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At the end of the day Blake was very exhausted. He had examined the possessed robot for weaponry, but found nothing that looked ominous. He had no trouble falling asleep. A few moments after he closed his eyes, he found himself in a dream, and experienced a shaft of light reminiscent of the transport beam.
“Blake, my dear,” his mother’s voice rang clearly in his mind.
She then appeared before his astonished inner vision.
“Mother, what a surprise. You’ve never come to me in my dreams before. Oh no, does this mean you’ve passed on?” Blake asked in alarm.
“No, Blake, it’s not that bad. However, I do have news. Do you want the good news or the bad news first.” She asked.
“Well that depends.” Blake replied, not in a hurry to hear either. “Will the good news be ruined by hearing the bad news first. Or will I feel better about the bad news by hearing the good news first?”
“You know. It matters not, the relativity of the judgement of good and bad, is more about this world of limitation and differentiation. Just be aware that whatever judgement you make regarding it, will have relative value and will change over time,” Alice declared dryly.
“Yes, mother. Thank you for that erudite, brief elucidation on the nature of reality,” Blake. “I’ll take the good news first, being as how it’s all relative anyway.”
“Well, being as how the good news hinges on the bad news, I’ll give you the bad news first. The bad news is that malignant entities were present in all the new robot parts, and their mission was to take over the robot, and use it for a purpose that is still unclear. The good news is that the robot’s original parts were already possessed by benign entities and they have overpowered the malignant entities and brought them over to the benign side of the equation,” she triumphantly announced.
“Wow. what a relief, you had me going there for a moment,” Blake replied. “but now it occurs to me that whoever placed the malignant entities in the first place may have something else up their sleeve. What do you think.”
“ Blake, you might have a point there. I can not determine the manifestation of any new malignant plans at this moment, but I will look into it immediately,” she replied. “Have a good rest, and I will be in touch.”
At that instant Alice vanished from the dream and he sunk deeper into a restful slumber.

To be continued…

With a mighty, “Hi, Ho”, and another whoosh, Alice transported them back to the store into the hardware department. Hours had passed since departure. The restocking robots had finished their nightly ritual of replenishing the shelves, and were just reentering their storage closets. As the hardware robot storage closet door was closing, Alice waved her hand and it stopped moving, and opened instead. She waved her hand again and parts of the robot began to glow with an orange light.
“Parts have been exchanged for the originals,” Alice said. Coming up closer to the large machine, she pressed her palms together, then pulled them apart, a large panel covering the robot’s internal parts, became transparent, revealing more glowing parts.
“Blake, we must have one of your robot technicians examine this machine, and identify these replaced parts.
“Hmmm, well that could take weeks. Can’t you make a determination. You seem to have some interesting skills,” said Nellie.
“I could. I’ll have to give it much, more effort, and a few hours, but just to get it over with, I’ll do what I can, ” Alice replied.
“I may be able to help. I do have access to repair manuals. Let me pull those up on the computer, “ Blake said, as he marched off to his office on the other side of the building.
The morning crew had just started to come in, and they were surprised to see Blake so early. Several of them stopped him, to ask a question or requested help in solving a problem that they had held over since the day before. Nellie was following for a while, until she had to peel off and help solve other problems.
Once back in his office, Blake, after spending over an hour perusing the robot tech manuals, downloaded them to his handheld device, and headed back to the department. Of course, without his mother there, how could he tell which parts were new. Then he realized he had instant photographic recall. Then why did he have go back to hardware if he could remember the parts? He could just as well do the research at his office. But there was some other reason to go back to hardware. He didn’t know what it was, but he would find out when he got there, maybe.
As he turned the corner into the main hardware aisle, he could sense something different. There was a strange ambiance or vibe that he hadn’t noticed before. He almost had the sense that the robot was alive or conscious. The big door was now closed. One of the other employees may have closed it or maybe his mother closed it before she disappeared again. He knew she wouldn’t be here. She was often transferred from one place to another at the spur of the moment. He remembered that much about their relationship, it survived frequent and prolonged separations.
He continued to walk toward the robot’s closet, feeling an even stronger sense of some presence hiding there. Was there an invisible entity hovering over the machine, left to keep an eye on it to make sure that it performed the way they wanted it to. He experienced an increased intuitive sensitivity that was more characteristic of his mental make up as Broj than of his acquired identity as Blake.
His mind was working very fast now, to understand the situation and stay ahead of the game. The presence was inside the closet, inside the robot. Whoever borrowed the machine needed to install possessed parts, to take over its functioning. He surmised that the perpetrator was probably aware of him now and could activate the robot at will, and use it to crush him and leave the building, if that’s what its game was. But, Blake reasoned, the robot was restricted to this building, and its re-stocking function, therefore it couldn’t be of much value in any other context. Unless, he realized, its stabilizer and shelving arms could be detached. Even then it still wouldn’t be able to get out of the building, it was too tall. Of course, he recalled, that wheels had been added to its two upper arms. Theoretically it could be made to hinge in the middle, enabling the top half to fall forward onto the wheels, then it could roll out of the store, through the double doors. So apparently it could and probably would be used outside of the building. I’ll have to examine it more closely for signs of weaponry, Blake thought.

To be continued…

The whoosh produced only a slight sense of acceleration, not even one G, and only for an instant. Then they were surrounded by an ethereal light, the surface under foot, the surroundings and the ceiling, filled with a soothing illumination.
“Are we traveling fast? I have the feeling we’re going somewhere really fast.” Nellie said.
“Yes, my dear, we have moved out of your planetary configuration, although not in the way you understand time and space. This trip is happening through a natural paradoxical energy corridor that I created to take us somewhere special,” Alice responded.
Before Nellie or Blake could ask where, they sensed a change in their bodies, like a slowing down, then a settling.
The translucent quality of the surrounding light, slowly became opaque, and like a fog dissipating, gradually revealed a stunning landscape. A beautiful blue sky asserted itself above, while a rocky ledge appeared near by, and beyond that a vast vista, graced by rainbow arches, sparkling lakes and snow capped mountains. A pleasant meadow, lush with beautifully colored flowers of magnificent hues spread out towards a distant forest of enormous trees in the opposite direction.
“This is a beautiful place,” Blake said, “And it seems very familiar.”
“This was one of your favorite spots for integration and rejuvenation. There is a healing hot spring and a Toning Chamber nearby,” Alice said.
“I’m a little confused,” Nellie exclaimed. “Has Blake been here before? How is that possible?”
“I apologize Nellie. You have been unceremoniously pulled out of your customary life, and dropped into a world you may have difficulty understanding. Blake has lost his memory, and adopted an alternate identity. I’m hoping he could speak for himself,” Alice said as she looked squarely at Blake. “What about it, my dear? Are you remembering? Do you know who I am?”
Blake’s face revealed his inner struggle to secure a stable sense of self, amidst the whirling and conflicting experiences. The sudden leap to this far distant locale, had severely shaken his assumed identity as Blake.
He shook his head as if to remove any residue of bafflement. He looked back and forth from Alice to Nellie, trying to orient and find a way to express himself in a way that made sense. “Wow, I’ll be gob-smacked. I feel so mixed up, to put it crudely,” he blurted.
As he looked at Alice, Blake reflected out loud, “I think I remember now. Years ago, I put myself into a trance to do some research, and made the mistake of relinquishing my will completely to the process.” He looked at Nellie, trying to help himself help her find a way to understand. “While surrendering to the trance, my mind was vulnerable to, what you might describe as, an environmental brain washing.”
“That’s weird. Who are you two? and where exactly are we? Can I get back to work, to the store?” asked an exasperated Nellie, as she looked at the vast unfamiliar landscape, “And back to Earth? …We’re not on Earth are we?” She asked incredulously.
As the reality of the situation began to dawn on her, anxiousness was quickly displacing her customary cool reasoning.
Alice put her hand on Nellie’s shoulder, “I’m so sorry my dear, that you got caught up in this. I couldn’t leave you back there. You might have gotten hurt by the incoming transport beam. Fortunately, I was able to get us out of there us in time. Don’t be concerned, everything will be fine. I’ll take you back soon. And, if you want, we can erase any memory of this experience from your mind.” Alice said. “In fact, that would probably be best for you. If you started telling others about this escapade, they’ll likely to think you’re eccentric, if not crazy.
“Since Blake is still a little confused, I’ll have to introduce myself. I am his mother, chief custodian of sanity in this quadrant of the galaxy,” said Alice.
“Wow, no offense intended but that sounds a little crazy. But, it doesn’t matter who you are, just get me back to where I was, or take me out of this trance, if that’s what’s going on. I’d really appreciate getting back to my normal life,” pleaded Nellie.
“If I recall, life had already reached an abnormal state of affairs, when the robot disappeared,” said Blake, then turning toward Alice. “Yes, mother, I remember you now. It’s wonderful seeing you again.” As they hugged, Alice said, “Thank goodness, I was afraid your memory loss was permanent.”
“Blake is right, Nellie. Something abnormal has happened at your store. I think I know who borrowed the robot. They returned it probably after they have altered it to suit their purposes. We can look into that later. Did they expect us not to notice? Strange behavior, I must say. Something sinister is going on, and we must discover what it is soon. Blake, if you are back in the game, let’s return to Earth, examine the robot, and try to mitigate whatever mischief it’s supposed to reap.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Blake said, full of excited and interested anticipation.
“Oh my,” said the still distraught Nellie. “Will my life ever be normal again?”

To be continued….

My thicket of difficulties dissolves in the effort to express the inexpressible, as the sky greets me with rolling ripples of riddles.
The ridiculous loveliness bubbling out of the wells of relationships really more often than not breaks up the boring monotony of mortal strife.

As Blake (or Bhoj) was following Nellie to the hardware department, his awareness was metamorphosing incomprehensibly. In a matter of seconds he realized how constrained, bored and stifled he felt by the environment and the role he was playing. He experienced an almost uncontrollable urge to do something else… “like jump into outer space,” the thought occurred to him. “Now that’s an out of the box idea,” Blake almost said out loud. “What an interesting thing to do, but what would I do out there?” Then into his mind, strange, unfamiliar images of distant places, people, things, and creatures appeared that did not resemble anything he had ever remembered seeing or imagining before in his earthly life. That’s when he stopped walking altogether. His sense of self was also shifting uncontrollably, affecting his balance.

“Wow, I don’t think I belong here. I feel as though I’m not who I thought I was. I think I must be somebody else. Was I hypnotized into thinking I’m not what I used to be – what? I’m utterly confused,” he thought. He didn’t know whether he was coming or going, incidentally he noticed Nellie had proceeded onward to the hardware department, apparently oblivious of his odd dilemma.

Blake continued to mentally grapple with his sense of disorientation. “Now wait a minute, I know who I was ….or who I am, at least I did a minute ago. Now I either have an alternate life, or a great imagination, …..or I’m going crazy……. or I’ve already gone crazy,” As Blake’s mind tried to explain his experience in terms it understood, or thought it did and sort out the life he had been living with the one he was suddenly viewing in his memories, he heard a voice in his head, “Quick honey, snap out of it, hurry up, we don’t have very much time.”

Then he did snap out of it, and came back to his immediate goal of accompanying Nellie to see Alice, or whoever she was, and his body sprang into a sprint, seemingly with a will of its own.

As he reached the aisle where Alice and Nellie stood, the floor began to tremble, and the building to vibrate. “Good thing, it’s past closing time. This could really freak out the customers,” the thought flashed through his mind.

“Blake, Nellie, quick join hands, they are bringing the toy back, we must get out of the way, ” shouted Alice. Blake quickly joined hands with Alice and Nellie, as something resembling a dowsing rod lifted up out of Alice’s shawl. The rod’s tip instantly lit up, then a bright beam of light shot up through the floor from beneath their feet, through the tip of the rod, and quickly spread out under them, then instantly swelled into a shaft of light that took them, with a whoosh, up into outer space to safety.

to be continued….

Alice chuckled when she realized that they called her Ancient Alien Alice. Little did they know how close to the truth they were. Her actual Earth name was Alicia, at least, during her first assignment on Earth, that was the name she went by. She decided to change it to Alice, not only was it easier to pronounce, but she loved the story of Alice in Wonderland. Her life had been like that. At an early age, she had been dropped into a rabbit-hole-like conduit, and since then she’d been planet hopping, dimensional transitioning and otherworldly tripping ever since.
She didn’t know exactly why she was here on Earth again. Her presence anywhere was always a mystery, until the last minute, when she would find herself knowing what to say and what to do to solve some incredibly complex problem. While she was here, and since she knew she would be coming back here, she always brought some potion, incantation or new acquired magical power that might help bring her son back to his senses. The problem was that her son didn’t remember who he was. And that was the main reason why it was hard to bring him back with her. He had taken on an Earth identity and was going by the name of Blake Austin, manager of a Home Improvement Super store. So mundane, it made her head spin just thinking about it. After all, he was a descendant of a long line of planetary, dimensional explorer adventurer types, confronting every conceivable situation, environment and civilization across the universe and living to tell about it.

He was missed at the last family clan meeting. In the past he had acquired a reputation as a very entertaining story teller. Usually his escapades were fantastically unbelievable. There was a clan gathering coming up soon. She was hoping she could bring him around by then. Everyone in the family was accustomed to being regaled with his extraordinary exploits. And the spontaneous sharing of useful strategies by the other attendees would better equip him for surviving the most insidious of adversaries. Sadly the clan was certainly not going to experience any expansion of the envelope of their possibilities by hearing about the boring life of a mercantile manager on a relatively mild mannered planet such as Earth. Oh, hum. It could be worse, she thought.
The closest pronunciation of her son’s real handle resembled an ancient Sanskrit name, Bhoj. How often she had thought about how he had got into this predicament. Somehow he had succumbed to a self-induced trance intended to give him deep powers of insight, and the ability to express poetic conundrums woven into the fabric of time and space. As he tried to come out of the trance on this world, he had absorbed the essence of the mental, and spiritual development of this culture, and voila: the personality and persona of Blake Austin was born. Alice had returned a number of times, with a number of so-called cures or remedies to pull him out of his allusion. She thought she hit upon the solution, and started the recovery process the last time she was here. It will take awhile, she knew, depending on a number of subtle factors, but she had faith that he would gradually begin questioning his experiences on this world and compare them with his memory of the past revealed to him in his dreams.
Alice was pulled out of her contemplation when she felt the presence of her son and his cute helper approaching. What was her name? Jellie? Willie? whatever.
Alice could sense that Blake was experiencing a growing awareness of the subtle energies of this location. Thousands of years ago, this site had been used by a star traveling race as a transition loci between solar systems. Deep below in the earth were the appropriate metals that could be used to store the interplanetary energies for galactic travel. That was one of the reasons she could easily come here literally out of thin air. Her energy harnessing device resembled a dowsing rod used by some earth people to find water and other things. Fortunately she was able to hide it before the girl got a closer look at it.
Alice turned quickly, as Nellie came around the corner and appeared at the end of the aisle.
“Hello Nellie, how are you,” Alice said relieved that she had remembered her name. Thank goodness for spontaneous divine memory, Alice thought.
“Eh, hi Alice, we..ah,” Nellie said, and then turned to look back, apparently expecting Blake to be right behind her. “Now where did he go?.”
“He must have stopped to remember something,” Alice said.
“You mean he remembered he forgot something and went back for it?” Nellie replied.
“Whatever makes sense to you,” Alice agreeably said.

To be continued…..

“Ancient Alien Alice might know where the robot is. Maybe she took it and wants us to pay a ransom to get it back. On the other hand, Blake might be able to sweet talk her into giving it back, if you promise to go dowsing with her. What do you say Blake?” Fred asked. Months ago, the first time Nellie spotted Alice in the store from an adjacent aisle, Nellie swore Alice was holding a dowsing rod, and it appeared to have a strong pull. By the time Nellie raced around to the aisle where Alice was standing, the dowsing rod was nowhere to be seen. Alice did tell Nellie that thousands of years ago, star people had lived on the site where the store now stood. Since then, her identity as Ancient Alien Alice was sealed.
“Right I’ll strike up a deal,” Blake said, going along with the joke. He took a deep breath, and sighed.
Blake said to Nellie who was still on the phone, “Nellie, Did she say what she wanted?”
“She said she heard that your toy was missing, and she could help you get it back,” Nellie replied.
“Our toy? Is that what she called it? How did you know she was talking about the robot?” Blake asked.
“We were standing next to the empty robot storage cabinet, and when I asked her, she tapped on the metal door with her finger nail,” Nellie replied.
Blake groaned as he lifted his legs and swung his feet to the floor. He stood up, and stretched his arms straight up, his fingers almost touching the ceiling, and emitted a long stretching groan. With the phone ear piece still in his ear, he replied, “Okay, Nellie. Please tell Alice I’m on my way.”
“Will do, Lou!” Nellie liked to rhyme whenever he could get away with it.
“I’ll let you handle it Blake. If you don’t mind. I think you and Alice have rapport that I can’t begin to match,” Fred said.
After the dowsing incident, Blake had approached Alice, and that’s when she told him they had met before in a prior life, when he was a high priest.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come along, Fred. This could get really interesting. Just imagine, she might have met you before in a past life as well,” Blake replied.
“If she did, I was probably a horse, and had more sense. Give her my best. I’ll wait here. I’m looking forward to the details. On the other hand, we could video tape her explanation and put it on YouTube and it might go viral. We would get more business, then we could get promoted to the corporate office. The possibilities are endless,” Fred dreamily ranted.
“Okay, I’ll check it out on my own, and let you know what’s what. If I don’t come back, remember I gave my life for my company. Maybe we’ll meet in another life, where life is easier, and on the beach,” Blake replied agreeably. Then leaning forward with his arm stretched out before him, he moved toward the exit, leaning as if striding forward into a strong gale. “Onward brave adventurer, into the unknown thou dost step with wary and sure tread.” Blake triumphantly bellowed in a deep voice, as if he were a Shakespearean actor.

To be continued….

Blake and Fred were in their office. Blake was reclining in the swivel office chair, his legs stretched out with feet on the desk. Fred was slouched on the faux leather couch, also with his legs stretched out and his feet were on a low coffee table. They were in recuperation and recovery mode after three grueling hours with Dirk, the corporate district manager.
Their minds were adrift, trying to find mooring in a sea of company mandates, scenarios, and prognostications. After trying to stay on top of the Dirk’s demanding expectations was like preparing for and actually running a grueling triathlon with the rules changing willy-nilly. Their blood sugar levels had dropped, and the next inspiration was slow in arriving. They had been called upon to summon unreal levels of patience, while working to project agreeable yet intelligent personas to spontaneously meet impossible dreams of a superhuman slave driver. “No, I shouldn’t think that way.” Blake thought. “He’s not really a slave driver. In order to compete these days with other companies, it’s required that we make a super human effort to be better than anyone else. And then to outdo ourselves, before anyone else does.”
Blake sometimes wondered about the direction that the company was going. And then as he thought about it, he couldn’t define it, because it was ever changing. Oh yes, he remembered, it wasn’t a direction, it was like a purpose, but more abstract, a process, and like Dirk said: To go where no one had ever gone before. “But wasn’t that too general?” Blake asked himself, there had to be other qualifiers to channel the effort into forming and shaping a company to fulfill customer needs that changed everyday and do it seamlessly, exponentially and extraordinarily well.
“That’s where Super Sam came into the picture,” Blake chuckled when he remembered Super Sam, the epitome of excellent customer service that was exemplified in the big chested superman-like image on a customer service poster that graced all company staff lounges years ago. But that was abandoned, the women wanted a Super Samantha mascot. Redoing all the company announcements was too expensive. So Super Sam was abandoned. “How did I get on this mental jaunt?” Blake wondered introspectively. As he started to ponder that, Fred said as if crawling out of a reverie of his own, “Hey, I must have gotten the high speed videos from Hank by now.” He pulled himself off the couch and struggled over to his desk, dropped into the chair and started punching keys.
“I’d better get busy too,” Blake thought about the numerous tasks that were left undone, trying to prioritize them in his mind, while the last of the mental and physical fatigue ebbed away.
“We should order pizza or something,” Fred said and then with his head craned forward and squinting his eyes: “Hmmm.. This is strange.”
“What?” said Blake.
Fred was studying something on the screen, “He must have gotten our video mixed up with some kids video. Well, wait, I see the robot, and the cabinet and…that’s definitely the hardware department. I don’t understand what this means. Take a look Blake, pull yourself together, muy pronto.”
Blake got up, struggled to pull another chair over to the computer and sat down. He sat there in silence for a moment, studying the image on the screen. “Looks like an elf. Hmm, now it’s perfectly clear, I should have known. Elves stole the robot. They want to make replicas for Santa Clause and the kids…”
“Stop kidding around,” Fred groaned, “that’s dumb….or maybe you have a point there. I mean…I need not take this too seriously. After all, obviously the tape or video has been corrupted. Elves don’t exist, etc and so on. Case closed. And we might as well laugh about it. Ha, ha, ha. Great! We’re not any closer to finding out what happened to the robot than we were before.

Blake’s phone announced a call coming in, “Nellie in hardware calling.” “Yes Nellie. Any more robots missing,” Blake answered.

“No,” Nellie replied, “but there’s somebody here who thinks she can help you find it.”

“Really,” Blake responded, trying to sound incredulous. “Anyone I know:”
“You know her better than anyone else,” Nellie said matter of factly.
“Yeah, and who might that be?” Blake tried to think, He didn’t know any one here at the store any better than anyone else. He didn’t spend time with any employees except at company events. He lived alone. Could it be a customer. He had struck up sort of a casual relationship with a few of them that came in on a very regular basis, and there were a few complainers that were not his favorite people.
“Fred calls her Ancient Alien Alice,” Nellie replied.

“Oh!” said Blake.

To be continued….

Part 4
Blake stood with Nellie at the large cabinet that usually housed the restocking robot.
“Well, it appears that every hydraulic hose and electrical cable has been  disconnected appropriately. Nothing broken, or damaged as far as I can see.” Blake said into a recording app in his phone.
Nellie piped in: “Weren’t these robots installed before the merchandise came in? I mean, right after the building was constructed?” Nellie said.
“That’s what I understand. I wasn’t here that long ago,” Blake said. His head began nodding.
“You’ve got that ‘Ah ha, so it is’ look on your face. Do you have it figured out yet, Sherlock?” Nellie teased.
“Yes, Ms Watson, it’s perfectly clear, million dollar robot disappears magically, leaving store personnel wondering if it was ever here in the first place,” Blake said. Voices could be faintly heard nearby.
“I think I hear Fred talking. He’s probably in the next aisle,” Nellie whispered.
“Right,” Blake whispered as he hurried to close the large empty robot storage closet door.
“Well, there’s Blake now,” said Fred as he appeared at the other end of the aisle. Blake turned the closet door handle with a click and spun around. As Blake walked quickly towards Fred and away from the cabinet, Dirk, the district manager appeared and stopped next to Fred. Dirk was holding a clip board. His brow was knitted, and a frown was fixed across his mouth.
“Good morning, Dirk, how’s everything going,” Blake asked his usual question to ferret out the situation, and test the waters.
“It’s going where it has never gone before. How’s that for a progressive answer?” Dirk responded.
“Very star-treky of you,” Blake glibly responded, and then curbed his tongue, knowing he could easily get too casual and familiar with this guy, and that wouldn’t go over well.
“Yes, we are establishing stiffer guidelines for personnel, store organization and accountability protocols,” Dirk went on in a more serious tone.
“Oh wonderful. Tell me more,” Blake responded, hoping he didn’t sound sarcastic.
“You’ll be receiving full details in the next couple of days. First I wanted to see where your store was coming up short, so we could make appropriate recommendations to bring it into alignment with the next generation store design.”
“Sounds very thorough,” Blake responded.
“I think we’ll find what you’re looking for down this aisle,” a floor clerk said as he tried to maneuver past Fred and Dirk.
“We’ll come back here later,” Dirk said to Blake, as he directed them to follow him by gesturing with his head towards the opposite direction.
“Okay,“ Blake said to Dirk. As Dirk and Fred turned to walk back the way they came, Blake turned to Nellie, looking a little dazed, rolling his eyes and drawing a circle with his nose.
“Carry on, Nellie. We’re work this out later,” Blake said with a sigh of relief.
“Check, double- check” said Nellie.

To be continued….

Part #3
The next morning as Blake walked into the office, Fred was already there looking at the computer screen on his desk.
“Got those videos from your friends’ cameras yet?” Blake asked.
“He’s about to send them over to me.” Fred replied.
Blake’s store phone sounded, “Nellie Hardware calling” heralding that Nellie, the supervisor in the Hardware department was calling him.
Blake answered, “Yes, Nellie. What’s up?”
“You won’t believe this,” she said.
“Try me,”Blake replied. After all, he knew he believed in UFOs, aliens, and magic, so nothing could really surprise. “I’ll put you on speaker. Fred’s here.”
“ Yeah, he should hear this too. Prepare yourselves, even you’se guys might have a little trouble with this….dat ta da….drum roll……(the sound of hands rapping on a cardboard box is heard over the speaker, then stops) The hardware restocking robot is gone.” She said.
Fred straight armed and pushed himself and his rolling chair away from his desk, with a expectant frown on his face, as if expecting a punchline, a retraction, a correction, anything to bring him back to the real world.
“The restocking robot is gone,” Blake repeated. “Isn’t that thing attached to a bunch of stuff: electrical cables, cords, hoses, etc. Plus it’s super heavy, and attached to a railing or something above. If you weren’t the one telling me this, I would say you must be crazy. In fact, I’ll say it anyway. You must have lost your mind.”
“Thanks Blake, you say the sweetest things,” Nellie replied.
“Yeah…” Blake began but was interrupted when Fred’s phone announced: “Cashier Cathy calling.”  He and Fred and looked at each other, ” Now what?” Blake said.
“Yes Cathy,” Fred answered.
“The District manager is here. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks, perfect timing….. Talk later,” Fred hung up.
“We must…, we must…, we must do something,” Blake stammered.
“I agree. Maybe we should split up. I’ll go meet the manager. He usually likes to walk around the store, before he comes in here to discuss issues. He likes to get something store specific to talk about. And you can go to hardware to checkout the missing robot scene. See what isn’t there. If the manager shows up there, we’ll wing it… I guess,” Fred said.
“Okay, good plan,” Blake sounded relieved, as he walked out of the office, almost running into the automatic door because it didn’t open fast enough. “This door could use an upgrade. How about a thought activated door.”
“One thing at a time,” Fred shouted to Blake’s back as it receded.

To be continued…