joegoda | BagsNPockets

There are some things that mankind was not meant to see. The end of the Universe. The center of the human soul. Pockets sitting naked and cross-legged on a three legged stool.

He was in his environment, made by his own hands and understood by his own mind. In the wagon he had carved his cave. By any other standards, cramped in a 4 feet by 8 feet area, but by his standards, it was only limited by his imagination. On one long wall of his cabin was covered with paper, upon which hundreds of doodles, drawings, scratches and marks were drawn. The only spot that wasn't covered was the doorway that led to the rest of the wagon.

On the opposing wall, a window, centered, was surrounded with crystals of all shapes and sizes catching the sun and sprinkling rainbows all through the room.

The light reflected off of bits of wire, was captured in mugs of waters and oils, trapped by mazes of wood and funneled through tubes of different diameters and lengths to be changed and diverted by lenses of polished glass.

One of the shorter walls contained his cot, a thin thing with a blanket and a pillow. The other wall had nothing on it at all except a large red circle with a dot in the center.

Sitting on his stool in front of his tiny work bench, Pockets was mumbling to himself. His mind was a-whirl with thoughts that was unbound by common convention and filled to the brim with possibilities of everything.

"A is for aardvark, b is for bear. G is for growly tummy, and h is for hair." It was an old song he learned as a child and his outside voice would sing it to his inside mind while it went spiraling up and out into the heavens.

"You know, it's possible to bring the water to the surface through a spiral and create a reservoir that could recreate the forest. But then again, it's an awful lot of work, and I don't know anyone that would want to do that much. But then again, what if there was an underground cave that had been capturing the water for years and years" he mumbled.

He was doodling on one of his thousands of pieces of paper, scavenged from some unknown place and used and erased and used and erased hundreds of times. He was doodling what looked to the untrained eye like a bird's wing, except it was connected to a frame, that in turn was connected to a fairly accurate drawing of a human torso. He stopped and lifted his head away from the doodle.

"No, that would never do. The foot pounds required to make the thing work would be more than the average six foot human could manage, even if the human had hollow bones and no body to speak of. For that matter, the less body, the less body mass, but that would mean less muscle mass. Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm." He took the drawing and carefully moved it to a pile already precariously tilted. On top of it he placed a large stone to help the stack keep it's balance.

He leaned back against the paper wall and watched the light play on the crystals. It was what he liked to do, and when Bags and Grizelda weren't here, it was what he was most likely to do, because it meant he didn't have to be in his body any more. He could crawl out and play in the universe.

In his mind, he soared up and out of the wagon, far above the walls, far above the desert. He looked down and around and could see all there was to see. He was looking for something, and he knew when he found it, he would find it.

He traveled across the tiny kingdom, spying on the folks that milled about, buying and selling, stealing and getting caught. His eyes latched onto shiny things and, after inspecting them briefly, lost interest and went back to just drifting, drifting.

Back in his body, his other mind was aware that he wasn't really doing any of this. His other mind was the grownup Pockets, the one that would occasionally mention how dangerous or how foolish it was to be doing this or thinking that. Pockets had long ago learned to ignore this voice, because it was usually boring, no matter that it had a problem with being right more often than not.

His soaring mind, though, was traveling across walls and through doorways. It found a wall made of stone, quite a bit like the cellar he was stuck in a while back, so it traveled down the wall until it found a crack.

It squeezed through the crack and found itself in a dinning hall. The sort of dinning hall that would be found in a proper castle, in a larger kingdom. His mind fluttered like a butterfly on a breeze, around and behind old tapestries, under chairs and tables. It touched upon candlesticks that seemed to be made of pure gold, which it filed away to examine when it had hands, and maybe cart away. Gold was useful stuff, since it could be stretched miles thin and was soft and pliable. Not to mention it would bring in a lot of money.

Up and away from the tables he floated across the floor, following the lines between the wooden boards. The line he was following went all the way to one of the stone walls and abruptly ended. He turned and followed the wall, which in turn also abruptly ended at a small alcove. His mind hovered in that alcove, examining the stone work, which was impressive. Each stone had been carved to meet it's brother at a precise angle to give the curve of the alcove a clean and simple form. At the bottom, there was more wood floor, but more importantly, there was a circle of metal, possibly iron, imbedded in it.

From past experience with dungeons, Pockets knew that where there was a circle of iron embedded in the floor, it usually meant there was a door attached to the circle, and that the door led down.

Now he knew the where, and possibly the what. He still didn't have a clue to the why but that would reveal itself in time. His mind drifted back out of the alcove and just hung in air, examining all it could see.

Directly across from the place he hovered, he saw another alcove, so he just pushed his drifting mind towards it. Over tables and under chairs, once frightening a scurrying mouse, he reached the niche in the wall. There was no ring on the floor but there was a curious hole in the wall. If he had possessed a hand, rather than just a mind, he could have put his fist into it, but not very far. Looking deep into the hole, he could see tiny points scattered around inside of it, just peeking out from their hidden places. They looked to Pockets like the teeth on well polished gears, but it could just as well be shards of crystalline quartz, reflecting the light, if there had been any light, and there wasn't.

Back in the wagon, Pockets other mind rang an alarm bell. Someone was inside the wagon! It wasn't Bags, because the step was too light, and it wasn't Grizelda, because it didn't smell like Grizelda. His wandering mind came flitting back like a moth on fire, shook hands with it's partner in the body, and decided the best thing to do was to hide under the bed.

Safely tucked away, Pockets could feel the vibrations of more than one set of boots. There were.. two people here, he estimated by the feel of the floor board shake and the sound echoing through the grain. One large and masculine, by the stride and rhythm of the step, the other small and definitely feminine because the step was so light, so light.

From under the bed, Pockets saw two sets of boots enter his room. One large pair, well shined, black and well heeled. The other was a smaller set, tan in color with pointed toes. He knew the second set on sight. Chibi.

As much as he wanted to crawl out from under the bed to accept her apology and to explain why he wasn't there when she came back, something told him to stay put. It was one of those rare moments when his more mature brain won the argument and reason won out over impulse.

"Can you believe this crap?" came Chibi's whisper. "How can anyone live like this? It's a pigsty."

"Oh, I don't know." replied the other voice, a deeper, scratchy whisper, as if a wolf could talk. "It has a certain appeal, if you were a madman genius." Black boots stepped toward the bed. "Look here. If one were to squint their eyes just a bit, one could see this definitely had military applications. Imagine this cylinder attached to this mechanism. I believe your boyfriend was working on a device to through an object over long distance using a cord stretched to high tension."

"So?" asked Chibi. "And he's not my boyfriend, bud. He's just a guy that found your little gizmo. If you hadn't paid me, I wouldn't have even paid him mind at all."

Pockets less mature mind sighed and cried and died a bit at that. He thought he was doing so well, too.

"I don't know, Chibi. I could have sworn I saw a little spark in your eyes when you were sitting with him."

"Well, okay. Maybe just a little. He was kind of cute, but way, way too weird. Smart to the point of being almost scary."

Pockets less mature mind quit crying and wiped it's nose on it's sleeve and beamed a boyish smile at the more mature brain, triumphant.

"My point exactly, my dear." said black boots. "See here. He's got one idea here for a tube that has a dart in it." Pockets could hear blackie pick up something from his table. "Now, if you take this curved piece and attach it like so..." a click was heard. "and if you pull this back," another click, "and pull this little lever thing." There was a twang and a thunk against the far wall. From under the bed, Pockets could see the dart sticking out of the wall, near the dot.

"Imagine what that would do to a human body? Quite impressive. I wonder if that's what he had in mind for it?"

No, thought Pockets, it was supposed to help an average dart player play darts more accurately by allowing them to see the path the dart was going to take by projecting a beam of light from one of his crystals along the path of the tube. What a moron. To think that something like this might be used against another human being. Where was the honor in that?

"I think," said blackie, "that I'll just have to take this along with me." The boots moved away from his table. "Now, where do you suppose he might have hidden my little toy?"

"I don't know.", said Chibi. "This place is so small I couldn't swing a decent sized rat in here. I searched his jacket out in the ... I guess it was the living room. Nice of him to have left it there. I don't see any spot not covered on his table, and there's nothing else to look in. We've searched the whole place."

"How about the bed?" asked blackie. "Maybe he sleeps with it." Tan boots crossed over to the bed and the sounds of pillow being pulled apart and blankets being tossed drifted down.

"Not in the bed," said Chibi. "But what about under it?"

Both of Pocket's minds knew they were in trouble now, and the only thing they could think to say was "Run away!"