The Words - An Autobiography

A Welcomed Unexpected Visitor

Several weeks later, I received a welcome surprise when Mary returned the favor and came to visit my oceanfront estate. Or at least it had been before IT's appearance and was now in the process of being restored to what had any right to be referred to as an 'estate.' The front gate once again hung from its hinges, freshly painted. Still, I left it open until someone reinvented the mechanism that had previously swung it open and closed, or I grew tired of the gate being left open and reinvented it myself. I'd framed the house with the help of the local farmer. And there were stairs between floors, rather than just the ladders of a week earlier. Nothing more, except for the mansard roof, beneath which I'd recently been spending most nights. It struck me as some nostalgic gesture of forgiveness of a man dead nearly four centuries and gratitude for the toughness he'd forced upon me that had allowed me to endure those last hellish two.

In the Real, I stood on the beach at the water's edge gazing out over the ocean deep in thought, when Mary suddenly appeared before me in the Virt, as had become her habit since that wonderful week we'd spent together, regularly popping up to surprise me, and say hello. But I was confused when she asked where I was when she was looking directly at me. I told her I was right there - wondering whether something was wrong. That had become me over those past few centuries: Mr. Fix It.

I ran a diagnostic analysis of what might be impacting her ability to see me in Virtuality. Had she damaged her Magick Hat? It had, after all, been gathering dust for two hundred years before her recent return to Virtuality. No, diagnostics determined that her Hat was fine, although long overdue to be replaced by a new model. Could her Pixie Dust have degraded? Again, after several centuries, I was aware this had also become an issue for some of our Immortals. Was it time for her to down another glass of Kool-Aide and Pixie Dust? Before I came to a firm conclusion, I assigned a team of my AI Avatars the task of formulating a protocol for Pixie Dust boosters.

"No," Mary insisted, shaking her head. "I can see you just fine in the Virt. Where are you in the Real? I'm standing next to your gazebo, looking out at the ocean. What a phenomenal view."

"I'm on the beach," I told her, relieved to find nothing was wrong. "You'll probably see me if you take a few more steps toward the top of the switch back paths down. But I'm on my way up."

In a little under fifteen minutes, I made it to the gazebo, which I considered a rather impressive feat, given that I'd never been an Olympic-caliber athlete. The paths from the beach up to the gazebo rose nearly a thousand feet, meaning I'd just run more than a mile up a grade with a steady seven-degree pitch. So, it was understandable that, in addition to being rather proud of myself, I was both out of breath and sweating heavily.

I found Mary waiting in anxious anticipation. She threw herself into my arms, clearly happy to see me, before peeling herself away with the front of her shirt now soaked with my sweat. Smiling, she told me, "I hoped I'd get sweaty with you, but that wasn't quite what I had in mind."

She held a large flat rectangular package, easily half her height. Several sizable pieces of Plexiglas and cardboard were duct-taped to the front and back of a wooden frame to protect it. She'd strapped this awkward appearing parcel to her back and somehow transported it from her home in the woods to my estate on her trusty dirt bike, a feat far surpassing my run up from the beach. She'd had to drive far more slowly than she liked, she explained, because the package acted like a sail and nearly pulled her from her seat a few times before she'd convinced herself to ease off the gas.

Tearing the plexiglass and cardboard away, I stared at my wife's face or a large, framed portrait of her. It was the same as the one that once hung above the mantle in the original mansion, burnt by some roving group disappointed over not finding food or anything worth stealing. To my surprise, marks on the frame and the writing on the back confirmed it was the same photograph I'd presumed stolen or burnt along with the mansion and its contents.