Launfal / my_fiction (public) (License: Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0) (since 2018-06-24) (hash sha1)
Repository of my stories and books.
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making the text files readable b2fdff00b506c4adc92ad7bc9d7dcb9a7302d40d Launfal 2017-12-24 19:02:34
Delete 01.chapter_one.text a51cd38f07a4c15370399914b44254e56180a68c Launfal 2017-12-24 17:51:06
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Commit b2fdff00b506c4adc92ad7bc9d7dcb9a7302d40d - making the text files readable
Author: Launfal
Author date (UTC): 2017-12-24 19:02
Committer name: Launfal
Committer date (UTC): 2017-12-24 19:02
Parent(s): a51cd38f07a4c15370399914b44254e56180a68c
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1 1 # my-fiction # my-fiction
2 2
3 This is a repo with all my fiction - books and shorts. Everything is licensed under the latest CC-BY-SA license.
3 This is a repo with all my fiction - books and shorts. Everything is licensed under the latest CC-BY-SA license.
4
5 All files ending in .fold are plain text files hard-wrapped to 80 chracters.
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1 "Killing this one will be fun," she thought as she flashed through the ruins
2 of Moscow’s southeast end. The moon was hidden behind the clouds unleashing
3 the hells' own snowstorm, and the destitute residents of the slum were huddling
4 together for the little warmth they could find. The glows of many carefully
5 hidden fires throughout the bombed out buildings were plainly visible to her,
6 but she spared them no more than glances; she would waste no time on cattle. It
7 had been far too since long she had encountered a hunter worthy of the name,
8 and none had been as good as THIS one. He was a master of the game, the
9 ultimate predator. His file had told her as much, and thus far tonight he had
10 proven his worth. All she had needed for her trap was the proper bait, and his
11 nature had taken care of the rest. "You can lead a bear to honey and you CAN
12 make him eat," she chortled into the wind as she floated on black gossamer
13 deeper into Moscow’s no man’s land.
14
15 ******
16
17 Sergei Valkinov, code name The Bear, ran as if his life depended on it. In
18 a way it did, since the thief he was chasing had somehow stolen the entire
19 roster of Soviet assets currently in play in Western Europe. No alarms tripped,
20 no intruder reports, no sign of a breakin except for the missing roster. It had
21 been a fluke the dossier was even present in the dacha of Covert Two, and at
22 its most vulnerable it had been stolen. The message recalling him to duty had
23 been Priority One, Ultimate, Decrypt Self, and it had specified "all measures
24 justified" to recover the roster. Moscow Center had launched its most potent
25 weapon, and he now prowled the streets of the capitol, following the scent like
26 a guided missile.
27
28 The Bear was only one of the latest generation of a recombinant genetics
29 experiment, begun in the early seventies, designed to produce the ultimate
30 soldier by grafting animal DNA to the human genome. In Valkinov’s case, the
31 genetics used had come from the Kodiak bear. All five of his senses had been
32 enhanced. He could see light from ultraviolet to infrared, hear frequencies
33 well above ultrasonic, and smell traces in the single parts per million.
34 Nervous system acceleration gave him reflexes faster than the eye could follow,
35 and his training had made the best use of them. He was the most dangerous
36 covert agent in the field today, with one possible exception. Upon receiving
37 the communique, his first thought had been it was his American counterpart he
38 pursued, but hurried inquiries had ruled out the possibility. Whoever his
39 quarry tonight, he would only run until The Bear caught him.
40
41 *****
42
43 She ran lightly and surely through the ruins even without her pursuer's
44 intimate knowledge of them. To compensate for her other advantages, she had
45 chosen his home ground. As she ran, she thought of the lone survivor of the
46 first generation experiments, an American reputed to be at least the equal of
47 The Bear. When this night ended, she would travel overseas for another
48 rendezvous with another hunter. For the present, though, her current game was
49 more than enough to hold her attention. Given the quality of her opponent, one
50 mistake could be her last. Almost certain of her superiority, the differences
51 in their capabilities was small enough to prevent complacency, that small doubt
52 only fueling her exhilaration as carefully laid the trail that would bring the
53 hunter to the killing ground.
54
55 *****
56
57 He followed his quarry further south and east into parts of the slums
58 where the police refused to go, a section of the glittering jewel that was
59 Moscow ruled by the law of the jungle. Born and raised here, he had often
60 returned after his recruitment, using the vast network of black marketeers to
61 aid his investigations. Those who ruled here did so with an iron fist and were
62 above the municipal law. They had a piece of all the action, from gambling to
63 opium to prostitution, and his childhood ties had allowed him to keep track of
64 the major underground players throughout all of Europe and most of Asia. A
65 phone call from one of his contacts had started his chase. "Sergei, if you
66 would, come home and see to this, please, as a favor to us who protected your
67 family. People are afraid of the shadows, afraid of the wind, afraid of what is
68 hiding in them. Perhaps, if you please, solving our problem solves your own as
69 well. Hurry, Sergei. For the sake of the past." Upon reaching the ruins, he had
70 quickly found the signs marking the trail, and following them further into the
71 ghetto he had quickened his pace.
72
73 He passed sentries in each district he crossed, armed bandits muffled and
74 masked, who in the ghetto were responsible for the security of their
75 warlord’s territory. They all knew him here, and followed his progress
76 without raising their weapons. Reports of the intruder had obviously made the
77 rounds and had resulted in armed guards braving even this snowstorm in order to
78 maintain their boundaries. Word must also have spread of his coming, and while
79 the guards were armed and ready, they remained close to their bases. Their
80 masters seemed more than content to let him handle the situation, secure in
81 their knowledge of its ultimate outcome. The odds against the intruder were so
82 prohibitive not even a ruble had been bet on his behalf.
83
84 Past the decay of an old elementary school, the bombed out hulk gaping
85 through huge black eyes at the misery of the human condition, he was silent as
86 he glided through the rubble littering the street. His eyes constantly roamed
87 the landscape, not in the least deterred by the knife-edged wind or the
88 razor-sharp ice it bore. He was totally immersed in his environment, attuned to
89 its sights and sounds, on the alert for anything out of its element. He was
90 gaining on his quarry, but in the dark and the storm, it would take time and
91 patience to make the final approach.
92
93 Taking a shortcut through an alley stinking of urine and rotting meat, he
94 stopped at the side of an old storefront. Climbing a rusted drainpipe he gained
95 the roof and the advantage of the high ground. Moving cautiously to the edge
96 facing the street, he slowly scanned the terrain from left to right and back
97 again.
98
99 *****
100
101 She heard his ascent to the rooftop behind her, and she chuckled throatily
102 as she watched him crouch in the shadows. She was hidden from him by the
103 vestige of a brick wall that offered a perfect view of all possible approaches
104 from the street. "He really is very good," she allowed magnanimously, and
105 although he would soon learn his advantage was illusory, she had to credit him
106 with his technique. "Time to give him a preview of the coming attraction," she
107 decided as she rose to an adjoining rooftop. From there, she easily leapt the
108 gap between the buildings to land lightly and silently behind him.
109
110 She marvelled that as she approached him, he spun fast enough to see her,
111 and she stopped mere feet from him. Frozen in a still life, each studied the
112 other with the confidence of their own supremacy. She easily followed his train
113 of thought, from amazement at her appearance, to confusion as to how she had
114 managed it, to admiration of her form, to determination to kill her. His scent
115 was carried to her by the wind, cut down by the broken chimneys to little more
116 than a stiff breeze. She breathed deeply, taking the essence of him deep into
117 her lungs, savoring it as a true connoisseur. She had to have a taste, just a
118 small one, just something to whet her appetite for the main course to come. She
119 stepped forward…
120
121 …and felt a hammer blow just below her sternum, hard enough to take her
122 breath away. It was followed by a chop to her throat that left her gagging.
123 Both would have been killing blows were she still mortal, but even so they
124 hurt! She dropped down to one knee, momentarily stunned, but aware enough to
125 block a savate kicked destined to cave in her skull. She caught the second
126 attempt and flowing with the impact she threw him over her, hearing him land
127 lightly in a roll that took him momentarily out of reach. Regaining her wind,
128 she rose and faced him, more intent than ever to have that taste. Moving more
129 forcefully now, she took him in her arms and drew him to her, easily overcoming
130 his struggles as he resisted her. Pulling him in easily, she kissed him
131 passionately on the lips, running her tongue hungrily inside of his mouth. She
132 felt his resistance and ignored it, pressing him to her with enough force to
133 crush the ribs of a lesser man, reveling in the tang of him, the artificial
134 chemistry that made him unique.
135
136 *****
137
138 He resisted her with all of his strength, but he was completely enveloped
139 in her arms, powerless against her strength. He felt her tongue as it moved
140 within his mouth, forcing its way in between his locked teeth. Enraged as he
141 was, he found her aroma intoxicating, her flavor irresistible. He felt himself
142 entranced, succumbing to a seduction he was unable to prevent and no longer
143 wanted to. He was physically reacting to her, lowering his defenses, welcoming
144 her into himself. He responded to her kiss, his tongue meeting hers now in a
145 joining of equals. He heard her moan as the kiss deepened, and suddenly he had
146 the use of his arms. He wrapped them around her, as tightly as he was able, and
147 they fused in an embrace that seemed to last forever, each of them sampling the
148 other, drinking deep from the well that was the opposite soul. Just as abruptly
149 as it began, however, it ended and he was suddenly flying through the air,
150 landing awkwardly on his back, shaking his head in shock and confusion. It took
151 long moments to clear his head, and all the while he was vulnerable to a
152 killing stroke.
153
154 *****
155
156 She was shaking as she threw him from her, overpowered by her physical
157 reaction to him. Passions she had long thought extinct flooded through her, and
158 for a moment she was completely disoriented. She had never been so viscerally
159 affected by a man since her crossing over, and the re-emergence of her human
160 femininity took her completely unawares, unable to cope. She fought for primacy
161 over her emotions, taking control of herself by sheer force of will. Her
162 breathing slowed, the tingling of her breasts subsided, and the wetness between
163 her thighs dried. Her eyes once again focusing correctly, she eyed him warily.
164 This one was dangerous, not so much to her immortal existence but to her sense
165 of self. Her momentary panic never reached her face, and she kept her eyes
166 hooded to hide the fires still burning in them. As she stood there, outwardly
167 calm but roiling inside, she realized she could remain here no longer. She
168 needed distance and time to reconcile her feelings, but before she took her
169 leave, she would leave a memento. Flashing over to his still prone form, she
170 ran a nail down the left side of his neck, breaking the skin and drawing blood.
171 Letting it flow across her fingers, she as quickly stepped back and escaped,
172 leaving him dazed and bleeding where he lay.
173
174 *****
175
176 He felt the sting of her nail, and he looked dumbly at the blood on his
177 fingers. Even he had not seen her departure, and as he rose shakily to his
178 feet, he tried to make sense of the encounter. He was unable to reconcile her
179 ability to overpower him so effortlessly, to handle him as easily as if he were
180 a child. He could still feel her resonance, a low-level hum that slowed his
181 mind and underlaid his thoughts. He could still taste her in his mouth, and he
182 inhaled shakily as the memory of her touch threatened to overwhelm him again.
183 Shaking his head in another attempt to clear it, he turned slowly in place,
184 looking for a sign of her passage but finding none. He still had a job to do,
185 but for the first time in his career he doubted himself. A word kept occurring
186 to him, beating like a drum with its desire to break through, but for a time he
187 discounted it as the aftermath of their encounter. He searched for an
188 explanation, considering and then discarding several, each more ridiculous than
189 the last, until the truth could be denied no longer. Out of options, he
190 whispered it to the winter wind, exhaled it in a cloud of mist: vampire.
191
192 Unthinkable. Improbable. Real. As he examined the possibility, he
193 eventually had to admit to it. He could feel the truth of it in the coldness in
194 his gut, in the numbness of his mind. The folktales of his childhood, told in
195 cracked whispers by ancient peasants around burning fires, fantastic stories
196 from his earliest years had appeared to him, had presented themselves in the
197 form of a femme fatale. He mined his memory, panned the myths as if for gold,
198 sifted through the glitter of decadent Western movies for any nugget of truth.
199 Did he have any weapon with which to fight, or was his enemy truly invincible?
200 Could he kill her? Could he recover the roster without doing so? Could he break
201 her, turn her, make her an asset to the workers' struggle as he was? With more
202 questions than answers, he moved to the edge of the roof and slid down a frayed
203 power line to the now deserted street.
204
205 Searching carefully, he could find no trail to follow from the broad
206 plaza that had been a major thoroughfare during the Cold War. Even with the
207 wind howling down its length, there should have been faint imprints to guide
208 him in the proper direction, but there were no marks in the now virgin snow.
209 Expanding his search radius, he saw pieces of paper fluttering on the side of
210 the building across the street, the remains of the old precinct station,
211 pitiful in its impotence. Crossing the street, he pulled the papers down and
212 read them. It was the agent roster nailed to the brick building like a welcome
213 mat. She was waiting for him inside, and this was his invitation. He could
214 refuse the invitation, take the roster and leave, mission accomplished. He
215 could save himself the encounter he was no longer sure he could survive, live
216 to fight the workers' fight another day. He could but would not. Everything in
217 him rebelled against retreat, against surrender. He would never refuse, and she
218 knew it. The perfect snare, using the perfect bait. He had done the same many
219 times himself, but now he was the fly walking the spider’s web. Removing a
220 brick from the crumbling facade, he hid the roster and replaced the brick,
221 chalking a coded mark and his callsign in Russian on the wall. Removing the 9mm
222 Yarygin from its holster, he ducked down and moved fast through the gaping
223 doorway.
224
225 *****
226
227 She could hear him, as quiet as he was, gliding through the rubble of the
228 station. She had tasted his blood, bringing it to her lips and drawing it along
229 her tongue. The taste was ambrosia, obviously a byproduct of his unique
230 chemistry. She could feel the alien hormones in it coursing through her veins,
231 intoxicating her like fine wine, freeing her mind and lowering her inhibitions,
232 an almost narcotic effect. She admired his animal instinct, his sure and
233 compact movements as he made his silent progress towards her. Her pulse
234 quickened as she watched him, more enamored with his fluid grace with each
235 passing moment. Finally, she could take no more, could maintain her distance no
236 longer. "Time for dinner," she decided as she glided lazily to the floor and
237 waited for him to round a pile of loose stones.
238
239 *****
240
241 He sensed her before he saw her, and as he rounded the rock pile, his
242 pistol was raised and cocked, a round chambered. He fired at his first sight of
243 her, scoring four quick hits to her center of mass, rolling fast to another
244 firing position, emptying the clip into her face, throat and chest. Seventeen
245 rounds, all direct hits, blood flying from the exit wounds in crimson bursts,
246 and still she stood there, silently watching him, not even registering the
247 bullets’ impacts. He never bothered to reload as he allowed his arm to limply
248 fall back to his side, nerveless fingers releasing the pistol. He was deaf to
249 the pistol’s metallic clang as it hit the floor, unaware that he had risen to
250 his feet. He stared into her onyx eyes and studied his reflection in them, the
251 coldness of the assassin flooding through him, calming his mind and readying
252 his body. He shut down his conscious mind, preparing himself for the speed of
253 his autonomous systems, relying on enhanced reflex and native viciousness as
254 his last defenses. He widened his feet, redistributed his weight, and slightly
255 bent his knees, preparing himself as best he could. Reconciling himself, he
256 waited for her imminent attack.
257
258 *****
259
260 She smiled as she watched his preparations. She was only vaguely aware of
261 the pain from the passage of the soft-nosed bullets, was beyond awareness of
262 anything but the exquisite agony in her loins. He would fight her if he could,
263 but she was not going to allow him to hurt himself before she was ready. One
264 moment she was silently watching him, the next she was an arrow, intending to
265 spear him and drive him to the ground. As fast as she was, he still managed to
266 turn and crouch, and he caught her cleanly at the knees, unbalancing her and
267 sending her over him. Even as she landed she felt him shift and when she hit
268 the ground he was on top of her, trying to pin her to the gritty cement floor.
269 She rolled him, but he used her momentum to regain the advantage. Several more
270 rolls brought them to a low brick wall, and they stopped with her on top and
271 her right hand on his chin, threatening to break his neck. He stopped his
272 struggles as she increased the pressure. She took advantage of the moment to
273 regain her breath and her wits.
274
275 He was magnificent! No one before had been able to match her, and the
276 speed with which he moved! For the first time, she questioned her need to kill
277 him, the possibility of bringing him across as her perfect mate. For long
278 moments she indulged herself in a fantasy of global conquest, of ascendancy
279 through the ranks of the Consortium as they removed obstacles to ultimate power
280 among the immortal. His skills combined with her ambition, and they would be
281 the irresistible force overwhelming the immovable object. Nothing could stand
282 against them, and he would complete her, make her whole, give her the love she
283 had thought forever denied her.
284
285 "Will you join me?" she asked him aloud, her first spoken words to him
286 since the chase had begun. "Will you rule the world at my side?" She released
287 his head and allowed him to see her, watching him intently as she stared into
288 his eyes. She could see him considering, considering the angles, tempted by the
289 prospect of eternal youth and strength. She saw his attraction to her, saw his
290 appraisal of her, felt his physical reaction to her. She felt the stirring of
291 his manhood beneath her, heard the rasping of his quickened breath, saw and
292 smelled his sweat as it poured from him. Tabling her question for later, she
293 separated from him long enough to rip open his shirt, baring his chest. In
294 another movement his pants were in tatters, and just as quickly she stripped
295 herself.
296
297 By the time she had lowered herself to him again, he had shed the remains
298 of his clothing and was reaching for her. Their lips met again, tongues again
299 eeling around and over each other. She felt his hands roughly grabbing her,
300 reaching around to fold her into his arms. She melted against him and they sank
301 prone to the floor, each exploring the other with reckless abandon. Breaking
302 the clinch, she inhaled deeply, his aroma subtly changed with the power of his
303 arousal. She ran her hands down his body, exalting in the hardness of his
304 muscles and the perfection of his form. She ran her tongue along his face, down
305 his neck and across his chest, savoring the tang of his sweat on her tongue.
306 She felt his hands on her breasts, felt her nipples harden under his palms.
307 Then he pulled her up sharply and rose to face her.
308
309 *****
310
311 He rolled her over and climbed on top, burying his face in her breasts.
312 Tonguing rapid circles around her left nipple, he sucked it suddenly into his
313 mouth, teasing it with his teeth as he heard her moan. Biting down, he pulled
314 up sharply and held it firmly as he flicked it with his tongue. She was
315 writhing under him now, the movement of her hips threatening to dislodge him.
316 He repeated his attentions to her right breast, breathing deeply through his
317 nose. The musk of her need, thick and pungent, struck him like a physical blow.
318 He moved quickly down her body, past her stomach and straight to the thick hair
319 between her thighs. She was growling now, animal sounds completely divorced
320 from anything human as he took her into his mouth, awash in her wetness,
321 tonguing her center fiercely as her back arched sharply and her thighs locked
322 around him. Her first climax exploded around him as she keened in an inhuman
323 wail that could have come from no mortal throat. The next thing he knew, he was
324 on his back with her sitting astride him.
325
326 *****
327
328 She impaled herself on him in one motion, oblivious to everything except
329 the urgency of her need. She rode him mindlessly, driving herself downwards to
330 meet his upward thrusts, heedless of his hands on her haunches pulling her to
331 him. He had risen up to suckle her, and she wrapped her arms around him as she
332 moved, finding her rhythm, quickening her movements as her passion rose. She
333 gave herself to the moment, allowing herself complete release to her reclaimed
334 erotic humanity. Her next climax rocked her to her core, and then she exploded
335 in a series of them, each one hammering her like a piston, pounding her in
336 relentless waves of unendurable ecstasy. In the midst of her passion, she
337 lowered her face to his neck and sank in her fangs, taking his blood in
338 torrents, feeling it flood into her mouth and down her throat in a delicious
339 river. She felt him release himself with the force of a shotgun blast, and
340 still she drank. She felt the weakening of his thrusts within her, and still
341 she drank. She felt the slowing of his pulse and the laboring of his breath,
342 and still she drank. As she climaxed one last time, she drew the last of him
343 into her, and only then did she finally raise her face from his throat.
344 Trembling violently, unable to stand, she rolled to her back and lay next to
345 him, aware only of the earthquakes still shaking her loins. Ever so slowly, the
346 aftershocks died to tremors, and then to quivers. When her muscles would once
347 again obey her, she rose unsteadily to her feet and looked down upon her now
348 dead lover.
349
350 "Of all those whom I have taken, you are now first. I was as a virgin
351 again with you, and I will always love you best. You will be immortal, in your
352 way, my desperate love, as I will carry you with me forever. Rest well from
353 your labors, my dear one, and may the God you spurned in life take you to his
354 breast in death. Farewell." She never noticed the single tear that fell upon
355 his chest as she turned away to gather her clothing. Halleya Enrije would be on
356 a plane westward for an appointment in America.
357
358 Finis
359
File shorts/bear_and_bat.txt deleted (index b31d6bf..0000000)
1 "Killing this one will be fun," she thought as she flashed through the ruins of Moscow’s southeast end. The moon was hidden behind the clouds unleashing the hells' own snowstorm, and the destitute residents of the slum were huddling together for the little warmth they could find. The glows of many carefully hidden fires throughout the bombed out buildings were plainly visible to her, but she spared them no more than glances; she would waste no time on cattle. It had been far too since long she had encountered a hunter worthy of the name, and none had been as good as THIS one. He was a master of the game, the ultimate predator. His file had told her as much, and thus far tonight he had proven his worth. All she had needed for her trap was the proper bait, and his nature had taken care of the rest. "You can lead a bear to honey and you CAN make him eat," she chortled into the wind as she floated on black gossamer deeper into Moscow’s no man’s land.
2
3 ******
4
5 Sergei Valkinov, code name The Bear, ran as if his life depended on it. In a way it did, since the thief he was chasing had somehow stolen the entire roster of Soviet assets currently in play in Western Europe. No alarms tripped, no intruder reports, no sign of a breakin except for the missing roster. It had been a fluke the dossier was even present in the dacha of Covert Two, and at its most vulnerable it had been stolen. The message recalling him to duty had been Priority One, Ultimate, Decrypt Self, and it had specified "all measures justified" to recover the roster. Moscow Center had launched its most potent weapon, and he now prowled the streets of the capitol, following the scent like a guided missile.
6
7 The Bear was only one of the latest generation of a recombinant genetics experiment, begun in the early seventies, designed to produce the ultimate soldier by grafting animal DNA to the human genome. In Valkinov’s case, the genetics used had come from the Kodiak bear. All five of his senses had been enhanced. He could see light from ultraviolet to infrared, hear frequencies well above ultrasonic, and smell traces in the single parts per million. Nervous system acceleration gave him reflexes faster than the eye could follow, and his training had made the best use of them. He was the most dangerous covert agent in the field today, with one possible exception. Upon receiving the communique, his first thought had been it was his American counterpart he pursued, but hurried inquiries had ruled out the possibility. Whoever his quarry tonight, he would only run until The Bear caught him.
8
9 *****
10
11 She ran lightly and surely through the ruins even without her pursuer's intimate knowledge of them. To compensate for her other advantages, she had chosen his home ground. As she ran, she thought of the lone survivor of the first generation experiments, an American reputed to be at least the equal of The Bear. When this night ended, she would travel overseas for another rendezvous with another hunter. For the present, though, her current game was more than enough to hold her attention. Given the quality of her opponent, one mistake could be her last. Almost certain of her superiority, the differences in their capabilities was small enough to prevent complacency, that small doubt only fueling her exhilaration as carefully laid the trail that would bring the hunter to the killing ground.
12
13 *****
14
15 He followed his quarry further south and east into parts of the slums where the police refused to go, a section of the glittering jewel that was Moscow ruled by the law of the jungle. Born and raised here, he had often returned after his recruitment, using the vast network of black marketeers to aid his investigations. Those who ruled here did so with an iron fist and were above the municipal law. They had a piece of all the action, from gambling to opium to prostitution, and his childhood ties had allowed him to keep track of the major underground players throughout all of Europe and most of Asia. A phone call from one of his contacts had started his chase. "Sergei, if you would, come home and see to this, please, as a favor to us who protected your family. People are afraid of the shadows, afraid of the wind, afraid of what is hiding in them. Perhaps, if you please, solving our problem solves your own as well. Hurry, Sergei. For the sake of the past." Upon reaching the ruins, he had quickly found the signs marking the trail, and following them further into the ghetto he had quickened his pace.
16
17 He passed sentries in each district he crossed, armed bandits muffled and masked, who in the ghetto were responsible for the security of their warlord’s territory. They all knew him here, and followed his progress without raising their weapons. Reports of the intruder had obviously made the rounds and had resulted in armed guards braving even this snowstorm in order to maintain their boundaries. Word must also have spread of his coming, and while the guards were armed and ready, they remained close to their bases. Their masters seemed more than content to let him handle the situation, secure in their knowledge of its ultimate outcome. The odds against the intruder were so prohibitive not even a ruble had been bet on his behalf.
18
19 Past the decay of an old elementary school, the bombed out hulk gaping through huge black eyes at the misery of the human condition, he was silent as he glided through the rubble littering the street. His eyes constantly roamed the landscape, not in the least deterred by the knife-edged wind or the razor-sharp ice it bore. He was totally immersed in his environment, attuned to its sights and sounds, on the alert for anything out of its element. He was gaining on his quarry, but in the dark and the storm, it would take time and patience to make the final approach.
20
21 Taking a shortcut through an alley stinking of urine and rotting meat, he stopped at the side of an old storefront. Climbing a rusted drainpipe he gained the roof and the advantage of the high ground. Moving cautiously to the edge facing the street, he slowly scanned the terrain from left to right and back again.
22
23 *****
24
25 She heard his ascent to the rooftop behind her, and she chuckled throatily as she watched him crouch in the shadows. She was hidden from him by the vestige of a brick wall that offered a perfect view of all possible approaches from the street. "He really is very good," she allowed magnanimously, and although he would soon learn his advantage was illusory, she had to credit him with his technique. "Time to give him a preview of the coming attraction," she decided as she rose to an adjoining rooftop. From there, she easily leapt the gap between the buildings to land lightly and silently behind him.
26
27 She marvelled that as she approached him, he spun fast enough to see her, and she stopped mere feet from him. Frozen in a still life, each studied the other with the confidence of their own supremacy. She easily followed his train of thought, from amazement at her appearance, to confusion as to how she had managed it, to admiration of her form, to determination to kill her. His scent was carried to her by the wind, cut down by the broken chimneys to little more than a stiff breeze. She breathed deeply, taking the essence of him deep into her lungs, savoring it as a true connoisseur. She had to have a taste, just a small one, just something to whet her appetite for the main course to come. She stepped forward…
28
29 …and felt a hammer blow just below her sternum, hard enough to take her breath away. It was followed by a chop to her throat that left her gagging. Both would have been killing blows were she still mortal, but even so they hurt! She dropped down to one knee, momentarily stunned, but aware enough to block a savate kicked destined to cave in her skull. She caught the second attempt and flowing with the impact she threw him over her, hearing him land lightly in a roll that took him momentarily out of reach. Regaining her wind, she rose and faced him, more intent than ever to have that taste. Moving more forcefully now, she took him in her arms and drew him to her, easily overcoming his struggles as he resisted her. Pulling him in easily, she kissed him passionately on the lips, running her tongue hungrily inside of his mouth. She felt his resistance and ignored it, pressing him to her with enough force to crush the ribs of a lesser man, reveling in the tang of him, the artificial chemistry that made him unique.
30
31 *****
32
33 He resisted her with all of his strength, but he was completely enveloped in her arms, powerless against her strength. He felt her tongue as it moved within his mouth, forcing its way in between his locked teeth. Enraged as he was, he found her aroma intoxicating, her flavor irresistible. He felt himself entranced, succumbing to a seduction he was unable to prevent and no longer wanted to. He was physically reacting to her, lowering his defenses, welcoming her into himself. He responded to her kiss, his tongue meeting hers now in a joining of equals. He heard her moan as the kiss deepened, and suddenly he had the use of his arms. He wrapped them around her, as tightly as he was able, and they fused in an embrace that seemed to last forever, each of them sampling the other, drinking deep from the well that was the opposite soul. Just as abruptly as it began, however, it ended and he was suddenly flying through the air, landing awkwardly on his back, shaking his head in shock and confusion. It took long moments to clear his head, and all the while he was vulnerable to a killing stroke.
34
35 *****
36
37 She was shaking as she threw him from her, overpowered by her physical reaction to him. Passions she had long thought extinct flooded through her, and for a moment she was completely disoriented. She had never been so viscerally affected by a man since her crossing over, and the re-emergence of her human femininity took her completely unawares, unable to cope. She fought for primacy over her emotions, taking control of herself by sheer force of will. Her breathing slowed, the tingling of her breasts subsided, and the wetness between her thighs dried. Her eyes once again focusing correctly, she eyed him warily. This one was dangerous, not so much to her immortal existence but to her sense of self. Her momentary panic never reached her face, and she kept her eyes hooded to hide the fires still burning in them. As she stood there, outwardly calm but roiling inside, she realized she could remain here no longer. She needed distance and time to reconcile her feelings, but before she took her leave, she would leave a memento. Flashing over to his still prone form, she ran a nail down the left side of his neck, breaking the skin and drawing blood. Letting it flow across her fingers, she as quickly stepped back and escaped, leaving him dazed and bleeding where he lay.
38
39 *****
40
41 He felt the sting of her nail, and he looked dumbly at the blood on his fingers. Even he had not seen her departure, and as he rose shakily to his feet, he tried to make sense of the encounter. He was unable to reconcile her ability to overpower him so effortlessly, to handle him as easily as if he were a child. He could still feel her resonance, a low-level hum that slowed his mind and underlaid his thoughts. He could still taste her in his mouth, and he inhaled shakily as the memory of her touch threatened to overwhelm him again. Shaking his head in another attempt to clear it, he turned slowly in place, looking for a sign of her passage but finding none. He still had a job to do, but for the first time in his career he doubted himself. A word kept occurring to him, beating like a drum with its desire to break through, but for a time he discounted it as the aftermath of their encounter. He searched for an explanation, considering and then discarding several, each more ridiculous than the last, until the truth could be denied no longer. Out of options, he whispered it to the winter wind, exhaled it in a cloud of mist: vampire.
42
43 Unthinkable. Improbable. Real. As he examined the possibility, he eventually had to admit to it. He could feel the truth of it in the coldness in his gut, in the numbness of his mind. The folktales of his childhood, told in cracked whispers by ancient peasants around burning fires, fantastic stories from his earliest years had appeared to him, had presented themselves in the form of a femme fatale. He mined his memory, panned the myths as if for gold, sifted through the glitter of decadent Western movies for any nugget of truth. Did he have any weapon with which to fight, or was his enemy truly invincible? Could he kill her? Could he recover the roster without doing so? Could he break her, turn her, make her an asset to the workers' struggle as he was? With more questions than answers, he moved to the edge of the roof and slid down a frayed power line to the now deserted street.
44
45 Searching carefully, he could find no trail to follow from the broad plaza that had been a major thoroughfare during the Cold War. Even with the wind howling down its length, there should have been faint imprints to guide him in the proper direction, but there were no marks in the now virgin snow. Expanding his search radius, he saw pieces of paper fluttering on the side of the building across the street, the remains of the old precinct station, pitiful in its impotence. Crossing the street, he pulled the papers down and read them. It was the agent roster nailed to the brick building like a welcome mat. She was waiting for him inside, and this was his invitation. He could refuse the invitation, take the roster and leave, mission accomplished. He could save himself the encounter he was no longer sure he could survive, live to fight the workers' fight another day. He could but would not. Everything in him rebelled against retreat, against surrender. He would never refuse, and she knew it. The perfect snare, using the perfect bait. He had done the same many times himself, but now he was the fly walking the spider’s web. Removing a brick from the crumbling facade, he hid the roster and replaced the brick, chalking a coded mark and his callsign in Russian on the wall. Removing the 9mm Yarygin from its holster, he ducked down and moved fast through the gaping doorway.
46
47 *****
48
49 She could hear him, as quiet as he was, gliding through the rubble of the station. She had tasted his blood, bringing it to her lips and drawing it along her tongue. The taste was ambrosia, obviously a byproduct of his unique chemistry. She could feel the alien hormones in it coursing through her veins, intoxicating her like fine wine, freeing her mind and lowering her inhibitions, an almost narcotic effect. She admired his animal instinct, his sure and compact movements as he made his silent progress towards her. Her pulse quickened as she watched him, more enamored with his fluid grace with each passing moment. Finally, she could take no more, could maintain her distance no longer. "Time for dinner," she decided as she glided lazily to the floor and waited for him to round a pile of loose stones.
50
51 *****
52
53 He sensed her before he saw her, and as he rounded the rock pile, his pistol was raised and cocked, a round chambered. He fired at his first sight of her, scoring four quick hits to her center of mass, rolling fast to another firing position, emptying the clip into her face, throat and chest. Seventeen rounds, all direct hits, blood flying from the exit wounds in crimson bursts, and still she stood there, silently watching him, not even registering the bullets’ impacts. He never bothered to reload as he allowed his arm to limply fall back to his side, nerveless fingers releasing the pistol. He was deaf to the pistol’s metallic clang as it hit the floor, unaware that he had risen to his feet. He stared into her onyx eyes and studied his reflection in them, the coldness of the assassin flooding through him, calming his mind and readying his body. He shut down his conscious mind, preparing himself for the speed of his autonomous systems, relying on enhanced reflex and native viciousness as his last defenses. He widened his feet, redistributed his weight, and slightly bent his knees, preparing himself as best he could. Reconciling himself, he waited for her imminent attack.
54
55 *****
56
57 She smiled as she watched his preparations. She was only vaguely aware of the pain from the passage of the soft-nosed bullets, was beyond awareness of anything but the exquisite agony in her loins. He would fight her if he could, but she was not going to allow him to hurt himself before she was ready. One moment she was silently watching him, the next she was an arrow, intending to spear him and drive him to the ground. As fast as she was, he still managed to turn and crouch, and he caught her cleanly at the knees, unbalancing her and sending her over him. Even as she landed she felt him shift and when she hit the ground he was on top of her, trying to pin her to the gritty cement floor. She rolled him, but he used her momentum to regain the advantage. Several more rolls brought them to a low brick wall, and they stopped with her on top and her right hand on his chin, threatening to break his neck. He stopped his struggles as she increased the pressure. She took advantage of the moment to regain her breath and her wits.
58
59 He was magnificent! No one before had been able to match her, and the speed with which he moved! For the first time, she questioned her need to kill him, the possibility of bringing him across as her perfect mate. For long moments she indulged herself in a fantasy of global conquest, of ascendancy through the ranks of the Consortium as they removed obstacles to ultimate power among the immortal. His skills combined with her ambition, and they would be the irresistible force overwhelming the immovable object. Nothing could stand against them, and he would complete her, make her whole, give her the love she had thought forever denied her.
60
61 "Will you join me?" she asked him aloud, her first spoken words to him since the chase had begun. "Will you rule the world at my side?" She released his head and allowed him to see her, watching him intently as she stared into his eyes. She could see him considering, considering the angles, tempted by the prospect of eternal youth and strength. She saw his attraction to her, saw his appraisal of her, felt his physical reaction to her. She felt the stirring of his manhood beneath her, heard the rasping of his quickened breath, saw and smelled his sweat as it poured from him. Tabling her question for later, she separated from him long enough to rip open his shirt, baring his chest. In another movement his pants were in tatters, and just as quickly she stripped herself.
62
63 By the time she had lowered herself to him again, he had shed the remains of his clothing and was reaching for her. Their lips met again, tongues again eeling around and over each other. She felt his hands roughly grabbing her, reaching around to fold her into his arms. She melted against him and they sank prone to the floor, each exploring the other with reckless abandon. Breaking the clinch, she inhaled deeply, his aroma subtly changed with the power of his arousal. She ran her hands down his body, exalting in the hardness of his muscles and the perfection of his form. She ran her tongue along his face, down his neck and across his chest, savoring the tang of his sweat on her tongue. She felt his hands on her breasts, felt her nipples harden under his palms. Then he pulled her up sharply and rose to face her.
64
65 *****
66
67 He rolled her over and climbed on top, burying his face in her breasts. Tonguing rapid circles around her left nipple, he sucked it suddenly into his mouth, teasing it with his teeth as he heard her moan. Biting down, he pulled up sharply and held it firmly as he flicked it with his tongue. She was writhing under him now, the movement of her hips threatening to dislodge him. He repeated his attentions to her right breast, breathing deeply through his nose. The musk of her need, thick and pungent, struck him like a physical blow. He moved quickly down her body, past her stomach and straight to the thick hair between her thighs. She was growling now, animal sounds completely divorced from anything human as he took her into his mouth, awash in her wetness, tonguing her center fiercely as her back arched sharply and her thighs locked around him. Her first climax exploded around him as she keened in an inhuman wail that could have come from no mortal throat. The next thing he knew, he was on his back with her sitting astride him.
68
69 *****
70
71 She impaled herself on him in one motion, oblivious to everything except the urgency of her need. She rode him mindlessly, driving herself downwards to meet his upward thrusts, heedless of his hands on her haunches pulling her to him. He had risen up to suckle her, and she wrapped her arms around him as she moved, finding her rhythm, quickening her movements as her passion rose. She gave herself to the moment, allowing herself complete release to her reclaimed erotic humanity. Her next climax rocked her to her core, and then she exploded in a series of them, each one hammering her like a piston, pounding her in relentless waves of unendurable ecstasy. In the midst of her passion, she lowered her face to his neck and sank in her fangs, taking his blood in torrents, feeling it flood into her mouth and down her throat in a delicious river. She felt him release himself with the force of a shotgun blast, and still she drank. She felt the weakening of his thrusts within her, and still she drank. She felt the slowing of his pulse and the laboring of his breath, and still she drank. As she climaxed one last time, she drew the last of him into her, and only then did she finally raise her face from his throat. Trembling violently, unable to stand, she rolled to her back and lay next to him, aware only of the earthquakes still shaking her loins. Ever so slowly, the aftershocks died to tremors, and then to quivers. When her muscles would once again obey her, she rose unsteadily to her feet and looked down upon her now dead lover.
72
73 "Of all those whom I have taken, you are now first. I was as a virgin again with you, and I will always love you best. You will be immortal, in your way, my desperate love, as I will carry you with me forever. Rest well from your labors, my dear one, and may the God you spurned in life take you to his breast in death. Farewell." She never noticed the single tear that fell upon his chest as she turned away to gather her clothing. Halleya Enrije would be on a plane westward for an appointment in America.
74
75 Finis
76
File shorts/carousel_redux.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..47d1331)
1 Carousel: Redux
2
3 This is my last trip on the merry-go-round. They promised, damn it, and this
4 time they had better mean it. Not that I can do anything about it if they welch
5 again, but if I have to do this one more time, I'll skip the middle step and go
6 straight to Hell. With any luck, I'll take some of them with me. I don't say
7 that out loud, since the bastards have no sense of humor.
8
9 It's not like I've led a bad life, just that I haven't lived one quite good
10 enough. I've been a fish, a dog, and one time I was even a dragon. I'd have
11 stuck with that if I'd had a choice, but ever since they sucked me up, they've
12 called the shots. I bought my ticket and I have to ride, but enough is enough.
13
14 I get to be a man this trip, my final exam before I go before the board. They
15 say if I get this right, I'm in like Flynn. My record's been pretty good
16 lately, and they're even willing to forget that minor trouble in the garden I
17 caused some time back. They still blame me for that, like I was the one who put
18 the only apple in a million miles within an arm's length of the only ones who
19 could reach it. I told her not to, but did she listen?
20
21 About as well as they have ever since. I suppose THAT'S my fault, too.
22
23 Anyway, this time is for all the marbles. All I have to do is go into this
24 neighborhood and stop some whackjob from giving a .41 caliber injection to
25 somebody who's supposed to be important. They didn't give me many details, but
26 I've seen the guy, so this should be an easy gig. I stop him, they stop my
27 ride. Doesn't get any easier than that.
28
29 The only problem was the timing. They dropped me off at 9:45, giving me less
30 than half an hour. No time to scour the streets trying to catch him before he
31 showed, but that was all right. I'm used to working on a deadline.
32
33 I went inside and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. People were milling about,
34 wearing formal gowns and tailored black suits. The top hats were a little much,
35 but they did lend an elegance that you just don't see anymore. I'd have to
36 score one for myself when this was finally over.
37
38 Small gaslights were guttering here and there, throwing wierd shadows around
39 like a flock of ravens were flying just overhead. Just past the door, to my
40 right was where it would all go down. I ran my hand along the gleaming raised
41 platform that rose to just over my head. Turning the corner at the far end, I
42 went through the small back door and looked around. A dank, narrow, smelly
43 alley dead-ending on my left and circling back to the main street on my right.
44 Ducking back inside, I retraced my steps, hiding in the shadows in the back of
45 the room. No way he gets in without my seeing him.
46
47 Unless he was already here.
48
49 The curtain before me rose as bright lights came up. Closing my left eye to
50 preserve my night vision, I caught movement in my right. Looking up, I saw a
51 man climbing from a higher section, jerking unsteadily as if on a ship during a
52 storm. As Asa and Flo went at it up front, I ran to the wall and scaled its
53 irregularities until I reached a balcony. Swinging my leg over, I was greeted
54 with astonished gasps and wide eyes, several men in uniform standing to bar my
55 path. Out of time, I climbed onto the ledge and jumped as high and as far as I
56 could.
57
58 I had him dead to rights. I was going to take him shoulder high and drive him
59 backwards away from his target. No way I could miss. Easy street, here I come.
60
61 Then the bastard tripped. He fell to one knee, grabbing the nearest seat to
62 keep from sprawling forward, and I sailed over his head to land in an
63 unceremonious heap in the carpeted aisle. Sneezing and wheezing at the cloud of
64 dust, I scrambled up and whirled in time to watch my failure.
65
66 He extended his arm and fired one shot, point blank into the back of another
67 man's head. Several quick steps and he leapt down from the box, landing
68 awkwardly in a tumble. Regaining his feet, he limped to the back door and
69 disappeared into the night as a packed house sat stunned.
70
71 Then the scene unfroze into chaos. Several pairs of rough hands clamped onto
72 me, but I didn't even notice, my eyes still fixed on that damn back door. Once
73 again I was screwed through no fault of my own, and I knew what my excuses
74 would get me. I was dragged up the aisle amid shrieks, the cries of "The
75 President's been shot!" and entreaties for a doctor. None of it mattered in the
76 least to me. I'd be having my own troubles soon.
77
78 They hung me that night, as a conspirator to assassination, never bothering
79 with the formalities of learning my name. The rope snapped tight around my
80 throat, and even as I jerked and thrashed, I cursed their clumsiness. Since my
81 neck didn't break, it would be a long several minutes before it all went black.
82
83 When I awoke, I felt sluggish, my thoughts far slower than I was accustomed to.
84 Maybe they'd drugged me, or taken their boots to my head while I lay
85 unconscious. As I struggled to rise, I heard footsteps beside me, then the
86 rattle and clank of keys in a lock. Soft leather shoes scraped the cold hard
87 floor as they stopped beside my head. They must have been running as fast as
88 they moved. The voice from above talked too fast to follow its words, but I
89 caught the general idea. Eventually.
90
91 "You've failed us again, as we knew that you would, but we've been lenient, and
92 will keep our word. Because of your efforts, we are giving you your wish.
93 Because of your results, we are giving you your due. Henceforth your life will
94 proceed at a pace more in accordance with your abilities. Fare thee well, and
95 know that this parting will be our last."
96
97 Sons of bitches have a sense of humor after all. Well, I'd asked for a simpler,
98 more sedate life, and to be fair, they did fill the bill.
99
100 I wonder how long it would take to cross this field moving at a snail's pace.
File shorts/carousel_redux.txt deleted (index a0b9d74..0000000)
1 Carousel: Redux
2
3 This is my last trip on the merry-go-round. They promised, damn it, and this time they had better mean it. Not that I can do anything about it if they welch again, but if I have to do this one more time, I'll skip the middle step and go straight to Hell. With any luck, I'll take some of them with me. I don't say that out loud, since the bastards have no sense of humor.
4
5 It's not like I've led a bad life, just that I haven't lived one quite good enough. I've been a fish, a dog, and one time I was even a dragon. I'd have stuck with that if I'd had a choice, but ever since they sucked me up, they've called the shots. I bought my ticket and I have to ride, but enough is enough.
6
7 I get to be a man this trip, my final exam before I go before the board. They say if I get this right, I'm in like Flynn. My record's been pretty good lately, and they're even willing to forget that minor trouble in the garden I caused some time back. They still blame me for that, like I was the one who put the only apple in a million miles within an arm's length of the only ones who could reach it. I told her not to, but did she listen?
8
9 About as well as they have ever since. I suppose THAT'S my fault, too.
10
11 Anyway, this time is for all the marbles. All I have to do is go into this neighborhood and stop some whackjob from giving a .41 caliber injection to somebody who's supposed to be important. They didn't give me many details, but I've seen the guy, so this should be an easy gig. I stop him, they stop my ride. Doesn't get any easier than that.
12
13 The only problem was the timing. They dropped me off at 9:45, giving me less than half an hour. No time to scour the streets trying to catch him before he showed, but that was all right. I'm used to working on a deadline.
14
15 I went inside and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. People were milling about, wearing formal gowns and tailored black suits. The top hats were a little much, but they did lend an elegance that you just don't see anymore. I'd have to score one for myself when this was finally over.
16
17 Small gaslights were guttering here and there, throwing wierd shadows around like a flock of ravens were flying just overhead. Just past the door, to my right was where it would all go down. I ran my hand along the gleaming raised platform that rose to just over my head. Turning the corner at the far end, I went through the small back door and looked around. A dank, narrow, smelly alley dead-ending on my left and circling back to the main street on my right. Ducking back inside, I retraced my steps, hiding in the shadows in the back of the room. No way he gets in without my seeing him.
18
19 Unless he was already here.
20
21 The curtain before me rose as bright lights came up. Closing my left eye to preserve my night vision, I caught movement in my right. Looking up, I saw a man climbing from a higher section, jerking unsteadily as if on a ship during a storm. As Asa and Flo went at it up front, I ran to the wall and scaled its irregularities until I reached a balcony. Swinging my leg over, I was greeted with astonished gasps and wide eyes, several men in uniform standing to bar my path. Out of time, I climbed onto the ledge and jumped as high and as far as I could.
22
23 I had him dead to rights. I was going to take him shoulder high and drive him backwards away from his target. No way I could miss. Easy street, here I come.
24
25 Then the bastard tripped. He fell to one knee, grabbing the nearest seat to keep from sprawling forward, and I sailed over his head to land in an unceremonious heap in the carpeted aisle. Sneezing and wheezing at the cloud of dust, I scrambled up and whirled in time to watch my failure.
26
27 He extended his arm and fired one shot, point blank into the back of another man's head. Several quick steps and he leapt down from the box, landing awkwardly in a tumble. Regaining his feet, he limped to the back door and disappeared into the night as a packed house sat stunned.
28
29 Then the scene unfroze into chaos. Several pairs of rough hands clamped onto me, but I didn't even notice, my eyes still fixed on that damn back door. Once again I was screwed through no fault of my own, and I knew what my excuses would get me. I was dragged up the aisle amid shrieks, the cries of "The President's been shot!" and entreaties for a doctor. None of it mattered in the least to me. I'd be having my own troubles soon.
30
31 They hung me that night, as a conspirator to assassination, never bothering with the formalities of learning my name. The rope snapped tight around my throat, and even as I jerked and thrashed, I cursed their clumsiness. Since my neck didn't break, it would be a long several minutes before it all went black.
32
33 When I awoke, I felt sluggish, my thoughts far slower than I was accustomed to. Maybe they'd drugged me, or taken their boots to my head while I lay unconscious. As I struggled to rise, I heard footsteps beside me, then the rattle and clank of keys in a lock. Soft leather shoes scraped the cold hard floor as they stopped beside my head. They must have been running as fast as they moved. The voice from above talked too fast to follow its words, but I caught the general idea. Eventually.
34
35 "You've failed us again, as we knew that you would, but we've been lenient, and will keep our word. Because of your efforts, we are giving you your wish. Because of your results, we are giving you your due. Henceforth your life will proceed at a pace more in accordance with your abilities. Fare thee well, and know that this parting will be our last."
36
37 Sons of bitches have a sense of humor after all. Well, I'd asked for a simpler, more sedate life, and to be fair, they did fill the bill.
38
39 I wonder how long it would take to cross this field moving at a snail's pace.
File shorts/death_of_kyle.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..562b835)
1 Darkest night, broken only by the faintest of aurae from the billions of stars
2 far overhead. Some shone steadily with a bright, clear light, others guttered
3 fitfully as they appeared and vanished, often in the space of a heartbeat. He
4 gazed upward, momentarily at rest, an onyx statue emblazoned with a gray
5 Templar cross, listening to the background hum composed of the billions of
6 dreams melting together. He could feel in his bones the beat of The Heart,
7 strong, steady, a metronome measuring time that did not pass here, beating not
8 for him, never for him, but still a guide to the work he did.
9
10 One night, shortly after his transition, he had visited Miranda in a dream. A
11 bittersweet reunion, but by night's end, she had understood if not accepted the
12 reasons for what he had done, what he had become.
13
14 "You are the only man I have ever loved," she had said, cheeks wet and eyes red.
15 "A child's love for a man unworthy. Now a woman, you will find another. Better,
16 far better, and the life you build will be a testament to the woman you have
17 become."
18 "Mom and Dad miss you. Everyone misses you. I miss you! Why did you have to go
19 away?" she had wailed.
20 "To destroy the evil that threatened you. It will not return while I still
21 stand. The Knight of the Shadows still walks the wall, even as he did while he
22 lived."
23 "Will I ever see you again?"
24 "Mayhap, dear heart. Mayhap. But for now, you must move on, as all must do. My
25 love to your family, and keep the rest for yourself. Fear not the dark, for
26 thou art the light, and in the shadow thou casts I wait and watch. Live well,
27 and be as proud of you as I am. Farewell, Milady, and if it please you,
28 remember me fondly."
29
30 Brianna had rebuilt her life, taking classes at the local college on a track
31 scholarship. He had visited her once as well, with the predictable result.
32
33 "Well, well, well, if it ain't the big, bad wolf."
34 "Be nice or I'll blow your house in."
35 "Yeah, yeah. This is me terrified. So what you doin' here, besides creepin' on
36 young women while they asleep?"
37 "Memory problems, girl? You called for me."
38 "Took you long enough. You been gone a year."
39 "Time flies. People to see, things to do."
40 "Yeah, well, I never got a chance to thank you for what you done, then I find
41 out I made it back alone. You know they never did find your body, and that some
42 people still thinking you comin' back?"
43 "They're right, just not in the way they think."
44 "I see that. Just don't get too cocky. I can still kick your ass even in that
45 tin can."
46 "Humility, thy name is woman. Be free, and if you ever need me...fuck off."
47 "If I ever need you, I'll be more fucked than I know. Now fuck off yourself. I
48 got class in the morning."
49 "You're welcome."
50
51 So many stars, so many dreams; he was master of all he surveyed, the bringer of
52 justice, the law where none existed, the last resort of the weak against the
53 strong. He was Vision. He was Justice. He was The Shadow Knight.
54
55 Tonight, he was Bored.
56
57 He had his work, and he would do it, but he needed a diversion, something
58 different to pique his interest. Gazing upward, scanning the sky, he noted the
59 appearance of a new star, dim, blinking rapidly, cycling from red to blue and
60 back again. He waited for it to disappear, but it continued blinking, changing
61 colors, brightening momentarily before dimming, over and over. This was indeed
62 something different, and it indeed caught his interest.
63
64 Suddenly, he felt The Pull, that irresistible force that called him to his
65 duty. Odd that he heard no cries for deliverance nor calls for aid. He smelled
66 none of the putrescence that signaled the presence of evil, nor could he see
67 any sign of the evil at work. But he was bound, and duty called, so,
68 unsheathing his sword, he leaped into the air, great black wings expanding to
69 beat powerfully as he ascended. As he rose, he was presented with a vision, the
70 reason for his involvement, and he smiled. This night he would be the bringer
71 not of justice, but of truth. He pierced the star's outer shell...
72
73 ...and landed unsteadily on cement. A loading dock of some kind, a powered lift
74 to his right with ramps that raised and lowered. Two sets of double doors faced
75 him, and he went to the set on the right. With a wave of his hand, he summoned
76 a mirror, and in the glass he saw a tall, bald man, going slightly to fat.
77 Nodding, he banished the mirror and stepped through the double doors.
78
79 A large work area, with palettes of boxes scattered about. Canvas and plastic
80 carts held even more boxes, and all around him people were bustling from place
81 to place. Stepping forward, he noticed men and women dressed in blue, sorting
82 mail into slots labeled with addresses. Nodding, he turned right and found a
83 small room with a refrigerator, microwave, and several vending machines. A
84 young man sat at one of the tables, Keith? No, Kyle, that was it, Kyle, and at
85 his entrance, Kyle looked up.
86
87 "Wayne, what are you doing here?"
88
89 Gabriel shrugged, standing motionless for a beat, then two, before taking a
90 seat opposite the young man.
91
92 "You know you're not supposed to be here. How did you even get here? Have you
93 been drinking?"
94 "Just a bracer with the morning coffee. You know how it is," Wayne said.
95 "Yeah, I know. So what ARE you doing here?"
96 "I just got this feeling, you know, that I had to come here and see you, and
97 here I am."
98 "Well, I got this feeling you have to go. Come on," Kyle said, rounding the
99 table and taking Wayne's arm.
100
101 They walked together to the other set of swinging doors, Kyle pushing Wayne
102 ahead of him. They went through the doors, one step onto the dock into
103 daylight, the next into...
104
105 ...a dimly-lit basement, a single, naked bulb screwed into the ceiling the only
106 source of light. No doors or windows, and the only furniture was a heavy,
107 wooden chair with arms that ended in large knobs. Kyle sat in the chair,
108 looking around, blinking in the sudden change of light. It took a moment before
109 he found Gabriel.
110
111 "Wait, who the fuck are you? What did you do to Wayne?"
112
113 Gabriel smiled, opening his black duster, a pair of silver knives glinting in
114 the meager light. Dropping his hands, he tugged two drawstrings at his thighs,
115 revealing two rows of throwing knives. Flicking his wrists, he flipped first
116 two, then four of the knives up in front of him, juggling them easily as he
117 looked at Kyle.
118
119 "What the fuck is this? Where am I?"
120 "This, my young friend, is a classroom, and I am your teacher. It would seem
121 that my current employer has grown tired of your constant insistence on a story
122 including several rather inane elements that belong in no literature with which
123 he is presently aware."
124 "Who is your employer? Who the fuck are you?"
125 "I can see the cause of his annoyance. Your repetition does get tiresome."
126 "I'm supposed to be at work! What are you going to do to me? People are going
127 to miss me!"
128 "First of all, no you're not. Second of all, you'll see soon enough. Lastly, I
129 seriously doubt it."
130
131 All the while, the knives flew, tumbling and arcing through the air, gray
132 streaks connecting them in complex patterns that shifted with the movements of
133 the blades. Catching them all and sheathing them in a movement too quick to
134 follow, he folded his arms across his chest and looked at Kyle looking at him.
135 He waved his hand, and a wooden table appeared. He stepped to it and looked
136 back at Kyle.
137
138 "As I said, this is a classroom. Today, we're going to learn about botany, and
139 maybe something about tribal lore. But first, to set the stage."
140
141 On the table appeared a large bowl of grass seed, a phonograph player, and a
142 portable seismometer. He turned back to Kyle and smiled.
143
144 "It seems that the elements you requested are going to make it into a story
145 after all. Perhaps not in the way you intended, but beggars can't be choosers."
146
147 Grabbing the bowl of grass seed, he rounded the table and stood in front of
148 Kyle, who had been struggling to break free of bonds he could not see. Watching
149 him a moment, he waited for him to quiet and look back up at him.
150
151 "Seeing your interest in scientific study, I thought I would indulge your taste
152 for such inquiry. We're going to test the premise of these researchers using
153 methods, that while suitably reproducible, may, for reasons that will become
154 apparent, may NOT be fit for publication. Shall we begin? Yes? Then open wide."
155
156 Kyle just sat there staring, so Gabriel lifted his head with a hand under his
157 chin and squeezed. When Kyle's mouth opened, Gabriel emptied the bowl down his
158 throat. A smack under the chin closed his mouth again hard enough to clack his
159 teeth together.
160
161 "Very good. Now, we'll proceed to Step Two," Gabriel said, moving back to the
162 table and turning on the phonograph.
163
164 A steady, persistent beat of heavy drums vibrated the concrete walls of the
165 room, causing dust to drift down from the cobwebbed ceiling. After several
166 moments, with no discernible effect, Gabriel turned off the music and went back
167 to Kyle.
168
169 "Hmm, I must have missed something somewhere. Now let me think...aah, I have
170 it. Sometimes I can be quite the absent-minded one," he said, snapping his
171 fingers.
172
173 An instant, ice-cold deluge poured over Kyle's head, heavy enough to drive up
174 his nose and down his throat. Kyle coughed and thrashed until Gabriel snapped
175 his fingers again. Water ran down Kyle's nose and bubbled from his mouth as he
176 sputtered and gagged trying to breathe around the water in his lungs and throat.
177
178 "What...the...fuc..."
179 "You can't grow grass without watering it, a fact I momentarily overlooked. NOW
180 maybe we'll get somewhere."
181
182 Gabriel returned to the table and resumed the music. After a few moments, grass
183 began sprouting out of Kyle's ears and mouth, and his eyes took on a definite
184 green cast. His stomach distended, and soon more grass pushed its way out from
185 under his fingernails. Gabriel nodded, then scowled.
186
187 "Dandelions? Really? I was sure they told me that this seed was pure Kentucky
188 Bluegrass. I'll have to get a refund. But something is still...aha, that's
189 right. The last part of the experiment," he said as he stomped his foot.
190
191 The room started shaking vigorously, and he turned on the seismometer. 2.6,
192 3.4, 4.2, 5.9...When the reading hit 9.7, he held it steady for a moment,
193 turning his head to look at Kyle, who was riding his chair like it was a
194 mechanical bull as it rose in the air to fall heavily back to the floor hard
195 enough to slam his head against the wooden slats behind him. At one point, he
196 spit out his tongue, having bitten through it during a most violent collision.
197 The grass was growing furiously now, growing from his head to replace his hair,
198 covering his face in a verdant beard, and covering his skin in a verdant pelt.
199 Kyle's stomach continued to grow, expanding exponentially to fill that entire
200 half of the room. Nodding, Gabriel clapped his hands and the earthquake ceased.
201
202 "Well, it would seem that those researchers knew their business. I'll have to
203 include that tidbit in the report to my employer. But, we'd better do something
204 about this overgrowth before the city gives me a citation."
205
206 Ringing like silver bells, his belt-knives were free, flowing in graceful arcs
207 over the grass that was now a foot long. Back and forth he swept his hands,
208 tufts of grass flying in all directions, accompanied in places by bits of skin,
209 and in one enthusiastic sweep, an ear. Kyle screamed as free-flowing blood
210 combined with free-floating grass to create a viscous rain that fell in wet
211 clumps in his lap.
212
213 "Very nice. And now for a shave. Can't have you looking like some homeless
214 wreck, now can we?" Gabriel asked.
215
216 Again the knives did their work, up one cheek and down the other, peeling skin
217 and muscle in long rolls. Flipping his wrists, he worked up and down Kyle's
218 neck, carefully avoiding the carotids. After several seconds, he stepped back
219 to survey his work.
220
221 "Very nice. You'll never have a closer shave. I missed my calling as a barber.
222 But you do seem to have gained a bit of weight. That won't do, what with the
223 danger of heart disease and all. We'll have to do something about...uh-oh, too
224 late."
225
226 Gabriel waved his hand and the table disappeared, and he walked across the
227 empty space to the opposite wall. Turning back to Kyle, he watched as his
228 stomach extended still further, pulsing and rippling. Then, with a loud bang,
229 it exploded in all directions, scattering grass and acid in torrents to all
230 corners of the room. Gabriel's shield appeared in his outstretched hand, and he
231 crouched down as gore and grass pounded against it in solid clods. When it was
232 over, he stood and walked over to the chair, gazing down on the few scraps of
233 hair and skin that were all that remained of Kyle.
234
235 "I would call that a rousing success. Score one for the scientific method,"
236 Gabriel said as he stepped through the wall and disappeared.
File shorts/death_of_kyle.txt deleted (index e9d828a..0000000)
1 Darkest night, broken only by the faintest of aurae from the billions of stars far overhead. Some shone steadily with a bright, clear light, others guttered fitfully as they appeared and vanished, often in the space of a heartbeat. He gazed upward, momentarily at rest, an onyx statue emblazoned with a gray Templar cross, listening to the background hum composed of the billions of dreams melting together. He could feel in his bones the beat of The Heart, strong, steady, a metronome measuring time that did not pass here, beating not for him, never for him, but still a guide to the work he did.
2
3 One night, shortly after his transition, he had visited Miranda in a dream. A bittersweet reunion, but by night's end, she had understood if not accepted the reasons for what he had done, what he had become.
4
5 "You are the only man I have ever loved," she had said, cheeks wet and eyes red.
6 "A child's love for a man unworthy. Now a woman, you will find another. Better, far better, and the life you build will be a testament to the woman you have become."
7 "Mom and Dad miss you. Everyone misses you. I miss you! Why did you have to go away?" she had wailed.
8 "To destroy the evil that threatened you. It will not return while I still stand. The Knight of the Shadows still walks the wall, even as he did while he lived."
9 "Will I ever see you again?"
10 "Mayhap, dear heart. Mayhap. But for now, you must move on, as all must do. My love to your family, and keep the rest for yourself. Fear not the dark, for thou art the light, and in the shadow thou casts I wait and watch. Live well, and be as proud of you as I am. Farewell, Milady, and if it please you, remember me fondly."
11
12 Brianna had rebuilt her life, taking classes at the local college on a track scholarship. He had visited her once as well, with the predictable result.
13
14 "Well, well, well, if it ain't the big, bad wolf."
15 "Be nice or I'll blow your house in."
16 "Yeah, yeah. This is me terrified. So what you doin' here, besides creepin' on young women while they asleep?"
17 "Memory problems, girl? You called for me."
18 "Took you long enough. You been gone a year."
19 "Time flies. People to see, things to do."
20 "Yeah, well, I never got a chance to thank you for what you done, then I find out I made it back alone. You know they never did find your body, and that some people still thinking you comin' back?"
21 "They're right, just not in the way they think."
22 "I see that. Just don't get too cocky. I can still kick your ass even in that tin can."
23 "Humility, thy name is woman. Be free, and if you ever need me...fuck off."
24 "If I ever need you, I'll be more fucked than I know. Now fuck off yourself. I got class in the morning."
25 "You're welcome."
26
27 So many stars, so many dreams; he was master of all he surveyed, the bringer of justice, the law where none existed, the last resort of the weak against the strong. He was Vision. He was Justice. He was The Shadow Knight.
28
29 Tonight, he was Bored.
30
31 He had his work, and he would do it, but he needed a diversion, something different to pique his interest. Gazing upward, scanning the sky, he noted the appearance of a new star, dim, blinking rapidly, cycling from red to blue and back again. He waited for it to disappear, but it continued blinking, changing colors, brightening momentarily before dimming, over and over. This was indeed something different, and it indeed caught his interest.
32
33 Suddenly, he felt The Pull, that irresistible force that called him to his duty. Odd that he heard no cries for deliverance nor calls for aid. He smelled none of the putrescence that signaled the presence of evil, nor could he see any sign of the evil at work. But he was bound, and duty called, so, unsheathing his sword, he leaped into the air, great black wings expanding to beat powerfully as he ascended. As he rose, he was presented with a vision, the reason for his involvement, and he smiled. This night he would be the bringer not of justice, but of truth. He pierced the star's outer shell...
34
35 ...and landed unsteadily on cement. A loading dock of some kind, a powered lift to his right with ramps that raised and lowered. Two sets of double doors faced him, and he went to the set on the right. With a wave of his hand, he summoned a mirror, and in the glass he saw a tall, bald man, going slightly to fat. Nodding, he banished the mirror and stepped through the double doors.
36
37 A large work area, with palettes of boxes scattered about. Canvas and plastic carts held even more boxes, and all around him people were bustling from place to place. Stepping forward, he noticed men and women dressed in blue, sorting mail into slots labeled with addresses. Nodding, he turned right and found a small room with a refrigerator, microwave, and several vending machines. A young man sat at one of the tables, Keith? No, Kyle, that was it, Kyle, and at his entrance, Kyle looked up.
38
39 "Wayne, what are you doing here?"
40
41 Gabriel shrugged, standing motionless for a beat, then two, before taking a seat opposite the young man.
42
43 "You know you're not supposed to be here. How did you even get here? Have you been drinking?"
44 "Just a bracer with the morning coffee. You know how it is," Wayne said.
45 "Yeah, I know. So what ARE you doing here?"
46 "I just got this feeling, you know, that I had to come here and see you, and here I am."
47 "Well, I got this feeling you have to go. Come on," Kyle said, rounding the table and taking Wayne's arm.
48
49 They walked together to the other set of swinging doors, Kyle pushing Wayne ahead of him. They went through the doors, one step onto the dock into daylight, the next into...
50
51 ...a dimly-lit basement, a single, naked bulb screwed into the ceiling the only source of light. No doors or windows, and the only furniture was a heavy, wooden chair with arms that ended in large knobs. Kyle sat in the chair, looking around, blinking in the sudden change of light. It took a moment before he found Gabriel.
52
53 "Wait, who the fuck are you? What did you do to Wayne?"
54
55 Gabriel smiled, opening his black duster, a pair of silver knives glinting in the meager light. Dropping his hands, he tugged two drawstrings at his thighs, revealing two rows of throwing knives. Flicking his wrists, he flipped first two, then four of the knives up in front of him, juggling them easily as he looked at Kyle.
56
57 "What the fuck is this? Where am I?"
58 "This, my young friend, is a classroom, and I am your teacher. It would seem that my current employer has grown tired of your constant insistence on a story including several rather inane elements that belong in no literature with which he is presently aware."
59 "Who is your employer? Who the fuck are you?"
60 "I can see the cause of his annoyance. Your repetition does get tiresome."
61 "I'm supposed to be at work! What are you going to do to me? People are going to miss me!"
62 "First of all, no you're not. Second of all, you'll see soon enough. Lastly, I seriously doubt it."
63
64 All the while, the knives flew, tumbling and arcing through the air, gray streaks connecting them in complex patterns that shifted with the movements of the blades. Catching them all and sheathing them in a movement too quick to follow, he folded his arms across his chest and looked at Kyle looking at him. He waved his hand, and a wooden table appeared. He stepped to it and looked back at Kyle.
65
66 "As I said, this is a classroom. Today, we're going to learn about botany, and maybe something about tribal lore. But first, to set the stage."
67
68 On the table appeared a large bowl of grass seed, a phonograph player, and a portable seismometer. He turned back to Kyle and smiled.
69
70 "It seems that the elements you requested are going to make it into a story after all. Perhaps not in the way you intended, but beggars can't be choosers."
71
72 Grabbing the bowl of grass seed, he rounded the table and stood in front of Kyle, who had been struggling to break free of bonds he could not see. Watching him a moment, he waited for him to quiet and look back up at him.
73
74 "Seeing your interest in scientific study, I thought I would indulge your taste for such inquiry. We're going to test the premise of these researchers using methods, that while suitably reproducible, may, for reasons that will become apparent, may NOT be fit for publication. Shall we begin? Yes? Then open wide."
75
76 Kyle just sat there staring, so Gabriel lifted his head with a hand under his chin and squeezed. When Kyle's mouth opened, Gabriel emptied the bowl down his throat. A smack under the chin closed his mouth again hard enough to clack his teeth together.
77
78 "Very good. Now, we'll proceed to Step Two," Gabriel said, moving back to the table and turning on the phonograph.
79
80 A steady, persistent beat of heavy drums vibrated the concrete walls of the room, causing dust to drift down from the cobwebbed ceiling. After several moments, with no discernible effect, Gabriel turned off the music and went back to Kyle.
81
82 "Hmm, I must have missed something somewhere. Now let me think...aah, I have it. Sometimes I can be quite the absent-minded one," he said, snapping his fingers.
83
84 An instant, ice-cold deluge poured over Kyle's head, heavy enough to drive up his nose and down his throat. Kyle coughed and thrashed until Gabriel snapped his fingers again. Water ran down Kyle's nose and bubbled from his mouth as he sputtered and gagged trying to breathe around the water in his lungs and throat.
85
86 "What...the...fuc..."
87 "You can't grow grass without watering it, a fact I momentarily overlooked. NOW maybe we'll get somewhere."
88
89 Gabriel returned to the table and resumed the music. After a few moments, grass began sprouting out of Kyle's ears and mouth, and his eyes took on a definite green cast. His stomach distended, and soon more grass pushed its way out from under his fingernails. Gabriel nodded, then scowled.
90
91 "Dandelions? Really? I was sure they told me that this seed was pure Kentucky Bluegrass. I'll have to get a refund. But something is still...aha, that's right. The last part of the experiment," he said as he stomped his foot.
92
93 The room started shaking vigorously, and he turned on the seismometer. 2.6, 3.4, 4.2, 5.9...When the reading hit 9.7, he held it steady for a moment, turning his head to look at Kyle, who was riding his chair like it was a mechanical bull as it rose in the air to fall heavily back to the floor hard enough to slam his head against the wooden slats behind him. At one point, he spit out his tongue, having bitten through it during a most violent collision. The grass was growing furiously now, growing from his head to replace his hair, covering his face in a verdant beard, and covering his skin in a verdant pelt. Kyle's stomach continued to grow, expanding exponentially to fill that entire half of the room. Nodding, Gabriel clapped his hands and the earthquake ceased.
94
95 "Well, it would seem that those researchers knew their business. I'll have to include that tidbit in the report to my employer. But, we'd better do something about this overgrowth before the city gives me a citation."
96
97 Ringing like silver bells, his belt-knives were free, flowing in graceful arcs over the grass that was now a foot long. Back and forth he swept his hands, tufts of grass flying in all directions, accompanied in places by bits of skin, and in one enthusiastic sweep, an ear. Kyle screamed as free-flowing blood combined with free-floating grass to create a viscous rain that fell in wet clumps in his lap.
98
99 "Very nice. And now for a shave. Can't have you looking like some homeless wreck, now can we?" Gabriel asked.
100
101 Again the knives did their work, up one cheek and down the other, peeling skin and muscle in long rolls. Flipping his wrists, he worked up and down Kyle's neck, carefully avoiding the carotids. After several seconds, he stepped back to survey his work.
102
103 "Very nice. You'll never have a closer shave. I missed my calling as a barber. But you do seem to have gained a bit of weight. That won't do, what with the danger of heart disease and all. We'll have to do something about...uh-oh, too late."
104
105 Gabriel waved his hand and the table disappeared, and he walked across the empty space to the opposite wall. Turning back to Kyle, he watched as his stomach extended still further, pulsing and rippling. Then, with a loud bang, it exploded in all directions, scattering grass and acid in torrents to all corners of the room. Gabriel's shield appeared in his outstretched hand, and he crouched down as gore and grass pounded against it in solid clods. When it was over, he stood and walked over to the chair, gazing down on the few scraps of hair and skin that were all that remained of Kyle.
106
107 "I would call that a rousing success. Score one for the scientific method," Gabriel said as he stepped through the wall and disappeared.
File shorts/deleted_files.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..191ed7c)
1 "We have a major problem in here!"
2
3 They always had a major problem in there. Every time someone turned around,
4 some ham-fisted Luddite was signaling the end of the computer age. A plugged-in
5 mouse, a closed window, or a turned on monitor usually averted a return to the
6 Stone Age.
7
8 In no real hurry, Rick walked into the computer center, arriving at a terminal
9 with a pretty good crowd gathered around it. Ignoring the moaning, wailing and
10 gnashing of teeth, he elbowed his way to a position directly behind the sobbing
11 typist.
12
13 "They're gone! All gone! All I did was press a key and all my files are gone!"
14
15 "They're not gone," Rick said, rolling his eyes. "You just closed the program
16 that was accessing them. Again."
17
18 "No! It's still on my screen! Look!" she said, smearing the screen with a
19 finger coated in hand lotion, chocolate and sweat. "I'm going to be fired! I
20 just know it!"
21
22 Rick sighed, turning to the others.
23
24 "Can I get a little room here? This isn't an accident scene! You'd think
25 someone was dying the way you vultures are circling!" To the typist, he added,
26 "Get up."
27
28 They switched places and Rick hammered the keyboard, navigating a maze of
29 access violations, broken symlinks, and file-block errors. Just another day at
30 the office stuff, for about ten minutes. Then things got interesting.
31
32 They were gone. Every database, every index, every spreadsheet. Gone as if
33 they'd never been. The folders were there, the icons were there, but the files
34 were gone.
35
36 "What in the hells did you do?" he snarled over his shoulder.
37
38 The only response he got was a banshee wail that receded as the girl ran for
39 the bathroom.
40
41 Gritting his teeth, he went to work. Dropping to the command prompt, he dropped
42 below the graphical system to directly access the drive. The files had to be
43 here. All he had to do was reform the references that told the system where
44 they were. As long as nothing had written to the empty space, the files could
45 be recovered.
46
47 Except they were nowhere. They hadn't been overwritten. They were gone. Well,
48 that's why they invented backups.
49
50 After restoring from the backup, he went back to the graphical system. Still
51 gone. Dropping back to the command prompt, same result. A quick file-search of
52 the remaining backups gave the same story. The files were gone.
53
54 It wasn't possible. There were enough redundancies in the system that this
55 couldn't happen. Except it had. The question was how.
56
57 By the end of the day, he still had nothing. He had determined that the typist
58 had begun a search for a specific record in order to correct it in her
59 database. The system had errored out and come to a screeching halt. Rebooting
60 had restored the system, but not the files. For the first time in his career,
61 he was at a loss. Well, he'd figure it out tomorrow.
62
63 The next day, he found himself in the middle of another crowd, this one running
64 around and babbling. A secretary grabbed him by the arm and pulled him further
65 inside. "The files are back! All of them. Stan verified that the backups are
66 complete, too!"
67
68 Growling, Rick let himself be towed into the tumultuous scene until he saw its
69 source. He stopped so suddenly that the secretary lost her grip on his arm.
70
71 Socks. Green socks, blue socks, white socks. Tall socks, short socks, socks
72 with holes and socks with runs. Knee deep on the floor, covering everything,
73 hanging from fixtures. He'd never seen so many socks in his life. And not a one
74 of them had a mate.
75
76 "I'll be damned," he said, collapsing into a sock-padded chair.
File shorts/deleted_files.txt deleted (index ca38546..0000000)
1 "We have a major problem in here!"
2
3 They always had a major problem in there. Every time someone turned around, some ham-fisted Luddite was signaling the end of the computer age. A plugged-in mouse, a closed window, or a turned on monitor usually averted a return to the Stone Age.
4
5 In no real hurry, Rick walked into the computer center, arriving at a terminal with a pretty good crowd gathered around it. Ignoring the moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth, he elbowed his way to a position directly behind the sobbing typist.
6
7 "They're gone! All gone! All I did was press a key and all my files are gone!"
8
9 "They're not gone," Rick said, rolling his eyes. "You just closed the program that was accessing them. Again."
10
11 "No! It's still on my screen! Look!" she said, smearing the screen with a finger coated in hand lotion, chocolate and sweat. "I'm going to be fired! I just know it!"
12
13 Rick sighed, turning to the others.
14
15 "Can I get a little room here? This isn't an accident scene! You'd think someone was dying the way you vultures are circling!" To the typist, he added, "Get up."
16
17 They switched places and Rick hammered the keyboard, navigating a maze of access violations, broken symlinks, and file-block errors. Just another day at the office stuff, for about ten minutes. Then things got interesting.
18
19 They were gone. Every database, every index, every spreadsheet. Gone as if they'd never been. The folders were there, the icons were there, but the files were gone.
20
21 "What in the hells did you do?" he snarled over his shoulder.
22
23 The only response he got was a banshee wail that receded as the girl ran for the bathroom.
24
25 Gritting his teeth, he went to work. Dropping to the command prompt, he dropped below the graphical system to directly access the drive. The files had to be here. All he had to do was reform the references that told the system where they were. As long as nothing had written to the empty space, the files could be recovered.
26
27 Except they were nowhere. They hadn't been overwritten. They were gone. Well, that's why they invented backups.
28
29 After restoring from the backup, he went back to the graphical system. Still gone. Dropping back to the command prompt, same result. A quick file-search of the remaining backups gave the same story. The files were gone.
30
31 It wasn't possible. There were enough redundancies in the system that this couldn't happen. Except it had. The question was how.
32
33 By the end of the day, he still had nothing. He had determined that the typist had begun a search for a specific record in order to correct it in her database. The system had errored out and come to a screeching halt. Rebooting had restored the system, but not the files. For the first time in his career, he was at a loss. Well, he'd figure it out tomorrow.
34
35 The next day, he found himself in the middle of another crowd, this one running around and babbling. A secretary grabbed him by the arm and pulled him further inside. "The files are back! All of them. Stan verified that the backups are complete, too!"
36
37 Growling, Rick let himself be towed into the tumultuous scene until he saw its source. He stopped so suddenly that the secretary lost her grip on his arm.
38
39 Socks. Green socks, blue socks, white socks. Tall socks, short socks, socks with holes and socks with runs. Knee deep on the floor, covering everything, hanging from fixtures. He'd never seen so many socks in his life. And not a one of them had a mate.
40
41 "I'll be damned," he said, collapsing into a sock-padded chair.
File shorts/hell_where_heart.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..ed117a6)
1 They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I always intended to
2 stay the hell out, if you get my meaning, which means that I essentially paved
3 my own road here. How's that for irony?
4
5 You probably don't get it, and that's fine. I don't either most of the time,
6 and the docs say that's pretty normal, to expect that sometimes. Since the war
7 that wasn't a war to anybody except the poor stiffs they sent over to not fight
8 in it, I don't think like other people, something about all the biochems and
9 nanobots swimming around in my body messing with my brain. Docs can't do
10 anything about that, since apparently their guys are smarter than our guys, and
11 nobody can figure out what they did and they ain't talking. Nobody knows what
12 all those chemicals are doing to me, and I lit out before they brought out the
13 big knives to cut me open.
14
15 Besides, chemicals I got. What I need is a soul.
16
17 I used to have one. I used to have a life like other people. I used to have a
18 lot of stuff, like a wife and kids, complete with a dog, in a little white
19 house that even had a picket fence. But that's all gone now. They're gone, long
20 gone, down a different road than the one I took.
21
22 Theirs is paved with yellow bricks. Mine is dark, gritty, dead-end, and not
23 paved with anything that will hold my weight.
24
25 Hell is supposed to be bright and hot, with a bunch of screaming people being
26 torn to shreds from the inside out, everything they ever wanted tormenting them
27 from just beyond their reach, now and forever, amen.
28
29 Let me tell you, Hell is what you make of it, and the beauty of it is that you
30 can take it with you anywhere.
31
32 I mean, who would have thought that you could reach it by a dingy, cracked,
33 filthy flight of concrete stairs leading to an abandoned garage right in the
34 heart of town? Nobody, that's who. By the time you stop to wonder how you got
35 here, it's already too late.
36
37 I should report to my PO, but to hell with that, if you'll pardon the pun. Dumb
38 broad thinks she can save the world, one con at a time. I don't want to be
39 saved, don't deserve it. If I did, I wouldn't be here. I'd have followed the
40 harps and singing, the golden neon sign pointing to Heaven, not the
41 gang-scrawled arrow pointing down to the smoke and the blood.
42
43 Sometimes, some wannabe Napoleon tries to take over down here. He gets himself
44 a crew that's as raggedy as he is, and because they're the strongest thing
45 going, they start shaking people down for the little they got, breaking some
46 bones for no better reason than they can, trying to build an empire. They're
47 too stupid to know that you can't build an empire on nothing, too stupid to
48 know what real evil is, trying to build their own road, an easier road on the
49 backs of those they grind under their boots.
50
51 Then they hit a speed bump. They meet me. War may be its own kind of hell, but
52 its lessons last a lifetime. No one misses them when they're gone.
53
54 I'm no hero. I don't bring light and justice into the dark. I like the dark the
55 way it is, living in the shadows, making my own way. The laws of God and Man no
56 longer apply to me. The suits call me a sociopath, but they're wrong. I've
57 simply risen above all the crap that they say a society needs to function. None
58 of it matters, none of it can reach me here. I take no responsibility for
59 anyone but me, so why get involved? Why bother to balance the scales at all?
60
61 I hate bullies. Sometimes, life is just that simple.
62
63 Now that I think of it, there was this one strange bird that showed up one day
64 out of nowhere. I could tell right away that he didn't belong, even though he
65 wore the same torn and ratty clothes the rest of us did it was clear he wasn't
66 one of us. At first I took him for a cop, but the way he talked and carried
67 himself put that to bed right away. I never did pin down exactly what he was or
68 what he wanted because after one bad incident, he disappeared, and nobody I
69 talked to later could tell me where he came from or where he went.
70
71 All I know is that after knowing him, nothing has been the same for me since.
72
73 Some time ago, no idea how long ago since time stops down here, one of the
74 scroungers tripped over a girl, maybe thirteen, on one of his rambling searches
75 for food or stuff to trade for food. You could tell right away that something
76 was really wrong from the racket he made, and when I found him, he was
77 screaming and dancing and pointing to the ground where she lay all crumpled up
78 and bloody.
79
80 Her pink dress had been torn to ribbons, and whatever had shredded it up had
81 dug all the way through to her bones. There wasn't enough left of her face to
82 recognize as a person, and the blood stains between her thighs were even bigger
83 than the ones on her torso. Not much blood on the ground around her, so she'd
84 been done somewhere else and dumped here. That wasn't surprising in itself,
85 since we've long been the garbage dump of the outside world, and frankly, she
86 wasn't the first we'd found who'd been thrown away like garbage after somebody
87 stronger was done with them. The long, jagged tears weren't the worst of it,
88 though. I thought then and still do that some of those wounds were teeth marks,
89 like somebody had carved her up and eaten her.
90
91 We may have made our Hell down here, but from the looks of that poor girl,
92 there was still plenty to go around up there.
93
94 I asked around, and maybe I got a little rough now and then, but from what I
95 could tell, none of us had anything to do with it. Like I said, I ain't no
96 hero, but there was no way that I would have left a freak like that living free
97 among us. Some of the others have families, wives and kids who are in the same
98 sinking boat together, and their lives are hard enough without having to worry
99 about some rabid pervert on the prowl among them. Anyway, I would have left it
100 lie there, since I'd learned what I needed to know, except for that guy I
101 mentioned before. He showed up a couple days later, after we'd cleaned up the
102 mess and laid her to rest the best we could. I figured the whole sad thing was
103 over until then.
104
105 He kept to himself at first, and I remember thinking that maybe it was the guy,
106 slumming around to enjoy the kick of what he'd done, but that didn't feel
107 right. Like I said, it was obvious he didn't belong here, and besides, he
108 didn't strike me as the type. I got a feel for people, can tell when they're
109 going to be trouble, and his feel was all wrong. As it turned out, I was wrong,
110 too, since he was trouble with a capital T, just not the kind I originally
111 pegged him for.
112
113 He walked around and talked to people, his voice to soft to hear what he was
114 saying from too far away, and the people he talked to seemed better for having
115 him around. Nothing I've ever been able to put a finger on, but he had a way of
116 making you look at things from a different side, kind of like he tossed
117 everything you ever knew up in the air and let you see how it all fell out
118 differently, made you ask questions that had never mattered to anybody before.
119 Questions that shook you up only a little less than the answers did.
120
121 Anyway, eventually it was my turn, and I got my first real good look at him.
122 Like I'd said, his clothes were a mess, but the rest of him could have come
123 from a magazine cover. Eyes all bright, fingernails all even and pink, straight
124 white teeth gleaming when he smiled, gold rimmed glasses catching even the
125 faint light from guttering candles and flickering flourescents and scattering
126 it around him like a rainbow. He had a way of making you listen to him, whether
127 you wanted to or not, and it wasn't long before I was caught up in the voodoo
128 he was selling. The whole time I was telling myself it was all BS, but if I'd
129 died on the spot, I bet I'd have still heard him in the afterlife.
130
131 He had that kind of power. I just hope he uses it for good wherever he is now.
132
133 His shtick was all weird stuff, all about fighting evil and other worlds and
134 living in what he called The Light, his tone of voice supplying the capital
135 letters. None of it made much sense, just crazy talk. Maybe the guy was a drunk
136 or a junkie, but he sure didn't sound like one, and his eyes didn't have that
137 mad dog look in them. Just listening to him talk made me want to be better, do
138 things to make a difference in the world, but at the same time it made me
139 angry. What could I do to make a difference? I'm nobody, nothing, not even a
140 blip on anybody's radar. He talked about all these big ideas and hope for the
141 human race, but what he didn't give me was any way to help the people here. I
142 asked him about that, and he slid around that with some snake oil about free
143 will and making our own choices.
144
145 What it all seemed to boil down to was "You found your way here, now find your
146 way out."
147
148 I tried to blow him off, tell myself that he was full of it and that nothing he
149 said mattered, nothing could change a damn thing about my life down here, but a
150 little voice inside of me started asking questions, wondering how things could
151 be, dared to hope that maybe there was something better than hiding in a
152 stinking hole underground. I used to have a life like other men, used to
153 believe that the world was a good place. What changed my mind? When did I lose
154 my drive to fight the good fight, to stand for what was right? Was it the war?
155 Was it the mess I came home to, my country and my family both in tatters? Did I
156 leave my heart back on that battlefield? Could I get it back?
157
158 Listening to him, for the first time in more years than I could count, the
159 answer seemed to be yes.
160
161 He disappeared shortly after that, but the damage had been done. I was no
162 longer content to just kill time while the world above passed me by. I was in
163 no shape to rejoin that world, but maybe I could help build one here, carve out
164 some kind of haven for those who had nowhere else to go, no one else to turn
165 to. Crazy ideas, real pie in the sky stuff, but the more I thought, the more
166 restless I got. I had to do something, change something for the better, and I
167 thought I knew where I could start.
168
169 On the sly, I chatted up a drifter I called Squinty because of the weird way he
170 had of looking at people. He said he used to be a PI before it all fell apart,
171 and talking to him gave me the start of a plan. He gave me some names and
172 places, people to look up and where to find them, and one night, without
173 telling anybody, I took those concrete stairs up and back to the world of the
174 living.
175
176 It was when I shoved my hands into the pockets of my old army coat that I found
177 the envelope. Ducking into a doorway, I opened it and found a few hundred
178 dollars in small bills. I stood there a long time, looking at that money like
179 it came from another planet, wondering where it had come from. It had to have
180 been the crazy guy, but how had he done it? The envelope hadn't been there
181 before; I'd have known it if it had. I thought long and hard about what I could
182 do now that I had a stake, how far I could get before it ran out. Then I
183 remembered what had brought me out of my hole to begin with, and shoving the
184 cash back into my coat, I went back out into the wind and cold rain.
185
186 Hitting a discount store, I grabbed a razor, a toothbrush, and a set of better
187 clothes, and finding a flophouse that took cash without asking questions, I
188 showered and shaved. Looking back at me from the mirror was a guy I barely
189 recognized, the guy I could have been had things gone different. Jaw set and
190 eyes sparking, he looked like a guy who had somewhere to be and something to do
191 when he got there. It had been too long since I'd seen that guy, and I hoped
192 that he'd stick around a while.
193
194 Long story short, I used the contacts Squinty gave me, using the cash to buy
195 the information I needed, and in the wee small hours of the morning, I found
196 the guy who had done the girl. No need to go into what I did to him, but
197 suffice it to say that he won't be preying on any more small girls, stealing
198 the childhoods from any more innocents, destroying the hopes and dreams of any
199 more families.
200
201 It was just before dawn when I found my way back to the hole, and as the sun's
202 first rays lit up the horizon, I stood at the top of the stairs and watched the
203 start of the day, a normal day for those of this world, a minor miracle long
204 forgotten by those who lived in mine. No one saw me descend the stairs, to
205 reclaim the darkness that had been my companion for so many long, unnumbered
206 years. I didn't answer many questions other than to say that nobody had to be
207 afraid anymore. I gave Squints a respectful nod which he answered with a wink.
208 After that, life went back to its normal routine.
209
210 Well, almost. Somehow, word got out that there was a place where one could find
211 peace and justice, and our numbers have been slowly growing ever since. The
212 garage is big enough to hold any number of them, and as we've grown, we've
213 found a way to make our own way. We may not be able to see the light, but I
214 think we've found a way to live in The Light. A hard life, but it's ours, and
215 we'll do what we need to to keep it.
216
217 I'm still no hero. I don't have a white horse and a shiny suit of armor, but
218 people look to me to solve their problems, so I do what I can to have the
219 answers to their questions.
220
221 So here I am, and here we are, and in the world above people are living their
222 lives with no idea that we grow just under their feet. Not that they'd care if
223 they did know, but as long as we keep to ourselves and stay true to what we
224 believe, their ignorance can be their bliss.
225
226 Until they pave their own road here. When they do, they'll find us waiting.
File shorts/hell_where_heart.txt deleted (index 523a17c..0000000)
1 They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I always intended to stay the hell out, if you get my meaning, which means that I essentially paved my own road here. How's that for irony?
2
3 You probably don't get it, and that's fine. I don't either most of the time, and the docs say that's pretty normal, to expect that sometimes. Since the war that wasn't a war to anybody except the poor stiffs they sent over to not fight in it, I don't think like other people, something about all the biochems and nanobots swimming around in my body messing with my brain. Docs can't do anything about that, since apparently their guys are smarter than our guys, and nobody can figure out what they did and they ain't talking. Nobody knows what all those chemicals are doing to me, and I lit out before they brought out the big knives to cut me open.
4
5 Besides, chemicals I got. What I need is a soul.
6
7 I used to have one. I used to have a life like other people. I used to have a lot of stuff, like a wife and kids, complete with a dog, in a little white house that even had a picket fence. But that's all gone now. They're gone, long gone, down a different road than the one I took.
8
9 Theirs is paved with yellow bricks. Mine is dark, gritty, dead-end, and not paved with anything that will hold my weight.
10
11 Hell is supposed to be bright and hot, with a bunch of screaming people being torn to shreds from the inside out, everything they ever wanted tormenting them from just beyond their reach, now and forever, amen.
12
13 Let me tell you, Hell is what you make of it, and the beauty of it is that you can take it with you anywhere.
14
15 I mean, who would have thought that you could reach it by a dingy, cracked, filthy flight of concrete stairs leading to an abandoned garage right in the heart of town? Nobody, that's who. By the time you stop to wonder how you got here, it's already too late.
16
17 I should report to my PO, but to hell with that, if you'll pardon the pun. Dumb broad thinks she can save the world, one con at a time. I don't want to be saved, don't deserve it. If I did, I wouldn't be here. I'd have followed the harps and singing, the golden neon sign pointing to Heaven, not the gang-scrawled arrow pointing down to the smoke and the blood.
18
19 Sometimes, some wannabe Napoleon tries to take over down here. He gets himself a crew that's as raggedy as he is, and because they're the strongest thing going, they start shaking people down for the little they got, breaking some bones for no better reason than they can, trying to build an empire. They're too stupid to know that you can't build an empire on nothing, too stupid to know what real evil is, trying to build their own road, an easier road on the backs of those they grind under their boots.
20
21 Then they hit a speed bump. They meet me. War may be its own kind of hell, but its lessons last a lifetime. No one misses them when they're gone.
22
23 I'm no hero. I don't bring light and justice into the dark. I like the dark the way it is, living in the shadows, making my own way. The laws of God and Man no longer apply to me. The suits call me a sociopath, but they're wrong. I've simply risen above all the crap that they say a society needs to function. None of it matters, none of it can reach me here. I take no responsibility for anyone but me, so why get involved? Why bother to balance the scales at all?
24
25 I hate bullies. Sometimes, life is just that simple.
26
27 Now that I think of it, there was this one strange bird that showed up one day out of nowhere. I could tell right away that he didn't belong, even though he wore the same torn and ratty clothes the rest of us did it was clear he wasn't one of us. At first I took him for a cop, but the way he talked and carried himself put that to bed right away. I never did pin down exactly what he was or what he wanted because after one bad incident, he disappeared, and nobody I talked to later could tell me where he came from or where he went.
28
29 All I know is that after knowing him, nothing has been the same for me since.
30
31 Some time ago, no idea how long ago since time stops down here, one of the scroungers tripped over a girl, maybe thirteen, on one of his rambling searches for food or stuff to trade for food. You could tell right away that something was really wrong from the racket he made, and when I found him, he was screaming and dancing and pointing to the ground where she lay all crumpled up and bloody.
32
33 Her pink dress had been torn to ribbons, and whatever had shredded it up had dug all the way through to her bones. There wasn't enough left of her face to recognize as a person, and the blood stains between her thighs were even bigger than the ones on her torso. Not much blood on the ground around her, so she'd been done somewhere else and dumped here. That wasn't surprising in itself, since we've long been the garbage dump of the outside world, and frankly, she wasn't the first we'd found who'd been thrown away like garbage after somebody stronger was done with them. The long, jagged tears weren't the worst of it, though. I thought then and still do that some of those wounds were teeth marks, like somebody had carved her up and eaten her.
34
35 We may have made our Hell down here, but from the looks of that poor girl, there was still plenty to go around up there.
36
37 I asked around, and maybe I got a little rough now and then, but from what I could tell, none of us had anything to do with it. Like I said, I ain't no hero, but there was no way that I would have left a freak like that living free among us. Some of the others have families, wives and kids who are in the same sinking boat together, and their lives are hard enough without having to worry about some rabid pervert on the prowl among them. Anyway, I would have left it lie there, since I'd learned what I needed to know, except for that guy I mentioned before. He showed up a couple days later, after we'd cleaned up the mess and laid her to rest the best we could. I figured the whole sad thing was over until then.
38
39 He kept to himself at first, and I remember thinking that maybe it was the guy, slumming around to enjoy the kick of what he'd done, but that didn't feel right. Like I said, it was obvious he didn't belong here, and besides, he didn't strike me as the type. I got a feel for people, can tell when they're going to be trouble, and his feel was all wrong. As it turned out, I was wrong, too, since he was trouble with a capital T, just not the kind I originally pegged him for.
40
41 He walked around and talked to people, his voice to soft to hear what he was saying from too far away, and the people he talked to seemed better for having him around. Nothing I've ever been able to put a finger on, but he had a way of making you look at things from a different side, kind of like he tossed everything you ever knew up in the air and let you see how it all fell out differently, made you ask questions that had never mattered to anybody before. Questions that shook you up only a little less than the answers did.
42
43 Anyway, eventually it was my turn, and I got my first real good look at him. Like I'd said, his clothes were a mess, but the rest of him could have come from a magazine cover. Eyes all bright, fingernails all even and pink, straight white teeth gleaming when he smiled, gold rimmed glasses catching even the faint light from guttering candles and flickering flourescents and scattering it around him like a rainbow. He had a way of making you listen to him, whether you wanted to or not, and it wasn't long before I was caught up in the voodoo he was selling. The whole time I was telling myself it was all BS, but if I'd died on the spot, I bet I'd have still heard him in the afterlife.
44
45 He had that kind of power. I just hope he uses it for good wherever he is now.
46
47 His shtick was all weird stuff, all about fighting evil and other worlds and living in what he called The Light, his tone of voice supplying the capital letters. None of it made much sense, just crazy talk. Maybe the guy was a drunk or a junkie, but he sure didn't sound like one, and his eyes didn't have that mad dog look in them. Just listening to him talk made me want to be better, do things to make a difference in the world, but at the same time it made me angry. What could I do to make a difference? I'm nobody, nothing, not even a blip on anybody's radar. He talked about all these big ideas and hope for the human race, but what he didn't give me was any way to help the people here. I asked him about that, and he slid around that with some snake oil about free will and making our own choices.
48
49 What it all seemed to boil down to was "You found your way here, now find your way out."
50
51 I tried to blow him off, tell myself that he was full of it and that nothing he said mattered, nothing could change a damn thing about my life down here, but a little voice inside of me started asking questions, wondering how things could be, dared to hope that maybe there was something better than hiding in a stinking hole underground. I used to have a life like other men, used to believe that the world was a good place. What changed my mind? When did I lose my drive to fight the good fight, to stand for what was right? Was it the war? Was it the mess I came home to, my country and my family both in tatters? Did I leave my heart back on that battlefield? Could I get it back?
52
53 Listening to him, for the first time in more years than I could count, the answer seemed to be yes.
54
55 He disappeared shortly after that, but the damage had been done. I was no longer content to just kill time while the world above passed me by. I was in no shape to rejoin that world, but maybe I could help build one here, carve out some kind of haven for those who had nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to. Crazy ideas, real pie in the sky stuff, but the more I thought, the more restless I got. I had to do something, change something for the better, and I thought I knew where I could start.
56
57 On the sly, I chatted up a drifter I called Squinty because of the weird way he had of looking at people. He said he used to be a PI before it all fell apart, and talking to him gave me the start of a plan. He gave me some names and places, people to look up and where to find them, and one night, without telling anybody, I took those concrete stairs up and back to the world of the living.
58
59 It was when I shoved my hands into the pockets of my old army coat that I found the envelope. Ducking into a doorway, I opened it and found a few hundred dollars in small bills. I stood there a long time, looking at that money like it came from another planet, wondering where it had come from. It had to have been the crazy guy, but how had he done it? The envelope hadn't been there before; I'd have known it if it had. I thought long and hard about what I could do now that I had a stake, how far I could get before it ran out. Then I remembered what had brought me out of my hole to begin with, and shoving the cash back into my coat, I went back out into the wind and cold rain.
60
61 Hitting a discount store, I grabbed a razor, a toothbrush, and a set of better clothes, and finding a flophouse that took cash without asking questions, I showered and shaved. Looking back at me from the mirror was a guy I barely recognized, the guy I could have been had things gone different. Jaw set and eyes sparking, he looked like a guy who had somewhere to be and something to do when he got there. It had been too long since I'd seen that guy, and I hoped that he'd stick around a while.
62
63 Long story short, I used the contacts Squinty gave me, using the cash to buy the information I needed, and in the wee small hours of the morning, I found the guy who had done the girl. No need to go into what I did to him, but suffice it to say that he won't be preying on any more small girls, stealing the childhoods from any more innocents, destroying the hopes and dreams of any more families.
64
65 It was just before dawn when I found my way back to the hole, and as the sun's first rays lit up the horizon, I stood at the top of the stairs and watched the start of the day, a normal day for those of this world, a minor miracle long forgotten by those who lived in mine. No one saw me descend the stairs, to reclaim the darkness that had been my companion for so many long, unnumbered years. I didn't answer many questions other than to say that nobody had to be afraid anymore. I gave Squints a respectful nod which he answered with a wink. After that, life went back to its normal routine.
66
67 Well, almost. Somehow, word got out that there was a place where one could find peace and justice, and our numbers have been slowly growing ever since. The garage is big enough to hold any number of them, and as we've grown, we've found a way to make our own way. We may not be able to see the light, but I think we've found a way to live in The Light. A hard life, but it's ours, and we'll do what we need to to keep it.
68
69 I'm still no hero. I don't have a white horse and a shiny suit of armor, but people look to me to solve their problems, so I do what I can to have the answers to their questions.
70
71 So here I am, and here we are, and in the world above people are living their lives with no idea that we grow just under their feet. Not that they'd care if they did know, but as long as we keep to ourselves and stay true to what we believe, their ignorance can be their bliss.
72
73 Until they pave their own road here. When they do, they'll find us waiting.
File shorts/life_for_sale.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..1d8e8f9)
1 The young man stopped when he saw the tattered sign, tape yellowed, sticking to
2 the grimy window.
3
4 "Tired of your old, drab existence? Come inside and talk to a certified
5 life-experiant to start your exciting career as a whole new you."
6
7 He was tired of being himself. The same boring routines, the same stupid
8 conversations. He was to the point of hiding when he heard the knock at his
9 door or the chime of his wrist-comm. He'd had a girl who thought that screwing
10 a writer was exotic until she saw the size of his royalty checks. Even the
11 weather never changed now that the new met-sats were online and debugged. He
12 needed a change; any change would do. He just couldn't do the same old thing
13 anymore.
14
15 He found the address on the sign and walked in. Carpeted floors, overstuffed
16 furniture and abstract statues all artfully coexisted in the spacious lobby.
17 With his frayed hems and scuffed shoes, he felt out of place in the midst of
18 all that elegance.
19
20 The redhead at the desk looked up with a dazzling smile. "May I help you, Sir?"
21 she asked in a voice as gentle as a wind-chime.
22
23 "I saw your ad, and um, well, you know..." His sentence died in a sea of
24 wordless mumbles.
25
26 "I understand perfectly," she said, pressing some keys on her phone. "If you'll
27 wait just a moment, someone will come and speak to you."
28
29 True to her word, a short young man in a blue pinstripe and red tie appeared as
30 if by magic. They were soon sitting in his plush office, on opposite sides of a
31 massive mahogany desk.
32
33 "So what is it that we can do for you? A life of adventure, romance, travel?
34 Maybe ruling an empire from a palace of gold? You name it, we frame it. Just
35 say the word and its yours."
36
37 "That's just it. I don't really know what I want. All I'm really sure of is
38 that I want out of this rut I'm stuck in."
39
40 "Not a problem. No problem at all," said the guide, punching some keys on his
41 desk. A hologram appeared of a pretty woman with eyes that glowed neon-bright.
42
43 He didn't so much hear as feel the ensuing interview, images rushing past him
44 too fast to process. It ended as suddenly as it began. Blinking rapidly to
45 clear his vision, he was surprised to see the office as it had been. The images
46 had been real enough that he'd thought he was physically transported.
47
48 "Done, and done," the guide said, sliding a set of documents across the
49 gleaming desktop. "Just read through these and you're in like Flynn. Or your
50 version of it, at any rate."
51
52 He barely skimmed the papers before he signed them with a shaky hand. "When do
53 we start?" he asked past a tight throat.
54
55 "You already have, and congratulations." The office blurred then dissolved in a
56 blue mist.
57
58 When he was again conscious of himself, he was sitting in a hard wooden chair
59 in front of a small table. A guttering candle was to his left, and in front of
60 him sat a large calfskin book. A quill and an inkpot were at his right elbow.
61
62 A round man in a brown robe, bald except for a fringe of gray hair that circled
63 his head entered the room with an armload of books.
64
65 "The abbot said that we just got an order for another ten copies of The
66 Complete Shakespeare. Finish that one and then start on the next. They need to
67 be ready before winter."
File shorts/life_for_sale.txt deleted (index 5db84c0..0000000)
1 The young man stopped when he saw the tattered sign, tape yellowed, sticking to the grimy window.
2
3 "Tired of your old, drab existence? Come inside and talk to a certified life-experiant to start your exciting career as a whole new you."
4
5 He was tired of being himself. The same boring routines, the same stupid conversations. He was to the point of hiding when he heard the knock at his door or the chime of his wrist-comm. He'd had a girl who thought that screwing a writer was exotic until she saw the size of his royalty checks. Even the weather never changed now that the new met-sats were online and debugged. He needed a change; any change would do. He just couldn't do the same old thing anymore.
6
7 He found the address on the sign and walked in. Carpeted floors, overstuffed furniture and abstract statues all artfully coexisted in the spacious lobby. With his frayed hems and scuffed shoes, he felt out of place in the midst of all that elegance.
8
9 The redhead at the desk looked up with a dazzling smile. "May I help you, Sir?" she asked in a voice as gentle as a wind-chime.
10
11 "I saw your ad, and um, well, you know..." His sentence died in a sea of wordless mumbles.
12
13 "I understand perfectly," she said, pressing some keys on her phone. "If you'll wait just a moment, someone will come and speak to you."
14
15 True to her word, a short young man in a blue pinstripe and red tie appeared as if by magic. They were soon sitting in his plush office, on opposite sides of a massive mahogany desk.
16
17 "So what is it that we can do for you? A life of adventure, romance, travel? Maybe ruling an empire from a palace of gold? You name it, we frame it. Just say the word and its yours."
18
19 "That's just it. I don't really know what I want. All I'm really sure of is that I want out of this rut I'm stuck in."
20
21 "Not a problem. No problem at all," said the guide, punching some keys on his desk. A hologram appeared of a pretty woman with eyes that glowed neon-bright.
22
23 He didn't so much hear as feel the ensuing interview, images rushing past him too fast to process. It ended as suddenly as it began. Blinking rapidly to clear his vision, he was surprised to see the office as it had been. The images had been real enough that he'd thought he was physically transported.
24
25 "Done, and done," the guide said, sliding a set of documents across the gleaming desktop. "Just read through these and you're in like Flynn. Or your version of it, at any rate."
26
27 He barely skimmed the papers before he signed them with a shaky hand. "When do we start?" he asked past a tight throat.
28
29 "You already have, and congratulations." The office blurred then dissolved in a blue mist.
30
31 When he was again conscious of himself, he was sitting in a hard wooden chair in front of a small table. A guttering candle was to his left, and in front of him sat a large calfskin book. A quill and an inkpot were at his right elbow.
32
33 A round man in a brown robe, bald except for a fringe of gray hair that circled his head entered the room with an armload of books.
34
35 "The abbot said that we just got an order for another ten copies of The Complete Shakespeare. Finish that one and then start on the next. They need to be ready before winter."
File shorts/manufacturers_tag.fold renamed from shorts/ubw_pic_story003.txt (similarity 50%) (mode: 100644) (index a5e06e7..762e7ff)
1 1 Extracted from the wreckage, it still lived. Their job was to keep it that way. Extracted from the wreckage, it still lived. Their job was to keep it that way.
2 2
3 Vital signs had been broadcast the entire way to the lab. On its arrival, a full surgical team was ready and waiting. Experts from every biological specialty were gowned and masked awaiting their opportunity to make history. The national security guys had tried to horn in but were brusquely rebuffed, joining Army brass in an observation suite to mutter dire threats to each other, all eyes riveted on the scene before and beneath them.
3 Vital signs had been broadcast the entire way to the lab. On its arrival, a
4 full surgical team was ready and waiting. Experts from every biological
5 specialty were gowned and masked awaiting their opportunity to make history.
6 The national security guys had tried to horn in but were brusquely rebuffed,
7 joining Army brass in an observation suite to mutter dire threats to each
8 other, all eyes riveted on the scene before and beneath them.
4 9
5 "I've seen sausage in better shape," a surgeon muttered. "I can't tell its insides from its outsides."
10 "I've seen sausage in better shape," a surgeon muttered. "I can't tell its
11 insides from its outsides."
6 12 "Figure it out. Every reading we've got is nosediving." "Figure it out. Every reading we've got is nosediving."
7 13 "How can we tell? The monitors are going haywire!" "How can we tell? The monitors are going haywire!"
8 14 "Only one way. Curtain's up, people. Showtime." "Only one way. Curtain's up, people. Showtime."
9 15
10 Once committed, the team moved in rhythmic ballet, each step performed precisely. Bone saws ripped through an ossified carapace to reveal a labyrinth of vessels, some only visible with the aid of the microscope's projection on the far wall, connecting to pulsing organs that none could identify. Having gained access to the victim's interior structure, the team stood open-mouthed and sweating.
16 Once committed, the team moved in rhythmic ballet, each step performed
17 precisely. Bone saws ripped through an ossified carapace to reveal a labyrinth
18 of vessels, some only visible with the aid of the microscope's projection on
19 the far wall, connecting to pulsing organs that none could identify. Having
20 gained access to the victim's interior structure, the team stood open-mouthed
21 and sweating.
11 22
12 23 "What now?" "What now?"
13 24 "Retractor! We've got a leaker!" "Retractor! We've got a leaker!"
 
... ... The Geiger counter quietly registered the slight rise in radioactivity.
20 31 "Good, hells! What's causing it?" "Good, hells! What's causing it?"
21 32 "Let's find out. Suction!" "Let's find out. Suction!"
22 33
23 They cleared the large central cavity to provide room to work. They located the broken vessel and applied a hurried patch to prevent further seepage. Trained nurses specifically chosen for their steady hands and nerves blotted sweat from the surgeons' faces.
34 They cleared the large central cavity to provide room to work. They located the
35 broken vessel and applied a hurried patch to prevent further seepage. Trained
36 nurses specifically chosen for their steady hands and nerves blotted sweat from
37 the surgeons' faces.
24 38
25 39 "What's that, just under those protrusions?" "What's that, just under those protrusions?"
26 40 "Can't tell. Scope it." "Can't tell. Scope it."
27 41 "More light. Can't make it out." "More light. Can't make it out."
28 42 "Let's tie this off. Suture!" "Let's tie this off. Suture!"
29 43
30 Having cleared the immediate area, the surgeons gathered around the incision, more like a hole, staring down at a small, silver, flashing globe in the midst of organic matter that varied in color from green to brown.
44 Having cleared the immediate area, the surgeons gathered around the incision,
45 more like a hole, staring down at a small, silver, flashing globe in the midst
46 of organic matter that varied in color from green to brown.
31 47
32 48 "That's the clicker! What is it? A heart?" "That's the clicker! What is it? A heart?"
33 49 "Anyone else feeling heat? Give me a reading!" "Anyone else feeling heat? Give me a reading!"
 
... ... Having cleared the immediate area, the surgeons gathered around the incision, mo
36 52 "We might kill it!" "We might kill it!"
37 53 "It's already dead for all we know! Cutter!" "It's already dead for all we know! Cutter!"
38 54
39 The globe was deftly removed with no discernible detrimental effects. Set on a metal table, the globe flashed more quickly, cycling through the entire visible spectrum in a matter of seconds to repeat in a kaleidoscopic pattern. Then, suddenly, it stopped.
55 The globe was deftly removed with no discernible detrimental effects. Set on a
56 metal table, the globe flashed more quickly, cycling through the entire visible
57 spectrum in a matter of seconds to repeat in a kaleidoscopic pattern. Then,
58 suddenly, it stopped.
40 59
41 A hologram appeared over the globe with the number ten glowing in large numbers. The team looked at each other as the display showed nine, then eight. The Geiger counter went crazy with the radiation spike.
60 A hologram appeared over the globe with the number ten glowing in large
61 numbers. The team looked at each other as the display showed nine, then eight.
62 The Geiger counter went crazy with the radiation spike.
42 63
43 Another hologram appeared over the countdown that explained everything. The lead surgeon closed his eyes after he read its display.
64 Another hologram appeared over the countdown that explained everything. The
65 lead surgeon closed his eyes after he read its display.
44 66
45 67 "This device may not be removed under penalty of law except by the consumer." "This device may not be removed under penalty of law except by the consumer."
File shorts/naked_truth.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..2ec05ab)
1 She was on her way back from the kitchen when the phone rang, and without
2 thinking, she answered it.
3
4 "Hey, baby, what'cha doin'?" came a familiar voice over the line.
5
6 "Nothing really," she replied, "just sitting around. How have you been?"
7
8 "Actually, that's why I called. Any chance I could come over? I'm in town."
9
10 "Um, sure, I guess. Where are you right now?"
11
12 "Just off the main drag. I can be there in about 20 minutes."
13
14 "That would be great. I'll be ready. See you then." In somewhat of a
15 flutter, she went over to the computer that was still running and typed into
16 the chat window, "I've got a hottie coming over. Gotta run, all. Bye!" and
17 logged out of the system. In her haste to get to the shower, it never occurred
18 to her to question how his call had made it through with the line busy.
19
20 A quick shower, light makeup and a change of clothes later, she was
21 standing in front of her bathroom mirror. "Not so bad for a librarian. Not so
22 bad at all." A refresh on her drink, and then quickly around the apartment to
23 straighten things up. She gave a thought to logging back onto the chat system
24 to kill time until he arrived, but she changed her mind and settled on the
25 couch to wait. Before too much longer, her bell rang, and she rose to open the
26 door.
27
28 What she found standing outside wasn't exactly what she had anticipated. While
29 the figure vaguely resembled the man she knew, his wild, unkempt hair, lined
30 and drawn down mouth and dull, lifeless eyes gave lie to his age of 25. If she
31 hadn't known better, she'd have sworn he was 80. "Um, hey there," she
32 hesitantly said. "Come on in and take a rest. You look like you could use it."
33
34 "I need more than a rest," was his sardonic reply as he practically limped
35 into the apartment and over to the couch, where he didn't so much sit as
36 collapse. "If you only knew how these years have gone..."
37
38 "Years? I only saw you 6 months ago," she replied, confused.
39
40 "Oh, right, months. That's what I meant. Months," he mumbled.
41
42 "Are you all right? You look terrible. Is there something I can get you?"
43
44 "Naw, not right now. Just let me catch my breath here and then I'll figure
45 out what's what."
46
47 "What's what?"
48
49 "Right. That's what I need to figure out. I'm in a helluva fix."
50
51 "You're not sick, or anything? Your family is ok?"
52
53 "Oh, yeah, everyone's fine. Everything's fine. Nothing could be
54 finer...than a day in Carolina...in the morning..."
55
56 "What in the hell is the matter with you? And what are you doing?!"
57
58 Her last question was the result of his taking off his clothes. She was
59 now staring, open mouthed, at his naked body, and her stupifaction wasn't so
60 much at his member standing at stiff attention, although she had never seen one
61 that big and wasn't sure that it was even natural, but at his gaunt and wasted
62 look, horribly underweight and appearing to be little more than ribs and
63 joints. Come to think of it, she mused, his color doesn't look all that good,
64 and why is his skin so wrinkled?
65
66 "What? Oh, this? I just relax better without clothes. Don't worry, I won't
67 hurt you. Although I wouldn't mind..."
68
69 "Stop right there!" she said emphatically. "That monstrosity isn't coming,
70 no pun intended, anywhere near me. You just keep that thing leashed if you
71 don't want it cut off."
72
73 "Right, right, no problem." If he was the least bit perturbed at her
74 rebuff, he didn't show it. "I think I'll just crash here for a minute. I'm
75 awfully tired. You don't mind?" Without waiting for her reply, he threw himself
76 back onto the couch and within seconds was asleep. Now more than a little
77 rattled, she logged back onto the chat system. "You guys have to help me," she
78 typed. "I have a naked guy on my couch and I can't go to sleep. You have to
79 keep me up."
80
81 "Woo-hoo (!)" came back one reply. "You go, girl!" came another.
82
83 "No, no, you don't understand. This is really freakin' me out."
84
85 "That he fell asleep, or that he fell asleep BEFORE doing it?" asked
86 Launfal, the chat room's resident smart ass.
87
88 "No, no, you don't understand!" she typed frantically. "This guy is major
89 league freaky!" And so for the next half hour, the chatroom denizens tried to
90 occupy her mind, each to his or her own fashion. At the end of that time, her
91 bell rang again. "Who in the hell is THAT?" she wondered as she again went to
92 the door. As she passed the couch, she noticed that her visitor hadn't even
93 stirred.
94
95 Opening the door, she found two young men in white suits with pleasant
96 smiles on their faces. "Who are you and what do you want?" She asked.
97
98 "Um, well, er, we're very sorry for the interuption, as we know how late
99 it is, but we're under the impression that you've recently had a visitor?
100 Perhaps this evening?"
101
102 "Well, yes I have, but I don't see..."
103
104 "Well, I realize that this is going to be a little confusing, but we need
105 to take him back."
106
107 "Take him back? To where?"
108
109 "Well, ma'am, not so much to where as to when."
110
111 "When what?
112
113 "No, ma'am, not when what, when where."
114
115 "I have no idea what you're talking about."
116
117 "It's all very simple to explain. May we please come in? Here is our
118 card." Taking the card, she read WHITE and WHITE, Temporal Recovery and Salvage.
119
120 "Um, sure, please come in," she said, now in a daze. "Won't you please sit
121 down?"
122
123 "Thank you. Now, ma'am, as you can see, we specialize in the recovery and
124 salvage of people and things that have, oh, how can I best explain this,
125 misplaced themselves in the flow of time. People are the worst, you see, and
126 the elderly just can't seem to control themselves. They end up flying all over
127 the when, if you get my meaning."
128
129 "Elderly? He's only 25!"
130
131 "Well, ma'am, the man you know is 25, and I'm sure he's just fine and
132 running about, cavorting as those young Marines will. But this is the man 60
133 years later, lost in an eddy of time that brought him back quite a ways. He was
134 a real pain to find, let me tell you. Sometimes when they go wandering off like
135 this, it can take minutes to find them."
136
137 "Um, you're kidding, right?"
138
139 "Oh, no, ma'am, we do this all the time. So if you'll just let us get him
140 dressed, we'll be out of your hair in no time." And with that, the two men took
141 the sleeping figure from the couch, deftly dressed and fastened him, and
142 without another word they were gone in a flash of light accompanied by a faint
143 POP. Stunned, she watched as the last of the mist faded away, and like a zombie
144 she went back to the computer.
145
146 "Um, he's gone, everyone. Thanks for keeping me up tonight. And do me a
147 favor, huh? Let's not talk about this? It's been pretty weird, and he does come
148 in here sometimes. Love you all. Goodnight." Numbly, she logged off and went to
149 bed. "There is no way I'm ever going to be able to explain this to anyone.
150 They'll never believe it. For that matter, I don't believe it."
151
152 And with that final, bewildered thought, she went to her room and fell into a
153 well-deserved and exhausted sleep.
154
155 Finis
File shorts/naked_truth.txt deleted (index 7df2c59..0000000)
1 She was on her way back from the kitchen when the phone rang, and without thinking, she answered it.
2
3 "Hey, baby, what'cha doin'?" came a familiar voice over the line.
4
5 "Nothing really," she replied, "just sitting around. How have you been?"
6
7 "Actually, that's why I called. Any chance I could come over? I'm in town."
8
9 "Um, sure, I guess. Where are you right now?"
10
11 "Just off the main drag. I can be there in about 20 minutes."
12
13 "That would be great. I'll be ready. See you then." In somewhat of a flutter, she went over to the computer that was still running and typed into the chat window, "I've got a hottie coming over. Gotta run, all. Bye!" and logged out of the system. In her haste to get to the shower, it never occurred to her to question how his call had made it through with the line busy.
14
15 A quick shower, light makeup and a change of clothes later, she was standing in front of her bathroom mirror. "Not so bad for a librarian. Not so bad at all." A refresh on her drink, and then quickly around the apartment to straighten things up. She gave a thought to logging back onto the chat system to kill time until he arrived, but she changed her mind and settled on the couch to wait. Before too much longer, her bell rang, and she rose to open the door.
16
17 What she found standing outside wasn't exactly what she had anticipated. While the figure vaguely resembled the man she knew, his wild, unkempt hair, lined and drawn down mouth and dull, lifeless eyes gave lie to his age of 25. If she hadn't known better, she'd have sworn he was 80. "Um, hey there," she hesitantly said. "Come on in and take a rest. You look like you could use it."
18
19 "I need more than a rest," was his sardonic reply as he practically limped into the apartment and over to the couch, where he didn't so much sit as collapse. "If you only knew how these years have gone..."
20
21 "Years? I only saw you 6 months ago," she replied, confused.
22
23 "Oh, right, months. That's what I meant. Months," he mumbled.
24
25 "Are you all right? You look terrible. Is there something I can get you?"
26
27 "Naw, not right now. Just let me catch my breath here and then I'll figure out what's what."
28
29 "What's what?"
30
31 "Right. That's what I need to figure out. I'm in a helluva fix."
32
33 "You're not sick, or anything? Your family is ok?"
34
35 "Oh, yeah, everyone's fine. Everything's fine. Nothing could be finer...than a day in Carolina...in the morning..."
36
37 "What in the hell is the matter with you? And what are you doing?!"
38
39 Her last question was the result of his taking off his clothes. She was now staring, open mouthed, at his naked body, and her stupifaction wasn't so much at his member standing at stiff attention, although she had never seen one that big and wasn't sure that it was even natural, but at his gaunt and wasted look, horribly underweight and appearing to be little more than ribs and joints. Come to think of it, she mused, his color doesn't look all that good, and why is his skin so wrinkled?
40
41 "What? Oh, this? I just relax better without clothes. Don't worry, I won't hurt you. Although I wouldn't mind..."
42
43 "Stop right there!" she said emphatically. "That monstrosity isn't coming, no pun intended, anywhere near me. You just keep that thing leashed if you don't want it cut off."
44
45 "Right, right, no problem." If he was the least bit perturbed at her rebuff, he didn't show it. "I think I'll just crash here for a minute. I'm awfully tired. You don't mind?" Without waiting for her reply, he threw himself back onto the couch and within seconds was asleep. Now more than a little rattled, she logged back onto the chat system. "You guys have to help me," she typed. "I have a naked guy on my couch and I can't go to sleep. You have to keep me up."
46
47 "Woo-hoo (!)" came back one reply. "You go, girl!" came another.
48
49 "No, no, you don't understand. This is really freakin' me out."
50
51 "That he fell asleep, or that he fell asleep BEFORE doing it?" asked Launfal, the chat room's resident smart ass.
52
53 "No, no, you don't understand!" she typed frantically. "This guy is major league freaky!" And so for the next half hour, the chatroom denizens tried to occupy her mind, each to his or her own fashion. At the end of that time, her bell rang again. "Who in the hell is THAT?" she wondered as she again went to the door. As she passed the couch, she noticed that her visitor hadn't even stirred.
54
55 Opening the door, she found two young men in white suits with pleasant smiles on their faces. "Who are you and what do you want?" She asked.
56
57 "Um, well, er, we're very sorry for the interuption, as we know how late it is, but we're under the impression that you've recently had a visitor? Perhaps this evening?"
58
59 "Well, yes I have, but I don't see..."
60
61 "Well, I realize that this is going to be a little confusing, but we need to take him back."
62
63 "Take him back? To where?"
64
65 "Well, ma'am, not so much to where as to when."
66
67 "When what?
68
69 "No, ma'am, not when what, when where."
70
71 "I have no idea what you're talking about."
72
73 "It's all very simple to explain. May we please come in? Here is our card." Taking the card, she read WHITE and WHITE, Temporal Recovery and Salvage.
74
75 "Um, sure, please come in," she said, now in a daze. "Won't you please sit down?"
76
77 "Thank you. Now, ma'am, as you can see, we specialize in the recovery and salvage of people and things that have, oh, how can I best explain this, misplaced themselves in the flow of time. People are the worst, you see, and the elderly just can't seem to control themselves. They end up flying all over the when, if you get my meaning."
78
79 "Elderly? He's only 25!"
80
81 "Well, ma'am, the man you know is 25, and I'm sure he's just fine and running about, cavorting as those young Marines will. But this is the man 60 years later, lost in an eddy of time that brought him back quite a ways. He was a real pain to find, let me tell you. Sometimes when they go wandering off like this, it can take minutes to find them."
82
83 "Um, you're kidding, right?"
84
85 "Oh, no, ma'am, we do this all the time. So if you'll just let us get him dressed, we'll be out of your hair in no time." And with that, the two men took the sleeping figure from the couch, deftly dressed and fastened him, and without another word they were gone in a flash of light accompanied by a faint POP. Stunned, she watched as the last of the mist faded away, and like a zombie she went back to the computer.
86
87 "Um, he's gone, everyone. Thanks for keeping me up tonight. And do me a favor, huh? Let's not talk about this? It's been pretty weird, and he does come in here sometimes. Love you all. Goodnight." Numbly, she logged off and went to bed. "There is no way I'm ever going to be able to explain this to anyone. They'll never believe it. For that matter, I don't believe it."
88
89 And with that final, bewildered thought, she went to her room and fell into a well-deserved and exhausted sleep.
90
91 Finis
File shorts/over_the_rainbow.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..134de3c)
1 Over the Rainbow by Rob Houglan
2 Licensed Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
3
4 She was a walking rainbow, and like any rainbow, she only appeared after a
5 storm.
6
7 It was another day at the office. Readings scrolled on terminals, printers
8 spewed reams of data, and video screens showed scientists hard at work. Another
9 day of chaos. Controlled to be sure, but chaos nonetheless.
10
11 She grabbed a cup of what used to be coffee from the dispenser in the corner,
12 grimacing as molten tar slid down her throat. She nodded and smiled as she
13 walked the corridors, easily avoiding collisions and distractions as she
14 reached her corner office. Shutting out the activity by shutting the door, she
15 sat at her desk, turning her chair to take in the panoramic view.
16
17 Colored bands raced up and down her arms, bathing her face in a cascading
18 rainbow that accentuated her high cheekbones and dark coloring. She could tell
19 what kind of day it was by how fast the rainbow danced. Today, it was an almost
20 solid chromatic blur.
21
22 Today was going to be a bad one.
23
24 Sighing, she faced her desk and pulled up abstracts written by the night crews.
25 Undeniable statistics pointing to inarguable conclusions. No way around, over
26 or through them. They'd been predicting this for years. Years had become
27 months, which had whittled to weeks. The time for planning was over. When this
28 day ended, maybe there'd be another to follow. Or maybe there wouldn't.
29
30 The smart money was on wouldn't.
31
32 But she knew something they didn't know, could do things that they couldn't
33 imagine. Today, her secret would come out. A fair price to pay to insure that
34 there were still people around to spread it.
35
36 "As long as they don't call me Goddess," she said to the air. She chuckled
37 softly at a picture of a line of techs snaking around the building, laying
38 sacrifices of electronic gadgets before her desk. With another sigh, she left
39 her office and went to the elevators.
40
41 On the roof of the complex, cleared per her previous order, she took another
42 look at the city around her. Slate blue met slate gray in a gradient texture
43 that blurred them into one.
44
45 "The thing a girl does to earn a paycheck," she said as she undressed and
46 spread her arms, face turned to the sky.
47
48 Soon it would end, one way or the other.
49
50 Breathing deeply, she closed her eyes. Her heartbeat slowed, her temperature
51 dropped. The colors dancing on her arms shifted, separated, and slowed. Reds
52 became blues before deepening to violets, dulling and sharpening at the same
53 time. Violets darkened, expanded, turned black, expanding to cover her skin. In
54 moments, she was night at the height of day.
55
56 "A shadow of my former self." The thought came unbidden and was as quickly
57 banished.
58
59 At the appointed time, the solar flare struck, the largest ever recorded, the
60 world killer. She quivered at the first onslaught, a mere tickle of what was to
61 come. She focused inward, in total harmony with herself and the universe. She
62 was night, the death of light.
63
64 Today she would be a new sun.
65
66 She absorbed the flare, its rays bending to find her from around the globe, all
67 of its fury directed on one point, on her. She took it in, greedily devouring
68 the radioactive maelstrom, waves of heat shimmering around her as she reached
69 for more, cried out for more, demanded more.
70
71 Finally, it was over. The flare died, but she lived, and through her, the world
72 lived as well.
73
74 Calmly dressing, she left the roof, rainbow bands shining brightly in a slow
75 dance over her arms.
76
77 Today was going to be a good one.
File shorts/over_the_rainbow.txt deleted (index e8d9baa..0000000)
1 Over the Rainbow by Rob Houglan
2 Licensed Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
3
4 She was a walking rainbow, and like any rainbow, she only appeared after a storm.
5
6 It was another day at the office. Readings scrolled on terminals, printers spewed reams of data, and video screens showed scientists hard at work. Another day of chaos. Controlled to be sure, but chaos nonetheless.
7
8 She grabbed a cup of what used to be coffee from the dispenser in the corner, grimacing as molten tar slid down her throat. She nodded and smiled as she walked the corridors, easily avoiding collisions and distractions as she reached her corner office. Shutting out the activity by shutting the door, she sat at her desk, turning her chair to take in the panoramic view.
9
10 Colored bands raced up and down her arms, bathing her face in a cascading rainbow that accentuated her high cheekbones and dark coloring. She could tell what kind of day it was by how fast the rainbow danced. Today, it was an almost solid chromatic blur.
11
12 Today was going to be a bad one.
13
14 Sighing, she faced her desk and pulled up abstracts written by the night crews. Undeniable statistics pointing to inarguable conclusions. No way around, over or through them. They'd been predicting this for years. Years had become months, which had whittled to weeks. The time for planning was over. When this day ended, maybe there'd be another to follow. Or maybe there wouldn't.
15
16 The smart money was on wouldn't.
17
18 But she knew something they didn't know, could do things that they couldn't imagine. Today, her secret would come out. A fair price to pay to insure that there were still people around to spread it.
19
20 "As long as they don't call me Goddess," she said to the air. She chuckled softly at a picture of a line of techs snaking around the building, laying sacrifices of electronic gadgets before her desk. With another sigh, she left her office and went to the elevators.
21
22 On the roof of the complex, cleared per her previous order, she took another look at the city around her. Slate blue met slate gray in a gradient texture that blurred them into one.
23
24 "The thing a girl does to earn a paycheck," she said as she undressed and spread her arms, face turned to the sky.
25
26 Soon it would end, one way or the other.
27
28 Breathing deeply, she closed her eyes. Her heartbeat slowed, her temperature dropped. The colors dancing on her arms shifted, separated, and slowed. Reds became blues before deepening to violets, dulling and sharpening at the same time. Violets darkened, expanded, turned black, expanding to cover her skin. In moments, she was night at the height of day.
29
30 "A shadow of my former self." The thought came unbidden and was as quickly banished.
31
32 At the appointed time, the solar flare struck, the largest ever recorded, the world killer. She quivered at the first onslaught, a mere tickle of what was to come. She focused inward, in total harmony with herself and the universe. She was night, the death of light.
33
34 Today she would be a new sun.
35
36 She absorbed the flare, its rays bending to find her from around the globe, all of its fury directed on one point, on her. She took it in, greedily devouring the radioactive maelstrom, waves of heat shimmering around her as she reached for more, cried out for more, demanded more.
37
38 Finally, it was over. The flare died, but she lived, and through her, the world lived as well.
39
40 Calmly dressing, she left the roof, rainbow bands shining brightly in a slow dance over her arms.
41
42 Today was going to be a good one.
File shorts/temp deleted (index 8b13789..0000000)
1
File shorts/ubw_pic_story000.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..3485ac3)
1 Death came to his forest, borne on whirring blades.
2
3 Even without the pack's warning, he had heard the choppers bringing the
4 hunters. They had created him, trained him, then tried to use him. He had
5 escaped, and for over a decade he had lived free. Once again they had found him
6 and would take him back if they could. He had fought them to a bloody
7 standstill, with the understanding that if they stopped hunting him, he would
8 stop killing them.
9
10 Some lessons needed retaught. Today, the hunters would be the prey.
11
12 Some of the pack were to the north, and through their eyes he saw the choppers
13 land, their passengers hitting the ground running on booted feet. A full
14 platoon this time, heavily armed, fanning out by squads in classic assault
15 formations. In less time than it took to take it in, the choppers went light on
16 their skids and retook to the air, their deep-throated roars absorbed by the
17 thick foliage overhead. They wouldn't risk their aircraft anymore, as they were
18 too valuable.
19
20 Some lessons only needed taught once. His creators had wrought far more than
21 they knew.
22
23 Through its eyes he saw the pack grow, smaller groups meeting to reform the
24 whole. He felt its rage build, let it resonate within him, let it sing with the
25 blood in his veins. Its heart was his heart, its home was his home. Pack law
26 was elegant in its simplicity.
27
28 Live free or die hard. Today, it would be the hunters who died.
29
30 Tactics came to him unbidden, and he sent out instructions to the pack. No
31 headlong rush into a hail of bullets, no last battle atop a blood-soaked hill.
32 They were pack. They were wise. They were ready.
33
34 The platoon had split into squads, and the pack had split to meet them. He ran
35 to the nearest, knives in his hand, to find their hiding place. He could hear
36 them crashing through the undergrowth, cursing as their equipment tangled in
37 the densely packed trees. A few more steps, a few more moments.
38
39 "Leave me one," he sent. "The rest you can have, but leave me one."
40
41 The song in his blood reached its crescendo. When it did, he turned loose the
42 pack and lead it in its charge.
43
44 Training and discipline melted in a heartbeat. The first in line fell,
45 hamstrung by the teeth and claws that reached them first, throats ripped out by
46 those who followed. Scooping up a rifle without breaking stride, he fired using
47 quick, controlled bursts. In less than a minute, all that remained was bloody
48 meat spilling out of shredded rags.
49
50 The gunfire had brought the hunters in, ignoring their orders as they came in
51 tightly-packed clumps. The pack was everywhere and nowhere, and to face it from
52 one direction was to fall to it from another. Erratic gunfire and incoherent
53 orders, and then silence.
54
55 He found the survivor, and into a face grimy with tears and dust, he said,
56 "Tell them what you saw today. Tell them that next time, we take their war to
57 them."
File shorts/ubw_pic_story000.txt deleted (index a2a532c..0000000)
1 Death came to his forest, borne on whirring blades.
2
3 Even without the pack's warning, he had heard the choppers bringing the hunters. They had created him, trained him, then tried to use him. He had escaped, and for over a decade he had lived free. Once again they had found him and would take him back if they could. He had fought them to a bloody standstill, with the understanding that if they stopped hunting him, he would stop killing them.
4
5 Some lessons needed retaught. Today, the hunters would be the prey.
6
7 Some of the pack were to the north, and through their eyes he saw the choppers land, their passengers hitting the ground running on booted feet. A full platoon this time, heavily armed, fanning out by squads in classic assault formations. In less time than it took to take it in, the choppers went light on their skids and retook to the air, their deep-throated roars absorbed by the thick foliage overhead. They wouldn't risk their aircraft anymore, as they were too valuable.
8
9 Some lessons only needed taught once. His creators had wrought far more than they knew.
10
11 Through its eyes he saw the pack grow, smaller groups meeting to reform the whole. He felt its rage build, let it resonate within him, let it sing with the blood in his veins. Its heart was his heart, its home was his home. Pack law was elegant in its simplicity.
12
13 Live free or die hard. Today, it would be the hunters who died.
14
15 Tactics came to him unbidden, and he sent out instructions to the pack. No headlong rush into a hail of bullets, no last battle atop a blood-soaked hill. They were pack. They were wise. They were ready.
16
17 The platoon had split into squads, and the pack had split to meet them. He ran to the nearest, knives in his hand, to find their hiding place. He could hear them crashing through the undergrowth, cursing as their equipment tangled in the densely packed trees. A few more steps, a few more moments.
18
19 "Leave me one," he sent. "The rest you can have, but leave me one."
20
21 The song in his blood reached its crescendo. When it did, he turned loose the pack and lead it in its charge.
22
23 Training and discipline melted in a heartbeat. The first in line fell, hamstrung by the teeth and claws that reached them first, throats ripped out by those who followed. Scooping up a rifle without breaking stride, he fired using quick, controlled bursts. In less than a minute, all that remained was bloody meat spilling out of shredded rags.
24
25 The gunfire had brought the hunters in, ignoring their orders as they came in tightly-packed clumps. The pack was everywhere and nowhere, and to face it from one direction was to fall to it from another. Erratic gunfire and incoherent orders, and then silence.
26
27 He found the survivor, and into a face grimy with tears and dust, he said, "Tell them what you saw today. Tell them that next time, we take their war to them."
File shorts/ubw_pic_story001.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..63d0218)
1 This once was a house of God. Hell has since foreclosed.
2
3 The church in the wood had been nearly eradicated from the inbound rockets.
4 Huge, gaping wounds in the earth still festered years later. The living refused
5 to enter the clearing; the dead to be buried beneath it. The shadows under the
6 forbidding trees withstood the sun's best attempts to pierce them, casting
7 everything in eternal gloom. Late at night, when all was still, faint rustlings
8 and moanings could be heard on the wind, if any could hear over the thudding of
9 their hearts.
10
11 As horrific was the scene above the ground, true terror ruled far beneath the
12 roots of the gnarled and twisted oaks. Black water seeped into caverns ripped
13 wholesale from the earth, permeating them with a rancid stench. Cramped tunnels
14 connected these chambers that were lit with an unearthly green light that gave
15 no warmth. In the deepest, darkest, most dimly lit of these an abomination was
16 born.
17
18 Strapped to a stone altar was a great gray wolf, torn and bleeding from various
19 wounds. He had been brought here snarling and snapping until having finally
20 surrendered to his exhaustion and terror. Circling the altar were ten forms,
21 shapeless in black cloaks, colorless but for the green runes that danced over
22 them as if alive. The forms chanted in a language never before heard, a
23 language that glorified death and despair, in a rite that would solidify their
24 ascendence here, at the expense of all that lived.
25
26 The wolf breathed his last in a feeble growl, his spirit rising above the altar
27 for its journey to the realm of dreams. The chanting rose to a thundering roar,
28 and the shimmering form, was arrested in mid-flight. It's light was
29 extinguished, absorbed by the dark, twisted and perverted into a churning
30 miasma, black and obscene. With a final incantation that rent the altar
31 asunder, the spirit was returned to the body of the wolf.
32
33 The wolf jerked and shuddered as if in rejection of the perversion that it now
34 was, but in the end it rose. With clear brown eyes now turned green, it shook
35 its great head, spittle from its mouth burning holes in the ground. For a
36 moment, then two, silence reigned, the rite now ended, its aim achieved.
37
38 With a roar that could come from no earthly throat, the wolf thrashed itself
39 free of the altar's wreckage. Those in the circle made no move to retreat,
40 having no fear of their creation. It served them, now, completely and without
41 question, with no thought to what it once had been.
42
43 They would send it out into the world of the living, to kill, to feed, to
44 spread its depravity, deathless, eternal and entirely ruthless. Without mercy,
45 without fear, without even a soul, it would never stop, never surrender and
46 never retreat. Where now was one, soon would be many, stealing the light so as
47 to feed in darkness.
48
49 From the storm that was coming, there would be no shelter.
File shorts/ubw_pic_story001.txt deleted (index 02ba928..0000000)
1 This once was a house of God. Hell has since foreclosed.
2
3 The church in the wood had been nearly eradicated from the inbound rockets. Huge, gaping wounds in the earth still festered years later. The living refused to enter the clearing; the dead to be buried beneath it. The shadows under the forbidding trees withstood the sun's best attempts to pierce them, casting everything in eternal gloom. Late at night, when all was still, faint rustlings and moanings could be heard on the wind, if any could hear over the thudding of their hearts.
4
5 As horrific was the scene above the ground, true terror ruled far beneath the roots of the gnarled and twisted oaks. Black water seeped into caverns ripped wholesale from the earth, permeating them with a rancid stench. Cramped tunnels connected these chambers that were lit with an unearthly green light that gave no warmth. In the deepest, darkest, most dimly lit of these an abomination was born.
6
7 Strapped to a stone altar was a great gray wolf, torn and bleeding from various wounds. He had been brought here snarling and snapping until having finally surrendered to his exhaustion and terror. Circling the altar were ten forms, shapeless in black cloaks, colorless but for the green runes that danced over them as if alive. The forms chanted in a language never before heard, a language that glorified death and despair, in a rite that would solidify their ascendence here, at the expense of all that lived.
8
9 The wolf breathed his last in a feeble growl, his spirit rising above the altar for its journey to the realm of dreams. The chanting rose to a thundering roar, and the shimmering form, was arrested in mid-flight. It's light was extinguished, absorbed by the dark, twisted and perverted into a churning miasma, black and obscene. With a final incantation that rent the altar asunder, the spirit was returned to the body of the wolf.
10
11 The wolf jerked and shuddered as if in rejection of the perversion that it now was, but in the end it rose. With clear brown eyes now turned green, it shook its great head, spittle from its mouth burning holes in the ground. For a moment, then two, silence reigned, the rite now ended, its aim achieved.
12
13 With a roar that could come from no earthly throat, the wolf thrashed itself free of the altar's wreckage. Those in the circle made no move to retreat, having no fear of their creation. It served them, now, completely and without question, with no thought to what it once had been.
14
15 They would send it out into the world of the living, to kill, to feed, to spread its depravity, deathless, eternal and entirely ruthless. Without mercy, without fear, without even a soul, it would never stop, never surrender and never retreat. Where now was one, soon would be many, stealing the light so as to feed in darkness.
16
17 From the storm that was coming, there would be no shelter.
File shorts/ubw_pic_story002.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..d619be0)
1 He was almost too late.
2
3 By the time he arrived at the parade stop, the crowd was overflowing the
4 sidewalk. And the children, carried on shoulders, cradled in arms, everywhere
5 he looked, the damned screechy, pouty, teary children. Of course, they were
6 smiling now, laughing even, as their parents cooed, tickled, bounced, and
7 swayed. Laughing at him, at his dreams, at his hopes for a better future. He
8 hated them all and wanted them dead.
9
10 The crowd's good cheer leeched his strength even as it hardened his resolve.
11 Soon, they wouldn't be laughing anymore.
12
13 He had to be careful. If he was recognized, they would stop him, hold him until
14 it was too late to act. He had to move with deliberate haste, blend into the
15 crowd without joining it, use it to hide his movement.
16
17 It wouldn't be long, now. His tongue darted to his upper lip, tasting salt.
18 Steady now, take it easy. Exert control. His breathing slowed as his runaway
19 thoughts once more focused on his mission.
20
21 A step here, a turn there. Slowly, invisibly, he moved through the throng,
22 ducking his head at an accidental jar, flashing a fake smile at a meeting of
23 eyes, never seeing the faces around him, never acknowledging them as
24 individuals. There were obstacles to be overcome. Invisible was invincible.
25 Every beat of his thudding heart was another second he wouldn't get back. He
26 resisted the urge to throw himself forward, to erupt from the crowd with his
27 flaming sword to put everything to rights. Time enough. There was still time
28 enough.
29
30 It shouldn't have come to this. Parades like this should have been for him. He
31 had devoted his life to serving humanity, to ending fear and violence,
32 heartbreak and despair. He had struggled mightily to prevent mankind from
33 reaping the wages of its sin. He had fought death to a standstill.
34
35 Instead, he'd been stripped, broken, ridiculed by his peers and damned with no
36 more process than a Salem witch trial. Then, in the ultimate betrayal, they had
37 taken the work for which he'd been condemned and twisted it, perverted it
38 beyond all that was proper for their own use. Today, he would deliver the
39 message. Today, he would be the messenger of the righteously angry gods.
40
41 Today, he would balance the scales.
42
43 He was only halfway to the front of the crowd when its mood changed. Over the
44 ambient noise of those around him, he could hear the sound of an approaching
45 car. Too soon! He wasn't ready! Heads turned as the roar increased, as the
46 first car eased around the nearest corner. Calm, stay calm. It's not too late.
47 There's still time. Still a chance. Don't waste it. There'll be only one.
48
49 The crowd's pitch intensified, its volume increased as the car crawled forward.
50 Signs waved, shouts went up, and music blared. Flashing lights strobed the
51 crowd, bathing it in blues and reds, transforming flying confetti into a pastel
52 blizzard. In an instant, he was at the eye of a human hurricane, the solitary
53 constant in a confusing, shifting, kaleidoscope of lights and sound. For an
54 almost fatal instant of sensory overload, he had completely frozen.
55
56 He shook his head, blinking furiously, rage at his lapse, at the mindless,
57 sniveling fools that stood in his way spurring him to action. As the police
58 escort passed, he stepped to his left, towards the street corner. He was more
59 insistent, more forceful, more urgent. The time for subtlety had passed. A
60 lowered shoulder here, a jabbing elbow there and he made quicker progress,
61 ignoring the stares and curses he elicited. A little further. A few more
62 seconds.
63
64 The time of reckoning was at hand.
65
66 The crowd cheered each passing car, its roar increasing by the second. He had
67 finally reached the outer edge, nudged into the sidestreet from an incidental
68 shove. His path was clear, and with everyone's attention focused on the festive
69 caravan, he would never have a better opportunity. His plan would work. It had
70 to work. He had no other.
71
72 The crowd's roar reached a crescendo at the appearance of a long, pink
73 Caddillac convertible with its top down. A man and woman, smiling idiotically,
74 were waving with the synchronized rhythm of a windup toy, their heads moving
75 side to side in perfect unison as they scanned the crowd from end to end. Their
76 absolute physical perfection, their elegantly crafted clothing, their obvious
77 contentment with their mindless servility disgusted him. The bile in his throat
78 threatened to drown him, its acidic bite deep in his chest threatened to
79 dissolve his heart. His rage broke beyond all control, rose within him in a
80 crimson torrent, carried him forward without conscious thought.
81
82 He was to the car before anyone noticed him, clambering over the passenger side
83 door and falling clumsily to the space between the front and rear seats. As he
84 rose, he drew his revolver, holding it in the two-handed grip he had seen on
85 television. The man and woman turned slowly to face him, smiles evaporating,
86 and the ice in their pale blue eyes should have frozen him in place. But the
87 heat of his rage melted the ice, creating the flood that swept fear away. He
88 pulled the trigger once, twice, three times, blood and bone and brain erupting
89 around them, the reports making his ears ring. Without thinking he emptied his
90 gun into the other face, erasing it in a sea of red and gray.
91
92 It's done. It's over. He could take his rest.
93
94 Hands grabbed him, threw him out of the now-stopped car, impact with concrete
95 crushing the air from his lungs. His arms were wrenched up and back, and the
96 cruel bite of steel stabbed at his wrists. He was jerked upright and dragged
97 away, his toes barely scraping the pavement. It was then that he saw the crowd,
98 looked for the first time at those around him, and the sight brought a wail
99 from his throat. His screams echoed behind him long after he was gone.
100
101 As one, the crowd turned its face to follow his journey. The same face, in
102 every detail, over and over as far as the eye could see. When he was gone,
103 workers descended on the car. The bodies inside were quickly removed, the car's
104 interior efficiently cleaned. No wasted movement, no change in expression. For
105 all the emotion displayed, they could have been changing a tire.
106
107 Two others from the crowd climbed into the backseat, and within moments the
108 engine roared back to life and the caravan resumed its crawl.
109
110 Signs waved, shouts went up, and music blared. Flashing lights strobed the
111 crowd, bathing it in blues and reds, transforming flying confetti into a pastel
112 blizzard...
File shorts/ubw_pic_story002.txt deleted (index d6eb8f8..0000000)
1 He was almost too late.
2
3 By the time he arrived at the parade stop, the crowd was overflowing the sidewalk. And the children, carried on shoulders, cradled in arms, everywhere he looked, the damned screechy, pouty, teary children. Of course, they were smiling now, laughing even, as their parents cooed, tickled, bounced, and swayed. Laughing at him, at his dreams, at his hopes for a better future. He hated them all and wanted them dead.
4
5 The crowd's good cheer leeched his strength even as it hardened his resolve. Soon, they wouldn't be laughing anymore.
6
7 He had to be careful. If he was recognized, they would stop him, hold him until it was too late to act. He had to move with deliberate haste, blend into the crowd without joining it, use it to hide his movement.
8
9 It wouldn't be long, now. His tongue darted to his upper lip, tasting salt. Steady now, take it easy. Exert control. His breathing slowed as his runaway thoughts once more focused on his mission.
10
11 A step here, a turn there. Slowly, invisibly, he moved through the throng, ducking his head at an accidental jar, flashing a fake smile at a meeting of eyes, never seeing the faces around him, never acknowledging them as individuals. There were obstacles to be overcome. Invisible was invincible. Every beat of his thudding heart was another second he wouldn't get back. He resisted the urge to throw himself forward, to erupt from the crowd with his flaming sword to put everything to rights. Time enough. There was still time enough.
12
13 It shouldn't have come to this. Parades like this should have been for him. He had devoted his life to serving humanity, to ending fear and violence, heartbreak and despair. He had struggled mightily to prevent mankind from reaping the wages of its sin. He had fought death to a standstill.
14
15 Instead, he'd been stripped, broken, ridiculed by his peers and damned with no more process than a Salem witch trial. Then, in the ultimate betrayal, they had taken the work for which he'd been condemned and twisted it, perverted it beyond all that was proper for their own use. Today, he would deliver the message. Today, he would be the messenger of the righteously angry gods.
16
17 Today, he would balance the scales.
18
19 He was only halfway to the front of the crowd when its mood changed. Over the ambient noise of those around him, he could hear the sound of an approaching car. Too soon! He wasn't ready! Heads turned as the roar increased, as the first car eased around the nearest corner. Calm, stay calm. It's not too late. There's still time. Still a chance. Don't waste it. There'll be only one.
20
21 The crowd's pitch intensified, its volume increased as the car crawled forward. Signs waved, shouts went up, and music blared. Flashing lights strobed the crowd, bathing it in blues and reds, transforming flying confetti into a pastel blizzard. In an instant, he was at the eye of a human hurricane, the solitary constant in a confusing, shifting, kaleidoscope of lights and sound. For an almost fatal instant of sensory overload, he had completely frozen.
22
23 He shook his head, blinking furiously, rage at his lapse, at the mindless, sniveling fools that stood in his way spurring him to action. As the police escort passed, he stepped to his left, towards the street corner. He was more insistent, more forceful, more urgent. The time for subtlety had passed. A lowered shoulder here, a jabbing elbow there and he made quicker progress, ignoring the stares and curses he elicited. A little further. A few more seconds.
24
25 The time of reckoning was at hand.
26
27 The crowd cheered each passing car, its roar increasing by the second. He had finally reached the outer edge, nudged into the sidestreet from an incidental shove. His path was clear, and with everyone's attention focused on the festive caravan, he would never have a better opportunity. His plan would work. It had to work. He had no other.
28
29 The crowd's roar reached a crescendo at the appearance of a long, pink Caddillac convertible with its top down. A man and woman, smiling idiotically, were waving with the synchronized rhythm of a windup toy, their heads moving side to side in perfect unison as they scanned the crowd from end to end. Their absolute physical perfection, their elegantly crafted clothing, their obvious contentment with their mindless servility disgusted him. The bile in his throat threatened to drown him, its acidic bite deep in his chest threatened to dissolve his heart. His rage broke beyond all control, rose within him in a crimson torrent, carried him forward without conscious thought.
30
31 He was to the car before anyone noticed him, clambering over the passenger side door and falling clumsily to the space between the front and rear seats. As he rose, he drew his revolver, holding it in the two-handed grip he had seen on television. The man and woman turned slowly to face him, smiles evaporating, and the ice in their pale blue eyes should have frozen him in place. But the heat of his rage melted the ice, creating the flood that swept fear away. He pulled the trigger once, twice, three times, blood and bone and brain erupting around them, the reports making his ears ring. Without thinking he emptied his gun into the other face, erasing it in a sea of red and gray.
32
33 It's done. It's over. He could take his rest.
34
35 Hands grabbed him, threw him out of the now-stopped car, impact with concrete crushing the air from his lungs. His arms were wrenched up and back, and the cruel bite of steel stabbed at his wrists. He was jerked upright and dragged away, his toes barely scraping the pavement. It was then that he saw the crowd, looked for the first time at those around him, and the sight brought a wail from his throat. His screams echoed behind him long after he was gone.
36
37 As one, the crowd turned its face to follow his journey. The same face, in every detail, over and over as far as the eye could see. When he was gone, workers descended on the car. The bodies inside were quickly removed, the car's interior efficiently cleaned. No wasted movement, no change in expression. For all the emotion displayed, they could have been changing a tire.
38
39 Two others from the crowd climbed into the backseat, and within moments the engine roared back to life and the caravan resumed its crawl.
40
41 Signs waved, shouts went up, and music blared. Flashing lights strobed the crowd, bathing it in blues and reds, transforming flying confetti into a pastel blizzard...
File shorts/ubw_pic_story003.fold renamed from shorts/manufacturers_tag.txt (similarity 50%) (mode: 100644) (index a5e06e7..762e7ff)
1 1 Extracted from the wreckage, it still lived. Their job was to keep it that way. Extracted from the wreckage, it still lived. Their job was to keep it that way.
2 2
3 Vital signs had been broadcast the entire way to the lab. On its arrival, a full surgical team was ready and waiting. Experts from every biological specialty were gowned and masked awaiting their opportunity to make history. The national security guys had tried to horn in but were brusquely rebuffed, joining Army brass in an observation suite to mutter dire threats to each other, all eyes riveted on the scene before and beneath them.
3 Vital signs had been broadcast the entire way to the lab. On its arrival, a
4 full surgical team was ready and waiting. Experts from every biological
5 specialty were gowned and masked awaiting their opportunity to make history.
6 The national security guys had tried to horn in but were brusquely rebuffed,
7 joining Army brass in an observation suite to mutter dire threats to each
8 other, all eyes riveted on the scene before and beneath them.
4 9
5 "I've seen sausage in better shape," a surgeon muttered. "I can't tell its insides from its outsides."
10 "I've seen sausage in better shape," a surgeon muttered. "I can't tell its
11 insides from its outsides."
6 12 "Figure it out. Every reading we've got is nosediving." "Figure it out. Every reading we've got is nosediving."
7 13 "How can we tell? The monitors are going haywire!" "How can we tell? The monitors are going haywire!"
8 14 "Only one way. Curtain's up, people. Showtime." "Only one way. Curtain's up, people. Showtime."
9 15
10 Once committed, the team moved in rhythmic ballet, each step performed precisely. Bone saws ripped through an ossified carapace to reveal a labyrinth of vessels, some only visible with the aid of the microscope's projection on the far wall, connecting to pulsing organs that none could identify. Having gained access to the victim's interior structure, the team stood open-mouthed and sweating.
16 Once committed, the team moved in rhythmic ballet, each step performed
17 precisely. Bone saws ripped through an ossified carapace to reveal a labyrinth
18 of vessels, some only visible with the aid of the microscope's projection on
19 the far wall, connecting to pulsing organs that none could identify. Having
20 gained access to the victim's interior structure, the team stood open-mouthed
21 and sweating.
11 22
12 23 "What now?" "What now?"
13 24 "Retractor! We've got a leaker!" "Retractor! We've got a leaker!"
 
... ... The Geiger counter quietly registered the slight rise in radioactivity.
20 31 "Good, hells! What's causing it?" "Good, hells! What's causing it?"
21 32 "Let's find out. Suction!" "Let's find out. Suction!"
22 33
23 They cleared the large central cavity to provide room to work. They located the broken vessel and applied a hurried patch to prevent further seepage. Trained nurses specifically chosen for their steady hands and nerves blotted sweat from the surgeons' faces.
34 They cleared the large central cavity to provide room to work. They located the
35 broken vessel and applied a hurried patch to prevent further seepage. Trained
36 nurses specifically chosen for their steady hands and nerves blotted sweat from
37 the surgeons' faces.
24 38
25 39 "What's that, just under those protrusions?" "What's that, just under those protrusions?"
26 40 "Can't tell. Scope it." "Can't tell. Scope it."
27 41 "More light. Can't make it out." "More light. Can't make it out."
28 42 "Let's tie this off. Suture!" "Let's tie this off. Suture!"
29 43
30 Having cleared the immediate area, the surgeons gathered around the incision, more like a hole, staring down at a small, silver, flashing globe in the midst of organic matter that varied in color from green to brown.
44 Having cleared the immediate area, the surgeons gathered around the incision,
45 more like a hole, staring down at a small, silver, flashing globe in the midst
46 of organic matter that varied in color from green to brown.
31 47
32 48 "That's the clicker! What is it? A heart?" "That's the clicker! What is it? A heart?"
33 49 "Anyone else feeling heat? Give me a reading!" "Anyone else feeling heat? Give me a reading!"
 
... ... Having cleared the immediate area, the surgeons gathered around the incision, mo
36 52 "We might kill it!" "We might kill it!"
37 53 "It's already dead for all we know! Cutter!" "It's already dead for all we know! Cutter!"
38 54
39 The globe was deftly removed with no discernible detrimental effects. Set on a metal table, the globe flashed more quickly, cycling through the entire visible spectrum in a matter of seconds to repeat in a kaleidoscopic pattern. Then, suddenly, it stopped.
55 The globe was deftly removed with no discernible detrimental effects. Set on a
56 metal table, the globe flashed more quickly, cycling through the entire visible
57 spectrum in a matter of seconds to repeat in a kaleidoscopic pattern. Then,
58 suddenly, it stopped.
40 59
41 A hologram appeared over the globe with the number ten glowing in large numbers. The team looked at each other as the display showed nine, then eight. The Geiger counter went crazy with the radiation spike.
60 A hologram appeared over the globe with the number ten glowing in large
61 numbers. The team looked at each other as the display showed nine, then eight.
62 The Geiger counter went crazy with the radiation spike.
42 63
43 Another hologram appeared over the countdown that explained everything. The lead surgeon closed his eyes after he read its display.
64 Another hologram appeared over the countdown that explained everything. The
65 lead surgeon closed his eyes after he read its display.
44 66
45 67 "This device may not be removed under penalty of law except by the consumer." "This device may not be removed under penalty of law except by the consumer."
File shorts/ubw_pic_story004.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..e5cbcd7)
1 Nobody chases the dragon anymore, and everybody knows it.
2
3 Just like nobody steals anymore, or kills, or rapes. The social engineering of
4 the last century has seen to all of that. Everybody knows it, so nobody talks
5 about it. It would be like talking about the weather, which hasn't changed for
6 a generation. They engineered that, too. Everything's perfect, nothing's out of
7 place. Heaven on Earth, if you believe all the news-comm chatter. We've all
8 attained Nirvana together, one big, happy, global family.
9
10 A shame that it's all just pollyanna bullshit.
11
12 We were looking at proof of that in a small, dingy, filthy shithole that
13 somehow fell through the cracks when the world achieved perfection. Places like
14 this don't make the travel brochures, the lists of things to see and do. On a
15 torn mattress stained with hells knew what, lay what used to be a pretty woman.
16 Couldn't have been more than twenty, didn't look older than sixty. Her arms and
17 legs had more tracks than a railroad station, and an anatomy class could have a
18 field day without ever touching a scalpel.
19
20 Bad thing about chasing the dragon: sometimes you catch it. That only ever ends
21 one way.
22
23 My partner is a product of his times, a company man. He does what he's told
24 because he believes what they tell him, and he doesn't scratch too far beneath
25 the surface. Everything at face value, that's his motto. Strange, considering
26 our line of work.
27
28 You might be asking why they need cops in a world without crime. Good question
29 deserves a good answer. Simply put, in a perfect world, bad things don't
30 happen. No one drowns, falls out a window, gets cancer and dies. Those are all
31 things of the past. Everybody knows that.
32
33 Everybody but her, apparently.
34
35 "What the heck happened here?" my partner asked, using what passes for
36 profanity in an enlightened society.
37
38 "The fuck does it look like happened?" I replied, using real profanity from
39 when society was less enlightened but more interesting.
40
41 I'm an atavist, a throwback. I've been accused of being a mutant, a result of
42 my genes spending time with the wrong crowd. They used to talk about my need
43 for realignment until I realigned one of the more vocal proponents. Now he
44 talks in whispers, and his buddies got the point.
45
46 They suffer me because I do the job nobody else wants. I slog through the muck
47 they deny exists and keep the monsters living there from tracking up their
48 carpets. I help them live in their perfect home in their perfect neighborhoods
49 on their perfect planet. I help them pretend that nothing goes bump in the
50 night.
51
52 I keep the dragon from their doorsteps.
53
54 "It looks like what I've read about in history class," my partner said, "but
55 this doesn't happen anymore. There hasn't been a case like this..."
56
57 "...in a week," I finished for him, ignoring his widened eyes as I slowly
58 walked the room.
59
60 There wasn't much to see. Her clothes piled pitifully on the floor in a huddle
61 of filthy and shredded rags next to the bed. A scarred and charred table with a
62 needle and spoon wobbled on legs of uneven length. Vinegar stung my nose as the
63 open window did nothing to stir the air in what felt like a sauna. No purse, no
64 possessions. Nothing to prove that she ever existed.
65
66 If they have their way, she never did.
67
68 Dead awhile. The hand I picked up was cold, pale, almost blue from the veins
69 showing through her almost translucent skin. I wiped down a spotted waterglass
70 and pressed her fingers around it, then wrapped it in what was left of her
71 shirt. Sticking it in my pocket, I met my partner's raised eyebrows.
72
73 "She lived, and somebody, somewhere cared about that. I find out who she was, I
74 find them. They'll want to know."
75
76 "She was nobody. A piece of trash that someone threw away. Probably failed the
77 pysche evals and went underground. Who cares about someone like that?"
78
79 I used to wonder how people knew when I got angry even when I didn't speak. One
80 day, somebody told me when I get angry enough, my eyes turn green. I've never
81 seen it, but apparently, green means go. Go somewhere safe. He backed up
82 against the wall and wouldn't meet my eyes.
83
84 "Maybe there's people would say the same about you," I said. "Maybe nobody
85 would give a shit if I shredded you and flushed you town the toilet. Maybe I'd
86 be doing the world a favor. Or maybe, there's somebody out there somewhere that
87 even cares about a pathetic asshole like you. Maybe somebody who would want to
88 know if that was you," I finished with a jerk of my head.
89
90 He turned red in the face, his mouth working as if he had something thoughtful
91 to say, then realized he never would and ran from the room like death was
92 contagious. I forgot him before his shadow left the doorway, my attention back
93 on the girl.
94
95 She had been somebody's sister, daughter, maybe mother, and now she was a Jane
96 Doe in a city full of them. Nameless, rootless, and all too soon lifeless, they
97 drifted in the undercurrents, looking for what the rest of the world had fall
98 in its lap and that they somehow missed out on. They lived on the scraps, the
99 leftovers, the dregs that drifted to them on air almost unbreathable, flowed to
100 them on water made toxic. Every day a fight for what everybody else took for
101 granted.
102
103 With nowhere to go and nobody to turn to, they had only one option left, one
104 source for what it is that everybody's looking for.
105
106 To flee the demons, they chase the dragon, hoping that its strength will give
107 them some of their own.
108
109 The late-morning sun set my eyes to watering as they fought to adjust.
110
111 Bad thing about catching the dragon. It only ever ends one way.
File shorts/ubw_pic_story005.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..b7030a1)
1 On the charts, it's called Gamma-12-Sigma-Epsilon. Don't ask me why. Onboard
2 ship, it's The Swamp. Terrestrial planet orbiting an F8 star. Hot and muggy
3 with a slightly higher gravity, it was the ideal vacation spot for the guy
4 who's been everywhere.
5
6 If Hell is in your travel plans, that is.
7
8 The three of us had made the trip in cryosleep, so the fifty years it had taken
9 to get here passed in a single night's dream. We were slow to rouse after the
10 systems woke us, the effects of such a long suspension playing hell with our
11 autonomics. Nothing that a few cups of joe and a few smokes couldn't cure, and
12 in a couple hours we were standing almost in uniform watching readings scroll
13 down our screens.
14
15 The probes had been sent out first. They'd achieved orbit and mindlessly spat
16 out their findings ever since. There was a ton of data to sift through, but we
17 focused on the highlights. Our mission was simple and had been driven into us
18 with iron bureaucratic spikes.
19
20 Get here, get a survey, get home. Leave it the way you find it. No
21 interference, no tampering. No indigenous samples. We scan, they plan. We show
22 the guts, they get the glory. It's the story of our lives, but they pay well
23 for the privilege.
24
25 "Life signs are high, but energy levels are low," Parker said. "Pre-industrial?"
26 "Must be," Samuels replied. "Pre-sentient, maybe. Might not be anything
27 higher-evolved than snakes for all we know."
28 "Not according to this," I said, reading from another screen. "Sat-photos are
29 showing what could be buildings and roads."
30 "Indicative. Not definitive," Samuels said, pursing his lips.
31 "One way to know. We got to go," Parker said, dropping his cigarette butt into
32 the dregs of his coffee. "Let's hit it and get it. Time is money."
33 "Our time, their money," I said to a round of snorts.
34
35 With a collective snort, we input the figures for the final approach. We'd be
36 eating lunch dirt-side if all went right.
37
38 It did, and we touched down as lightly as a lover's goodnight kiss in a small
39 clearing ringed by trees that dwarfed anything back home. We waited on the
40 shipboard systems to give the go/no-go as we outfitted for an extended stay.
41 When the lights all went green, we strapped on our weapons and popped the hatch.
42
43 It was like breathing through gauze. The air was heavy enough to stir with a
44 spoon, and the higher temp and gravity didn't help at all. We'd be taking it
45 slow and easy until we adjusted, but at least we didn't need to carry extra
46 oxygen.
47
48 Parker took point and I brought up the rear, scanners whirring. We took
49 pictures, analyzed soil, listened for broadcast signals, the works. We followed
50 the book, went by the numbers. There is no room for error this far from home,
51 no such thing as a slight risk.
52
53 We'd gone maybe a couple clicks before we climbed a hill and overlooked a river
54 that made the Amazon look like a drainpipe. It had cut a huge valley amongst
55 several taller hills and ran as far as we could see in front of us. Idyllic as
56 you could ask for, and a long way down.
57
58 The air grew even thicker the further we descended and a wet mist threatened to
59 clog our noses and throats. Wrapping bandannas around our faces, we took a rest
60 on the right bank of the river beneath a green canopy so thick that it seemed
61 like evening. We switched on our lights when we resumed our journey.
62
63 A few hours later we reached another clearing, larger and more bare. At its
64 center was a large wooden hut, intricately carved with symbols that we had no
65 frame of reference to decipher.
66
67 "That look familiar to you?" Parker asked, pointing to the top of the hut.
68
69 It sure did. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was the head of a huge
70 alligator, complete with beady eyes. I had the creepy feeling that those eyes
71 followed me as I moved.
72
73 "Maybe their god or something?" Samuels' guess was as good as mine. I shrugged.
74
75 "I don't see anybody around. Maybe it's abandoned," Parker said. I shrugged
76 again.
77
78 "Let's split up and meet on the backside," Samuels said. My third shrug was met
79 with a pair of grimaces.
80
81 What do I know? They say split up, I say fine. They say stay put, I say fine.
82 The book covers both scenarios, so I say what difference does it make?
83
84 We spread out and approached the clearing in a rough triangle. As we neared the
85 hut, I lost sight of the other two, but everything was quiet, so I didn't
86 worry. It wasn't that far to the rendevous point behind the hut.
87
88 Then all the hells broke loose. Parker and Samuels both screamed bloody murder.
89 In the time it took me to whirl and get a bearing, they went silent. Some loud
90 thrashing and rustling was all I heard as I reversed my course and rounded the
91 hut.
92
93 Nothing and no one. At first glance, nothing was amiss other than nothing was
94 there. Parker and Samuels were gone. On closer examination, I found some blood
95 splatters and a few scales. I drew my weapon and completed my circle of the hut.
96
97 I made another full circle without finding anything that told me where the
98 others were. Halfway around, I found a door that hadn't been there on my last
99 circuit. Dark as pitch inside and silent as a tomb. Two hands on my weapon, I
100 went through.
101
102 Sitting on a mammoth wooden throne was a replica of the beast on the top of the
103 hut. As I entered, it rose to a height of ten or twelve feet. It's long mouth
104 opened showing me rows of sharp teeth in what could have been a smile on a face
105 less monstrous. Flicking its tongue, it took a couple of steps forward and my
106 eyes dropped to its feet. Staring back at me were the lifeless faces of Parker
107 on his left foot and Samuels on his right. Bile rose in my throat as I closed
108 my eyes to the hideous sight.
109
110 The beast shuffled a few steps closer, and my eyes opened of their own accord.
111 Lifting one of his large, clawed feet, he spoke in a guttural snarl that was
112 only slightly less unmanning than what it was he said.
113
114 "Like my new boots?"
File shorts/ubw_pic_story005.txt deleted (index fe6c336..0000000)
1 Nobody chases the dragon anymore, and everybody knows it.
2
3 Just like nobody steals anymore, or kills, or rapes. The social engineering of the last century has seen to all of that. Everybody knows it, so nobody talks about it. It would be like talking about the weather, which hasn't changed for a generation. They engineered that, too. Everything's perfect, nothing's out of place. Heaven on Earth, if you believe all the news-comm chatter. We've all attained Nirvana together, one big, happy, global family.
4
5 A shame that it's all just pollyanna bullshit.
6
7 We were looking at proof of that in a small, dingy, filthy shithole that somehow fell through the cracks when the world achieved perfection. Places like this don't make the travel brochures, the lists of things to see and do. On a torn mattress stained with hells knew what, lay what used to be a pretty woman. Couldn't have been more than twenty, didn't look older than sixty. Her arms and legs had more tracks than a railroad station, and an anatomy class could have a field day without ever touching a scalpel.
8
9 Bad thing about chasing the dragon: sometimes you catch it. That only ever ends one way.
10
11 My partner is a product of his times, a company man. He does what he's told because he believes what they tell him, and he doesn't scratch too far beneath the surface. Everything at face value, that's his motto. Strange, considering our line of work.
12
13 You might be asking why they need cops in a world without crime. Good question deserves a good answer. Simply put, in a perfect world, bad things don't happen. No one drowns, falls out a window, gets cancer and dies. Those are all things of the past. Everybody knows that.
14
15 Everybody but her, apparently.
16
17 "What the heck happened here?" my partner asked, using what passes for profanity in an enlightened society.
18
19 "The fuck does it look like happened?" I replied, using real profanity from when society was less enlightened but more interesting.
20
21 I'm an atavist, a throwback. I've been accused of being a mutant, a result of my genes spending time with the wrong crowd. They used to talk about my need for realignment until I realigned one of the more vocal proponents. Now he talks in whispers, and his buddies got the point.
22
23 They suffer me because I do the job nobody else wants. I slog through the muck they deny exists and keep the monsters living there from tracking up their carpets. I help them live in their perfect home in their perfect neighborhoods on their perfect planet. I help them pretend that nothing goes bump in the night.
24
25 I keep the dragon from their doorsteps.
26
27 "It looks like what I've read about in history class," my partner said, "but this doesn't happen anymore. There hasn't been a case like this..."
28
29 "...in a week," I finished for him, ignoring his widened eyes as I slowly walked the room.
30
31 There wasn't much to see. Her clothes piled pitifully on the floor in a huddle of filthy and shredded rags next to the bed. A scarred and charred table with a needle and spoon wobbled on legs of uneven length. Vinegar stung my nose as the open window did nothing to stir the air in what felt like a sauna. No purse, no possessions. Nothing to prove that she ever existed.
32
33 If they have their way, she never did.
34
35 Dead awhile. The hand I picked up was cold, pale, almost blue from the veins showing through her almost translucent skin. I wiped down a spotted waterglass and pressed her fingers around it, then wrapped it in what was left of her shirt. Sticking it in my pocket, I met my partner's raised eyebrows.
36
37 "She lived, and somebody, somewhere cared about that. I find out who she was, I find them. They'll want to know."
38
39 "She was nobody. A piece of trash that someone threw away. Probably failed the pysche evals and went underground. Who cares about someone like that?"
40
41 I used to wonder how people knew when I got angry even when I didn't speak. One day, somebody told me when I get angry enough, my eyes turn green. I've never seen it, but apparently, green means go. Go somewhere safe. He backed up against the wall and wouldn't meet my eyes.
42
43 "Maybe there's people would say the same about you," I said. "Maybe nobody would give a shit if I shredded you and flushed you town the toilet. Maybe I'd be doing the world a favor. Or maybe, there's somebody out there somewhere that even cares about a pathetic asshole like you. Maybe somebody who would want to know if that was you," I finished with a jerk of my head.
44
45 He turned red in the face, his mouth working as if he had something thoughtful to say, then realized he never would and ran from the room like death was contagious. I forgot him before his shadow left the doorway, my attention back on the girl.
46
47 She had been somebody's sister, daughter, maybe mother, and now she was a Jane Doe in a city full of them. Nameless, rootless, and all too soon lifeless, they drifted in the undercurrents, looking for what the rest of the world had fall in its lap and that they somehow missed out on. They lived on the scraps, the leftovers, the dregs that drifted to them on air almost unbreathable, flowed to them on water made toxic. Every day a fight for what everybody else took for granted.
48
49 With nowhere to go and nobody to turn to, they had only one option left, one source for what it is that everybody's looking for.
50
51 To flee the demons, they chase the dragon, hoping that its strength will give them some of their own.
52
53 The late-morning sun set my eyes to watering as they fought to adjust.
54
55 Bad thing about catching the dragon. It only ever ends one way.
File shorts/ubw_pic_story006.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..ab235f5)
1 I'll be damned if they didn't pull it off. Staring at their own extinction,
2 they pulled themselves back from the brink and now they're rolling in dough.
3 Others are looking at how they can catch lightning in a bottle and pull off the
4 same trick. Good luck to them. People are smarter now.
5
6 I was there when it happened, on the ground floor, at point zero, when they
7 saved the day. I could have stopped it, I guess, if I had known they really had
8 a chance. But the idea was so radical, so obvious and at its core so simple
9 that I figured it never had a prayer.
10
11 That will teach me to overestimate the intelligence of my fellow man.
12
13 The history books will say that it was the intrepid boldness of a small band of
14 adventurers, huddled together in the dark of night to claw their salvation from
15 the jaws of destitution. History is written by the victors, so I have no doubt
16 as to how it will read. Well, I can tell you, the history books are horseshit,
17 but people do love its smell in the morning.
18
19 The truth of the matter is that a group of five clowns, myself included, met in
20 what was left of a shabby conference room in some rathole hotel that was so
21 decrepit that the looters had left it be in the last set of riots. The entire
22 city goes up in flames, and the only standing monument is the one building that
23 should have imploded under its own weight, like the one house on a street
24 untouched by a tornado. Go figure.
25
26 Anyway, these clowns are sitting around this water-warped veneer table in
27 secretary chairs that were missing wheels, clutching dog-eared and torn file
28 folders like they were the maps to El Dorado. Mismatched, ill-fitting clothes
29 that made them look like skid-row bums even without the dirty scraggle coloring
30 cheeks and necks. All we needed was a couple of paper bags with bottles in them
31 and we could have been extras in one of those docu-dramas about the crazy,
32 homeless people who moved into the old city buildings claiming to be the new
33 government.
34
35 Those wackos would have been better than what we have now. Some more truthful
36 grist for the historical mill, if anyone ever cares.
37
38 Anyway, these guys are sitting around this table, and the two ad guys that they
39 had dug up from some asylum or prison somewhere start gibbering in what goes
40 for corp speak nowadays. Talking about upward mobility of product consumption,
41 correspondent maximization of production facilities and universal saturation of
42 local communication networks. I think they even mentioned something about
43 sufficient leverage of financial force. They went on, then on some more, then
44 even when you thought they had to be out of hyphenated words, on a little more.
45 I could have slept through some of it and never known the difference.
46
47 The rest of the guys were eating it up, beady little eyes lighting up like
48 those halloween toys with the little bulbs that make their eyes wierd colors. I
49 swear that a couple of them were even drooling, but whether from their
50 excitement or from a natural proclivity I never could figure. Knowing them, a
51 little bit of both.
52
53 So the meeting finally breaks up with all the alacrity of a war council taking
54 a battlefield, and I pretty much blew off the whole thing. I have trouble
55 remembering why I was even there, to tell the truth, and I certainly never
56 believed that anything would ever come of it. Crazy people have crazy ideas all
57 the time. Who knew that sometimes crazy trumps smart?
58
59 Well, nothing happened for so long I figured everybody had forgotten the whole
60 thing, then the vans started showing up. Starting in the poorer neighborhoods,
61 they prowled the slums like a band of pedophiles in their ugly purple vans with
62 their loudspeakers blaring cartoon Christmas carols. At first, people just
63 ignored them. They were loud and obnoxious, but they seemed harmless enough, so
64 nobody made much of a fuss.
65
66 Then the kids got involved.
67
68 At first in pairs, then in small groups, kids started trailing those vans like
69 hunters after big game. In the beginning, the vans never stopped. They just
70 kept patrolling the neighborhoods in ever-widening circles, making themselves
71 part of the scenery. Then one day, it all changed. I guess, looking back, it
72 really was inevitable, all things considered.
73
74 The riots had not only taken out most of the government, they had put a serious
75 dent in the food distribution networks. The soup kitchens could no longer make
76 a dent in the hordes of those needing their help, so hunger and lawlessness
77 were constant companions on streets no one dared walk alone even in daylight.
78
79 Miraculously, the vans were safe. Nobody ever screwed with them. Maybe nobody
80 figured it was worth the trouble.
81
82 One day, the vans began stopping, and tribes of dirty little children swarmed
83 them looking for what they could get. They always left happy, no matter how
84 many there were or how long it took. Some days they looked like ants swarming a
85 picnic, what with their climbing, scrabbling, pushing and shoving. Day after
86 day, week after week, the same scene, repeated over and over all over town.
87 From there it was only a matter of time.
88
89 It took a while, but they started raking in money hand over fist. Not from the
90 vans, no way. That was just what the vultures called a loss leader. It was from
91 all those poor kids needing their help afterward. Business started booming, and
92 before you know, there was one of them on every corner. It started with the
93 kids, but by the time it was done, everyone was hooked. If it had been drugs, I
94 could have understood.
95
96 But this, I still shake my head when I think about it.
97
98 So looking back, those dentists had the right idea. From the abyss to the
99 heights in one easy step. Oh, and what was so special about those vans?
100
101 Spray-painted on the side in sloppy letters were the words, "Free Candy".
File shorts/ubw_pic_story006.txt deleted (index adea2a2..0000000)
1 On the charts, it's called Gamma-12-Sigma-Epsilon. Don't ask me why. Onboard ship, it's The Swamp. Terrestrial planet orbiting an F8 star. Hot and muggy with a slightly higher gravity, it was the ideal vacation spot for the guy who's been everywhere.
2
3 If Hell is in your travel plans, that is.
4
5 The three of us had made the trip in cryosleep, so the fifty years it had taken to get here passed in a single night's dream. We were slow to rouse after the systems woke us, the effects of such a long suspension playing hell with our autonomics. Nothing that a few cups of joe and a few smokes couldn't cure, and in a couple hours we were standing almost in uniform watching readings scroll down our screens.
6
7 The probes had been sent out first. They'd achieved orbit and mindlessly spat out their findings ever since. There was a ton of data to sift through, but we focused on the highlights. Our mission was simple and had been driven into us with iron bureaucratic spikes.
8
9 Get here, get a survey, get home. Leave it the way you find it. No interference, no tampering. No indigenous samples. We scan, they plan. We show the guts, they get the glory. It's the story of our lives, but they pay well for the privilege.
10
11 "Life signs are high, but energy levels are low," Parker said. "Pre-industrial?"
12 "Must be," Samuels replied. "Pre-sentient, maybe. Might not be anything higher-evolved than snakes for all we know."
13 "Not according to this," I said, reading from another screen. "Sat-photos are showing what could be buildings and roads."
14 "Indicative. Not definitive," Samuels said, pursing his lips.
15 "One way to know. We got to go," Parker said, dropping his cigarette butt into the dregs of his coffee. "Let's hit it and get it. Time is money."
16 "Our time, their money," I said to a round of snorts.
17
18 With a collective snort, we input the figures for the final approach. We'd be eating lunch dirt-side if all went right.
19
20 It did, and we touched down as lightly as a lover's goodnight kiss in a small clearing ringed by trees that dwarfed anything back home. We waited on the shipboard systems to give the go/no-go as we outfitted for an extended stay. When the lights all went green, we strapped on our weapons and popped the hatch.
21
22 It was like breathing through gauze. The air was heavy enough to stir with a spoon, and the higher temp and gravity didn't help at all. We'd be taking it slow and easy until we adjusted, but at least we didn't need to carry extra oxygen.
23
24 Parker took point and I brought up the rear, scanners whirring. We took pictures, analyzed soil, listened for broadcast signals, the works. We followed the book, went by the numbers. There is no room for error this far from home, no such thing as a slight risk.
25
26 We'd gone maybe a couple clicks before we climbed a hill and overlooked a river that made the Amazon look like a drainpipe. It had cut a huge valley amongst several taller hills and ran as far as we could see in front of us. Idyllic as you could ask for, and a long way down.
27
28 The air grew even thicker the further we descended and a wet mist threatened to clog our noses and throats. Wrapping bandannas around our faces, we took a rest on the right bank of the river beneath a green canopy so thick that it seemed like evening. We switched on our lights when we resumed our journey.
29
30 A few hours later we reached another clearing, larger and more bare. At its center was a large wooden hut, intricately carved with symbols that we had no frame of reference to decipher.
31
32 "That look familiar to you?" Parker asked, pointing to the top of the hut.
33
34 It sure did. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was the head of a huge alligator, complete with beady eyes. I had the creepy feeling that those eyes followed me as I moved.
35
36 "Maybe their god or something?" Samuels' guess was as good as mine. I shrugged.
37
38 "I don't see anybody around. Maybe it's abandoned," Parker said. I shrugged again.
39
40 "Let's split up and meet on the backside," Samuels said. My third shrug was met with a pair of grimaces.
41
42 What do I know? They say split up, I say fine. They say stay put, I say fine. The book covers both scenarios, so I say what difference does it make?
43
44 We spread out and approached the clearing in a rough triangle. As we neared the hut, I lost sight of the other two, but everything was quiet, so I didn't worry. It wasn't that far to the rendevous point behind the hut.
45
46 Then all the hells broke loose. Parker and Samuels both screamed bloody murder. In the time it took me to whirl and get a bearing, they went silent. Some loud thrashing and rustling was all I heard as I reversed my course and rounded the hut.
47
48 Nothing and no one. At first glance, nothing was amiss other than nothing was there. Parker and Samuels were gone. On closer examination, I found some blood splatters and a few scales. I drew my weapon and completed my circle of the hut.
49
50 I made another full circle without finding anything that told me where the others were. Halfway around, I found a door that hadn't been there on my last circuit. Dark as pitch inside and silent as a tomb. Two hands on my weapon, I went through.
51
52 Sitting on a mammoth wooden throne was a replica of the beast on the top of the hut. As I entered, it rose to a height of ten or twelve feet. It's long mouth opened showing me rows of sharp teeth in what could have been a smile on a face less monstrous. Flicking its tongue, it took a couple of steps forward and my eyes dropped to its feet. Staring back at me were the lifeless faces of Parker on his left foot and Samuels on his right. Bile rose in my throat as I closed my eyes to the hideous sight.
53
54 The beast shuffled a few steps closer, and my eyes opened of their own accord. Lifting one of his large, clawed feet, he spoke in a guttural snarl that was only slightly less unmanning than what it was he said.
55
56 "Like my new boots?"
File shorts/ubw_pic_story007.fold added (mode: 100644) (index 0000000..17017d3)
1 Carousel
2
3 The planet killer rode high in the sky, a second moon growing larger by the
4 hour. 1983-Delta, first spotted two years ago, was on a collision course. No
5 mathematical wizardry, no technological miracles. Nothing short of divine
6 intervention would alter the course of an object the size of Russia bearing
7 down on what was now an orbiting madhouse. Those so inclined had been praying
8 feverishly for months, seeking a stay of execution.
9
10 All they got for their trouble was God's busy signal. Time had run out. The
11 earth was doomed.
12
13 When the story's ending first became apparent, the eggheads had gone to work,
14 at first with the full faith and funding of their respective governments. As
15 time grew shorter, increasing public panic had strained resources, diverting
16 them from research to internal control, and vital government systems had
17 demanded their due. The irony of those demands had completely sublimated to the
18 bureaucratic instinct for self-preservation. Not surprisingly, after a year on
19 an ever accelerating treadmill, official patience wore out, and any semblance
20 of international cooperation evaporated, ending in the dissolution of the
21 United Nations, finally ending the sham of its existence. Too many nations
22 wanted too badly for their flag to fly on the instrument of Earth's survival.
23 That flag would then fly over what was left of the world.
24
25 Few lamented its passing, and those few soon had more pressing concerns.
26
27 Finally, desperately, a small group of scientists had convened at a mountain
28 resort in the Andes. Specialists in physics, astronomy, quantum theory and
29 electronics came together, on their own with no official sanction, to take it
30 on themselves to save the world. They had a plan, hastily worked out in
31 notebooks, on napkins, and scrawled in marker on sheets and curtains. Every
32 surface that would hold and imprint was pressed into service, and as the earth
33 exhibited its first signs of the meteor's influence, the blueprints and
34 equations were given life.
35
36 Today was the day; they would have one chance. The good news was that if they
37 failed, no one would ever know. One turn of the card, one flip of a coin.
38 Nothing certain, nothing guaranteed. Odds and percentages and probability were
39 all they had left, such inadequate tools with which to save a planet.
40
41 Time enough to roll the dice, one time, for it all.
42
43 The idea had been to return to the time of the object's first appearance, the
44 time when direct action would have availed them most, and remove the threat
45 once and for all. A small chamber, a large laser, and a steady hand would
46 combine to save a world that some of them thought undeserving of deliverance.
47 It had been suggested to sit by and do nothing, to let the universe render its
48 judgment for the sins of the race. Suggested, debated, then discarded.
49
50 They would act in the place of the indifferent gods, becoming gods themselves.
51
52 He took his seat in the chamber, final calibrations and adjustments registering
53 on the screens before him. Numbers produced by castoff equipment, equations and
54 assumptions patched together by dreams and prayers. A shaky foundation upon
55 which to rest the hopes of a world.
56
57 He looked around the room through the clear plastic cuppola, meeting the eyes
58 of everyone present. One after another, they straightened, came to attention
59 and solemnly nodded. They had done their best, the best anyone could, and if
60 their efforts fell short, they would die with the honor of having tried.
61
62 He answered their nods with one of his own, then pressed the activation button.
63 The fabrics of space and time shredded around him, leaving him alone in a
64 maelstrom of forces never meant to wed. Lights flickered, dials spun, monitors
65 screeched and howled for attention. He was the constant in a universe gone
66 wild, a primordal event of man's creation. At the appointed time, he flipped a
67 switch, and order sprang from the chaos.
68
69 He was directly in front of the Delta, well within the range of his weapon. A
70 quick scan showed the optimum target for a directed strike, a faultline running
71 perpendicular to the equator. With the energy at his disposal, he would split
72 the meteor like an egg, driving its halves far enough apart to glide harmlessly
73 wide of their mark, saving his home and everyone on it. With a dry mouth and
74 wet hands, he cycled up the laser.
75
76 His aim was true. Huge cracks appeared on the screens before him, widening as
77 the process he had started took its course. Debris the size of cars slammed
78 into the corona surrounding his equipment, obliterated by the forces warping
79 around him. The two halves separated, and a quick check of their trajectory
80 confirmed his success. The danger had passed, and he would have a home to go
81 back to.
82
83 Heart pounding, fighting the tremors that racked his body, he again pressed the
84 activation button. Programmed to return to its original state, his chariot
85 would return him to the point of its departure, only moments later. The forces
86 around him twisted and gnarled, fighting to regain their natural forms. He was
87 again surrounded by a cacophany, a triumphant symphony, its crescendo rising to
88 take him home on a wave of pride and exhultation. They had won, not just for
89 themselves, but for those who could now come after.
90
91 The room reappeared before him, a short line of red-eyed men standing at
92 attention before him. As he waved and shouted in his soundproof enclosure, he
93 watched in horror as they straightened. One after another they gave a solemn
94 nod, trusting him with their last desperate hope for survival. His elated cries
95 were strangled by horrified gasps as he manically scanned the screens and dials
96 before him, numbed by what they said.
97
98 The planet killer rode high in the sky, a second moon growing larger by the
99 hour. 1984-Delta, first spotted two years ago was on a collision course...
File shorts/ubw_pic_story007.txt deleted (index 6102772..0000000)
1 I'll be damned if they didn't pull it off. Staring at their own extinction, they pulled themselves back from the brink and now they're rolling in dough. Others are looking at how they can catch lightning in a bottle and pull off the same trick. Good luck to them. People are smarter now.
2
3 I was there when it happened, on the ground floor, at point zero, when they saved the day. I could have stopped it, I guess, if I had known they really had a chance. But the idea was so radical, so obvious and at its core so simple that I figured it never had a prayer.
4
5 That will teach me to overestimate the intelligence of my fellow man.
6
7 The history books will say that it was the intrepid boldness of a small band of adventurers, huddled together in the dark of night to claw their salvation from the jaws of destitution. History is written by the victors, so I have no doubt as to how it will read. Well, I can tell you, the history books are horseshit, but people do love its smell in the morning.
8
9 The truth of the matter is that a group of five clowns, myself included, met in what was left of a shabby conference room in some rathole hotel that was so decrepit that the looters had left it be in the last set of riots. The entire city goes up in flames, and the only standing monument is the one building that should have imploded under its own weight, like the one house on a street untouched by a tornado. Go figure.
10
11 Anyway, these clowns are sitting around this water-warped veneer table in secretary chairs that were missing wheels, clutching dog-eared and torn file folders like they were the maps to El Dorado. Mismatched, ill-fitting clothes that made them look like skid-row bums even without the dirty scraggle coloring cheeks and necks. All we needed was a couple of paper bags with bottles in them and we could have been extras in one of those docu-dramas about the crazy, homeless people who moved into the old city buildings claiming to be the new government.
12
13 Those wackos would have been better than what we have now. Some more truthful grist for the historical mill, if anyone ever cares.
14
15 Anyway, these guys are sitting around this table, and the two ad guys that they had dug up from some asylum or prison somewhere start gibbering in what goes for corp speak nowadays. Talking about upward mobility of product consumption, correspondent maximization of production facilities and universal saturation of local communication networks. I think they even mentioned something about sufficient leverage of financial force. They went on, then on some more, then even when you thought they had to be out of hyphenated words, on a little more. I could have slept through some of it and never known the difference.
16
17 The rest of the guys were eating it up, beady little eyes lighting up like those halloween toys with the little bulbs that make their eyes wierd colors. I swear that a couple of them were even drooling, but whether from their excitement or from a natural proclivity I never could figure. Knowing them, a little bit of both.
18
19 So the meeting finally breaks up with all the alacrity of a war council taking a battlefield, and I pretty much blew off the whole thing. I have trouble remembering why I was even there, to tell the truth, and I certainly never believed that anything would ever come of it. Crazy people have crazy ideas all the time. Who knew that sometimes crazy trumps smart?
20
21 Well, nothing happened for so long I figured everybody had forgotten the whole thing, then the vans started showing up. Starting in the poorer neighborhoods, they prowled the slums like a band of pedophiles in their ugly purple vans with their loudspeakers blaring cartoon Christmas carols. At first, people just ignored them. They were loud and obnoxious, but they seemed harmless enough, so nobody made much of a fuss.
22
23 Then the kids got involved.
24
25 At first in pairs, then in small groups, kids started trailing those vans like hunters after big game. In the beginning, the vans never stopped. They just kept patrolling the neighborhoods in ever-widening circles, making themselves part of the scenery. Then one day, it all changed. I guess, looking back, it really was inevitable, all things considered.
26
27 The riots had not only taken out most of the government, they had put a serious dent in the food distribution networks. The soup kitchens could no longer make a dent in the hordes of those needing their help, so hunger and lawlessness were constant companions on streets no one dared walk alone even in daylight.
28
29 Miraculously, the vans were safe. Nobody ever screwed with them. Maybe nobody figured it was worth the trouble.
30
31 One day, the vans began stopping, and tribes of dirty little children swarmed them looking for what they could get. They always left happy, no matter how many there were or how long it took. Some days they looked like ants swarming a picnic, what with their climbing, scrabbling, pushing and shoving. Day after day, week after week, the same scene, repeated over and over all over town. From there it was only a matter of time.
32
33 It took a while, but they started raking in money hand over fist. Not from the vans, no way. That was just what the vultures called a loss leader. It was from all those poor kids needing their help afterward. Business started booming, and before you know, there was one of them on every corner. It started with the kids, but by the time it was done, everyone was hooked. If it had been drugs, I could have understood.
34
35 But this, I still shake my head when I think about it.
36
37 So looking back, those dentists had the right idea. From the abyss to the heights in one easy step. Oh, and what was so special about those vans?
38
39 Spray-painted on the side in sloppy letters were the words, "Free Candy".
File shorts/ubw_pic_story008.txt deleted (index 7c3591e..0000000)
1 Carousel
2
3 The planet killer rode high in the sky, a second moon growing larger by the hour. 1983-Delta, first spotted two years ago, was on a collision course. No mathematical wizardry, no technological miracles. Nothing short of divine intervention would alter the course of an object the size of Russia bearing down on what was now an orbiting madhouse. Those so inclined had been praying feverishly for months, seeking a stay of execution.
4
5 All they got for their trouble was God's busy signal. Time had run out. The earth was doomed.
6
7 When the story's ending first became apparent, the eggheads had gone to work, at first with the full faith and funding of their respective governments. As time grew shorter, increasing public panic had strained resources, diverting them from research to internal control, and vital government systems had demanded their due. The irony of those demands had completely sublimated to the bureaucratic instinct for self-preservation. Not surprisingly, after a year on an ever accelerating treadmill, official patience wore out, and any semblance of international cooperation evaporated, ending in the dissolution of the United Nations, finally ending the sham of its existence. Too many nations wanted too badly for their flag to fly on the instrument of Earth's survival. That flag would then fly over what was left of the world.
8
9 Few lamented its passing, and those few soon had more pressing concerns.
10
11 Finally, desperately, a small group of scientists had convened at a mountain resort in the Andes. Specialists in physics, astronomy, quantum theory and electronics came together, on their own with no official sanction, to take it on themselves to save the world. They had a plan, hastily worked out in notebooks, on napkins, and scrawled in marker on sheets and curtains. Every surface that would hold and imprint was pressed into service, and as the earth exhibited its first signs of the meteor's influence, the blueprints and equations were given life.
12
13 Today was the day; they would have one chance. The good news was that if they failed, no one would ever know. One turn of the card, one flip of a coin. Nothing certain, nothing guaranteed. Odds and percentages and probability were all they had left, such inadequate tools with which to save a planet.
14
15 Time enough to roll the dice, one time, for it all.
16
17 The idea had been to return to the time of the object's first appearance, the time when direct action would have availed them most, and remove the threat once and for all. A small chamber, a large laser, and a steady hand would combine to save a world that some of them thought undeserving of deliverance. It had been suggested to sit by and do nothing, to let the universe render its judgment for the sins of the race. Suggested, debated, then discarded.
18
19 They would act in the place of the indifferent gods, becoming gods themselves.
20
21 He took his seat in the chamber, final calibrations and adjustments registering on the screens before him. Numbers produced by castoff equipment, equations and assumptions patched together by dreams and prayers. A shaky foundation upon which to rest the hopes of a world.
22
23 He looked around the room through the clear plastic cuppola, meeting the eyes of everyone present. One after another, they straightened, came to attention and solemnly nodded. They had done their best, the best anyone could, and if their efforts fell short, they would die with the honor of having tried.
24
25 He answered their nods with one of his own, then pressed the activation button. The fabrics of space and time shredded around him, leaving him alone in a maelstrom of forces never meant to wed. Lights flickered, dials spun, monitors screeched and howled for attention. He was the constant in a universe gone wild, a primordal event of man's creation. At the appointed time, he flipped a switch, and order sprang from the chaos.
26
27 He was directly in front of the Delta, well within the range of his weapon. A quick scan showed the optimum target for a directed strike, a faultline running perpendicular to the equator. With the energy at his disposal, he would split the meteor like an egg, driving its halves far enough apart to glide harmlessly wide of their mark, saving his home and everyone on it. With a dry mouth and wet hands, he cycled up the laser.
28
29 His aim was true. Huge cracks appeared on the screens before him, widening as the process he had started took its course. Debris the size of cars slammed into the corona surrounding his equipment, obliterated by the forces warping around him. The two halves separated, and a quick check of their trajectory confirmed his success. The danger had passed, and he would have a home to go back to.
30
31 Heart pounding, fighting the tremors that racked his body, he again pressed the activation button. Programmed to return to its original state, his chariot would return him to the point of its departure, only moments later. The forces around him twisted and gnarled, fighting to regain their natural forms. He was again surrounded by a cacophany, a triumphant symphony, its crescendo rising to take him home on a wave of pride and exhultation. They had won, not just for themselves, but for those who could now come after.
32
33 The room reappeared before him, a short line of red-eyed men standing at attention before him. As he waved and shouted in his soundproof enclosure, he watched in horror as they straightened. One after another they gave a solemn nod, trusting him with their last desperate hope for survival. His elated cries were strangled by horrified gasps as he manically scanned the screens and dials before him, numbed by what they said.
34
35 The planet killer rode high in the sky, a second moon growing larger by the hour. 1984-Delta, first spotted two years ago was on a collision course...
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