by William Salsman

Created on: August 02, 2008   Last Updated: December 25, 2008

The Gadget

This was not the first time such a sighting had occurred. On numerous occasions a young boy, about 12 or so could be seen going down the street with an odd looking old man on a leash. The young boy appeared to be toughened and breathing heavily from the work of towing this half interested old man around who behaved as though he wore blinders or was peering into a keyhole to see where he was going. At times the old man resisted his partner to the point of not even budging because of it being so difficult for him to keep up with such a wavering and fidgety young boy.

If the boy intended to go north and it took some navigating a few degrees to the left it had to be done slowly and with coaxing to get the old man to play along. This particular act required quite a bit of skill and patience, which appeared to be taking a lot of practice on the part of the young boy. However, once the old man had undergone a few dozen repetitions of any particular act requested of him, it would then become like a sort of second nature. But it needed to be done with regularity or it would soon be forgotten and would need to be learned all over again.

It was an odd thing to see these two going down the busy streets in broad daylight, one being the anachronism of decades past, and the other like something from out of the future, and how they always had such difficulty in getting from one end to the other. Even more of an oddity was the fact that nobody seemed to notice them, even as they could see what was going on and the queerness of it all, doing nothing but to make room for them as they passed along.

Every once in a great while someone would show some charity in giving them a few coins but the coins would just fall right to the ground. It was not so much that they were averse to receiving the money, as it was the fact that they could never actually grasp anything that came to them from what seemed to be worlds away. It literally would pass right through their poorly outstretched hands as though they were made of vapor and pigmentation and nothing more. But in that cocoon of theirs, despite the fact that they together were as bumbling as a drunkard, they aacted as though they were as solid as steel and were always careful not to run into anyone or to apply more pressure than was needed to hold a cup of coffee or to pull the lint from each other's garments.

Day after day these two would be seen not only by the people on the street but from above by those in the towers who every

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