Chapter 1

For people my age, sixteen or thereabouts, hi-tech electronic gadgetry is a way of life. To us, there’s no mystery to it, we’re not baffled by it and we don’t regard it with any sense of awe. It just is. Unlike many of the older generation, we don’t feel intimidated by bits, bytes and all the other jargon that goes with using computers in all their forms because we grew up speaking the language.

I hear my Grandpa George talk about when he was a boy back in the thirties and forties. They didn’t have televisions or computers or satellites, and I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like. I mean, what did they do to occupy themselves back then? I even asked him about that once and he gave me this odd look and said something about how I might try thinking outside my own narrow little world. Then he laughed and told me that with a little imagination and a touch of ingenuity, people back then somehow managed to get by. For entertainment, they’d go to the movies or maybe a band concert in the park, and they’d sit around the radio in the evening after a hard day’s work and listen to programs for an hour or so. He rattled off a list of popular radio shows that were his favorites like “Our Miss Brooks”, “Fibber McGee and Molly”, “Nick Carter, Private Eye”, “The Shadow”, “Jack Benny”, and a few others. I’d never heard of any of them.

Anyhow, I bring up the subject of high-tech toys because of something that I somehow got myself involved in last summer after school let out for vacation. I say electronic gear, but I’m not entirely sure what it is to be perfectly honest. I can tell you it didn’t do what it was supposed to do - no, it was way beyond that.

I’m about half way through my junior year now, so it all began about seven months ago. Now, I don’t expect you to believe a word of it. I’m only chronicling this story now because someday I hope to run across someone who will take it seriously and I don’t want any important details to slip through the cracks, and I’m publishing it online so that it’ll be officially documented and time-stamped as my story. Online publishing is a lot less hassle than applying for a copyright. Besides, I hope someone out there who has had a similar experience reads it and gets in touch by e-mail. I’m pretty sure this, or something like this has happened to someone else, but I have no idea who, when or where. I’ll explain why I think that later.

So here goes:

For starters, a few facts about me: My name is Bobby Gardin (pronounced Hardeen). Well, actually my whole name is Juan Alejandro Roberto Gardin, but nobody calls me any of those names except my abuelita, Dad’s mom. My dad was born in Barcelona, Spain and my mom was born in Denver. And yeah, I learned to speak Spanish at my folk’s insistence. I’m in my junior year in high school and I suppose I’m reasonably popular with the other kids. I play football in the fall, do track in the spring, and I’m on a swim team in the summer. Because of all the sports, I’m in pretty good physical condition. Academically, I’m good at math and the sciences, and I hope to study engineering in college, although I’m not sure yet exactly what branch of engineering I’ll wind up in. I think I’m pretty good looking, but maybe that’s just teenage narcissism talking.

We live in a medium-size town on the western side of the Colorado Rockies where Dad is a mining engineer and Mom is an attorney. It’s not like a full-time legal practice and she doesn’t always have regular office hours. Sometimes she goes to her office downtown and sometimes she works from home. I guess by some people’s standards we’re pretty well off, but I’ve never felt like we were anything like stinking rich. But then I suppose wealth is a relative thing.

Anyhow, to get on with the story, a couple of days after school let out for the summer, my friend, Sean O’Grady and I were out cruising the back roads around town in his new pickup. Well it isn’t new, really; his dad had just bought a new Tundra and gave Sean his old 2011 Tacoma. Of course I was green with envy because I was still getting around town on my bike. My folks said we’d discuss buying me some motorized wheels when I turned eighteen and was heading off to college. They don’t believe in spoiling their children. There are two of us by the way, me and my sister who’s a year younger and a big part of this story.

So Sean and I were a couple of miles out of town on Mesa Road when we drove by this run-down old farmhouse. The place was badly in need of paint and a lot of general repair work. There was a hand-painted sign nailed to the gatepost that said:

YARD SALE

EVERYTHING MUST GO!

There were a few sticks of furniture and several boxes scattered around in front of the porch and some people were shuffling around picking through it. I got the impression somebody must’ve died and the family was just trying to unload everything.

I looked over at Sean and said, “Hey, let’s go back and check it out. There might be some good stuff.”

“What? Why would you want to go rummaging through someone else’s old useless crap? It’s just junk, man! Why else do you think they’re trying to sell it?”

“Maybe, but maybe not. C’mon, Sean, we got nothin’ better to do. Hell, it’ll only take five minutes to see what’s there. We might find some long lost thing that’s worth a fortune. You read about that kind of stuff all the time where someone buys a dusty old painting that’s been stored in someone’s attic for decades, and later it turns out it’s an original Renoir or Monet or something.”

“Right! As if!”

“Turn around, Sean. I wanna check it out.”

“Alright, alright! Don’t get your panties all twisted in a knot.”

So Sean does a U-turn and we go back. Of course he was mostly right - it was pretty much all junk; old clothes, cheap furniture, mismatched dishes and flatware, that kind of stuff. I was just about to give up any hope of finding anything useful when I spotted another box up on the porch, so I climbed the three steps to take a look. It was just a bunch of old electronic parts; you know, the kind of stuff that accumulates when you replace old computers, audio and video components with a newer model. It was a tangle of wires, connectors, plugs and three or four remotes. I thought I might be able to use some of it, so I picked up the box and looked for a price tag. I figured they’d probably want something like five bucks for the whole box. There wasn’t a price tag, but there was a printed note taped to the side of box that said, “If you’re interested, come see me.”

That seemed odd, but what the hell. I turned to see if I could spot the owner and damn near stepped on her foot because she was standing right behind me, way inside my personal space.

Startled, I took a step back and said, “Oh, excuse me, ma’am. Are you the one selling this stuff?”

She was this really short, round woman, maybe five-foot nothin’ and probably in her late forties or early fifties. What I first noticed was the enormous boobs that stuck way out in front of her. They were stuffed into a sweatshirt that looked stretched to its max. She wasn’t ugly or anything, but she had kind of weird look about her; kind of mysterious and haunted, if you get my meaning. And her eyes were strange, too. They were really large and such a deep brown that they looked almost black. I guess her dark eyes, her coal-black hair and her very pale skin gave her that haunted look. She was so pale that at first I wondered if she had on theater makeup or something, but I don’t think she did.

So anyhow, she says, “Yes, I’m the one selling this stuff. You want to make me an offer on this box?” She had an odd accent but I couldn’t place it; maybe Eastern European or something.

I looked at the open box, then back at her, trying my best not to stare at her chest. “Um, well I don’t really know how much of it I can use. I just like to tinker with stuff like this, so I just thought I’d kinda wade through it and see what’s here. Would you take five bucks for all of it?”

She got this odd look and smiled up at me. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Uh, Bobby Gardin. Why?”

“I just like to know with whom I’m doing business.” Then she laid the palm of her hand against my face and said, “Well, Bobby Har-deen, what would you say if I told you there might something in this box that’s extremely rare and valuable?”

I jerked by head back because I wasn’t expecting her to touch me. And here’s something weird; her hand was ice-cold even though it was a hot day, and my face felt kinda tingly where she touched it. Honest! I’m not making this up! It was like being touched by something dead! Not that I’ve had a lot of experience with that.

I looked in the box again and couldn’t see anything worth much at all. I shrugged and told her, “I don’t see anything but a bunch of old electronic stuff. What could be so valuable?”

She gets this little hint of a smile on her face and says, “Ah, but it would only be valuable in the hands of the right person, someone who could master its secrets. I wonder if you’re that person, Bobby Har-deen. Something tells me you are.”

Well things were definitely starting to turn really strange, so I figured it was time to leave. I set the box back on the small table and said, “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, ma’am, but I guess I don’t want it all that bad. Thanks anyway.”

I started to step around her and make my escape, but she put her hand on my chest and stopped me. And I mean STOPPED me! It was like walking into something anchored in the ground. And like before, it felt cold and it kind of tingled where she touched me. She laughed and said, “Now Bobby, where’s your spirit of adventure. Tell you what: I can see you’re an intelligent young man with a curious mind. I’ll bet you’re the kind of guy who enjoys fantasizing about lots of things, aren’t you? What if I let you have this box for say, two dollars. Does that seem fair to you?”