-1, which no longer had a reputation for high scholarship.

The manager’s quandary was he could no longer favor the gifted Special Ed students, yet he still had to keep them quarantined, separated from the less gifted, good to middling students.  Average and underachievers wouldn’t take notice of any decline, of course,  but the Special Ed gifted students certainly felt the pangs!  They might tell the average students what a rip-off the schools were.  They weren’t preparing them for real life anymore.  They could expect nothing much going stateside—unemployment, a lot of job seeking, and being turned away from better schools than Cousteau A-1 could provide.

Besides,  almost overnight the job pool  had shrunk drastically in America, so unless you were extremely good at anything the country still could pay for, you couldn’t get land a good-paying job.

Before, they had to be kept apart lest they inspire  envy and feelings of inferiority.  Now all they had to share was discouragement and apathy, concerning the graduating classes’ dismal prospects faced, once their parents took their families and flew back to the states.

In the recent past, Cousteau A-1 work was considered sensitive and vital to American interests,  with potential trillions of dollars worth in manganese, gold and other expensive metals at stake in the global gold-rush in metals.

Now, who cared about the station’s troubles anyway?  Mu heard the talk of the other students about these matters.  What he heard, echoed what his parents were saying late at night at the kitchen table in low voices he could pick up on his voice synthesizer, when he turned up the recording volume and kept quiet. 

His mother’s voice sounded all the most strained for being higher pitched than his father’s low, guttural monotones.

Whatever are we going to do, dear?  Think of something!  We cannot, I cannot, go on like this, what with everything going downhill week after week!

His father said nothing for a long moment, then grunted, cleared his throat.  Is there any more of that coffee in the pot, sweetheart?

No! his mother burst out.  Get it yourself!  You’re the man!  You’re supposed to take care of us.  Are you doing that?  At the rate things are going here, we are going to end up on the street like so many others I have been hearing about, families we’ve known who left before us too!  If it is that bad now, what will it be like when we finally scrape together enough for our tickets out of this hell!

Sweetheart, please!  Emotions like that don’t help in the least.  We have got to devise a working, reasonable plan, or we are going to be much the worse off than if we just held on here and, who knows, Congress came through with a bigger appropriation than last term.

Are you an idiot?  Did I marry an imbecile?  That’s a pipe dream of yours, things will get better if we just ‘hold on’!  Well, I can’t hold on any longer!  I’ll— 

She was so loud Mu had to turn down the synthesizer volume or his ears would hurt.

Something must have happened at that point he could not see, but his mother’s voice was muffled, though he thought she was crying. 

Then things seemed to quieten down for a while, until they began speaking in low voices again, and Mu had to turn the volume higher to catch their words.

They were agreeing there would be no turn around in the economy.  Administration staff, workers, researchers, students,  they all were forced to put up with the crummy conditions, and hoped they could escape, when the chance came for an opening on the mainland.

Mu?  He didn’t feel the same way with his parents and fellow students in the least.  Unlike his peers, he wasn’t going to depend on his parents moving anywhere, as it wouldn’t benefit him in the way he wanted.  He knew he had to blaze his own way in the world without them.  His peers depended on the decisions of their parents, to better their situations and prospects.  He certainly didn’t!  His parents, in his view, were a lost cause.  They lived in the vain hope that things would return to normal, once the U.S. economy rebounded.  All they needed to do was tighten their belts and hang on as best they could until then.

Mu simply didn’t buy their dogged stoicism, the same that made coulees and peasants of his Chinese ancestors, trapped in back-breaking labor, dawn to dusk, in old China under the emperors and empresses.  He knew he could do much better without his parents, launching to the stars entirely on his own, in fact, thrust upwards by sheer brain power.  Let them stew in their watery bean soup, he was going on to bigger and better things!  He had seen some of those things in places shown on a tour of the Stately Homes of Britain, a video their teacher played for them as part of their Western Culture and Civilization course.  Those were the venues where glittering candles and crystal chandeliers abounded,  vast banquet halls crowded with the most influential people and great world leaders. The most prestigious awards that particularly caught his eye, were handed out for scientific triumphs in physics and mathematics. 

As soon as he caught sight of this glittering world completely different from the dank, depressing hole that was Cousteau A-1, his world-view expanded exponentially. 

Golly, that’s what I’ll do!  I’ll win one of those prizes and medals soon as I grow up! 

He knew one thing for sure.  The trump card he had ready  access to, was achieving proven success in astrophysics and mathematical theory, applied to handling of anti-matter, his chosen scientific field.  If great enough,  an LiS-challenged person such as himself, could forget all about disability being a handicap, even if physically he was like a numb, limp Rhopilema hisidum jellyfish from his neck, all the way down to toes.  That was the kind he loathed and his parents liked to eat, when they ordered them packed in a cold storage container in Singapore, and shipped to the station. It was a rare delicacy and treat for them, when life for the Yongs had seen better days, that is. 

The world Mu was growing up in, the world Michael Jayson the pop king dominated with music, using that as a platform to launch into world geopolitics, and on his way to the helm of the European Union, was now the world into which Becca the Viking was soon to be introduced as a new element in the equation.

Yet there was a fourth new element, Mu’s mystery guest.  And the mystery guest even had nine other siblings! 

2.

Mu’s face, clamped in place before a console,  lit with a high degree of self-satisfaction at that moment. 

His disability removed from the center of his thoughts at the moment, his emotion may have bordered on smugness.  But he could be excused for not being able to disguise genuine delight.  He had just achieved something, he knew, that was guaranteed to catapult him into an A plus grade.

The instructor sighed and went over to Yong’s work station which was blinking an EUREKA sign for ATTENDANT, COME IMMEDIATELY! A highly expensive module that the station manager bitterly regretted having to fund, since it had to be specially engineered to handle someone like Mu.

It had taken several difficult, and expensive legal actions by the attorneys for Mu and his parents, to force the funding authorized by official company contracts.

Their jobs were so vital to the stations’ operation, that they were able to keep their jobs after that—but just barely.  As long as they worked there, they could expect no bonuses and pay raises for stepping out of line.

Naturally,  Mu’s father was restless, constantly applying to other stations, but his name and reputation had been passed around by the manager, and he was effectively blacklisted.

Well, bright boy, what do we have here that’s so important to our own little Einstein?  I’m pretty busy,  you know.

Mu bit his lip and just let the instructor read what he had.

The teacher’s face paled after a moment as he scanned Yong’s data on the screen. 

I think you’ve got something here, Mu!  I think, yes, you’ve got something really big!

His head and neck clamped rigid like a German nutcracker’s,  Mu could still register plenty of human expression, and he beamed. 

I aced it, right?  Tell me I aced it, Teach!

The man, however, wasn’t thinking of mere grades.  He was looking at what could only be a new age of technology, a new world,  new Universe—new everything! 

In 1995 the first anti-atom had been created by Professor Reinhard Oelert and his team from Erlangen-Nuremberg University in the E.U.  Nine anti-hydrogen atoms survived only 40 billionths of a second, but that was enough.  They had made the long-held dream of  physicists a reality, and the event inaugurated a new spectrum of  investigations based on anti-matter.

Yet the next major break-through,  from the making of the anti-atoms to actual harnessing of anti-matter’s  power, had eluded researchers.  They couldn’t seem to maintain the mass of anti-matter appreciably beyond the 40 billionths of a second threshold.

Matter continually annihilated  anti-atoms before anything could be done with them—that is, until now. 

Mu’s discovery was no mere anti-hydrogen molecule.  No, it was a virtual piece of  the anti-Universe,  consisting of the mathematical blueprint for a specimen, apparently composed of  a crystalline structure, and exhibiting signs of intelligence!

Growing restless in his padded cage,  Mu gazed at his speechless instructor and frowned.

Hey, Teach, aren’t you listening to me or day dreaming of lying on the beach at a resort on the mainland?

What?  the rattled instructor said.  I’ve got to think!  This is really something, Mu.  Quit razzing me!  Do you know what you’ve started?  Do you?

Mu sort of had an idea.  He saw a fantastically-changed world, with everything powered by controlled anti-matter/matter collisions, from a power station energizing the entire earth that  you could hold in your hand, to starships with speeds many times that of the latest experimental quark-driven propulsion systems.  Harness the fraction of the explosive potential from the interaction of matter and anti-matter, and unlimited power could be produced that would never run out, with no chance of exceeding the supply!

His dark brown eyes gleamed, as he struggled to hold down his grin, then he gave the voice command SEND. 

Instantaneously, his epoch-making discovery and data on the specimen, flashed on their way to website input analysis centers, to labs all around the world and off-planet sites as well.

Since it was just a kid involved in playing around with his science course work, there was no attempt by the CIA, NSA and the World Union nerds to stop its dissemination either, since it wasn't considered political or anything that could compromise the national security, (the understanding of security involving only those intelligence agencies, at the expense of practically everything else).

The discovery proved sensational, beyond all expectation, nevertheless.  A Break-through of this magnitude seemed all but certain to the world scientific community.

Communications being what they were, within hours Mu was called the most gifted Asian-American student of the century, and was invited to speak before international boards, assemblies of the most distinguished scientists, historians, doyens, educators—all experts,  mavens, and wonks on practically everything that touched science in the slightest way. 

Mu found he did not need anymore sweaty sessions at his old work station.  He had, with this one discovery, aced with a plus, plus, plus the course. 

With his amazed and proud parents,  he was off!

He would have liked to bring his robo-kar, affectionately called Sea Horse, but the speaker platforms were too crowded with dignitaries to accommodate it.

Mu Gan Yong’s high, squeaky voice, greatly amplified, informed august gatherings that the earth-type planet in 3C 295,  from which he had drawn a mathematical model for identification, had to be quite similar to their own, in general and intrinsic components and structure.

He squeaked on, trying to make it drone in a lower key, but it did not matter what he sounded like, everyone hung on every syllable.

Um—but just the same I’m so glad I got it.  Now we can tell pretty much how the other Universe is made up, and that should tell us a lot of neat things!  But is there any danger?  People always ask me.  No, not at all.  The data model I got was of  a little rock of some kind.  Sorry, it isn’t anything alive, though I detect it is intelligent.  I wasn’t that lucky to get an actual person of some kind.  Of course,  if we bring it here to Earth it might blow us all up, unless we  contain it with a powerful l enough magnetic field.  So, it’s better to stays where it is, right?  At least leave it alone, until we can figure out how  to do it right—and that could take a couple years.  Maybe all you know what AM—anti-matter, I mean—is, and the dangerous stuff too.  But a lot of  kids still don’t.  Um.  Since they’re looking in, it’s matter that has an opposite charge property to the matter in our Universe.  A proton has a positive charge, but the anti-proton from the other Universe carries a negative charge.  Put them together and—kaboom!—they blow each other up!  That process has given us great potential of a power source, beyond anything we’ve got.  Spacecraft can be propelled to the other galaxies with it.  But AM is tricky, tricky stuff, as I said.  We’ll have to be very careful it doesn’t touch anything in our Universe we don’t want it to touch, so I’m not going to try to tractor the actual thing in, until we know it’s really safe—

Then he always concluded at such premier events, So, kids,  don’t ever give up on your line of research!  Everyone I know back home can tell you how I tried and tried to get into AM, then finally it worked out!  Now I hope we kids of science will make a lot more contact in the near future, maybe speak to the people on the other side, and find out what they think of us.  That should be real interesting for both us kids and adults!  Okay, that’s all there is to what I wanted to tell you all.  Thanks for coming.  I’m finished!  Gotta go!

At that point attendants would help him off the platform, so he could rejoin his parents and be taken to his next venue.  Once on the road, the Yongs would speed off  via rocket tubes of  the International Transit System (I.T.S.).  A worn-out but triumphant Mu, was happily sipping a grown-up’s espresso, of fifty-seven organic superfoods laced with caffeine.

After all the speaking engagements let up a bit, Mu slipped back to Cousteau A-1 for a look around, and to gather things he had left at the lab class, he didn’t want anyone selling for high-priced souvenirs.

As for Sea Horse, it was pure pleasure to be back in a harness,  shooting this way and that down the long tube expressways of the facility. 

He had just ridden Sea Horse inside the educational module, when someone leaped across his path, and he was forced to hit the brake button with a quick voice command.

Lindbladt, why don’t you quit stalking me and get yourself a life!  Mu yelled at the much bigger boy who was chief enemy, and who had blocked him every time when he tried to get accepted by the station's Space Cadets.

I thought you’d have changed by now, but I see you’re still fixated on being the world’s biggest slime bag.

Careful to stay clear of the robo-kar’s grasping arms, the bully enjoyed the advantage of  maneuverability even if he was weight-challenged for his age. 

He could try to dart round to the side and clobber Mu before he could turn his vehicle and fend off  the attack.

What, me change?  You think you’re so hot, Mu! What a snotty little nerd you are!  Imagine, using words like 'fixated, trying to impress me too! I seen you on video smart-talking  all those bigshot people everywhere.  But you and I know they’re making  a fuss over absolutely nothing, nothing but a cripple.  That’s all you’ll ever be, Mu!  A miserable cripple smelling of fifty-seven superfoods you are always guzzling!  You done forgot about that,  I betcha, that you’re nothin’!  Wouldn’t they laugh if they saw you can’t even wipe your own snot without your mommy's help?  Wouldn’t they?"

The jeering, older boy would not let Mu go, evidently meaning to pull some mean trick on him before he could send a call for help to his parents.

Mu had been through it all before, of course.  Umpteen times!  Every school had its brain-dead, nose-picking bully, who preyed on the kids with disabilities, it seemed to Mu, who had researched the topic of bullying to try and find a working solution.

No dice!  The research always turned around to make him the problem instead.  The studies suggested he needed more compassion and understanding, then the bully would change his behavior since he was a bully, only so he could generate feeling of hostility and acts of retaliation.  When that failed him by receiving compassion and understanding instead, the aggression not paying off, then the bullying would stop. 

Mu tried compassion and understanding to test the psychologists’ theory. 

Lindbladt only got worse, the more compassion and understanding Mu showed him.

You think you can pity me, huh?  You understand me, huh?  Why, take this!  (Pow on the cheek).  And take this little love pat, (Pow, pow, on the side of the head with his fist).

Giving up on the theory which didn’t quite cope with Lindbladt, he just reported it.  That took care of the problem for a while.  But now, perhaps because of the great honors heaped on him, he himself had changed.  He wasn’t going to put up with continual abuse any longer!

His anger quotient shot up high—very high.  He got mad—very mad!  Then the thought came to him that he wasn’t absolutely helpless.  He could do something concrete about the problem.  And really solve it once and for all!

Hey, let’s make a deal, he said to Lindbladt who was apparently going to pour a plastic bag of  stinking, half-decomposed sea slugs on him.  You quit stalking me and I’ll see you get what you deserve.

The other boy’s mouth fell open, and he let the bag plop down on the floor.

A deal?  Whaddaya mean?  Is this some trick you dreamed up?  Don’t think of trying a nasty on me!  I know you’d wipe me off the sea floor if you could get away with it, and not take the station with me.

Mu’s face looked shocked beyond words.

Well, if you think that about me,  forget it.

The bully grinned.

C’mon, Snot Nose, tell me first, and then I’ll decide if it’s worth my valuable time or not.

Mu looked cut to the quick.

No, you said you totally distrusted me, and I don’t see how what I had in mind would interest you anyway.  All you’re good at is pushing people around, who are smaller than yourself and can’t fight back.  You don’t care about making lots of money and getting out of here and—

Lindbladt was suddenly very interested.  He leaned over on Mu, blowing sickening, foul breath in his face from green-mossed teeth that had never known a brush.

Gee, I didn’t mean anything like that!  Yes, I thought you were just a snobby creep stuck on himself, but I’ve changed my mind.  You’re pretty smart,  and maybe you do have something I’d be interested in.  Why not run it by me and see?  There’s no reason why you and I can’t get along for a change and help each other out in this crummy dump, is there?

Mu’s face showed he might be reconsidering.  The mortally offended expression fell away.  He looked into his persecutor’s eyes with angelic innocence.

All right,  you asked for it.  I just thought you might want to know what I invented.  It’s a new, better way to extract gold from hot vent water.  Oh, I know it hasn’t paid in the past, but I’ve developed a means to double the yield, a more efficient capture process no one else knows about, which I’ve kept secret until now.  I call it the Angel extraction factor.

Lindbladt’s porcine eyes narrowed with suspicion. He wasn’t buying the angel—unless he first knew its angle.  But why tell me if it’s a big secret? he jeered.

Well, I figured you would be able to keep the secret, since grown-ups would snatch the process away if they heard about it, for our own good, of course, since they’re adults and know how to handle big money, and we don’t, being just kids.  Do you really think they’d let us keep piles and piles of  gold?

Boy, never!  You’re spot on, old Mu!  Well, what’s the secret process you thunk up?

Mu went on patiently explaining.  The math concepts wouldn’t mean anything to you, since you didn’t stay the course with  physics and metallurgy.  Way too boring, I agree!  But  I have the gold extractor hidden at my quarters, and will meet you tonight at  0130 hours sharp by the X-station pump and viewport.  We’ll have the place to ourselves for fifteen minutes.  It’s the break between shifts, so there’ll be just us.  No spying grown-ups who’d steal the formula from us.  Can you be there and right on time?

Sure, sure,  count on it, buddy!  Lindbladt cried in a low, conspiratorial tone.  This better not be a joke.  I’ll make sure you regret it the rest of your miserable life if it is!  YOU can count on that too, since you’re such a wizard in math!

Mu watched the bully swagger away, quite like three or four bags of potatoes going in different directions at the same time. 

Oh, it’s no joke,  Muttonhead!  he swore below his breath.  I can really extract gold from the vent water, enough to make us both very, very rich.  Only you’ll never live to see a carat of it!  You can count on it.

3.

For once in his life Lindbladt was true to his word.  He slouched and rolled down to the arranged place of  meeting, right on the button.

That part of the pump station at least, devoid of personnel,  was theirs.  Mu knew from close observation of the command center that the personnel there, too, would be grabbing a fifteen minute break away from monitors, so they could get something to eat and drink at the snack module, in the next compartment.

As for the cameras,  let them take pictures.  They wouldn’t incriminate him,  not without audio and they couldn’t photo his moving lips either, being his head was down as it had to be.

Moreover,  Pik van Krumpp the station manager had been cost-conscious, and cut out most audio systems throughout the facility.  He had also severely reduced the number of  cameras, so there was only one in this particularly well-chosen pump room, trained on the far viewport, which was considered the most critical spot for leakage.

Mu knew there was far more instances of inside leakage too—from Lindbladt! 

He was always taking a leak wherever he pleased, Mu knew.  He seemed to have excessive hydration, which required eliminating it everywhere at fifteen minute intervals on walls, on floors, whatever was most convenient to him—sparing him the bother of going into  latrines to use urinals he had vandalized and blocked-up. 

He caught him at it a number of times, merrily passing water beyond the washrooms at snack bars stations, where the staff normally gathered. That was probably the cause of the urine smell pervading the whole facility, despite disinfectant  Pine Sol used by maintenance  to spray down everything. 

Unless Lindbladt took a leak there, and van Krumpp did a DNA match,  no one would be the wiser they had been hanging out there.

Stopping Sea Horse, Mu looked very pleased, and the robotic arms at the front of his vehicle grasped a bulky object.

Ready to leap to safety, the other boy made a grab at the machine, but Mu’s commanded the arms to thrust it out of reach.

No, it has to be hooked up first to work.  We can’t use base electricity and risk being monitored for unauthorized energy consumption, and then they can track us here,  but it’ll run on my kar’s power pack.

Mu’s partner nodded at this specimen of good sense of innocent kids vs.  evil, grasping adults and gave him a grudging look.

You’ve got a real head on, Mu!  All you need is a real body to go with it!  Haw, haw, haw!  Like old Ichabod Crane of that old story in that English class I flunked,  only in reverse.  Did you get it?  All you need is a body to go with your brain?  Haw, Haw, Haw! 

Lindbladt took time off to enjoy his joke.  It was just too good, he milked it of every last drop.

Then he wiped the laugh off his face with a grease rag he grabbed off the floor, and instantly turned deadpan. 

Now what do you want me to do?  Trust me.  I’ll hook your little gizmo up in a jiffy.

Mu had Lindbladt stretch out colored wiring and attach it with electrodes to his power pack.  Plastic tubing also had to be hooked up to the station water circulation system, which not only ingested seawater from mineral-rich volcanic vents to remove valuable elements, but energized, warmed, and furnished nutrients to the warehouse gardens of  this giant facility of  4,000 trained personnel.

Just those smaller  X24 ducts over there, the orange and blue coded ones, please, Lindbladt.

In a few minutes, after a lot of huffing and puffing by the bully,  the machine was hooked up.

Now what?  What do we do now, Mu?  I better see at least a ton of gold for myself come out of this demonstration, or you’re a dead duckie.  You know that, don’t you? 

Don’t worry, it’ll work.  Now help me out and you get in.  You need to power up to provide the necessary juice, and regulations won’t let me, a minor,  have the voice command to bypass the safety lock on the transmission, so to do that you have to manually operate the switches for me.

I don’t get it!  Lindbladt objected.  You say you can’t get access to the power supply, except by those switches?  How come they left the switches then?

Mu said nothing, and it took a few moments but Lindbladt figured it out himself.  Mu could tell that because Lindbladt suddenly erupted in cackling laughter and piglike snorts, to get his breath between cackles.

Yet, his laughing fit over, Lindbladt still balked.  Lindbladt cast Mu a sly look.

This old nag of yours has a lot of  power.  How do I know you haven’t rigged the seat to zap me into atoms?  And those arms, they can reach back in and squeeze me to a pulp because  they’re steel.

Mu laughed.

That’s crazy!  Everyone would come and see what happened to you, and I’d be declared responsible on the spot!  No, I don’t hate you that much.  I have a big, booming science career to think of.  If  you don’t want more gold than you know what to do with,  don’t do what I say!  It’s that simple,  just stick in your rut here, while I go gallivanting across the globe and have the time of my life!  You’ll never know the good times you could have had.  I am sick of your suspicions!  I’m going to call off this demonstration right now.

Lindbladt who had a career as professional bully but knew he  wasn’t making much by it,  shrugged, then grinned with his green array. 

Just testing the waters! I gotta look after myself, don’t I?  Who else can I trust around here in this smelly dump?

Lindbladt helped Mu out,  dumped him rather brutally on a chair like a cast-off rag doll, and heaved up into the control seat.  It took some considerable rearrangement of his potato sacks to do that, but he finally managed it. 

Playing it careful, Lindbladt jammed his foot down on the brake and also pulled the emergency.

Okay, how does she power up?

Mu smiled.

Easy.  Just hit the switch ‘Startup’ on the right side of the controls, and at the same time depress the  Neutral Gear" switch close to it.  That’ll disengage the wheels and give us the power we need.

Before Lindbladt could reach the switches,  Mu barked a voice command.

FSF [full speed forward]!  he cried. 

Sea Horse, with the new driver, suddenly bolted.  It had only a couple hundred yards to go before converging with the curving bubble of the huge view port at the far end of the pump room.

The instant acceleration took Lindbladt by surprise.  Losing his foothold on the brake, and with the emergency brake burning up,  Lindbladt held on as he rocketed toward the view port.

There was a scream, then a shattering collision.  Sea Horse exploded in flames and smoke, sending pieces, including Lindbladt’s teeth, scalp, the top of  his skull and his brains flying against the bulkhead walls across the passage. 

Then the facility’s safety systems automatically closed the viewport. 

A vault-like titanium shield slammed down,  cutting off the possibly compromised viewport from the rest of the pump room. 

Mu stayed just where he was, keeping calm and rehearsing his coming little speeches. 

He had never heard anything so sweet as that final shriek of Lindbladt’s.

Within a minute personnel came running and shouting. 

Help!  Mu cried to them, a look of horror on his face.  I saw it happen.  I was showing my friend Lindy my robo-kar when he said he wanted to try the controls himself.  So, I let him, and—and—

Until the damage could be assessed on the other side of the shield,  it was left in place, and Mu was pressed for his account, which was relayed to the general manager’s assistant at command center. 

I know that kid,  a real mischief-maker, always truant from school and up to no good!  someone remarked after the half-hysterical Mu gasped out his report. 

I told Joe his boy would pull something one day that would get him in a world of hurt,  but you know Joe—he’ll be the last to pull his head out of the bucket.  He kept saying Lindy would get tired of his goofing off and settle down, just as he had when he turned 29 and got married.

The father was off-station at the moment.  There was no mother on hand either.  Mrs. Lindbladt had dumped Joe and left several years before with a transferring Pump Engineer, Second Class  (one grade above Joe’s).  Gossip had it they honeymooned in Singapore and were headed to Cousteau B-1 off Australia’s south coast. 

Mu blurted out the rest of the story,  choking on his tears from time to time.

Poor Lindy thought he could turn before he hit anything, but he was going way too fast, I guess.  I’m terribly sorry.  I shouldn’t have let him have Sea Horse.  I didn’t want to let him have it, but he insisted he could handle it.  You know him,  he won’t take no for an answer.  He said he’d sock me in the jaw if I didn’t let him drive the robo-kar.

By now sirens were wailing.  Fire warden,  medics, and other squads came rushing on the scene, with suction equipment trained to raise the shield and to repair the damaged, possibly leaking viewport. 

Mu’s parents also came running from a work trolley, his mother in a  shabby dressing gown, his father shirtless and naked except for the unlaundered station jumper. 

Messed up hair and Mr. Yong’s zipper down to his hairy navel, showed they had been startled awake by the emergency, unable to comprehend how he had gotten out of the apartment without their knowing. 

Mu grew a little uncomfortable for the first time, as his parents gazed at him with troubled eyes, once they saw he was perfectly all right.

When they heard him call Lindbladt Lindy, which they knew he had never done before,  they visibly winced and their eyes darkened. 

The first chance they could get, they took him aside to spare him the trauma of having to watch medics use little brushes, to scoop Lindbladt into pint ziploc bags.

What did you do to him?  his father queried him alone in a shaking voice, the moment they were left  by the others.  Tell me the truth.

Mu was prepared for this.  There was a trace of defensiveness in his voice despite the care he took.

Just as I told everybody, he wanted to drive Sea Horse and forced me out of it so he could race around the station.  I couldn’t stop him.  You know him.  What else could I do if I didn’t want to get hurt again?  He was going to pound me bad if I didn’t let him have Sea Horse, dad!

His father still shook his head and looked at his mother, whose eyes dropped.  Their hands fumbled as they moved Mu to the trolley for the trip home. 

Mu was pleased.  He knew by their numb, resigned reaction that nothing would come of  any suspicion they had.  In time, they would get over it, and let him off the hook.

They had no proof to the contrary, and everybody knew Lindbladt was a bad egg, in fact, a rotten one!  Whenever any vandalism or some nasty thing occurred, Lindbladt always had an alibi, but the station was not so big the personnel didn’t know what was going on, that he was the one pissing on everything.

They all knew he was the prankster responsible for nearly all the acts of  petty vandalism, too,  not to mention obscene words painted throughout the station, that made the station manager want to fire Joe his star technician, who was supposed to monitor the camera tapes and track down the perpetrator.

Later, after Muttonhead was reassembled more or less, and set in the infirmary’s cold storage body locker,  Mu lay in his warm bed, not chuckling, but not unhappy either. 

He would miss Sea Horse, but it was a necessary sacrifice—one he put off making until he was absolutely sure of success.  And now that he had re-discovered anti-matter in a big way and was famous all over the world,  he knew he’d soon earn a lot of money from magazine articles,  books,  toys,  appearances on talk shows,  videos showing interviews of him,  special awards,  and the like. 

He wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he got the Nobel Prize.  With the money he’d buy anything he wanted,  an entire fleet of  Sea Horses with the latest conveniences. 

Let him fry in Hell! the victor thought as he composed himself for sleep.  Now I’m rid of the world’s biggest jerk forever.  I must have tried a dozen times and he always got away.  Finally, the sucker took the bait!  That’s the value of persistence.  Try, try again! That’s the winning formula!

Mu’s photographic memory never failed.  He had sometime or other come across Edward Hickson’s moral song.  He knew every word.

"‘Tis a lesson you should heed—

Try again.

If at first you don’t succeed,

Try Again.

Then your courage should appear

For if you will persevere

You will conquer, never fear,

Try again.

Once or twice though you should fail,

If you would at last prevail,

Try again.

If we strive, ‘tis no disgrace

Though we did not win the race—

What should you do in that case?

Try again.

If you find your task is hard,

Try again;

Time will bring you your reward,

Try again.

All that other folk can do,

Why with patience should not you?

Only keep this rule in view,

Try again."

Mu found that poem foundational for his life’s endeavors.  Having nothing to do with Judaeo-Christian morality and humane feeling for fellow men, based on the hybrid gospel of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Edison, that made it all the better a fit and suited him just fine.

He heard his parents moving restlessly around in their tiny cubicle adjoining his, his father saying something, then a bump on the cold, sweating metal wall.

Let them talk.  I know they don’t buy my explanation, but what really can they do?  They’ll accept it, given time and a lot of money to sweeten this up for them.

Several hours later, Mu lay wide awake—his mind endlessly rewinding Lindbladt’s shriek, and his last moments as he burned, writhing like a sea slug held to blow-torch. 

That must have been his conscience—but he fought it down.  He killed it to the last gasp when he considered there was no changing things now, he had gained the upper hand at last over his tormentor, and he was determined to see he kept it!

The next day,  Mu felt a little jaded from too much excitement and not enough sleep.

Yawning,  he trundled down to the lab in a clunky, borrowed, older version of his robo-kar that his mother used to get groceries.  She also used it to drag laundry to the filthy, trashed-up washroom attached to their technician grade,  and to run other errands.

He pulled up at his dusty, pop canned and candy-bar wrapper-littered work-station.  It was just as drab and depressing as ever. 

Condensation on the walls, peeling paint, sweating pipes and walls,  the grease  stains from sloppy maintenance—but what was that awful smell? 

He gagged.  He nearly upchucked.  Someone—no doubt the late great Lindbladt—had left something for him to be remembered by, and smeared rotting sea slug around as a nice little homecoming surprise.

A green light blinked at his reeking old console.

Forcing himself,  he checked it out and found a caller on-line.  It was the mathematical model of the anti-matter specimen.

Mr. Yong, would you like to play a game of  martial arts? the specimen queried him from the other Universe—the anti-Universe.

Mu was puzzled at this much display of  intelligence in what he thought was an inert object.  Previously, he had detected signs only.  Now because he had missed so much sleep and the incident with the school bully had drained him of  resolve, he wasn’t much in the mood, or even very alert.  If  that wasn’t enough,  sea slug stench around him was nearly overwhelming,  nearly enough to make him too nauseous to play any game.

Who or what is transmitting?  he queried his Cray, thinking he was hearing wrong.  Explain how you know my name too."

Unknown:  player’s identity is password-protected.

Well, okay, be that way," Mu shrugged, although he had already played out the facility’s stock of games months and months before his grand scientific break-through with anti-matter.

The caller called back. Mu was upset this time.  He checked and found it was,  indeed, the anti-matter specimen transmitting to him.