00101

“Al! X-9! Listen to this!!" she called again, clutching Dr. Kitchen's personal screen device to her bosom, now hopeful that perhaps this mission did not end as a failure after all- At last, some indications of the truth of George's fate!

Albert Zoeniga and the robot hurried to hear what she had to say that was so important. Each carried in his arms a few boxes of items they had found as they headed to Nina McCleer. X-9 had surmised the contents of the boxes might be useful.

"What is it, Nina? What did you hear on Dr. Kitchen's recordings?" asked Albert Zoeniga.

X-9 set down his load and pointed out, "You know, perhaps Dr. Kitchen also has some details about some of these things we have collected, since we cannot access the main computers here to learn all of the secrets which this place holds."

"Yes, you're right," agreed Nina, "but this is even more exciting! Listen-" She held up the device, with Dr. Kitchen's blurry face on the cracked screen, as the elderly woman revealed her thoughts.

Dr. Kitchen said, "Clyden had helped Xavier with so many problems, often making the ‘problems’ end up at the fuel ore mines, transformed into a monstrosity with his identity wiped clean- the ol’ ID Wipe- and brainwashed to love Gov. Bright and to dig and dig the fuel ore for him. Only convicts, mostly from Earth, are supposed to be made into miners, digging in the mines, but not just a few people who disagreed with Xavier and became ‘problems’ for him populate the mines as well. One such person is Xavier Bright’s old college roomie, George McCleer. Earth sent McCleer here to supposedly help the Governor make his administration more efficient, but George McCleer didn't fool him. George McCleer actually wanted to find out for Earth whether Xavier had a secret fuel ore processor hidden on the World of Hope. Earth can't have that. They need this world to be dependent on Earth for processing this world's own ore for this world’s use. Otherwise, the World of Hope might become too self-sufficient, and might want to break away, become its own world and government. Well, I can't say I blame Xavier Bright for sticking Mr. McCleer in the mines. Why wouldn't the Governor be annoyed, since Earth deliberately kept supplies short for the World of Hope and the citizens- necessary things, like medicines and better equipment for the Enviro-Gens and such-  to make the World of Hope a poor beggar, always looking to Earth for help and supplies, too dependent to rebel? Why wouldn't Xavier be interested in being able to process his own ore into power fuel for us here on this world, and to shake off Earth's chains, and gain some dignity?

"Now what’s interesting about when Gov. Bright made George McCleer a miner is, the ID Wipe they gave McCleer didn't seem to work as well for him as it did for the other miners during the transformation. I don't know why, but for some it just doesn't always take so well as for most miners. So then, the brainwashing that follows the ID Wipe doesn’t work properly, either. That's why McCleer keeps trying to escape the mines. Sure, the process kinda worked. It made him lose his memories about who he was, but I think inside he is still George McCleer, trying to come back. Poor McCleer. Sooner or later, some Warden at the mines will run out of patience because of his constant escape attempts, and just toss him to the Eaters that patrol the moat around the mining mountain.”

As they listened, Nina said, "I already heard this part before. It both makes me very happy and very concerned. I am glad Dr. Kitchen thinks he is alive, and that the ID Wipe is not a complete success- Maybe with time, he will again remember who he is, and remember me, if he has been forced to forget me. But- but what if he doesn't have time- What if he is tossed to the Eaters?? And- I never suspected George had ulterior motives for coming here to the World of Hope-"

Dr. Kitchen continued: "It's funny. McCleer's wife Nina, another former student of mine- She never believed Xavier that McCleer had been caught in a cave-in at the mines during an official inspection of the mining mountain. She suspected Xavier's bad deed from the start. And Nina must have known that I am working here at this research lab, even though this place is a secret- Her husband George probably mentioned the fact. And yet she did not come to ask me for my help to find her missing husband. Maybe she just didn't know how to reach me. Maybe she didn’t expect I really would help. Maybe, because she pretty much despised me, she simply didn't want anything to do with me. Still, it was her husband's disappearance in question. Anyway, instead, she tried to get Earth to send someone to help her find the truth... but then Xavier sweet-talked Earth into turning a blind eye to the whole thing. Earth doesn't like Xavier very much as the Governor of Hope these days, but they would hate to replace him, too- unless he did something really bad, like make a secret power fuel ore processor for the World of Hope. Xavier Bright is very good at getting the supply of ore they need, and on time, too, as well as the food from the farms on this world which Earth depends on. But... Nina asked Earth for help, instead of me. A lack of sound judgment on her part, in my humble opinion. But okay, it's her choice. I owe Nina, big time, after all, and I would have paid her back. I would have helped her rescue her husband, had she asked me. She didn't, though, and I did not volunteer, either. I only promised to help her if she ever asked. I never promised to volunteer help.”

Nina McCleer shut off the device and excitedly said, "Well, that settles that, at least. Anyway, in my mind it does. Dr. Kitchen will try to verify anything that can be verified, before she will speak it. Dr. Kitchen says she knows that George is at the mines! So! I knew Xavier lied to me! How could he?! Oh, my George is alive, as I had believed and prayed!"

"That's great, Nina!" Albert Zoeniga shared her joy. "So, now we know we either need to rescue him, or at least prove he is held in the mines, so that Earth cannot any more ignore it, and the Leaders must then come to set things right!"

"Which means we must still take all these prototypes and experimental models and things, and figure out what we shall need, and what we must do, and how to do it," said X-9.

"Right you are, X-9," agreed Nina. "I want to thank you two for coming with me so far in my mission. Dr. Kitchen was a brilliant woman- If only she had used her brilliance to actually serve humanity, and not merely to amuse herself with the extreme intelligence God gave her to use... How different Earth and Hope might be, had she tried to find what God wanted her to do with her mind...”

Albert nodded. "Such a waste, according to what you've told us. But one thing I don't understand; what kind of a favor did she owe you?"

"Oh, that... I never told anybody about it before, but I guess it won't hurt now. She is already gone," reasoned Nina. "As Dr. Kitchen says, and I can vouch for it, she really did hate me, when I took her class. I always argued with her, and she hated me for it. Not that she hated an argument. Not at all, she welcomed any and all challenges to her wide knowledge. She always won those kind of arguments. But what she hated was me telling her there was such a thing as morality, and that things like love were not second-hand emotions, as a by-product of physical needs. She despised my beliefs in a fixed morality, in God, in the need for Jesus to give us new hearts. Her amoral nature refused to accept it."

"Wow," marveled Albert. "How sad."

"Yes. And so, she never failed to give me a low grade, no matter how well I did. She is not the type to deliberately give someone a bad grade, but I thought her biases blinded her to fairness, and she did not even know it. I am no Einstein, but I was sure I deserved better than what I received. And, finally, I had had enough of that. So, I decided to do something about it, and get her to see she was not so impartial and objective about judging some matters as she believed."

X-9 interrupted. "Excuse me, Mrs. McCleer, but while you relate your story of the past to Mr. Zoeniga, I shall continue to gather the things we might find useful, in case we do indeed find reliable transportation outside in that other building, to take us from here.”

“C'mon, robot pal, just wait for me," urged Albert. "Stay and listen to the story. You're almost human, anyway, so you might as well learn to take a break."

"I'd prefer not to be idle, when there is work to be done, actually," X-9 replied.

"Okay, okay," Albert Zoeniga gave in. "I guess you're still pretty much robot, eh?"

"Yes, Sir," X-9 answered, leaving the foyer, pleased to have permission to continue to do his work.

Nina McCleer resumed her tale. "I went to her lab one day, where she almost always spent her spare time- I went after classes and without an appointment, to complain. I completely surprised and shocked her by my unexpected arrival."

"Why, what happened?"

"I found her higher than a kite. She was in such an altered state, she actually was warm and cordial to me. That was a big tip-off to me. She claimed she was okay when I asked her if anything was wrong. But she had a hard time sitting still as I started in on her about my poor grades. She tried to write some notes in a little black book about what I said, always logging everything back then, but she barely knew how to write, in her state! And then she even fell off her chair, too!"

"Yikes. Some professor."

"I helped her up, and as I did so, she dropped her tablet, and I saw on it some plans, a recipe of some type, and above it the label, Space Trip. Under that, it said, How to make yourself take a space trip, even if you never leave the Earth. She must have concocted some kind of mixture to make for herself a new kind of drug, an experimental drug-"

Albert gasped. "You mean, she's the one who invented the Space Trip pills??"

"I"m afraid so," sighed Nina. "And, I am ashamed to admit, I had a hand in it getting into the hands of the street chemists who always love making some new kind of brain scrambler. It is really quite embarrassing to me, to say the least."

Albert frowned. "I... find that hard to understand how you could possibly be involved in something like that, Sis Nina."

"When I got there to my unannounced meeting, I had my grades on my mind, and I never looked about the laboratory, and so I did not even notice she had a Bunsen burner still lit up, sitting down in a sink basin, of all places. And then, when she began to act up, I certainly then focused on Dr. Kitchen, and on how I could keep her steady on her feet. Well, then, she became flushed and hot, so she took off her smock and tossed it to the side- and guess where it landed-”

“Not on the Bunsen burner in the sink!” groaned Albert, picturing it in his mind.

"Suddenly, we heard this great big whoosh! and we looked over to the lab table where she had tossed her smock, and there a big fire blazed away, apparently burning from something in the sink, which I did not yet know she had the Bunsen burner in there- and the fire covered her smock!

"I looked around for an extinguisher, and Dr. Kitchen tried to hold me back. ‘Oh, look, it's so beautiful,’ she was telling me. I shook her free and spied a fire bucket full of sand. I ran to get the sand, and as I did this, suddenly Dr. Kitchen began to scream and warn me not to go near the fire, to get away, because she saw the Devil in the flames. She screamed and screamed, but no one else must have been around anywhere nearby her lab to hear her yells. I tossed the sand on the smoking fire and kept smothering the thing with all the sand I could get from the fire bucket until finally I got the fire snuffed.

"Then Dr. Kitchen railed on me, and called me a meddler, and demanded I leave. But I refused. I would not go and let her alone, not in her whacked out state, not until she became sensible. She tried to push me out the door, and she swung the empty fire bucket at my head. I ducked, and she swung so wildly, she ended up hitting herself in her own head."

Albert's eyes widened. "Even in our wildest parties, back on Earth, when Os and I liked to enjoy alcohol sometimes a little too much, we never got that bad."

"Surprisingly, rather than knocking herself silly, the bump seemed to improve her mind, or maybe the drugs were just wearing off. I hear a Space Trip pill wears off pretty quick. She looked around at the mess in the sink with the burnt smock and the sand, all that she had been responsible for, and she was flabbergasted. She realized she could have been caught in the fire, and burned down the lab, with herself in it, and maybe it would have spread over the campus. She could not believe what she had almost done. And as her mind came back, she glared at me, the one she hated, and she grudgingly thanked me, and admitted I had prevented a disaster of which she would have been the cause. I think she almost wished she had burned to death, rather than have to admit I saved her life. Well, she said, I guess now you can get even with me. You can turn me in to the campus police. They might not believe you, of course, but they also know you would not make up something like that, either.

"I told her I had no desire to get back at her, but I insisted she promise to not go making experimental drugs like that again, menacing everyone's safety. Maybe I should have turned her in, but I knew she always kept her promises, despite her lack of conscience. She figured keeping one's word is the only sensible thing to do, because nature itself teaches that if something is promised, it should be done. She often likened it to when science always gives you the same result you should be getting from a properly done experiment. It is like an agreement nature makes with us, promising to always behave by a set of fixed laws. She reluctantly gave me the promise, and I tore that recipe for making Space Trip pills from her little tablet, and shoved it in my pocket. I know she meant to keep her promise, but why should I leave temptation around, I reasoned. Afterward, I tossed it in the trash as I went back to my dorm, but I guess when I tossed it, the wind threw off my aim, and I missed the trashcan, and so somebody must have found it and done his or her own experimenting with making the Space Trip pill, and, well..." She shook her head and hung it a bit, sad at her part in the ensuing drug problem.

"I see," said Albert. "Well, it's not really your fault. It's not like you wanted that to happen. So, did Dr. Kitchen give you better grades after that?"

"She assured me I would always get near perfect grades from her from then on. She admitted she did not like to do that, it conflicted with her policy about being honest, like nature is, but that she recognized she owed me a favor. I told her I only wanted fair grades, not perfect grades which I didn't earn. I wasn't THAT good, for crying out loud. But I asked her to be less biased, at least, when she looked over my work. So, after that, my grades picked up, not as dramatically as I had expected, unfortunately. I guess she really did give me only the grades I pretty much deserved all that time. But I still managed to graduate, anyway, even though I did not do so well in her class. And she also promised me at that time, ‘If you ever need any help in any matter and you ask me to help you, I will do whatever I can. I guess I owe you one.’ And she meant it, too, as we heard on her personal screen device.”

During her story-telling, X-9 had been coming and going with boxes. He returned with a few more items, which he put down on the floor.

Nina McCleer said, "I found a strange communications device of some sort which George had brought with us. I never knew that he had come here with a secret mission. I am a bit shocked that my husband had a secret. But that doesn't excuse Xavier Bright putting him in the mines!! When I found George's mysterious communicator, I contacted Earth with it and told them my suspicions about George being stuck in the mines. You remember meeting me at the rocketport, and you know that they did not send a representative to meet me at the rocketport, as they had promised, to look into my husband's disappearance. So, I got the church involved in this, protesting and asking about their own missing loved ones. But look what happened to them... I thought we would all be able to force Xavier to release his prisoners that didn't deserve to be at the mines, but... And he has hurt them, transforming them into miners and wiping their identities. I indeed knew back then at the time my husband disappeared that Dr. Kitchen was working at Xavier's R and D Lab, but I did not know how to get here or how to contact her. Coming here to see her was a last hope..."

Albert said, "I am glad she kept a record of all she knew. Without finding this personal screen of hers, you would still be wondering if Mr. McCleer really lived or not. But it's too bad she was not here alive to be of more help, because of Fuzzy."

"And she should have been willing to help me on her own, and not wait for me to come and ask her. If she really wanted to pay me back. But, I guess I should not have expected Dr. Kitchen to volunteer to help on her own.."

"At least now you know about Mr. McCleer."

X-9 said, "Mr. Zoeniga, Mrs. McCleer. we have so many things here in this foyer to sort through, to consider which we can use or not, more than we may need, if only there is a decent vehicle in that building to get us back to Sparkle City. I think I could infiltrate the mines as a robot guard, and do something about Mr. McCleer's situation. We should concentrate on the task at hand, so that when Fuzzy leaves, we will be ready to move. If only we had camo tape...”

“What’s that?” wondered Albert.

“Oh. It’s a bit hush-hush, I guess. I heard things talked about by Gov. Bright, remember?” said X-9.

"When do you calculate Fuzzy will leave for one of his trips to get food from his stash so we can look next door?" asked Nina.

The robot said, "By my calculations, it should be about now... Ah, see? It is finally quiet out there in the snow. No howling. He must have left us for awhile. Let us take advantage of his absence and see what is in that building, and if there is anything in it which can carry these prototypes and such, and us, also, from this place."

"Yes, and may the Lord bless our mission," said Nina McCleer.

"Amen," agreed Albert Zoeniga.

(c) 2012 drk