Genie Chronicles Gemini Ch 00

Prologue

John was happy to be finally moving out of the shit hole he'd been calling home for the past 4 years, while he'd made the best of a bad situation the single room in a house-share in the small market town in Buckinghamshire had long since gotten too small for his personality. His books and music had piled up and piled up until he could barely move, his geek side had pulled him to constantly learn more and his love of music stretched back to when he was 9 years old and first picked up an Iron Maiden CD in a music shop.

He was a decent enough looking guy, nothing AMAZING, he had the remnants of a beer gut, he had noticeable biceps and when he wore shorts he had big lower legs too, the result of a lot of hiking, he was 5'11', long blonde hair (well he was still a metalhead, that was sort of obligatory), but he'd never had much self-confidence (mainly due to having only recently got into any sort shape, at 25 he was looking OK but dial back the clock 10 years and he was 16 stone, 44 inch waistline and one of the least fit boys at his school) and as a result his dating history had been extremely limited.

Never the less he'd kept going, imagining the perfect girl would come along eventually and in the mean time he'd busied himself with work outs, reading books on symbology, Egyptian hieroglyphs, history, military, science, engineering, philosophy, religion, sociology and psychology. He'd immersed himself in music, not just heavy metal but classical too and to a limited extent trance/ house music.

He'd decked out his room with some huge speakers and plenty of gothic ornaments and usually had some incense going. As a result he was quite a deep guy, but always the lack of female attention gnawed at him and every once in a while he'd realize just how lonely he was.

But the boy had done good recently, picked up more regular paid work while he finally put pen to paper and started writing some of the novels that had been gestating in his imagination for a while now. With a couple of those novels selling in decent quantities he'd gotten enough money together to afford a decent house for himself.

He wasn't moving too far but the town of Windsor was much more up-market than his previous place of residence and it was a much more lively place with a huge castle in the middle of it, John being a history lover had been especially drawn to that feature, because let's face it who doesn't love a good castle right?

And so today he was loading his stuff into the van and getting ready to start living in his own place. As he was almost done with the loading he went back to have a final check of his room and to have a final settle-up with the landlady.

As he entered his room he passed a box of random bits and pieces on the landing, entering his room he found his landlady checking around the room for damages and the cleaning lady was already starting to wipe the dust off a few surfaces.

"Hi, I'm all loaded now, it's been a good few years here but I'm kinda glad to be moving on" he said.

"It's been good having you John" said the landlady "you've been one of the easier residents of the past few years".

John chuckled at that, yep he'd seen a few nut cases come and go.

"So how much do I owe you for the damages?"

"Not much really, just call it a square £50 and that should cover it".

John got out his cheque book and wrote out a cheque for £200, he decided to be generous, she'd been patient with him at times when he'd been behind on rent and she'd had a hard few years so helping her cover a few more costs seemed like a the right thing to do.

As he handed her the cheque he glanced at the box of nick-nacks by the door. The landlady picked up on this and started explaining.

"My mother's recently had to go into a care home, we were moving some of her stuff out and we found that box, as far as I can tell it's all junk."

John looked at it and for the most part he agreed, it was old jars and small pots with coins in them and almost all of the glass ware or pottery was the tacky sort, but his eyes were drawn to a tubular object, a cylinder roughly 15 inches long and about the same around as a pringles can but this was all one piece, all of it was an obsidian black colour and it had almost no features, almost, but John, ever the curious problem solver was excited by stuff that was "almost" something or "almost" not something, he loved chasing those trails and as he picked up the object it felt right, it felt like something he was meant to find, it was flat at both ends with small dots, a few symbols carved into the surface and the rest of it was smooth.

"What's this?" he asked, not really registering that it was someone else's property and he'd just picked it up as if he was entitled to it.

"No idea John, I've got no use for it so it'll probably go to the tip like everything else", his land lady responded, bemused by the man in front of her and the way he was enthralled by what seemed to be useless rubbish.

"Can I take this?"

"Don't see why you'd want to really but if you can find a use for it by all means have it".

John reached for his wallet thinking he'd chuck £10 at her as payment but she just held her hands up.

"Consider it a house warming gift"

"Thanks", John said still a little absent of mind, he was startled from his daydreaming by the moving van's horn and the drivers impatient shout of "move it".

He said his final goodbyes, thanked his landlady and the cleaner for 4 years of memories and headed out and jumped in the van. He dumped the cylindrical object in the bag between his feet, the bag was full of his clothes but it didn't matter everything would get sorted out at the other end.

- - - - - -

A week later John was moved into a decent sized detached house in Windsor, he had four bedrooms, a shower that looked brand new in a bathroom that had apparently only just been put in, a large living room occupying one side of the house with a dining room and kitchen sharing the other side and in the middle a wide hallway leading to a similarly wide stairway.

With all his stuff moved in he'd spent the past week organising and unpacking, although the perks of being a writer seemed to be the capacity to be at home all day his publishers were starting to ask him when he was going to finish his next book, so despite being at home he didn't feel as much let-up in the pressure, but having done plenty of work this morning he was taking the afternoon off to sort out the boxes and bags of stuff that still weren't organized from the move the previous week.

He was in his bedroom, sitting on his large double bed and sorting through a bag of clothes, this bag seemed to have nothing but black t-shirts in, he chuckled to himself at that, he did have a lot of them, from bands he'd seen live to festivals he'd attended to gothic artwork he had a lot of black t-shirts. Picking each one out individually, putting it on a hanger and placing it in the built in wardrobes that occupied the entire wall to the right of the door from door side to window. As he worked he came across the black object and realized it must have gotten buried as the van was moving and no wonder he forgot it was there it was a black object amongst black t-shirts.

He got up placed the t-shirt he'd been holding in the wardrobe and then took the object downstairs to the living room so he could sit comfortably and muse over it, that should waste a few hours he thought.

As he examined it he turned it and stroked it and held it to the light to see the symbols around the middle better, noticing what looked like the sign for Gemini the twins in the zodiac, the symbol was placed at equal points around the circumference of the object like the cardinal points of a compass with smooth unbroken surface between them. John continued to move the object in his hand testing theories, trying to twist the two ends in opposite directions, he tried pulling the two ends to see if any separations appeared but nothing, brute force wasn't going to solve this at least not on it's own. He started turned it once again and held the flat ends of the tube as he looked at the side, pressing here and there until..... wait... what was that? He pushed the exact centre point at each end and felt them give a little, they were smooth and unbroken but as he looked at the end and as he pushed them again he noticed the surface dip in, it was moveable, he held it between both hands again and used his middle fingers to press in as hard as he could on the moving points, this was the best lead he'd had so far and he was going to follow it as far as it would go.

As he continued to exert pressure he heard a click-hiss, sound and then the centre points became hard and unmoveable, he was disappointed until he noticed how the cylinder had separated in the middle, with a line running right the way round, separating each Gemini symbol so one twin from each pair was on each side of the separation.

He tried putting a nail in there to separate them more but to no avail, he then tried twisting like before, but whereas previously the material had been solid and unmoveable now the two ends moved in opposite directions, sliding smoothly through 180 degrees before popping open further, this final pop surprised John and he jumped, but that was followed by a haziness as purple smoke billowed from revealed compartments in each end of the object, as the haziness increased John got up, worried at what was happening, honestly he didn't know what he was going to do but he got up out of instinct, but that only carried him as far as the fireplace, his last memory was the room starting to fall forwards before he blacked out completely.