Meeting the Former Waitress
Did you ever have one of those odd meetings with someone from your past, someone who remembered you on sight, but for whom it took you a while to place them within your memory?
Well, my wife Helena and I were walking to the neighborhood restaurant one day, for our weekly lunch with our son, who lives nearby and was working from home that day. A youngish woman got off a city bus, which was stopping to let people off a short distance ahead of us. She seemed a bit lost, looking around at her surroundings.
As we walked near her, she stopped us and asked us whether we used to go to a different restaurant, about a mile away, called the Garneau Pub and Plato’s Pizza. We said that we did and she said that she thought so, adding that she used to waitress there, and remembered us, noting that we came in once a week or so. We agreed that was indeed one of our weekly outings.
I said that I seemed to remember her now and asked if she knew how the proprietor of the establishment was doing. The place had shut down during the Covid lockdown era. That said, the owner was getting on in years.
She said that "Jimmy is gone now".
I asked "gone, as in left the planet?" That was an expression that one of my brothers used, to indicate that someone had died.
"Yes," she said, intuiting my meaning. "Once he was gone, his brothers couldn’t keep the place up on their own – he was the glue that had held things together."
She also asked about our son, who often joined us at our afternoons at the Garneau Pub, as he was a university student at the nearby university at this time. We said that we were just going to meet him for lunch, at Rick and Alice’s Grill, which was only a few hundred feet distant, as we were now in the parking lot of a strip-mall that housed that establishment.
She said, "I remember him, he was a nice guy."
I told her that he lived nearby in a condo. Thoughts of her as a daugher-in-law crossed my mind, as Scott is still single and very eligible (he has a very good job as well as several university degrees).
She also said that she remembered us as writers. That was unusual for me; sure I write some, but more as a hobby than a profession. My wife, on the other hand, has internalized that identity for herself, so it was an apt description for her. She has written several novels, which continue to get sales and downloads on Amazon. My more modest contribution to the family business does well enough, but not to the same extent as Helena's. Anyway, it was surprising to have someone identify us in that fashion – I suppose she must have heard Helena and I talking about it over wine and pizza.
She then took her leave, saying that she had gotten off the bus at that location by accident, as the stop she wanted was about ten blocks up. She said "I don’t know why I got off so soon."
There seemed to be something slightly portentous about the incident, but I don’t know what it was. One never knows. She did mention that she eats at Rick and Alice’s sometimes, so perhaps we will meet again some day. Maybe in some future, she and Scott get together. It is a nice dream anyway.
And below is a novel written by my wife about a lost young woman.
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Kati of Terra Book 1 – Escape from the Drowned Planet
Amazon U.S: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00811WVXO
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In saving her small son from alien abductors, a 24-year-old Earth woman, Katie, finds herself abducted instead. She awakens from a drug-induced coma on a spaceship, in a room full of children, both human and alien, and two other women, younger than she is. The young women adapt to the situation as best they can, keeping the youngsters calm and entertained. But, when a drugged alien man wearing a uniform is added to the captive cargo, it becomes clear that this is an intergalactic slave operation.
The slave traders implant their captives with “translation nodes” in order to allow communication among various groups. These are living entities, normally docile, merely enhancing certain brain functions, such as language acquisition. However, Katie discovers that she has accidentally received a very special “granda node”, a long-lived node with its own cantankerous personality, including a fondness for criminality and lethal weaponry. Fortunately for Katie, it also values its freedom. With its help, she escapes on a fringe planet, dragging the peace officer along—also at the granda’s suggestion.
She finds herself on a strange world, with a somewhat deranged personality, quite possibly a killer, in her head, and partnered with a man from an advanced civilization who abhors killing. He is a Federation Peace Officer, captured by the slavers while attempting to bring them to justice. His task is complicated by the fact that he has sworn to avoid the taking of sentient life during the performance of his duties. He can and does, however, make vigorous use of non-lethal weaponry. Since, before leaving the ship, Katie had promised to help her co-captives gain their liberty, she and the alien peace officer find that they have a common cause.
But first they must find their way off the primitive planet and get to the Federated Civilization, avoiding the slavers who have been left on the planet to re-capture them. Their flight is complicated by the fact that the planet has had a global warming catastrophe some centuries back – the locals refer to it as the Drowned World. This has forced the inhabitants to revert to a pre-industrial state of development; however, they are a wily and resourceful people, mostly helpful, but they can also be dangerous.
Kati (to mark her escape, she adopts a slight name change) and Mikal seek a Federation beacon, which had been hidden on this planet ages ago, to aid in situations such as this, (in accord with a longstanding Federation policy for fringe worlds). They must embark on an arduous trek across two continents and an ocean, seeking the temple that holds the beacon. They travel on foot, by cart, by riverboat, by tall sailing ship, and on pack animals, always pursued by the dangerous slavers.
They must rely on their wits, guile, charm and acting abilities to avoid recapture, while their chasers have advanced technology and ruthlessness on their side. Fortunately, they are able to make many friends who help them along the way, and their quest becomes a series of adventures, both frightening and funny, and involving a cast of engaging characters.
To complicate matters, Kati finds herself falling in love with Mikal, the strange, handsome and amusing alien. He seems to be reciprocating, though they both struggle against an untimely romantic entanglement.
Will Kati and Mikal escape from the Drowned Planet? Can they ultimately bring the slavers to justice, as Mikal has sworn to do? Can they free the remaining captives of the slavers, as Kati has promised to do? Read this book and the rest of the series to find out all.
At about 200,000 words (equivalent to a paperback of about 400 pages), the book is an excellent value.
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