The Gaming Outpost

Food. The one word kept being repeated over and over. Food. Gentle hands surrounded you, up-tight and in your personal space so that you just wanted to scream ‘get back’, but the smiles were so determinedly friendly that you could not. Besides, you remembered how freaked out the waitress at Johnny’s Omie had been when you showed her your ‘angry eyes’. No way did you want to do the same to these kindly intentioned folks.

Down a hallway, and up a staircase escalater, narrow for just one person but still surprising. The top opens into a low-walled entry cube with a door three feet high that swings open from your side and closes on the other side with a snap.

Stepping out into a large open space, you see dozens of infants and toddlers who are waking up, mostly with soft cries. Daddies rush to their infants, and lift them to their shoulders with the vast majority of the tykes taking this in stride with smug looks of ‘yeah, I’m the king of the world’ as they sat on Daddy’s shoulder. A few were already giggling as Daddy played games with them that usually involved being tossed skyward.

Seeing one youngun’ float five feet into the air and drop made your heart feel as if it would stop. And then the huge man caught his infant girl with hands like catcher’s mitts, and the girl burst out giggling.

Staring goggle-eyed, you are herded to the side where a line is being formed. Beyond the line are tables with square white boxes on them. Lids are removed and fragrant, warm smells of food steady your heart, and get your stomach grumbling even if the smells seem odd.

Meanwhile, you’re surrounded by motherly sorts. The young girls are against the wall, wallflowers you might say, and the boys are lining up to talk to them. Each boy spending anywhere from a minute to half a minute talking to a girl before the pressure of the line and an occasional catcall forces him to move on.

The men were, there was no other word for it, promenading around the room with their kids on their shoulders. One fellow, his face red, had four kids attached to him. One baby on his shoulder, one toddler on his right, an older girl hanging on his back with her arms about his neck, and another toddler gleefully hanging on to his right leg and using his broad shoe as a seat.

The older men and women stood in the midst of the room and provided part of the watchers along with the women in line who although you cannot understand a single word, the look, the feel, the fabric of the way they move and smile lets you know they are talking to other women about their husbands.

Some things are evidently universal across worlds. If that is what happened to you.

Pork and grape salad is your first choice if the widely grinning ladies ‘soot-eek, soot-eek’ means pig noise. The next is more unequivocal as ‘moor, moor’, but finding the minced and pulverised moo meat amongst the green peppers, green beans, sweet peas, and shalots hurts your eyes. It hurts your tongue too when you realize the green peppers are actually a larger version of jalopeno.

Rice pudding pie with pretzel crust, and chicken minced and pulverized (these people seemed to like to destroy their meat’s texture) with a strong, white cheese powerful enough to ignite your nose hairs mixed together to form a dip for corn chips completed your meal. On the rule that less strange things could be done to a clear soda, you took the ‘Refresher’.

It was very strong ginger ale. Perhaps that is good you decide as you tentatively eat. Ginger is supposed to be settling to the stomach.

Others join you, and begin to help you with the language. And they give you for them a lot of personal space. Which means you only feel quite uncomfortable and not in the lap of those next to you like everyone else around you. With a dozen people squished on to a table that would have held five back home, wherever that is, you wonder why they gave themselves more space while singing.

With signs, you’re able to get your question out. The reply comes the same way with laughs as the signer bangs into the folk on his right, left, and far left. One needs space to breathe to really belt it out when you sing. Food, well, you’re just sitting there. You get the feeling the locals might be more physically vigorous than you are used too.

The assault on your taste buds end, and despite your cleared nose, you feel better, stronger, more fortified.

An older lady and a couple young girls, you think the ones you sat by, take you back down the now reversed escalator, to the great auditorium which now echoed emptily where before the seats had buzzed with the noise, and down into the basement.

The older woman who presses your hand to her heart and says repeatedly ‘Cheyla’ until you say ‘cheyla’ back then releases you. She sends off the young ladies who you rather wish would do the same for you, and pulls open a drawer in the base of the clotheswasher. You had not thought to look for it there.

Inside are squished, air removed clear plastic containers. Opening one, she pulls out a kilt and a shirt, and a pair of socks with some sturdy underpants which are lined with silk. She blushes a little at the last, and so do you.

Cheyla leaves you with a hand wave at the washer and one toward the bathroom. Obviously they would prefer you were cleaner.

In the square room, surrounded by hundreds of non-singing songsters, you face the soft-voiced old man who speaks English to you by way of miracle he claims. Its enough to have your mouth open, stop, close, open, and stop again.

Another man begins speaking, and you sense an authority about him. Everyone turns to listen to this fellow with the rusty beard on the far side of the auditorium. With the room’s excellent acoustics, you can hear the words very clear, but again the language means nought to you.

But the soft-voiced man who comes into the open space with you and the big-bellied song leader, perhaps that is the significance of his bright, blue belt?…this ‘friend’ serves as a translator.

Ute mas sheik…

“Let me speak the words I hear. The word of the Lord to you.”

The hair on the back of your neck rises, and suddenly you realize this man is claiming to be a direct conduit for God to you. Is that even possible? Is it not better for God to speak to each man in his heart?

“I do as I will, Walker, Verser, Man of Two Lives. If in one life I spoke in a still, small voice, and in another I command, what is that to you?”

In other words, who are you little punk to tell me how to run my shop?

Of course, this all could be a fake. A guy with a lot of charisma, and some very moving and exceptionally loud music to put you in the mood might do something you think. You brace yourself for some high-flown rhetoric that amounted to ‘give the church all your cash’.

The man with the beard laughed. And your translater raised an eyebrow.

“You are hard, but I am harder still. Listen to the song of the words, and hear them as if spoken by Scotty imitation McCoy.” The translater blinked and everyone stared at the rusty bearded man who threw up his hands in bafflement, and smiled and sat down. A rustle ran through the crowd.

This was not what you expected. It was almost as if your conversationalist were responding to what you were thinking you decide as the crowd rests their eyes on you with the patient look you sneer, of cows. That was ridiculous, but well, they did have psionic receiving devices. Perhaps you could program one to do a language…

Aargh. You slap the side of your head. Although an interesting idea, that was not what the clue meant.

Speak as Scotty imitating McCoy. Obviously a Star Trek reference. Experimentally, you hum a few bits of the Star Trek theme song which should be recognizable to nearly everyone in your home world. No response except for nods that seemed to say it was a pleasant music line, but what praise song should they sing to the tune of it?

Song of the words? You gesture to the man next to you to speak, and don’t listen to the words as such, but to the music of them.

And then you hear it.

A Scottish brogue with a deep Southern drawl laid right over the top of it in a hideous amalgram of accents with something else down below.

You remember a friend of yours moving South, and how he had come back changed. He had talked of no more snow, and laughed when his old friends hhad asked him about the whitesheeted Klan, and described his house which was twice as large as the one he had rented up North, but with half the price. His only complaint had been the drawl.

“It took me a good solid month before I could understand the waitresses.”

“So you starved for a month?” A girl had asked him.

He grinned back and mimed pointing at a menu.

“Its why Southerners sneer at Yankees.” He explained with a grin. “Completely rational. Its a hatred of mimes which is a feature of all civilized cultures.”

You smiled in distant memory of his jokes, and listened more. With a feelling of relief, you thought you understood at least one word in thirty now.

You gave everyone a thumbs up and an exzaggerated smile which had them uncertainly attempting to copy your ‘thumbs up’ as if it were a new symbol.

Still a long way to go on the language barrier you decide, but then they sweep up to you and begin hugging you.

The broad-bellied man with the bright blue leather belt, unlike any man you have seen here, and the red tartan kilt like the rest of the men in the huge square room, except for you, reaches out, clasps you to his chest and kisses the top of your head.

He steps back and waits. The thought occurs to you that he is expecting you to kiss his head as well, but that is just too much. So you reach out with one hand, and he stares at you as do the three hundred or so other kilted men, bewigged women, and jeweled children on the four bench areas which focus their frontages on the center square you are uncomfortably inhabiting right now. Your smile gets very fixed, and you nod jerkily at his right hand. He puts it out toward you with a puzzled look.

You shake it, and let his hand go. And then you nod. He looks a bit puzzled, and then claps you on the shoulder and says something to the crowd, turning to face all sides as he said his line.

Laughter echoes from all sides and reverberates off the walls and the lacquered benches so that the air hums. You think it sounds friendly.

He turns back to you, and your stomach flutters. Its like your worst dream of not being able to remember a speech. He says something, and you smile at him. Looking curious, he asks you some question. And then he nods, and speaks to the crowd.

People nod, and several men step up, and gently lead you to sit down between the two young ladies.

Unhappily, this only reminds you that you have not had regular baths, and now you’re sitting between two atractive and well-made up young females. Its another nightmare.

The big bellied man smiles, says something that brings another laugh, and then raises a hand and calls something out.

Suddenly everyone stands.

Then they open their mouths, and you’ve heard less volume of sound underneath the speakers at your fave rock concert. The melody booms out of three hundred voices at full chorus, hits the walls and bounces, hits the floors and richochets, and hits the benches and vibrates the air so that you can feel the air in your lungs shiver. You feel as if you’re being lifted off the ground so great is the power in the song.

And not a word you understand, but it is some sort of joy. You see smiles, and sheer animal spirits flickering on faces before they redouble their efforts and really put their hearts into it.

Some sort of repeat line comes around again, and something sounds familiar, but the volume builds and you find you cannot think. A smile splits your face. The sheer joy of massive waves of music is, you find like surfing, or what you imagine skydiving might be like. Its an intense physicality which bonds you into a union of joy, and so it is with no self-consciousness that you find yourself clasping the hands of the girls on either side of you as does everyone else.

The song is done, and you sit with the rest, panting a bit, and you had not even sang. And then another song comes, and you try to hit the repeat lines with a harmonious…

“Na-na-na-na.” It brings an encouraging smile and a hand squeeze from the brunnette to your right. And then she bends her neck which causes her long hair to slither seductively on her neck, and with a secret flicker of a smile gives herself more fully to the song. You follow her example, and lose yourself in song that makes rock and roll seem tame and soft with its exultant chords.

An hour later, the songs end, and the big-bellied man gets up and speaks for a few minutes. None of it you understand except you perk up for one word that sounds like it could have made sense. “Made.” or “maid” seems to be the word.

And then he holds out his hands to the crowd, and begins to speak in a different manner. Everyone holds themselves quiet.

And then he looks straight at the crowd, and spinning about, makes some sort of welcome. You find yourself standing as you are pushed forward to stand by him. Looking about, you see no one else joining you.

Nervous, you feel your stomach flip again. But people do not seem to be looking at you. Instead, various men are standing up.

Some speak. And others listen, sometimes agreeing quickly, sometimes with thoughtful expressions on their faces. One woman stands up and walks up to a man, and kisses him on the head.

The crowd stands up and cheers. The two part, and you do not think that was about marriage, but perhaps you just saw a marriage proposal?

And then one man stood and spoke softly. It seemed familiar. If your ears were not pulverized, and the man were speaking louder perhaps…

The big bellied man next to you looks about, calling for another to stand up, and no one seems to do so. The man speaks softly again.

“I speak to the new one.” You hear and then some more drifts off slowly. You jerk your head up startled.

The big bellied man next to you speaks in rebuke to the soft voiced man in the back.

“I have a message for the new visitor, but I must stop speaking now.” The soft voiced man says and makes to sit down.

You burst out in English.

“Wait. Wait! Please.”

The soft voiced man looks up surprise lighting his face, and everyone pauses. The big bellied man who is in charge of the meeting motions for the other man to continue. Everyone looks expectantly with a joy in their faces.

“You know my words?”

“Yes, of course, you speak English.” You say.

“I am not familiar with this English.” The soft voiced man says as he walks up the aisle toward you. He looks elderly, and trim, with neat clothing, but obviously no great strength. So despite the excellent acoustics in the room, he starts to sound more audible as he gets halfway up the room to you.

“How do you speak then if you do not know it?”

The man laughs and smiles.

“As at Pentecost, the Spirit gave utterance.” He says with a simple joy shining through his words and carriage.

You stare. He is claiming that this is a miracle. You have heard of speaking in tongues. Is this what they meant?