Neo-Geo Mountain

    February 16, 2012, 10 miles outside of Newton City...
    Wow, 2012, I was only 18 at the time. Fresh out of high school and on my way to my internship at Neo-Geo Mountain. I had zero interest in the world of geology or archeology but the internship was college credit nonetheless while I figured out what I wanted to do. Besides my best friend, Glen, was into that stuff, sort of. He was more interested in the romantic side of archeology, you know, exploring caves, finding ancient treasure, solving the mysteries of the past. He was in for a rude awakening once he found out how dirty, and exhausting, real archeology work was.
    Upon disembarking the bus, we were greeted by the site supervisor, Dr. Richter. "Welcome to the Neo-Geo base camp. This is where you will eat, sleep, and categorize. You will be spending eight hours a day out in the field or in the lab, but don't worry, you'll be able to go into town on Friday nights."
    "Whooo!" someone shouted. "Party!"
    The crowd tried to suppress a laugh with varying degrees of success.
    "Yes..." said Richter, putting his hands behind his back as if he was a military general. "We'll start today with a brief history of Neo-Geo."
    That brief history lasted five hours. I'll give you the short version. The mountain was formed the normal way of lava and plate tectonics over millions of years. The city of Newton (originally called New Town) was founded in the 1800s (give or take) as settlers moved west from the East trying their hand at ranching or gold mining. Newton was close to a river, before the water treatment plants and dams and such, and Neo-Geo housed many precious gems such as gold. But soon the residents found that Neo-Geo wasn't your typical mountain. The gems were...different. A mixture of ruby, quartz, emerald, and lapis lazuli stone created strange effects, according to legend of course.
    The story goes that these gems caused people to act differently and gain abilities beyond normal people. Then one day everyone in town simply vanished. But people didn't stay away too long, the temptation of new land and gold was more powerful than superstition and Newton became the booming metropolis we know now.
    Over time scientists discovered the strange properties of the ruby, quartz, emerald, and lapis within Neo-Geo, which is how it came to be called Neo-Geo (as in new geology, and it also rhymed really well). Science admitted that there was something odd about the mountain but Science still will not admit to anything supernatural. And that is basically why we are there: to study the rocks and figure out why they are different and maybe reproduce it. Richter is also curious about why the original settlers just vanished.
***
    I plopped heavily into the cafeteria seat and stared at the bubbling glop on the tray for a moment. A few seconds later Glen joined me. He had a smile bigger than his face. "Wasn't that great?! How interesting! Wow!" I noticed that his tray was filled with potatoes, steak, and green beans. I glanced back down at the glop on my tray. How did that happen?
    "Yeah, it was...something."
    "Like getting your head drilled by a screwdriver?" said a pretty redhead sitting down next to me.
    I laughed nervously. "Yeah. It was pretty dull. That Richter guy needs a personality upgrade."
    "My father is known to drone on."
    I choked on my glop. "F-f-father?"
    "Oh relax, I'm not going to tell. I know he's as interesting as paint drying on a hot day. He can be odd; he named me Sandy after all."
    "Your geologist father named you Sandy?" I said.
    She finished her bite of salad. "Sandy Onyx Richter to be exact. Parents can be cruel."
    "Yeah," I aimed for sounding like I was sympatric. "I was named Ace."
    "That's not so bad," Sandy said. "Was your father a World War II pilot?" she joked.
    "Actually, I don't know. Mom doesn't talk much about him."
    She looked at her tray. "Oh. I'm sorry."
    "Not a problem."
    "Anyhoo..." Glen said (thankfully) changing the subject, "I'm looking forward to starting tomorrow. It should be great fun."
    Sandy stood. "Oh it is," Her smooth face shined a mysterious smile. "It is until Dad gets hold of you."
***
    I stared at the ceiling of our cabin as Glen finished in the bathroom. The cabin wasn't the greatest but at least it had lights and running water (not to mention a bathroom, I was not looking forward to trekking across the camp in the middle of the night to use the toilet). I'd been watching the ceiling for so long that the wood was starting to make a pattern...one of Sandy's face smiling at me.
    Glen then came in babbling about something; it took me a second to come out of my daydream. He was using some kind of green-tipped brush on his hair. "You're doing highlights again?" I asked.
    "My roots were beginning to show." He pointed at his brown hair. His mixture of dyed green and natural brown hair always made me think of a meadow. All he needed to do was plant some flowers. "Gotta make a good impression." Dr. Richter seems like the guy who'd appreciate a green and brown haired kid. And elephants love to have dinner parties with mice, I thought. Glen said a quick "good night" before literally jumping into bed. As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out...and not long after that, snoring.
    Years of campouts, sleepovers, and the like had made me immune to his snoring. I took one more look at the Sandy pattern in the ceiling, rolled on to my side and turned out the light.

Into the Light
    "Go towards the light," a voice said. It sounded a lot like Glen's.
    I was in a long corridor. It had a pattern of thin rays of lights that ran along the sides, floor, and ceiling. At the other end of the tunnel was a bright light.
    "Go towards the light," the voice instructed again.
    I started towards the light. The light got brighter and brighter until it covered me. I saw flashes of rubies, quartz, emeralds, and lapis. "Flxintaoajcslsdfot," the voice said. It was trying to tell me what the strange mixture of minerals was but it came out as gibberish. The light then faded and I stood in space. It wasn't the boring old space you see from a telescope; this was the kind of space you see from like NASA satellites with all the colors and lights. The strange voice continued to speak in gibberish. Suddenly it was as if a trap door opened and I began falling through a tunnel of strobe lights.
    I then fell out of bed.
    I stood up and rubbed my head. Glen was still sound asleep. It was light outside. "Sleeping in, Glen?" I said. "So much for a good first impression." I opened the door and walked out into a lush land of plants, animals, and colors. This was not the dusty desert that I'd been in hours before. The place was completely transformed. If it hadn't been for the massive mountain nearby, I would think I was in OZ or something. In fact, Neo-Geo was the only thing I recognized.
The colors seemed brighter, cleaner than normal. The sounds were like music as if everything was singing a song in harmony. The sound seemed to be coming from everything. It was like everything had its own song but that song harmonized with the big/main song.
    "Journeyman, Ace Journeyman," a voice said softly, like a summer breeze. "Ace." I then felt someone shaking me and the voice become more urgent.
    "Ace!" Now it was Glen.
    I gasped as if I'd been holding my breath for ten minutes and sat up. I was back in the cabin. Glen and some guy where there. "About time," said Glen. "Thought I'd need to get a bucket."
    "Dr. Richter wants to see you," the other person said coldly.

Richter
    "Just keep me posted," Dr. Richter said to his daughter.
    I poked my head into the office. "You wanted to see me." Sandy issued a small gasp once she saw me but quickly recovered with a sunbeam of a smile. She nodded towards me as she left.
    Richter offered me a seat. "I'm a no nonsense type of guy, Ace," he said, "I'll get right to it. I'm surprised to see you here."
    "Excuse me?"
    "I knew your father." Whoa. "I was shocked to see your name on the pre-selection tests everyone took in January. And I'm kind of surprised your mother would let you come within a hundred miles of this place...after what happened to your father." He must have noticed a confused look on my face. "She never told you?" He went to the window and looked out. He looked like an old soldier who'd seen too many battles. "I was Samuel's friend, much like you and Mr. Otero. We did everything together; except for archeology." Richter shook his head. "Samuel never had much use for it. You take after your father in that department. And I suppose in other areas too..."
    What's that supposed to mean? "What happened to my father?"
    "I finally talked him into joining me at Neo-Geo. I was so close to uncovering its secrets. Not long after he arrived, he...changed. Started acting differently. I contacted your mother; you and she left to come here. You probably don't remember, you were three at the time." He paused for a moment as if he was trying to fight back some personal demons.     "It was too late. By the time she arrived...Samuel was gone."
    "Gone?" I asked. "Dead?"
    "No. Gone. Vanished, like the settlers. Just poof. I turned for a second to pick up a stone tool. When I turned around, he was gone. No footprints, no drag marks, nothing."
    Suddenly this internship was a lot more interesting.
***
    "I don't trust him," Glen said flatly. "And quite frankly, I don't trust his daughter." This is serious. Glen trusts everyone. I was far from convinced. "Think about it. She shows up out of nowhere and sits next to you at lunch. No offense, but she's out of your league."
    "How is that not offensive?"
    Glen studied the rock he was holding and sat it gently into the pile marked limestone. After almost a week of working the site, we were settling into a routine. "You know what I mean. Dr. Richter knows more about your father than he's letting on...if he even knows anything. He could be lying to you."
    I looked at the rock I was holding and tossed it behind me. I have no idea where it landed. "Why would he do that?"
    "How should I know? He could be some creepy stalker." I put my hands on my hips. "Yeah...OK, probably not that, but you get my point."
    "Hey you two!" shouted an assistant. "Stop talking and get to work!"
    "I tell you, Ace," Glen shook a rock in my face; he then realized what he was doing and carefully put it into its proper pile, "that Richter rubs me the wrong way."
***
    Three more hours of looking through rocks had reduced me to just looking at the rock, saying "rock," and throwing it into a pile. Glen had returned to his normal jovial self, going on about how "awesome" and "exciting" all of this was. "Oh my gosh!" he said, "Is that basalt!?" With each iteration of how "amazing" categorizing rocks was, I yawned bigger and more frequently until I...couldn't...*yawn*...take it...anymore...and fell asleep.
***
    Someone started tapping on my forehead. I opened my eyes. A person about my age stood there. I didn't recognize him from the orientation. "We're here," he said as if he was just announcing that a meteor the size of Texas was about to hit the Earth. That was when I noticed we were moving. We were in the back of some kind of transport. There were others about my age, maybe a little older, with us. They were all dressed in military fatigues and armed. That's when I noticed I was wearing fatigues too.
    "Come on, David," said the one that woke me; he nudged me towards the exit. "We need to report in."
    "David?" I said.

Continued in The Life of Ace Journeyman (Journey to Neo-Geo, #1) available to buy at Barnes & Noble.