26) Reflections

I don’t think I’m worried about being taken away to some fantasy world anymore.

Getting kidnapped, of course, is still a concern, but it's a minor one. Sort of at a level of the abstract fear that normal everyday dangers you know could happen, but don't worry about. Like how it was before I saw old George vanish from the restaurant that day.

Getting taken is something that could happen to me in real life, it’s just not all that likely.

Sure, everything I learned how to do might make me more of a target to be taken by someone's emergency criteria, but it also makes me more of a liability if I were. I can fight my kidnappers, I have options that would let me refuse to cooperate, or at least run off instead of doing whatever they want me to do.

I also got at least one person that can and will, come looking for me.

My Ready2go bag is still something I carry around, but more because people expect to see me with it.

Lately, I haven't even bothered to clip a bag to my ankle when I go to sleep. I still put my Mom’s graduation ring on my pinky finger at night, the only finger it will fit on, to make sure the necklace I normally keep it on doesn't slip off in my sleep.

But for the most part, all my emergency stuff, including my Ready2go bag, goes in the ring at night.

And I don't have it filled up all the way either.

My luggage, mostly a pair of simple duffle bags goes in the ring when I travel, and my groceries go in there to when I go to the store on my bike.

Of course, I take a backpack style book bag with me on planes, you have to give the airport guys something to search or they might want to check you in a way that involves gloves.

Can you refuse that and just not get on the plane that day? It seems pretty cruel and unusual to not be able to just say no to a random cavity search, or one with cause without a warrant.

Our world has become so magical, so much like the image of the places I fear being taken away too, that getting Taken now would be more of a major inconvenience than a life changer.

Who would have thought?

Today the extra space in my ring was taken up with two pizzas. An all veggie one for the hobbit and her girl, because she likes all the colors more than the taste, and a somewhat healthy one for me.

Low salt barbecue sauce, Parmesan cheese, bits of diced up chicken breast, and low salt bacon on top.

I'm only planning on three or four slices, but it's not the calories I worry about anymore, it's the salt.

Imogene got me to see a Doctor for a check up and my blood pressure is up. And from what I’ve read, just taking the pills the Doc gave me isn’t enough, I got to change my lifestyle.

Which is what they call going on a diet now, but more. You got to stick to the changed diet… forever.

Forever? Okay, I get why they call it a change of lifestyle. Still sounds like made up wording though.

My Pizza is staying nice and hot in the storage space in Mom’s ring while I take a quick shower and type this up so I got the rest of the night clear.

A night I’m really looking forward to.

My Sister gave up on traveling to the closer parallel worlds of Earth, but Nexus clued her in that she could detect them well enough to at least look in on them.

A short lived TV series one of her co-workers got her to watch put an idea into her head.

She’s learned to access the internet on the closer parallels, and even contracted a spirit to do the

equivalent to what she is calling an inter-dimensional search engine.

“Imogenggle?”

That got me hit with a pillow. Only because I let her. You have to let your little sibling win every now and then or you’ll destroy their confidence.

She did go with my second suggestion. Ding. For the alarms, the Deamon lets off when it finds a good match.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

I’m really hoping the surprise she promised me for tonight is season two of Firefly.

No. I won’t post it on the web page, even if it’s not that.

Me and my sister talked about internet piracy, and how I chose to start paying for my downloads once I had money for them. Or sending a check to whoever I felt deserved the money when it was morally justifiable to pirate something rather than deal with security features that made it impossible to just own and read or watch a copy of something I had paid for.

TV shows, movies, books, games, and anything else downloaded from another world? They belong to the versions of the people who made them on our world, and we have to figure out how to make sure they get paid before anything gets put out that will then be ruthlessly pirated.

I've always believed that sometimes you have to step up and do the right thing, well now I've begun to learn that sometimes you have to step back too.

That seems like a good spot to end this one.

Note: Give this a good read thought and run it through the editing page before I post it.

Addendum.

Season Two, Episode One was great. Wash lives.

At least on Earth APH axis 533b. Whedon lost creative control on 533a. I gave up on that version halfway through episode 4. It had its moments and I still have the downloads for the eight episodes they made, even the ones that didn’t air, but pew.

This is Imogene by the way.

Someone who is going to regret it took my brother.

He got up after we ate, taking his bag but not his shoes with him, to put the leftovers in the fridge because while food doesn't age in pocket storage dimensions, somehow everything else inside them still ends up smelling like every other opened container of food that spends too much time inside them.

There is a bump forward on the internal time frame when anything gets put in or pulled out, but it's in microseconds.

Shameless plug. See my part of Thelastgoodbye.com “Higher Dimensions” for the math, unless my handlers hacked it again.

I mean, really, leave my posts alone. If anyone in this world can do something with my formulas, I want to meet them.

Possibly marry them if they don’t mind me having a girlfriend too.

After all, I'm nearly sixty, and since I’m mixed race I’m not entirely sure as to when my biological clock will stop ticking.

And I’m almost all alone again… Sad protector of Earth from extra-dimensional horrors is sad.

Also, I'm quitting my job.

You got this people. I've taught a lot of you the basics, and some of you everything I learned in the Shadow Guard, as well as some of the things I figured out since then.

You don’t need me anymore, my brother does, or at least might.

It took me nearly an hour to figure out where he had been Taken to, I knew the exact moment he was gone from the kitchen even if it didn’t trip the wards on him, his ring, or the house because I’m sensitive as all heck to that kind of magic. But whoever took him was good.

A whole hour for me to track Jim down through their false trails and sub-dimensional traps level of good.

I’m going to give them a good punch in the nose before we compare notes. Even if they had a good reason to take an Ex-con, former dishwasher turned extra and interdimensional influencer blogger for some reason.

Okay, also a ritual magic wielding, military nanocyte suite enhanced, well equipped, trained warrior, but what would they need one of those for? It's probably the dishwashing thing. He still gets called into his old job now and then.

Either that, or they took him to lure me there. But while I'm more powerful than my brother, I'm not that rare. They could just hire a mage like me rather than blackmail and piss off one.

By the time I catch up with him, after finishing this post and saying some goodbyes it will have been several months for Jim.

But I had a few clues as to what he has been up to for those first few months so I’m not too worried about him.

I’m linked to the ring I gave him.

Mainly to help me find him wherever he went if he ever was taken, but I also get a report by way of my staff of everything that gets put into, or taken out of his ring.

There was a lot of loot at first, and animal parts.

Then things like that started getting taken back out, and replaced with things that he had to have bought somewhere.

...then it was stuff like flowers, wine, and expensive treats.

...damned Bards.

So, he seems to be doing good, and having his little sister show up to fetch him home might cramp his style. But he’s my only family, so me and my girl are going looking for him.

But we might not come back.

With what he's been up to, I might have some more family soon.

The stuff going in and out of Mom’s ring is identified enough to know what they are, with a full description.

Described well enough to read any writing on them

Dear Hobbit:

I let a friend of mind examine Mom’s ring. So I know it’s sending off information somewhere every time I use it.

We're going to talk about that later on but for right now…

What’s keeping you?

This world is very magical, like right down to the dirt and the air, it was nearly blinding for me at first, so much so that the natives have never learned to see magic like we can.

Which is why I may have been brought here, and the person who did it hasn’t bothered to introduce themselves, even to bother to tell me why I’m here.

I’ve been well, but in addition to this place being magical, it’s also dangerous as hell.

My preparations and training have kept me alive, but a lot of the men here go off to protect their families and end up dying off pretty young. Leaving the women to pick up the slack.

And leaving a lot of them pretty lonely.

Not to gross you out, but, Bard.

I’ve made friends to say the least, but this isn’t home.

To put it short. Having a wonderful time, wish you were here.

Love Jim.

P.S.

In case these notes get to you somehow, I’ll keep you up to date.

And if it takes so long to get here, that I'm gone, then the ones I leave behind have promised me one favor.

Here, you will have family.

Love you little sister.

I admit, I teared up a little.

We’re back. I've said my goodbyes and made my arrangements, and we should catch up with my brother just short of nine months after his arrival.

This may be the end of the blog, but someone I trust will be moderating the forums and keeping the site active indefinitely. The house will be fine as well.

All I have to do now is post this and finish a fiendishly complex ritual to launch myself, Alzara, and a pair of Guardian Sakura Trees into the incredibly dangerous flux between continuums.

Most likely never to return and all for the sake of a bully that keeps calling me a hobbit.

Since that is a possibility, I leave you with several seasons of TV shows that got canceled too soon from various nearby versions of your worlds posted in the forums.

I've never had a problem with pirates, I could never have afforded all the books I’ve read without them.

Yo ho ho.

Imogene Alhertil Brenner, out.