Scene 1. Visit
Lilly finally is able to get away and visit The Professor in the Long-Term Care Facility at The Base. Like all of the other Army Base buildings, it is an older green building, but very clean. In the large lobby are a number of wheelchairs, all with elderly patients. Probably retired military, Lilly thinks. She approaches the desk and gives her name to the clerk, “Oh! You’re Lilly!” “Wait here and I’ll have someone come out for you.” The clerk turns and dials the telephone.
The same attendant that pushed The Professors chair at the reunion party comes out to greet Lilly, “Good morning Lilly, I am sure that The Professor will be happy to see you!” “Please follow me.” They walk through several hallways to the back of the building to single-patient rooms, maybe these rooms are for residents that are contagious? They come to one room with a guard posted outside, the door is closed. The guard stands aside as the attendant shows him her ID badge. The guard opens the door and they enter, he then closes the door behind them.
The room has one large bed. In the bed is a large older bear-man, The Professor. Lilly runs up to him and lifts his huge fore-paw. He only moves his eyes to stare at Lilly. Lilly is doing everything to avoid looking surprised, or cry. She takes his great fore-paw and presses it against her chest. “I have missed you so much!” “I’ll bring our astronomy research papers next time I come so that you can review them with me.” “I think we have enough material for several papers, maybe even a prize!” She holds his paw for several minutes, she gets no response so she says nothing more to him. My Professor! What have they done to you!?
Lilly releases The Professor’s paw and turns to the attendant, “What is wrong with him?” The attendant responds, “I have asked the doctor to come down and talk to you, he is on his way.”
The doctor enters the room with the guard. Lilly jumps up almost reaching the ceiling, and shouts, “FOXWORTHY!! She lunges at the doctor, but she is intercepted, restrained, and silenced by the door guard. She is wiggling wildly in rage, bright crimson, “MMMMFFFFFTTTTTT!”, Let me kill that bastard!
Foxworthy draws back and grimaces at Lilly, “Now my dear Lilly, just relax. This county only has one psychiatrist,” He holds his fore-paw to his chest, “Me!” Foxworthy smiles triumphantly at Lilly, “I told you we would meet again.” Foxworthy continues, “If you promise to be good, I’ll have the guard release you,” “If not, you will not be allowed into this facility again and you will not be allowed to visit The Professor again.” “So what will it be?” Foxworthy looks up with a sudden thought, “Oh! Have you changed your mind on my offer for your brain?”
Lilly stops wiggling and forces herself to relax. She is still bright pink. The guard drags her across the large room and forces her to the floor, preventing her from attempting another lunge for Dr. Foxworthy.
I have been defeated again by this bastard! Even though he has won, he is still trying to ‘Get My Goat’!
The guard cautiously releases Lilly. She is straining to remain motionless, but her feelings are revealed by her a bright pink blush. Lilly coughs after being choked by the guard, “Okay, Lets presume that you are actually trying to help The Professor,” “What therapy is he receiving? How long can we expect it to be before he is able to speak?” “And testify against you...”
Dr. Foxworthy, pulls up a chair and sits down. He motions to a chair next to Lilly, “Please sit down my dear.” “You look like a pink bomb, ready to explode.” The guard carefully takes the chair and motions for Lilly to sit. She does. She is now shivering, but not from the cold.
Dr. Foxworthy begins, “The Professor is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.” “He needs peace and quiet.” “Unfortunately, not much is known about the specific cause for this disorder or its treatment.” “The best we are able to do is to keep him comfortable and avoid stressful situations and let him recover on his own.”
Lilly stares at Foxworthy, like she expects him to suddenly pull out a knife and threaten to kill The Professor. Lilly asks, not expecting an honest answer, “You were holding him at the same time as me at your ‘clinic’." "What were you doing to him there?”
Dr. Foxworthy tries to look concerned,“We were conducting tests, as he was like this when he was turned over to us by the medical staff from abroad.” “He was accompanying your parents on an archaeological excavation.” “He collapsed at the hotel and the hotel staff called their emergency medical personnel.” “They worried that they did not have the proper facilities to treat him and they turned him over to ‘us’.”
Lilly continues her harsh glare at Dr. Foxworthy, Like anyone would turn anyone over to the Psych-Squad! I’ll ask my parents and see what they know, probably not much, “That’s a great story, doctor,” “Have you ever considered writing fiction novels?”
Dr. Foxworthy gives Lilly his signature, long-snouted, toothy, grin, “I have several books in print, and I have even won awards.” “I’ll give you my pen name so that you can pick them up and read them.” “I think you will like them, especially the ‘spy thrillers’.”
Lilly cannot take any more, she motions to the guard, “May I leave now?” The guard motions to the door. Lilly stands up and hurriedly exits the room, not looking back. She makes her way back to the front desk and checks out with the clerk, not saying anything, just hissing at everyone, like a snake ready to strike, “SSSSSSS!”
Scene 2. Top Secret!
The General stands as Lilly sits down in a large and well padded office chair. Lilly scheduled the meeting several days earlier with this very busy Minotaur.
“I apologize for interrupting your busy schedule but I am concerned about The Professor’s care at the clinic.” “Did you know that Dr. Foxworthy is The Professor’s attending physician?” “The same guy that was trying to remove my brain?”
“The Professor was being held at Foxworthy’s clinic the same time I was when your men recovered him.” “How do we know that The Professor didn’t ‘acquire’ his ‘condition’ right there, from Dr. Foxworthy’s torture-treatment?
“Maybe you heard,” “When I saw Foxworthy at The Professor’s care facility, I tried to kill him, but your guard stopped me.”
The General watches and listens to Lilly and then pauses to speak after she has finished, “I am concerned but I have no authority over the Psych-Squad.” “I really upset them just by recovering you.” Their operatives only answer to their superiors in the highest levels of government and I don’t know who. I have complained numerous times to my superiors about the actions of the Psych-Squad and my superiors have taken not action that I am aware of. My superiors won’t even acknowledge the Psych-Squad’s actions or that they even exist. My superiors, and the rest of the government, must believe that the Psych-Squad is doing’ God’s Work’, and is not to be interfered with, collateral damage is acceptable, without apology.”
The General looks even more serious, “Please do not discuss the Psych-Squad, your arrest, subsequent treatment and rescue.” “Also, deny your work on, and the existence of, ‘advanced technology’ to everyone except for those cleared specifically by me.” “All of your past work has been classified: ‘Top Secret’.” “Any and all of your new work will be done here, on this base, in a facility we built especially for containing this ‘new technology’.”
Lilly looks down, “Alright, I get it,” I’ll behave from now on,” “I don’t want to be prevented from visiting The Professor.” “And I already have agreed to work with you, with only the condition that you protect my family and friends.” “Will I be a prisoner here?” "I would like to leave The Base once in a while, to conduct personal business and to see my family at home."
The General sighs, “You are not a prisoner here, but please work with us.” “Yes, you can leave the base and even spend some nights at your home.” “Undercover protection is assigned to you and your family and friends, all the time from now on.” “But be careful!” “Don’t put them in even more danger by telling them anything, especially anything that you are working here!” “Your cover is that you are still attending college and occasionally working at The Factory and staying overnight there.”
Scene 3. Dreamers
Lilly is met by the cute warrant officer who smiles upon seeing her, “Lilly I would like to show you where you are going to work here at the base.” Lilly hesitates, well that was fast, The General must have planned this when I told him I was coming.
The warrant officer escorts Lilly to an electric car identical to the one at The Factory, The Chief must have made this car too. The car whirs across the large base they pass athletic fields for various sports and Lilly spots a tennis court, “Do you play tennis?”
The officer flashes a smile at Lilly, “Yes, I made the finals in high-school.”
Lilly finally feels some relief, “Are you up for a game?”
“Maybe tomorrow, after I get you set up at ‘The Facility’.” Egad, It sounds like I am about to be institutionalized!
The car drives through two fenced vehicle checkpoints and finally pulls up to a very long building with the only windows being way up high on the sides. The entrance is through outer doors leading to a guard station. The inner doors have no handles. Apparently the inner door is only operated by the guard.
Lilly’s name is found on the visitor’s list, the warrant officer turn to Lilly, “Tomorrow you’ll need to get a new badge, to get in here without me.” The inner door opens.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The building is a collection of offices and conference rooms all along the outer wall. On the opposite side of the hall is a window looking out onto a large field with a number of larger and smaller devices and constructs, a few figures can be seen attending to these constructs. They walk down the hall, along side of the outer wall offices. The warrant officer is reading tags on each door and finally stops, “Here it is,” “this is your new office!” Lilly notes her name on the door. Wow! The warrant officer unlocks the door and the room is filled with light from the outer windows, high overhead. The office is a little smaller then The General’s. It reminds Lilly of Ellie’s office back at The Factory, a large desk, filing cabinets and several large workstations.
Lilly cannot resist, “When is The General going to install electric lights?”
The warrant officer hesitates, then continues, “I believe he has them scheduled for installation at the end of this month.” The warrant officer walks to the door and hands Lilly her office key, “Now I’ll show you the shops and introduce you to your coworkers and the assistant staff.” Coworkers? They walk down a hall to larger spaces containing various types of shop equipment, including an arc-welding station. Lilly smiles, May I continue my hobbies?
The two then walk down out of the office area and out to the field toward a construct surrounded by large piles of apparatus. The pile is being attended by two college-age individuals, a boar-man and a bear-man. The bear-man looks up and walks over to greet them, the boar-man looks up then looks back down and continues working. The warrant officer smiles to the bear, “Otto, I would like you to meet Lilly.” Otto smiles. “Will you be joining us out here?
Lilly weakly smiles, “Yes.”
The warrant officer points to the boar-man, “That’s Oliver, he’s shy.”
Otto smiles again, staring at and obviously interested in Lilly, “What are you ‘in’ for?”
Lilly looks up to him, and says, without irony, “Unauthorized ‘new technology’.”
The warrant officer smiles at the staring Otto, “Otto, show Lilly what you are working on. Then see if you can find an area where she can work. She does electrical stuff.”
The warrant officer then smiles at Lilly, “I am going back now, call me if you need me to come and get you, or you can walk back to your apartment, if you prefer. Be sure to pick up your new badge from Security in the morning.” “Oh, and call me for tennis, I am usually free after lunch.”
Otto smiles, “You play tennis?”
Otto escorts Lilly up to the pile of apparatus he and Oliver are working on. It appears to be some kind of internal combustion engine, but heavily modified, with large areas of the castings machined away. “What are you trying to do?”
“Reduce the weight of the engine.”
“Why?”
“So it can fly!”
“Fly?” “How and with what?” “With this.” Otto walks to a large construct and points to a long wooden barrel, with projections out of the sides. “Where does the engine go?” “Up here in the front.” Otto walks to the narrower of the barrel ends and he points to a small platform in the barrel end, presumably the engine mount.
“How does the engine make this thing fly?”
“With this!” Otto holds up a one meter shape, like the projections on the barrel only smaller, double sided and twisted about ninety degrees.
“And you know all this will work? How?”
“We built and tested a ‘model’.” “In our ‘wind-machine’” Otto walks over to a box with a window and closes a switch. “Look here.” Lilly looks in the window of the box and sees a small streamlined shape, like a child’s toy, moving up and down in the wind from a fan.
“The ‘thrust blade’ we tested on an electric motor and measured the thrust at different shaft speeds.” “We even built gliders that we took up in balloons and then dropped." "We even flew in one glider,” “It was very scary.” I’ll bet is was!
Lilly looks on at the detailed set-up, astounded, “All of this is from your dreams?”
“Not mine, his,” Otto points to Oliver who is still working intently on the engine. “I am his assistant and caretaker.”
Lilly walks over to Oliver with Otto. Lilly is determined to at last have a conversation with another ‘dreamer’. Oliver does not acknowledge them even when they are standing right next to him. Lilly speaks with a lilting laugh, “Hi!” “I’m Lilly!”
The man stops working, still looking down. Then he slowly turns his head to look up at Lilly’s large, looming, menacing figure.
Lilly reflects, I have seen this look before, I know it quite well. It is the look of a man in absolute terror.
Am I really a monster?
Lilly quickly backs away from Oliver, “Otto, where can I work?” “I don’t want to get in your way.”
Otto and Lilly walk across the field to a row of low buildings. Inside the buildings are large desks and tables, “You can set up in any shop room that isn’t being used.” “Get a key from the guard if you don’t want the area entered when you are not around.” “There are some drawing boards in the back.” “You can either make parts yourself in the shop, or order them from The Factory.” “We can’t make castings here so we have to order those, for example.
“You can order things from The Factory?”
“Yes, all the time.” “Eventually, the things we develop here are to be manufactured by The Factory,” “for the Army.”
“Do you have a contact at The Factory?”
“Yes, her name is 'Ms. Ellie'.”
Scene 4. Field of Dreams
Lilly has an agenda for the next day. She is up early and scribbling notes at the commissary over breakfast. I’ll get some attention from The Factory with these!
She picks up her new ID badge, same photograph as her previous badge, but with a different color border, green last time, red this time. She walks through the checkpoints, What! No ‘beating and clubbing’ this time? Ah shucks!
At the second checkpoint she is recognized, “You’re that lady!”
Lilly looks up, I sure am! But I ain’t no ‘lady’!
One of the dog-solders on the barricade runs up to her side, “I saw you the other day." "The day you were taken in.” “Are you okay?” “Do you work here now?”
Lilly does not know what to make of the panting solder anxiously smiling at her, with protruding tongue, You smell pretty nice, if you were just thirty years older...
“Yes, I work here now.”
“What do you do here?”
“I’m a welder.” Watch out solder! Goats are known to eat little dog solders!
Finally, Lilly clears the check-point road-blocks and enters her ‘Top-Secret’ building. She opens her office and puts down her cases. She then takes a sheaf of this morning’s sketches down the hall, They all should still be in their offices. She stops at Otto’s office and knocks, Otto cheerfully answers, “Come on in.” He was waiting for me! Otto opens his office door with a broad smile, “Good morning Lilly!”
“Good morning Otto,” Lilly looks around Oliver is not there. “I need to talk to you about Oliver…” “Ha ha,” “Yeah,” “he’s afraid of women.” “So you are here to act as a go-between with everyone?” “Yeah, Oliver and I were roommates in college.” “I noticed right away that he is a genius, but had many hang-ups with people.” “So we traded, I did the presentations and he did the writing.” “But then and I don’t know exactly when, he changed.” “He began sleepwalking and I had to help him with everything that he did during the night.” “But in the mornings he would start drawing the most outlandish parts and devices.” “My father was a machinist and he showed me how to do it, so I started to make the things that Oliver would draw in the college machine shop,” “And together we would assemble them into things that actually worked.” “We made the mistake of showing one of the devices to an instructor, he took us to show the Engineering Department head.” “We were then interviewed by a psychologist, Dr. Foxworthy, I believe.” “Then the military picked us up and brought us here.” “We have been here ever since.”
“Your family does not miss you?”
“They think we are still living at the college, I am not sure that mine would miss me anyway.” “We have been allowed to continue our college coursework as a cover story.”
Lilly passes a bound sheaf of paper to Otto, “Here, send these sketches over to Ms Ellie, and tell her that they are from ‘Lilly’.”
Lilly spends the morning clearing out and cleaning all of the open shops and the labs. Otto sees her working and walks over, “What are you doing?”
Lilly has a mop in one hoof and a bucket in the other, “I am cleaning everything up around here. It is an old habit from my years as an apartment superintendent.” Otto immediately joins her helping move the heavier apparatus. Soon everything is gleaming and Lilly is smiling, “Now that’s better!”
Lilly pauses and turns toward Otto, “Do you think that Oliver would mind if I were to help you all with your projects? I might be able to make a few suggestions to help with the engine weight, for example,” and maybe have The Factory make a few parts for you to try out.”
Lilly returns to her office to sketch a few engine parts. She unlocks her office to find that all of her ‘new technology’ notes, drawings and devices delivered to her office, from the observatory, the college and The Factory. Boxes fill the office. Wow, I did all of this?
That afternoon Lilly plays tennis with the warrant officer. Although the warrant officer is not as skilled as Lilly, Lilly is not at her physical best, so the two are fairly evenly matched. The play several sets and Lilly is exhausted afterward, but she feels very good, being able to get out and jump around, and the warrant officer, about the same age, is pleasant company. They agree to meet at the commissary and have lunch together tomorrow. Lilly thinks about the next day and decides to visit The Professor in the morning. She spends the evening finding and organizing the notes and photographs from the boxes that were sent back from the observatory to take for his review. Wow! I am sure we have enough research material and original science findings for a paper or maybe two. I hope this cheers him up.
Scene 5. Paper
Lilly is up early and sorts through the observatory materials one last time, stuffs everything into her bag and heads to the commissary for breakfast. She sees the eager dog-solder from yesterday, he sees her and waves her over. Why not? It’s not like I can ‘eat him’ here… He’s probably safe.
The solder reminds her a lot of Timmy, triggering her motherly instincts. Although he is curious about her, Lilly questions him thoroughly about his education and his future career plans. He has thought about his future and is using the Army to pay for school. He is not interested in a career in the military but wants his own automobile-repair business. Lilly smiles, Good boy!
The Lilly walks the two kilometers to the Long-Term Care Facility, checks in and proceeds back to The Professor’s suite and confirms that Dr. Foxworthy is not there. The Professor does not appear to have moved since Lilly’s last visit. But everything in the suite is clean and fresh. Lilly pulls a chair up to the side of the bed and takes the professors huge paw in her hooves and presses it to her chest, “I brought you my notes and photographs from the observatory.” “I thought I might show them to you and discuss some ideas I have for a paper.” Lilly releases The Professor’s paw and proceeds to dig out the papers and photographs from her pack and pile them on his bed. Lilly then enumerates each photograph and matches the photograph to the analysis in her notes and holds them up for The Professor’s review. After an hour she is finished. She shovels everything back into her pack. She smiles at the professor and takes his paw again, “I’ll come back tonight, and stay with you, until they throw me out.” “Maybe I’ll have a draft of the paper for you to review tomorrow.” “Thank you for reviewing everything with me today.” She stares at the bed, then she rises to leave.
She walks to the door and looks back, starts to sob a little,
Oh Professor! Come back to me, my love!