Fantasy

What Does the Red Light Mean?

Hi Readers!

Last week, we shared with you our Thanksgiving holiday, and at the tail end of that mini-adventure, this funnel cloud flew out of our Scribe’s tablet and sucked us back into the refrigerator adventure.

Before we get back to that, I have some news. The Magic Underground Anthologies, which includes Hidden Magic, Wayward Magic, Forgotten Magic, and The Complete Collection, will be gone from stores at 11:59 pm on Dec. 31, 2020 because that is when the contract with the participating authors ends. So we will no longer have permission to publish their stories from then on.

What does that mean for you?

If you have bought a copy or you buy one before 11:59 pm on December 31, 2020, then it will not affect you at all. Your copy is yours and will remain will remain in your cloud/on your device forever.

However, if you borrowed any of the Magic Underground Anthologies as part of Kindle Unlimited, then they will disappear from your selection at 11:59 pm on December 31, 2020 when all four anthologies are unpublished. You can still read all four anthologies through Kindle Unlimited up until that day/time.

So if you’re planning on reading any of the collections, buy them now to secure your copy before they are gone forever.

       

And now, we’d planned to return you to our adventure in progress because we still need to do something about that dragon, but something else came up. And this something might be a big misunderstanding between a bunch of fictional characters and the technological devices you use every day. I can’t rule that because we are fictional.

Let me quickly lay out the situation before Papa and Uncle Miren break something, then tell me what we’re doing wrong.

So this all started when Uncle Miren and I hopped through the portal from our cave in our fantasy world to our Scribe’s apartment. Uncle Miren and I had done some brainstorming, and between us, we had a list of things we wanted to include in Curse Breaker: Hidden, which our Scribe, Melinda, is writing right now. 🙂

So it was imperative that we get her that list before she finished breakfast. Nothing would stop us from accomplishing that one goal. We were characters on a mission.

At least we were until we exited the portal. It had moved, so we landed on a cylindrical thing that’s half as tall as me. (I’m Ran, and I’m a kid, so this thing was less than two feet tall at a guess.)

I righted it and patted its top since machines didn’t have heads to pat, and the top lit up all red and pretty. I gazed at it in wonder for a moment. I can’t help it. I like things that glow.

But the machine did more than light up my life. It also made a whirring sound, and lots of air rushed out of the vents on top, mussing my hair.

My Uncle was immune to its charms, so he asked the all-important question. “What is this thing?”

Melinda looked up from her phone where I hoped she was writing important story bits down. She liked to write on small devices for some reason. Whatever helps her get the words down, right? Finishing the book is the goal. “It’s an air purifier.”

“What does the red light mean?”

“The air is harmful.” Melinda tapped on her phone.

“We have to fix that.” I ran over to the sliding glass door, which Melinda used for a window since her apartment only had one small window that was hard to open. I flung it open, and bitterly cold air slapped me in the face. Brr. “Why’s it so cold out there?”

Melinda shrugged. “Because it’s December. It’s always cold in December.”

Uncle Miren pulled me away from the cold air rushing into the apartment. We stood over the air purifier, but it stayed red. The temperature dropped 9 degrees before it went from red (harmful) to amber (bad) to green (good).

I slid the glass doors closed, then wrapped my hands around a cup of hot mint tea as the heating system warmed up the apartment. Uncle Miren and I sat on the couch, and we’d barely drank more than a few sips before the light on the air purifier went from green to amber to red again. 😦

“It’s red again.” I pointed, but Melinda didn’t look.

“Don’t open the door again. I’m still freezing from the last time. Is the filter light on?” Melinda typed something on the phone.

“No, it’s dark, but we should check it, anyway.” I set my cup of tea down and took my uncle’s cup from him.

He reluctantly turned the air purifier off and unscrewed the bottom. And that’s when Papa poked his head through the portal.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re trying to make the air safe for our Scribe. She needs good air to write our books.” At times like these, I wished Papa had air magic because it would have been very helpful.

“The filter looks okay to me.” Uncle Miren held it up. The filter was a cylinder with mesh covering a black core. The mesh looked clean, but maybe the dirt was invisible.

“It should be. I vacuumed the dust off it yesterday,” Melinda said from the other side of her small apartment.

Uncle Miren put the air purifier back together and switched it on. In seconds, the lights went from blue to green to amber to red again. But Melinda’s apartment was much toastier.

The new boiler system, which had replaced the one that dragon had destroyed in Dragon Spells, worked even better than the old one. Melinda’s neighbors were still upset we weren’t able to save to the original one. But when dragons rampage, you must save what you can and replace what you can’t.

“Then why does it say the air’s bad? The air seems okay to me.” But I lived in a cave under a mountain in fantasy world, so what did I know?

And now, dear readers, I’m asking you. Is our Scribe okay? The red light is still on many hours later. It only goes off if the door is open to the outside for extended periods of time, and that wastes heat. It also freezes our poor Scribe, and I want to keep her writing, not playing around with bad air.

If you have any thoughts on this, hit reply and tell me before Papa and Uncle Miren dismantle this thing again.

This is Ran. son of Sarn, and bane of air purifiers everywhere, wishing you an amazing week. May all your devices function properly. 😉


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