An Insider's Look at the Big Three's Working Relationship

Excerpt from Nick Neercassel: The Novel

If you’re standing on a clear night in the Mojave Desert and you’re about a mile from any road or highway and you look up into the sky in the direction of the North Star, and if you imagine you could actually see another 3 million light years or so beyond the North Star, you might see another star; a large yellow one burning brightly. And you might see in the halo of that star the outlines of two figures that appear to be having a casual conversation:

“No luck, eh, in the XM11115987 Galaxy?”

“Nothing. Just like in the 17,234 galaxies I’ve searched previously.”

“Same here. You know I miss the old fellow. He was never actually there with us because he was everywhere but he was the kind of fellow that was always there when you needed him even when he wasn’t. If you know what I mean.”

“He could be funny when he wanted to be. I especially liked the times when he called himself THE ODD GOD OUT. He’d asked, 'Why am I always mentioned last? Why is it always the Boss, BJ, and The Ghost? Why couldn’t it sometimes be The Boss, The Ghost, and BJ or better yet The Ghost, the Boss and BJ?'”

“And then he’d sometimes complain that you got to sit at my right hand while he, always having to be everywhere, never had the chance to be just somewhere. But you know, he never let his gripes interfere with or negatively affect the quality of his work.”

“How true.”

“But let’s be serious for a moment. Our decision making process is in shambles. Contrary to some thinking we did not plan out everything billions of years ago; too much trouble and besides there’s no fun in that. Much more fun to make decisions on an as needed basis and for that we had devised (after billions of years of trying) a pretty darn good system. On any issue I would let you two vote first. If you two agreed we’d go ahead with that plan. If you two disagreed, I would cast the deciding vote. Simple? Yes, but highly effective. Now that we’re down to two, the decision making process is much tougher. I don’t like pulling rank but there may be times I’ll have to and it’ll be a miracle if our relationship isn’t strained in the process.”

“We need him back in the triangle to make this thing work like it should.”

“That means we keep looking.”

“Let’s meet again after diligently scouring at least 20,000 galaxies each. We need to pick up the pace. No more star gazing.”

THE END