Thinks and Things

Introduction



                    Everything that ever existed, once started out as just a thought. For this world to last and keep evolving, people need to keep thinking. Problem is, original thoughts are running out quickly.

                    One of the last original thoughts was of a flying machine. For a thought to become a thing, one needs to truly believe in it. Ever believed in something that everyone else around you criticizes and repeatedly tells you is impossible?

                    Failing is part of succeeding. Without failure, there wouldn't be any light. Light bulbs, that is.  When attempting the impossible, you will fail numerous times. But then your machine flies. Your phone call is answered. Your light bulb lights. Your television  broadcasts news from around the globe. Your remote control turns the volume up. You beat the computer at solitaire. You're on-line.

                    Meet Thinksandthings. He's old, bulky, seven feet tall, and elusive. That's all the Fixer knows about him. The Fixer has been sent to track him done and fix some of the thinks he turned into things. Thinksandthings takes thoughts (or what he calls “thinks”) from people and turns them into things. But not with a wave of a wand. Turning thoughts into things can be instant or it can be a slow process, take several, to hundreds of years. Thinksandthings helps out a little here and there, gets the ball rolling, so to speak.

                    Once upon a time, a 13-year-old male stepped into an arcade. The type of arcade that's meant only for those ages eighteen and up. He inserted a coin into one of the machines. The boy cranked the handle, watched a lady dance a jig and teasingly, start to take off her top. The faster he cranked, the faster the pictures flipped and the faster she would take off her clothes. He cranked and cranked but the top stayed on. Right before the last several dozen pictures were about to be flipped, the manager of the arcade came back from the restroom. He found the boy and escorted him out to the sidewalk. He kept the boy's coin and the paper girl kept her shirt on.

                    During one of his many travels, Thinksandthings happened to be in close proximity to the young boy that same night. As the boy was in the midst of falling asleep, he thought it would be really boss if there was a machine that could show you pictures of naked girls instantly.  No more cranking and turning of a handle just to see one girl naked. Instead it would take just one click of a button to see a different naked girl. Click the button again and see a different naked girl. Yeah, it could happen, the boy thought just a moment before he fell asleep.

                    And that is how the Internet was invented.

                    As I've said before, original thoughts are running out. To keep the world running at its fast pace, Thinksandthings scours the globe, finding people who truly believe in something and makes it real. Only problem now, is that Thinksandthings can't find very many original thinks to turn into things.          However, a number of people truly believe in unoriginal things but that will only keep the world going for a short while. Those tend to be thoughts of children and in some cases, mental patients.

                    Small children since they are truly free thinkers. Granted, children are often baby-sat by the television and godfathered by mass media. However, dreaming and thinking begins far before babies can even focus their eyes on their mothers.

                    First, I will tell you why the Fixer fixes.

                    Then, our story will begin within a story. It begins in a well known, old, much loved children's tale about cannibalism, Hansel and Gretel.













The Fixer



                    The man who owns the red beat up red truck wiped his mustache of coffee in a diner somewhere in Minnesota. He didn't take off his long, black trench coat when his food arrived. He didn't take off his cowboy hat either. A toolbox sat next to his feet, under the table.

                    Half a dozen straws were in his cup of water, as the man was simply fascinated by the straw dispenser. The waitresses kept their eye on him but soon came to the conclusion that perhaps he's a foreigner.

                    They would be right, about him being a foreigner. They could not, however, even come close to guessing how many miles he's traveled to Minnesota.

                    The waitress walks over with his bill, she leans over to see what he's writing in his notebook. He stops writing, “Thank you, that will be all,” he looks at the name tag pinned to her apron, “Charlene.”

                    “And what do they call you?” she retorted.

                    “They call me the Fixer,” the man stated. She gives him a look, as if he were the one who was being rude, and walks away. He finishes writing and closes the notebook.



                    He fixes the things that Thinksandthings (against better judgment) leaves behind on his trail. However, the trial has no rhyme or reason. Thinksandthings hears the thoughts of people all over the world, depending on who is the loudest. If it's a good thought, he turns it into a thing. If not, he moves on. Every once and a while though, a not so good think becomes a thing. The Fixer fixes things. He can't fix thinks. He can use tools of persuasion to try to change people's thinking, which can help with fixing things.

                    Thinksandthings doesn't really like it when the Fixer needs to be called in. While Thinksandthings towers over seven feet tall, it still makes him feel small and inadequate when someone

has to undo his work.

                    You may be thinking, “Why doesn't Thinksandthings listen in on the Fixer's thoughts so the Fixer can't find him?” Well, you see, Thinksandthings can only hear the thoughts of humans.

         

                    “I don't get this,” said a boy with unkempt mop of hair and big, round chestnut brown eyes to his grandma. Arlan dropped his star constellations book to the  floor and placed the telescope on the top of the stack of textbooks and get well cards lying beside his bed. He grabbed an old sweater sitting at the foot of his bed that once belong to his grandfather and pulled it over his head.

                    “Here let me show you what the constellation looks like again. It's called Ursula Major,” Grandma flipped through the book, “Keep your eye out for a falling star and wish on it.”

                    Arlan sighed. “If the moon is God's thumbnail, then maybe falling stars are his tears,” lamented the boy.

                    She sat down on the edge of his bed and pointed out his window, “I can see the Dipper out tonight. Can you spot it?”

                    The boy gazed out the window and past the top of the evergreens, as Grandma walked across the room to place the book back on the book shelf, but it fell. She picked it back up again and placed it more carefully.

                    Arlan thought someone should make book shelves with guard rails, like with beds for the very young and the very old.

                    “I don't see it. It isn't there,” he stated plainly.

                    “It's right there, I'll show you,” Grandma went to the window but couldn't find the Dipper now. “That's strange, I saw it just a moment ago. Oh, well. I'm tired, my brain is tired, and I bet you're tired as well. Maybe you'll feel better in the morning. Goodnight, sweetie.”

                    “'Night, Grandma,” the boy rolled over and shut his eyes.



                    What happens when one believes or thinks in the negative is that things cannot grow. They cease to exist. Above all else, this is why the Fixer fixes things. Most thinks are good thinks. Some thinks happen too soon and some thinks don't function properly in this world. When something disappears because of a think, only a more powerful think can override it.

                    Thinks need to align in an orderly fashion at a constant speed. Can't have a television remote before inventing the television. Can't have refrigerators without ice boxes first. But as of right now, thinks have been slowing down and so has the world. Not quite enough to notice yet. But people will notice if the Big Dipper has suddenly disappeared from the skies.

                    If there isn't a sufficient amount of thinks in one day, one second of time is added somewhere during the night. People will eventually adjust their clocks by a few minutes at the end of the year, but what will happen when a whole entire day just inexplicably occurs? Or if the sun sits in the same spot in the sky for hours, because the earth has come to a stop?

                     Fixing thinks and things wasn't in the Fixer's original job description. Every year, the job requires more and more time. He'd see one or two clients per calendar year and now it's morphed into several months of work.

                    The Fixer assesses the situation and then decides whether or not it needs fixing (“Fixed”), if things should stay the way they are (“As Is”), or if the repairing is still in progress (“Pending”).

                    There isn't but one way to follow and track down Thinksandthings. You have to follow the road where the dandelions grow. When thinks become things, dandelions bloom. The Fixer's disguise is that of a weed killer salesman. He receives orders from people who are overburden with dandelions. He keeps track of his clients closely on a map and tries to predict Thinksandthings's next move.

                    There's no weed killer that can kill this type of dandelion. Looks like any other ordinary dandelion but can't be destroyed by anything you can get at a store. The Fixer has the only thing that can kill these type of dandelions. The Fixer's business is done largely by word of mouth by people who had the same sort of problem (as in Thinksandthings paid them a visit or traveled down their street once).

                    The Fixer can easily talk into and out of any situation. He comes to people in time of need-whether they need a bottle of weed killer or if an undead relative has risen from the grave for a visit. But the Fixer can only fix things. He can't replace things that get lost.

                    The Dipper hasn't disappeared from the skies yet, but it's fading. It's hard to determine exactly how much time the Fixer has to find Thinksandthings and whoever thought the Big Dipper doesn't exist and hopefully, stop or reverse the process. It is certain, however, that not much time to do all of that is left. The Fixer heard of Thinksandthings strength and isn't quite sure he's the man for the job. The Boss is completely assured that he is, and well, no argues with The Boss.

                    Once the Big Dipper disappears, what else may be next?





The Witch



                    It's hazardous when people fall in love with paper people, live out their digital fantasies, or succumb to a scary book. Books and other forms of entertainment offer escapism-literally.

                    Children don't choose their fantasies freely like the grown-ups do. Instead of believing oneself is flying on a broomstick, they believe that the candy they just eaten will make them blow up like balloon. Instead of believing that wardrobes, houses, and tollbooths can take you to lands that don't exist, they will believe something or someone is hiding in their wardrobe or house. Or tollbooth too, if they happened to have one of those in the basement.

                    When I say that it's hazardous when people turn books into things, I mean that the Fixer has to chase down flying monkeys, find Captain Hook in the middle of one of the seven seas, and locate confused male-romance-novel-cover-models in the middle of shopping malls across America.

                    Fear is a powerful emotion but it's not the most powerful. The Fixer has met the Witch before and she tricked him then. The Fixer believes every person has a bit of good inside of them, sometimes it needs a little light or water to grow. However, the witch is not a person. She is a thing. Since she is a thing, she has no emotions. She runs on pure instinct and that instinct tells her to hunt.

                    The Fixer met the Witch not long after Hansel and Gretel's father told them a story he made up to lull them to sleep.  Unfortunately, the father neglected to tell them that it wasn't a true story. Thinksandthings took that think and thus, became a true story.

                    In the story, two children ignore warnings from their father to not wander into the dark woods without permission. The children sneak off, get lost, and come across a house made of candy. A very nasty witch owns that house. She locks them up in a cage and feeds them all the cakes, candy, and cookies they could ever possibly desire in a lifetime. Everyday, the witch (who had really bad eye sight) poked through the cage, grabbed the children's fingers to monitor their progress. The witch's plan all along was to fatten the children up and cook them in an oven for a special meal.

                    Fortunately, these two children were quick thinkers for they took the bone of a chicken and tricked the witch into thinking it was Hansel's finger. The children also trick the witch into climbing into an oven and they were able to escape.

                    But what most versions of this story will not tell you that the witch never died. The Fixer came along soon after the children fled and fixed the situation before she succumbed to a fiery death.

                    After all this time, the witch has lived in the thoughts of children. Until a librarian mistakenly placed a copy of the tale in the non-fiction section at Billy Godfrey's school.



                    The Witch was lying lazily on her green and pink pastel striped couch, fanning herself with an index card of a lemon spritz cookie recipe. She had been baking all day and the house needed cooling off. But not until she got her fix.

                    She heard footsteps outside, crunching the fallen autumn foliage that the melting snow revealed. She woke up and rubbed her eyes. She had fallen asleep with her contacts still in. She sat up and listened closely to the footsteps now, they were tiny.

                    Flour stained her bubblegum pink blouse but she didn't care. She took a quick look in the hallway mirror. Messy red hair in need of a hair straightener, stained clothes, pink eyes with raccoon rings. Lovely. The footsteps were getting gradually louder. Too late to do anything with you, she sighed at her twin.

                    She could envision a tiny finger reaching out to ring the doorbell.

                    She opened the door and was pleased to find a plump boy, about age eight, standing on her doormat, “If you lived here, you'd be home now.”

                    “Hi, there,” she greeted him. He didn't respond.  Perhaps he had been wondering these dark, scary woods for a while. Probably starved. Disoriented. Delicious.

                    “Are you lost, little boy?” she asked. He nodded. “Are you hungry?” she grabbed his plump little hand and laughed. He took a step back. She didn't let him go.

                    “I was just about to pull out a batch of cookies from the oven. Want some?”

                    She opened the door a little wider with her other free hand, the boy peered in. Down the hallway, he saw mountains and hills and rivers of goodies. Chocolate truffles, frosted sugar cookies, petit fours, peanut brittle, perfect squares of caramels, powdered lemon bars, and peanut butter fudge.

He saw dipped white chocolate pretzels, a big pot of chocolate boiling on the stove, bowls of cookie dough, pitchers of frothy orange creme and raspberry lemonade, and a German chocolate cake ready to be frosted.

                    Enticed, the boy stepped in eagerly and threw out whatever caution he had to the wind, the squirrels, and to the trees.

                    “Help yourself,” the Witch said as the boy reached for a gingerbread man cookie.



                    The Witch's house was nearly impossible to find. It was off the map and in the middle of the woods.

                    Luckily, the Fixer noticed mutant dandelions growing near his next client's location.

                    Not so luckily, the half eaten goodies (the coffee flavored biscotti was left untouched) and a few bones on a cookie sheet was all that remained in the house. The Fixer didn't bother to close the peppermint door when he left.

                    The Fixer bent down on one knew to examine a dandelion. This particular dandelion was not the normal kind. Normal dandelions don't grow together, intertwined in one big stalk.

                    When mutant dandelions appear, that means two things must have happened. One, something is missing and needs to be found before repairing can be done. Second, something irreversible has happened. Sadly, in this case, it was death. Death cannot be undone.

                    Now, sometimes a think may cause a previously dead person to return to the earth but they can never take on their previous form. The dead person in question may come back in the form of a ghost, zombie, or angel. It depends on the type of think.

                    The Fixer has long since mastered the technique of detaching himself from the death of any of his clients. Everything that starts must come to an end. Although, nothing really truly “ends.”

                    After doing what he can, the Fixer puts his ax, hammer, and a box of nails back into his tool box and takes out his logbook. He sharpens a graphing pencil with a knife. He sits down on a freshly cut tree stump and begins to write.







Name: Billy Godfrey

Location: Thief River Falls

Think: The Witch from Hansel and Gretel

Thing: The witch and her house far off in the woods of Thief River Falls.



Status:          pending          



Comments: Unfortunately, the boy has expired. The Witch, as of today, has not been located. House is boarded up, securely.