The Peabrain's Idea: A Short Story of Urban Magic Read online

  John watched him go, letting out a sigh and cocked his head to one side, looking at Maggie, still holding her hands.

  “I would put that differently,” said John. “We made a different suggestion that replaced itself in your mind,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “Not erased, just replaced.” He shrugged apologetically. “It’s not easy transporting such a clever cargo such a long distance. We wanted to keep you safe.”

  Maggie felt the contents of her stomach flop over and try to rise in her throat. It gave her a weird kind of comfort at the same time. Not dead—can still puke on my shoes, she thought.

  “Cargo?” she squeaked. “Transport?”

  “You know, this is fairly typical when one of the peabrains falls through the illusion. So many questions. It’ll be okay. It takes a few minutes to find your feet, as it were,” he said, shaking his feet, making them dissolve into shimmering bubbles that came back together again into a different kind of shoe. This time it was a small boot with a little side buckle.

  “Peabrain’s not exactly a very nice thing to say,” said Maggie, pulling her hands away. The joy from dancing around the room was slipping away.

  “My apologies. I’ve waited too long to explain. Optimal time is about two minutes, tops. Then your brain goes off in search of darker answers. We’re well over that time limit. Let me start by saying, peabrain is a name that Rodney and the others came up with a million years ago. Literally. We don’t really count time and see it as more fluid.” He saw how anxious she was.

  “But I can make an exception for you if you make me a promise. Can you do that?” he asked, tucking his chin.

  Maggie nodded her head, wondering at the possibilities of what he was about to say.

  “Don’t worry, it’s simple. Remember, from this day forward, there is no actual space and time. It’s just a tool we,” he said, pointing back and forth between himself and Maggie, “use to tell a better story. Okay?”

  “There is no space or time,” she repeated.

  “Good job, peabrain. You see, we noticed your brain is locked into a view of everything that’s so limiting you don’t try using even a tenth of what you could to do all sorts of marvelous things. You get it? You use the equivalent of a small, green pea. It’s an affectionate term.”

  “Not where I come from,” said Maggie, taking a small leap as she stepped back, feeling the vibration run through her body, lifting her mood.

  “I see you’ve discovered how to recalibrate. It’s a wonderful thing. Yes, I’ve noticed that the peabrains have a system of greater than, less than. Changes over time too. A peabrain overheard one of us talking and took the phrase and ran with it. Before we knew it, it was part of your language but not the way we intended.”

  Maggie gave him an arched eyebrow that was half question, half disbelief. John let out a deep sigh. “We tried to show you what you were capable of but then we inadvertently helped you figure out how to split an atom and make things go boom. Not much more than that. You didn’t seem to get that there were far more possibilities. That’s when the counsel decided as a group to cut it out, you know, leave you alone. At least till we could repair the ship. It’s been taking forever.”

  “Ship?”

  “Yes, what you like to call a planet. Planet Earth,” said John, tapping her hand gently, a smile spreading across his face, as he shut his eyes and breathed in deeply. “One of our better ship designs, even now, a million years later. Our ships were created to be living, breathing beings in their own right.”

  He opened his eyes and touched the tips of his fingers one by one, drawing forth bubbles that turned into images. First, whales in the ocean, complete with sounds and the smell of a sea spray, then antelopes running across the tundra, the sound of thundering hooves, the feel of warm sunlight, and then a playground in Maggie’s neighborhood, the children running and yelling in delight and the smell of her neighbor’s lilac bush.

  Maggie reached out to touch them but her hand passed right through, not disturbing the images.

  “We’re the cargo…” she said, her mouth staying open in the shape of a perfect ‘o’. She knew it was true even if she couldn’t say how she knew. A bubble emerged from her mouth and took on a memory of herself as a little girl talking to what she had thought was an imaginary friend. At least, that’s what her mother eventually convinced her was the truth.

  “There, being able to make the bubbles is another remembrance, like the shimmer. That’s what we call it when you use just another little piece of your peabrain,” he said, holding up his thumb and forefinger so they were almost touching, as he squinted at them.

  “But you look like me. Aren’t you a peabrain?” she asked.

  “Oh, this old thing,” he said, patting himself all over. “This is what we come together as to show you. It’s less disturbing than balls of light. We can come together as anything though, with a few exceptions. There are rules, even here. Why Rodney always chooses to look so down-trodden is beyond me.”

  “Really,” said Maggie, agreeing with more emphasis than she intended. She kept her lips pressed together in case a bubble escaped, showing her scowling at a homeless person.

  “You know, I’ll share a little secret with you. You’ve come this far, could be fun.” He leaned in, putting his hand up to the side of his face like he didn’t want anyone else to hear him, even though Maggie couldn’t see anyone else around them. “You choose the role you want up there,” he said, pointing above him. He stood back, holding out his hands, nodding vigorously.

  “Above? We’re below? This is below?” she asked, spreading out her arms. “I knew it!”

  “Oh, yes, more like inside. But I think you may have missed my point,” he said.

  Maggie was still looking up, trying to imagine the streets in her neighborhood.

  “Okay, too much information. That happens,” said John, waving an arm toward the great engine making more of it appear, stretching out for miles.

  “You’re like a showman,” said Maggie. He nodded vigorously, smiling as a tall, black top hat appeared on his head, emerging out of bubbles.

  “This is the engine room, I think you’d call it. It’s how we steer the ship. Well, how we would if we didn’t break down. Got caught in the sun’s orbit about, what, a million and a half years ago? Was quite a sticky wicket. Killed off a few dinosaurs. That was an embarrassment. Lost so much money off the top that had to be explained. Thank goodness the peabrains kept evolving and boy, could you repopulate! Unexpected bonus!” he said, smiling so hard parts of his face broke into bubbles, zipping around and coming back together, leaving him with a moustache, waxed at the tips.

  “Can I do that?” she asked, reaching out to touch his moustache. “Make things just appear? Something really good must have happened to you a couple hundred years ago.”

  He wiggled it for her, getting a giggle out of her, surprising herself.

  “With practice,” he said. “Much longer story. Let’s start with just the background for now. Where you are now, this place, it’s like an ant hill of sorts, or what you think of as an ant hill. Lots of layers, all filled with all sorts of wonderful things. I think they’re wonderful, anyway. Where you are, is in the belly of the ship.”

  A thought occurred to Maggie and she peered up at the streams of intersecting light above her. “Chicago sits above the engine room of a ship we call Earth.” She began laughing, harder, bending over and putting her mittened hands on her knees, gulping in air.

  “I think you call this hysterical laughter,” he said, waving his arms around in a circle, encircling Maggie in light. The light pulsed around her, pushing at her from both inside and out, a little like the massage chairs at Happy Nails. She stood back up and stretched out her arms, watching the light play over them, changing colors, illuminating.

  “Like sunshine,” whispered Maggie, her eyes widening.

  “Exactly,” said John, “Same kind of energy but without the piercing element. That was a little overdon
e, if you ask me.”

  Maggie kept her arms out in front of her as she gently shook her head, watching the light swirl around her face. “So, I’ll try again,” she said, clearing her throat, willing herself not to break into giggles or wonder why she had never asked her aunt if she aware she was crazy. “I’m cargo on a ship?”

  “Peabrain blowing, right?” asked John.

  “I’m using a little more of the pea, aren’t I? Are there other peabrains down here?” she asked.

  “Oh, no. We put you all back in your respective stables up there, eventually. No need to keep you underfoot. Wouldn’t want to see any of you get hurt. Besides, our time is taken up with trying to fix the navigation, get things moving again, pull enough energy together so we can get out of this orbit, at last,” he said, ticking things off.

  “There’s a ‘we’?” Maggie peered around and at first didn’t see anyone.

  “Oh yes,” he said, moving his arms around again. It looked like he was casting a spell. “Let yourself believe there’s a ‘we’,” said John. “Not something you work at, as much as you allow. Try breathing deeper. That seems to loosen up a peabrain.”

  Maggie slowly took in a deep breath, repeating softly, “There is a ‘we’. There is a ‘we’.”

  Slowly the room filled with small, glowing golden bubbles till everything was encased in them. They hung there for a moment as Maggie kept breathing in long, deep breaths, saying, “There is a ‘we’.”

  The bubbles shimmered more and more and more until they moved, whirling around the room, making the braided knitted ties hanging from her hat and her hair dance in the air. She looked down and saw that she was floating just above the ground.

  She gently came back down as the bubbles took shape all around her, forming a milling crowd of people all busy tending to something.

  “Have they been here all along?” she asked, reaching out to touch someone’s arm.

  “Hello,” said a small woman in a mini skirt with teased hair. She looked down at Maggie’s hand on her arm and raised her eyebrows till Maggie let her go. She nodded and dissolved into bubbles, reappearing across the room.

  “Yes, we take up most of the space down here, particularly around the engines. Up there,” he said, pointing, “there are more rules, even for us. We have to take a form and we make a point to spread out more. Being a dog is a big favorite. Can be a nuisance sometimes, causes reports of hallucinations among the peabrains. Easier on Halloween, our idea, of course. Sorry about your aunt.”

  “She’s not crazy,” said Maggie, feeling like all the marbles in her head were rolling into place.

  “Yes, often without context it can cause a glitch in a peabrain. Fortunately, you are an outlier, an exception. Somewhere in that peabrain you remember a thing or two from before you were loaded onto this ship, and were just willing enough to roll with what you saw. Fascinating,” he said, peering at her head.

  Maggie wondered if he could see inside at the inner workings of her brain.

  “Well, I wear a larger hat size,” she said, trying to make a joke. It was true, she did wear a large man’s hat size, even if no one could tell.

  “Bigger brain.”

  “Not that far off,” said John.

  “Wait a minute,” said Maggie. “If we’re cargo and this is just a ship, where are we from? Where are we going? What are we doing up there?”

  “Big questions, big stuff,” said John, as a virtual screen appeared in front of him, sliding between them, hanging there.

  He tapped his fingers in the air as if he were typing, making colored bubble appear and disappear.

  “I’m going back already, aren’t I,” said Maggie. She was always good at knowing when someone was about to try and get rid of her. It paid to be able to read a room in her family.

  “Well, for now,” said John. “Once a peabrain gets past a certain point we find the awakening only grows. No going back, too dangerous. We’ll be in touch. It’ll be a necessity, you’ll see,” he said, as he typed faster.

  “Wait! I have questions,” said Maggie, as the light dimmed for a moment and then came back and she found herself sitting on the Brown Line train, heading toward downtown. She looked down at the phone in her lap and saw the time. 7:35. She was on the earlier time, not the booger train. “There is no space and time,” she whispered, feeling the remnants of the hum still traveling throughout her body.

  A text appeared on the phone. ‘More adventures to follow,’ it said as a shimmering bubble formed on the screen, slowly floating away. No one else seemed to notice.

  Maggie held the phone close to her and whispered with a smile, “More adventures to follow. Maybe.” Hope was going to be an even harder concept for her to grab and hold onto. “Peabrain,” she said, smiling, as another bubble formed on her lips and floated away.

  Martha’s Notes

  The Peabrain’s Idea – A Short Story:

  Written January 22, 2017

  Thank you for not only picking up this short story, but for reading it all the way to the end, and NOW you are reading this as well. I am very grateful for each and every reader. It’s a great feeling for any author. I’m considering turning The Peabrain’s Idea into a full-blown series! Let me know what you think – or keep reading and that will give this peabrain a clue – and the books will follow, every four to six weeks!

  The series, just like the Wallis Jones series, will also be available in Kindle Unlimited.

  I like the idea of a world filled with magic and even better, that there’s something wonderful for each of us to discover inside. That’s going to be Maggie Potter’s adventure.

  I’m also a big fan of super heroes and DC Comics, in particular. Frankly, the first time I took my grown son, the wonderful Louie, to Comicon and realized he could name any costumed character I choked up. I felt like a good mother. Write to me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to share with you pics of me with a trio of Batgirls or the seven-foot-tall esthetician for the Star Ship Enterprise, complete with tall bleached-blonde bouffant hairdo. Let me know if you’re digging the short story too, and if you want to see a full novel. You can even suggest ideas like what kind of magic should be in the world.

  In the meantime, if you need something more to write and you like the idea of good people coming together to find out just how strong they really are (and you’re willing to try a thriller), check out the Wallis Jones series. Different kind of magic – all generated by a tough, loving family hanging together in the middle of a conspiracy.

  I’ll wait to hear from all of you and then get to writing what’s turning out to be an inspiring, fun little tale of wonder and magic and possibilities. More peabrained adventures to follow.

  If you enjoyed The Peabrain’s Idea, please consider leaving a good review at Amazon or Goodreads. Your kind words and encouragement help any author.

  If you want to help with the end of this series or with future series, please consider becoming part of the Advance Team. Join the Facebook Group and let me know you’re interested.

  There’s more – you can sign up for my author newsletter and find out about other series – like the Wallis Jones series, be the first to hear about publishing dates, giveaways, and other exciting news! You can also hang out with me on Facebook or Twitter and see what the main characters are pinning at Pinterest plus a few tools of the spy trade. More pages will be coming for the peabrain, Maggie Potter.

  I am the author of eight books, lots of short stories and my newest work, The Peabrain’s Idea is a short story that may become a series.

  I’ve also written a weekly, nationally-syndicated column on world affairs and life that has run on such political hotspots as The Moderate Voice.com and Politicus.com. My work has run regularly in such publications as The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune and Newsweek.

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