Stories by the Staff – The Science Geek Triumphant: Part One

Here we have a new story written by John Milliken, News Production student. Since it was rather long, it has been broken up into three parts. Check back later for part two!

The Science Geek Triumphant: Part One

By John Milliken

Stephen was a professional science geek.  Of course, he did give the bare minimum expected of him to his community, family, and church, but his job, interests, and free time were all scientific in nature, with the exception of his weekend hiking excursions.  At only twenty-seven, he had a newspaper column, a children’s TV show, and a very large following on the internet.  Many books for curious young readers bore his name, many an amateur lab set or microscope bore his Official Stamp of Approval, and from innumerable posters and t-shirts his smiling visage protruded from behind his big, round glasses.  
One day in early October, Stephen was preparing to mow his lawn.  The Maine winter was well on the way, and this seemed like the last opportunity that he would get before the frost and snow came.  He put his goggles and gloves on, then went over to the shed to get his push mower out.  He tried to open the door, but the old, rusty padlock wouldn’t budge.  Stephen turned the key back and forth in the lock, but to no avail.  Muttering under his breathe, Stephen twisted and pushed, and was wondering what he would do next, when the lock suddenly burst open, the door swung wide, and he fell face downward on the floor. Silence prevailed, occasionally punctuated by the soft whisper of rustling leaves.  Stephen slowly moved his hand up to his nose, was pleased to discover that it wasn’t broken, and began to stand up and make another attempt at getting the lawnmower, when the loudest wind he had ever heard began to blow.  Leaves were falling in clouds, branches snapped and lawn chairs toppled over, and the wind still howled in his ears.  Instinctively, Stephen threw himself back to the floor and covered his ears.  The wind blew harder still.  Suddenly, the shed doors blew shut – bang! – and all was silent.  
Stephen gingerly stood up inside the shed, expecting the wind to start up again at any time, but nothing happened.  Feeling his head, he felt a warm, wet stream.  He must have banged his head on something.  He was still perfectly able to mow the lawn, of course, but all the same, it seemed like a good idea to go back to the house and take a look at the wound.  Stephen tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge.  Again he tried, but without success.  Tenacious fellow that he was, Stephen decided to try one last time, but still the door didn’t move.  There was no doubt about it.  Someone had locked the door, and had locked him inside!
Needless to say, this thought made Stephen more than a little angry.  To think that someone would have the gall to lock him inside of his own shed!  After he had fumed for a few minutes, Stephen decided to try to break out.  Taking a large, rusty fire bowl with a broken leg, he raised the implement above his head and dealt the wood a savage blow.  The wall gave very little in the way of resistance, and out into the open air tumbled Stephen.  
What on earth was this?  What had they done to his lawn? As if locking him in the shed wasn’t bad enough!  What where all those big bundles of weeds lying around for?  Where did all the trees go?  Were those cows trampling all over his nice, clean grass?  Enraged, Stephen looked around him for a likely culprit.  A little ways away, standing next to what appeared to be a flock of sheep or something, stood a figure with a weird, pointy stick.  Stephen strode over.

“What exactly is the meaning of this, I would like to know?” Stephen bellowed.  The figure looked up.  Stephen found himself looking at a middle aged man, slightly shorter and certainly quite a bit stouter than himself.  He was robust and muscular, and his skin was well-tanned.  His face was weather-worn and somewhat wrinkled, but happy, sensitive, and good-natured.  His clothes were brown and baggy, consisting of large pants made of some very coarse fabric, shoes with a sort of point on the front, and a weathered cloak with a very pointed hood.  Staring curiously at Stephen, he quietly asked, “What was that?”

“You know full well,” Stephen replied.  “What have you done to my lawn?”

“Lawn?” the man responded in a quiet voice.  At this point, quite a number of people, who, apparently, had been doing something in the surrounding fields, gathered round curiously.  This made Stephen very annoyed.  

“Yes,” he bellowed, “my lawn.  What did you do to it?  And why did you lock me in that shed?”

“That shed?” the man asked, pointing at the damaged shed.

“Yes, Yes!” Stephen responded.  “That very one!  Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  

Stephen looked around at the ring of spectators.    
“Well, one of you did it!”  He shouted.  At this point, many of the people were backing away, wide-eyed.  Stephen glared.  The people stared and backed away.  Stephen glared some more.  The people backed away, ready for him to explode again.  
Then he laughed.  He laughed looking at the people cowering away from him.  He laughed at how he must have looked a few moments before.  Of course! It all made sense now.  He had had a concussion when he fell in the shed, and he was hallucinating.  This was just a dream.  These people he had been terrifying didn’t really exist outside of his own mind.  Still, just in case, he somehow felt that an apology would be in order.

“My dear people” he said magnanimously, lifting his hands up for emphasis, “I very much regret my hostile welcome.”  At this point, some of the people were running away.  He shouted after them, “Come back!  I have something to say to you!”  Stephen ran a little ways, then stopped.  He felt strangely light-headed.  He cleared his throat, and was about to shout again, when one of the men ran up and hit him on the head.  Sparks and patches of darkness flew before his eyes, pain turned into numbness, and he knew no more.  

***

Stephen awoke from deep sleep to feel his forehead throbbing.  Why did his head hurt so much?  Why was his bed so hard?  He tried to get up, but found that he was too weak.  Then, memory began to return.  He had fallen down trying to get the lawnmower, and banged his head, and, and… and something else had happened too, but he couldn’t really remember it.  Ah well, it was probably a dream anyway.  Stephen wondered how long he had been lying on the ground.  Finally, with some effort, he opened his eyes and sat up.  
The scene that met Stephen’s eyes was neither his bedroom nor the floor of his shed.  In front of him, perhaps two or three yards away, was a dark, stone wall.   He looked to his right and left.  Then he looked behind him.  Stephen was sitting on a straw pallet, with walls of stone on all sides.  High on one wall was a small barred window, with a metal door on the opposite wall.  Standing up stiffly, he tried to look out the window, but he was too short to see anything but a small patch of sky.  The sky was overcast and dark.  Judging by the amount of light, Stephen guessed that it was probably early in the morning.  How did he get here?  Stephen tried to remember, but he couldn’t.  At a loss, he sat down again, when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching.  
A small window in the door opened, and a voice came out.  

“You got your bowl there?” the voice asked.

“My bowl?” Stephen replied.

“That’s right, your bowl.  Unless, of course, you’re in the mood for skipping breakfast this morning.”  Now that he thought of it, Stephen realized that he was terribly hungry.  He looked around, found a wooden bowl on the floor near the straw pallet, and held it up to the window in the door.  The figure outside spooned him out a few ladles of a thick, dark porridge, and then threw him a hard crust of bread.  

“Now just in case you get thirsty, here’s this,” the voice chuckled, and passed Stephen a full skin of water.  The window began to close.

“Wait,” Stephen called out.

“Are you trying to bribe your way out of here or something?” the voice said.  

“No,” Stephen answered.  “I just wanted to know where I am.”

“Where you are?  You’re in the jail.”

“The jail!  What for?”

“Now don’t you go pretending that you don’t know what you did yesterday.  If you must hear it again, the charges are intimidation and harassment of his majesty’s subjects, with a fair degree of lunacy thrown in for good measure.”  The window clanged shut, and the jailer’s footsteps faded back down the hallway.

 
Stephen sank back down on the pallet.  His head was hurting more fiercely than ever, and his new-found knowledge of his whereabouts did nothing to alleviate the pain.  Trying very hard to remember, he thought that he could faintly recall getting up after his accident and finding himself locked in the shed.  He had broken out, and everything had looked strange outside, complete with people wearing funny clothes.  He had tried to take them to task for locking him up, and…the story went blank here, but Stephen remembered that he had felt very strange and light-headed.  
Stephen winced and held his head.  At least they had had the consideration to bandage it for him.  The injury must have been worse than he had thought.  At least he understood why he had felt so light-headed during the encounter.  It must have been because of his injury.  How much blood had he lost before it was bandaged?
Stephen had forgotten about his breakfast!  Ravenous, he quickly began to eat the porridge with a small wooden spoon that had been sitting by the pallet.  On a normal day, he would have considered this a very poor breakfast indeed, but for someone who hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, it seemed wonderful.  Once Stephen finished the porridge, he turned to the bread.  It was coarse and heavy, but not bad.  After carefully using it to sop up all the remaining porridge, Stephen finished the crust and lay back down on the pallet and went back to sleep.  
Stephen was awakened by the knocking of the jailor at his door.  He got up and took his dinner, a chunk of bread and a small cheese, and ate it thoughtfully.  He then proceeded to consider his predicament.  

At this point, Stephen had completely abandoned the hallucination hypothesis.  That he was awake and fully conscious seemed undeniable, but exactly where he was was still a mystery.   When he had broken out of the shed, the field he had found himself in certainly wasn’t his backyard, but where was it?  How did he get there?  Stephen didn’t know.  This sort of thing was the stuff of fantasy.  Could he really have somehow been transported to some alternate reality?  He also remembered the jailer’s words about “his majesty’s subjects.”  Wherever he was, apparently, it was a monarchy.  Worn out from his injury and from the shock of the last two day’s strange events, Stephen went back to sleep.  

   ***

Stephen spent four days in captivity.  He slept a good deal, partly because he needed rest to fully recover, and partly because the lack of food (compared with his regular diet) made him sleepy.  On the fifth day, the jailer came back several hours after breakfast, this time with several armed guards with him.  The guards wore metal helmets, along with leather tunics and trousers.  The jailor opened the door and stepped into the cell.  
“Get on up,” he growled.  “Time for your trial.”

“What sort of a trial?”  Stephen said, standing up.  

“Before a local judge.”

“What happens if I’m found guilty?” Stephen inquired.

“Let’s just put it this way,” the jailor replied.  “People have been killed for stealing a loaf of bread.”  Needless to say, this didn’t strike Stephen as an overly reassuring answer.  He grudgingly let the guards bind his hands and lead him out of the prison.  They escorted him through what appeared to be the center of a town, where he generated a considerable amount of attention.  Most of this, he assumed, was not due to curiosity over what his sentence would be, but rather, a fascination with his appearance.  All the villagers were wearing dark brown, handspun garments.  Stephen, on the other hand, was wearing red sneakers, jeans, a blue plaid shirt, and his trademark glasses.  He must have looked as foreign to them as they did to him.  Most of the activity soon died down, however, as the villagers returned to their business.  A few small boys followed for a few minutes and threw pebbles at him, until one of the pebbles hit a guard on the helmet.  The guard swiftly turned around and drew a cudgel from his belt, sending the boys scampering off in all directions.  The rest of the trip was uneventful.  
After several moments, Stephen found himself being led into a low wooden building.  The interior was dark, lit only by torchlight.  At the end of the room sat a large, bearded man, wearing a robe and holding a staff in his hand.  This, apparently, was the judge.  

“Bring the prisoner forward,” the judge said.  Stephen stepped forward and stood before the judge.  After this a trial of sorts commenced.  First various villagers came forward, relating with painful accuracy Stephen’s bizarre behavior upon first breaking out of the shed.  After the testimony was over, the judge turned to Stephen and asked, “What do you have to say for yourself?”  The whole thing struck Stephen as extremely unfair.  Aside from the crude and clearly biased procedure, he hadn’t even done anything wrong.  Sure, his behavior had been embarrassing and ill-thought out, but it certainly wasn’t criminal.  

“Well,” the judge thundered, “what do you have to say?”

Stephen swallowed hard.  “I did do what you accuse me of,” Stephen said, “but I am willing to make amends.  If there is any task I can do in recompense towards his majesty’s subjects, I will do it.”  The judge looked very thoughtful.  Stephen began to sweat.  This culture seemed basically medieval, and if one tenth of what he had heard of medieval punishments were true, then the outlook was very grim indeed.  
Finally, the judge stood up and banged his staff on the ground.  

“I have made my judgement,” he proclaimed.  “Guilty!”  

“Oh no,” thought Stephen,  “now I’ve had it!”  

The judge continued, “I seem to recall that the prisoner here said that he would be willing to do some act of reparation towards the people.   Very well, I will grant his request.  It just so happens that there is a village only two hour’s ride from here that has been troubled by a young dragon down from the mountains.  The prisoner may go and dispatch this dragon, if he really wishes to make amends.  If not, he is invited to return to the prison and await further punishment.”  

Stephen was stunned.  Surely, this was some sort of cruel joke.  Yet, when he looked around at the faces of the witnesses, they did not look in the least surprised.  Instead, they all looked at him, awaiting his response.  

“Well,” Stephen stammered, “I suppose I’ll do it.”  The judge’s expression didn’t change at all.  Some of the witnesses, especially the older men, however, grinned knowingly at each other.  Had he made a fool of himself?  Would it have been wiser to accept imprisonment and maybe torture than to take this crazy risk?  Did he really, really believe that there was a dragon?  Stephen’s whole world had been tipping over during the last week, and now it was upside down.  
The guards escorted Stephen back to his jail cell.  That evening, the jailer gave him a much larger meal than usual, consisting of a loaf of brown bread, a small cheese, a cake of raisins, and a strip of dried meat of some sort.  

“Rest well,” the jailer said.  “You’ll be getting up early tomorrow morning.”  Stephen was so nervous and confused that he didn’t see how he could possibly sleep.  He was so tired, however, that he fell into a deep sleep almost as soon as he collapsed on the straw.  

END OF PART ONE