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The kiss on her forehead woke Jenny with a start. Burt grinned down at her. “Wake up, sleepyhead. We have company and you have breakfast. Get dressed and we’ll see you out on the patio. It’s a gorgeous day and Tidbit, Chidwi, BaaGah, and Lolly are entertaining our guests at the moment. Bob and Merv wanted to brief you in person.”
Jenny stretched and yawned as she watched him turn and leave out of the bedroom door. She had read into the night to finish the first of Lizzie’s journals and was anxious to start the second one, as she only had these few weeks to finish them before she went back to full duty.
She had spent a large part of her sleeping time interacting in cross-dimensional mindspeech with various members of the Dimensional Alliance regarding the ongoing efforts to prepare to liberate the various dimensions potentially enslaved and ravaged by the Insenium. As Gatekeeper, it was part of her responsibility to manage the various gate guardians and keep up to date with the ongoing operations and then report to the Alliance Council.
Fortunately, due to her expanding mental abilities, she had learned to do something no one else, including Liliath (the dragon who currently headed the Alliance Council) had known could be done. She could contact people mentally even across dimensions, as long as she knew the person well. She had discovered she could do this while sleeping, although it did affect the quality of her sleep.
While on light duty, due to doctor’s orders, she had to limit her nighttime work. But during the day, her time was her own for the next couple of weeks. She had spent the first week of her recuperation delving into her aunt Lizzie’s journals.
She hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know her aunt while she was alive and had been so surprised to find herself the heir to her estates. She had no idea the impact this would have on her life.
As she had discovered while reading that first journal, Lizzie had been given a similar opportunity that had taken her off of her planned path into a lot more than she thought she had bargained for.
The difference was that Lizzie had actually been given the opportunity to go through the entire training process available to agents and gate guardians. Jenny, contrary to anyone’s expectations, had been given almost no time to train as a gate guardian and had been thrust untimely into the role of the Gatekeeper, in charge of all other gate guardians.
Fortunately, Jenny had been given a guide, Tarafau Bane, a shape-changer whose persona while on Earth, except in special circumstances, was normally seen as a big black cat named Tidbit, of all things. Without him, she might have been even more overwhelmed than she was.
As she dressed, she continued to marvel at the chain of events that had pressed her into this position and taught her so much about the multiverse and, even more importantly, about herself. Little did any of them know the hidden abilities she had been born with, abilities she would have never discovered if she had continued as a well-paid ghostwriter, hanging out with her hiking club and living a quiet but satisfying life.
For now, she dashed through her morning routine. Her hair was so short and curly now that after a quick shower, she simply towel-dried it, fluffed it, and let it do what it would. She didn’t bother with makeup—she almost never wore it—so, practically jumping into some sweatpants and a t-shirt, she was ready in almost no time.
Sure enough, when she headed out the french doors to the patio, Bob and Mervin (aka Merlin) were seated in lawn chairs under the covered patio, leaving another lawn chair and the chaise lounge for Jenny.
They rose and gave her gentle hugs. “You’re looking better than I expected,” Merv said by way of greeting, his eyes twinkling.
Jenny imagined him with a long grey beard in wizard’s robes, but for now he wore his favorite uniform, jeans and a t-shirt with the emblem of a famous ’80s rock band.
Bob just said, “Hey, kiddo, how’s it going?” The concern on his face touched her. His salt-and-pepper mustache twitched into a crooked smile.
“I’m doing better every day, you two. Don’t look so grim. Yes, the whole ‘shout’ thing took a bit out of me, but I’ll be ready to go by the time the doctors clear me for duty. You folks are doing all of the heavy lifting, so I’m just keeping track and staying up to speed. Speaking of which, I think Burt said something about a briefing?”
At that point Burt came out holding a tray with breakfast for all. After Bob and Mervin took their plates, he handed one to Jenny that had scrambled eggs, hash browns, and buttered toast.
“I’ll be right back with some juice and utensils. Don’t start without me,” he called back over his shoulder after setting his own plate on his chair.
Jenny laughed as she noticed that strawberry jam had been dribbled onto her toast in a smiley face. And Burt was right back out, sharing forks and glasses of orange juice for all.
Seating himself, he turned to Merv. “Okay, so let’s hear it. I understand you two have been up to some interesting stuff.”
Merv, who had just taken a big bite of his scrambled eggs, chewed hurriedly and said, “Well, we got to thinking about the situation we find ourselves in. While it is true, we have disrupted the Insenium in a major way, we still have to deal with the implications that there are many dimensions still struggling under Inseni tyranny, as those involved probably haven’t gotten the memo yet that their boss is extinct and there will be no more help coming from that quarter again.
“However, until we get enough information from the remaining captured Inseni agents, we don’t know enough yet to pinpoint which dimensions are affected. Generally, these are dimensions that are not members of the Alliance and may not even have gate guardians. The Insenium was careful, most of the time, not to get on our radar, as they would have done if they had attacked a member dimension.
“In the meantime, it occurred to us that we probably didn’t locate all of the Inseni agents currently on Earth. Although we have located and closed one of their portals on the planet, we can’t be sure there isn’t another one.
“On that note, we are developing the tech to locate the signal or resonance created by one of those portals, but there is another concern.
“Now that the L.A. gate has become the Gatekeeper’s gate, we need to up security. We don’t want another recurrence of what happened at Miriha’s gate.”
Jenny shuddered at the thought. She imagined this lovely quiet neighborhood ravaged and its people captured and enslaved and shook her head.
“No,” she almost whispered, “not here.”
“Exactly,” Bob chimed in. His house was across the street from hers on Infinity Loop, and these neighbors had been his friends for many years.
“So, we realized we needed to create a system to guard this gate,” Merv continued, “and give you instantaneous support for any threat we could imagine. Therefore, we took Burt’s idea of a ‘net’ and extended it with a new piece of tech that Bob came up with.” Merv nodded to Bob appreciatively and Bob grinned.
“We have installed a kind of pulse generator in your backyard. You can’t see it, nor can anyone else. It is microscopic and is installed in the yew tree. Your gardener, Ted, won’t even notice it. It is embedded under the bark of the trunk, and the bark has been repaired in a way that looks natural.
“The pulse generator scans constantly for certain types of DNA, specifically alien DNA. There have been certain exclusions. For instance, Tidbit aka Tarafau, BaaGah or any Mookookie, and Chidwi, not to mention I, myself. As need arises, we can add to those exclusions. In the meantime, any DNA that enters a one-mile radius of this net will automatically set off an alarm that will notify you and any of the occupants of this house if there is an issue.
“The alarm will also trigger the opening of a gateway that leads to an Alliance trooper barracks whose troops are on standby to answer that alarm immediately. Within less than a minute, troopers will pour out of the gateroom into the house, prepared to defend the entire area.
“These are non-uniformed troopers, all humanoid and dressed appropriately for the area. I guess you would call them guerrilla fighters. They will be able to infiltrate the area without alarming the residents and will be armed in such a way as to be unobtrusive. Any questions?”
He turned to Jenny, who sat there, her breakfast forgotten and her mouth open.
“Wow,” was all she could think to say. “What are the chances we’ll find ourselves attacked?”
“Better than I’d like to think,” said Burt solemnly. He looked into her eyes more seriously than she had seen before. “We have no way of knowing how many agents were planted here that were not a part of our earlier issues with Sam’s plots. We also don’t know how many might have escaped our assaults on their bases in Louisiana and the Amazon.
“Quite frankly, after the attack on Earth, shutting down all electrical devices, we don’t know there aren’t more threads to that plan, even after completely disrupting the Insenium. There are way more questions than answers here, and we simply can’t take any chances.”
Jenny sighed. She had known there was still a lot to do if they were going to clean up the mess made by the Insenium, but she had thought that at least Earth was safe.
“We wanted to take some of your stress away,” Bob said, his eyes reflecting his concern. “You have enough on your plate to be going on with. This will work. We have tested it off planet, using some Inseni agent prisoners and other DNA samples from various cultures.”
“Thank you,” Jenny said, and she meant it. She appreciated the fact that they hadn’t brought this up before they had come up with a solution. It would have definitely haunted her to think of the danger they might have been in. Even after all she had been through and seen since taking on the Gatekeeper’s post, it hadn’t occurred to her that the threat was still there for the Gatekeeper and what that represented.
They finished breakfast while watching their various companions frolicking among the flowers, chasing butterflies, or watching the koi in the little pond under the yew tree. It was good to have company, Jenny thought, but her mind continued to stray to the box that contained the next of Lizzie’s journals.
Reading the journals had been such a great distraction from her current concerns. She could hardly wait to go back to Lizzie’s account of her training, especially since Lizzie had been about to begin her internship as an agent of the Alliance with Tarafau.
Mervin stood after handing Burt his empty plate. “Great breakfast, Burt. Maybe we need to hire you as the lab cook?”
Burt shook his head and chuckled. “I had help. Lizziebot is very good at cooking, among other things. By the way, Jenny, we may have forgotten to mention that Lizziebot has had an upgrade to coincide with your defense net. She will get the first notification if the boundary is breached. And you may not realize it, but she has some defense capabilities of her own that Bob included in her originally, before we went into the Amazon venture, which has since been upgraded with ‘diabolical alien tech.’
“Needless to say, you are as protected as we are able to make you. In a couple of weeks, we’ll take you through some of the other discoveries we’ve made, but for now we need to get back to it. Do you need anything else before we skedaddle?”
“I’m fine. Thank you, all three of you, for taking such good care of me.” She stood and hugged Merv and Bob and kissed Burt. With an arm around him, she escorted them to the gate office and saw them through the door to the gateroom and out the door that led to Alliance headquarters.
In the dining room, she invoked the box of Lizzie’s journals out of her MDP. Placing it on the dining room table, she extracted the second journal. The cover bore no date. It simply said, in Lizzie’s hand, “Agent Training.”
She decided it was such a lovely day that she would read out on the patio in her chaise lounge. She noticed Lizziebot had already cleared away the detritus of their morning meal and was standing by the chaise, waiting for her.
“Lizziebot, could you please take the first journal from the box and scan it into your database in two formats? I’d like one in her original handwriting and one set in type for ease of reading. I’d like to preserve her writing if we can. I’d hate to lose her history if something happened to the house or the box for any reason.”
“Indeed. Would you also like me to scan in the photo albums?”
Jenny knew there were several of these and nodded. “That would be great, Lizziebot. Thank you.”
Lizzie strode off through the doors to the dining room, and Jenny settled herself on her chaise. Burt had taken BaaGah with him and Bob had taken Lolly, even though she was bonded to Jenny. Lolly and BaaGah were helping Merv and Bob with their research, and evidently there were a number of Mookookie who had joined the Alliance science team.
Jenny sighed contentedly. She knew she had only a short time to finish these journals, but somehow she felt it was important, that there might be something in these journals that would make a difference as she went forward with her duties as the Gatekeeper, especially since she had never had the full training that an agent or guardian would normally have had.
She opened the journal written in the clear hand of her aunt that had now become so familiar and read....
