The Chardon Chronicles: Season One -- The Harvest Festival (10 page)

“It’s so good to have you back,” she hugged
him.

“It’s good to see you, and you too Morgan,
how’s your family?”

“They’re alright. My mom’s got a new job.
I’ve been working at the garage a lot this past week.”

“Really? after school?”

“Nope. He got suspended for two weeks!” Tracy
laughed. Morgan’s cheeks went a little red.

“Ha! Oh, don’t be embarrassed. I was no
saint! If you’re not getting in trouble, you’re not trying hard
enough.”

“Good way to think about it.”

“Well that’s the ‘lite’ version.” He stopped,
and smiled broadly. “It’s great that you guys are finally
adult-
ish
. I can tell you stories now that would have
twisted your young pure minds.” He laughed. “Let’s grill some
steaks for dinner. You staying, Morgan?”

“Sure that sounds great.”

“Hey Morgan can you help me?” When Robbie
walked fast, his limp was most noticeable. He went toward the pole
barn. Morgan followed along.

“Can you drive the tractor?” he asked.

“Um, I think so.”

“Let’s slide the doors open.” He shoved his
door open with one arm. The heavy door slid out of the way. Morgan
tugged a little on his side of the door till it started moving then
heavily walked it open.

“Yeah just pull the tractor out there out of
the way. There’s a grill back here, I think.”

Morgan climbed up on the old Ford. It had a
front loader bucket that was down on the floor of the barn. An
excavator arm was on the back. It was a heavy duty piece of farm
equipment. He nervously turned the key, the diesel sputtered a
couple of times then roared to life and settled into a
pop-pop-pop.

Robbie was digging around looking for the
propane tanks for the grill. Morgan took a minute to look at the
levers that controlled the buckets. Four levers for the front end
loader were on the right side of the steering wheel. The labels for
the controls were long faded to smooth shiny metal. Robbie heard
the engine rev, then go idle. He went around to the right side of
the tractor. Morgan looked a little bewildered.

He pointed and shouted, “Throttle, brake,
gear, bucket up and down, bucket tip up down.” and gave a quick
thumb’s up then went back around. Morgan nudged the up bucket
lever. It popped off the ground and the tractor rocked front and
back. He nudged it again and the bucket rose to just level with his
line of sight. The brake was set, so he shoved it down, and he felt
a spring release. The tractor rolled forward slowly so he gave it
some gas and it surged out. He pulled it off onto the lawn and
re-engaged the brake and shut it off.

“That’s my first time driving one of those in
case you couldn’t tell.”

“You’re a natural! That’s a
great
machine. It’s older than me but I think it actually works better
than I do! An absolute must for a place like this. Here take
these.” He handed the propane tanks to Morgan. “Can you throw the
empty in my truck? I think the other one’s still full.”

Morgan walked over toward the truck and put
the light container in the back. Robbie was wheeling the huge grill
toward the back of the house on a dolly. There was a brick stand
for the barrel next to an old stone patio. The patio was in the
shade of a big old maple tree, and moss had grown over most of the
stones.

“If you can help me guide this thing, it’d be
a lot easier.” Morgan grabbed one side of the barrel and they
hoisted it onto the stand. Robbie beamed and patted the grill. “I
made this last year. Check out those welds. Ever weld? Hardest part
was cleaning the barrel. Hook that up.” he handed the hose over to
Morgan and Robbie started vigorously scrubbing the grill with a
wire brush.

“I’ve never welded anything.” Morgan
answered.

“We’ll have to build something this fall.”
Robbie said. He patted Morgan’s shoulder then jogged over to the
truck and grabbed a cooler. “Free range, grass fed,” he mentioned
as he walked into the house.

He grabbed an oval serving plate from the
kitchen cupboards. “Hey Tracy!” he called out. She was walking back
from the master bedroom. “I was getting you some flannel sheets and
airing the room out. It was stale in there.”

“Thanks! Hey, want to help with the
steaks?”

“Sure.”

“We could just throw these on the grill, but
they’ll be a lot better this way.” They massaged salt into the meat
then let it sit on the counter. “It’ll sit for about 40 minutes.
Makes a huge difference.”

Morgan stepped inside. “The grill’s ready. I
think I’ll head back into the library.”

“Oh excellent.” Robbie led the way to the
room and thumbed through the stack of notes. “You guys are doing
some research… For school?” Tracy and Morgan struggled to put an
answer together. “Have you spent much time in here?” he asked
Tracy.

“Well, yeah, just recently.” she said.

“I was looking at these books,” Morgan said.
“My notes there. Trying to figure this out.” he handed over the
coin.

“Oh wow, what’s that?” Robbie checked it out.
He hefted in in his hand.

“I found it, believe it or not.”

“Found? Where?”

“In the woooods….” he trailed off
embarrassed. “In the wall at school.” he said matter of factly.

“Hmmmm……” Robbie scratched his beard and
tipped his hat back. “That’s
really
freaky.”

“I hadn’t even thought how weird it is that
it was just jammed into the wall.” Morgan said. “I just noticed it
there on the first day of school.”

Tracy said, “speaking of weird, an old friend
of yours stopped by… David something...”

“Oh! David Mathis? I didn’t even know he was
in town.” Robbie rubbed his beard.

“Yeah that’s it… Oh yeah, more weird: I
passed out, dreamed about Mom and Dad, then started remembering
things about the collection. David tried explaining some things for
us, but woosh…” she zinged a hand over her head.

“Oh, wow….” He looked slightly stunned. The
gears of his mind were churning.

“Do you know what he was talking about?” she
asked him.

“I can explain this better if you’ve seen
Star Wars.
”

Morgan enthused, “Oh yeah.” and mimed a light
saber and made the sound effect. Robbie pointed, “yep, good.”

“Well, I haven’t for a long time.” Tracy
said.

“
Star Wars
is sorta like our bible. I
mean for my generation.” Robbie said. He gestured around the room.
“This. This is the plans for the Death Star.”

“That’s no moon.” Morgan said, pointing up at
the Moon sculpture. Robbie chuckled.

Tracy scrunched up her nose. “What? Death
Star plans. I don’t think there are any Death Star plans
here...”

“I mean if you were in the Rebel Alliance,
you’d be able to blow up the metaphorical Death Star with what’s in
here.”

“Like this?” Robbie picked up the copy of
“Finance and Belief” and handed it to him.

Robbie nodded and shook the book in his right
hand. “This book made France go broke in the 18th century. There’s
shit in this room that’d curl your hair”

“Why haven’t I heard any of this before?”
Tracy asked. “David said it is the family business.”

“Oh you
did
hear it in bits and
pieces. Nobody ever
hid
this from you. But nobody presented
it to you. You were just too young. You didn’t have any context to
understand this stuff. Also, I need to point out that ‘family
business’ is misleading. It’s not the
family
business. You
can choose this life--anyone can.”

“Well what about this?” she pointed at her
head. “I didn’t
chose
this.”

“What?” he was puzzled.

Morgan answered, “She’s like a human search
engine.”

“Oh shit, he didn’t.” he rapped the table a
couple of the times with his fist.

“Didn’t what?”

“I think your Dad basically transferred an
index of this place to you.”

“How? I don’t even remember.”

“I don’t really know exactly. I’ve studied
the information in here since I was your age, but I just take what
I need and apply it. Matt, your Dad, did the deep dive and extended
and improved on what he found. He probably used some method he
discovered in here. There are a bunch of memory techniques that can
be used to recall huge amounts of data--and presumably to transfer
huge amounts of data from person to person. At some point, he must
have done that to you.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Beats me.”

Morgan leaned forward and asked, “So are you?
I mean, are you in the Rebel Alliance?”

Robbie laughed. “Yes, yes, in fact I am.”

“Like a Jedi?”

“Ohhhh man. Well, yeah, I guess. The problem
with communicating this information through movies is it needs to
be visually dramatic. In the movie, the Rebels get the Death Star
plans, then
pew-pew
shoot a couple of bombs into it and it
explodes. The reality’s so much less dramatic--well, most of the
time--and usually more subtle.” They heard the clacking of Perry’s
nails on the kitchen tile. “In here!” Robbie called. Perry walked
back and flopped down in a sun beam on the floor.

“So there’s an Empire?”

“Yeah--this story goes way back, really
thousands of years--maybe longer. The real history of the world is
almost impossibly weird.” he sat back and rubbed his eyes.
“Alright, we’re gonna cook the steaks and I’ll just blab.”

The sun was dropping toward the Western
horizon as Robbie started cooking the steaks on the grill. Perry
waited patiently for his share.

“You guys both had world history, right?”

Tracy nodded. “Yeah with, Mr. Trouper. He’s a
cool teacher.”

Morgan laughed. “Oh man, remember that movie
we watched about medieval history, ‘It’s not my clothes that smell,
it’s me!’” Morgan said acting the part of one of the peasants.

Robbie flipped the steaks and took a sip of
his beer, thinking about a way to dive into the discussion. “In a
nutshell, some of what you learned might be actually be true. But
the overall story is wildly distorted and missing major actors and
events.”

“Like what?” Tracy asked.

“This is going to sound crazy, but we think,
and by ‘we’ I mean the ‘rebel alliance’, think that history is
driven by the interaction between men and--how to put it... For
lack of a better word these things are supernatural entities.”

“You mean like ghosts?” Tracy was
incredulous.

“A problem we’re going to run into again and
again is that myths and Hollywood versions of myths have provided a
visually dramatic representation of these things. When you imagine
a ghost, you pull up some mental footage of Patrick Swayze and
imagine a disembodied person that you could ‘see’ with your eyes
under the right circumstances. Right?”

“Yeah, I think so.” she answered.

“Well, these supernatural entities, they are
really more like
idea beings
. Humans connect to them through
our brain--maybe with some type of sense organ---rather than
through our eyes or ears. That connection brings them into this
world.” he made a pulling motion with the spatula.

“But they’re just ideas...” Morgan was
following along.

Robbie was thrilled Morgan was following
along, and he pointed at him emphatically. “And so harmless, like
an imaginary friend, or fake, just a comic book villain? That what
you’re thinking?”

Morgan nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, we discovered they actually have an
independent existence apart from human beings, but become 3D
real
by attaching to the human world.”

Tracy rubbed her forehead and said,
“Egregore.”

Morgan asked, “E-gree what?”

“Well, if you wanted to read about it here,
you’d read about Egregore.” She shrugged.

“Yeah, that’s one of the terms used for these
critters. They’ve often been perceived and dramatized as gods, or
angels, or demons. Since they really don’t have a visual form,
artistic or poetic interpretations give them monster like or
angelic appearance depending on the being.”

“So how does ‘the Empire’ fit into this.”
Morgan said, air quoting it.

Robbie put Perry’s steak on a plate and set
it down on the patio. Perry ate it remarkably slowly for a dog. He
put the rest on a serving plate, and they sat down at the table to
eat. They had steak, corn on the cob, and mashed potatoes.

“There’s a seeming two way relationship with
these entities--they need
us
to enter this world, and some
men believe they can
use
these beings to gain power. The men
believe they’re going to use the secrets the being whispers to them
to achieve glory, fame, power. But in fact, the men give up their
soul--they’re emptied and refilled with one of these entities. And
these entities worked to build ‘the Empire’. I wish I could tell
you more, but it’d take hours. That’s the rough outline.”