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BookStore

I had taken to riding my unicycle exclusively. I was also wearing a trench coat because of the cool weather. The bottom hem of the coat brushed the ground as I glided along. No one gave me a second glance. No one knew that my legs were gone, that I was supposed to be disabled.

I could get used to this.

I finally took some time off. Sam had been swamping me with business but I one day I just closed the door, put a gone fishing sign in the window and rolled down the street to visit the nearby bookstore. One of it’s main attractions, other than its location, was that it had a coffee shop inside. The next large book store, much less one with a coffee shop, was over an hours bus ride across town. I wasn’t particularly fond of riding public transit, so I didn’t even consider it.

“Oops, sorry about that. Excuse me. Sorry, sorry.” I listened sadly, as another person in a wheel chair repeatedly apologized as he bumped people, shelves and tables. I could relate. That had been me a month ago.

Elvira was livid. “Why do the micro-encephalitic, sub-sapient, neurological degenerate off spring of coelenterates, put stuff in the middle of the aisles?”

She ranted. “Isn’t that where people are supposed to walk?”

“Such harsh words. You mean the managers?” I asked innocently, well aware that a manager was within hearing distance. “Oh I’m sure it wasn’t their fault. It was probably Corporate. That’s always the excuse. Still, I didn’t think this was a chain store. It does make things difficult doesn’t it?”

I spoke loud enough for other shoppers to hear too. The other patrons of the bookstore had initially thought it was cute that I, an old, white bearded man in a long trench coat had an animatronic dragon puppet sitting on my shoulder. It had to be a puppet. There were no such things as dragons, were there? I suppose we looked a little bit like the Pirates of the Caribbean or something.

They thought it a bit less cute that we were discussing the condition of the bookstore. Some of the book buyers had thought it even more adorable, but indefinably alarming when the puppet hovered about like a humming bird. They weren’t sure what to think when it said things like that though.

On the one hand, stuff in the Isles did makes it hard to walk.

On the other hand... well they weren’t sure. Stores always did that...everywhere. The store management seemed to take great pleasure in making the shopping experience as difficult and unpleasant as possible.

On the gripping hand the shoppers found thinking for themselves to be a frightening new concept. It flew in the face of all their schooling and what they were told by the public media. No one had told them what to think about this problem.

It was so confusing.

The book store managers weren’t really certain what most of the words that what they thought was puppet was using meant, but they were pretty sure that they weren’t very complimentary....to them. Perhaps it was a form of reverse psychology. They hadn’t decided whether to be flattered or offended. No one had told them what to think either.

It was so confusing.

“Ooops. I’m so sorry.” The poor man said again, as the corner of his wheel chair caught an in-aisle book display. The results weren’t pretty. “Here, let me help pick that up.” Elvira and I proceeded to help him clean up the mess.

“That’s perfectly okay.” A store manager had appeared and said through clenched teeth. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Joseph, clean this mess up and be quick about it.” The store manage said to one of the employees.

“Do you mind if I buy you a cup of coffee?” I asked the guy in the wheelchair. The man turned toward me and automatically looked up, over my head. I had retracted my unicycle’s mono-strut. I was at his eye level. He quickly adjusted his gaze to look at me eye to eye and said in disgust. “ Yes. Please. I need a cup of coffee.”

“Coming right up then.” I said. “Would you like for me to push or would you rather propel by hand?”

“Thank you for asking.” The vet replied. He was obviously a young disabled vet. I’d seen enough of them, young ones and old ones to recognize who they were. “I’d normally want to do it myself but I’ve knocked over enough stuff today haven’t I? If you would please I’d be grateful.”

I extended the suspension strut to normal height so that I could hold onto the chair handles easily. He stared at me in fascination. I rolled around behind him and grasped the push handles. As we made our way precariously back to the coffee shop, Elvira landed on the arm rest of the wheelchair. To the young vet’s credit he didn’t jump,... much.

“I’m going to make you an offer you might not want to refuse.” I said. “I’m going to let you train my dragon.”

Elvira smiled.

The vet did jump then. Elvira had a disturbingly large number of teeth. Fangs a lot.

I pushed the wheel chair to an empty table in the coffee shop, stopped and removed two of the chairs. Then we settled in. I didn’t need a chair either. I’d lowered the suspension strut and locked it to the proper height. I was eye to eye with my table mate and as steady as if I’d been sitting on a rock. The unicycle didn’t so much as quiver.

We ordered drinks. I ordered a large cup of coffee and so did he. We wanted coffee, just coffee, and we wanted it black. That seemed to confuse the servers. From their expressions they might have actually been shocked. They certainly didn’t approve. Apparently most of their customers drank some combination of chocolate, cream, lots of sugar, and caramel, with a bare touch of coffee. I saw no reason to do that. When I was drinking coffee that’s what I wanted, not a liquid candy bar. The young vet concurred.

“You know, I could really use a book.” I said. “That was why I came here tonight, after all. I need me some comfort reads! I’ve had a stressful week. How about you?”

“Yes sir. Sucks to be a reader with nothing new to read doesn’t it?” The young man said, getting into the swing of things.

“Yeah. Doesn’t it just?” I replied” but the fools who run this place have erected barriers just to make things difficult.”

“Oh my, oh my.” Elvira said. She hovered between the two of us. “How bout if I were to do the browsing for you? This old fart made me to be a kind of a flying seeing eye dog,.... with hands. That way you two lard asses won’t have to risk the racks.”

Meanwhile Elvira and I were communicating at the speed of thought. We could do that since we both lived in the same brain. We devised a PLAN..then implemented it.

“You can do that?” The young man asked Elvira, forgetting that he was speaking to a puppet, or so he thought.

“She certainly can.” I said and removed a plain gold colored necklace from one of my pockets. I’d decided to carry a few of them with me for just this type of occasion.

Marketing.

The young man looked at the necklace chain. He must have had damn good vision. I wonder if he might have been a pilot..or a sniper. He saw the monogram right away.

“This is the controller. You have guest privileges. Kinda cute huh?” I asked him. “I dreamed it up myself.”

“YOU dreamed it up?” Elvira playfully nagged me mind to mind.

“Dragon Force?” The Vet said.

“Marketing.” I shrugged “Gotta call it something. This gimmick will help. The simplest thing that it can do is let you link into the loop as an observer. Put the chain over your head and you can see out of the eyes of my little dragon here. The necklace will sting when you first put it on. Don’t worry about that. It’s taking a DNA sample to identify you as an authorized user.”

“Are you ready for some BOOKS?” I asked in my best football announcer voice.

Elvira was just gone. She’d flown across the room near the ceiling. She had covered the shortest distance to the Science Fiction area, ignoring the aisles. I just knew that the young feller was a SF reader. SF was a vaccination against future shock.

Anyone else would have freaked out.

Upon her arrival to the stacks Elvira hovered and slowly drifted up and down the aisles. She scanned the racks raising and lowering from the bottom to the top shelf. She had started at the “A’s” so she reached Alan Dean Foster right away then stopped. The bookstore had a new title that I hadn’t seen, but then I hadn’t got out much lately for the last decade or more. I had read the Tar Aiym Krang back in the day and I liked it. The new book, to me, was entitled “For Love of Mother-Not”, hmm. Interesting. A small flying dragon graced the cover. Elvira removed the book, using her front paws like hands, opened it and scanned the introduction..

“That looks interesting.” me and the Vet were viewing the book through Elvira’s eyes. “What do you think? Worth a shot?”

“Oh yeah” He said “I’m a big Larry Niven fan. I read the Tar Aiym Krang, too. I’ve been following Pip and Flinx.”

“Me too.” I agreed “I hope they have more copies, I want one for myself.”

Elvira closed the book then turned to leave, only to find herself face to face with a teen age boy.

“Cool.” the boy said “Pip is reading the Common Wealth Series.“

“Just checking for accuracy” Elvira said to the boy. “Nothing to be concerned about.”

She flew back to the coffee shop carrying the book. The boy was left standing flatfooted with my mouth hanging open.

“That worked out well.” I said. “I think we have a solution to your problem.”

“Huh? he said.

“Of course we do.” Elvira replied.

After that Elvira flew up and down the racks, high and low, looking for something interesting. On occasion we would see something through here eyes and tell her. She would stop, hover, remove the book and read a bit.

More than once a customer turned a corner to see the dragon hovering like a big humming bird or a bee, reading a book. Often as not the older ones would turn tail and run. It might not have helped that Elvira had taken to wearing reading glasses, big black, heavy rimmed cat eye style glasses. She thought it made her look more “librarian” and less threatening..

Not.

The kids were unaffected. They thought it was a hoot.

Meanwhile, the vet and I were sitting in the Coffee Shop, drinking gallons of coffee while discussing books.

We were having a marvelous time. Neither one of us got out much. Neither one of us had been with people much due to our injuries. This was good for the both of us.

It was a good system. It certainly beat trying to navigate the narrow stacks in a wheelchair. I had commandeered an adjacent table. The table was soon stacked high with books.

We each took sacks of books home that day.

“Keep the necklace.” I told him. “It’ll show you what I have to offer. It has a virtual catalogue and ‘stuff’. Consider it to be a sales pamphlet. If you see something you want come on down. There’s an interactive map that will bring you right to my door. If you decide against it, well you have a necklace.”

On the way back to the apartment I muttered. “It looks like I have another product line to make”.

“What would that be?” Elvira asked as if she already didn’t know.

“Dragons” I said. “I’ve been considering it for some time. Tele-operated service robots. Eyes, ears and hands for the disabled. Might as well be in the shape of small dragons, like you. It’s getting to be my trademark”

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To Be Continued

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I hope you are enjoying this
Yarn

.
Perhaps you might also enjoy
Other Books
that I have written.
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AND
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Follow me @everittdmickey
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That's my Blog
in which I pontificate on Technology,
Philosophy, Religion,Politics, Economics
and occasionally
ShantyBoats
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In my Blog I write about,
and hopefully engage my readers in discussions about,
the possible lifestyles that we will encounter after
TEOTWAWKI happens.
.
It WILL happen, one way or another,
probably something in between.
One thing is for sure and for certain though,
the world will NOT remain the same.
.
So Come on Down!
Sit a spell.
I got the Coffee on.

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The Hobo Picture is a Public Domain image from
Samantha at the Worlds Fair
by Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
Illustrated by
Baron C. De Grimm published by
Funk and Wagnall's Company 1893
Unless noted
All other Illustrations are from
Pixabay

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