#62: MonoWheel

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Shelby felt the urge to go to a bookstore. After his adventure in court he felt stressed. He needed some comfort books.

The last time he’d gone to this bookstore he’d had problems. The aisles had been too narrow for his wheelchair. He’d lost his track chair in the attempted mugging and needed another wheel chair anyway...why not do something different? The hell with public sentiment. He stepped out of the box and made some serious changes. He no longer rode in a wheel chair, or a track-chair. He rode on a unicycle.

Elvira had shown him a picture.

“Look what I found.” she’d said “ Isn’t that just the bee’s knees!?”

“I don’t see any knees.” Shelby had replied.

“It’s a figure of speech.” she said. “just lookidit. Isn’t it beautiful.?”

Shelby looked at the picture. It was a cartoon robot with one wheel. “A unicycle robot?”

“YES!” Elvira said. “Gyrostabilized. Variable height control. It has a lot of advantages! ”

“Oh?” In spite of himself he was getting interested. “Oh.... hmmm. Yeah. Loose the robot but keep the mono-wheel design?”

“Well yeah!” Elvira said. “What do you think that I meant?”

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So he had built one. It had been surprisingly easy. He had everything he needed in the shop. It had worked very well.

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Shelby had a little toy bell suspended over the door so that when ever the door opened it rang the bell. Whenever anyone opened the door he heard it.

The bell rang as a young man, on crutches made his way into the shop with some difficulty. Shelby glided to meet him.

“Hello there. Can I help you?” he greeted the young man.

“Uh...I dunno.” The young man said “ Sam said, he’s my boss, and I quote ‘Get ‘cher happy ass down to Shelby’s and let him see about getting rid of them damn crutches.’...so here I am.”

“Sam’s a hoot ain’t he?” Shelby said. “ I worked for him for a while. Still do actually.”

“I think I can fix you right up. I have the standard wheel chairs if you like but I just came up with something else the other week. I’m using it right now. Perhaps you’d care to check it out?” Shelby told him.

Shelby then proceeded to demonstrate the mono-wheel.

“Wow” Josh exclaimed “That’s really something. I like that. I wish I could afford it.”

“Sam sent you down here didn’t he?” Shelby asked him?

“Well yeah...” Josh admitted.

“Then don’t worry about it. Sam sent you here. That’s all I need to know. Now let tell you about about this little necklace I want you to wear......” Shelby continued.

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The next day Sam stumped by Josh’s workstation. “Well! I see you done what I said. Good man. I never seen that one before. Shelby does good work don’t he?”

“He certainly does that “ Josh said “Eh...look Sam. I appreciate it and all but I have no idea how I’m going to pay for this. “

“Did Shelby tell you what it was going to cost you boy?” Sam look at him hard.

“Uh ...no...Shelby wouldn’t talk about price. He said you intended for me to have it.” Josh said..

“Well there you have it.” Sam said “ and we’ll speak no more about it. Now get to work. I ain’t paying you to just stand there and jabber!”

Sam slapped Josh on the shoulder as he stumped by...

”DangNabbit Jesse!” he screamed.

Sam was already shouting at someone else across the floor. “Ain’t you got any more sense than God gave a goose? How many times I have to tell you about....”

“Wow.” Josh thought to himself.

And so it went. Josh really liked his MonoWheel. As luck would have it Josh was also a Van Helsing fan. The Monowheel was just perfect for a ground length coat.

Part of the reason that Josh had used crutches was a nervous disorder. The Neuro-loop didn’t address that. He was still wobbly. He carried a staff to compensate. If he felt that he was going to fall over he propped himself up with the staff. So he looked even MORE like VanHelsing...or maybe Gandalf.

Josh was well pleased.

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The Next Episode will be
#63: BookStore
The Previous Episode was
#61: I find this to be disturbing
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue

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I'm

@everittdmickey
.
I write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
I have books on Amazon too.
Sometimes I also comment on the news

Sometimes it's hard to tell fiction from the news.