WELCOME DEAR READER!! Welcome to Stolen Love. If you're new to this series, be advised that this is a series. The first story is Crown Vic to a Parallel World, and the second is From Whence I Came. This is the third and final installment of the trilogy, Stolen Love.
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Crown Vic to a Parallel World: Stolen Love The third and final installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips
1
A New Adventure for an Old Man
"I'm so glad you decided to come with me." I said to Father Miller. He was in the passenger seat of the Vic, and we were traveling southbound on New Jersey state route 55 somewhere between Glassboro and Vineland. I was driving slowly, slowly for me that is, because of the weather. It was Monday, May 18th, 2037, and an April shower had come a month late to dump an all-day soaking rain on the Delaware Valley. It was about eleven in the morning and what little traffic there was on the road was made up of diesel trucks taking advantage of the toll-free route through the southern end of the Garden State.
Father Miller shook his large head. The sagging skin of his thick neck scraped the high collar of his priest's black suit. The twelve years that had gone by since I'd last laid eyes on the man had left their mark on him. He'd aged significantly. He was still a large man, broad and thick-bodied, but he was thinner than I remembered, shrunken by the weight of his years. His expressive face sagged even more than it had before. His black hair, that had previously been only streaked with grey, was now completely iron grey.
Father Paul Miller was no longer the robust man of fifty-eight that I remembered. Now that he was seventy, he seemed very much an old man. I hoped he wasn't too old to benefit from a trip to the other world. "I can't believe so much time has gone by." The old priest said and added an expressive shrug to his head shake. "You don't look like you've aged a day."
"I feel great." I admitted. "At one time in my life, I figured I'd be long dead by the time I was fifty-seven, but instead, I feel like I'm twenty and I still look pretty good."
"You look great." Father Miller agreed heartily and patted my muscled right shoulder with a liver spotted hand.
I'd kept up with my Elit Fortis training to maintain my powerful build for Shawn. I originally built the muscle for him, but I came to like how I looked as well. I'd focused my exercise a bit more and kept a closer eye on my diet, so that now, instead of just being big, I was also decently cut. I couldn't call myself ripped, but I was nicely defined. Shawn seemed to like the results of the work I put in, and when he liked something, I got to enjoy it too.
Father Miller used the hand that had been on my shoulder to point at my hands on the steering wheel. "What happened to your hands?" He asked. "I remember them being severely scarred. I wanted to ask you about them when we first met years ago, but I didn't know...I thought maybe you would be sensitive about them. I didn't want to risk bringing up a difficult subject."
I took my right hand from the wheel and looked at the back of it. The priest was right, once upon a time, that hand and its brother had been crossed with thick, rubbery scars, and garnished with permanently swollen knuckles. They were the product of dangerous hard work and carelessness brought about by alcoholism and a severe case of self-loathing. Now my hands were just hands. They were still large and thick fingered, but they no longer bore the marks of injury or abuse. "I let Shawn fix them, as part of my therapy."
I glanced at my passenger and saw the curiosity on his expressive face. I felt a little awkward about explaining about the therapy until I remembered that this man already knew more about me than almost anyone else alive, Shawn and maybe Bem excluded. I didn't think he would change his opinion of me if I told him about the several years I'd spent in therapy, so I explained what I meant.
"When I was here the last time, on Earth, what with being at the old house, around my family, and dealing with all that, it got to me. I guess I'd built up kind of a protective shell over the years and being here broke through it. Shawn insisted that I get help, so I did. When we went back to Solum, he introduced me to the Solum equivalent of a psychologist.
"On Solum, psychologists are also clairvoyant empaths. That helps them get to the root of the problem faster than their Earth counterparts. Shawn and I saw him every week for two years and every other week for another two, then once a month for a year. I've made a lot of progress, dealt with a lot of the shit..."
I remembered who I was talking to and winced at my use of the expletive. Father Miller didn't seem to notice, and if he did, he didn't seem to mind. I apologized anyway. "Sorry Father, `stuff' I buried inside. When my doctor, Doctor Recolens, finally said I was ready to deal with life without him, he and Shawn convinced me to let Shawn fix my hands. It was a symbol of not allowing myself to be ruled by the past, kind-of a graduation from therapy. See?"
I held my right hand out toward Father Miller so he could get a closer look. He took my hand in his. The old priest's fingers felt bony and cold against the meat of my hand. He examined my healthy, unmarred skin. "Shawn is a remarkable physician. You know my diabetes never came back. When my doctor found out I was cured, he wanted to have me studied, but I wouldn't let him. I told him that would be like striking the rock twice." Father Miller released my hand back to me and I used it to turn the heat on high before I put it back on the wheel.
Father Miller noticed my action with the heater and guessed why I did it. "Thank you, Mister Summas." He said as the heat, made humid by the rain that fell outside, rose from the floor vents into the cab of the vehicle. He rubbed his hands together and rested them on his knees. "I get cold easily now. I'm an old man now."
I reproached myself for not coming to get Father Miller sooner, for letting so much time go by, for letting him get old before I offered him a vacation in the other world. I tried to reassure us both. "Not to worry, Father, a couple weeks on Solum and you'll feel better. It won't turn you into a teenager, but it will help. Wait until we get your magic working. That will make all the difference."
"Will I really have magic?" The old man sounded incredulous and desperately hopeful at the same time. "Yup, no doubt in my mind. It's up to you how we activate it. We can force it, or let it happen gradually, but either way, you will have magic power. I hope that's OK."
Father Miller sighed and leaned back in his seat. He let his head droop against the headrest. "Just getting to see you again, my dear friend, is all the magic I need, but I will not refuse the potential miracle of having my own power, no matter how great or small it turns out to be.
"Oooff!" Father Miller grunted and sat forward to dig something out of an unseen pocket. He brought out a white food service coffee mug with `Hotel Regis' written on it in blue calligraphy. The priest sat forward and perched the mug on the center of the dashboard, above the radio, with its rim resting against the windshield. "A cherished object inside of another cherished object." He narrated the mug's presence in the Vic. "That cup has seen every adventure of my life. It wouldn't be right to leave it behind for this one...for this one that might be the greatest of them all."
In the eighteen, almost nineteen years that I'd lived on Solum, much of what I'd originally found wonderous about it had become commonplace. Since Solum no longer amazed me, I worried about it being a letdown to my friend and said as much to him. "I hope it doesn't disappoint you, Father."
Father Miller burst into bright guffaws of joyous laughter. He laughed so hard he hugged himself and doubled over. He laughed hard enough that I worried about him. The old man settled and sat back in the seat again. "You hope it doesn't disappoint." He parroted. "Young man, I'm about to travel to another dimension in a," he held his hands up and counted something off on his fingers, "fifty-one-year-old Ford sedan. Don't worry about a thing. I assure you, whatever my expectations are, this trip is bound to exceed them."
I let Father Miller's words settle into my mind as I exited the highway and decelerated down a ramp onto what looked like a rural road in the middle of nowhere. Southern New Jersey was chock full of nothing and since we were traveling in daylight, it made sense to go somewhere with low population density instead of sticking to the tradition of using a tunnel for interdimensional travel.
The place we were going to on Solum, was even less populated than the rural area we were in, so making the trip during the day was not only possible, but it was preferable. The point was not to be seen, and at that hour of the day, we were less likely to be seen by someone where we were than if we used a heavily traveled highway tunnel or the lower deck of a bridge.
I drove us slowly along the road to look for possible observers and thought about the events that led up to Father Miller's presence in the seat next to me. That result was the culmination of a series of elaborate lies that I created to surprise the old man with what I thought was the opportunity of a lifetime. It was my lie, but Shawn and his uncle made the whole plan possible. Since Shawn and I had returned to Solum from our previous visit to Earth, Shawn had broadened his interest in philanthropy to include worthy causes both on Solum and on Earth.
A foundation that my husband started on Earth, with some of his uncle's vast funds, had been partially financing Father Miller's church for years. It was through the administration of that annual grant, through a shell company, that we kept tabs on the church and its curator.
We had also kept in touch via interdimensional email. That correspondence started a year or so after I'd gotten back to Solum from Earth in 2025. I missed Father Miller and had some time on my hands, so I'd asked Ars to set me up with an email account that would allow me to contact the good priest. After some negotiation, Ars complied, and Father Miller and I communicated regularly ever since.
When we heard that Father Miller was looking to slow down, not retire precisely, but step back from full time church duties, Shawn and I started to talk about what we could do for him. After some intense brainstorming and consultation with Shawn's Uncle Ars, we decided to ask Father Miller to come to Solum for a visit that could become permanent if the old man wanted it to be.
To provide a cover story for his disappearance, and to make sure his bags were packed, Shawn had his foundation offer the priest an all-expenses-paid trip to the Holy Land. On the day of his planned departure, instead of an airport rover to pick him up at the rectory, I planned to show up with the Vic and offer to take him to Solum.
If he refused, I would take him to the airport where all his travel was already booked, and all arrangements already made for the trip to Jerusalem that he thought he was going on. If he accepted the Solum trip, an agent of Ars' would stand in for the priest. The agent would take the flight to Israel, in Father Miller's name, and then disappear amid the multitude of pilgrims, maybe never to be heard from again.
I hadn't broached the possibility of his immigrating to Solum with Father Miller, but Shawn and his uncle had already agreed to welcome the man if he wanted to stay. The only caution that I planned to give Father Miller when I offered the trip to him, was that going to Solum with me, and spending significant time in my presence, would almost definitely activate the man's natural magic power. I also planned to promise that he could visit the Holy Land when he returned to Earth, if he returned and still wanted to go.
I'd showed up that morning as planned and astonished Father Miller into stunned silence. Once he recovered from his shock at seeing me, he hugged me tight enough to collapse a lung. After that, he enthusiastically agreed to go with me wherever I planned to take him, magic or no magic. I was thrilled that he agreed and overjoyed to see him again. Even though we'd kept in touch, seeing the man in person was more of a treat than I thought it would be. I'd loaded his suitcases in the trunk of the car and put him in the passenger seat for the journey.
He didn't ask me anything about why I'd shown up when I had, and I didn't offer any explanation. When I showed up, it seemed that Paul lost all thought about where he was originally supposed to be headed. He got in the car with me without a second thought or a backwards glance.
A little over an hour later, he and I were cruising along the two-lane rural road, and I was just about satisfied that it was a good place to depart the Earth from. I drove us about a mile away from the highway ramp, between freshly planted farm fields, and found a spot to pull over and stop. I took my phone from my pocket and slid open the car ashtray to retrieve the travel catalyst. I narrated what I was doing while I got things ready to go.
"This is what makes interdimensional travel possible." I said and held up a glass ball the size of a shooter marble. It was transparent pink with a silver diamond in the middle with one of its points extended to a round pin that projected from the glass to form a plug that mated with a socket on my phone.
"Before this device, I would have needed Shawn with me, or another empath, because only an empath can send their consciousness to the next dimension ahead of their physical body to make sure we don't arrive inside another object. This little doodad connects to GPS systems on both worlds and takes all the risk out of traveling, no empath needed."
"I didn't think to ask," Father Miller said as I fussed with the phone, "where your dear husband is. I supposed that he was busy with his practice. I remember that you wrote that he'd taken on a partner recently. I hoped that would give you two more time together, but perhaps it has only increased the demands on Shawn's time."
I looked up from the phone display and gritted my teeth. Shawn's practice, and his new partner, and the amount of his time that both demanded, were a sore spot for me at that moment. Shawn had promised, for Father Miller's visit, barring any emergencies, that he would take two weeks off and let his partner handle the practice. I hoped that he would follow through with that promise and that it would not be lost to good intentions.
Father Miller seemed to notice my change in mood. "I'm sorry, my friend." He said from the passenger seat. "I think I have unwittingly touched a raw nerve."
I turned my eyes toward the old priest, who returned my gaze with worried eyes in a worried face. I hurried to dismiss the injury he'd thought he'd inflicted on me. "Don't worry about it, Father. Shawn promised to be home for a while during your visit, so it's fine."
I brought up the interdimensional travel application, programmed our destination, and set it to engage when the car reached fifty-five miles per hour. I slipped the phone into the front pocket of my shirt, pulled the gearshift into `Drive' and checked the mirrors for traffic. As we were at the jumping off point, I paused to ask the priest one more time. "Father, are you sure you want to go with me? This is your last chance to change your mind."
The old man stared through the car windshield, through the wipers that slapped back and forth to clear the steadily falling rain from the glass, and into the cold, grey day that stretched out across the fields beyond. He reached forward and gathered his Hotel Regis mug from the dashboard into his lap and held it close.
"I feel like I should say something." He said, his voice quiet but with excitement behind it. "This moment...I feel that nothing that comes after this moment will ever be the same as anything that came before it. This may be the most momentous moment of my life, but I can't think of a single thing to say."
Father Miller trailed off and seemed to search his mind. His face brightened and he started to speak with slow reverence. "'The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be and that which is done is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun.' Ecclesiastes, chapter one, verse nine."
The priest's lapse into scripture confused me, and I needed to ask what he meant. "What does that mean, Father?"
The priest smiled and turned his face to mine. He reached to his neck, removed his white collar and lowered his eyes to study it. He opened the glove box, carefully stowed the collar, and closed it up again. He turned back to me, held his right hand out to shake hands and introduced himself. "Paul Miller," he said, "retired person. Pleasure to meet you, Church."
"Same here, Fath...uh, Paul." I said and shook his hand.
Father Miller saw my confusion and explained. "I can't be a priest in a world where there is no religion, therefore I will travel there as a man. I'm ready now, as ready as I'm likely ever to be. Let's go."
"Sounds good." I agreed and straightened up in the seat. I checked the mirrors again. No cars had gone down the road in the time we'd been sitting there, and I didn't think we'd see any in the few minutes I planned to remain on Earth. I made a U-turn toward the highway, accelerated, and steadied the car at fifty-five miles an hour.
The exact speed wasn't super important, but the motion added kinetic energy that helped the magic deal with the larger mass (verses just people and luggage) of the vehicle and its occupants. Fifty-five was at the bottom end of the recommended speed.
My phone beeped to let me know that the app had activated, and a pinprick of white light formed in the center of the view that we saw through the windshield. The pinprick grew to fill the windshield and dazzle our vision. When it winked out like a dying camera flash, I knew we'd made the jump to Solum.
I took my foot off the gas to slow our speed without braking and waited for my eyes to adjust to our new surroundings. The wipers chattered across the dry windshield, and I twisted the knob on the end of the turn signal stalk to shut them off. They retracted below the trailing edge of the car hood and parked. I powered down all the windows and turned off the heater. Warm dry air blew through the car and swept away the clinging dampness of Earth.
Father Miller looked around with wide, surprised eyes. He squeezed them closed, rubbed them with his fingers, and opened them again to look across the sunlit yellow carpet of juniper scrub that was the nameless plains.
I figured I'd better explain. "Welcome to Solum, Paul. We're in the middle of the nameless plains, except now they have a name. Shawn and I named them Camporum Patentium Pravus,' or literally the Vast Plains of Pravus' in honor of the king." I pointed through the windshield to a black tower in the distance. "That is the Antitheus Arx or the Demon's Citadel. We own it now. We own everything you see. All this nothingness belongs to me and Shawn. This is our retreat. We built a house next to the mountain and we live here as much as we can. It's our favorite place."
I glanced at the dashboard and noticed that our speed had dropped below thirty. I brought it up to thirty and set the cruise control. Father Miller swiveled his head in every direction. He even went so far as to unbuckle his seatbelt so he could shift around to look out the rear windows of the car. While he looked around, I took my phone from my pocket, disconnected the travel catalyst, and returned it to the dashboard ashtray. I slid the phone into my pocket and checked on my passenger.
"I don't understand." He said, his words barely above a whisper.
"What don't you understand?"
"It was just raining," Father Miller whispered some more and waved his hands around as he enumerated the things that he thought he should still be able to see, "and there was a road, and it was cold and grey and fields and power polls and wire fences and mailboxes and now...now it's all gone."
I tried to explain what had happened. "All that is still there, right where we left it, and it's probably still raining. We're not there anymore. We're on Solum now."
Father Miller...Paul, looked around again and said something I couldn't hear. "What's that?" I asked.
"IT'S A MIRACLE!" He shouted at the top of his big, deep voice. "It's a miracle! I've finally seen a miracle! I ALWAYS wanted to see one! THANK YOU, CHURCH! Thank you, dear Lord for letting me see this day! Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Church! My sincere thanks to you, you wonderful, wonderful man."
The old man covered his face with his large hands and wept into his palms. I wasn't sure if the priest...retired person, was happy or sad, but he cried like his heart was broken. I draped my arm over his shoulders in my default comforting posture and felt awkward.
Paul leaned hard against me like Shawn sometimes did when he wanted to start something intimate. I was certain that wasn't Paul's intention, but it reminded me that Shawn had been very busy with his practice of late and that he and I hadn't had as much intimacy as I was used to. I hoped to correct that sooner than later, maybe that very evening.
Paul recovered himself and sniffed and wiped his eyes with his hands. "Thank you, my son...uh...Church. Kind of you to comfort me. I'm fine. It's just...it's all so amazing." He pointed through the windshield at the black tower in the distance. "Is that the statue?"
I nodded to him and took my arm back from his shoulders to point into the distance. "It is. I brought us back on the statue side of the mountain so you would see that first. Our house and the other improvements are on the far side."
"How long until we get there?"
"At this speed, about twenty minutes."
Paul nodded and seemed to think for a second, then he stammered out a question like he couldn't make up his mind whether to ask it or not. "How...uhm...never mind...uh...how fast...no...yes...how fast can you go between here and there?"
"Why? How fast do you want to go?"
"As fast as we can." Paul grinned and fidgeted in his seat like an eager child on a carousel horse. For the first time since I'd left for Earth, I was glad that Shawn had been too busy to come with me. I was glad because he would have hated what I was about to do. I stomped the accelerator to the floor and the five-liter, V-8 engine roared. The four speed, overdrive transmission downshifted to first and the old sedan leapt forward like an excited puppy released from its leash. I held the pedal down and watched the faded orange speed-o-meter needle sweep across the wide gauge face, checking off MPH numbers as it went.
The needle touched forty as the transmission grabbed second gear and the straining drone of the engine changed to a more urgent tone. It climbed faster passed fifty, then sixty; at seventy-five the transmission grabbed third gear or drive' and continued to accelerate. The ride started to get rough as the soft suspension worked overtime to deal with the imperfections of the natural surface of the Pravus Plains,' as we called them.
The speed-o-meter needle touched eighty-five and slid easily passed that bold marking to disappear from view into the dashboard. The car continued to accelerate, but I no longer had any way to judge the speed. I released the gas pedal enough to get the transmission to upshift to overdrive but maintained our frantic pace. The high speed smoothed the ride and made the car skim over the plains. Its picnic table of a broad, flat hood rose and fell against the rule flat line of the horizon like the prow of a boat in even seas.
Paul Miller, as I was training myself to think of the man, sat forward in his seat, like getting closer to the windshield glass would somehow put him closer to the mountain and Solum. He rested his right arm on the top of the door panel and leaned into the howling wind that beat through the cab of the car, a broad smile stretched his expressive face. As we neared the mountain, I released the accelerator and allowed the car to coast down to a more reasonable rate of speed.
When we were back at cruising speed and getting very close to the mountain, Paul leaned his arm out the window and let his hand play in the air currents, like a porpoise would play in gentle ocean waves. When we were as close to the mountain as I wanted to get, I steered the car in a broad arc and stopped with the passenger side facing the front of the one-thousand-foot-tall statue of King Pravus. I clicked the ignition off and jumped out of the car. I ran around to the passenger side and opened the door for Paul. He got out slowly, like he wasn't certain his legs would support him.
"Paul Miller," I said to him and gestured to the carved mountain that towered to the heavens, "meet his majesty, Veneficus Pravus, the last monarch of this world."
Paul embraced the theatrics of my introduction and genuflected to the monument. When he stood, he shook his head in amazement. "Is it true that one man did all of this?"
The memory of Fidum made me feel sad and nostalgic for the man I'd known only briefly, but who remained the man I admired the most out of all the men I'd ever met. "Yes, one man who was determined to protect and honor his king no matter what. He spent millennia to turn this rock into the image of the man he loved. Much of it, most of it, he did completely alone."
"Amazing." Paul whispered as he looked up at the statue. "The depth of feeling that must have taken...the selflessness of it. It's a humbling thing to see. I've dedicated some forty years of my life to the Lord's service, but I still lived in the world. For this poor man to live for centuries in service to a man who couldn't love him back...it's the saddest, sweetest, dearest thing I've ever heard. He did it all with the undying faith that you would eventually come to release him and his love into the next world."
"Yes," I agreed, "that's exactly what he did. He was an amazing man. I wish I could do something more for him than what I've done. Part of the reason we bought this land was to preserve it for future generations, and to name these plains for the king that Fidum loved. It's the only thing I know to do. When Shawn and I die, all of this reverts to a trust that will pay to keep it undeveloped and open forever. It will become the equivalent of a national park but will be held in perpetuity by our estate."
"That's a wonderful gesture. I think Mister Fidum would be pleased." Paul lowered his eyes to see a large black stone some distance away from us, at the foot of the statue. "What's that?"
To answer Paul's question, I led the way to the stone. I guided our steps but stuck beside Paul as we walked closer so he could look. The large stone was a black monolith, twelve feet tall and six feet wide, quarried into an upright rectangle and polished smooth. I'd cut it from the far side of the mountain and forced it into the ground just at the spot where Pravus sat while I fought the barrier to send the king to the hereafter. In front of it was the dished spot of dirt that had been changed to glass by my white magic.
Paul admired the monument and read aloud the words I'd carved into its surface. "In memoriam. From this spot, Veneficus Pravus, monarch, and his partner, Fidum Cacula, physician and artist, departed this world for the next. May they spend eternity in the love and peace that were denied to them here."
Below the words was a carving in relief of two men, hand in hand. I'd hired an artist to take my description of Fidum and the image of Pravus and carve it into the monument, so even if the men weren't together cosmically, they were at least together as a representation in stone. Paul stepped close to the monument and touched the faces of the stone lovers. "They look like they're at peace. You did a wonderful thing."
I shrugged off the praise as undeserved. "I did what I could for them. It will never be enough, but it's all I could do."
Paul turned to face me and asked, "What do you mean, `not enough?'"
"If not for Pravus and his exile, there would have been no barrier, no prophesy, and no reason for Shawn to come to Earth. If not for Pravus, I'd still be a lonely, miserable welder...or dead...by now, probably dead. If not for Fidum, I wouldn't know what true love really is. Pravus brought Shawn and me together and Fidum gave me role-model to follow. If I can love Shawn, even a fraction as much as Fidum loved Pravus...I see it like you trying to live a Godly life. I'm trying to live up to an impossible standard, and even though I can never get there, I'm always going to try."
Paul shook his head at me and smiled a smile that was full of knowledge and long experience. "You're a lovely man, Church. Don't ever lose that romantic side of yourself. Shawn is lucky to have you." Paul glanced around like he was certain there was more to see. "Why don't we see this `estate' of yours before the melancholy gets overwhelming?"
Before we moved on, I wanted to ask Paul something, but I wasn't sure if I could. I actually didn't want to ask `Paul' anything. I wanted a favor from Father Miller, but I was worried Paul wouldn't be willing to assume that name again until he returned to Earth, if he ever returned to Earth. I decided there was no way to know except to ask. I had trouble being direct and found that my eyes wandered around while I tried to find the right words to voice my request.
"Paul, would you mind, sometime, putting the collar back on and saying some words here? Shawn and I said things when we placed the stone. We actually used that book you gave Joe, the one about devotions without a church. We did what we could, but I think Fidum would appreciate it if a true man of the cloth spoke over the memorial. I mean, it's not a grave or anything...not consecrated ground, but they...you know...they lived here, and they died here, and that means something, doesn't it?"
"Yes, it does." Paul agreed softly, sincerely. "It means the ground is already consecrated beyond anything I could add, but as these men were men of faith, I will gladly wear the collar and be a priest and say the words that I hope will add to the peace you have already given them."
"Thank you, Father." I felt a lump form at the back of my throat. I swallowed it, but it wouldn't swallow. I turned from the monument and walked toward the car.
Father Miller fell in step beside me. "We'll hold a service. I'll say a full mass, a requiem."
"Thank you, Father." I draped my arm around the slightly shorter man. I'd forgotten that Father Miller was over six feet tall. He was a large man and must have been imposing in his youth.
"You're welcome, my son." He said as we neared the Vic. We separated and got back in our respective sides. Once the doors were closed, Father Miller had gone, and Paul was back. "Let's get moving." He fidgeted impatiently in his seat some more.