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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 71: Cooper 23
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 306
Cooper remained a moment bent over the body of Timothy Campbell the Third. He then said, “May God receive you into His Kingdom, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,” and he straightened up.
So he was now officially a superhero. Of course, he had a lot of problems right at the outset. The same forcefield that kept his predecessor trapped here was still surrounding him. He had no special powers--he had declined to learn any of those mental tricks they offered to show him back in Nagaworld. He had none of his equipment, not even his walking stick, as what he had not left at the chalet had been confiscated when he was imprisoned. Relaxing he could feel two distinct directions pointing to it, but undoubtedly he would have to get out of this trap. He now had this holy sword, but no idea what it did or how to use it--and if the previous owner, who apparently had used it for some time measured in years, could not find a way to get through the forcefield using the sword, he wasn’t going to find an answer to that before he, too, starved to death.
He searched the body of the dead man, but all he found that he thought was worth taking was the belt with the holster; there was a dart gun in it, and he found a pack of darts, probably good for rendering villains unconscious without killing them, but not the tool for shooting out a lock. Still, he put the belt around his waist and stowed the darts in the pocket of his flannel shirt.
He next searched the room. He perused the books casually, and saw that indeed there were quite a few he might like to read as well. None of them suggested how to breach a forcefield from the inside, as far as he could tell. He did have the secluded bathroom, but he realized that if he broke this and failed to escape he would be in a worse place than he was now.
It struck him that this could be the inspiration for despair. He was trapped in a prison and had nothing he could use to get himself out.
On the other hand, he remembered that he had been trapped in a prison before, three times if you counted. The third time his exit was by dying in the fire. The second time he was removed to be transported elsewhere, and probably could have fled when Wilhelm did. The first time was a miracle--not the only miracle he witnessed, but in some ways the most dramatic.
He could hardly be a superhero without any powers, and expecting God to do a miracle without knowing what he was expecting didn’t really seem like a power.
He was holding the sword, and drew it partially from the scabbard. There was an inscription on the blade; it was in Greek, but the kind of Greek used in the earliest copies of the New Testament, all capital letters, no spaces, no punctuation or diacritical marks. He thought if he worked at it he could probably decipher it, but he’d need paper and pencil, and access to the Greek bible on his computer. He figured out how to put the scabbard on his new belt, and looked around, trying to figure out what to do next.
Suddenly the lights went out. Great, he thought. As if I don’t have enough trouble, now we’ve got a power failure.
“Oh,” he said aloud in the dark room. If the power failed, did that mean--?
He closed his eyes. He had already felt the directions to his possessions; could he remember where they were relative to the door? That is, could he find the door based on having those two vectors? He could at least move in the right direction. He slowly and carefully crossed the floor with his arms extended until he found a bookcase. Left or right? He decided it was a little bit to his left, and he felt his way along the wall in that direction until he felt a door frame, then found a doorknob. It turned. The door itself wasn’t locked, but it opened outward. If the information he had been told was to be believed, it had been held in place by the forcefield. As he pressed on the door it swung open, and he stepped from one dark space to another. This space was completely unknown to him, and he wished he had a light. Wait, though--magic swords often produced light. Would this one? It was worth a try. Taking hold of the hilt he drew the sword clear of the scabbard, and not knowing what else to do raised it at a forty-five degree angle in front of him.
The blade began to glow red, but it shone as much as a weak LED enabling him to see the sword, but nothing else. He willed more light, and it burst into flame, illuminating a corridor with multiple closed doors, including one at the end of the hall. That seemed to be the place to go, so he went there. That door was locked, but from the inside; it was a simple matter to undo the bolt. Opening the door, he stepped outside into the daylight of a vestibule, another door directly ahead.
There in the vestibule was his walking stick and the other properties the soldiers had taken from him in the previous world. He lowered the sword, which extinguished itself and was immediately cool to the touch, so he sheathed it and gathered his things. He had a lot to do, but it seemed that the priority would be to find his computer and other properties. They had been several miles away and up a mountain, but he did have that feeling pointing toward them.
Let the quest begin, he thought, and started walking.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #506: Characters Involved. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
