TNP2-01 "The Coconut Waterfall"

A Chapter by dw817

"David. It's not a problem. This just injects you with a harmless element so that SHE recognizes you as one of the members of this household. Everyone has it. I have it, all the employees have it."

Want to read this in a different language ?
Change the TO field to your own country and click the TRANSLATE button after going HERE

Press CTRL = (equals) to increase the page size and CTRL - (minus) to decrease the page size

THE NANCY PRINCIPLE (2nd book)

© July 2013 Written by David Wicker
Please do not reprint without permission

CHAPTER 1 - THE COCONUT WATERFALL

I am looking for chapter artists !

If you would like to contribute your own at any point in any of my stories,
then SEND me a URL of the website containing your art and I will insert it directly in the writing,
complete with a clickable website address and full credits to you, the artist.

Find the completed 1st novel HERE.

[ CHOOSE A DIFFERENT CHAPTER OF THIS BOOK TO READ ]

* * *

Rated: EVERYONE

Having arrived underground, I noticed the cut of the cylindrical wall behind us slid counter-clockwise slightly to the left and saw a passageway where ceiling lights flickered and staggered to turn on as they are suddenly activated to illuminate the foreboding darkness ahead.

"Whoa !" I say breathlessly. Even Judy beside me seems impressed by the scale of this complex.

Tricia hums to herself, a little pleased at our being so impressed at just seeing the entry hallway. She suddenly steps forward and me and Judy follow after her. Finally she comes to the end of the hall and there is a doorway with a little round cylinder, like an oversized watch battery, stuck to it, and as it is transparent on the front, inside I could see a softly lit violet circle, like a hologram.

Tricia waved her hand over it and I could hear a clearly digital chime, the hologram circle inside suddenly shined bright green, and the door ahead buzzed that it's okay to open, much like I had at work for BBI.

And inside it was beautiful ! There was a spacious room with 2 different couches with throws over them, chairs stacked neatly against the wall and a massive kitchen that must be at least 30 feet across. I gravitated towards that immediately as Judy went over to examine the furniture.

The door behind us closed promptly and clicked, locked. And - shouldn't I be concerned ? But no. I can trust Tricia, I mean, she got the settlement for me, I'm moving out of my old place into a new place, I'm getting married to her, and clearly I can continue my work on the BBS so what's the problem ?

I went to the refrigerator and found I had to use both hands to open the door because it was so big. Inside were - well - nothing but TV dinners. All kinds. In the freezer were all kinds of ice-cream treats. I looked behind me and there was a big microwave oven, very high-tech looking with a bright LED display showing the time, and I could see it was already 6 in the evening.

I reached for the door to open it when suddenly I pulled my finger back from a sudden shock ! jabbed my finger in my mouth in pain and as I looked at the display for a moment it showed all minuses, then the correct time again. Was it supposed to do that ?

Judy got up to examine the kitchen with me. Tricia stayed in the background, much like a schoolmarm letting children examine a playground. That was the best way I could describe it. Finally Tricia spoke.

"Judy, David. As long as you are staying here, you are welcome to anything we have. But before we go too far, I need you to come with me so SHE can recognize you. And that's why you got shocked just now, David."

I exchanged smiles with Judy who was, like me, enjoying this great adventure and followed after Tricia who took the first right down a hallway where there were several doors. She took the 2nd and it was some kind of medical room I guess.

Inside were two hard mechanical beds like you saw in the hospital. Tricia motioned for me and Judy to hop up on one of them. We did so and looked at each other warily.

Tricia explained, "As long as you two are here, you'll need this." and she held up a needle syringe. I started to step down off the hospital bed but Tricia stopped me to explain further.

"David. It's not a problem. This just injects you with a harmless element so that SHE recognizes you as one of the members of this household. Everyone has it. I have it, all the employees have it. It will just take a moment."

"What if I don't want it ?" I asked. Judy nodded, agreeing that was a good question.

"I - we - I mean - SHE won't like it."

I paused to think for a moment. Tricia was not speaking with confidence right now. It was as if SHE could not be changed and that SHE, despite being an intelligent computer could not be reprogrammed against this required injection. And that was odd.

For a moment I imagined that Tricia was in fact under the control of SHE and not the other way around, but I dismissed that immediately.

"It's not poisonous." Tricia said, bringing me back to my surroundings. I nodded. I remembered my Dad told me these exact words when I drank that strange lime-yellow liquid. Years ago for some odd reason, I couldn't learn. Really anything. I was still struggling with the alphabet while kids around me were singing, literally, the A B C's around, teasing me that I couldn't learn them.

Dad said he saw a doctor and that same doctor prescribed this weird drink for me. It tasted like copper or pennies cause I had tried sucking on one of those one time. And it was lime flavored, but not very good and it fizzed a lot in the glass like alka-seltzer.

But after I drank this 'medicine' for a month, my own intelligence shot straight up. I learned the A B C's, but I went further than that. I went further than my own classes ! But then I started having other problems. Hearing and seeing things that weren't there. And today I take medications for that - amongst other things.

"David ?" Tricia said, seeing I was clearly zoning out in my memories now.

"Huh ?" I asked.

"Can I see your wrist please, sweetie ?" and she held up the needle.

"Oh, yeah. Sure." I said still thinking about what it was my Dad gave me to drink. I never did figure that out.

There was a short stab on my wrist and then a dull pain as if what she gave me in fact was poisonous, but a moment later, a kind of coolness, as if what she was injecting had an anesthetic Property to it as well. Then she gave me a cotton swab.

"Hold this."

I did so and she got some tape and taped around my wrist to hold the swab in place.

Tricia then threw away the whole needle in a container marked biohazard. Apparently it was disposable. She grabbed another needle from the counter. "You're next, Judy." Tricia said.

Judy, seeing that I didn't make too much of a fuss, held her wrist out but looked away. I thought it important to look at the contents of the needle this time and was surprised to see it looked like shimmery water. Like water but more reflective, like - metal ?

* * *

Tricia injected her. "Oww !" Judy said in pain when she got hers. Tricia didn't say anything but gave her the cotton swab, and taped her up too.

Then she reached in a drawer and pulled out what looked like a little calculator. She held it over my wrist. It beeped. Then Judy's, it beeped. As I looked on curiously, she put it over her own right wrist but then suddenly ran it up to her shoulder, and like the two times before, it beeped compliance.

Tricia explained, "It is an inert material that never leaves you. Over time, it registers completely, that is, it does not stay in the wrist but eventually travels through every part of your body."

"Does it grow ?" Judy asked a little frightened.

"Nono ..." Tricia spoke in a soothing tone. "It disperses, it spreads throughout your bloodstream. It's harmless. Really quite harmless." Tricia then put the 'calculator' back in the drawer and looked to us to see if there were any more questions.

And no, there weren't any. So Tricia motioned us to stand up. We left the medical room, backtracked back to the living room and then took an opposite hallway where the doors were spaced further apart and they were numbered. I saw they went all the way up to 10.

As we passed the first clearly labeled with a raised engraving of "1," which was on the left-hand side, Tricia tapped it with her foot. "This is my room."

We traveled further and she tapped the 4th on the right with her hand, "Judy, this is your room."

Without waiting to see if Judy wanted to enter, we traveled on directly to the next door on the right, the 6th. She tapped and said, "David. This is your room. Did you want to see it now ? I think I owe you something - don't I ?"

"What ?" I asked, because maybe at the moment my head was spinning from everything that had taken place so far.

Without answering Tricia waved her hand over the familiar slightly glowing violet circle to the right, it turned green and I heard the familiar acknowledgement tone again and the door buzzed unlocked.

We entered within and it was HUGE ! Much nicer than my old place. There was a love-chair against the wall, some more of those familiarly stacked chairs, and a long table, clearly for my computer stuff.

And true to form the movers had everything all shifted in large plastic boxes, and there had to have been over a dozen or more in the center of the room and they were large, nearly 4-feet in height !

I immediately went over to one of them and popped the top to see my wall decorations had apparently and safely been transported. As I was looking through my stuff, Judy walked over to one wall that had several curious glass beads hanging down from it. Perfectly rectangular. 12-feet across and 8-feet down. And you could barely make out an opening behind it.

But I was more interested in seeing that all the stuff from my old place arrived safely.

"What is this ?" Judy finally said, running her fingers through the beads and reaching behind to a different smaller room on the other side and what felt like a faucet between what she now found was 2-sets of beads. A low table stood nearby holding an icebox. She opened it to find 2-chapagne glasses chilled from the ice in it. She closed it again with a satisfying click.

"That is the condition of our agreement, isn't it, David ?"

"Huh ?" I said. And then I looked to see what she was talking about. Tricia walked to the table and grabbed a remote control. She hit a few buttons and suddenly 3 bright lasers, red, green, and blue, danced all around the room in complex patterns. It was pretty - but I was still confused about what she was doing.

Then she hit a different button and the 3 lasers went to the shimmering curtain of beads and started dancing madly over them, brighter, brighter, shifting hues and changing colors, until suddenly - it was a waterfall ! Perfect in every way.

Tricia hit another button and I could hear the very clear sound of a waterfall coming through speakers in the ceiling. She hit another button and some kind of aerosol mister sprayed for a moment.

"David," she announced proudly, "Allow me to introduce you to your Coconut Waterfall."

Sure enough it was a perfect hologram now dancing off of the beads. And it looked like a delicious flowing river of milky coconut traveling right down a waterfall in my own bedroom !

Tricia set down the control for a second and went to the icebox to hand me one of the champagne glasses as she got one out for herself. Curiosity overcoming me I started to put my glass through the beads to see if it would fill with coconut milk but she stopped me.

"What was it you said ? That you wouldn't be satisfied unless you could walk behind a secret cave, hold out your glass and get delicious coconut milk anytime you wanted ? Wasn't that what you said ?"

"Yeah - sure." I replied. I didn't really think she would go through with it, not this far, but sure enough, she did !

"Well come on then. Let's see your 'secret cave' shall we ?"

I handed my champagne glass to Judy who was grinning from ear to ear to see this crazy device in action. Tricia went to a wall to the right of the glass beads and pushed on it. Sure enough, like a secret passage, the wall rotated on a center spindle and let us through on the other side.

Behind the wall it was very dark and I could see that someone had painted and decorated it with Styrofoam to make it look exactly like the inside of a real Aladdin's cave.

And then it was easy to see was the rough-hewn and plaster rocky opening to the waterfall, and because the lasers were shining on the opposite side, it was dazzlingly beautiful ! And I could definitely smell the coconut now, likely from the earlier mist she sent into the air.

Tricia fixed her eyes on mine and then thrust her champagne glass through the beads and I could hear a faint hum of a machine. When she pulled back her hand, sure enough it was filled with frosty coconut milk.

"Now you try." Tricia offered.

Judy stepped ahead of me still holding my glass, "Can I ?"

I nodded, amazed at seeing such incredible technology, and for something I originally deemed as an impossible feat to accomplish.

Judy looked at the waterfall and then went to the side of it and held her glass against the beads. Nothing happened. She looked at me quizzically. Maybe it was broken ?

Tricia spoke to Judy, "Give it a moment to find your glass."

I heard the hum and realized now it was a little spigot that was possibly using a reflective beam, between the 2-sets of beaded curtains, looking for a glass and it when it found it, it sprayed the ready-made coconut milk directly into it, much like those machines you see make you a cup of coffee at work.

Judy brought it back and handed it to me. I tasted it and it was really cold, sweet, and delicious !

"Satisfied ?" Tricia asked, crossing her arms and tapping her shoulders with her fingers. "I did the impossible for you, David. Now - you have to do the impossible thing for me."

I grew fearful hearing this and draining my glass of the savory milk asked, "What - do I have to do in return ?"