Ready To Go

Chapter 10

Ready To Go

 

 

They had all gathered at Carl’s home that night. Uncle Rick, Aunt Clara and Peggy had come over for the meeting that Carl had called. Carl’s father had once more been called out of town so was not present.

 

Sitting around the dining room table, they all sat silently waiting for somebody to start talking.

“Well since I asked all of us to come over tonight I guess I better start the meeting. Today some people tried to kidnap Peggy almost in front of her school.” Carl said.

 

“The Homeland Security has no idea who they were. They have some pictures and a mixture of DNA. Even with them almost on the scene they were not able to stop them from getting her into a van and start driving away. It was only when they tried to drug her that her protection was triggered. That worked, but what happens when they grab one of you to uses as a hostage, trying to force us to do what they want?”

 

He waited, hoping that one of the adults had an answer.

 

“Well, Carl, can’t you put one of those wards on each of us?” his Uncle Rick asked.

 

“Maybe, but the problem comes about in setting the safeguards to prevent the wards going off by accident and taking out innocent bystanders. Let say they use some gas to just put you to sleep, and then they use an ambulance to take you away. They have not crossed over the threshold that sets off the ward. But they now have gotten you under their control.”

 

“One thing we can do is to get enough material to prove you are you, so that we can use it to find, or even transport you to a place of safety. Then, we set a ward on you that even you can’t take off.

 

 

They spent the next couple of hours getting the identification items together. First he took a digital picture of each one of them. Then he took the memory card from the camera up to his computer where his reader took the pictures from the card and stored it on his computer. He then printed two copies of each picture.

 

Returning down stairs, he then pricked each of their thumbs, and had each of them put their bloody thumbprint on the back of their picture, and sign their name in full across the blood. Next, he took a clipping of hair and finger nails and taped some on the back of each of their pictures.

 

He folded the pictures and placed them individually in a Ziploc sandwich bag. Turning to Peggy, he handed her one set of identification materials. “Peggy, hide these and put a real big ward on them; I will do the same here in my lab in the basement.”

 

“That way, we each can rescue all the others. Mom, as soon as Dad is home we need to get his picture and have him put his fingerprints on the back side. You get some hair from him; hey!, trim his toe nails.”

“As soon as you get two sets, send one to Peggy and get me the other set.”

 

With that he got up, and went down to his lab. When he entered his first ward at the bottom of the steps he could feel it; then the next one and the next. In the area under the basement he opened his file cabinet and put all the identification material in the bottom drawer.

 

As he started back upstairs he paused to read the Placard on the wall.

 

“You are entering an ultra top secret area as designated by the Department of Homeland Security. Trespassing in this area without authorization is a felony punishable by 20 years in a maximum security prison.”

 

Behind him he heard a beep and a flash of light for each step he took. Even knowing, he could not help but look at where the flashes of lights and beep came from, there was a closed circuit camera recording him. Looking away, as if to hide his face, he found himself facing another set of cameras.

 

These cameras had magic in them. They took pictures of the person on the steps and nothing could block their vision. The pictures were sent automatically to a server in Amity, Missouri. He waved as he continued his trip back upstairs.

 

Carl paused at the top of the stairs; there, on the side wall, was a file holder where his family could put things for his attention. Such as letters, papers or just notes to remind him of things or messages from people. It was empty; it was mainly a backup system for things that came up while he was gone.  This is where his mother would put his father’s identification materials when she got them.

 

When he reached for the doorknob, he froze. He had forgotten the ward protection for the family. He closed his eyes and leaned forward until his head rested against the door. He grabbed his own ward on his chest in his left hand, and held his other hand palm up. Visualization could be very important here. One, two, three and four items appeared in his hand. Straightening up, he continued to the dinner table where the rest of his family waited for him.

 

Peggy was setting there big eyed. “I felt that Carl! What did you do? You did it outside a circle! After all the warnings you have sent to me!”

 

Carl dropped in his chair. “I should not have done that. I’m sorry Peggy, but I didn’t want to tramp back down those steps sending more pictures to that DHS server in Amity! There would have been some agent banging on the door wanting to know what I was up to if I had made two trips down there.”

 

They set there staring at each other for a time.

 

“Yeah, that’s why I rarely go into my own lab at home now days; it’s so invasive. I throw up a temporary circle in my garden when I want to do something new.”

 

“I think of it as just another ward, one that is just a little more annoying than the others.”

 

“I did a full transmutation spell with materialization carrying a protective ward.”

 

Carl brought his right hand to the table and dumped the items he was carrying. He pushed one to his Aunt and Uncle. They were a pair of hands clenched together; engraved on them were the words. “In these protecting hands, my love for you will always abide.” With a twist the hands could be parted, and each person could wear one.

 

The set he pushed to his mother said the same. “I think Dad will not object to wearing his when he reads the words engraved on them.”

 

His mother removed hers and put it on. He watched as his Aunt and Uncle did the same.  He and Peggy stared at each other, feeling the wards as they snapped into place.

 

His Aunt’s and his Uncle’s wards were interconnected! He had not done that! But when both wards snapped into effect an additional element came into played. Their hands reached out for the other and he could see the glow from each join, as their hands touched.

 

Now almost the whole family was protected. If anything happened and they disappeared he could find them. Carl would have bet that his dad had enough things, photographs, hand writings and hair samples laying around that he could use to find him if he was snatched. The problem was that until he got the ward on his person, he could be physically harmed.

 

That night, Carl and his Uncle Rick returned to the factory to do the setup. The workers had finished the refurbishing of the interior. All the conveyors were in place; the only thing missing on the assembly line was the ‘energizer’ for the Power Capsule just before the two conveyers met. There, in the joining of the two roller conveyors, a person would pick up a Power Capsule from one set of rollers, and insert it into the Inverter on the second set of rollers.

 

The Inverter then would be pushed on down the merged set of rollers, where the next person would lock the toggles on the power capsule, turn the power capsule on to the selected setting for that Inverter, then give it another push down the line. 

 

The next person on the line would flip the power cage shut and put butterfly nuts on the anchoring bolts. Then, close the inverter top, and give it another shove.

 

The next person would use a power screw driver to drive the final screws shut. Then it was the tester who would flip the switch on the front and test the voltage coming out from the outlet plug.

 

The labels were put on the outside with the date and serial number on them. Then, the next person boxed the Inverter, and put the final label on the outside of the box. The last person then sealed the box, and set it on a pallet.

 

When the Pallet was full, a person would pick it up with a forklift and moved it to the shipping area.

 

That night he, with the help of his Uncle Rick, assembled the energizer. This was a lead foil blanket draped over the conveyor rollers. A person on one side would switch the finish Power Capsule to off, then gently shove the capsule through the covered energizer, the rollers had a downward slant under the drapes, so that the capsule would continued to roll until it exited the other side.

 

Inside the draped area there were two glowing balls the capsule flowed past. They acted as storage for the magic spell and released the spell as the capsule passed them. They simply instilled the magic that let the energy from a higher dimension leak into the capsules.

 

The energizer was locked to its location any attempt to move it would cancel the spell.

 

It took Carl and his Uncle Rick about two hours to set up the energizer and put the spell in it.

 

He had a hard time sleeping that night. He worried about the attack on Peggy and when the next one would come. He was anxious to see if the factory worked as well as he hoped.

 

____________________________

 

It had taken them almost four full weeks to get the factory setup and organized. For more than a week, they had assembled capsules and then disassembled them. They had done every step of the assembling process with all the employees working each station of the assembling; from loading the conveyor rollers at the supplies area, to actually putting finished product in shipping boxes. The only step that was not actually the same as the real assembly was the lack of the energizer for the capsules. However, the un-energized capsules had been allowed to roll through that stage as if the energizer was in place.

 

All of them, his Uncle Rick, Peggy and himself were sure that the real assembly would work. Their floor supervisor, Luis Gonzales, was confused as to what the final product would do, but he was sure they could put them together with no problems. After working through each station himself he was also sure that this could be a mixed gender assembly with no problems. The final station was a 30 lbs lift to a pallet and most women could lift that little weight with no problem. But he understood that it would be better to have someone with muscle to do that last station.

 

They had ordered a large quantity of different sizes of lift belts, and all workers that had to pick up any weight over 10 lbs were required to be wearing a belt at that time. Uncle Rick had held a meeting with the entire employee crew presents to explain that failure to wear a belt would lead to termination. He did this with a member of the local employment commission present.

 

He further pointed out the cameras all over the building that recorded all action on the work floor at all times. Then he took them to the eating lounge and break area, where he also showed them there were no cameras.

 

He stressed that on their time they had privacy, but on his time it was his time, and privacy did not exist. All workers, male or female started at $12.00 an hour; they would be schedule for 40 hours a week. They would be paid time and half for any time over 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week; except for 15 minutes before the schedule start time and after schedule stopping time. 

 

There would be time on job raises, and positions raises. Luis Gonzales had taken charge his second day on the job and began showing some of the others how to do the work on most of the stations. By the third day, he had paid so much attention to the things around him, that he could handle any station with the same skill level of any of the other workers, if not better.

 

Uncle Rick not being a fool, and knowing that they themselves could not be present all the time, made him Floor Supervisor. His pay went to $15 an hour for a 45 hour week. But only 40 on the clock, the remaining 5 hours could be staggered as he thought needed.

 

Angie Bikinis, their office manager, was paid the same. $15 an hour for 40 hours on the clock, and an additional 5 hours as she thought was needed. Her four office workers were paid the same as the factory workers, $12 an hour.

 

Each member of the work force signed an employment agreement to these conditions, plus acknowledging their awareness of the policy on sexual harassment, racial, national and religious policy. On site, no harassment of a person for his religion or sexual orientation; no solicitation for religious or political purpose was allowed.

 

They continued to practice until the first Monday in February. That was to be their first real and full workday. Carl, his mother, Uncle Rick and Peggy would be there to watch the flow of the work. First, to be sure everything worked and second to see if it could be improved. Luis and Angie were both advised ahead of time that it would be a real work day that Monday. So, they were jittery themselves.

 

Carl and Peggy had gotten excused from school ahead of time. So, bright and early that day they arrived at the factory.  One of the things Carl had implemented was regular breaks in the days work. They had enough workers to let some go for 15 minutes break twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. With two shifts of one hour lunch breaks, helped by slowing the flow of the lines for those two hours.

 

The first thousand units finished had packing slips and shipping papers waiting. They were being sent to the research and development department of every major home construction company in the state, for “testing”.

 

They had invested around $300,000 dollars in property, insurance, and supplies, now it was just a matter of time.

 

There was not one construction company out there that could allow their competition to start exclusively building and selling homes with free electricity supplied. So as soon as they had tested those powered capsule converter units they would have to start buying them and making them the center of their all electric houses.

 

Now it was time to put his nose to the grindstone, the school grindstone. He had been coasting the last month. Now he had to catch up.

 

Their first day had gone so well he had to slap himself a couple of time to be sure it was not a dream. It was not. They had taken it easy and had completed 120 units. They had shipped 98 units. They had not been able to convince Fedhex that they had 120 packages at 30 lbs each to be picked up. If they did not make the required pickup the next day they would contact United Brown Trucks and see if they could send a big truck over to pick up the shipments by pallets.

 

They had a call that day from Home Workers; they had received the brochures Carl’s mother had mailed out. They wanted a couple of the power packages to test. The ones they were going to send had instruction for changing the power setting internally. The warranty on those units would be extended to resetting them at factory if they ceased to work.

 

If they set them up as a limited service facility, it would make them a much more attractive business dealer. They could be resetting the switch on the power capsule to double the power output of the packages.

 

“Uncle Rick, I need an electric car with no power package in it. Those batteries are expensive, and all that regenerative braking a waste of time. I need an all electric car, with disc braking system. Why try to make the car so different from a normal car? All we need is no internal combustion engine and all the accessories for the said engine.”

 

“Oh my god! Not only have you set yourself up as the enemy of all the major power companies but now you going after the gasoline companies!”

“Why have only 20% of the big businesses mad at you when you can have half of them?”

 

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My thanks to TxAgBand59 for his editing and proofing help. But the final results are mine and all criticism should be loaded onto my shoulders.

 

© Virgil Lee Fuqua III and ‘vlfouquet.wordpress’, 2008-2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Vlfouquet and Virgil Lee Fuqua III with appropriate and specific direction to the original contents.