CHAPTER 9 – THE CHOSEN ONE

Dr. Fenway Benway looked up from his antique collection of syringes and old rubber tubes and noted the time. Time to make rounds he realized and headed for the clinic door. At the washing station he scrubbed his hands, as was his habit of long years, glancing only briefly at the discolored congenital birth mark on his wrist. In the starched white hall waited Doctor Bodkin Adams and a gaggle of newly whitewashed medical students tightly clutching their tin plated notebooks in girlish anticipation of a wondrous array of exotic diseases, freaky malformations, eviscerations, and perhaps a cadaver or two. The students fell silent as was the custom when in the presence of the famous Dr. Benway, Emeritus Professor of Rhinoplasty, Psychiatric Urology, and Aerospace Medicine, of Department of Barbers and Surgeons, University of Sonogno, and holder of many noted awards and certificates.

“Have you washed your hands?” asked Benway to the gaggle of students.

“Yes,” they responded in unison, “and our feet also.”

Dr. Benway chuckled on that one. He had made the nurses, who were all Sisters in the Order, almost fall down laughing, when he had asked the students last week if they had washed their feet only to see them all run to the washing stations in confusion and embarrassment at their lapse in hospital hygiene. It was a mistake the students vowed never to make again. It had been Benway’ joke.

“Aghhhmm, Dr. Benway?” Mother Eboli, head of the nursing staff interrupted Dr. Benway’s moment of mirth and immediately cast a dark shadow across the happy gaggle.

“Ah, Mother, how nice to see you,” said the good Doctor. It was a big black fib and both Mother Nascent Eboli, Order of the Bloody Stain of Saint Hymenos the Benighted - Mothers of Earth Druids (reformed), and the Doctor knew it. So did the entire staff, in fact almost everyone in the Capital knew of their long running feud about the theory of germs and cooties.

“I see the young ones have scrubbed their hands and feet again,” she intoned in a voice so full of gravel and bile it could have well been the bottom of the Bay of Fumis when the tide was out. “I don’t think there will be any cootie infections today … Pookies,” Eboli said drilling into Benway’s eyes and piercing the optic nerve with an icy stare that made Benway flinch.

Her comment stung Benway deeply. Her insistence that germs and cooties caused infections had largely been revealed as hokum by the scientific community, but old practices die hard, especially where The Order was concerned. Dr. Benway, like most forward thinking Barbers and Surgeons had adopted the more trendy and far more au currant ‘Theory of Positive Thinking’ as the basis of sound medicine. After all this was Second Life and the famous Dr. McAfee had eliminated viruses in Second Life many years ago.

The sting to Benway came not from their philosophical differences, but from her nickname for him – Pookies. It was a lovers secret name, and it pierced him like a seven inch Quincke grande’ needle. She never failed to remind him of that stolen night of mad passion and lust on the floor of the convent chapel, near the potted palm, and under the stone gaze of the Saints resplendent, when they had given way to their animal desires and all too avatar needs. Their sweaty bodies entwined, sensuously writhing in pleasure and pain as only a trained physician and a moral disciplinarian can do. For hours they copulated, conjugated, concatenated and parsed their sexual expressions. Then as Benway lay spent, exhausted, and unconscious on the stone floor a dark form appeared from the Nook of Saint Golphus. Mother Superior Adel Flossberg of the Order of the Bloody Stain of Saint Hymenos the Benighted - Mothers of Earth Druids (reformed) looked down and stared hotly at the entwined couple. “Rise Sister,” she said soto voce but still loud enough to be heard by all the saints, especially the ones in Clissa. The Mother Superior quickly wrapped Sister Eboli in a warm burlap comforter embroidered with little bunnies and snakes chasing their tails and together they exited the chapel. The choir, waiting silently until this time, began to sing. Benway awoke as if from a dream to the sounds of a mighty organ and a thousand voices

“Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Nam regnat nunc omnipotens Deus.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!"

To the young Benway it was a moral lapse and something that caused shame these twenty years or so later, but to the Order it was a cruel and coldly calculated stratagem to change the virtual world. Nine Months after Benway’s moral failing, to the second, Sister Nascent Eboli, gave birth to a child. A child that bore the mark. The mark of the Chosen One.

The Limo slowed to a stop in the first handicapped parking space available in front of The Times building. Whitney Llanfair lowered the protective shield that prevented champagne corks from striking the driver, turned and said. “Sindy, Sindy Blazer. Were here!”

Sindy, startled by the chauffer’s shout, said, “Thanks Whitney. You must be exhausted. I am.”

Llanfair bounded out of the drivers seat and opened the door for Sindy as she stepped from the warm cocoon of the long black limousine with gold wall tires and into the cold winter afternoon.

“Will you be able to drive me to the opening of the exhibition tonight?” Sindy asked Llanfair.

“Sure,” said Senator Hyrum Funsta’s chauffeur, occasional lover, and Sindy’s most valuable source of social tidbits and scandal. “How about seven?” asked Llanfair.

Sindy thought, “No, make it 7:10, I want to be fashionably late.”

“Good.” Replied Llanfair “That will give me time to wash off the blood and gore on this door, replace the smashed grill and bumper, touch up the paint, change the juice, fuel up at the feed and grain store, and catch a quick nap.”

They both burst out laughing.

As Llanfair drove off down Beast Street, Sindy turned and gazed upward at the mighty Sonogno Times building. She remembered how proud she had been on her first day reporting to work so long ago. ‘Cub reporter’ the job offer had read. And to her astonishment the offer had been signed by Ruprecht Murdstone himself, the President of Lupine News, publisher of The Times, Dictat of the Lupine Network youtube outlet, and now owner of the rival paper – the Walled Street Drag. She cherished that job offer letter and had carefully pasted it into a new notebook onto which she carefully penned a title ‘My Life at The Times, by Sindy Blazer’ Now some six weeks later she had completed seven pages of carefully worded de-exaggeration and understatement. She could never write the truth for the truth was simply too insane and wild for anyone to believe. No she had chosen to de-exaggerate her story.

Gazing up at the Art Décolleté Tower of The Times building she noted that the light was on in her corner office on the 19th floor. Odd she thought. She was very cognizant of Global Warming and always turned off the lights when she left the office. Then to her surprise the light went off. Must be the copy boy, Jimmy Whatshisname, cleaning up she reasoned. Then as she prepared to mount the grand stair leading to the enormous zinc doors emblazoned with the famous ‘double cross’ symbol of the Murdstone publishing empire, she carefully read the motto that all at the times had dedicated their lives. Chiseled in Capibara Marble above the door in Times Roman Type read “IF IT'S PRINTED, IT MUST BE TRUE.”

Sindy stopped at the Strawbucks counter and ordered a Vented Grande Napachino with a twist of sorrow and a bagel with smears of creamed spinach. Then she proceeded to the elevator greasy bag in hand.

The magnificently polished elevator door opened with a swoosh and there stood the last real unscripted elevator operator in the entire Capital. Mr. Bubbs nodded to Sindy and asked “19th floor Ms. Blazer?” Sindy nodded affirmatively in reply. Mr. Bubbs grasped the enormous leaver, grunted, released the braking latches, pulled the lever forward, and called out in a very loud voice “Start ‘em up boys!” Far above on the 22d floor the whine of ferrits chasing a small white mouse could be heard as the elevator lurched into action. “Hard day?” asked the kind and knowing Mr. Bubbs.

“Yeah, a really hard day,” replied Sindy, “real hard.” Sindy watched as the elevator avatar wrote down the floor numbers on a slate board as they passed by.

“It’s a sad day for Journalism,” commented the usually taciturn Mr. Bubbs. “Tragic, awful…”

“Yes,” replied Sindy. “I heard that Murdsone was going to live.”

“Very sad, very sad,” he replied.

At floor ten, the archive floor, the elevator paused and copy boy Jimmy Whatshisname, entered his arms laden with back issues, post it notes, yellow copy paper, and a cheap Mont Blanc knock-off pen in his white crumpled shirt pocket. There was an ugly ink stain, still fresh, at the bottom of his pocket protector. “golly gee. hi miss sindy,” he said in lower case. always averting his eyes from direct eye contact as a sign of submission and respect. Sindy kind of liked the kid, he reminded her of herself when she was really stupid and empty headed from too much cough syrup.

“19th?” asked Mr. Bubbs.

Jimmy did not reply he was always stuck speechless in the presence of his idol, the lovely Sindy Blazer. He almost dragged up the courage to say, ‘lovely cheongsam. i love the way the slit accentuates your tanned hips and luscious breast and slender tummy which i really want to cover in cream cheese and then sprinkle crackers on you and lay you down on my big brown bed in my tiny apartment and start munching and chewing until i find that spot, you know the special spot, that makes young female avatars begin to sing and sway in that way that drives me mad with….’ but he thought better and kept his mouth shut.

Sindy thought to herself, 'I love the way that white wrinkled shirt accentuates his skinny arms and manly shoulders, and the way his slender tummy would contract and heave if I were to cover it in cream cheese and then sprinkle crackers on him and lay him down on my big brown bed in my tiny apartment and start munching …’

“19th Floor” announced Mr Bubbs thrusting forward the great lever, smashing down the dog latches, and barking out “Shut em down boys.”

The whine from above slowly receeded as the ferrets caught the mouse and began tearing it limb from tail. The door swooshed open and the tiny space was filled with the cacophony of typewriters clacking, Macs rebooting, and little furry things scurrying about trying to keep underfoot as the important work of The Times proceeded.

Sindy entered her office with dread. As she turned on the light she was greeted with a mess. Her desk was overturned, he chair lay sideways its seat stuffing spilling out at the sides from deep cuts and splits. Her papers lay strewn all over the floor in complete confusion. “Ah,” she said to no one in particular, “home sweet home. Just as I left it.”

Puling up her chair and righting her desk, Sindy fished inside the kapok of the seat cushion and found her schedule of appointments for the day. Lets see, she thought, it was almost four o’clock and besides the opening of the exhibition tonight what else do I need to get done before we proof and dummy this rag. She loved newspaper talk more than she loved ‘dirty’ talk. After the exhibition at 7:00 she had two options, go home to sleep, or attend the Great Debate Series at the HOTO Forum at 9:30. While sleep sounded like a good idea, the Great Debate Series always generated good copy and she was a little behind on her quota.

Rummaging through the chaotic pile of papers in the “corner of notices” where she kept flyers, admonitions, lowdown, memo’s and poop sheets she found the Great Debate Series broadsheet. Ah, here it is she thought. Debate 13: “What Variety Of Apple Tempted Eve In the Garden – Pippin or Golden Delicious” was the topic. A hot topic indeed. Controversy was certain, perhaps even protests and perhaps a lovely riot. The Devotees of the Book of What were bound to create a ruckus as was that perennial gourmand trouble maker Marie Calendar. Sindy decided to go right after the exhibition gala.

But first she had to get some research completed before the exhibition opening. “Boy!” she shouted.

It was not really necessary to shout because Johnny Whatshisname was always standing in her open doorway.
“yes,” said Johnny.

“Run down to the archive and get me a copy of Lindsey’ Warwick’s Short History Of Second Life and find that article about Monforte IV that I read in the times a few weeks ago” she shouted because all reporters shouted at a time like this. “Oh yes, get me the Sunday supplement, you know Feeble Magazine from last month. I want to read that article about the archeological discovery that’s gonna be shown at tonight’s exhibition.

Sindy leaned back in her tattered chair and began to think about the exhibition opening. It was going to be a society extravaganza and blue blood happening. All the famous nobs and hoi polloi were certain to be there and where the blue bloods were there was bound to be grist for the old mill of scandal, backbiting, disgrace, and lots of words, paragraphs, indentations, ellipses and innuendo.

Now thought Sindy, what to wear. She picked up the phone and quickly punched in a number she knew by heart.

“Oscar” she said, “it’s me Sindy. I need something to knock ‘em dead at the exhibition opening tonight.” Sindy looked down at her feet, she was going to need shoes and a bag, perhaps a tiara, after all she was a reporter for The Times and that made her press royalty. “Yes, yes, that will do just fine. How much? 400 lindens, sure there’s room on my Red Ink Card.” she said. “Ill be there at 6. Ciao, ciao bella” she said as she made smooching noises and then hung up.

Ha, she thought, I’ll show that Prissy Plumblossom, that Melody Panscake-Fernmot, that Ashley Plantegent-Plantegent – I’ll be their envy, ill show them. The childhood insults of the snooty Clique of Bluebloods from the days at the Convent run School for Wayward Girls still festered as an open wound in Sindy’s psyche. She was going to wear a stunning new gown from Oscar de la Rental. She was going to show them good!