Different Path Ch. 02

Jon leaned back in his chair and sighed before he said, "You will have to learn an entire new vocabulary. You will need to learn about the building blocks of matter, the elements and what comprises their basic part. You will, literally, have years of study before you are ready to do any kind of serious magic. Additionally, you will have to change your attitude. As I said earlier, I will not tolerate rudeness, selfishness or dishonesty. Any attempt at bullying will be grounds for your dismissal."

Jon began his attempts to train Merle with skepticism. In his mind, he was sure he didn't have what it took to learn the math, biology and chemistry necessary to become a doctor (Wizard). What surprised Jon more than Merle's failure to comprehend was the children and women he had adopted that were always around listening to him try to teach Merle.

He saw and heard the members of his "family" and even some of the village children discussing some of his lectures and even trying to solve the problems and homework he gave Merle. Finally, he had enough and one day he raised his voice and said, "OK you kids. I'm tired of this. If you want to hang around here and listen to my lectures get yourselves in here, sit down and be quiet while I talk."

Merle raised his head and glared at Jon first, then turned and scowled at the children and a couple of the women when they slowly filed into the small room and took seats at the work table or on the floor along the walls. He said, "But Sire! These peasants have no need to be here with their betters. They will never be able to learn these secrets and they may even give some of our secrets away to other wizards if you allow them to listen."

"That's enough! They have as much right to be here as you do. Now, if you want to continue to be my apprentice, shut your mouth and pay attention."

Merle flushed and sat glaring at the new additions to the class. It was obvious he was not paying attention to Jon but was trying to intimidate the children with his glares. Over the next week, Merle became more and more upset with the children and the attention Jon was giving them during the class. One evening after classes were over, Jon happened to see Merle behind the houses. He walked up to a group of the children from the whore house and pushed the oldest boy against a tree. He snarled, "Listen Twerp. You and these scum don't belong in that classroom. I am the apprentice and you are just whore's children, destined to be nothing for the rest of your life. I do not want you in those classes.. if I keep seeing you in them bad things could happen to you. Do I make myself clear?"

He smiled when he saw the boys eyes get larger. He pushed him once more and turned, intending to walk off with his cocky swagger, believing he had secured his spot as the alpha of the pack. He turned and bumped into something just as he felt a hand grab the collar of his shirt and pull. He looked up and saw Jon's red angry face.

Jon began walking toward his office, pulling Merle with him literally by the scruff of his neck. After they were inside he almost threw Merle into the chair in front of his desk. He said, "Merle, I warned you when I decided to take you as an apprentice and I have warned you several times since about your attitude and my expectations. This was the last straw. I will not teach you anything else. I want you to pack your things and leave. Leave this school and leave this town. There is no place here for you or anyone like you."

Merle glared at Jon for a moment then stood. He glared at Jon arrogantly and snarled, "I'm the best you would ever have taught. Or I could have been if you had actually tried to teach me magic. Reading, writing and numbers. That's all you have harped on for days. I came to learn magic. I'll find a master that will teach me real magic and then I'll be back. Count on it old man."

Merle stalked out of the room angrily. He was packed and trudging down the street within 30 minutes. He headed past the pub then changed his mind and walked into the dimly lit building and began drinking the poorly made ale. As the afternoon waned he became more drunk and let his mouth run away with him. Soon he and Tom were drinking together and deeply in their cups. They became louder and louder as they discussed the failings of the local Wizard.

Once again, Tom succeeded in inciting someone to do something exceedingly stupid. The two new drinking companions staggered out of the building late in the night. When they were standing in the street, Tom clapped Merle on the shoulder and said, "It would serve that Wizard right if something happened to him and that fine new building he just had to have. I bet you're just the wizard to do something too. That fire spell of yours or your ability to throw things with your mind could be just what you need to right the wrong done you and prove how great a wizard you already are.

"Now, I'll just wander over there and if he tries to escape or something, I can warn you or maybe even help out if you were of a mind to make him pay for the way he has treated you."

Merle swayed back and forth before he staggered across the street heading for the Wizard's house. Tom smiled and turned, heading for his store at a drunken stumble.

Merle stomped onto the boardwalk in front of the house/office complex and kicked the door, smashing his way into the building. He snarled, "Where are you Wizard? I've came to show you the error of your ways and punish you for the ill treatment you have bestowed on me."

As he staggered through the building, he threw his fire spell twice. The first time, the spell hit wood and wasn't strong enough to ignite it. The second attempt caught a curtain on fire but, thankfully, nothing else caught from that fire before it burned out.

Jon and the others in the house woke rapidly when Merle kicked in the door. Jon didn't even dress, but just headed for the slowly approaching, constantly yelling Merle. When he came in sight of Merle, the ex apprentice tried to use a spell on him but he failed. For some reason, Jon didn't use his normal push spell. He did worse in Merle's eyes. He attacked physically and literally beat the crap out of Merle before he dragged him into the street and threw him in the dust.

"Merle, this is your last warning. Get out of town. If I ever see you again you will deeply regret it."

Merle looked up at the sea of legs standing around him. One of the statements he overheard from the men killed his soul. The man said, "Humph. Not much of a magician or a man was he? The Wizard didn't even try to use magic on the pup. He just beat his ass with his hand like you would a child. Stupid pup wasn't even wizard or man enough to put up a magical or physical fight. Come on, lets get another ale before Scar closes the pub."

No one ever saw Merle again, he slunk off during the remainder of the night. He was heard from many times however. As he travelled he spent many an hour drinking and talking about the idiot Wizard named Jon that tried to make him go to school instead of just teach him the actual magic he wanted to learn. This resulted in the occasional young person showing up in town asking to become an apprentice. Twice older Journeyman Wizards came to Jon for advanced training. Jon accepted many of the applicants, including the two Journeymen, into his school reasoning even if they never became a wizard, just the education he was able to impart would benefit the young person and his new world.

Jon did have some problems with his school however. He needed books and material to teach. Sure he had a Phd but his knowledge was in his mind. He needed teaching aids, diagrams of the human body and molecules. He needed the periodic table chart, trigonometry function tables and on and on. He spent hours trying to recreate the items he wanted or needed for his classes. He was not terribly successful.

In desperation, Jon sat and tried to recreate the mind set he had when he apparently transported himself from his earth to this earth. Finally, one day, he managed a breakthrough. He caught a glimpse of his Phd Advisor's office. He had spent hours sitting in that office discussing his thesis and just discussing things with his advisor.

When he made the breakthrough, his mind reached out and grabbed onto a book he recognized. His head was splitting from the pain and he passed out. He awakened several hours later but, in his opinion, the pain, this time, was worth it. There was a book, the book he had seized with his mind, laying on his desk in front of him.

Over the next several weeks he managed to find and bring back several books, charts and papers. He had to be very specific in his desires and even in the location. He couldn't just think "I want a Calculus book". He had to think of the title of the book or its location and then grab it mentally before he could bring it back. He could "see" into an office and look around mentally. If he saw something he wanted he could then think "I want that ****** from the bookcase behind the desk" or "I want the fourth book from the left end on the second shelf of the bookcase" and sort of pull it toward him. If he couldn't see or identify the item he couldn't just ask for it and pull it toward his new world. The more he used his talent, the lesser the pain was when he did the magic. He likened it to muscle pain diminishing with exercise.

Jon worried about targeting his old Advisor's office for all his pilfering but he didn't know many other offices and locations well enough to visualize them. As it turns out, he was right to worry. His advisor was furious that some of his books were being stolen, some very expensive books at that. He accused his graduate students at first but they all vehemently denied taking the books. Finally, he decided to get to the bottom of the thefts and had the college security team install motion activated surveillance cameras to catch the thieves.

They were about ready to stop surveillance when the next book disappeared. The advisor called the security office when he discovered the theft and had them pull the video and watch it. After they watched the video he received a call, "Professor, this is Officer Dudley from Security. I think you need to come down and watch the video of your office from last night. None of us can figure it out."

When the Professor arrived he said, "OK, I'm here to see the video. Didn't you recognize the thief?"

"Professor, I don't know how to put this but, well, we couldn't see anyone taking the book. It just, uh, sorta disappeared or something."

"What? Bullshit. Let me see if I recognize whoever took it."

The Professor watched the video three times, varying the speed the last two before he admitted he didn't know what to make of it either. To him, it looked as if the book floated off the shelf, then disappeared as if it was just moving away from the camera. It appeared to him as if it disappeared in the distance.

He leaned back in his chair and said, "Keep up the surveillance and we'll see if we can catch a different view or something if I lose another book. I'll try to put something out to tempt whoever or whatever is taking my books. It's as if whoever is taking the books is trying to build a library of entry level to doctoral level knowledge in all the biological and chemical sciences."

After that, they had a complete video record of every theft but never, obviously, caught a clear image of the thief. There were two faint blurry views of Jon captured but the Professor discounted them. When they blew up the grainy images and showed him he said, "Well, we know that isn't the thief. He was one of my past Graduate Assistants and obtained a Doctorate. He disappeared several years ago and his wife and her boyfriend were tried for his murder. His body has never been found."

The more the Professor thought about Jon and the disappearing books the more he wondered. Could he really be the thief? If he was, where was he and how the HELL was he doing it? He couldn't help himself, he began collecting books and papers he thought Jon might be interested in and leaving them in plain sight in his office. He even placed letters in some of the books to Jon hoping to get some communication back if he was really the one taking the books. Some (most) of the specially purchased books and papers eventually disappeared but some were never taken. Finally, after what he would have considered to be a fine library was stolen, books stopped disappearing and the Professor gave up trying to solve the mystery.

One day, Jon was searching for teaching aids in his old high school when he thought about his ex wife (who had taught there) and his parents. He spent the rest of that afternoon trying to find them. Finally, he managed to fix his sight on his parents living room. It was just as he remembered it except for one wall. It was now covered with pictures of him and some of his awards and his degrees framed and hung. There were several articles from the local paper about his disappearance and the subsequent arrest of his wife and her lover. They were charged with his death but not convicted because there was no corpse and no proof he actually died. All the evidence available were drops of blood in the bedroom and bathroom of his home from the blood he lost during the fight (if you could call it that) with Ted and, of course, the fact he disappeared.

There was also an obituary for Sally from a paper published several months after her trial ended. In the article her parents blamed him for her suicide. In spite of her acquittal at trial for his murder, she never recovered from the notoriety. She couldn't take the ostracism and finally overdosed on pills and alcohol.

Jon thought about trying to send a letter to his parents but decided against that. After all, how do you explain to your parents you are a magician, have travelled to another world and don't know how you did it or where you are? Besides, they had grieved over his loss and rebuilt their lives as had he. Was it really kind to reopen wounds? He was happy here and probably wouldn't return to his earth even if he could figure out how to do it. Well, maybe he would go visit but he would even have to think long and hard about that. What if someone he knew saw him or his parents talked about his visit? No, best to let sleeping dogs lie. besides, what if he couldn't come back after his visit? No, he wouldn't visit them either. He did, however, manage to steal a picture of him and his parents that was taken when he was awarded his Phd. It became his prized possession.

Jon was not only gaining a huge amount of respect as his school grew but he was gaining a large amount wealth because of his introduction of modern innovations. In addition to pay for his healing and teaching, he received a good income from selling items he "invented".

From time to time he would watch a tradesman do something and remember a machine that could do it better, faster, easier or all three. His first innovation was the water wheel to power mills. The locals had figured out how to grind grain and made small millstones but they were all hand powered. One day he asked why the miller didn't build a dam on the nearby stream and use a waterwheel to grind his grain. No one had ever thought about doing something like that. Jon designed and helped the miller and blacksmith cobble one together for a portion of the profits from sales of future works and from the miller for the idea.

He thought long and hard about introducing some of the distillates from crude oil and finally decided to do so, thus improving lighting just by converting to kerosine lamps.

Not being an engineer, many of his ideas took a lot of work and were definitely primitive and poorly designed. Some of them they never did manage to make work but many did quite well. He remembered many of the old implements he had seen in museums and on his grandfather's farm and helped the blacksmith reproduce them for the farmers. Just the introduction of the sickle mower, Sulky Plow and the Sulky Rake improved the farmer's lot immensely. He also told the blacksmith about corn shellers and helped him design one of them. Now shelling the kernels of corn off the cobs became easier and faster, again improving farmers and millers lives. Each innovation increased the respect given Jon and his bank account.

His adopted home town became very famous and its population continued to grow. People came from great distances to learn in the university and work in the factories springing up to manufacture Jon's inventions. The city fathers decided to rename the town and wanted to call it Jonstown after Jon but he refused. Finally they decided University City was the next best choice and changed the name,

**********

An old woman and two younger ones came out the door of Jon's home beside the Bordello. They were crying as they walked to the edge of the porch to face the people gathered in the street. One of the younger women started to speak and her voice broke. She took a shuddering breath and tried once more, succeeding this time. She said, "He's gone. Wizard Jon has gone to his reward."

There was a loud murmur from the crowd superimposed on many sharper cries of sorrow as the news was heard. None there remembered a thing that hadn't improved since THE WIZARD had arrived in their town. Many an eye was filled with tears, male and female, as the words sank in.

Jon never knew how many children he had. In a way, he considered all the strays he collected and fed his children as much as those that sprang from his loins. He quit fighting bedding the stray women he collected under the rules of his new home. Bea, Polly, Charity and Faith all had children by him. Even Honor and a couple of the other Whores claimed he was the father of some of their children. Jon didn't care. If the customs of his new world decreed he become the "owner" or protector of a woman or child they became his family and he treated them with compassion, love and honor. In a way, they were all his children.