Down a cliff off a narrow, lonely road in the Scottish Highlands, some hikers found a wrecked car with the body of the driver in the wreckage. The police determined that the car had been traveling toward to coast when the accident happened a few days before. This seemed to coincide with a report that a visitor expected at the castle known as Dachaigh Nan Trolls had not arrived as scheduled. The deceased was identified as that gentleman, the heir to the estate. The butler at the castle was notified of the tragedy, as were the executors of the estate and the family.

The eldest of the “trolls” carefully deleted and destroyed all traces of his background search which had found the young anthropologist’s connections to genetic research on Neanderthals and connections to some rather shady pharmaceutical researchers investigating longevity and genetic engineering methods.

“Yes”, he thought, “That young man certainly could imagine wealthy and ruthless men wanting to be immortal, could imagine it far too well. What a pity that somehow his cell phone and laptop were not found at the crash site. At least, by the evidence in those devices, the guy had kept his wild (but accurate) speculations to himself. These so-called Homo Sapiens have been making the mistake of thinking of us as stupid cave men for a long time.”

Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash

Bob Wertzler is retired from almost twenty years in the mental health field in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist”, seems to fit. In 2006 he retired to move to Western North Carolina to help and become primary care giver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was work at various times as a soldier (US Army 1967-70), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, and other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip its been.”