Danny, Ben and Sarah were sat down waiting for Saturday lunch to arrive.
‘There’s something not right about you today, I can tell Danny,’ said Sarah eyeing Danny suspiciously from across the dinner table.
‘There’s n-no hiding from you, is there?’ laughed Danny self-consciously, trying to cover his embarrassment. There was very little time to do what he was planning and it was going to make him look a complete fool in front of Sarah. He could not possibly explain that he was trying to escape from some mad entity that had forcibly made a home for itself in his head.
‘You’re definitely up to something. Tell me!’ Sarah demanded petulantly. It was hard to say no to her. Danny would have loved to tell her everything but Sarah did not hold truck with any of his, ‘Weirdo stuff,’ as she so delicately called it.
‘You’re not still upset about your dad are you?’ she said quietly.
‘Nah, he can’t help being married to that bloody take-away.’ Danny’s dad owned ‘Five Star’ the areas busiest, and msot successful Chinese take-away.
‘Well, he should’ve come over when he said he would anyway.’
‘I-I know. I’m just a bit out of it today, that’s all.’
‘You’re not fooling me Danny, you’re hiding something.’
She swung her long blonde locks, turned her head away from him disapprovingly and folded her arms.
‘Lovers tiff,’ smiled Ben.
Danny tried to give Sarah a meaningful look that he hoped expressed his innermost tender feelings and his sorrow at excluding her. Then he was on his way. Quickly he wheeled his chair toward the patio doors.
A few seconds later Nathalie entered the dining room, ‘What the hell are you doing Danny?’ she gasped. She couldn't quite bring herself to believe what she was seeing. She had been in the kitchen when she had heard Sarah’s shouts for help. As Nathalie had entered the room Danny had powered his electric wheelchair straight at the patio doors. They viciously failed to smash.
Danny then proceeded to batter down the push-handle exit bar with the only thing available to him - his head. Nathalie, not quite registering the strange scene, turned round to call for Michael. He was however right behind her and she stepped straight into his moving path. Nathalie watched, frozen to the spot, as the tray of hot soup Michael was carrying went flying upwards. Time went into slow motion as the soup made its journey through the air.
Impact! Time snapped back. Nathalie started screaming and tearing off her dripping hot, soup-soaked clothes.
‘Okay Ben,’ shouted Danny as loudly as he could through the noise. ‘Follow me quickly.’
‘Why Danny, what’s happening?’ Ben replied telepathically.
‘We've got one minute to reach the old holly tree. The Frog’s gone and left my head. When we reach the tree the Sapient Ones will blast us out of here. Quick! Before Frog gets back.’
‘I'm not so sure Danny.’
Getting to the Sapient Realm would normally take up to an hour of intense meditation to achieve, even for Danny. Ben knew such instant shortcuts were not advisable - not if you were overly attached to physical survival. Even Ben, who was nonchalant about living at the best of times, did not want to risk leaving this life just yet. There was another way of getting there, as they both knew. Certain trees, which were really outgrowths into this world from the Sapient Realm, could act as spirit portals. They were an inter-dimensional gateway for the soul, a spirit gate. But it was dangerous – strictly for emergency use only.
‘Quick, NOW, there’s no more time. I can’t do it without you,’ grunted Danny out loud. Danny, having smashed the door-release pad made his way out of the patio doors. He wheeled down the wheelchair-ramp and toward the old holly tree. Here, he immediately buried his head in its split trunk.
Meanwhile, a near-naked Nathalie was finally free of her scalding clothes that lay scattered on the soup-soaked floor. Michael, realising that Danny may have hurt himself too, decided to try and get past her. He lurched forward as he slipped on Nathalie’s clothes on the wet floor. The now horizontally travelling, fourteen-stone carer went toppling, knocking heavily into Ben in his wheelchair. Ben had just undone the safety catch on his wheelchair belt when Michael slammed right into him. He sent his tiny body hurtling out the chair, through the patio-doors and out toward the tree. Danny had by now managed to ram himself fast between the two lower portions of the trunk.
‘C’mon Ben, you can do it, touch the tree, TOUCH the TREE,’ Danny screamed telepathically.
With one last effort Ben forced his rebellious, light brown arm upwards and outwards. Just before Ben touched the tree the sky suddenly darkened over into what felt like a premature dusk. A deeply purple, silver-edged, brightly glowing storm-cloud then materialised in a spiral out of nowhere. As the cloud appeared a gut-wrenching mind-numbing, ripping sound echoed through their brain-cells and out again. As Ben made contact with the tree a deadly bolt of sizzling blue-fire shot out of the cloud. It hit the tree with a finger of death-defying mega-watts.
Danny and Ben lit up the sky like a Lord Mayor's firework display. Their minds were whipped to the Sapient Realm in an instant. Stark pain drifted into bliss. Multiple colours swirled and fused like inter-dimensional fire. A musical symphony was formed from the ripping sound. Danny forgot who he was. Ben felt the power of a million suns course through his veins. This is how life should really be, Ben thought to himself. Ben was at home in this intense energy form. Soon, their minds at least, were gone from this coarse world.
Nathalie who had recovered from the first shock waves of intense burning pain glanced upwards to see Michael staring open-mouthed at the tree. He was repeatedly saying the words, 'No way, no way man!' whilst swaying sideways from leg to leg like a robot. The two boy's bodies were still there but they looked slightly charred, steam was rising from their clothes. Their lungs were on auto-pilot, taking small shallow breathes. They were alive, but nobody was home.
Michael's brain was now about one nano-gram heavier. Inside his brain there were now 1.48 nano-grams of very angry Golden Frog. On his way back from the ship Golf had realised that something was seriously wrong. He had borrowed some of Danny's life energy to beam himself out. His return journey was therefore pre-set, like an elastic band, to bounce back to Danny. Unfortunately for Golden Frog, Danny's mind had in the meantime, bounced off. This left him dangerously homeless.
If only he had been a mere fraction of a second earlier! He could have stopped him then. Outside Danny's brain he was powerless - for now. After he had landed Golden Frog had no choice but to head straight for the nearest inhabited brain. He had a survival time of just over a minute when outside a live neural network or a specially constructed gold and diamond nano-glass pyramid box.
Michael hadn't even realised he had a visitor. Frog could kick back and relax, but instead he was worried. The way things were going he was headed for a good desiccation from his ‘masters’ over at the agency. Maybe he should just try and go it alone, ditch the agency altogether, but he had been trying to get home for decades to no avail.
Michael felt suddenly restless and annoyed as though someone else was using his emotions. That’s strange he reflected suddenly. He was sure he had just been thinking with a gruff, half-oriental, half-cockney accent. That was quite a deep thought for Michael. He was not a thoughtless fellow but he was usually pre-occupied, work, family and football filled his days.
Michael now had a Golden Frog mind entity, with a working class Tokyo and East London hybrid accent, to do all his deep thinking for him. This thinking would be provided at a very reasonable cost: one somewhat neglected, overworked human body (answers to the name of Michael) and the unlimited use of the Michael brain. Michael was getting a great deal as far as Golf was concerned. Sure, he might kill his host but why sweat the small stuff?