The Return Of The Muse

By the year 1655 B.C. the Hittite astronauts were beginning to send their wooden spaceships thousands of miles away from Earth into the great unknown. They discovered that the ether streams possessed strong magnetic currents that allowed them to sail through space very quickly. At first it only took them a matter of weeks to sail to the moon.

            The first Hittite colony on the moon was established in 1652 B.C, followed by a second in 1647, and a third in 1642. All these colonies were small and never survived long. Although the air was breathable, there was virtually no life there except for a few species of moss and lichens. There were extensive gold reserves in the lunar mountains, but as of yet they still hadn’t been discovered.

Rumors prevailed the rest of the day over what had taken place the night before. The most popular theory was the most obvious one, but many of us still clung stubbornly to the hope that our fears were mistaken. The college president and his staff had issued strict orders to ration the food and water. The guards we had seen the previous night were now swarming throughout the fallout shelter searching backpacks methodically for anything that they thought should be added to the public domain. Everything from antibiotics to granola bars was seized unapologetically unless the student who owned it needed it to treat a medical condition.

            Brian remained strangely optimistic that the situation would be resolved quickly, and that the food reserves would hardly receive a dent before we all got out again. “It’s a wise move of course, stockpiling vital supplies,” he told me, “but I don’t think it’s the deciding factor for our survival. The one thing that we’re starving for more than food is information. You can’t keep people underground forever with no news before they take matters into their own hands. Eventually someone is going to go break free to take a peek around, and the sooner they do, the better it will be for the rest of us.”

            “That’s stupid,” I said. “They might die from radiation poisoning by simply going outside.”

            “True,” said Brian, “but we may all die by staying underground. As far as we know our country was invaded last night. There’s little we can do to defend ourselves when we’re trapped down here.”

            That was the last time I spoke to Brian that day. His sister Rachel came by just as he was saying this and shot him a glance so severe that it could have made a blind man blush.  He just shrugged his shoulders and gave her a look that said “bug off: I’m old enough to speak my mind.” She responded by turning around and walking away. It was obvious that she had been planning to speak with him about something, but now it was too late for him to win her back. She would probably spurn him for the rest of the day.

            I shook my head in a pretentiously knowing manner and sauntered down the hallway with a sophomoric grin on my face that made me look like an idiot. I had half a dozen quarters in my pocket which jingled sanctimoniously with each step, making me appear twice the arrogant hypocrite I was. Brian punched the concrete wall and walked the other direction. I scraped through the crowded hallway at a leisurely pace as if I didn’t notice.

            I went back to my “quarters” to take a nap, and spent the next few hours surfing through a stack of comic books that I had wisely brought with me when I had fled from my dorm. Later that afternoon I returned to the furnace room to see if the television was back up. Unfortunately there was still no signal, but dozens of students lounged around silently, as if they were merely waiting for the feed to come back at any moment. I gave a sigh of disgust and left again.

            I used up the next fifteen minutes in a narrow deserted hallway that was too thin to serve as a living quarters. It was being used to store un-needed boxes of equipment. I bumped in to Dr. Somner and Dr. Barnes, who were apparently looking for me in the subterranean alleyways. I was surprised to see that my English Professor and the college president were back on good terms with each other. It was as if they had never avoided each other at all.

            “Hello Phillip!” said Dr. Somner, “the college president wants to talk to you. We’ve been searching for you all over this miserable labyrinth. We have a proposal you might be interested in hearing about.”

            “I’ll do whatever you want,” I said to Professor Barnes. “This darn boredom is killing me.”

            “I’m glad to hear it,” he responded. “Because what I’m about to ask you will use up a lot of your time. I’ll try not to waste any of it now by beating around the bushes. My colleague here tells me that you are aware that this college contains in its vaults an ancient text known as the SkyPath Scroll. I have also heard that on one occasion you agreed to translate it for him. The reason I’m here now is to reiterate this request on the behalf of the entire school. Given the circumstances I want you to reconsider your decision. We are all counting on you.”

            “I’m not exactly sure I what you mean by ‘reconsider your decision,’” I replied. “Perhaps my teacher informed you wrong, but he was the one who suggested that my services were no longer needed. I’m also confused by the fact that you are asking me to do something that you have barred former students from doing. The SkyPath Scrolls are protected by the school’s insurance policy. No one is allowed to open them.”

            “No one except for you,” corrected Dr. Somner. “It’s true that I released you from your promise, but that was mostly due to a temporary shift in my mood caused by indigestion. As far as our insurance is concerned, you are well aware of the fact that there is nothing in the policy’s language directly forbidding a student from attempting to translate the scrolls. I know it probably seems out of character to you that Dr. Barnes would endorse such a questionable activity, but given the current circumstances, I think he agrees with me that this is the best time to break it open rather than letting it rot in our vault forever.”

            “Does that mean that you believe in the prophecies?” I asked the college president. “Your response will not affect my decision to help you, but I’m still quite curious all the same.

            “Heck no!” the professor laughed, his face brightening up with a jovial smile. “but I’m just as inquisitive as you are. I’m itching to find out what it says. It promises to contain some of the best medieval literature discovered in the past century. And besides, the professor and I are almost as bored as you are. This little task will improve our morale by giving us something to worry about besides the end of the world. Your job is to enter the vault, open the scroll, and transcribe the text letter by letter as it appears on the parchment, counting characters in each line to assure you haven’t missed anything. When you are done you will bring it to faculty headquarters where you will help Dr. Kraus give us a rough translation. Is this something you wish to do?”

            “Of course it is,” I said, as he peered at me with his typically fat face. It has always been my observation that college professors carry more weight on their bodies than the average human being. “Just let me know when you’re ready and I can get started at once. I just need to notify my room-mate first that I’ll be disappearing for awhile. We like to keep tabs on each other these days.”

            “Fine,” said Dr. Barnes, “but don’t tell him what you’re doing. Lie if you need to. We’re not ready to leak this project to the public yet.”

            “Thanks for being so compliant,” said Dr. Somner. “I’m sorry that I was a little bit harsh on you the other day. You really are a good boy. I just sometimes forget that not everyone is like me.”

            “Heck, hardly anyone is like you!” said Dr. Barnes. My English professor at first seemed quite offended by this joke, but then the two men faced each other and laughed fraternally. Dr. Barnes had tears running down his cheeks. Apparently he thought that his own joke was very funny.

            I quickly left the two of them with arms locked around each other pretending to be best of buddies. I didn’t have time to wonder why they suddenly seemed to be such good friends. I rushed back to my quarters and looked for my room-mate. Collin was nowhere around, so I left a note for him. As I searched through my stuff for a water bottle, my eyes fell a different handwritten note that someone had left for me. At first I thought it was from Collin, but the handwriting was too small. I took a quick sip of water and read it.

            “Dear Phillip,” said the penmanship, “I just wanted to write to tell you how scared I am. Yesterday I was thinking of you before the nuclear attacks started. It occurred to me this morning that we might never survive, and our precious young lives will end almost before they began. If that is the case, I just wanted to let you know before we die  that I love you a lot and that I would do anything for you.”

            My eyes welled up with tears. At first I had no idea who wrote it. Then I looked at the back where I found the following closing:

            “Sincerely,

            Collin’s friend Jenny.”

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While the common room was clearing quickly, I noticed a group of people streaming slowly back inside against the flow. They wore dark clothes with reflective stripes on their vests and radios in their hands. They talked back and forth to each other, transmitting crucial information swiftly and coherently. They were the security personnel appointed by the college president for the purpose of keeping the fallout shelter in order.

            One of them approached my friend Andy and relieved him of duty.

            “You’ve done a good job,” the newcomer said. “I expect you’ll receive some sort of public commendation for what you did. You have more courage than I’ve witnessed in a freshman before.”

            Andy just blushed and didn’t know what to say. The rest of us pretended that we hadn’t heard it. We didn’t want to encourage him to grow his ego any bigger than it already was.

            Within minutes the back-up generator was activated, and the emergency lights came on, flooding the hallways with a steady, all-be-it dim, source of illumination. Exhausted, Brian, Andy and I returned to our quarters. Rachel retreated to the girls’ area in one of the other hallways. I was sorry to see her go.

            “So what happened?” someone asked, when things had become relatively normal. “There was some sort of concussion and then the lights went out. Was it another nuke?”

            “Probably,” said Brian seated next to me. “It’s lucky that we were all under ground, or else we might have been hit with a deadly burst of radiation. Of course that depends on how close the blast was, and how powerful the bomb was. But I think we’re going to be down here for a long time.”

            “Is there anything we can do to get in contact with the outside world?” asked Andy. “Shortwave radio, maybe?”

            “It’s hard to say,” said Brian. The radios we seemed to have shut down. I’d ask my friend Peter if I could find him. He knows more about that kind of stuff then I do.”

            “What about the internet. Do we still have wireless?”

            “I doubt it. I’ve seen some people trying to use their laptops. Guessing by the looks on their faces they weren’t making much progress.”

            “Well, then I guess we’ll just have to wait patiently,” I said. “Sooner or later word will get through to us. Until then we should probably go to sleep.”

            “Good luck,” said Andy rolling his eyes. “I could sooner dribble a basketball to New Orleans, and you know how bad my coordination is.”

            “Yeah, we know,” I said. “I’m going to try to get some sleep anyway. I don’t like all this standing around doing nothing. Things will be better in the morning when we’re refreshed.”

            “Alright then,” said Brian. “Take care. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

            I nodded farewells to my two friends and returned to my sleeping quarters. Despite all that had happened, I soon discovered that my heart was calm enough to let me get some rest. I tossed and turned a few times on the cold concrete floor, but eventually I was able to drop off into la-la land. I got four and a half hours of sleep that night. That was a lot more than most people.

            The next morning when I got up I asked around to see if anyone had new news on the previous night’s attack. There was still no contact with the outside world, and the college was still running on the backup generator. The college president and his staff remained in closed quarters the entire morning. There was a lot of discussion going on as to what they should do next. One or two of his advisors were already suggesting that we send out a surveillance team, But all the others agreed that it was best to remain in the shelter for now.

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The Rumors went around campus that night that Dr. Somner was behind the mysterious destruction of the statue of Good. Apparently he had been acting strangely for quite some time, and several of the senior students could remember back to their freshman year when he was publicly reprimanded for attempting to break into the school’s vault without authorization. Of course he was after the SkyPath scrolls: he was convinced that they contained the secrets to avoiding the coming apocalypse. He had thrown a lot of money and time into acquiring pieces of ancient manuscripts from all over the world that he believed shed some light on the college’s scroll. He was reported to have said that they all told the same story and that if you put them together you would be able to predict the end of the world.

            Naturally all this talking made me feel like a complete idiot. Just the night before when Dr. Somner had asked me to help him in his secret mission I considered myself distinguished because a tenured professor had chosen to confide in me. Now I felt like I’d been taken advantage of. I went to bed angry that night, and got up still feeling like I wanted to punch him in the face.

            Actually, I almost did. The very next morning in the cafeteria that man had the audacity to approach me in front of my friends and whisper quite suspiciously that he needed to see me alone. I would have walloped him in the choppers right there, but that would have expelled me from the school. So I just agreed as quickly as I could to see him in his office after breakfast.

            The meeting started out much how I had expected it. He sat on the corner of his desk with his glasses on the end of his nose explaining to me that what had happened yesterday was a sign of an impending catastrophe. He said there was something I needed to know about and began telling me a tall tale about knights and emperors sailing through space in wooden ships many centuries ago. At this point I couldn’t take any more of it. I stopped him abruptly and asked him why he had lied to me.

            Dr. Somner coughed and stared me in the face. “What do you mean?” he asked angrily. “I never lied to you.”

            “Yes you did! It was on September 11^th when you asked for my help. You said you wanted me to translate the SkyPath scrolls, and that Professor Kraus would help me learn Byzantine Greek. I know that’s not true because I heard her talking to you yesterday.  She said that all of your theories were bunk!”

            “Oh!” said the professor smiling. “Is that all? You’re right that she doesn’t believe me, but you’re wrong about the rest. Professor Kraus is a skeptic of the best kind. She puts no stock in the ancient prophecies whatsoever. She wants to disprove them, but she can’t do that until someone has translated them. That’s why she agreed to teach you Byzantine.”

            “Well, I guess that makes sense, in a grownup sort of way,” I admitted. To me it still seemed completely crazy. “You’ll have to pardon me, Professor, but I don’t want to translate them any more. Every one thinks you’re off your rocker, and frankly I intend to agree. If I go through with this, I’ll lose my friends.”

            “Alright, you don’t have to do it,” said the Professor. “I was going to release you from your promise anyway. The scrolls don’t matter anymore: not since the statue got destroyed.”

            “Why not?”

            “Because the statue of Good has been destroyed. It’s a sign that all hope has vanished. When I asked you to translate the scrolls I knew I was asking you to do something difficult. It would have taken you years, even with professional help to accomplish that task. I thought we had time, but now we don’t. Since the statue has been destroyed we may only have weeks or even days. To start studying it now would be ludicrous.”

            “Uh, sure” I muttered. I looked at him strangely. He looked perfectly sane but everything he was saying was totally crazy. “Since there’s no hope, we might as well not try anything. I guess this is the last time I’ll be in this office.”

            Professor Somner nodded. “This may be the last time anyone’s in this office. It may be the last time this office exists!”

The Harsh cold wind swept down from the college buildings putting tears in my eyes as I took in the sight that presented itself to me. All around were oval pebbles ground smooth as glass scattered out like a shock wave from the place where the two statues had stood. One of the statues was still intact. Its sword was drawn victoriously: its visor was raised to display a happy, beaming face. It was the statue of evil.

            “Hey Phillip, watcha doing?” Collin came walking around the corner with two freshman girls. He had been doing all the talking: they stared at him and giggled as if they’d just been injecting melted marshmallows directly into their blood stream. As he addressed me he noticed the statues.

            “Hey, what’s going on here?” He paused carefully trying to comprehend what his eyes were seeing. “Is that one of the statues?” he said, nodding to the stones. “Did you do this?”

            “Yes!” I said sarcastically. “I melted the statue with a hair-dryer until it dissolved into small droplets the size of BBs! Seriously roomie, how in heck do you think I could have done this?”

            “Umm, you couldn’t have!” he admitted. He put his hand on his chin and tried to look serious as he attempted to figure out what could have possibly destroyed the statue. It only made him look all the sillier.

            By this time a small crowd had gathered around us. At first it was mostly students who had been roaming the campus with nothing productive to do. On the one side the misfits were huddled together making lame jokes and stupid remarks that I don’t want to repeat while fifty feet away the intellectuals were gathered in their suits and ties all surveying the scene quietly, trying to think of something wise to say. Presently some professors and staff approached and forced the rest of us to stand back a ways to give the scene some breathing room. Finally, the school President was sent for, and everybody stood by expectantly as if somehow his presence would shed some new light on the situation.

            As they waited I saw Professor Somner talking to Professor Kraus. They seemed very angry with each other as they spoke in low tones. I eased gently towards them so that I could hear what was going on.

            “I’m just saying that this isn’t a natural occurrence,” my English professor proclaimed passionately. “Look at those little pieces of stone. They represent only half of the statue: the rest must have been completely vaporized. Surely now you must believe me Professor. There is no way that a human being could do that!”

            “Then it wasn’t done by a human being,” said Professor Kraus sternly. “But it wasn’t done by magic either! There’s no such SkyPath curse and there’s no supernatural prophecy that has anything to do with this! These happenings are all part of natural history and you know it. You just enjoy being a stubborn old goat.”

            That was all of their conversation that I captured. About this time the college president finally arrived. Scores of eager students surged forward as if they expected something exciting to happen now. The president came forward and examined the remnant of the statue very carefully. He picked up a piece to look at, but then put it back down and wiped off his fingerprints. The growing wind played with his comb over the entire time, swishing around thin strands of gray hair.

            Five minutes later the president left the site without saying anything. The students all heaved a collective sigh of restlessness, and began to realize one by one that there was nothing more that would happen now. As he left, he summoned a few professors to come with him to his office in the administration building. Dr. Kraus was invited but Dr. Somner was noticeably left out.

September 12^th 2001 dawned like any other day, but like every other person waking up that morning, I knew that some things would never be the same. I got up slowly, combed my hair and brushed my teeth. Somehow it seemed appropriate to begin my day with a morning ritual, even though it was a ritual that I hadn’t practiced for a long time.

            I meandered to the dining hall to eat breakfast, and then headed off to the student center to watch TV. When I got there I discovered that half a dozen kids had stayed up all night watching the news. Disappointed, I returned to the dorm and watched cartoons. I stayed awake just long enough to hear someone say that our classes had been canceled again.

            I dozed off in the armchair and didn’t wake up until afternoon. I vaguely remember having a repetitive dream that kept irritating the heck out of me. I think I recall something like a drop of water falling into an empty bucket again, and again, and again. It was silvery like mercury and shaped like an angel’s teardrop. I have no idea how I knew what an angel’s tear drop is shaped like: I’m just telling you what I saw.

            That afternoon the warm weather broke and a brisk wind swept across campus bringing large fleecy clouds scudding in over the ink-blue sky. By three PM it was dark, lonely, and beginning to rain. I finally got up from my chair and went to look for Andrew.

            I walked across campus dejected and bothered by the chilly breeze. Goose bumps were popping up on my arms beneath my sagging sweatshirt. As I got closer to the classroom buildings I saw a squirrel playing with a chunk of stone that was resting on the grass. It struck me as strange that a squirrel would be playing with a rock, especially one that had a familiar blueish-gray tint to it. I knew I had seen that color of stone before very recently, but I couldn’t remember where.

            I just shook my head lackadaisically and raised my eyes. My mouth dropped open and my tongue collapsed downward onto my molars. I was so shocked by what I saw that I never got the chance to clamp my jaw shut again and bite my tongue off. The energy drained from me and left me standing there limp and haggard like a statue. But I wasn’t the only statue around. There were two others, and one was lying in pieces at my feet.

“Phil,” said Dr. Somner slowly, “I have a very strange request to make of you. I know it’s highly unusual, and it’s not something I would normally ask of a freshman taking a full slate of classes, but given what happened today, there’s just no time to wait. That attack on the pentagon was not a coincidence.”

            “I know,” I said. “It was terrorists.”

            “Yes, of course,” he said, “but that’s not really what I mean. It’s more than just terrorism. It’s more than just Al Qaeda. There are greater things about to happen here that are not related to the physical causes or technical reasons that these horrible events have occurred. The powers of fate often use unrelated incidents in close proximity to bring about ambient changes that portend to major shifts in the time-line. History is sending us a message that terrible things are about to happen.”

            “Terrible things have happened,” I said.

            “I know, Phillip, that’s why I need your help. If we don’t stop it, it will get much worse. Do you remember that story that Brian told you the other day? He told me that you’ve heard the legend of the SkyPath scroll that was discovered on the college campus 100 years ago.”

            “I remember,” I said.

            “Well, I need you to help me translate it.  That scroll contains a lot of prophecies. Some of them may pertain to what is happening now. I’ve heard that you’re a great scholar of Classical Greek. Dr. Kraus says that you’re the only freshman ever to start in her 5^th semester course. The scroll is written in Byzantine Greek, which is easier to read than Classical Greek. Professor Kraus says she thinks you can translate it if she trains you properly.”

            “Now why would she say that?” I asked.

            “Because I asked her,” said Professor Somner. “She told me she’d be willing to teach you if you were willing to learn. She says you have the ability to translate the main body of the document, although you will obviously make a few mistakes.”

            “I might do better than that!” I protested. “You’d be surprised how good I am.”

            “Excellent. Then will you do it?”

            “I don’t know. Why are you asking me this anyway? Wouldn’t it be better if a faculty member like Dr. Kraus herself would make the translation?”

            “Yes,” my English professor sighed, “but unfortunately that’s impossible. The college has an insurance policy that specifically stipulates that no one on the school payroll can ever attempt something like that without their explicit endorsement. Apparently they’re worried that another building might burn down or something worse.”

            “Oh, that’s right!” I said, suddenly remembering. “Brian mentioned something about people dieing or some such. He said that everyday the scroll was open something horrible happened. I certainly hope it’s not real!”

            “Oh it doesn’t really matter if it is,” insisted Dr. Somner. “There are many effective ways to defend against a curse, if there really is one. For instance, you can surround the affected article with charms to irradiate the pathways so that the evil can’t escape. Or else you can try exorcising it. Sometimes you can defeat the curse through simple technicalities in the language.”

            “Yep, he’s a lunatic,” I thought to myself, as he squinted his gray-shaded eyes at me. All that knowledge had driven him completely bonkers. He was not only off his rocker, but he had fallen through the floor—psychologically speaking. Still, I couldn’t say no. This was the most exciting thing I had ever been asked to do.

            So that night before I left I promised to give it a shot. I told him I’d wake up at 4:30 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings just so I could study Byzantine Greek with Dr. Kraus in a dark, deserted class room. It didn’t take me long to regret my decision, however. Not only had I effectively cut all of my week-day free time in half, but I was doomed to spend seven to eight hours a week in close quarters with my classics professor. Those of you who have ever taken a class taught by a classics professor know how intolerable their company can get after just twenty minutes.

I stood riveted to the floor watching the terrifying footage of airplanes full of people crashing and burning on the sides of large public buildings. The photos seared a part of my consciousness as if my synapses had just been soldered together with a cattle-brand. I doubt that a novelist could have come up with a more nefarious plot.

            As I stood there in utter disbelief I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder. It was friendly and familiar, yet strong and gripping. I whirled around to see Andy’s older brother Brian standing face to face with me.

            “Come with me,” the senior said without explanation. He had a look in his eyes that told me he had something important to show me. He seemed nervous and edgy. There were lines in his visage that I had never noticed before.

            I decided not to resist him. Everything seemed so surreal. He led me outside where I got into his car. Then he drove me to a house on the other side of town that I’d never been to before. On the way we drove by a dozen streets and alleyways which seemed to mesh together in a blur.

            “Come on, let’s go.” We exited the car and walked into the large white house. It had Greek columns on the porch. Once inside I found a lot of people whom I had seen that previous Friday out at the bonfire. Rachel was there and so was Andy. I sidled up next to my best friend and asked him what was going on.

            “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said.

            “Come on, we don’t have time!” Brian gripped me from behind by my shoulder again, refusing to let me chat with his younger brother. He forced me away from the party up a stairway into a second story hallway. He led me into a deserted bedroom and told me to wait.

            I honestly don’t know how long I stood there. Sometime later—it could have been a second or an hour—the door handle moved and someone stepped inside. I recognized him immediately as Dr. Somner, my English Professor.

            “What do you want with me?” I asked.

            “Lots of things,” said the Professor.  “I want to protect you. But I also want you to protect me.”

            “From what?” I asked. My hands were shaking as the old man looked at me.

            “From the end of the world!” he proclaimed with gravity. He paused for a moment and looked at me with those bizarre eyes of his. He was as scared as I was. He was waiting to find the courage to say more.

Tuesday morning threatened rain, but shortly afterwards the sun broke through. As I walked across campus I noticed that the two statues were still kneeling like they had been the day before, but this time they each had a hand over their chest. Before I had time to think about what it meant, Collin came up behind me and grabbed my arm.

            “Come with me,” he insisted.

            “Can’t,” I sputtered.  “I’m on my way to Greek.”

            “Your class has been canceled.  Mine too. Come with me.”

            “Why? What do you mean?” I resisted at first, but followed him anyway.  I considered the possibility that he was joking just to get me to cut classes, but that wasn’t like him. If it was Andy who was talking that would have been a different story.

            Collin led me quickly into the student center. His face was ashen and he wasn’t talking anymore. All around me I saw students acting strangely. When we got to the building we found it crowded with hundreds of students standing against the walls watching the giant-screen TV. No one was saying much. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen.

            “What you are witnessing,” said the voice of the announcer “is a fire coming from BOTH of the world trade center towers. Let me repeat: this is live footage. Earlier this morning both towers were crashed into by 747s.  It is no longer believed that this was an accident.  It is clearly a terrorist attack. Our country is under attack.”

            I gasped as I saw the videos.  I was trying to take it all in.  “What happened?” I asked. No one wanted to answer. I heard someone mutter the word “Pentagon,” but I had no idea what he was talking about.

            “Oh my G–!” I heard a girl scream and then panic broke out in the newsroom. One of the towers was crumbling into pieces. It was like the special effects I had seen in so many movies. But this time it was real.

            It was that moment that I got that gut-wrenching feeling that made me want to throw up. You know the one I’m talking about. We all got it that day: every true-blooded American when he or she watched that footage. It was horrible.  It was the worst thing I’d ever seen. I knew I would never be the same.

            The rest of the day seems rather hazy to me now. I wandered around campus like a chicken with his head cut off from one TV to another. No one even talked about classes any more. Everyone’s attention was on New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon.

Brian paused as he finished telling his story.  The rosy tint returned to his whitened cheeks and his breathing became normal again as if he’d just let go of a heavy weight. He was able to smile now and acted like his old self.

            For the rest of the night I was mystified by the legend. Of course I knew he’d made it up, but I only wished I could prove it. If Brian had told me the story fifteen minutes earlier I could have ran back to the school and watched the statues just in time to make sure they weren’t alive. I’m assuming that’s why he waited until midnight to tell it. It made for a better story.

            Finally at two AM I staggered back across campus with Andy, the two of us pretending to be drunk on root beer.  There was no way for us to avoid the two statues standing motionless in the moonlight on the main lawn. They both stared out of cold, dark visors with drawn swords. It really didn’t look like they were fighting, though.

            The next day I didn’t get up until noon, and the day after that I spent all my time indoors playing computer games. When Monday finally rolled around, I was both tired and unprepared for classes. I walked past the statues on the dew soaked grass.  They looked different this time. Both of them had sheathed their swords and were kneeling with folded hands.

           It was September 10th, 2001.