Prince Saga Story Three

Jerome Benton hurriedly trotted down the dark back alley, frequently and nervously looking back over his shoulder. His footsteps echoed through the deserted alley way, and the glimmer of moonlight presented the exit into the street, which he was pressing towards. He could hear the shuffle of feet behind him, closing in, “Damn,” his face was twisted in fear, “Double damn!” He knocked a garbage can over between him and his pursuers and broke in to a sprint towards the street. He made it. The side walk was dark and deserted, but he knew his car was not far away. He turned to see the men who had been chasing him slip and struggle over the garbage he had spilled into their path. He raised his arms in the air and laughed, “Kiss my whole ass you dirty crackers!” He turned to see three black vans emerge from a corner and stop, blocking him from his car. Four more of the same make of van raced from the other direction and blocked him from there. The doors to the vans opened and men in black suits poured out. “Naw!” He cried and jumped up and down in place in a fit, “Naw naw naw.”

Jerome was beat to the ground with expandable batons.

……………………………………………………………………..

In a dimly lit spacious chamber, a humming noise drummed, and a raised disc on the floor oozed a faint bluish glow. Morris Day led a cloaked figure to the disc and helped the figure step up on it. Morris said, “Sorry, hopefully this will be very brief.”

The mysterious cloaked figure nodded in agreement.

“Okay,” Morris revealed a remote in his hand and flexed, about to press a button when the figure clasped Morris’ wrist. Morris sighed, “Don’t worry. The energy in the field will keep you sustained. You will not need, nor desire food or water.”

Slowly the figure released the grip. Morris pressed the button on the remote and the bluish glow expanded to the ceiling, wrapping a cylindrical glowing energy field around the cloaked figure. Morris said, “You will be safe here.”

The figure removed the hood from his head. It was Prince. He attempted a smile, but it was painfully evident he felt a great sorrow. “Are you sure this is necessary?”

Morris said, “Unfortunately, it’s the only way.”

Prince inspected his new confinement, “It’s a cage, Morris. You are putting me in a cage.”

Morris shrugged, “Not really, well… try to remember it’s for your protection. So, it’s not really a cage… like how you would… Just think of it as an artificial cage.”

Prince smiled, “Artificial cage. I like that.”

“Yeah,” Morris said. “Who knows, maybe you can write a song about it.”

………………………………………………………………………………………….

I had become a mess. I was, in the very least, clinically agoraphobic. I realized it now more than ever as I sat in my car, palms sweaty, heart beating rapidly, feeling nauseas, dizzy, light headed. I was panting heavily, and I am sure I was on my way to passing out the very moment before I opened the door and stumbled back out into my garage. My two previous adventures with Prince had left me terrified to go into public. After the first incident, I was sure it was a coincidence which would never happen to me again. Now, after the second incident had happened, I learned I could be sucked in to another one of the undesirable adventures when in any public place. I was terrified of stepping out. I was unwilling to risk it happening again. My wife had taken the kids to live with her mother, “If you think you can fight your way back out of this, Jeff, call me. But it’s not fair to the kids to live like this, not fair to them, or me.”

I understood. I was a wreck. I didn’t really want to be around me either.

I pushed my way back in to the house and sat at the kitchen table, doing my best to slow my breathing down, “It’s okay. It’s okay. I am back in the house, safe. No one here but me. Safe.”

I walked to the living room, sat in my recliner, relaxed, and fell asleep.

When I awoke, I screamed. Someone was sitting across from me in my home. It was Morris Day. My eyes were close to popping from my head, “What the hell are you doing here? What do you want?”

Morris lifted his palms to me and tried to calm me, “Hey, it’s alright. I knocked, no one answered so I let myself in; I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course I mind! What’s wrong with you? I don’t let people just walk in my house uninvited, especially you. Especially you because I know you want me do some crazy ass shit which is going to put me in to a mental institution. I can’t do whatever it is you have come here for. So, now, please… leave.”

“At least hear me out.”

“No…. no… no no no no no no. You… you don’t get to be heard out. No. You get out. You walk back out my door and… oh, my heart, my chest,” I clutched my chest and leaned over in pain.

Morris took me by the shoulders, “Are you alright, man?”

“You have got to be kidding me,” I grunted. “You can’t be serious. Do I look okay?”

“Well, your color is good. Is it gas?”

I hissed, “Gas? Gas? Hell no it ain’t gas. It’s a panic attack. I have a lot of them now, since the two times I have saved Prince.”

“Okay, can I get you anything, a glass of water?”

“You can get me a ‘get the hell out of my house.’ That’s what you can get me.”

Morris stood and nodded, “Yeah. Alright. So you have me all figured out. Right? There is trouble again, and you have a pretty good track record now. It’s really something to be proud of. I would think. But, I will leave you my card.” He placed a card on the chair he had been seated in.

I groaned, “Take that card and shove it deep up your…”

Morris interrupted me as if I weren’t speaking, “I won’t take any more of your time. If you change your mind, give me a call.”

“I will not be changing my mind.”

“Fair enough,” he said, and started out my door. He turned to me and said before leaving, “You know, panic is just fear’s orgasm. Is that how you want to get off?” And he was gone.

…………………………………………………………………………………….

Two days later I had stopped looking out the windows with each passing car. I was also beginning to have mild attacks when the phone would ring. I even trembled a bit when opening my emails. I had found one thing to help me calm down. I sat back in my recliner, pulled out my pre-rolled joint, and fired it up. Ah. I was pretty sure this is what the cowboy on the posters should have been smoking. I was certain the camel in the sunglasses was probably smoking it too, if not, the person who created him had to have been.

I turned the television on and took a deep draw, and was feeling pretty good. The news was on, and the hot chick was speaking, “… on the new law holding pet owners responsible. We will have more on that later. But right now, big news out of the music industry. You know him as his royal badness, and he ushered in a sound in the eighties which won him an Oscar. From this point on, he made the talk of the town by going against the grain of the record business, trail blazing for the rights of artists everywhere. But now, in a mysterious twist, Prince has declared his feud over with the giants of the industry. Just this morning, he has signed back over full time to Warner’s, which startled the music world, but what is more startling are his plans for his new releases. Prince has declared he will begin singing only songs written, produced, and handed down from the recording label.”

I choked on the smoke I was holding. “No,” I gasped.

“Yes, that’s right. You heard it. The once fiercely independent artist is now releasing all artistic control of his releases to the very powers he once implied to be a poison to the entire process.”

I shook my head, “No. This can’t be.” My mind was reeling. What had happened? What was going on? I took another deep draw on my joint.

The hot chick said, “And, as oddly as it sounds, has hinted that he would also be letting Warner’s manage his touring details, upon which they would be making a substantial cut.”

I choked again, “This is not right. Something is going on.” I stamped my ash out in the tray by me. I thought back to Morris, what had he been trying to tell me the other day?

I ran to the kitchen and began rambling through my junk drawer. Where had I tossed the card with Morris’ number on it? I checked my second clutter area, it wasn’t there either. From up the road I heard it. The garbage truck was coming. I ran to my bed room and slid a boot on; I was tying when I heard the truck brakes in front of my house. “Shit.”

I was unsure if I had saved any time by not placing on the other boot as exited the front door, it was terribly hard to run in one boot. The garbage man was rolling my can to the truck, “Wait,” I screamed. My waddling run was painfully slow, “Wait.” The can was now attached to the truck and was rising with the hydraulic moans. I made it to the back of the garbage truck and grabbed the operator, “Wait. I left…. Something important, I think I threw it away.”

“What?” he yelled over the loud truck sounds.

“I threw something important away.” I pointed into the back of the truck, “I need to look through my garbage.”

He confirmed he understood with the oh mouth, and stopped the compactor. “So, you threw something away?”

“Yeah, I am sorry. I need to look through my garbage.”

He bid me entrance to the compactor with a wave of his hand, “Have at it.”

The card had been in a garbage bag, and now I dialed my phone from in my home. The card was smelly and filthy, so was I. Someone had answered on the other end. I spoke, “Morris? Morris? Yes… hello. It’s me….. yes…. I saw it. What’s going on? Why would he do that? …… What? …… You gotta be shitting me….. for real….”

I looked at the television again, and the story was running once again. This time, there was a clip of Prince making his announcement, “Incredible,” I said. I looked harder, “Yeah, I believe you. I’ve learned, when you guys are involved, it gets pretty damn strange. What? What made me change my mind? I can handle funkpires and a potential end of the world, but there is no way in hell am I going to listen to Prince churning out a bunch pre-fabricated shit like what is on the new music scene now. No way, no how.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………..

I was back under ground. I was back at Graffiti Bridge. I had been listening, but it was difficult to absorb. Morris said, “The person you saw on the clip was not Prince. As a matter of fact, it was not a person at all. It was an android. It was a very experimental and highly detailed replica of Prince made by the recording industry. It is called the Spooky Electotron.”

I repeated in amazement, “The Spooky Electotron.”

“It is attempting to take the place of Prince. In finality, it will have to terminate Prince in order to complete the process.”

“I suppose Prince knows, right?”

Morris nodded, “Yes, he knows. Right now, he is very safe. We can only hope to dismantle the thing before it does too much damage to Prince’s career.”

“So, let me guess, you want me to dismantle it.”

Morris shook his head, “No. We will dismantle it, from here, when we get the virus.”

I was a bit bewildered, “What virus?”

“It’s a code virus, created by the same lab which created the Spooky Electotron. They created the virus just in case the android went berserk and could not be controlled. It was safety protocol. We sent in a spy, who recovered the virus data, but unfortunately, he was beaten down and the data was taken from him. It was Jerome.”

“Jerome?” I asked. “Oh no, not Jerome.”

Morris nodded, “Yes. Jerome. He is in intensive care now, unconscious. They say he will come through, he just needs some time to let his brain swelling go back down.”

I gritted my teeth, “Those sons of bitches.”

“Yeah. Your mission is find the data virus, get it back here, and then we will load it up to the internet where it will find its way into the androids updates. After it is shut down, we will let Prince back out in to the world, and hopefully we can straighten everything out.”

“So, once again, why me?”

“Because,” Morris said. “You are a nobody.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I mean we can get you in. No one will be expecting. Just like that, we can get you in. We have a plan. You have to go in, get it, and get back here as soon as you can before we end up with a catalog of the worst songs ever to be sung by Prince.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

When I entered Warner’s Music Headquarters I was exhausted. The four hour hassle from airport to airport had really done a job on me. I was dressed as a Fed-Ex delivery person, and I had even been supplied with a truck. I was having some very mild panic issues, but I suppose since I knew I was already on a mission and not trying to hide from one, the triggers were not affecting me so severely.

I was to enter the building and go to the correct floor, deliver a package, ask to use the rest room, and wait for the signal. I did not know what the signal was. I never asked, no one ever told. I approached the desk and handed over the package to the receptionist. She took it and asked me, “Package for whom?”

I didn’t know, I had to look over, “Wow, I forgot.”

She frowned and pulled her reading glasses over her nose, “Stevie Nicks.”

I said, “Yeah, Stevie Nicks…” then I asked in amazement, “Really, Stevie Nicks?”

She looked over her glasses at me, “Your first delivery to a woman?”

“No. It’s just… you know…”

She frowned at me again, “And the next time, you can leave the packages downstairs with mailing. I can’t believe you came all the way up here.”

“It’s supposed to be very important.” I tried to stand as straight and professionally as possible.

“Sure you weren’t trying to get yourself a little bit of an autograph or something?”

I shook my head, “No. I was… I’m not that kind of… you know.”

She placed the package on her desk and reached for her phone, “It does say urgent. I will call Miss Nicks and have her come for it.” I paused and the receptionist asked, “Would you like to wait here and get a look at her? Maybe tell her your life story as if she has time in her life for that?”

I said, “No. No. I was wondering, though. Where is your closest restroom?”

She pointed down the hall with her bird finger. She said, “Yours will be the one that says men… maybe.”

I smiled and turned, muttering under my breath, “What a bitch.”

I waited in the restroom for ten minutes which seemed like an eternity. I did not know what the signal would be, and was wondering if I had already missed it. Was I in the right restroom? Then, there was a knocking on the restroom door. It was a beat, a rhythm. I knew it had to be the signal.

“Yes?” I asked.

A raspy female voice, “Fed-Ex man?”

“Yeah.”

The door opened and Stevie Nicks walked in. My mouth dropped open. “Oh… oh. Stevie Nicks!” I whispered with excitement.

She tilted her head and smiled.

I paced a circle, “Wow, I mean like wow! I can’t believe it.”

She smiled broader and said, “Yep, it’s me.”

I bounced once, “I should have known from delivering the package… I just didn’t put it together. And now, here I am in the men’s room with Stevie Nicks.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s keep this one just between us.”

I nodded, “Yeah, hell yeah. Stevie Nicks.” I shook my head and rubbed my scalp, “Like damn.”

She told me, “Okay, calm down.”

I flushed a little and nodded.

She gave me a diagram, “Here is where you enter the air duct system, and the path is marked in red. When you come out, you will be in the room which stores the data virus. It will be an iPod in a glass container.” I was smiling blankly in her eyes, she said, “You with me?”

“Yeah, I am with you Stevie Nicks.”

“Okay,” she continued, “because this next part is important. You will take these…” and she gave me a pair of panties.

“What’s this?”

She looked confused, “Have you never seen a pair of bloomers before?”

“Sure,” I said.

“When you get in the room, you will take the iPod, and place them in the panties. Then you will re-enter the…”

“Wait. What? Place the iPod in the panties?”

She nodded, “Correct, the iPod must be placed in the panties. It is very important, no, it is crucial that you place the iPod in the panties.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter why?”

“It must matter why if it is crucial,” I said.

She sighed, “These are panties I had specially designed when I was doing the Rumors tour in 1977. I was dating Lindsey Buckingham at the time, and he was constantly trying to have sex with me.”

“Yeaaah,” I could understand him wanting that.

She continued, “Of course I never let him.”

I frowned, “Poor Lindsey.”

“Yes, poor Lindsey. Anyway, he was persistent. So I had a special contractor in Belgium create for me penetrate proof panties.”

I slowly nodded, “Penetrate… proof… what?”

“Penetrate proof panties. Panties which cannot be penetrated by anything.”

“Anything?”

She leered at me seriously, “Anything. This is the last pair, so do not lose them. The iPod has a global sensor on it. It can be tracked from anywhere in the building once it is out of the container. You must place them in the panties; the tracking waves can’t penetrate them.”

I nodded.

She said, “You will then re-enter the air duct, follow the GREEN path marked, and you will be outside.”

I nodded again.

“Got it?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Any questions?”

I thought for a moment, “Yes, I do. Why are you doing this? Why are you helping of all people?”

She smiled, “Prince and me go way back, when music was music. Plus, I don’t know, but the sound of replacing someone with an android and then killing them just sounds wrong.”

I could relate. We opened the air grate on the restroom wall and I crawled up inside. I turned and said, “Smells like fart in here.”

“Lovely,” she said.

I began to crawl away and then I turned to ask, “Oh, one more question.”

She stared at me, irritated because she was in the process of closing the grate behind me.

I asked, “Did you ever wear these panties?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” and she slammed the grate in my face, turned, and walked away.

“I guess that’s a no?” I continued deeper in to the duct way.

I followed the red path, and indeed was in a large room which housed nothing more than a pedestal holding an encased iPod. I removed the glass cover to the iPod, grimacing, expecting alarms to go off, but there was none. My hunch was, once removed, the alarms would go off, ergo, the penetrate proof panties. I took no chances. I placed the panties over the iPod, stopping a few inches short of my nose and resisting the urge to sniff them. No, I could not get distracted now. So far; it had been so easy. I re-entered the air duct and followed the green path.

Once back in the Fed-Ex truck I started the long drive back to the airport. I could now, for reasons I don’t know, feel the pressure of the ticking clock. I had the notion I was moving too slowly. This is when I noticed all of the traffic around me. Could any of the cars be after me and the iPod? Could anyone be tailing me? I could feel my chest beginning to tighten. Not now, I thought. The road began to spin in front of my eyes. Dizziness began to wash over me. Beads of sweat were now popping out like sprays of dew on my forehead. I needed to find a place to pull over.

I pulled in to an abandoned parking lot and staggered out of the Fed-Ex truck. I could hear traffic roaring along the freeway, and even though there was no one following me, I could not shake the idea someone was on the way. I sat down and leaned on the wall of the abandoned building. My vision was getting very blurry. The iPod. Where was the iPod? I was so disoriented. Did I leave it in the Fed-Ex truck? I reached in my pocket and pulled the panties out, the iPod was not in them. I reached back in the pocket, there it was. The panties had slid off when I pulled them out of my pocket. I wrapped my fingers around the iPod, making sure it was indeed actually in my pocket. I pulled it out, looked at it. I noticed I had accidently turned it on. “Shit,” I said and then fumbled it to turn it off. Once off, I placed it back in my pocket. My breath grew faster and faster, and my vision continued to fail. I passed out sitting in front of the building.

Occasionally I would regain consciousness, and then pass back out. Finally, I came to and heard voices. Standing over me was six, maybe seven men in black suits with attack batons. Behind them was three black vans. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

One of the men said to me, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I don’t think you are up to the hard way by any means.”

I struggled to my feet, and the men were in a stance ready to pounce. “What do you want?” I asked.

“You have something which belongs to us. You stole an iPod from the Warner’s Music Headquarters.”

I said, “And you are going to beat me with batons over an iPod?”

The man said, “Only if you make us.”

“How did you find me?”

The man said, “You turned it on and it called to us.”

I rolled my eyes.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

A black hood was placed on my head and I was loaded in to the back of one of the vans. Our drive was short and I was led in to a dark room and tied to a chair. I would like to say I understood how everything turned to so badly so quickly, but I could barely remember anything; my memory was always foggy when I was having a panic attack. The hood was removed from my head and there were three of the black suited men in the room with me. One of them lightly smacked my cheek, “Fed-Ex in to picking up anything they want now?”

I said, “We have to get it there on time, you know.”

The man smiled, “Okay. We know you are not a real Fed-Ex employee. We also know you are working with the Graffiti Bridge consortium.”

“I didn’t think they were officially known.”

The man pulled a chair in front of me and he sat down, glaring in to my eyes, “Yes, Graffiti Bridge. We know all about them. What we don’t know is where they are located, or for that matter, where the real Prince is. But we do have a strong hunch they are hiding him."

I said nothing.

“You know, we put a pretty bad hurting on Jerome Benton. He almost didn’t pull through.”

I flinched a little. Was any of this really worth me getting beat half to death. Then I remembered the funkpires, and the third eye project, and how the universe hinged upon Prince singing the harmonies every day. There was much more at stake if they found the location of Graffiti Bridge. I felt like an idiot for the next words about to come out of my mouth, “Well, everybody wants to find Graffiti Bridge, don’t they? I don’t know where it is. They meet me in places and give me orders, I have never been there. I don’t know anything about Prince. I was paid to do a job, get the iPod, that’s all I know.”

The man nodded, “Yeah. That’s too bad. Information could have saved your life. The world would have noticed if Jerome Benton had died, we just roughed him up and took the data virus back. You, though, you will not be missed. The world will never know you left.”

One of the other men handed him a tray with some things on it. He directed me to its contents, “What do we have here. You had one set of keys, the iPod of course, a bag of weed, and a pair of panties. Not much of a secret agent are you?”

I said, “I am not a secret agent.”

He smiled, “Yes, we know. You are just some hapless schmuck tricked in to doing their dirty work. Would you be surprised to know they do this all of time? They really don’t have the guts to get out and do the dangerous stuff.”

I sat and thought for a moment, and I asked, “Can I have the bag of weed and the panties back?”

He did not respond, and I said, “Look, you have what you want. You have the virus back. I am a nobody, I don’t know how to get you to Graffiti Bridge. I don’t know where Prince is. That’s the honest truth.”

The man stood, placed the tray in the chair, and moved the chair back away from me. Each of the men pulled batons from their jackets and extended them. The man said, “We are going to make sure you are telling us the truth. You will tell us what you know, and then beg us to kill you before this is over.”

“I told you, I don’t know anything.” I began to struggle, but I was bound to the chair and could not move.

The man said, “And we will explore this.”

Suddenly, there was commotion outside the door to the room, then a high pitch shriek. The door blew open and in walked Stevie Nicks, and Cher. The men with the batons turned and saw them; a sudden fear came over their faces. Cher taunted them, “Just try using one of those batons on me boys and you will be shitting out of your ears when I finish you.”

The men looked back to the lead man, one asked, “What do we do?”

The lead man instead addressed Cher, “I should have known. We have expected you for some time. But Stevie Nicks? This is a surprise.” He ordered his men, “Place your weapons down men.”

One of them asked, “Sir?”

“You heard me, put the weapons away. If Cher releases her unmerciful fury on us no one will live.”

Stevie took a pair of keys from the pocket of the lead man and removed my binds. I quickly stood up and grabbed the bag of weed, but Stevie blocked me from grabbing the panties. She said, “I will take those back.”

I thanked Cher, “You saved my life, Cher. Thank you so much, I don’t know how to repay you.”

She winked at me, “Don’t sweat it sweet cheeks. I got you babe.”

“Yeah,” said a new voice from the door way. “But are you a star?” It looked like Prince at the door, every detail. He walked in.

I said, “Ladies, I am not so sure that is Prince.”

The two women and the men with batons began to back away from Prince, “It’s not,” Cher said. “It’s the Spooky Elecotron.”

“Oh, I am the real Prince now. At least I will be soon, as soon as I find and erase him.”

The lead man asked, “What are you doing here? Don’t you have orders?”

“Yes,” Spooky said. “I have a prime directive. Then I intercepted this strange message about a signal going off. A signal to a device which contains a code for ‘Directive Terminate.’ So I searched the data base and found, sadly, this to be a method for destroying me.” He looked at the lead man, “Why would anyone want to destroy me?”

The man said, “You’re coding has been, to some extent, programmed to have human responses. We don’t know where this will lead to. There had to be a safety precaution.”

I asked, “Isn’t there a copy to the virus code?”

“No,” the lead man said. “Only one copy. We tried to copy it, but the code is so viral it destroys any system we try to copy to. It’s hard coded on the chip in that iPod. There is only one.”

One of the other men suddenly pulled out a gun and unloaded a clip in to Spooky. The wounds were splatters of liquid metal, which quickly healed. The Spooky said, “Not hardly.”

Stevie said, “We are so screwed.”

The Spooky walked to the tray on the chair and took the iPod. The lead man shouted, “Put that down!”

Spooky looked at the man and chuckled while crushing the iPod. The four men rushed the Spooky and a fight began; I quickly grabbed the arms of the two girls and rushed out of the door. We ran down a dark hall way, over the bodies of other suited men lying on the floor. An exit door was in front of us. We dashed out of the door; we were in the parking lot of a seven eleven. “Seven eleven?” I asked.

Cher nodded, “You would be surprised what goes on in the back of Seven Elevens.”

Cher led us to her car, and we all climbed inside. “Hold on,” she said. And she wasn’t joking; the car lifted from the ground and flew in to the sky.

I said, “Cher, part of the Graffiti Bridge?”

She laughed, “No sugar. I am a secret agent for the United States government. We know about Graffiti Bridge, and are very interested in seeing it succeed.”

I chuckled, “Cher, a secret agent. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me. How long?”

She smiled, “Since Nixon.”

Stevie said, “Many Rock Stars are secret agents. Think about it, our access to different countries without looking suspicious. Of course it is dangerous work. We have lost some great agents in the line of duty.”

Cher nodded, “Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Denver…”

Stevie nodded, “Patsy Cline, Hendrix…”

They both said in unison, “Elvis…”

Cher’s eyes turned a little misty, “Sonny.”

There was a silence. I said, “Wow, I never would have guessed.”

Stevie nodded, “A lot of shit has gone down over the years.”

I said, “So, which one of you has the real iPod?”

Stevie looked bewildered, “What?”

I said, “Isn’t this the part where you tell me how you cleverly swapped the real iPod for a fake one when you busted in the room, and the phony was destroyed, and now we are taking the real one back to Graffiti Bridge?”

Cher bit her lip and then said, “Geez. That would have been a good plan.”

“Yeah,” Stevie said while pondering it.

“But,” Cher said enthusiastically, “unfortunately it was the real data was destroyed.”

I sighed. “So what now?”

Stevie said, “I don’t know. Maybe Morris has a back up plan.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Hell no! There ain’t no back up plan,” Morris screamed. He began to pace in his office, “This is bad. Really bad.” Morris took a deep breath, “Well, we still have time. Prince is safe, and the Spooky Elecotron does not know where we are.”

We all nodded in agreement.

Morris said, “Still, he isn’t going to be thrilled about the news.”

“Who?” I asked.

Morris began to walk to the door to exit the office, “You three follow me.”

We stepped in to a chamber with a large, bluish glowing cylinder of energy which spanned from the floor to the ceiling. There was a figure inside of it. Morris told us to stay by the door while he debriefed the person in the energy field. Morris motioned us to come inside. I could see it was Prince in the energy field. He said, “So, things didn’t go so well.”

I said, “My fault. It was my fault. I had a panic attack and… well, I’m sorry.”

Prince smiled, “You tried right? Did all you could?”

“Yeah. I tried.”

Prince said, “I wouldn’t worry too much. We always think of something around here, don’t we Morris?”

Morris smiled doubtfully.

Prince looked at me, “Do I know you?”

“No,” I said. “I’m just a nobody.”

Prince said, “Jeff. Your name is Jeff, right?”

I was amazed, “Yes, that’s right. I didn’t think you would remember me, you once told me you only remember those you around a lot.”

“Seems like we keep bumping in to each other, right?” Prince said, “Looks like I am going to be spending some time in here. Tell me something, you have a favorite song I do?”

“Oh, man, there are so many. I have been revisiting ATWIAD…”

“Excuse me?” he said.

“’Around The World In A Day,’ I have been listening to it a lot here lately. I think the song I am mostly likely right now is ‘Condition of the Heart.’”

Stevie and Cher nodded, “Oh I love that song.”

“Wow,” Prince said, “it’s been a long time since I have listened to that song.” Prince told Morris, “Why don’t you queue that up for us Morris?”

Morris pulled out a device, did some thumb shuffling, and the song started playing over amazing speakers in the chamber. Prince smiled, “Yeah. Now this takes me back to the day.”

We were all deeply listening to the song, and I saw Prince, alone in the chamber. He was safe there, cut off from all harm. There were no threats for him. He did not have to worry about the dangers of the outside world in here. But even though he was protected, I felt sorry for him. He would also miss out on life in this protective bubble. I told him, “I swear, I will never have another panic attack again. I will not let the outside world scare me anymore.”

Prince said, “Good,” and he smiled. He closed his eyes and let the song wash through him. “Morris, put it on repeat, I could listen to this song all day.”

Suddenly and alarm went off, Morris said, “We have had a breach.”

The three of us left the chamber and sealed the door behind us. We headed down the hall and could hear guns firing. When we entered the control room, we saw guards shooting at the Spooky Elecotron but not harming it. Morris took a moment to assess the madness and he yelled, “Stop! Stop firing.”

The guards stopped firing; Morris waved his arm and someone shut the alarm off. Morris said to the Spooky, “How did you get here?”

The Spooky laughed. He broke off one of his own fingers and let it drop to the floor, it turned to a puddle of liquid metal; he then reached down and touched it, slurping it back to part of his body. “I placed a little of me on Cher’s flying car. All I had to do then was track its beacon.”

“Damn,” Morris said, “That’s clever.”

The Spooky said, “I know he is here. Give him up or I kill you all and get him anyway.”

Morris said, “You can’t get to him. We have a shield you can’t get in to, and he can survive practically forever in.”

Spooky’s left arm formed in to long cables and wrapped around Stevie and Cher’s necks. The two women had incredible looks of fear on their faces. The cables began to squeeze, and Spooky said, “Take me to him, or I promise you, their deaths will be slow and most unpleasant.”

Morris led us all back down the hallway, the women in tears. Morris opened the chamber door and we entered. Spooky approached the shield of energy and tried to force his hand through, he could not. It was unsettling and yet amazing to see the two staring at one another, completely identical. Prince asked Spooky, “If I come out, will you let the others go?”

The Spooky nodded, “You have my word. The killing stops after you have been erased.”

I protested, “No, you can’t erase the original and then let the copycat live.”

The Spooky said to Prince, “I will let all of them live. Come out of the shield.”

Prince said to Morris, “Okay, Morris. Turn it off.”

Morris’ eyes bulged, “No. Prince we can’t.”

Prince looked over at Stevie and Cher, “We go back to the day when you had to be real to make it didn’t we girls?”

They smiled through their tears, and said, “Yes.”

Prince said to Morris, “Shut if off Morris. Let’s get this over with.”

I told Prince, “I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”

Prince looked at me and said, “Jeff, the things we fear define the boundaries of our abilities.”

Morris shut the shield off, and the Spooky released the women. Prince said, “Can we end this like gentlemen and allow me one last request?”

The Spooky said, “You called me a man. Thank you. What is your request?”

Prince looked to Morris, “Play the song one more time.”

Morris started the song one more time, and ‘Condition of the Heart’ began to play over the speakers. Morris, Stevie, Cher and I listened with tears in our eyes. Prince closed his eyes and let himself become absorbed by the music.

Then, an incredible thing happened. Spooky shed a single tear listening to the song. He said, “What song is this?”

Prince said, “I wrote this song with a couple of friends, Spooky.”

Spooky asked, “You created it?”

Prince said, “Yes, that’s right.”

Spooky took some steps backward began to vibrate, its form turned to a shiny metal, mannequin appearance. We were all frozen in anticipation, we did not know what to expect next. A blob of liquid metal rolled from the side of Spooky’s head and fell to the floor with a thud. The song was over, and there was thick and heavy silence in the room.

Spooky said, “Forgive me. I cannot allow it.”

Morris asked, “You can’t allow what?”

“The prime directive. I cannot allow the prime directive.”

Cher said, “I don’t understand.”

Prince said, “It’s pretty simple. Spooky was programmed to become more and more human as time went by, but was bound by his prime directive: to kill me, and to release only songs handed down by the record labels. As Spooky became more human, he began to appreciate beauty.”

Spooky said, “I cannot destroy creativity which results in such beauty. So I ejected my prime directive.” Spooky lifted the metal blob from the floor, “this is it.” He placed the metal blob on the glowing disc and looked to Morris, “Morris, would you?”

Morris smiled, “With pleasure.” The force shield confined the metal blob which was the prime directive.

Prince said, “The humanity in him won over.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Cher had promised to give me a ride back home in her flying car. She was waiting on me as I spoke on the phone. I am not sure where Spooky went, he and Morris vanished somewhere in the deep bowels of Graffiti Bridge. I was speaking in to the receiver, “Yes, baby, I know. I promise. Things will be different. I promise. I learned something very important the hard way. Just bring the kids home, come home. I will be home soon. I am having Cher drive me home in her flying car. Yes. Who Cher. The Cher. Remember, the singer, Cher. I am not kidding. I did say that. A flying car. No I haven’t been drinking. I have a lot of things to tell you, things I should have been telling you about all along. Yes. I love you. See you soon.”

I turned to find Prince smiling at me, “Things turned out pretty good.”

I laughed, “Yeah. I don’t know how I stumbled in to all of this.”

Prince said, “Hey, I got something for you.”

He left the room and came back with something in his hand, he pitched it to me and I unfolded it. It was a t shirt. It was a LotusFlow3r t shirt. I tried to smile, “Gee, thanks.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I have like a whole room full of them.”

[Edited 1/24/15 14:49pm]

This story was WAY too long for a forum. I have experimented and shortened the stories, a new format in The Purple Yoda Begins

This story was WAY too long for a forum. I have experimented and shortened the stories, a new format in The Purple Yoda Begins