A New Friend
It was the Sunday night, the last night of spring break. Alan spent the day completing his assignments for school, and by early evening he was done. He fiddled around on the computer for a bit, surfing sites and reading e-mails, but by eight o'clock he was bored. "The Simpsons" was a rerun so he had decided not to watch. With nothing much to do Alan began to clean his desk and organize his papers, but before he had made much progress he came upon the ring.
He had enclosed it in a sheet of notebook paper and some tape, and when he drew it out from the desk drawer it took him half a second to realize what it was. Slowly he unwrapped it. It just looked like a regular ring now, not glowing or buzzing like it had before. He examined it closely; it was silver but badly tarnished, unsurprisingly because it was two-and-a-half millennia old. He decided to polish it, and as he put it down on the desk it began glowing and vibrating. He picked it up again, and it stopped. Palming it in his left hand he went downstairs and grabbed a rag and his mom's silver polish and quickly returned to his room, closing the door behind him. He had never polished silver before so he didn't know if he should apply the polish to the ring directly or first to the rag. He scooped out some polish, a gooey pink substance, and rubbed it on the rag with the tips of his fingers, then placed the ring in the center of the moist part of the rag, folded it over, and began to rub the ring through it. After a few seconds he stopped to check his progress and saw that the ring was now gleaming.
"Should I try it on?" he asked himself silently. He was still new to his powers, and he didn't know what the ring would do to them. He put the ring down again so he could continue to think. This time the glow from the ring was intense, so intense that the light was almost blinding, and when he reached down to pick it up again, in hopes of stopping the terrible light from damaging his eyes he was chagrined to see that it was not abated. "For some reason this ring wants me to wear it," Alan was figuring out, so he slipped it on his finger, the middle finger of his right hand. He didn't know why he chose that finger, but it felt right.
Instantly the light faded, and after a few seconds it had stopped completely.
"Alan," he heard his mother call from downstairs, "Were you expecting company? There's someone at the door for you."
Alan went downstairs and saw his parents speaking to his unexpected guest. He wasn't quite sure who this man was, but he was certain that he had something to do with the ring, the Ring of Ko'un-Zir.
"Ah, there you are Alan," the man began. He had an accent, European for sure, it sounded like to Alan. He couldn't tell if it was French or British because it sounded like a little of each. "It's nice to meet you at last." His parents were at a loss, and he could see his father about to say something, but instead he took his mother and they walked away from Alan and the stranger, and up the stairs.
"I don't want to be rude or anything, but who are you?"
"Awfully sorry young man, frightfully discourteous thing to do. Well, you know, manners were never my string suit. I am Jean-Pierre Massimo, and I am here because of you. Because you are wearing the ring."
"I've heard of you! The man at the mus--" Alan stopped short, not wanting to tell Massimo that he had stolen the Ring of Ko'un-Zir from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "You're an archaeologist, that's uh, that's where I've heard of you."
"And you, young man, you are the vessel of one of the Seeds of Paishiya'uvada."
"What are you talking about?" Alan bluffed.
"Please don't patronize me Alan. You are a vessel of the Seed. There are five Seeds in existence, and you contain one. You received it last month in the hospital from its former vessel, a man named Grossman."
"I didn't know his name." A few seconds later Alan realized he had blown his bluff.
"So, the lies are over, thank goodness."
"How did you know? Did the ring tell you? I know you found it in Iraq many years ago, so you must know something about it. Please Mr. Massimo, I know virtually nothing about the Seed, and less about the Ring of Ko'un-Zir."
"Patience my son, all in good time. And by the way, it's 'Dr. Massimo.'"
"Sorry."
"Call me Jack. Everybody does." He laughed.
They went into the living room and sat across from each other. Alan noticed that Jack was also wearing a ring identical to his own, but he held his tongue, wishing for Jack to tell him more.
"Just out of curiosity, do you know which of the Seeds you contain?" Jack asked him.
"Uh, yeah. My Seed is the Seed of Hyrcanus."
"Really! Well I'll say! Excellent, excellent." He clapped his hand on his knee. "The first of them all, well met!" He paused before continuing, leaning closer to Alan as if to confide, "I am the vessel of the third Seed, the Seed of Cyaxares."
Alan had a million questions, and Dr. Massimo could see him chomping at the bit to ask them. "Right, right. You are dying to ask me some questions, but please, all in good time. I am used to lecturing, so you'll have to indulge me.
"So, about a month past you became the vessel of the Seed. And earlier this week you 'acquired' the Ring of Ko'un-Zir at the museum in Manhattan, correct?"
"Yes, how did you know?"
"After the firing and arrest of Dr. Swindon-Smythe I realized that someone had found my ring at the museum, and I had to rush there to rectify the situation."
"Oh Jeez! He was arrested? That's awful." Alan dropped his eyes, ashamed of himself.
"Oh, I fixed it for the chap. He's back on staff--as you Yanks say, 'No harm, no foul.' However, if your powers had been more advanced this would not have happened. Before I leave here tonight you must promise me to practice."
"But I don't really know what I'm doing. How am I going to practice? Is there a manual or something?"
Jack chuckled. "Sorry young man, there's no set of instructions. Just find a quiet hour to exercise your powers. You don't need to meditate, you need not concentrate. Just exercise your powers like you would your body. The better you become using the skills you know you have, the easier it will be to discover new ones."
"How did you find me?"
"Oh simple really. I had the chief of security at the museum review all of the videotape from last Monday, and then I 'hired' a private investigator to track you down. He found your cousin Nina first because she lives in New York. I paid her a visit this morning and she told me where you live. The clumsy alterations Swindon-Smythe made in the curatorial databases pinpointed the time of your visit, so thankfully we didn't have to sit through watching hours upon hours of videotape. It was quite easy, really. A lesson to you for the future to cover your tracks better, what ho.
"And now we come to the ineffable motive of my contact: the ring. How much do you know about the creation of the Seeds?"
