Chapter One. The Puzzle

The Puzzle

Derby Joshua Clearwater Ripley sat at his computer. Actually it was his daughter's computer because two of his had recently bit the dust. He has an office full of computers but he only uses one of those actively, and that is a fairly new development for the Ripley family. Derby (Derb as his old friends called him) had worked from home for twenty years until just about one year ago when he bought a downtown building in the thriving megatropolis of Tiny Town, Missouri.

What was on his mind at the moment was the thought from his meditation earlier. It was when he tuned into the particular sound of his daughter thumping down the stairs while she hurried to get ready for school. It meant a lot to Derb right then. That thumping sound. "Will you remember that sound?," he wondered. He tuned in again because she had gotten whatever it was she needed, eye liner or whatnot and had returned to her room, but now the thumping sound of her coming back down reverberated again.

"Yes," he thought "That is a unique sound. No one will quite make that same sound." He listened for his wife and imagined the sound she makes coming down from (Need to look up daughter's name from Zol)'s room. But he didn't get to because he heard the scuffle her slippers make across the carpet.

"Ah," he thought, "the sound of Pam crossing our living room is very familiar too. No one else will ever make that sound except her. I hear her make that sound all the time."

He fell deeply into his meditation because it was the moment he was in and realizing those unique sounds were all there was at those moments. But now those moments had passed and he returned to stillness.

But now the blinking cursor reminded him. "What was it significant about those observations?"

Beauty. Simply beauty. His life was filled with such abundance. Those sounds are music. Those sounds are poetry. Those sounds are gifts. Learning to honor those gifts and growing to a point that he will be content with that poetry, that music. That was the significance.

He had written a story, earlier, called The Children of Zol. In a way he had predicted certain events. For instance, at the beginning of the story, the IPad hadn't been launched. He had "imagined" a personal information system called PIS which was actually implanted in people's brains. At the time smart phones hadn't evolved to the point they are now. By the time you read this dear reader, the most current and amazing technology will have been replaced by something even more amazing. It is moving very fast. But back in the Story of Zol, he integrated the IPad into a quirky chapter. Now he sat contemplating what new ap would soon be invented for the smart phone.

This is really the beginning of the story dear reader. Because it is what happened next that makes the story worth telling. His smart phone brought him the good news. Justin Scoville, from Planetary Publishing had read Zol. "We want to publish it. We think its great. We'll have a car for you next Thursday and you'll fly in our private jet to New York. From there we've chartered you a flight to Hong Kong. Can you make it? We can offer you an advance of $10,000. At our meeting, depending how things go, we can talk about real money."

Derby looked at his watch as he processed this news. His wife sat in her office in the house talking to the phone company about the new problem since Derb's in home office line had been cancelled. It was 10:30 and the meeting he had scheduled is nearly an hour away. He is supposed to be there at 11:30. He should have been in the shower 20 minutes ago and yet he is typing these words now for a reader which is actually just a follicle on an unidentified body part. What to do?

Alas...to be continued.