Chapter 10
After getting back from seeing Phillip buried, I immersed myself in work. I also had discovered I was being bugged, again. This time I just started destroying the bugs as I found them. It was really annoying me. As a result, I had a lawyer start proceedings to sue the town of Clinton for its abuse of me, during my visit.
I was falling apart. I was getting angry, and doing things that I really shouldn't. I was letting my feelings get the better of me, something Markus had told me (and on occasion beat into me) as a child, not to do. As a result, I took my displeasure out on Clinton, Nebraska.
I was smoking more than I usually did. My early morning jogs were becoming a bit harder to do, what with the host of watchers I had accumulated. Despite the warnings, and what I had done to Lauder and his bunch of NSA assholes, officialdom was still on my ass.
I had to do something, but what? I pondered this at my desk, and drank the coffee that Vivian had made in the office coffee maker. I sighed. I needed a vacation, or to get away, or something. I nodded to myself. I was going to close down the office for a while.
I had to go somewhere quiet, and calm myself. I needed to get away from all this 'being watched'. It had my nerves on edge, and I was starting to react, instead of think.
I went downstairs and saw my landlord. I wrote him a check for the rest of the year, telling him I was closing my office, and taking some time off.
I went back upstairs, and talked to Viv. I had assumed it was going to be hard telling her I was closing down. Particularly, since I could not say for how long. She was a lot more understanding than I had anticipated. Since I had not yet replaced Phillip, it was just Vivian and I.
Vivian lived alone, in a house she had inherited from her mother. It was small, and was the house she had grown up in. It was paid off, and she didn't really have that much in the way of bills. I paid Viv 2,000.00 a month. She was well worth it to me. I gave her a check for three months salary, as severance, and told her that I would get in touch when I came back.
I drove out to my house, and phoned to cancel the gas and electric, as of the first of the month. I paid through to that date with a credit card, and told them I would resume service, when I returned from my extended trip.
I cast several maintenance spells on the place, to keep the pipes from bursting, the roof from leaking, etc.
I checked in with my lawyer to see how the case with Clinton was going. He told me that they were offering three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He was sure he could get it up to at least a million, possibly more.
I told him to settle at half a million. I said I would call from time to time, to see how it was going, as I could not tell him where I would be at any given time as I would be moving around. I also canceled my newspaper, and had the post office hold my mail until further notice, starting the first of the month.
All this still gave me a little time to figure out what I wanted to do. I changed, and went out for a run. Running always cleared my head, and it didn't take a lot of my attention, so I was free to think my way through problems.
I was halfway through my run, when it hit me! The gate I had destroyed in Clinton! It showed me what was missing from the gate in Colorado, that Markus had shut down. I now had a pattern with which to start.
Everything worked off of patterns. Life was a pattern. The world was a collection of patterns. Magic was a way of imposing a pattern that was not... natural... onto a situation or place. So it was called magic. Magic was just imposing your will, or a new pattern, on a situation or place that had no such pattern until you created it.
You changed the current pattern into what it was that you wanted. Magic. It was hard to explain magic. When you first start out, you are given chants and spells that work. This trains your mind. If you get good, you don't need chants, spells, or anything else to do magic.
The gate in Colorado had been dead. It's pattern had not been there. But the FOCUS had been! I just hadn't had any idea of what a gate pattern looked like! Now I had a pattern. I already knew what the focus of the pattern I wanted, was! I could get home!
The focus would sort of tune the pattern to a specific place. That was what the visualizations were for. As you built the 'pattern', you also 'focused' on the outer focal points that established the pattern. Markus never had taught me how to do gate patterns. It was always: 'later'.
I was so excited by this revelation, that I didn't bother with my watchers. I even waved cheerfully at the spots where I knew they were, or at the cameras. I felt buoyed, and filled with new energy. I knew what I was going to do. I was going to build a gate, and go visit my homeworld!
The feeling of tightness in my chest, and the gloom that had been on me for the past few weeks, seemed to melt away as I finished my run. I actually felt much better. I hadn't known I was affecting myself to this degree, with my worries. I would have to keep a closer watch over my feelings in the future.
Now all I had to figure out, was if I created the gate here, would it still take me to that alternate place from which I had entered this world. In other words, did distance in this world equate to distance in that world, or could I impose a pattern that would take me to where I wanted to go? That was a good question.
If I did all the focal points correctly, and build the pattern for the gate from that, would I come out hundreds of miles from where I wanted to be? What would I find on the other side? Would I be in my family's area, or in an enemy held area? Who had won, over there?
These were good questions, and I would have to think them out before I did the construction of the gate. What would I need? I remembered the clothing of the time. It had been similar to the clothing of the mid 1800's of this world. How had that other world changed? Was time going at the same rate as here? There was so much I didn't know. I was starting to feel angry with Markus, all over again. He always refused to talk of our home world.
Ok. I would take it one question at a time. I quickly made a list of possible equipment to take with me. As the list progressed, I found it wasn't as simple as I thought it would be, and the questions just got more numerous.
Had my home world advanced in technology as this world had? I just didn't know. Would a car, or truck, be ok over there, or should I take a horse? What did they use for money? For the life of me, I could not remember ever holding money over there. I would have to be careful when I went.
Two weeks later, saw me pulling off the highway at the exit for Roanoke Island, North Carolina. The place had a history of an entire colony going missing in the 1600's. If what I thought was true, then it was possible that the colonials had slipped through a gate. If so, then it would be much easier to create a gate here, than start from scratch, elsewhere.
It would not take as much power to open and maintain a gate, either. I stopped several times after entering Roanoke. While I could FEEL the stress in the space around here, I was unable to pinpoint its exact location.
I spent three days looking for the source, but was unable to find it. So I settled for finding an area that would make a good camp for me. It would be private and out of the way, but accessible to the main road.
Since it was still early spring, it was very chilly in the mornings. I had bought a Coleman pop- top camper. It had a heater and an air conditioning unit installed in it. I really didn't know how long it would take me to do this, but I wanted to be somewhat comfortable. However, did not want to leave an obvious trail for the government to follow.
I had brought 10,000 dollars in cash with me for this trip. The Coleman I had bought used, but added certain items to it. Its total cost had been a little over 4,500 hundred dollars. But with this purchase, I had a 'home away from home', and could stay away from prying eyes.
I would camp out at several different places, casting location spells. It took a while, but I finally found my spot. Virginia, historically, had some very severe storms during this time of year. Not as bad as they could or would get, but still, I was glad I had invested in the heater. The temperature took some very sharp nosedives.
I had changed out the propane tanks earlier. I had run the empty, and almost empty tanks into town, for a refill. I also did a little shopping while I was in town. I stopped by the grocery store and stocked up on fresh foods, fruit, and some steaks. The weatherman had said this storm would be lasting for a few days.
The electricity was provided by two marine 'deep cycle' batteries. While it could provide the power for my lights inside, if I ran my TV, it drained the batteries severely. Running my interior lights and coffee maker alone, was not too bad of a drain. The TV took the most power. To charge the batteries, I just had to hook the trailer connection up to my car, and run my car for a while. That charged the batteries nicely.
I went outside, and drove some more stakes into the ground, and ran wire from the stakes to the little eyelet rings, placed at the corners of the camper, to allow you to secure it from being blown away in heavy winds. When the top is cranked up and the canvas sides exposed, it tended to act like a sail in the wind.
I was more than adequate, inside. It was built to sleep 5 comfortably; and 7, if you were 'really good friends'. I was by myself. It was quite roomy for a person alone. The wind had picked up, and rain started to patter against the fiberglass roof and canvas sides. I was glad the windows were below the canvas portion of the sides. I opened my refrigerator (which ran on propane), and got out a can of beer.
The storm worsened, and just for the hell of it, I looked out into it with my 'second sight'. I gasped! The power and energy that was present was unbelievable! Of course! This much power could open a gate easily. Why didn't I think of it before?
Is this what had happened to that colony so long ago? A storm, a gate opens, swallowing them forever? It could be. While I didn't know very much about gates, if an unanchored gate had formed, it could easily have swept a small population away, especially if they had been in one location.
I did know gates should be anchored, but Markus had told me that sometimes gates formed at weak points, between worlds, spontaneously. There was more than enough energy out there to form a gate, and I had not even thought to tap into it! Stupid! I shook my head. Again, I was caught not thinking.
According to the weather report, tomorrow was supposed to be the worst of the storm. That would be when I would try to open the gate. I had already found a good place. I had started the preliminary survey of the gate's site. After a good night's sleep, I would attempt my first inter-world gate.
I finished the beer, and started a fresh pot of coffee. I had all the interior lights on, as it had gotten very dark in a remarkably short time. It was only a little after four in the afternoon, and already it was nearly as dark as night. It was going to be bad out there. I felt very snug in my camper.
The next morning dawned gloomily. It was raining along with thunder and lightning. Perfect for what I wanted. I quickly made breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, and coffee. I put on my foul weather gear, and took my staff with me. I went the short distance to the place I had found, which I thought would be perfect for the gate's structure.
A natural rock formation had formed an arch you could walk under. I had inscribed the focus onto the rock face a couple of days ago. I stood in front of my proposed gate. I started to think of, and then to generate, the pattern which would open the gate.
I pulled in more and more of the electrical energy that was in the air around me. Lightning flared, followed instantly by deafening thunder, as a bolt struck close by. But it didn't matter to me. I had my gateway. I was looking into the arch, and through it, into another world. That world showed a clear, sunny morning. It also was an identical representation of what was normally on the other side of the rock arch. So that answered the question of location displacement.
I was now well over a thousand miles from my entry point into this world from the world I had come from as a child. If I entered that world, I would have to travel those thousand miles. I didn't really know the technological level of that world.
I was pondering what to do when I felt the charge building up. The hair rose on the back of my neck, and I didn't even stop to think about it. I jumped through the arch, just in time to avoid becoming lightning skewered.
I picked myself up off of the dry ground and looked behind me. I sighed with relief, as I saw a stormy scene through a rock arch. My gate was stable, at least for the time being. That answered that question. I took another look around. I didn't see anything resembling a road, and I was very hesitant about leaving my newly formed gateway.
The brightly lit morning sky here, was clear, and it was slightly warmer than the place I had departed. I could hear water coming from a short distance away. It sounded like a creek or brook. I walked in that direction. I kept a light contact, magically, with my gateway.
I came upon a creek that was running with very clear water. The
whole place smelled... well... clean... unpolluted. I went back to my
gateway, and stepped back into a raging storm. It was a shock, after
the nice day I had just stepped away from. I shut down my gate, made my
way back to my camper, and started making plans for exploration.