The silence was deafening as we all just turned and stared at Shep, the “wonder dog” and Marvin the Marvel who really was starting to live up to his name! “How can this be?” murmured Veronica…”I mean, I mean…” “I know” I cut in, “How can this be your great grandpa’s dog and how could Marvin the Marvel have know him? I understand science has achieved great things…but the fountain of youth?! Wow!”Smiling at Veronica and I and glaring at an embarrassed looking Cowboy, Marvin said, “First of all, Cowboy, sit down, you have no idea what you are getting yourself into when you try to take possession of this book! Secondly, no-one can really own this book anyway because the secrets it contains were intended to benefit our entire society, not make one person rich!” All of this was said by Marvin in one long breath. “Let’s all sit down”, he continued, “And Shep and I will try to make some sense of this mystery; the mystery that is our life”“ It all began about 100 years ago, when this city was just a tiny village. Great grandpa and I were walking through the fields one hot summer morning and came upon a small pool of water. We were confused because there was no reason for the water to be there. I mean, there was no stream nearby, no foliage or trees to indicate an underground water source, nothing! So we stooped down to explore this strange thing…this very strange thing. And as we were looking down into the depths of this pool, we saw a ripple begin on one side and spread across to the other. It began rippling faster and faster, back and forth, back and forth until the waster seemed to swirl up out of the center of the pool and build itself into about a four foot pillar of water. It just stood there, water and pillar combined…solid yet liquid, shimmering with lights and shadows until suddenly the pillar collapsed on itself, dissolving into the pool again. As we sat there, dumbstruck, staring at where the ‘pillar’ of water stood and now seeing nothing but a tranquil pool we saw a paw extend out of the center of the water. Yes, that’s right, a paw! A big shaggy paw and that paw was followed by an equally shaggy head.”At that precise moment, Shep jumped up on his hind legs and seemed to be trying to show us in no uncertain terms that he was that dog; that special, crazy dog that came right up out of the pool of water and now walked among us!“Now,” Marvin continued, “There is so much to tell you but we really need to get to a safer place! There are evil people who know about this, and have been looking for this book, this dog and me! In fact, every time this book is opened, a type of “alarm” goes off and alerts the “others” of its presence…so, let’s get out of here!”Just as he said this, we all heard a loud crash come from the front of the theater.“Time to fly!” Marvin exclaimed and not one of us argued the point. Even Cowboy seemed to understand that time was running out and we needed to escape! What we didn’t realize was that when Marvin said ‘Time to fly’, he really meant FLY! Marvin grabbed my hand, I grabbed Veronica’s wrist, she in turn hung onto Cowboy’s jacket and well, Shep just didn’t seem to need or want our help at all. Marvin yelled, “Ready Shep?” Shep chuffed something that sounded a lot like “Ready, old man” and we were not in the theater anymore! (The adventures of Shep and Those He Loves will be continued at a later date!)