WAR STORIES, WESTERNS AND POCKET DIMENSIONS

'No Rory" said Ethan, after looking around unnecessarily. "Just the most sensitive blueprints and contracts the company has. Something QHY would sell their soul to steal. That's why they're in hardcopy. You know tech gives us a good firewall. Our hard-drives are smashed every so often to discourage hackers."

"Part of the reason we have a good reason is we get paid to test the system" Benny said. "That's how you got the bonus last Christmas."

"And I was almost transferred to the thirteenth floor as resident hacker" Ethan complained.

"That's awesome-cool" said Rory. "I guess the thirteenth floor engineers don't have it so bad after all."

"The guys are paid enough" said Ethan. "But they don't get to actually build anything. You know that's why I changed my mind about robotics or being a software engineer. To do something big . . .something big that has nothing to do with the supernatural."

"Yeah" Benny shrugged. "But you know, I thought that floor could have something like records of bribes and hit jobs the company pulled off."

"If it were, they wouldn't keep that crap in front of twenty reviewing engineers and fifteen guards" said Ethan. "I wish I had fifteen guards."

"Ethan, still worried about Whitechapel?" asked Rory.

"Grandma says she'll call us if she needs us" said Benny. "It's worked since we left for university."

"I wasn't a thousand miles away" Ethan complained. "I don't like leaving monster hunting to the first response team."

"So we leave it to the B team before we can put out the fire?" said Benny. "It's cool we even have one."

It should be mentioned here that Ethan's little sister Jane, Jane's boyfriend and on occasion Malcom Brunner were what Ethan called the "first response team". Benny just called it the B team, holding things in check until the "professionals" could arrive.

Jane had known about the supernatural, technically before Ethan, Benny and Rory knew. Jane's current boyfriend knew from her. And as for Malcolm Brunner, he had become reluctantly involved with the monster- hunting efforts after nearly getting himself killed in The Case of the Counterfeit Curses.

"Look" said Ethan proudly. "Since Lucifractor day, only 2 people have died of anything supernatural. We're not going to have Whitechapel go down again as long as I'm living. Even those two were two too many."

"Yeah" Benny shrugged, "But they were practically asking for trouble. "In Grade 12 there was the developer-dude who illegally set off the explosion in that cave releasing the dragon." Benny, adding with a smirk. "And you did an awesome job fighting the dragon, St. Ethan. If you didn't faint at the sight of the dragon's blood after you stabbed it."

"You were hiding behind a tree, casting spells and missing" said Ethan, who did not enjoy that adventure. "If Sarah hadn't been there to get in the first two stabs I would have been roasted. And Rory, you weren't much help. You were convinced that it was dinosaur, and just stood there wide-eyed when we saw that it was breathing fire."

"There was the one guy gored guy a unicorn five years ago" said Rory irritably (Rory still believed a dragon had to be a type of dinosaur – they were both giant reptiles!). "But he shouldn't have been trying to ride it. With spurs."

"That guy had gotten drunk like a skunk at the country-western restaurant my parents sometimes go on their date nights" Ethan observed. "It's lucky Benny, that March Break, Grade 11, you just accidentally sent us crossing the American Wild West on a Wagon Train. There's nothing like ramrodding a wagon across the west . . . with your grandmother . . . to teach you how to round up unicorns."

"You know how that happened" said Benny angrily, pausing the game.

It was one of the biggest mistakes Benny ever made (albeit not the most dangerous), and he hated being reminded of it.

"I was trying to use Grandma's pocket dimension spell to allow us to take a real live voyage with Captain Kirk."

"And you set us in a Western" Ethan said, as he recalled his shock of being stranded in the American Wild West. "For five months!"

"It was only five hours in the real world. We didn't age or lose a day" Benny pointed out. "Besides, you know what Grandma said. We had to finish the series' season goal to get out there. Get from Missouri to Sacramento. And when it was over you told Sarah you had a cool time!"

"You shouldn't have described Star Trek as a "Wagon Train to the stars in your spell" Rory laughed, as he remembered some of the lowlights of the trips. "Man, I just remembered! You're the biggest fan here of the vintage Battlestar Galactica?"

"Yeah" Benny admitted. "So what? Lorne Green, the best, the real Commander Adama was Canadian."

"You'd probably describe Battlestar Galactica as Lorne Green's most famous role" Ethan reminded Benny. "And probably put us in an episode of his western."

"I wouldn't put us in Bonanza" said Benny irritably, for that was the name of the series most people connected with Lorne Green.

"You should have just gone with Star Wars" said Ethan. "We could have gone on the Millennium Falcon. If we wanted something cool, we could just stick around Tatoonine and see the cantina. Or something exciting but less dangerous, go to the days of the old Galactic Republic and see Coruscant circa Episode 1. But you, dude, said it had to be Star Trek or nothing!"

"The frack I didn't want to do Star Wars! I just didn't have the power to put us in Star Wars when I was sixteen" said Benny heatedly. "I still don't. It's not a pocket dimension, it's a whole pocket dimension galaxy. Star Trek was a spaceship. I can do that. And for the wagon train thing, that's how Star Trek was sold to the network by the show's producers. Wagon Train in space. So I read the words "wagon train in space" into the fill-in-the-blank type spell it is. I didn't know that would give us a space on a wagon train in the real 1800s or in a TV show that was something like it."

Benny looked daggers at his friends.

"I had a cool time" said Rory, with a shrug. "In the desert, the dust was bad for my asthma sometimes, but it was like being on a dude ranch. Besides, your grandma's home remedies were better than my inhaler when things got bad."

"I don't know what you're problem is, Ethan" Benny said. "I was the guy who was stabbed by an arrow when we attacked by the Paiutes."

"You couldn't sit down for three days" Rory laughed. "You had to lie on your stomach inside the wagon."

"Shut up!" Benny retorted, although it was his fault for trying to brag about his time there. "You didn't help by choosing then to learn to play the guitar while Grandma steered the wagon. If I ever hear Home on the Range again I'll stuff an antelope down your throat."

"I tried some modern music once" said Rory. "But the people in the next wagon looked at me funny. And it scared the horses."

"Of course it scared the horses" Benny retorted. "It was that Single Tear crap."

Ethan was reluctant to concede that he didn't really have such a bad time. The truth was Ethan had become used to the Wild West over five months. He even thought it was a cool thing to experience . . . once it was over.

"It wasn't the worst adventure we had" Ethan admitted. "And you never screwed up so royally again. Half our adventures, when we were teens, were us cleaning up your magical mistakes."

"I never had to work hard to make you go along with me on my magical mistakes" said Benny, not entirely truthfully but not really lying either.

"Okay, it was tough on all of us at the beginning" said Ethan. "Until Lucifractor night. But . . . it just sucks now to have Whitechapel on my mind, and too far away to do anything about it, and worried that things could somehow go back the way they were. I talk about it with Sarah. I'd like to join her in an independent firm someday. And move back home. I like Whitechapel better than the New York City . . . I especially like the vamp and monster free version of Whitechapel."

"Dude, I'll go right in along with you" said Rory. "Maybe we can call it Team Sabre, like our monster hunting force. And we'll have our own rules."

"Yeah" said Benny, with a grin. "We deduct monster-hunting off our business income as a charitable expense."

"Tax jokes are lame . . . really lame" said Ethan.

"That's what happens when you work in an office too long" Benny returned. "Maybe we ought to find a haunted house before you leave?"

"Yeah, right" said Ethan. "That's the good thing about going to a city the size of New York. There's already hundreds of seers and spellmasters there roaming around. If nothing happens in Whitechapel, I'm getting a long vacation from seeing."

"While you're there, instead of using Skype to reach me you can work on your astro-projection" said Benny mischievously.

"Don't joke about that. I hate astro-projection" said Ethan bitterly. "It makes me feel like I'm a force-ghost wandering around the galaxy. Meanwhile, my body's stuck sitting with my eyes glowing like a 200 watt bulb. Yeah, guys, I love that."

"I think it's cool" said Rory. "You can be somewhere you're not. Like you can set up your own personal hologram a couple thousand miles away. Heck, Ethan, you can join us in planning the new firm . . . if that's what we're doing."

Ethan looked earnestly at Rory.

"Rory, buddy, keep these plans a secret. Just stick with McMurdo – Abbott. "If we make our name in the next five, ten years, we can go off alone and do what we want. We go now, we'll be lucky to if we can afford to pay our rent and buy our food. Give me your honour as a Jedi."

Ethan, Benny and Rory shared Roman-style handshakes on their solemn pledge.