The Missile 1
Copyright© 2025 by Zen Master
Chapter 2: Getting Organized
About three weeks into September, I got an invitation to a USPRA workshop or seminar over in Gadsden on Saturday in a couple of weeks. Actually, I got two of them. One came to the house, and I could tell from the way my name was formatted that they got my name and address from the state’s driver license records.
The other one went to the school, and that one was clearly sent to all the Weapons that the Attalla school district knew about. Even in this day and age, the PRA couldn’t combine those two lists and throw out all the double entries! Were they going to thank me for showing up on one of those invites, and then turn around and yell at me the next day for not showing up on the other one? Maybe I could get a job with the PRA as a programmer, straightening out their databases!
Mom & Dad both thought I should go, just not promise them anything. Mom had to go anyway, since she wasn’t going to let me take the car over to Gadsden, get lost, and then get in an accident when I didn’t even know where I was. That was silly. The seminar was being hosted at Gadsden High School. I’d been there lots of times for baseball games. Still, sure. Maybe she’ll let me drive on the way back, right?
When I got there I showed both of my invites at the registration table. The guy behind it mumbled something but it was obvious that it wasn’t his problem. Good advertisement for your office people, guys!
Once I was checked in, and my Mom noted as the responsible adult, I was directed to a classroom they were using for the meetings. It had ten or so other people my age. We just sat around talking until an adult came in, just like we would at our own schools.
“Good morning, everyone! I’m Jeff Ostwald, and I’m a Weapon. Or a Portal Diver, if you prefer. Or, as a lot of people are saying, I’m a Hunter. You young men and women are too, and the PRA asked me to give you a sort of briefing about what it’s like, what the PRA does, and what your country needs you to do when you’re ready for it. Could each of you take turns standing where you are and introducing yourselves? Your name, where you live, what weapon you’ve been given, if you’ve ever been inside a Gate yet, and your plans as a Hunter?”
There were nine others besides me. When it got to my turn I introduced myself, then when I got to the end I made a production of pulling my voice-recorder out of my pocket and pressing play. I’d done it for some of my friends, but this was the first time I’d played it for strangers.
“Hello, I’m Sam McGowan. I’ve explained this so many times that I got sick of it and eventually recorded it for those seven people in Mongolia who haven’t heard it yet. On August first of this year, the Portal System gave a bunch of fifteen-year-olds our own weapons. I guess we were supposed to look at them so we knew what weapons we were getting and then touch them to make them disappear until we went into a Portal, but I was still asleep. Apparently I hit mine when I rolled over. In my sleep. I got all the effects including being sore everywhere I’d ever been injured, but since my eyes were closed while I was sleeping, I have no idea what my weapon is supposed to be. That makes it really awkward trying to train to use it.” <click>
After everyone introduced themselves, we had a guy and a girl with swords, a guy with sword and shield, a male spear, a female fire mage, a male and a female rogue with twin knives, a really cute female healer, a really beefy guy with twin axes, and a high school junior who had no idea what his weapon was.
Mr. Ostwald had us all gather into a circle for a discussion, saying he didn’t want a formal lecture. He wanted a discussion of what people wanted and what they could do for each other. He started by saying that, while some areas didn’t have good demographics, other areas did. It appeared that, in those places where good reliable numbers were available, on August first right on one out of every hundred fifteen-year-olds got weapons. All over the world.
Alabama had about 70 thousand fifteen-year-olds, so the state should have 700 new fifteen-year-old weapons. The PRA, realizing that they were behind the 8-ball on this, had organized a series of seminars around the state for us ‘kids’. He was nice enough to use his fingers to make quotes when he said that.
Some counties were huge. Jefferson had more than a half-million people in it, and they were expected to include about 80 or 90 of us. Some counties had such low populations that they would be surprised to find even one.
Etowah County should have around 25 to 30 of us. Every one that the state PRA had been able to locate in Etowah County had been invited to this conference to meet and greet and, maybe, get some help before we all got ourselves killed. He himself had come down from Fort Payne for this. There had been two sessions set up for us, and we should all be here for either this morning session or the one at 1.
I pulled out both of my invitations, saying “Sir, I don’t know if this helps or hurts, but I got two different invites. The one that has my name as it is on my license said to be here at 8 AM. The one that has my name as it is on my school records said to be here at 1 PM.” while I held them out.
As he reached for them he said “Call me Jeff, all of you. This is a discussion, not a lecture. Thanks. Oh, yeah, you are two different people here, with two different USPRA ID numbers. One of you is supposed to be here right now. The other one is supposed to be here this afternoon. Sure, I’ll see what I can do about that. Unless you want to come back this afternoon?”
“Will I get anything from it?”
“Free drinks and snacks. You’ll meet more Weapons your age. Maybe learn something different.”
“My Mom drove me here. I’ll ask if we can stay.”
The healer, a cute girl named Cindy, asked “Jeff, once I learned I was a Weapon I’ve been trying to learn everything I can. The library has a subscription to Hunter Weekly, and a couple of months ago they had an article on a Canadian they call the Guide. He takes groups like us on their first trip in a Portal and teaches them what they need to stay alive. Does the PRA have anything like that?”
“Right now, I’m pretty sure that the answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Officially we have not, before this, done anything to help new Weapons. There are many Hunters like the Guide who do that on their own, but there hasn’t been any official attempt at it. I suspect that having these conferences and calling people like me in to talk to you is a baby step in that direction. Making that...” He pointed at her “ ... a formal recommendation, at least for you ‘children’...” He put his fingers up in quotes for that word, too. “ ... is probably going to be my main input from this. Society doesn’t want to legitimize you ‘children’ going in those Gates at all, but the alternative is that you go ahead and do it behind us ‘adults’ backs, right? With a lot of you not coming back, we all expect. So, no, we don’t do it but I’m pretty sure that the PRA will have to set up something like that before long. What other questions do you have?”
Bob (the sword) asked “What’s your weapon? How many portals have you been in? What can you tell us about them?”
Jeff held his hand out and a spear, like maybe 12 feet long, popped into it. Even from several feet away it looked razor-sharp. We all gave him a collective “Whoa!” and leaned back some in our chairs. He stood up and said “Let’s all go somewhere with a bit more room and I’ll show you how to use a spear.”
While we were walking to a corner of the room with some space Jeff said “When I got my spear I have to admit I really wasn’t that impressed. What can you do with a spear? Turns out, you can do a lot.”
He had us stay back behind him and give him some room. He held the spear out in front of him, saying “To start with, it’s what they call a ‘ranged weapon’. I can strike at opponents ten feet away from me. If all they have is claws, teeth, and maybe a short sword, I can kill them when they are ten feet away from me and they can’t do anything about it.”
Then he did something like pulling himself up a rope, and suddenly he was holding it just behind the head. “It’s also a close-in weapon, if someone gets past it the first time you poke it, or if you poked something but it had a buddy come up while you were busy. You do have to keep track of the whole thing, though. Your teammates do, too.”
Then he pushed it out, and turned it sideways and started moving it around as he talked. “You can use it like a staff if you want. It’s a barrier, it’s a long pole to push things away with, it’s a test-pole to poke things to see if they are safe or not.”
Then he put it away, and out popped a club and a machete. “Just about anything you see in one of the Portals can be saved in your inventory. If you kill something that has its own weapon, it may be magic and special. Most of them aren’t but some are. The rest of them are just weapons, but it’s real good common sense to keep a couple of them in your inventory. What if I’m fighting a pair of poison-spitting King Ants, and one of them bites my spear and pulls it out of my hands? I’d be helpless if I didn’t keep a couple of spares in my inventory. I took this machete off an Orc in a Green. I actually have three of them, and any time we go into a Green we all collect as many as we can find. The System will buy them from us for one silver each, so it’s free money. Just remember to keep a couple as holdout weapons.”
“The club came from the Boss on another Green, one with Goblins. Sometimes you just want to take a baseball bat to something, ya know? When that happens, well, I just happen to have this baseball bat with me.”
The guy who had said he had a spear was black. He said “I was wondering if the weapon we got was based on our race. Did I get my spear because I’m black?”
Jeff turned to him REAL fast and said “That’s bullshit!” Then he stopped, cocked his head a little, and said “You know, you’re probably right. A lot of people get weapons associated with their ethnic group. I’m part Cherokee, and, yeah, my people used spears and bows and arrows for our entire known history. The European-based Weapons get swords and stuff, several of us native Americans got spears or bows and arrows. I know one full-blooded Sioux who had been a sniper in the Marines, but guns don’t work in there so he got a bow and arrows. Maybe it’s because he’s Indian, but maybe because that’s the closest thing to his sniper rifle.”
He nodded again. “You’re probably right. I even know of an Australian native Weapon who got a boomerang. You can see videos on YouTube. He’s pretty good, he really can hit things hidden behind trees and stuff. Still, you need to set the racism aside. My people got treated a lot worse than yours did. Some of my people still hate the white man, but what’s done is done. None of those people are still alive now, and the People are treated just like any other people. As for you, as long as you think of yourself as ‘black’ everyone else will see you as ‘black’. If you can start thinking of yourself as just another person, that’s what others will see you as. Just another person.”
We talked all morning. Different weapons, different kinds of magic, different kinds of staff-wielding Mages, what we’d find in the different colored Portals, anything on our minds. How he would want us formed up with just about every group of Weapons we could think of. When he ran out of things to say about 11 I was determined to stay for the afternoon session. Accepting ‘No, we have to go home now’ from my Mom wasn’t going to happen.
Mom did want to go home, there was no telling what my sister was up to, but I was absolutely determined to stay. I may end up going in one of these Gates some day, and I need all the info I can get on them. Besides, it was only a half-hour drive from our home in ‘upper’ Attalla. She could go home until I called her, if she wanted. She didn’t put up too much of a fight, as she knew it as well as I did. She took me to a sub shop for lunch, then dropped me off again at Gadsden High for the afternoon session.
The afternoon talk was the same as the morning one, but with different kids in it. Jeff and I returned, but aside from us there were 11 new kids there. I was pretty sure I’d seen one of them before, at a baseball game, but I didn’t know his name. Jeff made us all introduce ourselves, and he smiled when I pulled out my voice recorder again. Other than the faces, it was the same as the morning session.
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