Gifts From The Stars (5 page)

After ten minutes of it
running, he shuts it off.

“Wow. Exhilarating. I feel
the energy in my arms and legs. Will what happened before still
work? I’ve got to try.”

He puts the devices under
his passenger seat, walks to a picnic table and sits
down.

“This looks like a good
place to test it. Will this work again? Or was it a fluke?” He
looks at rows of empty picnic tables and parked cars and stands on
the picnic table he’s sitting at.

“Now for some real fun,” he
yells out, looking at the park vista.

Still standing, he puts his
arms in the air and cartwheels on the picnic table and jumps up,
leaping to another table. And another and another, and begins
jumping like a gymnast from one picnic table to another.

After a few minutes, he
changes direction and leaps to the roof of a parked car and
another, until he accidentally sets off a car alarm.

“Whoops.” He jumps to the
ground and stops.

“Maybe I should’ve tested
its effects on me somewhere else.”

Some people playing baseball
notice the commotion and point at him.

“Hey, look at the punk,” one
of them yells out. “What’s he doing to our cars?”

They stop playing and chase
him when he runs away. He sprints faster, but trips over himself as
his panic increases. When they almost catch up with him, one takes
a swing with his bat, but misses when he hops up.

“I didn’t mean to do it,”
Jimmy yells while still jumping. However, a second swing of the bat
smashes his leg.

“If you even put a handprint
on my car...”

“Ow. I would clean it,”
Jimmy says while wincing in pain.

“So stop. Come over
here.”

“Forget that. Never mind,”
Jimmy says and leaps back.

He almost falls, but flips
over and manages to escape, bounding off into the woods. However,
they continue to chase him. He runs in a zig-zag fashion and heads
further into the forested darkness. He makes one last leap near a
large tree and lands six feet off the ground on a large
branch.

“Where’d he go? I don’t see
him,” one of the pursuers say. “It’s too dark. Let’s forget this
and play ball.” They all leave and head toward the baseball
diamond.

“How is this possible?”
Jimmy wonders. “How did I end up here? My virtual reality machine
is a lot more than VR. What did I really invent? I need to figure
out what’s happening and come up with a different name for
it.”

Jimmy waits several hours
until the park empties before leaving and driving home.