The Fairy Godmother Part 38

There I was, back at the office and the occupants were peering from behind cupboards, desks and doors all ready to do a runner depending on who it was that had just appeared and what mood they were in.

“It’s OK, I’m not going to bit,” I shouted, looking round the room.

“We didn’t know if it was going to be Enid coming back to tell us off,” said someone crawling out from under a filing cabinet.

“You’d be OK, Ethel,” someone else told her. “She’d never do anything to upset you.”

“She shouts at me sometimes,” said Ethel, looking worried.

“She shouts at everyone,” I told Ethel. “It would be more worrying if she didn’t shout at you sometimes.

“That’s true,” said several fairies, patting her and trying to get the dust out of her hair. “The ones she doesn’t shout at, they need to worry because she is obviously plotting something to get at them.”

“If you say so,” said Ethel, not sounding the least bit convinced.

“Is there anything for me to do in my pigeon hole?” I asked, looking round. As I caught sight of the pigeon holes an envelope suddenly appeared in mine.

“Looks like you’re in luck,” said Ethel handing it over to me.

“So are you,” I said as an envelope appeared in Ethel’s pigeon hole.

“No,” Ethel said, sounding flustered. “It can’t be for me, I don’t get envelopes!”

“It’s in your pigeon hole,” I said, handing it down to her. “You’d better read it and see.”

“I can’t she!” she said dropping it on the desk.

“It’s got your name on it,” I said opening my envelope.

I want you to work with Ethel on this, she doesn’t get out of the office enough and I don’t think it’s good for her.

Don’t let her see this, she may take it the wrong way

“OK,” I thought, slipping the sheet into my pocket whilst Ethel was still staring at her envelope as if it was going to bite her or something worse.

This is similar to a job you have done before, a small community is trapped in a computer game they have to fight off various enemies in order to survive only they aren’t doing too well. I think Ethel will be able to help you keep them alive whilst the two of you find a way to get them out of there. Normally I would say back to their own reality, but they have left it for so long, they don’t know where that is either.

Good luck

Enid

“There’s another sheet as well,” I thought after I had read the case notes several times.

GET HER BACK IN ONE

 PIECE OR ELSE

was written large on a third sheet of paper. I quickly hid that one in my pocket as well.

“Looks like we’ll be working together on this one Ethel,” I smiled.

“I don’t do going out of the office, ask Enid,” said Ethel trembling.

“I’m going to need someone who knows their way around a computer if I’m going to save the day,” I smiled. “And that means you, Enid says so.”

“You’ve got out of computer stuff before,” said Ethel.

“More by good luck than good judgment,” I replied, opening Ethel’s envelope for her. I got the impression that we would be waiting till dooms day if we left it to her.

There is a community trapped in a computer game, they have to fight off various enemies to stay alive, but they aren’t very good at fighting and their numbers are diminishing. You need to help keep them alive whilst the two of you find a way to get out of the game and shut it down or something. You know about this sort of thing, Ethel. The person you are working with knows next to nothing about computers, which is rather dangerous, I need you to make sure she doesn’t make a complete mess of this.

Good luck

Enid

“Nice to see she has so much faith in me,” I said, not that I didn’t expect it, but I thought she could have worded it better. Couldn’t have worded it much worse.

“Does she mean you?” asked Ethel.

“I should think so,” I sighed.

“What do we do?” she asked.

“We keep tight hold of the instructions and I wave my wand,” I replied.

“You’ve got it back,” Ethel smiled, looking very relieved, though I’m not sure why.

“Yes, Enid said she’d get it,” I smiled, wondering if I’d missed something important along the way.

“Right,” I said, gathering myself together. “There’s no time like the present,” I added and waved my wand, it seemed a bit rusty at first and I was beginning to wonder if I’d forgotten how, when the office walls began to melt and change into somewhere quite different and somehow, less real.

“Don’t just stand there, they’ll kill you,” a voice yell from behind where me. I grabbed Ethel, pulled her down low and headed in the direction of the voice. A moment later there was a creator where we had been standing and we were falling down into some sort of dug out, followed by a lot of the soil that had been blown out to make the creator.

“Did you two want to die or something?” the voice asked me.

“No,” stuttered Ethel.

“Really, you could’ve fooled me,” he snapped. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“We’ve come to help you,” Ethel replied.

“You! Help me! That’s the biggest laugh I’ve had in ages,” he said. “The best thing you can do, as far as I am concerned, is get the hell out of here.”

“That is what we intend to do,” I said.

“Good,” he muttered turning his back on us. Not a good thing to do, rule no. 47 a subsection 3ciii says you should never allow the person allocated to you to turn their backs on you and walk away.

“You are living through hell at the moment, we intend to take that hell away so that you can live peacefully once more,” I explained, pretending that he hadn’t turned away from us.

“What in all that is holy are you jabbering on about?” he asked.

“This is hell,” I said looking around as if to illustrate it.

“Get down,” shouted someone a few yards away to someone we couldn’t see. There was a loud explosion and someone came flying over the top into the dug out. I waved my wand to lessen the impact as they hit the ground.

“Shouldn’t you get a medic or something?” I asked when no one moved to do anything.

“That is the medic,” he said, looking at the body on the ground.

“Can you fix her?” I asked Ethel.

“I think so,” said Ethel tapping a few keys on a laptop she’d taken out of her bag. The medic seemed to consolidate and started to scream, a minute later they stopped groaning and the wounds began to heal, even the clothes began to get back into one piece. After a couple of minutes the medic gave herself a shake and stood up.

“I was told you had wounded, Sir,” she said looking round slightly dazed.

“Yes,” he said. “Young Tom here will take you to them,” he added and a young child stepped forward. I had thought that was quiet a spectacular mend, but no one said anything.

“You’d better go with them and see what you can do,” I said to Ethel.

“Two pairs of hands will be better than one,” said the medic as they headed off after Tom.

“And who are you?” he asked turning to me.

“I am your Fairy Godmother,” I said.

“And she?” he asked his eyes following Ethel.

“She is Ethel, a computer geek,” I said.

“Then she’s the one we need to get out of here,” he said. “My name is Tom, by the way.”

“Not old Tom,” I said without thinking.

“No, old Tom doesn’t get out much lately,” said Tom. “Not since they infiltrated his program with a virus. It keeps taking him to a gents toilets in the middle of a labyrinth on the other side of town. Every time he gets out of the labyrinth he wants to go to the toilet again, so he heads to the nearest one and gets lost again.”

“How long has he been stuck?” I asked.

“A couple of weeks at least,” Tom sighed.

“Then the first thing we do is break the cycle,” I said.

“And how do we do that?” he asked.

“We put a portable toilet on the outside of the labyrinth, so that he’ll use that when he gets out,” I replied, waving my wand.

“I hope Enid isn’t monitoring this,” I thought. “It’s going to be hard to explain.”

“Now what?” asked Tom.

“I think you need to get me up to speed about what is going on here, my instructions weren’t very forthcoming,” I smiled.

By Janice Nye © 2020