Lynn Greenwood wakes up, unaware of a place called the Nexus. She lives in a small, rural town in one of the northern tier of states of the United States of America in the 1,999th year of her Lord, also known as The Common Era to appease The Politically Correct Ones.
She showers, gets dressed, eats and goes to a dead-end job where she listens to people's problems all day and no one listens to hers. Then she goes home again to a small apartment with sufficient amenities to earn the non-descript description of "comfortable". She never sees another living being again, not even a dog or cat, until she gets up the next day and goes to her dead-end job and listens to more problems.
Life, basically, has passed her by. She is out-of-date. Anachronistic. Un-hip. She doesn't watch MTV, or even VH-1. She doesn't know anything about Anime, and has never held a comic book in her hands. She's never heard of Victorian Steam Punk, or listened to Heavy Metal bands. (Well, she listened to Metallica for a while, as an experiment.) She's never taken drugs, she doesn't drink, and she's still a... well... She's never been with a man, either. She's actually proud of the fact she did well in school. She believes in things like "if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well" and "a day's work for a day's pay".
In short, the world she grew up in has passed into obscurity already. The values she holds dear have no relevance. Her entire context is gone. She is Obsolete. She had hoped she had another fifteen years before that happened.
She didn't.
Lynn has been wading through life, with greater and lesser success, for forty-five years, give or take a few months. She has never been in love and, so far as she knows, never *been* loved by anyone not obligated by the expectations of society so to do. She keeps to herself, she has never been arrested, never had a traffic ticket, and never done much of anything to justify all the fuss and bother of getting her here, to this point in her pointless life.
All this is about to change.
Coming home from work, via the grocery store, she finds a detour sign where none had been as recently as lunchtime. She shrugs, makes a right turn in her car, and finds herself standing, sans said car, in the middle of a muddy, unpaved road in what appears the middle of a muddy, unpaved Nowhere. What's more, she's not even wearing her clothes. She's wearing clothes, but not _her_ clothes. What she _is_ wearing has a long, ragged skirt, and laces up the front under her breasts. It is dirty. But the sort of dirt one accumulates when working...not from uncleanly habits. Her hair, formerly short and neatly styled, is now long and in need of washing.
Beside on the ground her sits a burlap sack. Upon investigation, it proves to be filled with items of food. No cans, no plastic wrap. Just unwrapped food, and an animal skin bulging with some liquid. Lynn holds this up for closer examination. And hears an irritated voice behind her.
"You, there! What do you think you're about?"
She turns around to find a man on a tall horse bearing down on her at a fair clip, brandishing a long stick of some kind.
"Put that down at once! At ONCE, do you hear?"
Her first inclination is to tell him to go stuff himself, but instinctively she knows this is not a good idea. So, instead, she turns and starts to walk away as if she has not heard him.
"YOU!! STOP RIGHT THERE!!"
Lynn stops. She recognizes that tone as one of authority. She may not know whereby he *claims* that authority but, inasmuch as *he* has the horse *and* the truncheon, she deems it the wisest course of action to obey for the moment. Some things one simply doesn't question. Armaments being among those things.
The horse and rider reach her position, the mount snorting and mincing about with obvious difficulty to avoid trampling her. It seems to Lynn the rider is not entirely in control of the situation. She had spent some time watching her niece perform in Dressage at the local Off-off-off-Circuit horse shows. She knew a "bad seat" when she saw one. And she was looking at one, right now.
"You, there!" yells the rider, quite unnecessarily considering the close range. "What are you doing with that?"
Lynn looks down at the bag of goodies lying beside her on the ground. "This?" she asks.
The rider, whom she judges in his mid-to-late 30s, turns a lovely shade of crimson as veins stand out on his neck. "Of *course* that, you fool," he snaps. "How did you come by that food?"
Lynn half-shrugs. "It's not mine," she says, and backs away from it a step or two.
"Don't lie to me, you old hag!" he shouts, swinging his riding-crop dangerously. "You think you can make a fool out of me? You think I cannot see with my own two eyes?" The horse prances again nervously as the rider continues to hollar and flail about.
"Whoa, girl...easy, now..." Lynn coos, gently lifting a hand to sooth the mare with a pat on the neck. The horse nickers, but her hind quarters continue to swing back and forth, dancing under the pompous rider.
"How dare you touch my mount!" screams the rider, and he lifts his crop with murderous intent.
Lynn realizes what he's about a split-second too late to get out of his way. All she can do is fling up an arm to ward off the attack and turn her face away from the blow.
A blow which never comes.
Lynn waits...then turns to look. Rider and mount are frozen in mid-swing. Not moving. Not breathing. She looks around. The leaves on the trees have stopped. There is only unbroken silence. Even a bird above is frozen in mid-flight. Lynn frowns and straightens. "What the..."
"I always like this part best," says a voice behind her.
Lynn twirls about, to find a kindly-looking older woman walking toward her. A woman she had seen sweeping out a thatch-roofed hovel down the road.
"The silence. That is the best," continues the old woman. "Well, that and the pay-off. That, too, is quite satisfying." She continues to move forward, smiling, apparently completely unconcerned about the oddness of this event. Her smile becomes a twinkling grin. "Sometimes I stop it all just to get a little peace and quiet," she confesses, soto voce.
Lynn manages to close her mouth. She licks her dry lips and tries to swallow. She glances again at the rider, his whip inches from her. Then she looks back at the old woman. "What is going on?" she asks. It is not a demand, but merely a question. But the tone is compelling. And... slightly desperate in nature.
"Oh, I'm sorry, my dear," says the old woman. "The name's Beatrice. You may call me Bea." She holds out her hand. "I had forgotten you did not know me."
Lynn takes her hand tentatively. "Why...have we met?"
The woman laughs. "Well, we have. But you never knew it. You see, I have been watching you for quite some time, now."
Lynn's mind, exhausted from a full day's work, casts about for a possible explanation for all this impossibility. "Are you an angel?"
The woman smiles. It looks like a very fond smile. "No, no...I'm as mortal as you, Dear."
Lynn nods slightly, deciding this was probably a good thing. Still, it did not explain what was going on.
"I'm just...on a special assignment, if you will," Bea continues. "And I think it is time you and I discussed the nature of that assignment."
Lynn feels the ground under her begin to shake. Or perhaps it is her knees. Either way, it does not bode well. "It...is?"
Bea nods. Then she chuckles at something she sees in Lynn's expression. "Here, child," she says, taking Lynn by the wrist. "Perhaps you and I had best sit down over there." She gestures at a table and chairs Lynn had not seen before. The sort of white, wrought iron table and chairs one might see in a garden, or a French sidewalk café. "You just sit down for a moment. It will all become clear."
Lynn just nods absently, and allows herself to be led away. Nothing else around her moves. When they arrive at the table, there is a pot of tea, two cups and saucers, a plate of scones--the sort without the currents--and a pot of strawberry jam and one of clotted cream. The necessary flateware sits on either side of two small china plates.
"Here we are, dear...sit you down, now..." Beatrice herds Lynn to her chair and sees her properly seated before she takes her own seat. "Now. Shall I be Mum?" When Lynn does not reply, Bea takes up the teapot and begins to pour a cup. But she stops before the amber liquid issues forth. "Oh, dear...forgot the milk and sugar..."
Lynn glances down at the table, and sees a small pitcher of milk and a pot of sugar where moments before there had been none. She jumps up from the table, nearly overturning the chair, and moves back. "What is this? What's going on here? Am I dead? Is that it? Did I wreck the car? Am I crazy? Is this--"
"Now, now, dear!!" cries Bea, her tone carrying equal notes of alarm and amusement. "Do try to calm yourself!" She is beside Lynn in a moment, gently shepherding her back to her chair. "It's all right, child. All will be revealed...You'll see. It will be all right."
Lynn sits, and grasps the fragile china cup with both hands, as if this, alone, is her salvation. Her anchor. Teacups she knew. She collected them. This one was a particularly lovely Limoges eggshell china, pre-war. Of the slip that was bombed out of existance and never more seen. The tiny pattern around the rim was a transfer done in tiny green and lavender flowering vines. It appeared to be wisteria, but she couldn't be certain. She focusses on this, to avoid dealing with what is apparently happening to her.
"There's a good girl..." Beatrice burbles, pouring a cup of fragrant Earl Grey--Jackson's of Picadilly, if Lynn knew her tea. "You drink some of that, and I shall try to explain what this is all about." Bea adds a dollop of milk and two level spoons of sugar to Lynn's cup and smiles. "I believe this is how you take yours? Yes?"
Then she takes up a scone and cuts it, laterally, into two halves. She tops both with fair amounts of jam and cream. She makes happy little humming noises as she goes about this mundane task. She places one half on Lynn's plate, and takes a great bite from the other half before she continues.
Lynn just grips the teacup, even though it burns where her fingertips touch the porcelein. She doesn't seem to notice. She just sort of sits there, staring.
"Now, then," continues Bea, wiping her fingers on a fine linen napkin that has appeared at her elbow. "First things first. I am not an angel. I am not a demon. I am not a figment of your imagination." She takes a sip of tea. "You are not dead. This is not heaven, nor is it hell. Nor are you mad. You are merely in an alternate existance to the one to which you are accustomed. And I..." Bea smiles. "Well...I suppose I should just get right to the point. You're a good, sensible girl."
She begins to rummage around in a huge carry-all bag beside her chair. Lynn absently sips her tea as she watches, deciding finally that this will all go away when she awakens, so why fight it?
"Now, where did I put that-- Oh! Here it is." Bea pulls something from the bag, beaming in triumph. "This should explain everything."
She hands Lynn an object, which obliges Lynn to put down the teacup so that she might examine it. It appears to be a leather-bound book, about the size of a wallet. When opened, it reveals a badge on one side, and a card on the other with writing on it.
The badge consists of a Magen David-shaped star of two triangles, one pointing up and one pointing down. It is inscribed with the words, "As Above, So Below" and the image of an open hand, the palm facing the viewer, superimposed with an embossment of a human eye.
The card, laminated in plastic and very official-looking, has a photo of Beatrice against one edge. It reads, "Special Agent-In-Charge Beatrice. Enforcement Division, Karmic Forces. This authorizes the bearer to intervene, contravene, investigate, detain, suggest, reorder, conjure, block, initiate, manipulate and terminate at his/her discretion." It was signed with an illegible scrawl at the bottom line, with the word "Commanding" printed underneath. Someone had stamped "Valid until _____" and the word "Revoked" had been added in pen.
Lynn looks up from the badge with a feeling of confusion edged with a sort of almost superstitious excitement.
Beatrice smiles, and wipes a spot of strawberry jam from the corner of her mouth. "My dear, I am a Hand of Karma. Senior Staff."
Bea chuckles softly--and kindlily--at the expression on Lynn's face. Her eyes twinkle, as only eyes that have seen from the other side of the situation and survived can twinkle. She reaches out and pats Lynn's hand, her own soft hand warm and reassuring. "It's all right, Dearie," she tells Lynn, pouring her a second cup of fragrant tea. "Your head will stop swimming eventually. It will all make sense."
Lynn simply sits there, caught between disbelief and horror, excitement and terror, past and future.
Bea pours herself a cup of tea, and spoons sugar into both cups, followed by a generous dollop of milk. "Drink up, Love," she advises gently. "It'll do you good. You need your strength. You've had a bit of a shock, is all." She fits Lynn's cup into the girl's unprotesting figures. "Drink up, now."
Lynn complies, but in the way that a sleep-walker might. She doesn't even feel the hot fluid as it fills her mouth.
"Easy, now..." Bea cautions. "Not too fast..."
Lynn gulps, and the sweet amber liquid slides down her throat, warming her gullet.
"There's a good girl," Bea croons, a chuckle waiting impatiently behind her words. "You'll do. You'll do just fine." She prepares and partakes of another scone with jam and clotted cream while she waits for Lynn to unscramble her brain. Then she wipes her fingers delicately on a fine linen napkin and sits back. "Did you ever watch the TV show, 'Quantam Leap'?" she asks.
Lynn looks up quickly, surprised by the mundaneity of the question. "What?"
"Oh, you know the one. That handsome young man, popping in and out of people's lives, 'putting right what once went wrong'. The fellow who was a hologram that only he can see and hear..."
"Y-yes..."
"Good. Well, what we do is a little like that. Only we intervene *before* things go wrong. And...our brains don't get 'Swiss-cheesed'." Bea giggles like a school-girl as the mental picture apparently tickles her sense of humor. "I did love that program," she confides in a conspiratorial murmur. "I even loved the way they ended it. That Bruce McGill is a crack-up!"
Lynn just stares at her.
"But, I digress..." Bea confesses apologetically. "The point is, we Hands of Karma have a grave responsibility to dispense Karmic Justice. I've been doing this for...oh...more than twenty years, now, as you reckon time.
"Like you," Bea continues, "I had spent most of my life alone, doing what I could to do the most good with the least harm, to be mindful that sometimes things don't work out as I would like them to, but also trusting that there were reasons for that. I, like yourself, did not believe in an arbitrary, random, disinterested Universe. I believed there was, ultimately, a pattern, or a force for order at work. I just didn't know what it was, or understand how it worked.
"I was something of a forward-thinker for my time. Many of my beliefs are now common-place. Or at least are considered legitimate." Bea pauses. "Altough, I think many of those who think they understand really do not..." she adds, apparently as an after-thought. "Most of the so-called 'New Agers' are, in my opinion, a lot of self-centered, self-indulgent twits looking for a way to feel good about themselves while they behave badly."
She sits back in her chair again, giving a very good impression of a large bird trying to smooth down ruffled feathers. "But that discussion can wait for another time."
Bea brushes the fabric of her skirt. It looks rather like a ritualistic gesture, a "time-out" mechanism, performed so many times her hands fairly move themselves.
"Now," she says in a bracing tone. "As to why I've brought you here. I am getting close to retirement. It is time I trained my replacement. You, my dear, are that replacement."
"Me??" replies Lynn, startled into bad grammar.
Bea smiles. "Yes, child. You. I have been watching you for a very long time. In fact..." She leans closer. "...I have oft times used you as an instrument to accomplish my mission."
"You...have?"
Bea nods. "Oh, yes. I've sent countless people to your desk, knowing you'd do the right thing. You have quite a gift for sensing Karmic Moments, my dear. And for turning the gears just the right way."
"I...do?"
Again Bea nods. "That's what brought you to my attention. I was amazed to find you so intuitive, so turned to Cosmic Forces. 'There!' I said to myself. 'That's the one to fill my place when I go.' So I started grooming you."
"You...did?"
"Yes. I sent you Karmic Lessons. Put your through your paces. Forced you to decide what you believed. Pushed you to look at life, the Universe and everything. And you came up with all the right answers, I'm pleased to say. Oh, you had your lapses now and then. Bouts of It's-Not-Fairs and Why-Should-I-Behaves. But, by and large, you did well. Better than any of the others, far and away."
"The...others?"
Bea pours more tea. "Well, I had to hedge my bet, didn't I? I mean, there's that pesky Free Will proviso. That oft times mucks things up. I couldn't be certain you'd come through in the end. It was, after all, a very hard path to walk."
At this, Lynn frowns. A thought is forming in her brain. A rather distasteful thought, at that. "Just what do you mean...you 'put me through my paces'?" she asks, her fingers once more gripping the delicate china cup.
Bea looks up, and a tinge of pink brightens her already-red apple cheeks. "Oh, dear...I was afraid you might ask..."
But Lynn persists. "Are you telling me that you influenced my life, to make it harder?"
Bea sips tea without reply.
"Are you saying you deliberately screwed around with my life? Are you?" Lynn's tone is demanding now, enriched by righteous indignation.
"Well..." Bea begins. "I assure you, it was quite necessary. I had to--"
"You had to *what*???" Lynn fairly shrieks. "Ruin my life?" She stands up from the table, shaking, her skin white with rage. "Was it *you* who decided I was to live my life alone, with no earthly companionship? You who decided I should be the one to care for my mother and father while my brothers and sisters played and had families and great careers? Did you decide I'd be fat and ugly? Did you set things up so I'd have an abusive father? You who--"
"Now, wait just a moment," Bea interrupts.
Such is her Presense, her Command, that Lynn immediately falls silent.
"You give me too much credit, girl!" she asserts. There is just an edge of surliness to her tone that suggests perhaps Lynn has hit a little too near the mark for her comfort. "I was not responsible for all of that."
Lynn tips up her chin in defiance.
"Only...some of it," Bea admits, sipping her tea without meeting Lynn's eyes.
"Which parts?" Lynn asks beligerantly.
Bea locks her eyes on Lynn's. Lynn gasps at the sudden force of it, as though the air had been sucked from her lungs.
"You are not ready to know," Bea states simply. She cocks her head to one side. "But...in time, you could be." She raises one eyebrow. "If you're willing..."
Lynn tightens her jaw on the thought. "And if I'm not?" she asks, through clenched teeth.
Bea shrugs. "Then I'll send you back home. And you won't remember a thing about this conversation." She sips her tea complacently, but she flicks the occasional glance Lynn's way.
Lynn sits back down like balloon with a pin-hole leak. She closes her eyes. //This isn't real...this can't be real...tell me it's not real,// she thinks to herself.
"Oh, it's real enough," replies Bea.
Lynn's eyes snap open. "How did you--"
"I'm authorized to read thoughts," Bea answers nonchalantly.
//Then read this, you interfering, mean-spirited--//
"Now, now..." Bea cautions. "None of that..."
Lynn reddens, and quoshes thoughts of a similar nature.
"That's better. Now. Have you decided?"
Lynn twiddles the teacup in its saucer. "Just what would I have to do?" she asks, making it clear by her tone she has not yet decided at all.
"Well..." Bea stands up. "I thought I'd start you out in a very special place I've found. It will be perfect." She starts to gather up the tea things, which disappear as she touches them. "It's sort of a slice of every existance going. A strange place, where every reality is lumped together, jostling every other reality. There I can give you an example of about every situation you're ever likely to encounter." The last to disappear is the table, and Bea's chair.
Lynn stands up a microsecond before her own chair *poofs* into unbeing. "Where in the world is *that*??" she asks, intrigued in spite of her misgivings.
"It's not in the world. Well, not exactly. More like, it's in every world." Bea hurries on as Lynn looks appropriately befuddled. "It's a little place known to the locals as 'The Nexus'."
Bea starts to bustle away down a previously non-existant road. She stops and turns back to Lynn. "Are you coming, dear?" she asks.
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