The Chair (Chap: 3) (standard:science fiction, 1755 words)
Author: Cyrano	Added: Mar 21 2012	Views/Reads: 4762/1884	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Bart has been charged with the responsibility of persuading a man, Tom Schofield, a noted physicist, to instead become a man of creativity. Bart is an unfinished character, brought to life by Tom's late wife, a best selling author.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

“What launderette is that?” Bill Leggett asks, entering the study
through a portal. 

“It worries me you can do that, Bill!” I repeat, having said it the
first time I saw him perform this neat trick. 

“I'm a dream character; it's the only way I can enter! Sorry.” Arms held
wide, palms up. 

“The whole thing is just weird, Bill. I know something of your
background at least. It seems your grandma, some hundred years ago, 
told a farmer that you just disappeared, walked into a field and was 
gone. You left through a portal. But portals are not just that, they 
can be anything, such as windows, mirrors, walls, and those same places 
enable you to re-appear. We don't know what our creator intended for 
you. But I sure as hell don't believe you're intended to reappear in a 
study with the likes of the Bentley twins!” 

“Hey, asshole!” Alf interrupts, his decency besmirched, shifting in his
seat as if allowing room to expel gas. 

“Well, I simply love it!” Swoons Gwyneth, with me wishing she sounded
that way whenever I enter the study.” 

“Thanks Gwyn. You look stunning!” Bill replies, passing through the desk
toward the open window. And away from the foul smelling odor 

“All dressed up and no place to go! How's that for a cliché?” She says,
head bowed and fussing with the frills on her dress. 

“You're waiting for your Prince to come, Gwyn. That's all I know. A
Fairy story midst writing for our creator's Grandchildren. Either your 
Prince will make it, or you'll be eaten by a dragon. Your fate is 
unwritten.” 

“I'm sick of dragons being slayed.” Say's Alf, unapologetically,
counting wet ink money taken from a leather sack. 

“I agree,” I offer up, “you Bentley twins would make a much better
supper. Toasted first!” 

“I don't want to be eaten!” Gwyn whimpers, head in hands. 

“Look, none of us knows our fate. The fact is we don't have one if we
cannot find a way to get Tom to complete us.” I declare, putting a 
comforting hand on Gwyn's shoulder. 

There are lots of notes left on the computer about Bill Leggett. Our
creator writes in the margins that Bill is a basic human emotional need 
in one's social environment; her way in which to allow us, her 
characters, to express our thoughts and feelings. Bill as an 
imaginative idea, he could be a monster, any creature or fictive 
entities, but Bill has been created to categorize the vision and is  
‘only of the imagination.' 

Then a child's voice is heard in the doorway. “He will. He just needs
time.” 

Daniel, according to his notes, is the most complete among us. He's ten.
He might have been born on this very day; he looks so new and fresh, 
with staring blue eyes. He dances and laughs to the sound of the 
mandolin, a boy, a beach and the universe and the rarest wind you ever 
heard. Glad to be alive and announces this by the very sounds he makes. 
I laugh in turn, for his spirit is catching. He shoves out a wet, 
sandy, hand. I hesitate. He gestures impatiently for me to take hold of 
it. ' 

“Com'on, there isn't much time.” 

Such a boy, by his creator, I would like as a son. She has him running
hand in hand, headlong to where?  When he finally stops his heart is 
beating up the inside of his chest. 

“Why is there so little time?” The question is asked 

He doesn't answer, just runs off hell for leather along the shore. When
caught he tumbles into the sand, and is pinned him down. He gasps and 
as he does so his pursuer leaps up. 

The boy is me! Bartholomew Cubbins. 

We have been created with form, smiles, movement, thoughts and emotions
but no purpose. I know who I was, but not who I am. The boy's form is 
very clear to me. He stands in the doorway, confident, young, and all 
knowing. But why? 

“Where's that lout of a brother?” Ernie Bentley, slams into the room,
pushing the lad aside, in no mood for polite discourse. 

Alf, somewhat sheepishly, hurries the cash back into the leather sack.
“Right here, Ernie, just counting our cash!” 

“Did you find a place to put all the machinery yet?” He yells, blood
boiling, bushy eyebrows raised. 

“We're...er....still frozen in our negotiations for the launderette,
Ernie.” His voice squeakier than his twins. 

“Frozen, what the dicken's are you talking about?” 

While Alf tries to explain, for the umpteenth time of asking, I slip out
the door and amble onto the bluff that overlooks the ocean. I know I've 
stood here many times, but not why. The man we need to complete us is 
not creative, but is a man of physics and science. Our fate can only be 
determined by a creator, someone who has the ability to control 
happenings, literarily. Sometimes it's really easy for a gifted person 
to do, and sometimes it's not that easy. But whenever Katherine, our 
creator, found that feeling point we were controlled, and would do 
exactly as she wanted. I have been controlled by the wind a number of 
times. At one stage she could think of wind and it would come, and at 
other times she enjoyed making the wind swirl around me in a clockwise 
direction. How am I going to convince a scientist, a man of physics and 
chemistry that he can manipulate the visualizations and dreams of 
people, control the music they love, and somewhere while a song is 
playing change the course of their lives, destiny, or death.  That he 
can be the one to sit in the chair and just imagine what series of 
sounds he wants to come next.  Random noises appearing out of nowhere, 
or change the direction of smoke, as in cigarette smoke. That he can 
now sit looking out the same window and concentrate first on the 
cigarette, then on what direction he wants the smoke to go. 

So here I am, quite alone, seeing things that were shared before, long
ago ...my memory stretches and I am dazed: my creator knows how good 
the time was and how I laughed ..but times have changed, I can't 
complain: I had all my chances, she wrote, but they slipped through my 
hands-like so much sand; maybe now I'll never know if I can dance like 
I used to. My destiny lies in one man's willingness to go beyond 
science, beyond physics, beyond doubt and give me another chance. 


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