Giddeon (Silver Strand Series) (22 page)

I have to hand it to him.
 
Raymond Bradford has chutzpah.
 
The government agents and troops were just glad to get out of there, alive, and carried him to
El Paso
where he was put on a military aircraft bound straight for
Washington
,
D.C.
 
The captain had been in direct communication with the President on the ride from his facility to the city, and the surly ATF agent in charge received his orders as far as treatment and disposition of his ‘prisoner’ was to commence.
 

No handcuffs were to be involved, and media was to be kept as far away as possible.

*****

The government put Ray up in the newly renovated Watergate Hotel.
 
Two marine guards were stationed outside of his door, and the billionaire was basically under house arrest.
 

He ordered room service… surf and turf.
 
A T-bone steak and grilled shrimp.
 
He washed it all down with half a bottle of Merlot, ordered a movie, watched the film, and then called it a night.

The movie was ‘The Matrix’.

*****

The next morning, after a breakfast of French toast and poached eggs, Ray was escorted to the Oval Office.
 
He met privately with the President, for 45 minutes, and then with the Secretary of Defense.
 
I don’t know exactly what was discussed, but I have an idea.

The binder full of secrets also contained plenty of incriminating material on world leaders from nations all over the globe.
 
You would be surprised at the amount of compromised people in power, and how such secrets are used to coerce political favors on a routine basis.
 
I’m sure Ray made it clear that he would be able to divulge whatever it was that he had been keeping up his sleeve through an unnamed third party if anything untoward were to happen to him.
 
At least that’s how I think it went down.
 
Perhaps he went another route, and exposed knowledge that would be useful against enemies of the state.

Or, maybe, he just laid his cards on the table and told them he had a pipeline to the future and remote viewing capabilities.
 
Kind of doubt it, though.

Whatever he did, it worked.
 

He walked out of there a free man, stepped into a private limo and was shuttled to
Reagan
International
Airport
where his custom G-5 jet was waiting to carry him back to
Texas
.
 

He had an asteroid to paint.

*****

Giddeon and I spent almost every waking moment together when he got to where he could visualize me… and most of our sleeping moments together, too.
 
Even though we couldn’t touch, and really couldn’t hear each other very well without a cat surrogate, we didn’t have any problem communicating.
 
We both learned sign language, rather quickly, I might add, and I still can see his hands when I think of the first time he signed ‘I love you’.
 

I’m tearing up right now.

It’s hard to believe, sometimes, that I’m the same girl that grew up with a sword in her hand.
 
Zena
2.0.
 
I certainly didn’t feel like a warrior princess when he signed those words to me… I just felt like a princess.

A princess in love.
 

I threw myself into his arms, but I forgot that we weren’t substantial so I went right through him and into the waters of the Pacific there in front of The
Del.
 
We laughed and laughed, and he joined me in the water.
 
I signed ‘I love you, too!’ to him, and we kissed and kissed, our lips lighter than the foam on the waves against each other.
 
I could feel them a little bit, though, and that was enough for me.

I was the luckiest Inter-Dimensional Tourist in the world.

And, let me tell you, there are a lot of dimensions out there.

I can’t begin to describe the places and times that I’ve been with him.

My worlds were always local… centered around the magic of the Earth and the here and now.
 
I don’t know if it was the literature that I was exposed to as a child, or your belief system handed down from your parents, or what… but, apparently, I was limited in the scope of my existence to our current Mother Gaea.
 
Although I could fly, I couldn’t leave our atmosphere or time.

I tried to go to the moon, once, but I wasn’t able to do it.
 

At least not until I tagged along with GG that night when they played golf up there.

That was so much fun.
 
I especially liked watching Giddeon hop up and down like a gorgeous kangaroo.
 
His hair would bounce lightly around that face and those blue eyes… those blue eyes that were crinkling up at the corners… and I was completely mesmerized by his enthusiasm with the moment.

 
He’s kind of like a big, happy dog.
 

A golden Sampson, of sorts.
 

He enjoys every moment he can, and hardly ever ruminates on anything unpleasant.
 
If success is measured in the percentage of seconds spent in a contented, cheerful state, he’s pretty much got everyone on the planet beat by a mile.
 
Maybe quite a bit farther than that… maybe a light year.
 
That is a measure of distance, isn’t it?
 
I really should pay more attention to his lectures, but, hey, if I ever want an explanation of something related to physics, all I have to do is ask him.
 

I’ve got my own private Google-bug 24/7… sometimes I call him that, by the way… Google-bug.
 
He pretends to not like it, but I think, actually, he does : )

Anyway, before he was even aware of my existence, I would follow him around and just kind of hang out in his vicinity.
 
I watched him play a lot of golf, and I was there that day when he saw their dad on the course.
 
I recognized him from old family photos on the boat and in Greg’s wallet.
 
He did look quite different from the earlier version of himself, but, not that different.
 
Giddeon can be quite unobservant sometimes… but, most men are, aren’t they?
 
I don’t care if they have an eidetic memory or not.
 
Sometimes I do my hair differently, or actually put on make-up, and it’s hours before he notices… especially if he’s absorbed in a physics quest of some kind or another.

Oh, well… got to take the good with the bad, right?

Not that that’s so bad… kind of nice having a normal problem like other couples do on the solid side of things.
 
Makes me feel… well, normal.
 
Anyway… again… I noticed Alternate Dad right away.
 
Giddeon didn’t because he was interested in some floozy selling drinks in a golf cart.

Okay, she wasn’t a floozy… I just got a little jealous, I suppose.
 
I had no right to be… we had never even met, so it wasn’t like he was two-timing me or anything.
 
It was definitely a one-sided relationship at that point.
 
Come to think of it, kind of like a mirror image of the one you and Greg had at the time.

So, off Giddeon went to ogle the tramp… I mean, the nice young lady… and, he left me there kind of perturbed.
 
Since I was in a mood, I didn’t bother to follow my amorous companion on the rest of his round.
 
At least I had found something else of interest to pass some time.
 

*****

I found it odd that such a close relative of Greg’s from another reality would end up on the same island, and that Giddeon and I would run into him, to boot.
 
I’m sure the odds against it were pretty high, so I thought maybe it was meant to be.

I don’t really believe in accidents… but, I do believe in incidents.
 
And, when incidents look like accidents, that’s when I really pay attention.
 
Like the universe is trying to tell you something.

So, I followed him home to his apartment.
 
Not much of a housekeeper, I can tell you that… at least not in that bachelor reality.
 
It was a weekend, so around 9 o’clock he went down to the corner bar on Orange and First and had himself a
Fat
Tire beer… exactly the same kind that Giddeon prefers.
 
He watched the local band play for a couple of hours and then strolled back down to his apartment.
 
I heard him singing that song again to himself, and when he went inside, he picked up a guitar that looked exactly like the Ovation on the boat.
 
He strummed a few chords and then softly sang the entire tune to himself.

I watched as he took out a notebook and made a couple of notations in the margins near the lyrics.
 
I read the words over a couple of times to myself, and memorized them… I’m not as good at that as Giddeon, but, hey… I’m better at recognizing his relatives.

*****

One day Giddeon and Greg were playing around with their guitars on the boat, and they had been through a plethora of Beatles tunes.
 
Some of them were quite good ‘unplugged’, and I was impressed at my crush’s teaching ability.
 
When they were done, they decided to write a tune about the Beatles… but, they didn’t really know how they should go about it.
 
Giddeon thought for a moment, and then came out with that first line:

‘I Remember the Beatles…”

Greg added the next stanza:

‘On my transistor radio.’
 

My eyes grew wide as I recognized the lyrics that were even done in the correct key.
 
I waited… but, after that, they appeared stumped.
 
They tried a few different lines for a follow up, but nothing seemed right, so they discarded them.

Finally, I went over and whispered into
Giddeon’s
ear:

“And, every now and then, the Rolling Stones,”

He came out with the same line immediately afterwards:

‘And, every now and then, The Rolling Stones,”

“And, in the summertime, we’d all go…” I continued with my lips against his acoustic
meatus
.
 
Ooooh
… that sounds kind of naughty, doesn’t it?
 
Acoustic
meatus
…
 
tee-
hee
: )

‘And, in the summertime, we’d all go…” Giddeon sang.

Of course, I was shocked.
 
I continued to feed him lyrics, and he continued to spit them out.
 
He and Greg were getting into it, and played through the parts that they had… every now and then I would impart some more words into
Giddeon’s
ear… I wanted to take a little nibble at that ear when I did, but that was impossible… and, then I would smile and clap my hands when he came out with the same ones as he strummed.

In a short time, the song was complete.
 
The two boys on the boat were overjoyed for a while and played it over and over.
 
Finally, they went to have supper and celebrate their creativity.
 

Fat Tire beer was the drink of the night.

*****