Seventy years have passed since anyone has, in all seriousness, transcribed a tale of a child entering Narnia. This is not to say that it hasn't happened, for doorways to Narnia are opening all the time in different forms and in different locations all over the globe, around China and North Korea especially. I am only stating a very obvious fact that, indeed, thorough documentation about any true adventures in the lands of Narnia have not existed after the passing of the original chronicler, Clive Staples Lewis.

Imagine my surprise upon finding a printed book full of Narnia stories in the bottom of a cardboard box in my parents' messy basement.

The cover was in terrible condition, dog eared and bent, the pages just barely hanging together, but the stories inside were still incredible and worth sharing.

With the utmost care, I brought the book up to my room, making scans of the individual pages with an Optical Character Recognition program, at times typing by hand when the computer wouldn't cooperate.

It took months to put it all together. I assembled it into a pretty new book, shipped copies off to every publisher I could think of, and they universally rejected it. "The story is great," they would tell me. "But you need to lose the lion and all the magical parts."

Giving up on the whole endeavor, I instead posted the material on the internet. Still they hated it. "I'm familiar with the original story, and it is better," they said. "Why can't you make it exactly like the original?" And still others said, "Take the lion out of it. No one likes the lion."

I make no apologies. These words are not mine, I am only sharing the contents of that one mangled book, one piece at a time. If I find others beneath the multitudinous piles of clothing, newspaper clippings, magazines, billing statements and dog toys, I will be sure to share them as well. For the time being, however, I will share the first chapter of this extraordinary tale, entitled, "Database."


[0000]


The farm belonging to Danny's grandpa wasn't any fun at all. Miles away from civilization it had no livestock, and you couldn't walk more than a foot without having a tick crawling up your leg. The place had a pond, but it was all algae and mosquitoes so you couldn't even go swimming.

They had a black and white TV, no cable, internet, or even a VCR.

Danny's folks had dropped he and his brother off there for the summer, but they really didn't have that much in the way of entertainment. The barn didn't have enough hay for a good jump, and every time he told gramps he was bored, he ended up picking gooseberries, mowing a lawn with a push mower, or doing practice assignments for the upcoming school year.

And then there was the ramshackle old house with all the stray cats.

Grandpa had parked his mobile home behind the back porch and built sort of a wing to connect them together. He built it in such a way that you could still see the end of the old roof, a favorite place for the cats. Truthfully, the trailer was the better of the two - not as much dust, loose floorboards and peeling wallpaper.

The house scared Danny, but from time to time he got asked to go in there for various things. Today grandma said he could have ice cream if he got it out of the deep freezer, so he reluctantly went in.

Danny knew where the fridge was, but grandpa had neglected to change the light bulb in the front hallway, and there was so much junk blocking the windows that it looked shadowy and forbidding even during the afternoon.

"Why are you stopping?" his brother Tim asked behind him. "The freezer's right around the corner."

Tim held a calico cat in his arms, playing with its tail. It growled at him and ran off into the darkness.

"It's dark, okay?" Danny stammered. "I didn't want to stumble over a pipe or a carpet or whatever else grandpa's got lying around."

"You're scared," Timmy mocked. "Bawk bawk bawk!"

"Shut up!" Dan shouted. "I'm not scared-"

A brightly colored rubber ball bounced down the staircase, rolling into an adjoining hallway. Trembling, Danny glanced up a floor and found a pair of glowing eyes staring back at him from the darkness. He let out a scream.

"Meow!" a ball of fuzz darted past him, into the wing. Timmy laughed at him.

"How'd that ball get up there in the first place?" Danny asked. "Cat's don't have-"

Hearing a yelp, he turned around just in time to see a dark shape pulling Tim through an opened basement door.

"Tim?"

Grandpa had a lot of antique World War II stuff gathering dust around the place, including one of those old bayonet rifles. Danny didn't know how to fire one, or even find the bullets, but it had a pointy blade at one end, so he picked it up, preparing to face whatever monsters lurked in the dark.

He descended a narrow concrete staircase, entering a small work room.

The walls were covered in old faded brown maps, paintings of unicorns, dragons and lions, knights in armor and heraldic symbols. A few of the maps had been spread out on a work bench.

Hearing a strange whirring noise, he looked up and saw a closed circuit TV camera turning to face him.

What was that doing in the basement? he wondered as he stared at its angry glowing light. And where is-

"Timmy!" he called.

Suddenly a section of the wall slid open, and a massive computer monitor came rolling out on a conveyor, accompanied by a dot matrix printer.

The screen came to life, a one word message in white text flashing across its bright blue background.

NARNIA.