The Ring and The Cavern

The Ring

Frank: "....(aka) Tom Was surfing the web (that's the information highway of the future), with his secret decoder ring, when he broke out in a cold sweat and yelled "OMG"!! He saw that Cracker Jack was NO LONGER putting the secret decoder rings in the boxes as prizes. That means that Frank (Tom) has the only one left. He also found out while surfing on the Anderson blog, that Inganteria Moelusteian wants the ring and has plans to 'inanimate' him to get it.....Thinking fast, Frank (Tom) quickly sold the secret decoder ring to a band of roaming gypsies roaming the Appalachian Mountains. Frank (Tom) then fled to the 'old country' where he will hide in the 'olcooedootdso' caves (known only to a few trusted minions) for the next 1,000 years. At that time he will retrieve the ring from the gypsies grave and again read the Anderson blog to see if it is safe for him to return to the general population."

Carl: “Tom Tom the piper runs 'n Scott had no wipes so some be stunned...”

MS CGS: “MY GOD, MAN, DON'T PAAAANICCC! Sick the Body Parinoid on this ingrate Inganteria. They'll devour principles held dear, then claim the ring was all their idea, after all. (Tom, embrace the Pope that is your true id.)”

Frank: “The ring is in safe hands, it has a 1,000 year curse on it....to be broken only by me....I MUST hide, paranoid cannot kill paranoid....it can only multiply! Inganteria is multiple paranoid.....run...hide...”

MS CGS: “Raiders of the Lost Ring, led by the intrepid but wily Jack, intend to find you and that bejeweled metal circle. You can't hold for a century that freeze in Madame Troussaud's. Besides, we'd miss you, Mr. T. Take pride in your Tomness. If Obama can pass Health Care, you can face this fire!”

Frank: “'tis too late......the present and future has been written...in the 'olcooedootdso' caves, time is not time as you or I know it.....1,000 years is but.............mere weeks.......the fate of the secret decoder cannot and will not be changed.”


The Cavern

She'd grown up in the caverns. She was used to them. The cool velvet blackness did not frighten her. There was some comfort to it. As a constant temperature of 54° surrounded her she let herself adjust. The attack had been swift and sudden she'd never seen it coming. She was walking through the lobby with a newspaper and a cup of coffee when he grabbed her. What happened then was pure instinct. The fresh hot coffee had gone in his face. His hands up came up to protect his eyes but it was too late. The scalding liquid seared his flesh and blistered his eyelids. The rolled newspaper stabbed straight forward into his groin and she was running. But She was already in the mouth of the cave when she heard the first sounds of his pursuit.

The sounds of her feet on the limestone steps, cut into the very mouth of the cave, sounded like thunder in her ears. She took comfort in that, because so would his.

"The ring!," he whispered harshly into her ear as he grabbed her. "I want the ring now..."

That was the only thing he said to her, before she turned and threw scalding liquid into his face. It wouldn't matter now if he could see her not, she thought as she reached the bottom of the grotto. She'd sat still and listened, listened as his footsteps came down those same stairs that she had just descended. It was only when she knew that he had reached the bottom beyond the reach of the light at the entrance that she threw the switch and threw them into utter and total darkness. It was a darkness deeper than any darkness and space because even in the outskirts of space some light from some distant source penetrates the blackness. Here there was none.

It was a funny thing, standing here in the pitch black, remembering how it was as a child. When she and her brothers and sisters have played in the caverns. Even in the dark, they had learned to feel one another. She wasn't sure how they did it. Maybe it was the feeling of the heat of another body passing by and the constant unvarying temperature of the underground environment. But sometime from somewhere she felt as a pastor in a dark. Leaving the uninitiated giving them faint sounds and echoes to follow. She took him to the edge of a drop off and stopped, waiting, silent, breathing as shallowly as she could. Even willing her heart to slow and beat in the control that only a lifetime of training can impart. Her thumb moved to the ring, and spun it on her finger as she waited. If she stood still at the base the stone, column that she was leaning against he would pass her in the dark and in the passing would fall to his death. But would that solve her problem?