Edited by Brett Heller

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license.

Stephen looks ashamed, "Derek, please. I'm sorry Mr. Korbach, take your time..."

Korbach now seems more relaxed, "Well, I suppose I can expedite my story. May 3rd, 1968 I'm on spring break from college and I'm crammed into a VW bus with five or six other hippies. It's the middle of the night and we're in North Carolina heading toward a Vietnam War protest in DC. We've been driving a couple of hours and well, those times were different. We were enjoying the herb of the time, enjoyed far too much actually..."

Derek laughs, "Those times weren't that different."

Korbach shrugs, "Perhaps your right. Any way the minibus pulls over and we pick up what we thought was a hitch hiker. A man dressed in thick dark robes joined us. He couldn't contain his surprise when the van started moving and he spit out a string of incomprehensible words. I remember we all laughed for a while, we thought he was just a bizarro, stoned, traveling hippy like the rest of us. We offered him some of what we were smoking. He smelled it and handed it back. Then he clutched a huge sapphire at his neck and uttered strange words. A blue light swirled from his mouth like tentacles, a thin strand touching each one of our mouths and when he spoke we could understand him. His first question was 'What plane is this?' 'You're not in a plane, you're in our peace bus, man!' The rest of the conversation was like that. We could understand his words and he could under stand ours but we weren't talking about the same things. Anyway, the guy tired of talking but he couldn't help staring out the window, watching the lights and the cars going by. Despite his efforts he eventually fell asleep. We stopped only once during the night in a tiny town about 50 miles out of DC. One of our group got off there. Everyone was so stoned they didn't care what was happening. We arrived at the Vietnam protest in the morning and the sun and the fresh air woke the unusual traveler. Immediately he clutched at his neck where his necklace had been and it was gone. His satchel was also gone. He demanded to know who had stolen his talisman and spell book. We all just kind of looked at each other. He stormed off into the protest crowd. I knew that the member of our group who left us at the gas up in the small town had robbed him. I felt bad about the situation and so I followed him into the crowd to tell him. The area around the reflecting pool was packed and I could just see the edges of his dark robe as he angrily shoved his way through the crowd. Finally the crowd grew too thick and I thought I wouldn't be able to catch him because the crush had stopped him from moving forward. Suddenly I heard a growl, like a bear had been loosed. People flew backwards away from the traveler in a perfect circle around him. Two people were hurled into the pool. I just stood agape like the rest of the crowd. The tra...

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