Date: Mon, 22 May 2023 06:25:41 -0700 From: Juxepe Albi Subject: All That Glitters - Chapter 2 - Unexpected Turnout Chapter Two - Unexpected Turnout News got around fast. Monday morning there were sixty-three pupils waiting for the library-school to open; nineteen were girls. They had not come to visit; and it was clear that the school would need at least two more teachers and many more textbooks. One of my ex-roommates, Jan Polowski, also twenty-one, and with a doctorate in Physical Sciences, had been emailing me off and on with his tales of difficulty finding suitable employment. Jan was a math minor, and quite intelligent; additionally, he was equal to me in his sexual backwardness. I looked through my emails and located Jan's contact address. I sent off an email saying: "Dear Jan, I find myself in quite a bind needing teachers for what amounts to a country school, founded by my grandfather. Having been told there were sixteen pupils, I had planned to take it on myself; but this session there are sixty-three enrolling and I need to find at least two other willing souls. There are only nineteen girls, so you should have enough pupils to fill out several teams of whatever sport you wish to teach----and, of course, the maths. Until I can have something built, you would have to use the rather large swimming pool at my home, which is nearby. Reply soonest. Regards. Tsiif." The email had only just been sent, when I received a reply. "Tsiif, Bless you, I'm in! What about Reynolds for your lit and arts. He was just crying to me about how he doesn't want to teach a bunch of street-wise city kids. The best I remember, you two got along pretty well. Here is his email address. Reply with details. Where are you, etc... Thanks again. Jan." I wrote to Carl Reynolds immediately: "Dear Carl, I have found myself with the responsibility for a country school founded by my grandfather. Last term had only sixteen pupils, which I thought to handle on my own. This term, I had sixty-three to enroll on the first day. Polowski is in for sports and maths, and tells me you might be interested in literature and arts. How about it? Regards, Tsiif." "Tsiif, Jan just called me; and you can count me in, too. I'm not even asking how much you are going to pay us; as I know it will be fair. What's the housing situation? Where are you? Regards, Carl." "The Philippines?? The Philippines?? What the hell are you doing there? Count me in! Advise the details. Fearlessly yours, Carl." "Oh my gods, Tsiif, the Philippines? You might remember I was stationed there for nearly three years. Loved it; I speak Filipino and my Tagalog is pretty prime, too. What are the accommodations? Can I come today? Just kidding! Tell me more! Rarin' to go, Jan." Joint message to Jan and Carl: "You might have sent your phone numbers! Tsiif." I received the numbers within the next ten minutes; and called both of them in a conference call. "Listen guys, it's like this. My grandfather died, leaving me an island in the Philippines. It has a small village----ergo, a small village school. Luckily, Grandfather also left me some pretty high profile income properties, which allow me to continue his expensive hobby. I know both of you have read some of his books; and they still sell like hotcakes. Anyway, I'll bring you guys here; and, if you don't like it, I'll make it easy for you to reintegrate with the outside. Right now, I'm planning on micronet internet from Manila at about 6-16Mbs, which is the best that can be done here at the moment. The Philippines is on a list of countries that have the worst internet in the world; so I will get our own dish, and so forth." "Tsiif, Jan here. I'm totally in for it! I loved the Philippines so much I learned some of the local languages, as I told you. If you are on an island, then I guess you have a good means of going to the mainland and stuff like that?" "Jan, I have a fifty-nine foot yacht for stuff like that, but this place is otherwise totally inaccessible from sea or air. Grandfather liked it that way. We have a pretty well-stocked general store, which is now mine; and we get snail-mail at a box on the mainland twice a week. Right now we have only limited radio-telephone service through Manila, but when the dish is installed that will be improved; and it will give everybody a telephone. We're on the ocean side, so there is some rough weather; but I'm told there are bunkers with pretty good utilities for times like that." "You're scaring me," Carl spoke up. "I'm scared, but I'm ready for it. I've spent months trying to find work that I can stomach; so your setup is like a dream come true for me. I just have a few crates of stuff that I can't live without, so I can leave on two days notice. Just say when." "Same for me," cut in Jan. "I just got notice that this building has sold; and I will have to be relocated. I like your idea best. I also can be ready in two days." "OK, guys. I assume you have passports and stuff like that?" "Yeah, I was prepared to take a job anywhere," Carl said. "Me, too; so I got everything I need," Jan added. "Good. I'll have the attorney's office take care of the travel details; so the two of you can plan to leave on the day after tomorrow. We will pick you up at the Manila airport. As far as accommodations go, you both can stay in my house until we can build you a bahay kubo, if you prefer. Grandfather had a child fostering arrangement as a result of his efforts to house orphans after the big typhoon, so there is room at the moment for more than a few bus-loads of people; but I don't plan to fill the place up. We have a very large swimming pool and places to fish, even though the place is a wildlife habitat. I understand from the boys that there is a rock-bottomed swimming hole upstream from the house; but I haven't been there. We grow all our own fruit and veggies on the island; and the villagers are very friendly and home-like. There are several gigantic solar arrays to provide electricity; and, with the new satellite dish, we will have television, which, to date, did not exist on the island at all. We will also have our own internet; for, I suppose you might have heard, the public internet in the Philippines is the poorest. I imagine that we will be cultivating a very large crop of couch potatos when TV comes on the scene. I guess we'll find out soon enough." George Nepomuceno left word at the store for me to call "soonest." "Dr. Vízrolin, you asked me to spare no expense to discover anything possible that would explain your existing puzzles; but, so far, I have found nothing for which I would bill you. "There have been no reports of missing children that would fit this case. You could take a blood sample for DNA testing and comparison; but unless there is a medical emergency, I would not advise it. If you wish to keep the child, there are ways to get documentation; and, in anticipation of your expected positive reply, I am having the papers drawn up for you. Things like that are easier here due to the fact that orphans are always turning up with no papers; and your grandfather was a government designated caregiver. "I have been assured by my friend at the Ministry, who has caused an exhaustive bank of tests to be run on them, that not only were the bags definitely not made in the Philippines, but that no fiber even vaguely resembling that used in their manufacture exists as a product of our country. It has been determined that each of the two bags is crafted of a different type of fiber; however, there are also the remains of a slightly sticky substance on both bags, perhaps where a tag was affixed. Scrapings of the substance have been taken, but so far, unidentified. My friend has also sent small samples of the fibers to the Institute of Fibers in Poznan, Poland, in an attempt to clarify the situation. Inasmuch as his department chief, having had much of his training there, feels confident that their investigations will come to the same conclusion----the fibers are not identifiable. Even the composition and source of the cord that holds the bags shut is unknown. "Further, there was a very small quantity of seeds attached to the fibers of both bags----a different type in each bag. They were sent to the university Department of Horticulture and returned with the notation `Identity unable to be established'. He further sent two samples to the World Seed Bank; but their report is not back. "The word uttered by the child, which you have phonetically spelled as "Nyoatotko," is unknown to the several linguists at Omniglot from whom we requested information. His name, on the other hand, is possibly not that obscure. From Old Frisian Bojo, shortened from compound given names with an obscure first element, Bóje may variously be interpreted as "ruler", "dweller", or "boy"; possibly the same as in Old English Beowolf. The word, Nyoatotko, however, in any suggested permutation, is unrelated to any existing, or known, language. "So, I believe that just about sums up all the known, or should I say unknown, facts," he concluded. "I can't thank you enough, Dr. Nepomuceno," I replied. "I know it's going to be difficult for the boy; but he doesn't seem to be showing any ill effects from his attempted drowning. He appears happy, and enjoys playing with the dog and the puppies. Asa is very protective of him; and except for nursing her pups, rarely leaves his side. Several of the neighborhood boys are teaching him to play ball. Somehow they have made a way to communicate; and his English and Tagalog are improving by leaps and bounds. Oh, and please call me Tsiif. "Yes, We, too, noticed there were seeds left in the bags; and one of my young gardeners has made a small plot of ground for the purpose of trying to grow them. I suppose we will eventually see what they are. "Actually there were more than two kinds of seeds, but several existed in lots of only one or two each----not enough to share. The boys thought the bags had been used a number of times, leaving a small sample each time of what they had contained on a six inch diameter wax-like spill, which had soaked through the weave----probably, as you said, the remains of labels which, at one time had been stuck onto them. All examples were photographed for the record, then planted, carefully labeled with a photograph of the seed. Both of the bags were microscopically inspected by one of the village men who knew about such things. He had been the one to discover a few incredibly tiny seeds that would have been otherwise overlooked. "The very tiny seeds have begun to sprout into very strong, dense and rigid, grass-like plants. One portion of the small plot had an extremely high salt content; and the two plants which had sprouted there were nearly twice the size of the sprouts in the normal soil. This prompted Jáve and his gardening helper, MÄ"no, to plant a few seeds on the beach near the river's end, where there was a high concentration of salt in the soil. "When they sprouted, a mere three days later, they discovered that the plants were sending out sucker roots into the salt water; and within a month, each seed had developed into a dense fifteen centimeter circle, one and a half meters tall. "Curiously enough, the same plants grown in the garden patch, had done little more than survive, with the exception of the two plants in the high salt area. MÄ"no and Jáve decided to move them to a section of the beach that was paved with small, exceptionally sharp rocks, with the intention of covering that area where it was dangerous to walk barefoot," I concluded. Please consider supporting Nifty with your donation to https://donate.nifty.org/ Funds used to continue these free stories