Cheri Smith, Orb Chaser
Preview: Chapter 1
A Normal Day
Today was supposed to be a normal day.
Cheri’s mind slowly drifted up toward consciousness. She had been dreaming about flying among giant flowers, seated on the back of a very large grasshopper. The colors and scents in that world were almost overwhelming in their intensity, but now they were fading away along with the rest of her dream. Slowly, light began to leak in past her eyelids even though she wasn’t ready to wake up yet. Off in the distance a small bird was chirping, saying “Morning! Morning! Morning!” Cheri wiggled her fingers and thought it was a little funny because her hands were sore from clenching onto grasshopper antennae like reins as she flew in her dream. But that dream was gone now.
No! Today was supposed to be a normal day.
As she awoke, Cheri realized that the phone she kept on the nightstand by her bed was buzzing. That’s why she woke up so early. It was a summer morning and she had plans to sleep in today. She thought that later she might ask her gateway guide, Findley, to take her into the Great Expanse where they could step through any of the hundreds of doorways leading to other worlds. But that plan was for later, right now she had planned on still being asleep! Her phone stopped buzzing and almost immediately it started buzzing again. Clearly, it wasn’t going to stop until she looked at it.
Picking it up, she saw the screen was filled with message after message and all of them read the same: Open the app! We need to talk! -Howard
Of course it was Howard! He lived in New York City where it was already an hour later in the morning than it was out here in the sticks, living in the middle of nowhere. Plus, Howard Barry was a bit of a genius when it came to inventing gadgets, but he was a little short on social skills. “He’s probably been up for hours in his lab and doesn’t even know what time it is.” Cheri smiled to herself as she thought about this. She really liked Howard, he was funny, and they worked well together as a team. She just wasn’t sure how much she’d like Howard this early in the morning!
Wait! Today was supposed to be a normal day!
If she was going to see Howard, she needed to get ready. Cheri picked up her phone and texted back. Will open app in a minute. Hold on Howard!
Swinging her legs out of bed, her feet hit the cool, wooden floor of the old farm house as she stood up and found her bathrobe. She was wearing her somewhat faded, favorite PJs, the ones with hearts and strawberries on them. Yes, she was twelve going on thirteen, but she still loved some of the things like this from her childhood, and she wasn’t quite ready to give them up yet. Next she took her favorite rainbow plushy and stuffed it away, out of sight, under her pillow. Now she was ready for Howard.
Cheri opened up her phone and found the ICHoward app. After touching it, her phone buzzed, and following a brief flash, there stood Howard Barry, in his white lab coat with a pen stuck up over his left ear. Well, not quite Howard, it was a holographic image of Howard but unless you knew differently, it looked like he was standing right there next to her bed.
“Howard! What’s the emergency? You know you just woke me up…”
“Oh, sorry Cheri,” replied Howard as he looked at the time on his phone. “I’m not really good at keeping track of time. It all just seems the same when I’m in my lab.” Cheri smiled a bit of a crooked smile. “Yes, this was Howard, ‘the boy genius,’“ she thought.
“So Howard, what’s up?”
“Oh! Yes! Have you seen the news? Of course you haven’t, you just woke up! It’s all over the internet. Reports of five or six shining orbs, circling planes, hovering over ships then shooting off up into the sky or diving under water! There are reports from the West Coast of the US, from Australia, and from China too!”
“Howard,” broke in Cheri, “why did you wake me up about this? There are always reports of unknown objects being spotted in the sky by someone, somewhere.”
“That’s just it,” replied Howard. “Not 15 minutes later I was contacted by one of the agencies that use some of my gadgets. They asked if I had anything that could track a UAP.”
“A UAP? What’s that, Howard?”
He laughed, “It’s a UFO. They just changed the name to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, UAP, to make it sound different. That way they can deny that they are studying UFOs. The defense people have a whole agency dedicated to watching out for these things and that’s who contacted me.”
Cheri was still not quite sure why Howard needed to tell her about all of this. Especially this early in the morning. “That’s interesting Howard, but why did you wake me up just to tell me this?” Howard’s eyes grew a bit larger as he looked at Cheri.
“Hasn’t your guide, Findley, ever taken you to the Glowing Grids and Orbs world before? Whenever I’ve gone there, five or six glowing orbs would fly around me, hover, and then zoom off into the sky. It sounds like somehow the orbs from this other world have escaped and are loose now on Earth! If that’s true, we need to figure out how to get them back home!”
Please! Please! Today was supposed to be a normal day!
Cheri let Howard’s words sink in. She had never been to the Glowing Grids and Orbs world. In fact, up until now, she’d never even heard of it before. But her guide, Findley, had warned her of bad things happening if any of the different universes within the Great Expanse accidentally interacted with each other, and she had seen bad results from this once before. If this was true, it would be up to human gateway explorers, like her and Howard, to try and fix it, without revealing the existence of the Great Expanse. “Okay Howard,” agreed Cheri, “I’ll get dressed and go talk to Findley.”
Cheri sighed. Today was not going to be a normal day.
Cheri Smith, Orb Chaser - coming soon!