Wilson Nepatr was tired. He had been working all day and was ready to go home to his wife, son and his son's imaginary freind Desmond the giant elephant.

In the bustling metropolis of New York City, Wilson Neptar embarked on his usual evening commute homeward. As the subway train chugged along, Wilson's eyelids grew heavy, succumbing to the allure of sleep.
However, his slumber was abruptly shattered by a deafening roar and the screech of metal. The train had abruptly halted, plunging Wilson into darkness. As his senses returned, he realized he was trapped in a desolate alleyway, surrounded by the cackling of menacing figures.
These were the notorious gang known as the Feminine Toddlers, led by their grotesque leader, Baby. With their oversized pink tutus and sharp, pointed teeth, they were a formidable force to behold. To their horror, the gang had mistaken Wilson for a meal and were preparing to feast on him.
But Wilson was no ordinary commuter. With cunning agility, he dodged their clumsy attacks and began to reason with them. He revealed his true identity as a harmless office worker and implored them to spare his life.
Unmoved by his pleas, Baby ordered her minions to feed Wilson to their grotesque captive, a gargantuan, one-eyed baby locked away in their subterranean lair. However, Wilson's wit outmaneuvered them. He slyly unlocked the baby's cage and set the horrifying creature loose upon the gang.
Amidst the chaos, Wilson seized the opportunity to escape. But in his haste, he inadvertently left behind his pants. As he fled into the night, he realized the grave consequences of his near-death experience.
Before he could rectify the situation, however, he was apprehended by the authorities. Throughout his incarceration, Wilson gazed out his cell window, witnessing a surreal sight. A colossal, humanoid elephant ravaged the city, causing widespread destruction.
Undeterred, Wilson devised a daring escape plan. He liberated a knife from the crumbling wall of his cell and used it to sever the bars. Once free, he stumbled upon the elephant, its ivory trunk wreaking havoc.
In an act of desperation, Wilson offered his allegiance to the creature. Together, they forged an unbreakable bond, their combined might unstoppable. They laid siege to the city, crushing the resistance and establishing an iron-fisted dictatorship.
As Wilson expanded his empire, he was astounded to discover a group of dogs playing poker in lieu of performing their assigned tasks. Indignant, he confronted them, but the cunning canines swiftly outwitted him, leaving him stripped of his clothing and exiled into the city's sewers.
There, fate led Wilson to an extraordinary encounter. The one-eyed baby he had once outsmarted had miraculously survived the Feminine Toddlers' attack. Together, they formed an alliance, vowing vengeance against the dogs that had wronged them.
The fight waged long into the night and it seemed unwinnable to Wilson. But something unimaginable happened, the baby cyclops began to wail. The wailing hurt Wilson's ears but when he saw the dogs he saw his ears where getting the best of it. While the dogs were whining on the floor Wilson's old guards jailed the foul mutts.

In the end, their perseverance and unwavering cunning prevailed. With the fall of the dog mafia, Wilson and his monstrous ally emerged as triumphant liberators. And from the ashes of chaos, Wilson's son, Neptar Jr., was crowned King of New York, marking a new era in the city's turbulent history.

“What are you doing here?”

Emma twisted to face me. The chains that connected the swing to the set twisted with her, effectively blocking the guilty look on her face. “Hey, Anns,” she greeted me.

The mulch crunched under my sneakers as I crossed the playground to meet her. The night was silent – even the cicadas had quieted their chirping – which made my steps deafening. I’d always found the quiet of nighttime to be especially peaceful, but tonight it felt eerie.

I sat on the swing beside her. The thick black plastic dug into my hips and I winced both from discomfort and the sudden reminder of how much we’d grown since our last visit to Dodger Playground. Memories flashed behind my eyelids of our knees cracking together as we screamed and laughed as my dad spun us in the tire swing; of tiny shoes against wooden play bridges as we played “The Ground is Lava.”

Those were the days I wanted so desperately to get back. The time before needles and pipes and parties and boys. When the days were long and the nights were longer as we giggled beneath the sheets, giddy at the prospect of breaking bedtime.

As the chains uncrossed they revealed her eyes, piercing blue and completely focused. I hated to admit that I was surprised. These days it was more likely to find Emma high than it was to find her sober. In fact, I don’t think I’d seen Emma this aware and alert since she started dating Jacob over two years ago.

“How did you know I’d be here?” she asked.

And the truth was, I didn’t know. The logical first place I should have checked was the abandoned train station at the edge of town. It was where all the addicts went to get their highs before stumbling home in a heroin-induced haze. But as I drove, something was telling me to make a right instead of a left once I got to Walnut Street. So I did.

After a long moment, I said, “Just a feeling.”

Emma’s mouth did that thing it always did when you got the answer right when she didn’t want you to: the corners tugged up into a grimacing smile before pursing in disdain.

“I was hoping you’d find me,” she said. It was nearly a whisper, almost lost even in the surrounding quiet. She turned away from me, staring straight ahead at the large wooden castle: the epicenter of childhood adventures. I could tell she could see them, too – the memories.

We sat in silence for a long moment. I could smell the nostalgia in the air: fresh-cut grass and damp soil mixed with the distinct smell of incoming rain. I let myself bathe in it, soak into my skin and permeate my senses. I could see Emma sober, smiling as we sat together on the bed, gossiping late into the night. I could hear her laughter, pealing and light. I could feel her hand in mine as we walked together. It felt like what life should have been.

“You’re sober.” I don’t know why I felt the need to say it, but I did. Maybe I needed to know why, or maybe I just needed confirmation, proof of the possibility of the mending of our friendship. Or maybe I needed that to be the reason why.

Either way, she said, “Yeah, I am,” and I felt my heart skip a beat. What should have filled me with joy only left me with a distinct, piercing dread. The lingering nostalgia was wiped away by the same unsettling feeling I’d had when I arrived. Something was wrong.

So many questions fought inside my chest, clawing at my throat, all wanting to come up at once. What won was a strangled, “Why?”

Emma turned back to me with a sad smile. “It sucks that you have to ask that, but I get it.” When I didn’t respond, she finally answered, “I decided that I’m done.”

I frowned. “Done with what?” I asked. Done with drugs? Done with Jacob? Done with the 3am phone calls that she doesn’t remember the next day?

Suddenly, Emma pushed off with her feet, sending her swinging back and forth. She pushed again on the backswing, sending her higher and faster. Before long, she was nearly perpendicular with the bar above my head. “I’m done being sad!” she called out with a crooked smile. She pushed off again and I was almost convinced she would go right around the bar like a loop on a roller coaster. But she swung back down, and as she did, she called “C’mon, Anns! Swing with me!”

For a short moment, it felt like my brain had short-circuited. It had been years since I’d swung, and my first push was awkward, sending me more to the right than back. But before long I righted myself and the muscle memory returned as if it had never left. Like riding a bike, I thought to myself, elated.

I didn’t get nearly as high as she did, nor did I want to, but the smack of cold air against my face and the primal thrill of the motion had my grin matching hers. I glanced over to her and found her matching my speed, pulling at the chains to force the swing up as I ascended. Our gazes met and a bubble of laughter burst out of my mouth.

Emma reached her hand out. I grabbed it.

Together we swung, two pendulums over a pit of bad decisions and even worse memories. I felt young again, my heart lighter than it had been in years. I couldn’t help but to close my eyes, to envision what I thought I had lost – two friends, hands clasped and ready to take on the world together.

I felt the tears well up behind my lids, pooling, ready to overflow as they reopened to greet reality.

And then we were slowing, letting gravity pull us back to center together.

I turned to face Emma.

And she was gone.

Letters to Nobody is a series of short stories presented as fictional letters.

I'm Okay

We were both fifteen, our birthdays just a couple months apart. When we kissed, it was because you spun the bottle and it turned to me. You weren't upset at all like most of the other kids there would have been. You smiled at me and I smiled back. I didn't know your name yet. The walk-in closet was huge, it smelled like moth balls and cedar wood. There was a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

You were just as shy as I was and just as anxious to kiss each other. You said something like we only had a couple minutes before they started knocking and I said we should probably kiss soon, then. So we did. It was a slow easy kiss. Our lips touched and when we pulled apart your eyes were closed. You opened them and pulled me into you and kissed me again.

The knocking on the closet door started. You pressed against my chest, your hands down the back of my thighs as we stood ignoring the banging on the door. When the door finally opened moments later, we ignored the giggles. When the comments like get a room and what are you guys gonna fxck in there started, we kept kissing. You wrapped one leg around me and grabbed my hair as I kissed you. The door closed again, the host said apparently we needed more time.

I heard the host knock and ask if we were decent. The giggles exploded and we laughed. It was sweet, and it was so easy kissing you. You looked down at my jeans and told me that might be a problem and would I like you to take care of it. I said that door would open any second and it probably wouldn't be a good idea. You suggested we go somewhere else as the door opened.

Everyone noticed I was excited to be there. Your face was flush before the door even opened, it burned when everyone saw us walk out. A couple of the girls I had grown up with in elementary school blushed. The boys looked jealous of me. It was the summer before I started high school.

Everyone stayed in the basement and we went outside and sat side by side in the backyard on the steps and I asked you your name. I told you mine. I asked if you thought you might want to hang out later.

We hung out the whole summer. We spent a lot of time alone while your parents weren't home. We kissed and touched each other. I came over your house as I usually did one day, it was August. Your parents had just left. We had hours alone with no interruptions as usual.

* * * * *

Due to the NSFW content of the rest of this story, "I'm Okay", which violates the rules of this subreddit, the uncensored complete version of this story can be found here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/letters/comments/1c0vzvw/im_okay/

Chapter list:

https://www.reddit.com/user/Complex_Articles/comments/1ccugvw/letters_to_nobody_chapter_list/

(NSFW Warning Violence and Strong Language) This is the first part of what I plan to be an ongoing series of short stories. Some stories will span multiple parts some will only be 1 part. Thanks for taking the time to read my first posted story, hope you enjoy!

Part 1/3:

The forest was humid, the air thick as our hero found himself waking. His back was sore with more knots in it then the tree he was meditating against, he looked around and seen he was in the middle of no where nothing around in sight. "That’s weird I could of swore the city was just a short walk west, must of gone farther in the woods then I thought last night". He stood adjusted his sword and pack and began walking towards a town that was now on another plane of existence.

As he wandered through the forest, he pulled his trusty pipe from his sword's sheath. He packed a bowl of his family's weed and held the pipe to his lips, the pipe ignited with a puff of magic, and he begin to smoke and walk. He said aloud, "Maybe that city was to the east, I'm so bad with direction for a ranger", he sighed disappointed in himself. He checked the forest floor for tracks, signs of travel but just animals print in the soft dirt. "God's Leafily you sure got yourself lost again; seems like every other morning I wake up somewhere different". He stopped to tap his pipe out against a tree and have a small snack.

As he pecked away at his snack, he began to tighten the dyed green leather straps on his armor, his large ears flicked trying to keep the bugs away from his thick dark green hair. Suddenly in the distance he heard the sound of steel on steel. He started to run in the direction of the fighting.

As he got closer, he seen a human clad in armor with a great sword fighting off a pack of Goblins. As he got to the tree line just out of view of the combatants, he heard the sound of a spell being cast, that was when he seen the mage in a dark purple cloak with a bright purple dress underneath behind the fighter shoot off a fireball taking out 2 Goblins. A Goblin got underneath the fighter’s sword and stabbed him in the belly, as he stumbled back grabbing the wound. A woman in white robes standing next to the Mage held up her staff and plead to her God, a white light came from his wound as it closed.

The Goblins closing in almost 30 strong as more came from the woods to Leafily's left, but then across the clearing a dwarf in a heavy plate with a large shield came sprinting in giving a deep battle cry. A girl smaller than the Dwarf in all black leather armor leaped out behind him striking a Goblin down and retreated back to hiding. Leafily was reaching for his sword when he heard a great roar from where the dwarf and rogue came from, and a large brown bear burst through the brush crushing a Goblin's skull between his mighty jaws and flinging the body across the clearing. The human seemed to fight harder now that his reinforcement came.

Leafily gazed at the battle before him wondering if he should join in or leave them to their fight, when he saw a Goblins creeping out of the woods behind the mage and priestess. He drew his sword and in a puff of smoke he appeared behind the magic user's not 5 ft from the creeping Goblin and slashed him down telling them, "watch your back" the mage turned and her hood fell from her head blond hair glistened in the soft sun light he seen large Elven ears not as large as his maybe an inch or 2 shorter, she had fine pale skin and she looked him up and down she scoffed. "Filthy forest elf I do not need your assistance" she said in a stuck-up voice "bad enough I have to rely on humans, a dwarf, and a halfling but another filthy lower elf I will not stand for!" Leafily paid her no mind a lot of elves looked down on him for his lifestyle, but he cared not, he cut down more Goblins working his way with the human towards the dwarf and bear.

As the number of Goblins fell, they began to retreat. The fighter and dwarf yelled in unison "Run you green cowards or you will die with your friends" as the bear roared and turned into a slender elf with skin like bark. Leafily tried to slink into the bushes after the green coward’s line, when the priestess called to him stopping him. "Excuse me I want to thank you for stopping that Goblin, my name is Lee-Andra I am a priestess of Pelor I'm sorry for Tauriel she's not a fan of anything that's not a high elf and really not a fan of people covered in dirt". Leafily looked confused he didn't think he was that filthy he had bathed in a river only yesterday. "I'm sorry, do I smell" he asked her confused. She giggled "no look at you all caked in dirt your face and hands are green were you trying to blend into the forest to avoid the goblins"? Leafily began to laugh "no no no, I'm an Eladrin an elf of the Feywild my skin is green". He said pulling his armor up showing his green belly. Her eyes widened as Leafily caught a glimpse of the shocked face of Tauriel, who had clearly overheard his comment.

At this point the human and the dwarf were joined arm and arm in celebration of their victory. "Man it was getting close just before you showed up" the fighter said. "Where did you find that green guy, he really helped clean up those little pests” the dwarf asked. The fighter laughed "I don't even know he just appeared by the girls and started kicking ass". The halfling in all black came out from the bushes and pulling a large sack from her belt she called out, "Let's have a drink to celebrate our new friend the Anti-Goblin". The human and Dwarf cried out "THE ANTI-GOBLIN" holding their hands high in the air. Leafily bowed and said, "Thank you all for the kind words my name is Leafily Greenbud".

The adventuring party gathered around him, patting him on the back and thanking him they offered him a bottle of something to drink and he politely declined. Drew his pipe from the sheath he began to pack a bowl.

Lee-Andra began to introduce the party members. "This human man is our fighter we call him Bronco". The man held his great sword up with a single hand. He looked as if he was flexing every muscle, his long black hair ran down his back. "You kill Goblins almost as good as i do" he said in a cocky yet seemingly joking voice. "The Halfling in all black is our Rogue her name is Daeatrix". She waved from a distance as she was collecting whatever could be worth something from the battlefield. She was completely clad in black but from the eye slits he could see she was young. "The Tanned elf is a druid his name is Finnean, we call him Fin though". Finnean looked Leafily up and down, sniffing at him. "You don’t smell like any Fey I've ever met before" he said in a confused ton, his hair was a dark brown and he wore casual clothes carrying a quarterstaff. "The dwarf is my mentor, a Paladin of Pelor, his name is Gremdol". The Dwarf hung his mace from his belt and held out his hand to shake Leafily's, when Leafily grabbed his hand to shack it the dwarf pulled him in close. He had thick brown hair that was graying fast, deep intense brown eye glared into Leafily's bright bloodshot eye. "Maybe he is the answer to your prayers Lee-andra". The clearing was suddenly filled with a thick tension, the party stopped what they were doing and stared at Leafily. Tauriel chimed in, "Right can we figure this all out not surrounded my corpses". She looked at Daeatrix "are you almost done ransacking the dead"? Daeatrix put a dagger from the ground into her belt and said, "you will thank me for collecting all this when we sell it all and use it to pay our stay for the trip!"

Lee-Andre looked at Leafily with a concerned face, "I truly hope you will join us there's a town about an hour or so up the road we are breaking there for a few days we can fill you in on what's happening". Leafily shrugged casually, "I woke up in this forest starting to think I didn't go to sleep in this forest, but I have no where else to go and nothing else to do, sooooooo why not". He chuckled and began to pull his pouch of weed from his belt, after the bowl was packed, he held it to his lips and once again with the puff of magic it lit he breathed deep and blew a large cloud almost enveloping the party as it wafted through the air and began to dissipate. Lee-Andre and Tauriel choked on the cloud, and as Leafily was beginning to apologize Tauriel stopped dead in her tracks and made her way behind him. "I may have to tolerate you, but I don't need to tolerate your bad habits, keep that horrid scent away from me". She walked about 10 feet behind him with her nose up in the air.

Bronco was trying to convince Finnean to let him ride Fin into combat. "Come on imagine the carnage we could cause" Bronco argued. "I've traveled with you a while now and I've seen you on mount I will have to pass". Lee-Andra and Gremdol where walking at the front of the party talking to them selves. It seemed as if Daeatrix had vanished, then he heard the faint rustling of the bush's and seen her sneaking along side them.

Leafily smiled to the sky, the bright sun shown down from the blue sky as large puffy clouds passed over head. "Have another" Leafily said to himself has he blew a large smoke cloud up into the sky. The travel was uneventful, but the walking seemed to pass faster with company.

As they came to a moderately large village. They found them selves at an inn and tavern. Leafily put his water skins on the counter and handed the bar keep 2 silver pieces, "could you fill these with fresh water please". The barkeep looked the silver over "Never seen silver with these marking, but it looks like silver and that's all that really matters". He took them into his pocket and picked up the skins to fill them, the rest of the party ordered drinks Lee-Andra and Fin got water, Gremdol ordered a pint of the house mead, Bronco ordered 2 (that was weird), Tauriel ordered their finest wine. When the barkeep turned to fill the skins Leafily seen in the corner of his eye, Daeatrix crouched behind the counter taking bottles from the shelf. He shook his head and placed a few more coins on the counter for the bottles.

He sat with the rest of the party they had a map spread across the table, one of Broncos empty goblet was holding down a corner and he was chugging down the second for the other side. He slammed it down, "alright I'll get 2 more for the last corners." When Bronco left the table Gremdol looked at Leafily and said, "we didn't ask him to do this he has a bit of a problem." Bronco returned already finishing his third with 2 more in his other hand. "I *BURP* got 1 for myself to enjoy." He began to drain the fourth, Gremdol shook his head.

"Alright, Leafily I'm sure you noticed all the goblins while you where in the woods" Gremdol asked him. Leafily shook his head, "like I said, I woke up in this forest this morning the first thing I seen besides trees is you lot". Lee-Andra looked confused, "did you smoke yourself stupid before bed and don't remember wandering in, you must have been lucky to not encounter any Goblins they have been plaguing this land for a few years now". Leafily sighed "no no no, I don't think this is the plain I fell asleep on. It happens every once in awhile. Not hundred percent sure how or why but I just keep exploring".

"Interesting, maybe Pelor is using you like an Avatar" Gremdol said stroking his thick beard. Leafily shrugged holding his pipe to his lips and taking a deep haul. Lee-Andra chimed in "the world is getting more dangerous by the day Goblins roaming in large packs is not common. Goblins are usually independent creatures and only end up living in large numbers because there is no where else to go, they normally only keep a small close circle that work together. What is happening in our plane?" Leafily blew a large cloud of smoke to the ceiling "Goblins are different in every plan I've been too; you get similar Goblins on different planes and yes most of the time they only work in small numbers like you said. I've seen Goblins that formed whole cities and civilizations but normally the key differences is usually Maglubiyet". Everyone at the table looked at Leafily. Except for Tauriel she was sitting perfectly straight one leg crossed over the other facing away from everyone eyes closed head turned up, she said "even you religious types don't even know the God of Goblins, I've read of him it's believed he was the God that created the Goblins but they lack the intelligence to understand what a God is".

Lee-Andra began to dig through her large pack and pulled out a massive old book, papers yellowing leather cover cracked and faded. Leafily was just able to make out a title on the book through all the wear it was written in a language he had never seen before. "What is that now" Leafily asked. "It's an old Tome that list all the God's around at the great beginning, the language is lost but I've been able to translate some of it. I think I understand this God better". She turned to a page and pointed at a what looked like a picture of a large black skinned Goblin with well toned arms and large teeth and claws. "So it seems after he created all the Gablinoid creatures the other God's seen how atrocious they were, so they attacked Maglubiyet and locked him away from creating more creatures and aiding them" Lee-Andra said confidently. "He must have busted out or something cuz clearly he must be helping them work together" Finnean added. Gremdol looked at the table with worry clearly on his face. "I guess we have no choice now. Looks like we are going into a Goblin lair to see what's really happening, enjoy tonight and by Pelor's light may it not be our last" Gremdol added sternly.

Bronco slammed his hands on the table laying down 5 silver. "Alrighty then let's have some fun and make some money. 5 silver to whoever can beat me in an arm wrestling competition if you lose you buy me a drink", he shouted throughout the bar. A few large men stood some obviously farmers and some other travelers, they formed a line as the first guy sat down and took Bronco's hand.

The man began to struggle against Bronco pushing so hard his face was red, Bronco didn't even look like he was trying. Then Bronco turned his wrist slightly left and the man was immediately slammed against the table.

Bronco made his way through the contestants and Leafily was watching rather impressed, as a half giant women sat across from him her hand easily twice the size of Bronco's. She began to push and Bronco’s hand started to go down he quickly pushed himself back to the middle and the two began to strain faces turning purple but Bronco managed to turn his wrist and pin her.

Out of breath he said with a cocky smile "Wow you are easily the strongest person to ever try me, I'll have an Ale". She went to get it with an angry look on her face. Leafily put his pipe away took a drink of water and sat across from Bronco holding his arm out to try. "Wooow I think the new guy smoked himself stupid, this twiggy ranger thinks he stands a chance" Bronco said with full drunken bravado. He took Leafily's hand and tried to turn his wrist, but Leafily was locked in place, Bronco pushed harder and harder with all his might struggling against the twiggy ranger face turning a dark purple. With his free hand Leafily gestured like his was turning a baseball cap around, turned his wrist slightly to the left and Bronco went down so hard the table flipped with him. "I'm sorry I forget my strength with this damn thing on" Leafily laughed patting a large cummerbund, it had a circular steel plate with the symbol of a cloud and lightning.

Tauriel's eyes widened "where in the 9 hells did you get a belt of storm giants’ strength" she said in shock. "I got a few treasures that can help us" Leafily said confidently as he put the table back up right. Noticing Bronco was passed out Gremdol tossed Leafily a key saying, "you can share that room with him then since you shouldn't have a problem carrying him there" he passed a key to Lee-Andra and then looked at Finnean "so the girls will bunk together and i guess i will share my room with you". Leafily tossed Gremdol a gold coin "for the room I'm gonna get some rest" he said picking Bronco up with one hand and putting him over his should, and with that everyone made their ways to their rooms for the night.

“Deadly Attractor” (TOC)

by P. Orin Zack

[2003]

Chapter Eleven

… Friday; Halifax …

There was a knock at the door. “Hello?” said a muffled voice. “Are you awake?”

Illicitly making love in an unused floatbed did have its risks. In order to get any privacy, though, you had to alter patient records to make it look like someone had been scheduled in for the night. Frank had arranged midnight zero-‘G’ trysts with Mara before, but this was the first time he’d done it at a MedCenter.

“Ignore it,” she whispered.

Short of booking space in space, this was the most deliciously sensual experience in the world. Only here it was private, or at least it was supposed to be. Wisps of breeze that got caught in the free-fall zone turned them gently like a roast on a spit over the safety cushion below. Wrapped up in one another’s musk, and with the warm sensation of him inside her, they floated in a kind of zen fog: still, yet moving; balanced, yet always about to fall. Fluids acted differently in free-fall, too. Instead of feeling like—

“Mara?”

Suddenly, the floatbed failed, and she fell. Nobody should have known they were—

Another knock.

Now she was alone. But where was Frank? If someone found her here—

“Mara? Wake up. We have to get going.”

And then it was gone. She opened her eyes and took a breath. Halifax. She was visiting with Alex and had been dreaming. Or was she? They’d been talking, too, and it had that feeling of reality to it, the sense that their dream-context tryst was more than just entertainment.

“Yeah, I’m up. Be right out,” she said hazily, trying to recover the details of their discussion.

Once she’d gotten dressed, and she’d had a chance to call her folks and talk with Pegwin for a few minutes, they went out for breakfast. Since the restaurant that Alex picked was so busy, they had time to talk.

“Frank visited dreamside, last night,” she said. “I don’t know how much of what I remember was real, and how much was the trickster, but I got the sense that a lot’s been happening back in L.A.”

Alex poured them both some coffee from the carafe a server brought.

Mara added cream and sugar, but stared into the mixture rather than stirring it. Finally, she pointed at the swirling tracery of brown and white, smiled, and looked up at Alex. “They talked at a stream.”

He stirred his drink. “Who did?”

“Frank and that woman; the one with the strange eyes. It’s like I could see a third-person view of them, but I couldn’t hear anything. I think she’s helping him for some reason, and he’s helping her. There was a sense of trust. Unfortunately, feelings translate better than words from that context, so I don’t have much more than that. There was one other thing, though.”

Alex put down his cup and waited.

She stirred her coffee briefly, and then took a sip. “Remember that conspiracy sheet he told us about?”

“Sure, Mara. What about it?”

“I think it kept coming up in his mind, or at least he kept thinking about it. He may have found out that something in there was true.”

They were quiet until breakfast arrived. When the server left, and they’d finished customizing their omelets, Alex began fidgeting. Finally, halfway through breakfast, he put his fork down and looked at Mara. “What do we do now, sis?”

“C’mon Alex. Eat,” she chided. “If we get bogged down again like we did yesterday, there’s no telling how long it will be before you get another meal.”

He ran a finger over his fork. “I just can’t believe they put us through all that grief, just to find out that G’danic allegedly pre-authorized that travesty of medicine they call treatment.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, mockingly, “it certainly looked official enough; had his ID and everything.”

Alex grabbed his fork and stabbed a chunk of egg. “And I suppose, if you didn’t know anything about him, and you didn’t know what that treatment would do to him, you might actually believe it.”

“So how did it get there?”

He ate a few more mouthfuls before answering. “Obviously, someone faked the record, someone with access to his biometrics files on the MedNet. But the MedNet’s supposed to be secure, so where does that leave us?”

Mara had finished her omelet, and began sopping up the remains with a piece of toast. “For one thing, it leaves us with more of a reason to suspect that whoever did it was afraid of G’danic, or of what he had to say, and that they have access to stuff that’s supposedly tamperproof.”

“Well,” Alex said between bites, “we did consider the possibility that his work threatened the GD power structure. If anyone has access to the inaccessible, it’s them.”

“Which brings us back to that dark conspiracy,” Mara said solemnly. “Considering what’s happened to G’danic so far – both the accident and the treatment orders – I think the one about the government being behind improbable events is winning. What can we do from here?”

“I can think of two things, aside from keeping an eye on G’danic. One is visiting the accident site, and the other is talking to that Australian news crew. What’s your choice?”

She thought for a moment. “I’ll stick with G’danic at the MedCenter, and see if I can track down the news crew on com. You head over to the work site.”

… Los Angeles …

Dreaming of Mara always made her trips less lonesome for Frank, but this morning’s dreamside coupling ended too abruptly for his taste. One minute they were making endless tantric love, wafting in the breeze of a hijacked floatbed’s ‘G’-field, and the next he was wide-awake, frustrated, and too worried to go back to sleep. After a shower and breakfast, he checked the newsfeeds to see what was happening in the world.

The case against HealthTech Resources and Tanguru ProbliMetrics was the top story in the regional news roundup. Breathless reporters excitedly recalled the chaos in the courtroom. Clips of their descriptions ran between canned pieces on both Apuérto himself and the East-Side MedCenter. They seemed so excited to have an actual news story to report, you’d think the rest of the news was made up or something.

Frank was getting ready to leave when a commentator came on and started hurling invectives at the idea of using psychics in court, and at him in particular for attacking the witness. The foreman said this would happen, and it was going to make both conducting the case, and the investigation he’d enlisted the jury’s support in, all the more difficult. When the screen showed a picture of Frank, taken from an old ID, he growled, turned off the feed, and stormed out. It wasn’t starting out to be a good day at all.

At least if he’d still had his glasses, he could have opaqued them while reading a book or something on the ride in, but as it was, he became the target of a considerable amount of gawking. The unsupported rumors fueled by that commentator’s ill-informed ranting had taken on a life of their own.

When he stood to debark at the stop near the courthouse, conversation in the bus abruptly ended, and the few remaining passengers watched him intently. They might have thought they were being quiet, that they were politely keeping their opinions to themselves, but to a psychic like Frank is was pretty obvious how they felt. That they were afraid of him wasn’t much of a surprise, considering how the story had been handled. That much he’d expected anyway. Instead, it was something about the way they felt it that bothered him. It was as if their feelings had been orchestrated. Instead of a random roar of unvoiced and uncoordinated fear, it seemed like there was something guiding it, some common impetus behind the surface effects. It was deeply disturbing, and he reminded himself to ask Cynthia about it.

An unruly crowd swirled about on the broad sidewalk in front of the courthouse. Frank could see them from blocks away, but he didn’t notice a familiar, strident voice among the rabble until he was much closer.

The young man who had attracted his attention on Tuesday morning was working the crowd again. Only this time, his message was different, and he was getting support from the crowd, rather than being overwhelmed by it. “Nobody’s Safe!” he screamed. “Psychics control your thoughts! They’re in your mind!”

Frank hesitated, and then continued towards the courthouse. It was too late for him to be just another face in the mob, but he wished he knew how Cynthia did that trick of hers, because he could certainly use a bit of anonymity right about now.

Thinking invisible thoughts, he walked carefully around the crowd and had just started turning towards the steps when someone realized who he was.

“He’s over here! The jury’s psychic is over here!”

The crowd caught its breath, and a moment later, Frank was mobbed by a circle of angry faces, egged boisterously on by the rabble-rouser, who had begun pushing his way towards him.

“Don’t let him go!” the young man growled. “Let me through!”

Frank glanced around for an escape. The crowd pushed closer. The woman directly in front of him was now less than a foot away, and she looked like she wanted to spit on him. Suddenly, she was jostled aside by the rabble-rouser, a tousled young man in his mid twenties, with fiery eyes, textured haircut and the manner of a reluctant leader. The really odd thing about him was his clothes, though: he looked like he’d just stepped out of a historical holodrama or something. The man examined Frank for a moment in turn, stared full into his eyes, and then turned to the crowd.

“Quiet!” he said sharply. “Let’s hear what he has to say for himself!” Then he turned back towards Frank, and nodded once in mock friendship. “They hired you to spy on the witnesses, didn’t they?”

“Spy?” Frank said, amused. “I’d hardly call it spying.”

“Right!” a voice from the crowd yelled out. “Then what do you call it?”

The rabble-rouser stood silently, waiting for an answer.

Frank spoke quietly, directly to the man before him, in as calm a voice as he could muster. “I link with the witness to psychically monitor testimony. I was hired to tell the jury when a witness is lying.”

The young man considered the answer. Then he straightened and looked around at the people surrounding them. “Did you all hear that? Healer Sanroya here says that it’s his job to decide who’s lying. He’s god!”

“Now wait a minute!” Frank said in a loud, clear voice. “Lie detectors have been around for hundreds of years. There are clear signs, ways to know when someone’s lying!”

The man nodded. “So there are. Then why do they need you?”

Frank was getting flustered. “Machines can be fooled. A trained Healer can’t! When you see someone’s memories, it’s obvious when they’re making something up.”

“Quiet!” the man called out again. This time, when the random voices stopped, there was another sound, the insistent crack of armored boots on concrete. “So it’s really all up to you, then. There’s no point in having a court at all, if someone like you can just pry open people’s minds and expose the truth.”

“But I’m just there to help the jury,” Frank protested. “They decide, I just advise them!”

The rabble-rouser looked around, and noticed that two of the police officers were starting to wedge through the crowd. He bent close to Frank and said, very quietly, “But why do they trust you? Repressive regimes like this one evade responsibility with that exact same tactic. The leader defers to the advisors, and the advisors hide behind the leader.” Then he pushed a folded paper into Frank’s hand and ducked into the crowd, away from the approaching police.

Frank was the last to arrive at the jury room that morning, but by the sound of things, a lot had changed since Thursday. Instead of a group of strangers thrown together by chance, and hampered by impersonal rules of formality and anonymity, they seemed to have taken the opportunity to conspire in seeking justice, and used it to build a hasty community. Instead of the rough sounds of antagonism, of an unruly and unwilling group of strangers, he heard the smoother tones of a band of subversives relishing whatever lay ahead.

“Come on in, Frank,” said the foreman. “Peter filled us in on your problem, and we were—”

Frank glanced at Peter, the juror he’d erroneously taken to be a historian, then back at the foreman. “Wait a minute. What’s going on here? I thought you weren’t supposed to use your—”

Peter waved him closer. “Let them worry about that. We’ll play their game in public, but if we’re going to get to the bottom of this, we’ll need to work together. Sit down and meet the team.”

Momentarily dazed, Frank slipped the note he’d been handed into his pocket and sat beside Peter. “Did you catch the news this morning? It sounds like they’re planning to hang me.”

The foreman nodded. “Yeah. That’s what we’ve been discussing.” He extended his hand. “Name’s Rick. I’m also an actor.”

Frank shook his hand. “I kinda guessed. What have you decided?”

“To charge admission, of course.” Rick laughed. “Look, unless we convince the judge, both counsels, the news goons, and the public that everything’s on the up and up, there’ll be a mistrial, and whatever’s been going on will continue. So we’ll be putting on a show. We’ll be a proper little jury, and we’ll follow the rules, just not the way they wanted.”

“Wait a minute,” Frank said, holding up both hands. “I was surprised enough yesterday that you all agreed to support my own indiscretion, assuming I get the chance to probe Apuérto’s mind. But why this? Why the big change?”

Tag team #2 tapped the table. “It was my idea, really. Oh, I’m John, and if I wasn’t on this case, I might have been asking for your hide as well. I’m a news editor, by the way. When I saw the media’s feeding frenzy this morning, I realized something. Most of what our people report is relayed from elsewhere, and we trust the sources because we figure they’re all in the same boat we are. Local stories are always minimized, to quell possible reactions, and people pretty much ignore the other news, since they figure it’s not their problem.”

Frank shook his head in confusion. “So?”

John glanced at the door. “I’ve never seen a story from the inside before, and it’s opened my eyes. In many ways, people are discouraged from getting personally involved in things that aren’t their business. It’s a subtext in a lot of commentaries, and from the point of view of public safety, it makes perfect sense. But this case is really about the unstated cost of all that safety. If someone’s playing games with how and where healthcare is performed, who knows what else might be going on? For all we know, our entire society might be someone’s idea of a good time.”

Juror #2 laughed. “He does get carried away, sometimes, doesn’t he? Oh, I almost forgot, Frank, I’m Sala.”

Frank shrugged his shoulders. “Okay. What’s the plan?”

By the time a bailiff finally asked the jurors to enter the courtroom, it was nearly 11 o’clock. The hallway was crowded with people, some of whom were streaming live feeds to their respective news agencies. Since this was their only chance to get pictures of the jury, and of Frank in particular, they were taking advantage of the situation. Some of them shouted questions, others spoke quietly to themselves, providing a more restrained voice-over of the proceedings, rather than attempting to derail it so they could cover the resulting train wreck.

John, who knew what to expect, had coached the jurors during the extra time they had. Instead of crossing the hallway in single file, as they had before, they walked in a block, with Frank in the protected position at the center. The theatrical maneuver, which Rick had suggested, was certain to take at least some of the spotlight off of Frank, and give the commentators something else to rant about.

As the jurors entered the courtroom, they reverted to the formal ordering expected by the court, and quietly took their seats. A murmur rose and quietly careened among the rows of spectators when the bailiff announced the judge’s entry. Having seen the crowd in the hallway, Frank turned to look at the day’s crowd of gawkers, and found someone he hadn’t expected, Carlita Gutiérez. She gracefully closed her eyes and subtly nodded, then folded her hands and turned to watch Judge Bennigan take her seat.

“Will the court please come to order?” she said. “I have a report from East-Side MedCenter regarding the condition of our last witness.” Once the whispering finally stopped, she looked down at the display embedded in her desk’s surface. “According to his physician, Dr. Apuérto is in stable condition. He’s comatose, and under observation in the BioStabilization Ward, where the staff can ensure that he gets the absolute best care possible.”

Frank exchanged glances with Peter across the intervening jurors. If they didn’t release Apuérto for treatment by a Healer, there was no way he could probe the man’s memories and find out what was buried there. They’d have to find some other way to get the information they needed. Frank was still mulling this over when Sala, the apprentice juror, gently elbowed him. When he looked over at her, she nodded towards the judge.

“—therefore,” Judge Bennigan was saying, “in light of this morning’s news stories about Healer Sanroya’s involvement in this case, I’d like to see the foreman of the jury in my office for a moment before we proceed.”

During the break, Frank stared at Healer Gutiérez, and wondered why she’d decided to come to court this morning. He supposed that she might even have been subpoenaed, but her body language didn’t seem right for that. Whatever it was, he’d have to wait until later to find out.

About ten minutes later, with the foreman back in his seat, Judge Bennigan once again called the courtroom to order. “The foreman of the jury has informed me,” she said, “that they are still willing to proceed with the case.” She turned towards the jury box. “Mr. Foreman, please tell the court your decision.”

Rick, the actor and professional juror who the court knew only as Juror #1, stood to face the judge, his powder blue outfit fluorescing under the lights. “Your honor,” he said, “distinguished Counsel for Complainant and for Respondent in this case, it is the jury’s unanimous decision that neither the events that transpired here yesterday morning, nor this morning’s disturbing news reports, nor the demonstrations outside this building have altered their resolve to conduct this case in a professional and impartial manner. The jury wishes to proceed with the trial, with the assistance of Healer Sanroya. Of course, they will understand if any subsequent witnesses choose to rescind their previously given permission for allowing their testimony to be monitored by Healer Sanroya.” With that, he nodded courteously to the judge and both counsel, and then sat down.

A moment later, Counsel for the Complainant rose to his feet. “You honor,” he said, “I’d like to request a recess.”

Judge Bennigan eyed the noisy spectators, gavel in hand, and waited for them to quiet of their own accord before speaking. “And your reason, Counsel?”

“So that we can prepare properly. Dr. Apuérto’s testimony was critical to the line of reasoning that we were presenting to the court. Because he is no longer available for questioning, we will have to find another way to present the evidence that he would have introduced.”

“How long will you need?”

Counsel for the Complainant spoke briefly with his associates. “Until Monday, your honor.”

The judge nodded. “Monday it is, then. I’ll expect to see you all back here at 10 o’clock Monday morning, prepared to continue with this case, is that understood?”

“Yes, your honor.”

“Adjourned.”

… Halifax …

Once Alex LeBlanc’s identity was confirmed — a time-consuming feat requiring the capture and comparison of a multiplicity of biometrics — the construction company’s newly paranoid security officer cleared him, and he was escorted to the spot where Uru G’danic’s accident had happened. Construction of the new home for the Organization of Aboriginal Nations was nearly complete. The original plan was to have it finished prior to next week’s OAN Summit, so that G’danic could give it a proper ceremonial christening, but due to the incident, that honor will now fall to someone else.

Alex’s escort, a member of the design team by the name of Sally Backnell, was originally from the interior of Australia. She was in the midst of describing the design process, a sacred mixture of intuitive dream sculpting and technological prototyping, when she suddenly stopped and looked up at the building.

“This is the spot,” she said, looking calmly up at the place from which the equipment had fallen.

Alex looked up for a moment, then at his escort. Judging from her posture, he got the impression that perhaps the event served some symbolic purpose for her. “Was it important?” He asked. “I mean, did the fact that G’danic was to conduct the ceremony make the accident — if that’s what it was — special in some way?”

“It wasn’t an accident,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Then… someone tried to kill him?” Alex suggested.

“What does that matter?” She looked at him quizzically. “The important thing is that Uru G’danic’s dreamtime self agreed to participate. In time, we’ll learn why.”

Alex was stymied. Calm acceptance of an attempt on G’danic’s life was hardly a good start on discovering who had done it and for what reason. “Aren’t you concerned about the effect this will have on the organization?”

Sally smiled. “He has done more for this organization than anyone before him. But it is not the people who are important, but the idea. Often, the worst thing a leader can do is to lead.”

“I don’t understand.”

Alex’s escort waved her arm towards the building. “Creating something is a sacred act. Allowing it to grow means stepping back. Uru G’danic has transformed our organization from a loose confederation of tribes and nations into a single family. For it to thrive, he will have to step back, to remove himself from all control. By agreeing to this experience, he has provided others with a way to let him do that.”

He was quiet for a time, studying the building and thinking about what she’d said. As his thoughts and memories stewed, he began to see a relationship between what she’d said, and the patterns in his own work. When a writer such as G’danic publishes a book, they release it into the world to start whatever adventure it may have. Unless they’re willing to let it go, to step back from it, as she put it, it cannot begin to seek its own literary destiny.

When he lowered his gaze from the tower they were standing in front of, Alex found Sally patiently watching him. “I think I understand. But I still want to know how this happened. It seems so improbable that equipment with so many safeties and interlocks could just fail like that and fall off the building.”

She laughed lightly. “Then you do understand. For an event to be that improbable must mean that it was very important to have happened.”

Alex was still puzzling out Sally’s amusement when his com signaled for attention. He pulled out the unit and looked into its laser target. Mara was calling, and judging from the translucent watermark, she was on one of the service units at Dartmouth MedCenter. “What’s up, sis?”

“It’s G’danic, Alex. He’d dead.”

“What?”

Mara shook her head. “I don’t understand it, either. They told me it was a sudden reaction to a change in treatment. According to the monitors, his system was recovering nicely, so they stopped using that gentech formulation we were worried about. By all accounts, his system should have resumed homeostasis, but instead it collapsed.”

Alex shrugged. “So what did they do?”

“For once, they honored his real wishes, and didn’t put him on BioStabilization. A short time later, he stopped breathing. Look, I can’t stay here. When you’re finished, meet me back at the hotel, okay?”

“Sure thing. I was finished here anyway.” He snapped the unit off and slipped it back into its holder. Then, after a few breaths, he turned to look at Sally again. “I hope you’re right. He’s really out of the picture, now.”

She shook her head. “Not out of it. Just in a different one, that’s all.”

… Los Angeles …

Much to his dismay, Frank discovered that watching Cynthia Thedik weave through the aerial traffic on manual in full daylight was far more unnerving than it had been at night. At least if she was willing to talk en route, there’d have been something to take his mind off the near misses and dizzying escape maneuvers she kept pulling. When they finally set down at what seemed to be her favorite spot in the Angeles Crest, he was only too happy to step out of her flier and onto solid ground again.

“You know,” she said, “for a trained psychic, you’re pretty easy to read. Don’t they teach you anything about keeping your thoughts to yourself on this continent?”

He chuckled. “Until I met you, I didn’t think it was a problem.”

“Well, in any case, you’ve been silently screaming at me about that paper you were handed this morning outside the courthouse. What’s it say?”

Frank shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.”

She crossed her arms and waited.

He pulled the paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and started reading.

Healer Sanroya,

Please excuse my methods. It was necessary to appear to others as a harmless crank in order to avert suspicion. The message you saw Tuesday on the courthouse Directory was my doing; I have access to their systems.

Your court case can expose a covert group that uses some kind of secret tech to control both people and events. The only defense is randomness. That is why I had your glasses smashed. It was the only way to keep them from affecting you, at least temporarily.

Apuérto has seen their operative. To protect themselves, they will eliminate him, rather than allow you further access to his memories. You may be in danger.

They looked at one another briefly.

Cynthia took the paper from Frank and examined it. She laid it over her left hand, then covered it with her right, and closed her eyes. Frank waited. Finally, she opened her eyes and handed it back to him. “Lenny’s freaked about something.”

“Lenny?” Frank said, surprised. “You know him?”

“Yeah. I ran into him on Wednesday.” She smiled. “We had a bit of a talk. It seems he was recruited by whatever agency we’re onto, but backed out when he started catching on to what they were about. They let him go, but swiss-cheesed his memories so he couldn’t squeal on them. You ought to see the mess they made of his mind. It’s no wonder he’s a bit paranoid; under the circumstances, it’s the only sane response.”

He nodded. “Then we’re all dealing with the same group?”

“Yeah.” She started towards their boulder. “And I think what he’s discovered sheds some interesting new light on what I’ve suspected for some time now.”

He followed her and got comfortable. “That being?”

“Someone,” she said, then stopped to look around at canyon, stream and sky, “someone is playing with causality.”

Frank thought for a moment. “The conspiracy sheet Lenny’s people were handing out on Tuesday claimed that the government was behind improbable events. He thinks they’re doing it with some kind of secret technology.”

Cynthia gestured towards the stream. “I’ve been watching the flow of events since my life was trashed, the psychic side of things, and it just didn’t make any sense.” She took a long breath. “Anyone with an indicator, like tarot or tea leaves, to amplify subtle clues about the course of events can get a dim impression of what may happen a short distance into the future. People like us can see it more clearly, especially if we know what to look for.”

She knelt beside the stream and waved her fingers through the slowly flowing water, launching a trail of miniature eddies and whirlpools. “Things that we do leave trails, but there’s always a sense that the ripples we create, and the ones that affect our lives, have a kind of continuity to them, a smoothness to the feel of the energy fields that surround events and people.”

Frank watched her tickle the water, and waited for her to continue.

“Well,” she said finally, “there have been times when I thought we’d somehow slipped sideways – I don’t know another way to describe it – through this flow of events. At those moments, it felt to me as if something had changed, or maybe something had been changed. I could never be certain, but I’d swear that some of the things I’d remembered as having happened no longer seemed to have occurred.” She looked up at Frank. “I’d wake up one morning, and someone I’d remembered as having died recently was no longer dead, and in fact the accident I remembered reading or seeing about hadn’t even happened. Or someone poised to make a splash in the flow of events suddenly appears to have died weeks ago. Things like that.” She stopped to run her fingers through the water again. “That, and my ice cave. And nobody else seems to notice.”

Frank rustled the paper. “He does.”

“Yeah. I know.” She stood up. “Lenny wasn’t deep enough into the agency to know, but if he’s right about it being done with some kind of technology, then the agency that recruited him must have incredibly deep pockets.”

He nodded. “But even if it is some shadowy part of the government, who’d need something that could affect events like that? Why would they spend what must have been an unimaginable amount of money to develop it?”

Cynthia rubbed her hands together nervously. “Whoever it is, and whatever their game, we’re both threats to them. We need to expose them, whoever they are, before they arrange accidents for us, and make everyone forget we ever existed.”

Frank scratched his head. “Sure, but how?”

“Apuérto. Lenny says he’s seen their operative. We need to know who it is.”

“But he’s under guard at East-Side MedCenter. How can we do that?”

She looked over at her flier. “Kidnap him. Then we bring him here and poke around in his mind.”

(TOC)

First story I've posted on this thread. Hope you enjoy. Word Count: 5415

...

"Can you give me someone else?" My voice was flat and my face expressionless as I posed the question.

Death's dark eyes met mine, and I could see the silent pity there. He quirked an eyebrow in amusement, then shook his head slowly. "No," he said quietly, but with finality.

"Can you elaborate why?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

Death glanced at all the other reapers flickering in and out of purgatory, stopping in only to greet a friend, clock in and receive their next soul to reap. He shook his head as if confirming something before shaking his head. "No."

Death's lips were pursed in a tight line, and his eyes had a distant glint that hinted at disappointment. His arms crossed over his chest, as if to protect himself from both my words and emotions. He rarely spoke when he was trying to convey disapproval, but the silence was almost deafening.

I glanced back at the sunny yellow sheet of paper, and my stomach clenched as I read the name written in heavy black letters. It felt like a kick in the gut – punishment for all the life decisions I had made that could only be described as morally questionable. Thoughts swirled around my head as I tried to comprehend why this particular soul was targeted. I'd been a Reaper long enough to understand that those in power didn't care so much about the individual lives taken as much as they valued maintaining balance in the cosmos. This collection had to be part of some grand plan. I just couldn't see the role that I played.

One does not simply say no to a primordial concept, especially when they are the idol of your affections. At times I could persuade him to change his mind, but when it concerned matters of the soul his position was always set in stone.

The other Reapers constantly complained about Death's stoicism, but not me. I had been observing him since I was a little kid--noticing the small hints he gave off that most people would miss if they weren't paying close enough attention. Watching him with diligence and care has allowed me to learn how to read his body language. At least what little he let show.

My chest felt hollow as I took a breath that did nothing for me; my lungs were no longer capable of filling with air. My cheeks felt cold, and the absence of blood in my veins dulled the sensation. Clenching my jaw, I willed a smile onto my face and tried to draw strength from an unknown reserve inside me that had never been used before

"Fine. Fine. I'll do it. I'll do it with a smile too because I love you and her, but I'm not going to like it." I said wagging a finger at him.

Death looked at me impassively as if to say he didn't care whether I liked it or not. He simply gave me one slow nod and turned his attention elsewhere, meaning I had now been dismissed. I turned, spun on one heel and walked away trying not to let that little bubble of fear worm it's way up my esophagus.

With a swirl of ethereal mist and a subtle bending of reality, I materialized a portal before me. The inky darkness beckoned, and as I stepped through, I was enveloped by the disorienting void. My senses, or at least the phantom semblance of them, gradually shut off. Sight dimmed to blackness, sound muted to silence, and touch receded like the tide.

Moments stretched into what felt like hours in the sensory vacuum before my faculties rebooted. Sight flickered back first, painting the scene before me in its vivid hues. Sound followed, bringing with it the distant murmur of voices and the occasional laughter, almost like a low-level soundtrack. Finally, my sense of touch, smell, and taste resumed their roles, albeit in a ghostly form, aligning me with the world once more.

I found myself outside a nursing home, its sterile, institutional architecture striking a sharp contrast against the deepening colors of the evening sky. A quaint garden, carefully manicured but showing signs of neglect, sprawled around the building. The faint aroma of antiseptics mixed with blooming flowers reached my nose— a sensory medley that felt oddly nostalgic. Windows adorned the building, some illuminated and some dark, like eyes keeping secrets within.

I took a moment to adjust, my emotions surfacing but muted, as though wrapped in a layer of gauze. Was it my old nature resurfacing, or simply the consequence of my life—or rather, afterlife—choices? I felt curiosity prickle, like a dormant beast waking up after a long slumber. Something clicked inside me, as though a rusty gear had finally shifted back into place.

I walked, or rather glided, toward the building, my feet not really making contact with the ground. The physical barriers that impede the living had no hold over me. My form passed effortlessly through the wall, led by an intuition that seemed to bridge both my mortal past and my spectral present.

The common living room of the nursing home greeted me, a space designed for comfort but tinged with the silent desperation of its occupants. Soft beige walls, faded floral curtains, and well-worn chairs filled the area. A television flickered in the corner, showing reruns of an old sitcom—something about 'golden girls,' although I couldn't be sure. I'd never been a TV aficionado in life, and in death, such pursuits felt even more trivial.

My eyes found Savannah. She reclined in a cushioned chair, her attention half on the TV, half lost in the foggy recesses of her memories. I approached her, aware of her senses picking up my presence. She looked up, her gaze meeting mine. For a moment, she seemed not to recognize me, her eyes clouded with disbelief. Then her face tightened, her eyes widening in a mixture of shock, fear, and above all, confusion.

"It's you," she whispered, her voice tinged with incredulity.

I couldn't resist the impulse. Striking a cheeky pose, we'd often used in our younger days, I confirmed, "Yes, it's me."

Savannah seemed to sink even further into her recliner, a feat that seemed impossible given the additional weight she had gained over the years. Her eyes roamed over me, not comprehending how I could appear so unchanged. "But—But how are you still so—" She trailed off, captivated and puzzled by my spectral form.

I did a little spin for her, letting my black cloak flow around me. "Young? Beautiful? Sexy?" I asked, grabbing a nearby chair from the poker table and sitting on it facing her. "So, do you want a short explanation or a long one?"

"Short." She said, huddling up with her blanket.

"I'm dead." I answered.

"Dead?" She repeated.

"Yeah, have been for the last," I took a second to look at my watch. It was currently February, 3rd, 2088. "By your standards, I've been dead for almost 55 years."

She narrowed her eyes as if weighing the information I just shared with her. I could see the pieces start to click together when she realized that was about the same time I disappeared. "If you're dead, how are you here right now?"

"I'm a Reaper. As payment for not receiving oblivion. I now collect souls for Death."

"Oblivion?" She asked, her eyes raised in shock. Of course, no one likes learning that instead of going to one of the myriads of other afterlife, oblivion was very much still an option though not in the way think, since nothing ever really dies.

I waved my hand as if to brush the topic aside. "Let's worry about that until you actually cross over." I said leaning back in my chain and giving her a soft look. "How has retirement or life in general been treating you?"

Savannah scrunched her face as if to consider how life had been treating her before answering. "It's been alright. A bit lonely, but I've been keeping busy with knitting and reading."

I nodded, taking in the information. "That's good to hear. And how about family? Any kids or grandkids?"

Savannah's eyes seem to go dark. "No. No kids. No lover. After my father died and you left, I just couldn't bring myself to open up to anyone like that again. It hurt too much."

"I'm sorry, Savannah. I wish I could've been there for you."

A tear rolled down her cheek as she looked away, trying to compose herself. "It's okay. It's been a long time. I've learned to live with it." A smile soon came back as she looked at me the same way she used too back then before I died and before she got old. "How about you? How's life as Death's soul collector?"

"It's not the most glamorous job, but it has its perks. I get to see all sorts of souls from different walks of life and different eras. It can get pretty lonely, but I've adapted to it." I paused for a moment before continuing. "But in all honesty, Savannah, seeing you again is one highlight I'm grateful for. It's been a long time since I've seen a familiar face."

Savannah smiled at me once more, and I was struck by how beautiful she still was. The lines in her face only added character and depth to her features, and her bright blue eyes sparkled with warmth and kindness. I always dreaded getting older, having to see the transformation of my body in its prime youthful vigor be subjected to a slow, gradual decay. But Savannah was different; her wrinkles were like war medals, telling stories of joy and sorrow with every crease. She embraced her age with an extra layer of weight, but it only seemed to make her more beautiful.

"You always knew how to make me feel special," she said, her voice softening.

Of course, I did. One of the perks about being a reaper is that you get a nearly perfect memory of the experiences you've had from birth to now. I say nearly because every now and then you have something you want to forget about, though I wasn't exactly the sort of person who couldn't deal with the choices they've made. Looking at Savannah reminded me of a few.

I felt my lips tighten as I started to remember those choices. Savannah noticed my discomfort and reached out to touch my hand. I moved it away, not ready to lose her yet. "Is everything okay?"

I took a deep breath before answering. "Yeah, everything's fine. I just remembered some things I wish I could change."

She gave me a sad smile. "Like what?"

I felt heavy again as I sighed in frustration. It wasn't a feeling of regret, but something else that I couldn't quite name. I wanted to say something, to speak the truth but my nature kept me from doing so, and instead I decided to try a different approach. "Like leaving you when you needed me the most. All the times I lied. Though dying probably takes the cake.

Savannah nodded. "I didn't ask, but how did you die?"

"Bullet to the dome." I answered with a half smile and raised my finger to the side of my head, mimicking a gun. I then made a quick motion as if firing it before dropping my hand.

Sav's eye's widened as she gasped, drawing the attention of a few others who simply thought that she was invested in the tv. "Someone shot you? Why?"

"Why not?" I grinned as if it didn't matter. Truth is, it didn't really. Death was something I had come to accept a long time ago. The only thing that truly mattered was what came after.

"Katherine." She said almost as if she were disappointed, yet expectant that I didn't really care. Like I said, I never cared about growing old. As far as I see it, the man who killed me did me a favor.

Knowing that what little I said wasn't going to suffice, I decided to share a bit more. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time." Which was partially the truth. You could make the argument that everyone who's ever been killed was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that wasn't entirely the case for me. I had done what most would consider to be heinous when I was alive, and now that I'm dead I have a better perspective to see the ramifications of my actions. Karma truly is a bitch. "It's just how it goes sometimes."

Sav shook her head as if to rebuttal but decided against it. I mean, she's not the one who reaps souls."

We talked a little bit more, nothing special, just catching up. It felt like no time between us had passed. We reminisced about our childhood, all the times we used to play in the park, sneak out at night to explore the abandoned houses on the edge of town and all the silly, embarrassing things we used to do. But as the conversation started to dwindle, I felt a strange pull towards her. It wasn't just nostalgia or sentimentality, but something more primal.

Sav sensed it and opened her mouth wide, releasing a big yawn. The air around her became cloudy with the mist that escaped from her lips as she sank into the comfort of the chair.

"You ok?"

"Yeah, but suddenly I've gotten really tired." She replied, her voice faint and distant. I could see her eyes drooping, fighting to stay open.

I gave her a small nod. "Your time is almost up." I said smiling.

"Before I go, I want you to tell me something you've never told anyone."

I almost sputtered at how silly her request was and at the implications. For a moment, just a moment. I felt 200 years younger, back when we were little girls selling lemonade for chump change and poking dead animals for fun.

I hid my gaze from hers as I contemplated telling her the truth I've hidden from her for so long.

I stood up and walked over to her side, looking down at her with a knowing smile. "You'll know it when you cross over." Before she could respond, I give a small kiss on the forehead. She closed her eyes and let out one last exhale.

I watched as her soul flowed from her body, confused and disoriented at first. But I knew what to do. I reached out and gently took her hand, leading her towards the light. We walked through it and arrived in a beautiful meadow. The grass was a lush green, and the sky was a clear blue with fluffy white clouds scattered throughout. The air had a crisp freshness that invigorated both the soul and body.

Sav's eyes widened in amazement as she took in her surroundings. "Is this heaven?"

A chuckle escaped my lips. Every soul asks that question when we arrive. "No. This is where you stop to get reoriented."

"What does that mean?" She said leaning down and picking up one of the flowers.

I walked over a nearby boulder that was conveniently placed several paces to my left and sat. I gritted my teeth as I took a moment to relay my words. "Before you cross over you have to remember your life."

"I already do." She answered as a bird came to perch on her finger. It looked like something out a fucking Disney movie. I almost gagged but suppressed the urge as I watched her body resemble what she used to look like in her youth.

"No, not snippets. Everything. This place is here to help you, give you a spot to decompress."

"You mean so that I can remember all the things I've suppressed."

I avoided her gaze, choosing to look at everything else that wasn’t her. Unfortunately, I wasn't a botanist in life so flowers were never interesting to me. "Not only that, but also the lives of everyone you've ever touched. All the bad. All good. All the embarrassing. All the fuzzies."

Sav snapped her attention towards me as if I had just revealed a well-kept secret, which in hindsight, I guess I did. "Why do I have to remember all of that?"

I took a deep breath before speaking. "Because it's part of the process. You can't truly move on unless you confront and accept every moment of your life and the impact on the lives of those around you."

She thought about it for a moment. “What if I don’t accept it or can’t accept it.”

I laughed a nasty little laugh. “Trust me. You’ll accept it.”

Sav glared at me. “But what if I don’t.” she pushed.

“You will. You don’t have any choice.”

After a moment she asked me. “What did you see?”

I grinned, but there was little humor in it.. “I didn’t see anything and before you ask, I refused, which often leads to spirits roaming the universe for the rest of eternity. I wasn’t trying to move on so instead I was given a job instead.”

Sav shook her head. “Only you could reject the afterlife.”

“Eh, I didn’t exactly live a normal life. I doubt I was going to heaven, not that I’d want too anyway. I like it here. I like being a Reaper.”

Sav thought to herself for a second, she looked as if she wanted to question something I said, but she decided not too. "How long is it going to take?"

"As long as it takes." I said looking at my sleeve as looking at a watch. “It should be starting right about now.”

"What? How does" At that moment, Sav's eyes glazed over and I knew she was starting to remember. It could take moments or hours for her to fully comprehend the details of her past.

I watched her as emotions flickered across her face, sadness, regret, joy, and love.

Each soul that crossed over had their own unique story to tell. Some stories were joyful, while others were filled with pain, hardship, death and even more pain. But no matter the story, each one was special in its own way. This is what I told every soul who crossed over. It was easy guiding people to their next destination, telling them that life, even in death, held meaning. I've walked all manner of people over to the other side. Homemakers, Kings, children, Murderers, Rapists, all types. I think it was easy because I never knew them personally. But this was different.

I sat on the boulder for what felt like hours. Suddenly as it all started, Sav snapped back to herself and collapsed to her knees, sputtering and crying. "It's pretty rough the first time." I said, recalling my own, though I remember feeling pretty good about the whole experience. Living your own life is one thing, but seeing through the eyes of another person was something entirely different.

There was an urge to help her up, but I refrained from moving any closer once I saw the murderous look in her now pink eyes. I raised her hands in a gesture of peace. This was the moment I was terrified of happening.

I expected a more rageful outburst, but I recalled that the whole life review gave your insight into the feelings and emotions of the people you've experienced. I think that, alongside the experiences of all the others is what kept her from striking me. After several agonizing seconds she popped the question. "How could you lie about something like that for so long!?"

I shrugged as if to say it wasn't my fault, but we both knew it was. "Technically I didn't lie. You just never asked me. I would have told you if you asked." Saying the words out loud, I felt stupid.

"You murdered my father!" She said, scrambling to her feet and clawing at me. I backed away from as far as I could, not wanting the cloak to react in protecting me.

"Technically, it wasn't murder if he tried to kill me first."

She didn't like that response. Her face reddened with anger and tears streamed down her face. "You motherfucker," she shouted, lunging at me. I stumbled backward, tripping over the boulder behind me, but that didn't stop her from trying to wrap her hands around my throat.

The cloak didn't like that and in one swift motion, despite my mental prodding for it not to do anything, a part of the cloth formed into a shadow and cut into hand, sending her sprawling away from me.

"Look, I know you're mad, but can you please. Take a minute to calm down and let me explain."

"You don't need to. I already know." She said, rubbing her hands. She wasn't bleeding since she was now just a soul, but there she could still feel pain nonetheless. In fact, damage to your souls' body was far more painful than the pain you received from your physical body.

"Then there's no reason to fight then. You already know."

"You didn't just kill my father, you killed so many people. Murdered them for no reason other than you were in love with Death?" She said, slowly picking herself back up. She had the same murderous look in her eye, but now she was just a bit more cautious about attacking me.

"Yeah, still am by the way," I added, taking my seat back on the boulder. She glared at me as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing.

I gave her a flat look and took it as my cue to continue talking. "It's been sixty years for you, Sav, but two hundred for me. Yeah, I took those lives when I was alive, but I'm dead now. Kinda, but not kinda, paying off that debt to Death, making sure souls like you, like the ones I’ve taken, make it over to the other side." I gestured to the field around us.

Sav still glared at me.

"What do you want from me? An apology, Sav? I'm sorry for killing your dad, what more do you want from me?"

"You should be in hell, burning for what you’ve done!" She yelled, turning to stomp a few paces away.

"You go to where you believe, Sav and I don't believe in hell." Though it does exist, and I have been there before.

"That doesn't make any fucking sense!"

"Good. That means you are getting closer to seeing things my way."

Sav shook her head violently as if she had heard the most ridiculous thing. "You're a piece of shit! That's what you are! All my life I thought we were friends! How can you be this way?" she whirled back around.

It was a loaded question. She already knew why I did what I did. Why I felt why I felt. I was born with the gift to see the souls of the dead, as I got older I realized that no one else could, so I learned how to keep it to myself. I guess as I got older, my ability started to mature, because not only was I able to see souls, but I could also see Death too. Always there, always lurking in the shadows.

So, I got curious. Killed a bug here and there and I would see him flicker into view. It took me until adolescence when the family dog, a cute labradoodle, named Montana, grew too old and needed to be put down, that Death stayed for longer when stronger life was taken. So, I moved on to animals. When I could I'd snipe a squirrel out of a tree, kill rats or frogs, one time I even got the neighbor's cat. All this for a little more time with Death. It never seemed to judge what I was doing as something that was wrong, and my child brain took that as the go ahead to continue doing what I was doing.

When my grandfather died and I first heard it talk with my grandfather, I realized that this entity was not human. It wasn't a reaper; it was truly death incarnate and I promised myself and it that each life I took after would in its glory.

I remember the first person I killed. His name was Micheal. I was in Highschool when it happened. He was our school's track star. He could get any girl he wanted, but he settled on me and Sav. Probably because he thought we were playing hard to get, as if it were such an improbability that we simply weren't attracted to him. He followed me on one of my night walks one day, hoping to catch me alone and pester me into a date. It was in the spur of the moment, but the thought just crossed my mind. When he wasn't looking, I slit his throat with my dad's pocket knife.

His ghost was absolutely pissed, but I got to see Death. This time it stayed with me for a few hours. The first thing I learned was that Death doesn't talk much. Next was that you can learn a lot from someone even if they don't talk. Everyone has told after all, and Death has his own. I just needed more time to figure him out. So, one thing led to another, body after body, I grew obsessed. Eventually I grew sloppy. Sav's father, a police officer, found me out. Killing him was not fun. I'll admit, looking back on it all, if I have a regret, it would be killing him.

The effect it had on Sav was heartbreaking which was the reason why I moved away. I'm a sociopath, but I do actually care about people and seeing what I did to her was not something I could bear. So, I left the city, moved to Detroit and died not long afterwards. Like I said Karma can be a bitch.

I glanced at Sav in front me. Her arms were folded, as if she was in the midst of hugging herself. A severe frown had taken over her face, unlike anything I'd seen before.

"If it makes you feel any better, your dad’s in heaven."

Sav glared at me and for a moment saw something else flicker. She seemed to be fighting with herself, but after a moment she breathed out a heavy sigh. "That does make me feel better." After a moment of silence, she asked me about her mother, and I told her that she's in heaven as well. She was an only child like me, so there was no one else worth asking about.

Realizing that our time was growing shorter I gestured towards the sky. "If you want to move on you can."

"Move on?"

"Yeah, like go into the great beyond. You just have to walk up those steps."

"What steps?" Sav squinted her eyes in the direction of where I was pointing and noticed, barely, a translucent staircase that seemed to be made from thousands of tiny stars. A similar light shone from above, several degrees brighter and more soothing than the one we'd first walked through. "Was that there the whole time?"

"No. This place just serves a spot to place for you to get your bearings. To come to terms with being dead. Now that you're ready it's shown itself."

Sav gave me a long look. I could tell there was a lot she wanted to say. I could see her wrestling between cursing me out or just leaving. She decided with the latter, taking a couple steps towards the staircase, then stopped.

"Kat?"

"Yeah?"

"Will we see each other again?"

After a moment I shrugged. "I don't know."

"That's not an answer."

"It was the best I could offer." I shrugged. Honestly, I didn't know. On one hand Sav was going to heaven. She would always be there. For eternity. On the other hand, eternity was a long fucking time. If I played this reaper business right, then I had a little less than an eternity to work off my debt. I could see her again, But would we even be the same people when we met again?

Sav nodded her head and started up the staircase. Once she stepped up to the fifth stair I spoke again.

"For what it's worth I am sorry, Sav." My voice felt like it weighed a ton, as if my words were sandbags instead of actual sound.

"No, you're not. You're just sorry you got caught." She sniffed.

Which wasn't exactly the whole truth. I mean, no one actually thinks they're the one to get caught, I just didn't anticipate ever being in this predicament in the first place. It's been hundreds of years since I last saw her, and I moved away and subsequently died before the guilt could eat at me. Either way I didn't have a rebuttal. I watched, not letting my eyes wander as Sav ascended the staircase and stepped into the light disappearing.

After she faded completely into light the hint of her perfume seemed to linger in the air for a second before it completely vanished.

Any lingering emotions I could feel out melted away from a cold, numbing sensation in my chest. I felt lightheaded and swaying as I attempted to process what had happened.

"How are you feeling?" Death asked, watching me as I watched her fade.

I didn't answer immediately. I didn't really know how to put my feelings into words. So instead, I settled with "For someone so impartial, you can be a real cunt when you want too."

Like always, Death wasn't fazed by my words. The realm around us dissolved to reveal purgatory, his realm, more specifically his office. "Wasn't my decision." He answered.

"Yeah, I know. I'd tell you to tell your sister to fuck off, but we both know that'll turn out for both of us. So, I'll just shut up and take my lumps."

Death sat down at the black obelisk that served as his desk, gesturing for me to take a seat. I picked a chair that was close enough to be in arms reach.

As I lowered myself into the chair, its stiff leather upholstery offered no comfort. The air in Death's realm was always stagnant and lukewarm, neither comforting nor suffocating. I was perhaps one of the rare Reapers who found this emptiness soothing. But today, the emptiness of the room mirrored the barren wasteland in my heart.

Death glanced at a parchment that seemed to appear out of nowhere on his desk. "Savannah was a special case, you know. There was a reason it was you who had to guide her."

I clenched my fists. "And what was that? To torture me? To give me a glimpse of happiness before tearing it away?"

Death looked up, his eyes pools of endless night, yet for a brief moment I thought I saw a twinkle—almost like a star in that dark sky. "No, Kat. It's because sometimes, healing comes from the most unexpected places. From confrontation. From facing our past and our choices."

I scoffed, "Confrontation? Is that your twisted form of psychology?"

"It's not about me, it's not just about you either," he paused, leaning back in his chair, "it's also about her. Savannah needed to know, just as much as you needed to be the one to tell her. Whether she forgives you or not, that's something she will carry with her, and something you need to let go of."

I sighed deeply, my eyes stinging, though no tears came. "She's moved on. She's in heaven, and I'm still here, living this existence." Which all things considered wasn't a bad thing. I could be in one of the thousands of different hells, right now.

"Your story isn't over, Kat," Death said, placing his palms together, deliberating his next monumental decision. "Not unless you wish it to be."

I smirked despite myself. I already died once and had no intentions of being reincarnated either. "So, what happens next, my love? What's my next assignment?"

Death's lips curled into a knowing smile as another parchment materialized on his desk. "Wouldn't you like to take a rest? I understand if-"

"Nah, I'd much rather move on."

Local vendors set up small tents for cooking and selling small wears. In the middle of the courtyard a massive stage had been erected from wood and iron. Red cloth with gold frill had been draped over the supports of the stage giving it an almost royal look.

People had already started crowding the stands signing up for different events. Thrane quickly pushed his way into the back of the line. He stood in line for hours and noon was approaching fast. His patience grew thin as each hour passed in the sweat covered musty smelling crowd. Competitors nudged and cursed each other trying to get a couple inches of room in the packed line. A few men fought in line and another pair unsheathed weapons and almost began the competition early before guards swiftly removed them.

Between the overly crowded line and the scorching sun the competitors were becoming more antsy and irritable by the moment. As Thrane finally neared the front of the line a group of burly brutes pushed him and others aside, cutting to the front. From the look of their mismatched and pieced together armor and deep thick scars Thrane could tell these were fierce gladiators. He found his footing and his temper flared. No one else had the nerve to stand up to or speak out against the gladiators, most of the barbarians had come from illegal back alley arenas, some undoubtedly traveled from some of the more uncivilized cities spread around the world. These gladiator competitions, if one could call them that, were nothing more than ex soldiers and deserters waging bets on who would win a fight to the death. There was nothing glorious or heroic about them as the tales would have one believe. Thranes' anger overtook him and his temper flared.

"Hey you half-witted meatheads!" He yelled, shaking one fist in the air.

One of the men turned around and took a step towards Thrane sizing him up. The burly gladiator looked like he had crawled out of the deepest depth of a Thortican prison. The man towered over Thrane, his black beady eyes broke the young man’s fiery spirit and Thrane felt a chill run up his spine. The man exhaled with a deep gravelly voice.

"Watch who you're talking to, you scrawny twig or I'll break you like one."

The words burned in Thranes' ears then and his blood boiled. The young boy smirked standing his ground, he slowly lowered his right hand towards his knife belt. He knew he couldn't possibly outmatch the man in strength but he was big and looked slow. One well aimed throw would do it. A brief moment passed, Thrane sighed and collected his thoughts. He wasn't looking for trouble, he was just anxious to compete this year because he had practiced especially hard for this day. He exhaled and removed his hand from the belt.

“That's what I thought.” Yelled the brute.

Thrane filled with rage then snatched a black knife from its sheath clenching it tight. Just as the man turned away a hand reached from the back of the line clamping down on a Thranes shoulder. He quickly spun around putting the blade to a man’s throat.

"Whoa there killer!" The young man chuckled, holding his hand to the sky.

“Frederick!? Said Thrane in a confused tone.

Frederick had been his best friend ever since they were children but as long as they had known each other Thrane never knew him to be a fighter, or even remotely competitive for that matter. Thrane paused slightly embarrassed from his over reaction.

"Sorry about that." He said as he put his knife back in his belt loop . He examined Fredericks odd clothes for a moment.

"What are you wearing, and why are you here Frederick?" With a lifted expression his childhood friend proudly replied,

"I'm here to compete in fencing.” Stunned, Thrane stared at him for a moment then a chuckle formed in his throat.

"You?A fencer?” Why would you want to twirl a sword around and try to look fancy doing it?" He asked, chuckling around the question.

Frederick Sighed, shaking his head back and forth.

"It's not about being fancy, it's about having a respectful battle of swiftness and footing.”

Thrane tried to stifle his laughter but it slipped through his lips.

"Well tell that to a Drylek or maybe you can dance around with a Shriven elve."

"Very funny," Fredrick said sarcastically with an annoyed look on his face.

"Next!" Yelled a fat bearded man at the signing table.

They moved forward in line, Thrane watched as the brutes who pushed thru jotted down their names then shambled off towards the stage. Anger crept over him again.

“Next,” Yelled the pot bellied receptionist.

Thrane and Frederick shuffled towards the wooden table draped in blue and gold cloth.

"Name?" The Man asked, never looking up from his papers.

"My name is Shrane. I will be participating in the Knife Throwing events sir."

"Ahh knife throwing, a good feet young man, Take your ticket and wait for your number to be called. Next!”

“I am Frederick, and will be signing up for the fine art of fencing." He said proudly as he pulled out his sword and twirled it in the air.

The half drunk man stared at Frederick for a moment with an unamused look. Frederick swirled his rapier over the man's head making short circles. He then put his sword back into the sheath and placed his hands on his hips while holding his head high, smirking. The man at the table raised an eyebrow.

"Buahahaha, fencing, what a laugh. Here’s your ticket, twinkle toes!"

The crowd burst into laughter. Embarrassment washed over Frederick and his face turned pink. He puffed his chest and stepped forward in an attempt to seem threatening but failed miserably.

"I'll have you know, Fencing is a highly respectable art of combat." He said flatly.”

"Well then!" Yelled the drunken receptionist.

“You can respectably dance your way to the stage, twinkle toes,”

Frederick frowned and stomped off towards the stage. The crowd bellowed as he walked away in defeat. The two friends met at the participants only section where they served the competitors free Ale and an entire buffet. They grabbed a couple of mugs and two heaping plates of grub and walked towards a bench near a group of gypsy dancers to sit down. Thrane took a small sip of ale and coughed. He had never drank before due to his mother's distaste for ale and his fathers over taste for it. He wrinkled his face and set the wooden cup to the side then glanced at Frederick

"So, when did you start fencing?" He asked as he bit into a pork hunk and watched the gypsy's.

"I've only just started. But I figured, what better place to learn than in a competition?"

Thranes' eyes widened. “I think anywhere would be better than in an actual competition. The people here aren't looking to teach you, they're looking to win." Frederick grinned

"Eh, I'll give 'em a go for their money" Frederick said grinning. Thrane began to reply but was interrupted before the words could leave his mouth.

"Hi handsome, how are you?" Asked a gypsy girl dressed in very thin green sparkling mesh.

Frederick looked up from his plate and met her bright hazel eyes. Unlike Thrane Frederick had always been prim and proper afraid to go out of his comfort zone. Even as children Frederick had always preferred the company of books as opposed to people, especially females. He had never been able to mumble more than a few incoherent words to a girl that he admired. Thrane had always been the one to coax him out of his shell, and did so on numerous occasions when they were shipped away to the Twin Cities during the Shreiven wars.

" Um. I'm .. I'm... hi, I'm a fencer," Said Frederick, turning bright pink in the face.

She smirked at him, "Aw, we've never played with a fencer before... can you show us how to use that fancy sword?" the gypsy giggled. “

Umm .. we?” He replied trembling.

She smiled and winked an eye at him as another gypsy draped in red and gold silk walked to her side. Her deep blue eyes locked with Fredericks, he gulped hesitantly and then shifted nervously in his seat.

"Eh, umm. I mean.. of .. of course!" .

He stood and reached for his sword with trembling hands and muttered.

"You just have to.. umm.” As he finally managed to grab the hilt and begin to unsheath the saber the gypsy giggled and grabbed his wrist. She pulled his hand from the sword.

“How about a private lesson?” She said while running a finger down his chest. Fredericks face was now beet red and he had began sweating uncontrollably.

“ Pr… private… l.. lesson.?, Ye..yes.. I suppose.”

Before he could finish his sentence the gypsy pulled his arm ushering him towards her tent. Thrane chuckled starring at the woman's hips as she walked away. Frederick turned around pale in the face making awkward eye contact with Thrane.

"I'll be back Thrane!" He yelled in a cracking voice.

Thrane laughed then leaned back on the bench.

"Haha! Whatever you say! I hope you've had more practice with a woman than you have with that sword!"

After Frederick disappeared into the tent Thrane reached for the cup trying another sip of ale. He swallowed then shuttered. As he sipped the ale he remembered his father drinking out of a similar mug, then his thoughts shifted to his mother scolding his father for over induldging. His thoughts shifted once more to a memory of his father hastily putting buckling armor and rushing him and his mother out the door and into a wooden carriage.

He thought of his fathers worried eyes as he kissed him and his mother goodbye then disappeared into a sea of soldiers. His mother held Thrane close as tears fell from his eyes, she reassured him that he would see his father again then clutching him tightly. Another pair of soldiers rushed to the cart lifting a small boy over the ledge. It was a tall blonde male and brown haired female. They set a young boy in the cart with a stack of books and a white sack with the emblem of the Thortican knights on it. The boy cried as he attempted to climb out back to his mother and father. Tears filled both the eyes of the parents as they bared him from exiting. The mother leaned in and whispered

"It’s only goodbye for now dear Frederick. We will meet again as soon as the war is over, until then be strong and study your books, we love you.”

Thrane snapped out of his trance and took another sip, it curled his stomach .

'Well mum you don't have to worry about me getting a taste for this horrid drink.' He muttered to himself as he poured it out.

He sat watching the remaining participants sign up and enter the competitors only area where they stuffed their bellys with ale and pork. Hours had passed and the crowd grew drunker and rowdier by the minute. It was nearly mid day when trumpets echoed through the streets, the crowd quickly became silent and all attention was directed to the stage. The old announcer stood from his chair and shouted into a golden cone

" Welcome one and all to our third annual Dragon days competition! Let us come together and show our metal as our brave friends, family and comrades did on this day nineteen years ago, when they first stepped foot onto the battlefield against the dark elves of Shrine Guard. Let the festivities go on for many years to come so that we shall never forget their sacrifice so that we may live in peace. Let us mourn their deaths by celebrating the life they have given us. May Thortica and it’s Allie’s stand strong and proud as a testimony to those who would wish us harm and as a beacon of hope to those in peril. Long live the Mid-continent and the kingdoms in its great lands.”

The crowd erupted in cheers and applause. The greying announcer cleared his throat and continued.

“Now starting event for this year will be..."

He reached into a silver gauntlet filled with golden coins, each coin contained an elaborate etching representing one event. He shuffled around in the cup for a moment then pulled out a coin and examined it. Silence fell over the crowd once more.

"Jousting will be todays first event.!"

The crowd cheered and chanted as the first two horsemen walked their steeds to each end of a long wooden fence dividing the two lanes. One of the men wore a black and grey tunic and the deep green cloak of Ravendale riding a jet black horse. The other wore a white and blue tunic and the royal blue and gold cloak of Granedale riding a massive white horse. They quickly adjusted their armor and leaped onto their astonishingly well groomed horses. Once they were atop their mounts they trouted to the gates waiting for the flags to drop.

Thrane walked over to the gypsy's tent and heard giggling followed by Fredericks nervous laughter. He chuckled then looked back towards the two jousters. Two men stood on a wooden platform at each end of the fence, they each held a flag representing the banner colors of each of the contestants. They waived the flags high in the air signaling for the joisters to ready themselves. The men dropped the flags and the two horsemen kicked their steads side, each horse lunged forward forcefully galloping towards one another . The crowd fell silent and the thunderous clopping of horse shoes on stone filled the town square, followed a sickening crack that echoed through the stands. The crowd roared as the knight draped in green flew from his horse and crashed to the ground. The announcer yelled into his golden cone.

“An incredible win for granedale !"

Two workers walked on to the stage and placed a blue gem on the scoreboard for Grandale. The fallen knight quickly picked himself up and left the arena as the next two jousters took their spots at each end. This time it was a knight in brown and black tunic wearing the yellow cape from the small town of Garmin. The other contestant was a free Lance Knight with no particular color or banner to identify him. The flags dropped and the two knights raced towards each other

It was a day like any other. I spend the greater part of it behind the keyboard, thinking of what to write, but didn’t get a single word down that I liked. No matter how much I tried nothing seemed to please my eyes. If I didn’t like it, the readers would not like it either. That was the first thing that I was taught in literary class.

At around 11pm I went out for a walk to clear my head. I had hoped that some fresh autumn air would give me some inspiration. Around 20 minutes into my walk I noticed that there was no sound around me, despite being in a forest that was supposed to be full of life, which seemed strange to me.

Then a bright light blinded me and I felt my feet lift from the ground. Soon the light started to dim, I looked around and saw that I was in eyesight of the tree tops and rising. I looked up and saw that the lights' origin came from the centre of a huge circle in the sky. I must have lost consciousness soon after, because when I opened my eyes I was on a table, surrounded by strange grey blobs. Any form of recognizable feature was obstructed by the blinding light above them and I realized what had happened. I was abducted by aliens. For what purpose I could only postulate. My heart started to race out of my chest and my body was dripping with sweat.

“What-What's going on?” I mumbled.

“Gina pu lagun?” one of the blobs stated in a manner that sounded like a question to me.

“I don’t understand.” I replied, not even knowing if it was a question.

The blobs exchanged what I can only infer as looks, as they seemed to have no eyes to speak of. A few strange clicks and beeps echoed around us and then silence.

“Understand now?” One of the blobs said.

“Yes. Yes I can understand you.” I replied with a shaking voice.

“Good. Let me make clear. You are no prisoner. You are a… a…” A blob trailed off as if trying to think of a more fitting term.

“Guest?” I completed his sentence. Hoping that I was a guest and not an after-school experiment for them.

“Yes, yes. Guest. That be term humans use.” the second blob said hastily.

Soon after, the blobs explained to me, as I understood it, that they were researchers. Seeking the origin of all life and studying the evolution of the universe. I was currently on board their spaceship. Which, was kind of obvious to me, but I dared not to insult them by stating that it’s an obvious thing. They had been studying humans for the better part of the last year. I remembered all the recent reports from people claiming they were abducted by aliens. Claiming they asked them tons of questions and then returned them unharmed. I dismissed it as lunacy. As all the abduction reports came mostly from farmers and drunks.

The aliens did not have a body that we usually call a body. Their ‘bodies’ were grey, almost see through blobs, possibly biological material. There was nothing that indicated features such as eyes, yet they could see me, no ears, yet they could hear me and no mouths, yet a voice did come out from them. Inside them there was a small device which I postulated was the origin of their senses.

Soon after introductions, they wanted to give me a tour of their ship. First, they showed me rooms that were used as re-hydration units, as their species apparently did not require sleep, but they did require constant hydration as to not dry out. Then we went into a room that was called ‘The insight space’, which I postulated to be some kind of research room, as it was full of animals and plants from earth. Some I recognized, some I did not. For a second I thought I saw a small bipedal lizard that faintly reminded me of dinosaurs I saw in books as a kid. But that is impossible, dinosaurs died out millions of years ago. Then they took me to what I believed to be the central control room. It was a round space with machinery beyond my imagination or ability to describe in greater detail. There were no buttons or screens to speak of, instead they had tubes coming out of them that seemed to suck out a tiny part of them, surrounded by blinking lights.

After the tour, we sat into a small room where they brought me food from my home country and sat me down behind a table. There was only one chair, which I guess was for us guests as they had no legs and moved like one might expect from blobs of biological material. We talked for a good few hours. They asked me questions about my life, my habits, country of origin and the customs of humanity.

After the discussion was over one of the blobs went to the wall behind him, which had one of the tubes and send a few pieces of itself through it, somewhere. It came back to me and give me an option.

“We give option to all. You are last guest. We know enough, we leave soon. You can go back or you can come.”

“Come? Come with you?” I asked with a puzzled expression.

“Yes.”

I was truly intrigued to say the least. It still baffled me that I was offered the possibility to travel the galaxy with them. See things no human has ever laid their eyes on. But what of my writing? What of my family? Then it hit me, my wife was divorcing me for another man, my children hated my guts as my wife turned them against me, my parents were long gone. There was nothing truly holding me in this world. This way I could be free. So I accepted.

They give me a nice little room for myself. It had everything a human like me needed. A bed, a food dispenser that give me anything I asked of it, a chair to sit on and a table. On the table were all my notes and writing materials. That's when inspiration hit me like lightning. This would be my story. This would be my legacy. I decided then and there, I would write about this journey. I would write about my new friends, which I decided to call Grobs. So that one day, if the day came that I returned, I could share my experience with the people of Earth. If they believed me was not that much of a concern to me. Let them call it comedy or sci-fi. I would know that it was real.

“Deadly Attractor” (TOC)

by P. Orin Zack

[2003]

Chapter Ten

Even though the jury had agreed to conspire with Frank on his investigation of the peculiar aberrations he saw during testimony, only the historian knew that he had a deeper mission: finding out what happened to Jerry, and learning the truth about the death that he was investigating. He’d spent the ride to Griffith Park Observatory wondering what he had gotten himself into, and where it would lead. At least now he’d be able to get some answers.

Since the cryptic note he’d written said nothing about where at the GPO they’d meet, Frank joined the evening crowd into the main hall and started a slow meander. When he reached the Foucault pendulum, he found the juror standing by the railing, watching it trace out the Earth’s rotation in the sand.

“I think it was time we were introduced,” he said, standing a bit behind and to the man’s left.

The historian turned to look at Frank for a second, and then glanced around the room. Satisfied that nobody was acting suspiciously, he said, “Let’s walk,” and started towards the exit. Frank followed.

Once they were outside, the historian walked towards the sculpture garden, and stopped by the bust of Galileo. “My name’s Peter.”

“Just Peter?”

“For now, yes. What we’re doing is dangerous, so let’s just leave it at that.”

Frank shrugged. “Okay.”

“One thing though. Were you serious about wanting to look something up, or was that just a broad hint about what you meant by ‘GPO’ in your note?”

“The former, actually, but there’s time for that.”

Peter looked up into the pervasive L.A. skyglow for a moment. “What did you want?”

“You haven’t said what information you tracked down for Jerry. I did some nosing around at the Hospice, and learned that the patient he was tracing was a man by the name of Vern Cuoku, and that Cuoku is related to a member of our administrative team. Jerry had treated him for an environmental allergy. Apparently, on his way back from a conference, Cuoku’s transport tangled with a freighter, and some fumes from a ruptured tank got sucked into the passenger cabin. I’m told you located some accident records?”

Peter chuckled. “For what they were worth, yeah. Y’know, the way things are set up, it’s almost impossible to prove anything any more.”

“Why? What did you find?”

“Well, from what I can tell, both vehicles were flying on automatic at the time, and they were each equipped with a serious amount of redundant tech. In order to fly unpiloted, both of them were required to have collision-avoidance safeties. Either one alone should have been able to avoid the other. Since they each had one, though, they’re supposed to negotiate a coordinated flight pattern. In theory, the two systems exchange course and position data, then check in with the grid to clear their avoidance maneuvers with any surrounding traffic. Once that’s been worked out, their respective nav systems use positioning data to follow the negotiated course. Their flight paths, as well as a ton of diagnostics, are logged real-time on systems at the BlackBox data center.”

“In that case,” Frank said, “shouldn’t it all be right there in the record?”

“Something’s in the record, all right, but it certainly isn’t the truth.” Peter turned around to stare into the night.

“Why? What did you find?”

“Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. More like ‘nothing happened.’ According to the record, both vehicles were dead on course, and their flight paths didn’t intersect at the site of the crash. I’m sure it was all sanitized.”

Frank raised his palms. “Then what did you find?”

“I compared a number of sources, and discovered that an emergency services flier was dispatched to the transport’s next stop. That’s how Cuoku was taken to the MedCenter.”

“How do you have access to this stuff? It’s not exactly in your line of work, if what you are is a historian.”

“A what?” Peter furrowed his brow. “No. I’m not a historian. You mean the book?”

“Well, yeah. I just figured…”

He laughed. “I said I’d brought it for perspective, that the data record could be changed, while old printed books could not. After finding that sanitized transportation log, I started wondering how much of what we think we know is just garbage. That sent me haunting antiquarian shops, which was how I ended up with that book.”

Frank studied him briefly. “So, what do you do?”

“I’m a statistician. I search for patterns.”

“How does that get you access to…?”

“…for a medical monitoring service. It’s amazing the kind of information you can get into in that line of work.”

Frank was quiet for a time, wondering what the skills and talents of the rest of the jury might be. Putting random groups of people together for one purpose might have some unexpected benefits to another.

At length, Peter spoke. “So what happens now? That was a pretty nervy stunt you pulled in the jury room today.”

“Stunt?” Frank asked, confused.

“That bit about the neural disorder. I know you can mess with people’s minds and all, but still, that was a heck of a way to get them on your side. It was a stunt, wasn’t it? I mean, there’s even less of a chance for someone to disprove your story than there is to prove Cuoku’s accident really happened.”

Frank was dumbfounded. Here he’d taken a huge risk by exposing his possible involvement in what could be interpreted as a psychic assault, something that could end his career and ruin his life, and Peter thinks it was a stunt? “No. It wasn’t a stunt. It really happened. Just like that accident.”

“Oh. I’m…” Peter stumbled, “I’m sorry. It’s just that with all the duplicity I’ve been surrounded with, I just…”

Frank raised his eyebrows. “I guess we’re even then. No harm done. And as to what happens now, like I told the jury, I’m planning to poke around in Apuérto’s mind, just as soon as they get him over to Kübler-Ross.”

The trip home passed without Frank even being aware of it. He was so wrapped up in the implications of what had been going on that he nearly missed his stop. What he didn’t miss, when he suddenly realized where they were, was the fact that something was different.

He first noticed the flier when he stood to head for the door. At this time of night, there wasn’t generally much traffic, and seeing a flier there at all was unusual. He stepped out of the bus, the door closed behind him and it rolled onto its next stop.

This flier, however, was a classic. Frank stood there for a moment, staring at the flier’s ugly gray nacelles. It wasn’t that the fan housings themselves were ugly, just the paint job. There were several kinds of propulsion systems in popular use, and the high priced ones were tending more towards antigrav units these days. The fact that this one used fans meant that it was labor intensive to keep it in good repair. Collectors still flew them, but for the most part they were only used for historical recreations. Well, in Los Angeles, anyway.

He was still gawking when the privacy glass switched to clear. Inside, he saw a familiar looking woman. He was trying to put a name to the face when he realized that she was the one with the strange eyes. She released the door, and he got in.

What he hadn’t realized was that this flier was special in another, more important way. It didn’t have an autopilot, or at least if it did have one, it was disengaged. She was flying on manual.

He turned towards her as they lifted off the ground. “Who are you?”

“That’s a long story, Frank. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to wait until we’re safely out of the city before getting into that. For the moment, just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Once they’d lifted into the aerial traffic pattern and started further inland, Frank looked down at the instrument cluster, and noticed a hole where the entertainment module ought to have been. He reached over and ran his finger across the empty Velcro mounting from the missing faceplate frame. “What happened to this?”

“Hmmm?” She glanced over at the hole and smiled. “Recent renovation. I didn’t like the way it rendered voices.”

While Frank alternately watched the lights below, the streams of flying traffic at different elevations, and the mysterious woman on his left working the controls, he thought about her voice. It was familiar for some reason, and not because she’d told him to expect her earlier that day. As they approached the ridges and canyons of the Angeles Crest, he started to remember where he’d first heard that voice: the hallway in the courthouse. It was her voice that he’d heard during his attack the previous Friday. She was the one who had helped him through the neural chaos, and then disappeared before he could thank her. Once he realized this, he stopped watching the scenery and looked instead at her. Whoever she was, she’d been involved for longer than he was.

She turned out the flier’s lights while still in the air, and somehow managed to fly to some other part of the Crest before gently setting down beside the streambed at the base of the canyon. While the fans spun down, she opened the door and stepped out.

In the dim light of the L.A. skyglow, now augmented by a young moon, Frank joined his captor and benefactor beside the stream. “That was you in the courthouse last Friday, wasn’t it?”

“I was wondering how long it would take you to realize that.”

“But why?” he said. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, revealing her accent for the first time. “Call me Cynthia Thedik. That’s an alias I used last year, when I first went underground.”

“Cynthia, huh? You’re from Australia, aren’t you? Or are you just messing with my head again?”

“Canberra, originally. But I was working in Nullarbor City when all this started.”

He thought for a moment. “I get the impression that whatever it is that you’re involved in is much larger than a simple civil case. There’s more to this than money, isn’t there.”

“At least. What it is exactly, however, is still a mystery.”

Frank suspected that if she was hunting for answers, too, there was most likely something that she needed from him. Otherwise, why go to all this trouble? Perhaps they could help one another. “It sounds like we ought to compare notes, though I can’t imagine what I know that can possibly help you. What was it that started in Nullarbor City anyway?”

“My career, for one thing. But then, it seems to have ended there as well.”

“Your career…?” he prompted.

“I was a Healer, much like you and your friend Jeroboam Suus.”

“Then you know about Jerry, as well?”

She nodded. “It’s all connected, really. But we’ll get to that. I kept seeing all those gray-area cases coming through for eval on their way to MedCenter. There wasn’t anything overtly wrong about it, though. Sure, the billings were higher that way, but it was well within the usual bounds of corruption, so there was no reason to bother with it.”

“No? That’s pretty much the same thing going on here in L.A. Only here, someone threw a case against it. Doesn’t corruption get press down under?”

“Not unless someone gets hurt, no. There was something else about it, though, something that just didn’t feel right, if you know what I mean.”

He glanced back at the flier, recalling how she’d landed. “You mean it irritated your psychic sense of balance? You’re a natural psychic, not a trained one, aren’t you?”

She nodded, though it was hard to tell in the dimness. “I had the sense that the general run of patients making that trip were different in some way. They tended to be involved in some kind of organization or other, usually. I tracked some of those patients after they were released, and a disproportionate number of the projects they were involved in failed a short time later. I hadn’t a clue what that might mean, but it still bothered me. And that’s when my life started to change.”

Frank found a boulder and sat down. “Why? What happened?”

“Something about the situation was important enough to disregard my Oath over.” She joined him by leaning against the boulder. “The same thing just happened to you, didn’t it?”

He studied her face for a moment, but there wasn’t enough light to see the color in her eyes. “Secret knowledge, psychic spying, or just a trained hunch?”

She smiled. “Body language. You can trust me.”

He nodded. “Yeah. It did. I’m planning to probe a witness’ mind when he’s transferred to Kübler-Ross Hospice.”

“Apuérto? The MedCenter administrator you were monitoring?” She huffed. “Don’t bother. He doesn’t know anything.”

“Why do you say that?”

She stood and stretched for a moment before answering. “What’s going on here is much bigger than that. Apuérto’s just a pawn.”

Frank walked a few paces past her, and then turned around. “So what’s really going on?”

“That’s what I wanted to know. I psychically lifted some passwords and dug around in the secure MedNet. Over time, I started building profiles on all the patients I felt were part of this, whatever it was. I sensed some kind of a pattern, but couldn’t nail it down. Then I got fingered.”

“Oh?

“Yeah. One morning, several of the passwords I’d been using were changed. My access was blocked, and I got a real bad feeling about trying the same trick again.”

He stepped back towards her. “Then your adversary is also psychic?”

“That’s what I thought.” She looked away. “I backed off for a bit, to let the trail cool down. When I started again, I used less direct sources, and switched among them more frequently. The pattern was definitely there, but I still couldn’t make any sense of it. I toyed with the angle used in that case you’re on, but something didn’t add up. In order for it to work, the emergency services people had to be involved as well, but they didn’t benefit from the arrangement, at least not financially. Still, I figured it was at least a clue.”

Frank squatted by the stream to listen.

“Collecting data wasn’t getting me anywhere,” she said, “so I started trying to fit some kind of hypothesis to the data. Nothing worked. Not until I turned the problem inside out from sheer frustration. Remember I said that a lot of the patients were involved in organizations? It turned out to be more than that. When I dug into the politics of their organizations, I found that my set of patients could all have been responsible for altering the outcome of their projects in some way. And all of those projects quietly failed, in one way or another. There were too many of these coincidences to have been random chance, so I figured there was something, or someone, behind it all.”

Frank shook his head. “I don’t get it. Anyone can get a vague reflection of possible future events using indicators like tarot, or even tea leaves. That doesn’t take a psychic. They’re useful for some things, like projecting the general results of decisions, but none of those visions are accurate, even when a psychic is doing it. The future is too fluid for that.”

“But how else would you expect someone to know who to deflect prior to their potential success?”

“How else, indeed.”

Cynthia paused to gaze at the steep canyon wall. “That’s when I had an improbable glacier-climbing accident. I should have died, and I probably would have if that ice cave hadn’t been there.”

Frank looked up from idly watching the stream. “Improbable? Like the so-called ‘accident’ my friend Jerry was investigating?”

She nodded. “Yeah, and look at what happened to him. Anyway, I know climbing gear, and that kind of failure just can’t happen. I gotta tell you, Frank, it was really strange. There I was at the NullArbor MedCenter, fighting to ignore the roar of psychic noise, and watching it all as if I wasn’t even there.”

“Ouch,” he said sharply. “I had a hard enough time just visiting Jerry. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be laid up there for days. How much did their meds interfere with your ability to block it all out?”

Cynthia closed her eyes tightly. “I don’t even want to think about it. I used that feeling of detachment to distract my attention. I watched everything that went on, noted all the people I could see, and the voices of those I couldn’t. I even tried scanning a couple of them, but the strain kept me weaker than I liked.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Yeah. I recognized several people that had roles in some of the cases I’d been studying, but one of them stood out. He was young, early twenties, and he didn’t seem to be MedCenter staff.”

Frank thought for a moment. “Why not? Was it something he did?”

She wrinkled her nose. “There’s a pervasive attitude among HealthTech staff, or at least there was at that MedCenter. You get to recognize it after a while. Well, he just didn’t seem to fit in. He had a different kind of smell about him, more controlling, a kind of governmental stench, if you know what I mean.”

He nodded.

“So I had two mysteries on my hands. One was the investigation I was taking a vacation from before the accident, and the other was this governmental advisor, if that’s what he was. And it occurred to me that, considering the nature of my accident, they really might be the same thing. Anyway, my last morning there, I tried to lure him out into the open so I could scan him. I guess I got snared in my own trap, because the next thing I knew they were pumping me full of sedatives and planning to move me to the security wing. That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands.”

He stepped closer. “What did you do?”

“Escaped.” She looked at him solemnly. “The first thing they did was report me as dangerous, and that let the city police stalk me. Then they filed bogus charges so the cops would have something to hold me on. My mates at the Hospice tried to defend my rep, but then the MedCenter threatened legal action against the Hospice unless I was fired in disgrace. I resigned to protect my mates, and applied for a private license, but was denied based on those trumped up charges the MedCenter filed on me. By that time, there was no escaping it. Someone was out to destroy me. And that meant I’d gotten close enough to whatever was going on to spook someone.”

Frank couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just waited for her to continue.

“I went underground. Ducked out of sight, and started using my psychic skills to keep people off my trail. In a situation like that, Frank, paranoia is your friend. I spent some time working out some new tricks, ways to avoid detection.”

He smiled, and pointed at her face. “Like making people think they can’t describe you?”

“Sure. That’s a lot easier than trying to change the color of your eyes. But it also meant dressing inconspicuously, avoiding leaving a data trail, and even tricking up an old flier so I could defeat the automatics, transponders and even the commercial com backchannel. It bought me time, and I got back to tracing what was going on.”

Frank took a deep breath. “So, what brought you to Los Angeles? What’s your interest in this case? And in me?”

She glanced around the canyon for a moment. “L.A. was easy. Even though GD headquarters is in Australia, not everything happens in Nullarbor City. I came across several obscure references to a controlling agency that was really based here. Then I learned about this case you’re on, which seemed to parallel what I stumbled on back home.” Then she fell silent.

Frank let the gurgle of the stream fill the moment. She’d stopped for a reason, and he didn’t want to force the issue.

Finally, she swallowed hard. “I did quite a number of surreptitious scans of people related to the case: legal counsel, court personnel, potential jurors, even likely witnesses.” Another pause. “I was, um… scanning you on Friday when your attack happened.”

He straightened. “While you were in the building? Wouldn’t that…?”

She laughed. “Hardly. Why do you think I was in the courthouse?”

“But I heard your voice. You said it was you that…”

Cynthia held up a hand. “Come on, Frank. Don’t tell me that you have to be next to someone just to scan them. You’ve been doing something more intrusive than that all week in court, albeit with permission.” She chuckled at his sudden concern. “Don’t worry, I was safe.”

“Well,” he said, “thanks. I didn’t realize I had a guardian angel. So what do we do from here?”

“That’s really what I wanted to talk to you about. As I said earlier, I think I have an idea about what might be going on, but it doesn’t make much sense. It’s a bizarre form of governmental sabotage.”

Frank frowned. “Sabotage?”

He looked skyward. “But why?”

Cynthia laughed darkly. “That’s what I want to know.”

“So how can I help?”

“I’m not sure yet, but I think we might be able to flush them out. I’ll be watching, and I’ll alert you if I notice anything. Just don’t give me away, okay?”

“Sure thing.” After a pause, Frank looked back at her. “One more thing. When I checked the courthouse directory on Tuesday morning after someone smashed my glasses, it said ‘read the paper’. Did you have anything to do with that?”

She shook her head. “Not me.”

(TOC)

Time travel is a lonely journey. Sure there will always be people to meet, unless you go to a humanity destroying event then go into that future. Then you just get to see what the world would look like without people. I did that once. I changed it back though, so I still don’t know if that makes me the worst killer the world has ever known, or maybe I’ve never killed anyone. I don’t even know anymore. Time travel is lonely and morally ambiguous. You see, time travel doesn’t really follow any of the rules of the movies. Maybe some, I haven’t seen all of them after all. In infinite timelines there has to be at least one movie that gets it right. So I’ll tell you about the first time I went back in time. Traveling forward was not that exciting to me, it was just a sample container disappearing and reappearing some time later. Woo. It sometimes helps for people to relate this to a movie, so think of me as Marty from Back to the Future. A little young and underqualified, an expendable factor smart enough to report back in, but not important enough if something were to go wrong.

I think I volunteered because of that first time travel question: What if you went back in time and erased your birth? Could it happen since you would not have existed to make the journey in the first place? That struck close to home for me. The chance to eliminate my father before I was conceived and prevent all that pain in mine and my mother’s life. So when it worked and I found myself in the past I could not resist answering that question. I looked my father up and located him. I won’t go into the details here, but suffice it to say the man who would have been my father met his end before he got the opportunity. 

Seeing his end I was frozen in anticipation, or fear. I had just killed someone for the first time, so I was feeling many things all at once. The one thing I didn’t feel was non-existence. I hadn’t ceased to exist through some temporal paradox. I logged the experience and made the return trip to the present, or what was my current perception of the present. My old present. They were surprised to see me. After sifting through all the data one of the "Docs" concluded that since matter can not be created or destroyed, only altered, acting on my own past did not have the power to alter my current state. Also I hadn’t existed in this “present” until I “returned” to it. So I was a time traveler from this world, but from outside the current timeline. After more debate the moral aspect of my actions came into question. I had killed someone in this timeline after all and that sort of thing is frowned upon. I convinced the “Doc” that I would prevent the killing of my father and restore the timeline. They loved the amount of data they got from my trip and were eager to have me go again, though most of them realized that once I restored the timeline I would not be returning to their timeline. I think since I brought my own device my leaving wouldn’t cost them anything and they could distance themselves from the moral issues. 

Stopping myself turned out to be easier than I could have imagined. I knew exactly where The other me would be and once I told my younger self what had happened, the other me was genuinely intrigued to learn the answer. We now knew what happened if you went back in time to prevent your birth. We also agreed that living in a world where we had no history would create new obstacles. The burden of being the first murderer to never have killed anyone was something I kept to myself. 

The last big surprise came when I returned to the “present” again. You see, there were two of me on the same timeline and both of us were returning to the same present. So everyone involved was shocked to see that there were now two “Martys” returning from the past. Of course that is not my name, but someone suggested that they could call one of us Marty since there were now two of me. Again after sifting through all the data it was discovered that if a time traveler changes any significant event, it created a branched timeline which became the only timeline for that traveler to proceed on. 

You must be asking yourself how could time travel be lonely if there were two of me around? Well upon learning that any changes made to the past would have no effect on the present timeline except for the traveler the “Docs” decided to enforce a strict no interference policy and redirected their efforts to “observing” the timeline. I believe their idea was to create a kind of window that you could use to see through time, but not travel or interact. And once again I was the anomaly that could be let go. My other self stayed behind and I was encouraged to see what happened if Hitler never took power. 

Since then I have been exploring the timelines. I have kept a log of the changes I have made, so I could always go back and repair any timelines that turned out worse. I also implemented a system that allows me to send and receive messages in critical locations. It allows me to send my records to past selves to prevent the bad timelines without creating more duplicates. I can’t be sure it works, but I haven’t met another me since I implemented the system, so I have to assume it works. 

Yeah, it’s lonely, but life has become a choose your own adventure book for me. One where I can go back any number of choices if I don’t like how the story is playing out. I have erased my own existence several times over. It turns out if you prevent a war it drastically changes breeding patterns in the next generation. And it’s a lot harder to prevent a war than you might think. Humanity loves fighting over who gets to control what. I’ve been approached by agents like you before. I can leave quite a trail on the timeline and powerful people want to control me, but it always comes down to the same thing. If I make the changes you want me to make to the past you will never see me again, because I will be on a new timeline and you will still be on this one. Having said that I am always open to new suggestions on how I can build a better world, so tell me what were you going to have me do?

I wasn't a normal kid. I didn't make friends easy. I was bullied. I was always the poorest kid in school. My life was generally miserable.

We moved around a lot, my father wearing out his welcome in one town or another. My mother jumped ship almost before I remember at this point.

None of that is important outside of framing the hole I felt I was in. Then one day my father decided he wanted a wolf.

We were up on 40 acres in northern Maine. I had gone to spend some time with my grandparents over the summer. I came home to a new puppy that my dad had got about a month before. He had traded our hifi system for a wolf hybrid.

Sky was 70% wolf Austrian shepherd mix. 30/40 arctic and timber. One of the guys from my dad's motorcycle club had told him about it, and he thought it was a good idea to put a wolf into a house with three kids. It was a bad decision that turned into one of the most blessed experiences of my life.

She didn't take too me at first. I was new, and I was coming into her home. I tried to bond with her for weeks, but she refused to like me. That changed when I went to my grandparents' house again at the end of summer.

She didn't leave my bed while I was gone. She became my shadow when I got home. She only listened to me and would have literally killed anyone who tried to harm me. She was not a dog. She was not a pet. She was a beast, and she knew it. She was brilliant and beautiful.

A hybrid can turn on their owner. It isn't like having a dog. I wasn't a dumb kid. Well, outside being a dumb kid. I was aware of mortality at a young age. I was aware that this beautiful beast could kill me if her mood turned. I was never afraid of her.

It's difficult to put into words. There is a bond when you grow up in a pack. I was her brother. It wasn't owner and pet. She was so much more. I didn't need to speak. She knew what I was thinking. It isn't an exaggeration. She could read body language as well as a seasoned poker player.

You don't want to encourage aggression with a hybrid. You have to balance play with training. You have to know when the play growls turn aggressive and stop. The bite Sky had was intense. I would wear an oversized wool coat during our play sessions for safety. It was about three inches thick. Some Russian military surplus jacket. Old wool and horse hair, I think.

She could tear through that like it was paper if she wanted. Even just playing she'd occasionally pierce skin. She'd bring it over when she wanted to wrestle. We'd wrestle until she got aggressive or I got tired. We'd sit on the couch or lay in my bed after.

By the time she was six months old we had to get a harness that I guess is usually used for calves. Her neck was too big for a regular collar. I never needed to leash her. She only left my side when she was chasing small animals on our walks through the old orchard or up in the poplar grove. She loved the winter. She loved chasing hares through the snow while I trekked across the backwoods. She would pounce after them into the snow like a fox does.

She was impossible to keep fenced in. She would push the windows out of the frame of the trailer more than once. While I was at school we had to chain her to an old satellite dish pole. There used to be one of those giant satellite dishes that could pick up pretty much anything in our back yard. My dad pulled the dish apart because he could use the aluminum frame to build sleds out of. The pole was at least eight feet in the ground. She could literally pull anything else.

We hooked her up to the hitch of our trailer at first, but she almost pulled it off the foundation blocks. She pulled a tree out. It wasn't huge, but it was still a tree. Honestly, almost every moment was like a fairytale. So many of my memories with her seem like they are from a storybook. I mean, she was an actual beast. I running through the woods with a wolf. I wrestling with a wolf. I was watching a wolf steal potatoes out of the potato box to play fetch with herself.

She loved potatoes. Absolutely went nuts for them. I can't remember her favorite brand, but if we got a different one she would make us wash the potatoes for her before she would play with them. She would take them out of the box and crawl up beside me and drop it in my lap and give me the saddest look until I washed it for her. Then she'd toss it around and nibble at it until there was just half a skin. She'd eat all the skin off her favorite brand. Must have been a different fertilizer.

We used to have the most amazing thunder storms. Lightning would tear across the sky all night sometimes. She would force her way under the blankets to hide beside me. This monster of an animal expected a kid years away from a learner's permit to protect her from the peeling thunder. I would have died for her.

After never really connecting, I found a true connection. That connection gave me a strength I never thought possible. Physically I grew stronger beside her. Mentally I grew to keep up with her. Spiritually I connected with nature in a way few truly do. I was truly blessed by this creature that could kill me if I pissed her off.

I miss seeing her run while hunting. I miss how she would stare at me until I looked her in the eyes. Losing her wasn't like losing a pet. She wasn't a pet. It still tears me apart knowing that I'll never see her come running out of the woods after getting loose carrying enough of a deer to know she killed it. I'll never forget that it would only take a whine from me to get her to stop playing because she thought she hurt me. I'll never forget the guilt in her eyes when she did accidentally.

A wolf is not a pet, but one wolf was my sister.

R.I.P. Sky

Saadou, a 37-year-old man hailing from the northeast, traversed his homeland, bound for the forested northern province of a neighboring West African country. His purpose? To sell his herd of 75 cows, accompanied by Tegedantay, a five-year-old girl, and Sulieman, a 10-year-old boy.
The trio faced the task of crossing a murky river to access the northern province. Their vessel, a sizable raft ferry propelled by an outboard motor, was crafted from securely bound wooden logs, connected with robust nautical ropes.
On the opposite bank, awaited two prominent cow traders—Ailemu and Shaiku—anticipating their arrival. Ailemu, with wide eyes and a pot belly, possessed an insatiable drive for profit, willing to engage in business with anyone offering cows for sale, be it 10 or just a lone sickly cow. Ailemu inherited the family cow business, combining his father's teachings with a tenacious work ethic. In under two years, despite not knowing how to write his own name, he expanded the enterprise from 15 cows and 27 acres to a staggering 350 cows and over 1000 hectares of land.
Shiaku, a short and stout man with hardly any neck, also inherited the family cow business and rapidly grew it to an admirable 300 cows operation and more than 1000 hectares farm estate, complete with other livestock such as goats and chickens as well as a highly sought after view of the mountains. Having completed secondary schooling, Shaiku focused on securing the most substantial deals or engaging with significant sellers to meet his annual quota of 50 cows. “Smart work and not hard work,” a motto he preached to the 30 men under his employment.
In the northern province, buying or selling cows inevitably involved dealing with either Ailemu or Shaiku, who dominated the province completely. Thus, a fierce rivalry extended not only between the two traders but also among their respective teams of workers. While public interactions adhered to pleasantries—as custom dictates—between the duo, behind the scenes, workers often endured screechees of "that fat illiterate rat" or "no neck fool" when a deal slipped through to the opposing party.
On the eve before Saadou, Tegedantay, Sulieman, and their cattle were set to reach the river crossing, Ailemu and Shiaku meticulously briefed their seasoned salesmen, Abu and Ibrahim, on the art of persuasion. The tall and slender herder's imminent arrival had been the talk of the town, with scouts and messengers providing detailed insights two weeks prior. Reports raved about the cows' robust size, their smooth and well-fed appearance, and their ease of rumination when at rest.
That evening over dinner with his wife and four children, Ailemu could barely contain his excitement for the potential deal that was about to arrive at his doorstep tomorrow. “This one is the big one!” he repeatedly shouted over dinner. The plan was for Abu to handle the negotiations, as he had done countless times before with other herdsmen. However, as the night wore on, Ailemu's unease grew. This deal was no ordinary deal like the many others Abu had closed for him; it’s a deal that required his special attention and “hard-work hands” in order to ensure a favorable outcome. The reports about the 75 cows from his scouts and messengers were more than encouraging—reports he hadn't heard describing a cattle herd not since his father's time.
Thus, two hours past midnight on the day of the deal, Ailemu, forsaking sleep, rose from his comfortable bed, careful not to disturb his deep-sleeping wife. He promptly dispatched messages to Abu and alerted his house girls to have his favorite gown pressed and ready by Fajr along with a gleaming white babouche, part of his many collections (of various colors) sourced from the finest Moroccan merchants.
The morning unfolded with an unusual dreariness, a mild fog shrouding the surroundings. Shiaku’s salesman, Ibrahim, strained his eyes against the river's mist, discerning shadowy figures and large four legged beasts on the other side. Having skipped breakfast after the first light of dawn, he had arrived early, eager to meet the man who had been the subject of his boss's fascination for weeks. Ibrahim had closed many deals for Shiaku before and was a trusted confidant due to having an eye for the “smart deals'' and quickly fulfilling the 50 cows quota early on in the year, giving his boss time to focus on other matters which range from spending more quality time with his two sons and daughter to tending to livestock on his farm estate.
Overlooking the shore on a hard muddy hill, Ibrahim placed his hand above his eyes and squinted like an explorer looking for land. “That’s them.” Coming out of the fog and gliding ever closer to the northern province shore were 25 cows (according to Ibrahim’s count) and a gangly boy holding the hand of a short pudgy little girl. Upon seeing the 25 cows, Ibrahim’s heart raced and then he remembered that the raft ferry was only so big enough to hold 50 human occupants at a time.
After the two children and 25 cows landed and got off on the shore, the ferryman, without hesitation, turned around his raft ferry and disappeared back into the fog. Couple minutes passed and another 25 cows were seen from the fog before being dropped off on shore with the two children. Another couple minutes later and all the cows were safely on shore. Seeing the cattle for himself, Ibrahim licked his lips as he kept counting and recounting each cow one by one. They were definitely the biggest cows he had seen in all his past dealings. Even better, none of them appeared sick or old for that matter as each was able to sit, stand and move around rather gracefully.
The last occupant to emerge from the fog and arrive on shore was Saadou, donning a black gown. Ibrahim got a clear look at the light-skinned and pony-tailed cattle herder everybody was raving about. True, he was tall—just as the scouts and messengers described — but not skinny, at least not by Ibrahim’s standards. Eying the cattle herder as he organized his herd, Ibrahim expected the man to be much skinnier, and certainly should not have broad shoulders and muscular arms at that. In fact, the only thing skinny about the man was his long and lanky legs, barely covered by loose black trousers that stopped far short of the ankles.
“Where’s that big head?” Ibrahim murmurmered. Noon was approaching and he had not seen any signs of Abu. He loved the feeling of winning deals over Abu. Throughout the years, they engaged in back and forth battles on who could win the most deals over the other: battles when tallied altogether would likely show an even score. Unlike their bosses, they were not shy to hurl insults directly at one another when jostling to entice herders to relinquish their precious commodities at a favorable price. “Big head asshole!” “Black bastard!” Some of the favorite insults of choice that could be heard all along the river’s shore, in addition to hisses and teeth-sucking.
Ibrahim felt a hand on his right shoulder. “Ah, I thought you were too scared to come, big head. Afraid I am going to whip you again.”
“Never afraid, Ibrahima,” said the bassy voice.
Ibrahim froze for a moment, feeling the coolness of the sweat running down from his forehead and armpits. He without a doubt recognized the voice but questioned why he was hearing it: at the river of all places.
“What?” the voice said. “Eh, you not going to look at me?”
Ibrahim turned around slowly, hoping that if he moved carefully enough, the voice would vanish and he would once again see the familiar forehead he’d been accustomed to seeing at the river all these years. “Sorry…sa,” Ibrahim said, sounding defeated as his eyes settled on the fat face and big grin of his boss’ longtime rival. There were four houseboys who stood behind him.
“Ibrahima, you look not well,” Ailemu said, wearing a creaseless bright white gown and kufi hat. “Do you want me to send you to my doctor?”
“No…sa,” Ibrahim said, caressing his sweaty forehead. “I thought…Abu—”
“Change of the fate, my son. I will be taking over for Abu.” Ailemu walked past Ibrahim—followed by his 4 houseboys—and stood at the edge of the hill, rubbing his hands and salivating at all he had been waiting for the past 3 weeks. “So this is the big one, eh… Mashallah.”
Ibrahim heard his stomach growling with impatience. It had been growling all morning since arriving at the river but his sales tactic (practiced over and over with Shaiku in the night’s prior) to close the deal along with excitement to beat Abu had kept his mind preoccupied. Now, with the thought of having to outmaneuver Ailemu, Ibrahim wished he had listened to his nagging wife and ate something before leaving home. He never competed with Ailemu before on a deal. Matter of fact, he did not remember ever seeing Ailemu at the river; it was always his “big head” and short salesman negotiating and closing deals on his behalf. Still, he had heard stories (lots of stories) about the “big belly man” and his callous way of doing business from not only his boss but also from other smaller cow traders. “Getting in the middle of Ailemu and money is like being in middle of a wolf and a sick sheep,” as bluntly put by a small inland trader who insisted on a private conversation.
"Ibrahima, come my son," the voice beckoned, its resonance cutting through the air.
Like a doomed sailor answering the call of a siren, Ibrahim walked with heavy steps towards the voice. When he finally (and reluctantly) made it to the edge of the hill, a blubbery hand wrapped around and covered him like a robe.
“Don’t worry about Shaiku,” Ailemu said, pulling Ibrahim closer. He reached inside his big gown, pulled out and plopped a bundle of cash—folded and tied up in a rubber band—on the man’s thumping chest. “Take this and if he throws you out because of today, come to me. You don’t need to lie. Tell him it was me, not Abu. You are a good seller, Ibrahima. Allah knows I’m grateful to those who help me.” Ailemu released Ibrahim, who bent his head down, took his earnings for the day and scurried away.
With the competition out of the way, Ailemu shifted his attention to the impending transaction.
/The Business of Cow. A 3-Part Series Short Story about the life of early cattle traders in West Africa. By West African writer Josephine Dean/

He and I were locked in combat, eyes staring at each other like two wolves fighting for dominance of the pack. He threw a round kick at me, hoping it would land and knock me down, but I stepped backwards in time to evade it. I then threw two punches at him, a jab and a cross. He raised his arms to block both, but I was expecting that. I then threw another jab, which once again caused him to raise his arms to block, but I then quickly used the momentum from my punch to turn all the way into a spinning side kick, one that landed right in the center of his stomach. The impact folded him like a cheap beach chair.

About two seconds later, the bell rang, and our sensei shouted “TIME!” The match was over, and even though there were officially no winners and losers in classroom free sparring, it was clear that I had come out on top in the match.

“Sparring gear, off!” Our sensei ordered.

As we went to the dojo’s shelves to put away our protective gear, my opponent, Patrick, came up to me and said “Wow, you’ve got one Hell of a turning side kick?”

“Thank you.” I said. “That’s my signature combo, the jab-cross followed up by a jab-turning side kick. No one ever sees it coming.”

“Is that so?” He asked. “You know, do you wanna get a drink sometime? First rounds on me.”

I said “You know, that sounds great.”

_____

The next day we went to a local bar to get a beer. Patrick was a fairly new student at our school, but one who’d already gotten a black belt at a different location, so he was placed immediately in the advanced class.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking, what got you into taekwondo?” He asked.

“Just needed something to keep me in shape after the Army.” I answered. “To be honest, my life lost a lot of purpose after I left. I went from doing something that felt fulfilling, to sitting at a desk processing Amazon orders. But the dojo helped me regain that warrior spirit, you know?”

“Oh, I fully understand.” Patrick said. “You’re very good, it’s no wonder they made you the assistant instructor.”

“Thank you.” I said as I took another sip of beer.

“So, tell me a little bit about yourself.” Patrick said, and it was the start of a long conversation.

_____

I didn’t think much of our conversation at the bar, just figured I’d made a new friend. But a few nights later, while I was fast asleep, I heard Patrick say “Good morning.” as I found him staring at me over my bed, fully dressed in a business suit. Beside him were two men in thick padded armor, each having weapons strapped to their utility belt.

Of course, I tried to fight back. I punched one and kicked the other, but against their armor, my strikes just bounced off. They quickly overpowered and subdued me. They gagged me, hooded me, cuffed me, then stuck a syringe in my arm that made me feel very tired all of a sudden. They then dragged me to my garage, where I was loaded into the back of a van they had parked there.

“Don’t worry, we’ll explain later.” Patrick said as I drifted off to sleep.

______

When the hood and gag were taken off, I was in some sort of gym. Patrick was standing there, still in his suit.

“Good morning.” He said.

I then grabbed him by his shirt collar and said “Dude, you have about two seconds to tell me where I am before I…”

“Ugh ugh, I wouldn’t be so feisty if I were you.” He said as he pointed to one of the windows in the gym. Behind it were four guards, dressed the same as the armed, armored thugs who kidnapped me. “They’re under orders to control you nonlethally, but they’re free to make things very painful for you.”

I let go of him.

“But, since it is important you know, the truth is that I’m not who I say I am. You see, I’m a bit of a talent scout for my boss. I won’t give you his name, but we normally refer to him simply as The Berserker, I suggest the two of us do the same. The Berserker is a very, very wealthy man with a very, very particular hobby.”

“What hobby?” I asked.

“Fighting, to the death.” He answered. “He gave boxing and MMA a try in his younger years, and even made amateur leagues in both, but having to stop at knockout just never satisfied him. So, he has scouts such as myself, who find gifted fighters & martial artists like you, drawn from gyms and dojos all over the country. We bring them here, and hope to give him a real challenge.”

“Here, if you’ll turn your attention to the monitor, you’ll see what you’re up against.”

He used a remote to play a video on a TV in a corner of the gym. A video showed two men stepping into the ring. One was wearing nothing but athletic shorts, and a dark mask that concealed his face. The other wore only sweatpants & boxing gloves.

“The one in the mask is The Berserker.” He explained. “The man you see him up against, was a two time Golden Gloves boxer.”

The boxer began throwing punches, but nothing landed. The Berserker moved with the speed and finesse of a cat, never staying in one spot for more than a moment or two. After the boxer began wearing himself out, The Berserker threw a roundhouse kick that took out his leg, forcing the boxer to then start hobbling in pain as he tried to continue the fight.

The Berserker then dashed behind him and threw another round kick, this one that landed right at the base of his spine. The boxer’s scream of pain was nothing short of blood curdling.

The Berserker then wrapped his arm around his neck, and put him in stranglehold, and did not stop until the boxer finally just lost life.

“This can’t be real.” I said. “There’s no way you can actually get away with this.”

“That’s why we’re careful.” Patrick continued. “That’s why we have scouts all over the country. His last fight was against a college wrestler we picked up at a college campus in Mississippi. Before then, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu prodigy from a gym in Idaho. I can go on, but I think you get the point.”

“He’s won all of his past 118 fights.” Patrick explained. “And in three days, you will most likely be his 119th.”

“Between now and then, you have free reign of this gym, and the living quarters in the room behind that door. If you want food, any food, our 24 hour kitchen staff can whip up anything you want. The Berserker wants you to be fully prepared for your duel.”

_______

I ordered lobster tail just to see if Patrick was serious. To my shock, it was delivered to the gym in about twenty minutes. It even came with a glass of white wine (that I hadn’t even asked for), along with a note signed by the chef that read “I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I served this lobster tail without this perfect wine pairing.” Patrick wasn’t kidding when he said they’d bring me whatever food I wanted, although it felt less of a kindness and more of them just trying to fatten up the pig they were about to slaughter. I wouldn’t be much of a show for the crowd if I was weak when I entered the cage.

But I intended to be at full strength during my fight. I knew I was playing into what they wanted, but I also didn’t care. If I was gonna die, I was going to die fighting. So I spent those three days working out just hard enough to not injure myself. I would pound the heavy bags, lift weights, and run on the treadmill for as much as I could take, for hours on end, for all three of my training days. It was all I had to do; the only things I could get to play on the gym’s TV were exercise videos. I didn’t have any books, any magazines, and the only people I had to talk to were the guards (and to put it mildly, they weren’t very conversational).

By the end of it, I was in the best shape of my life. Even when I was in the Army, I was never in such great shape. I felt ready to take on the world. But was I ready to take on him?

_______

“Are you ready?” Patrick asked me, as it was time to step out and faced why lay ahead of me.

“Yeah.” I said, coldly.

“I do hope you know that this isn’t personal. If anything I kind of liked you. But we all have a place in this world, I’m sure an ex soldier of all people understands that.”

I wanted to kill him right then and there, for having the gall to compare his crimes to my service. But there were two guards hovering over me, both with their palms resting on the handles of his firearms, ready to draw & fire the moment I stepped out of line. So I held my anger, and walked to the arena like a man.

“Ladies and gentlemen” a disembodied voice boomed over the intercoms, as the crowd went wild. I have no idea how or why The Berserker got an audience for these fights, or what kind of sociopath would actually pay to be there, but whatever the reason, the stands had dozens of people there to see me die.

I stepped into the ring, and the announcer said “Today’s challenger stands 6’3, weighing in at 185 pounds. He has eleven years of taekwondo under his belt, but will that be enough? He’s about to find out.”

And then, The Berserker entered the ring. He was at least two inches taller and much more jacked than I ever was, I could tell that this alone was gonna make it a difficult fight.

“On three!” The announcer shouted. “1…2…3!”

The Berserker then came at me with a flying round kick that would have shattered my rib cage if it had landed. Thankfully, I evaded just in time, and his foot flew through the air.

But before I could even counter, he continued the turn and threw a spinning elbow strike that landed right on the side of my face. I then spit out one of my own teeth.

He followed up a flurry of punches, but I stepped backwards to keep his fists away from me, until I felt the cold metal of the cage.

He thought he had me cornered and helpless, and he went on the offensive, hoping to land a knockout punch. This was a mistake; as he came charging in, I lifted my front leg and shot a lightning fast sidekick directly to his liver.

He stumbled backwards in pain & shock. For the first time in the fight, I had a moment of advantage, and I didn’t intend to waste it. I followed up with a spinning wheel kick that made his jawline meet my heel.

Before he could recover, I threw a body punch that landed right in his stomach. I then tried to throw another, but he blocked it in time. And then, before I could throw anything else, he stepped in close, grabbed my arm, and threw me to the ground, judo style.

He then began making it rain hammerfists all over me. I tried to cover myself as best as I could, but he was constantly moving over me, finding new spots to slam his hands into.

If I didn’t stop this, I’d be a goner. So I crawled out from underneath him, and then used bicycle kicks to create some distance. Once I put a few feet between us, I hopped back on my feet.

I then went on the offensive. I stepped forward and threw a punch, but he stepped back. This gave me an idea; my signature combo had never failed me before, why wouldn’t it help me now?

I threw two punches at him, a rapid jab-cross combo. He raised his hands to block, and stepped back. After resetting, I threw another jab; he once again put his hands up to his face to block, but this time, I twisted my hips, and nailed him right in his exposed, unprotected stomach.

He collapsed in pain, and spat out a mouthful of blood. Back in the dojo, my kicks were usually softened by foot pads, chest protectors, and my inclination to not hurt my friends. But in this arena, none of those things were there to stop my sidekick from devastating him. All I had to do was decide how to finish him off, and I figured stomping on his neck would be a

I had never killed anyone before, not even during my time in the Army. I wasn’t sure if I could even follow through with it; but I won’t lie, I enjoyed the feeling of crushing his windpipe a lot more than I thought I would. Watching him try to breathe only to suffocate was the icing on the cake.

______

After the fight, the guards escorted me out.

“PATRICK!” I shouted as my former opponent’s lackey came out.

“Yes, sir.” He said.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t do to you what I just did to your boss.” I said.

“Sir, please calm down.” Patrick said.

“I could’ve died in there. I…”

“Sir, please, sit.” Patrick said.

I took a deep breath, and then took a seat. I decided to at least hear him out before killing him.

“Don’t lie, I saw the look on your face. You enjoyed the feeling of taking the life out of him, didn’t you?”

I did not care about Patrick enough to bother lying to him. “Yes, I did.” I answered, bluntly.

“Sir, these fights make more money than you’ve ever dreamed of. Tickets to be in the audience cost $50,000 each. Our dark web live streams cost $2,000 per view.”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Completely. The only other places on Earth that provide an experience even close to this are in third world shitholes where you’d take him a deadly disease as a souvenir. For those wanting a bit of luxury with their show of blood, this is truly a one of a kind experience.”

“And our headliner, the one they all come to see, is now dead. Do you get what I’m saying?”

_____

A month later…

“Are you ready, sir?” Patrick asked me.

“100%.” I said as I finished my stretch kicks.

Patrick then turned to a guard and said “Let the announcer know it’s time to open the fight.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, please introduce our returning champion!” the announcer boomed as I entered the ring.

“And in this corner, we have the challenger. A Muay Thai fighter, handpicked from one of the toughest gyms in Louisiana.”

It was time to start my first real day at my new job.

Ten years, the only contract I never completed. Every day I can as the sun sets and the first moon peeks over the mountains I exit a densely forested area in the middle of the valley to step out into a clearing that wasn’t there when all this started. My foe is already at the other end. Today it’s perched on a boulder recently excavated from the soil around a fortnight ago from a devastating slash of my battle ax. A slash that in the past had cut clean through a wyrm and earned me the title [Scalebreaker]. I go through a few light stretches as I prepare for today's battle. Across from me my nemesis ungulates in a way that is no doubt mocking me. Today I shall prove my worth.

I send my strength down into my legs and a new crater forms as I launch myself forward towards my sworn enemy that doesn’t even move until I am a mere hair's breadth away as it seemingly vanishes from my senses.

I position my legs out in front of me as an Oak swallows the brunt on my momentum. The tree snaps when I push off back in the opposite direction. Before I can even get my bearings my side is slammed into, I can feel my ribs creek like an old board before I am sent flying off into the underbrush. A few scapes and tumbles later I am back on my feet, one hand clutching my side. I begin forming a new plan and just a few moments before stepping out into the clearing I begin gathering mana. I jump through the remaining shrubs and raise the blunt end of my ax over my head in a two-handed grip before letting out a roar and slamming it into the earth.

“Seismic Smash!”

The world goes still for a moment before my ax connects and sends shockwaves through the soil and air. A few trees closest behind me explode into splinters and ones even further back are stripped bare. Loose rocks become high velocity projectiles expanding outward in all directions. I quickly raise my ax again to the ready position and look around as the air ripples to my left and I catch sight of a blue blur in my peripheral vision. I turn, swinging my ax in a downward arc putting every bit of strength I can muster behind it. “Too slow,” is my last thought before the force of a train rams itself into my forearm sending pain racing all the way up to my shoulder. This loosens my grip on my ax and sends it careening off into the distance.

I spin countless times in the air before catching my bearing quick enough to land back on my feet. Panting now, I look forward and grimace, it’s in front of me. This creature has been with me since I started at F rank all the way to my newly acquired S rank status. Still, I see no way to beat it as I am.

I curse and raise my arms into a protective X across my torso and gather my remaining mana to cast a defensive spell. I already know what’s coming next but I had a new trick up my sleeve.

“Radiant Aegis!”

The sky above me cracks, and a pristine white hand lowers a chalice embossed with moonstones and sapphires. It tips over and a kaleidoscopic array of ethereal light spills out and flows downward before condensing and forming a layer over my body. This protection saved me from a concentrated blast produced by a hoard of dragons trying to overrun a dwarven stronghold. It’s where I gained my most recent title [Sentinel of the Eternal Light].

One second the creature is in front of me and in an instant it slams into me. My body holds as my feet dig a trench as I am moved at least a dozen paces back. I firm my resolve as I am slammed again and again. I am pushed further and further back, eventually reaching the edge of the clearing as one more slam pushes me into, then through the trunk of a tree. Foliage flies past as it is shredded by the kinetic force being produced. My arms slowly become numb as hairline cracks start forming at the ethereal barrier on my body.

Then at once the creature stops its assault, pausing in front of me. I don’t let up, keeping my defense up the best I can in my deprived state. A moment later my face and entire body create an indent in the ground. I can feel gravity increase a thousand fold as I am crushed below the weight of a mountain. It seems the enemy also had a new trick. Sure enough the light around my body dissipates at about the same time as gravity eases returns to normal.

I lay there, barely holding onto consciousness as I raise my arm to pull myself back over the new hole in the shape of my body. My eyes peer back onto level ground as I watch the only creature that I hadn’t been able to kill ungulate away from me and back into the forest. Before darkness takes me I cast Inspect on it.

Name: Blu$ Sl!m3

Level: %4#$

Health: ?&?/

Stamina: &$#7

Class: /*?O

Skills: ????????????????????????

????????????????????????

????????????????????????

????????????????????????

Titles: [H7*^$] [#@%G&] [3terna1 D3v0u4er]

The sound of scratching above my head pulled me from a fitful sleep. I rolled over onto my back and looked up at the ceiling only a foot away from my face. Ravens, cawing and hopping back and forth above, reminded me that I had forgotten to wash off the deck last night. A weak gray light filtered down into the bow of the boat where the captain and I slept. Without looking at my watch I knew it was time to get up, but in the bunk across from me, the captain still snored peacefully so I lay there another minute listening to the birds. The day was going to be cold and wet and difficult like so many before it. A part of me wanted to roll over and fall back into the darkness, but instead, with far less than enthusiastic vigor, I slipped out of my relatively warm sleeping bag and into a pair of dirty pants and worn rubber boots. Pulling on a threadbare wool sweater, I trudged out into the main cabin of the second-hand fishing boat we called home. Forty feet of wood and fiberglass older than I was, that at this point was held together mostly by hope and duct tape.

The view out the cabin windows made my shoulders slump. A dark mist swirled around our boat. Allowing only fleeting, spectral glimpses of the craggy island behind which we were anchored. Looking about, my eye couldn’t help but spy a letter sitting on our battered wooden table The letter had shown up last night, delivered by the cannery boat that came every other day from town to buy our salmon and replenish our ice. My name was written in her flowing script and it made my blood run cold. I had been at sea for ten days, ten days since that endless night of arguing and tears. Ten days since our icy goodbye on the dock and the last sight of her fading away behind me. All that night I had stared at that envelope, turning it over and over in my hands. Taking in every detail as I ate the can of soup that comprised my dinner, but I could not muster the courage to open it and see what waited inside. Now after a restless sleep, the letter lay there on the table, patiently waiting for me. However, I still couldn’t face whatever message it brought. So, after covering the letter with a book to hide it, I left the cabin to take care of some morning business. I walked out onto the back deck and shivered, chilled to the bone by the beautiful Alaskan summer morning. No other boats were in sight and the ravens had moved on after gobbling up the scraps of fish we left behind. In those quiet moments, as I relieved myself over the back rail, it was as if I were the only human alive. I closed my eyes and embraced the frigid, sputtering rain that had started to fall around me, endeavoring to find some measure of peace in the great gray stillness. Alas, before tranquility could be achieved, the boat shook and roared as the captain fired up the ancient diesel engine which belched black smoke into the sky. I sighed and returned to the cabin while he pulled up the anchor and got us underway.

It was experience and radar that got us around the island and out into open water. A stiff wind blew beyond the harbor’s safety, taking away the mist and building up the seas. Our boat dutifully plowed through the waves while the captain searched for a spot to set the net. Most of the best places were taken by our early rising comrades, forcing us further out offshore and into the weather. While he drove and cussed, I dug through the tiny pantry in search of breakfast. Not much remained, but I did locate a half-eaten bag of beef jerky and pulled out a piece the size of my palm. I had just put it in the oven to warm when the captain stopped the boat. We didn’t speak, we didn’t have to. Each of us knew our job and it was entirely too early for idle politeness. The waves tossed our motionless boat about as we pulled on our slime covered and scale encrusted foul weather gear. On the back deck sat a massive aluminum drum that held our fishing net. I balanced myself on the rolling deck between the drum and the back rail, the captain stood at a small wheel on the side of the drum. When the captain started driving forward, I pulled the net, hand over hand, off of the drum and threw it over the back rail. The net and its floats slid against my side, snatching at my jacket and endeavoring to pull me overboard. My eyes were scrunched in a perpetual squint to guard against flying bits of jellyfish which coated our net with annoying regularity. The captain steered us back and forth as I pulled and threw until a quarter mile long line of white foam floats stretched out behind us like a giant’s pearl necklace. The set made, we walked back inside and stripped off our jackets and overalls to wait while the net soaked. I pulled my now warm breakfast from the oven and turned to the table. An aggressive wave must have slid my book aside, leaving the letter exposed. I took it as a sign and set down at the table to face whatever was to come. With a shaky hand, I pulled out my knife and ran it along the top of the envelope. I unfolded the letter, took a bite of my jerky, and started to read. Outside the wind died down, and the rain picked up.

My instinct was to rush, to fly across the page and have my answer, but with fraying patients, I forced myself into steady, deliberate reading. Her words began with fits and starts as if she were unsure of exactly what to say. The cursive was sloppy and wild, dotted with eraser marks and corrections. However, this indecisiveness did not persist, and after only a couple of wondering sentences, the penmanship grew strong as her normal confidence returned. I sat there, tense, bracing like someone waiting on a punch they know they have no hope of ducking. I read on, but the blow never came. Understanding, forgiveness, and finally love floated up from the page. There was pain and sadness to be sure, but instead of anger and blame, she had embraced hope. I shook my head not fully comprehending. The weight in my heart lifted as the meaning of her letter sank in. Our future was not lost after all.

I read the letter again and again. Then devoured another piece of jerky and read it one more time. The captain turned on some music as I held the letter idly and stared out the window. Time became lost in the endless procession of waves, while my thoughts drifted without direction across the weeks and years behind me. After ten minutes or two hours, the captain stood and got ready to haul in the net. I put my gear back on and lumbered once more out onto the deck, smiling as the damp air chilled my bones.

“Deadly Attractor” (TOC)

by P. Orin Zack

[2003]

Chapter Nine

Whenever Lenny got to a new city, he made the rounds of all the public cafés. As far as he was concerned, you really didn’t have to rub shoulders with those in overt positions of control to get a sense of the social dynamic in a place. That was why he sought out the café where the unobserved nexus of public concern hung out. You couldn’t identify the major players by their jobs, their clothes, or much of anything else that people usually associated with being connected. It was more a matter of how the social networks themselves were stitched together.

Most people’s family, friends and associates inhabited only a small subset of all the interwoven social networks that made up the human ecosystem. Some, though, were different. For whatever reasons there may be, a few individuals in every city were perched at the spots where a number of these networks intersected, and rarely did any of them have an inkling about how important they really were. One thing was common among them, however, and that was their need to be sociable in a variety of ways. Because of this, some of their time would always be spent in the public commons, at places where people from disparate social networks mingled, namely public cafés such as the L.A. Pastry Parlor, which was located a block from the courthouse where he’d been spending so much time recently.

Because he was so bothered by the incessant subliminals in the com, Lenny preferred to stay with friends rather than at hotels while traveling, and to get his news from a flexysheet rather than having it read to him by a talking head on one of the feeds. That made the cafés doubly useful, because they provided one of those as well.

At the moment, he was sitting alone at a table surrounded by other, more populated ones, his chin resting on the thumbs of interlocked hands, engrossed in a background report about the Organization of Aboriginal Nations. It appeared that their hopes for a sedate gathering at next week’s summit were in doubt, owing to the construction accident that had sent one of the central players in that part of the human ecosystem to Dartmouth MedCenter in Halifax. He was studying a photograph of the organization’s nearly completed headquarters building when someone fell into the chair across from him.

“There’s news,” she said solemnly.

He looked up at the carefully unkempt young woman. “You’re really going to have to stop doing that, Vanessa.”

She sat back. “Doing what?”

Lenny gestured at her. “Making yourself look like some holodrama extra. If you don’t want people to notice you, you can’t go around with a perfectly balanced look. Trust me on this, symmetry is something that people notice. So what’s the news?”

Vanessa glanced towards the courthouse. “Remember that case we were working the other day? They had a MedCenter administrator on the stand this morning, and somehow or other, he just keeled over in the middle of testimony. Unconscious. Rumor has it that the jury’s snoop had something to do with it. After all, he was poking around the man’s mind at the time.”

“Hmmm.” He cocked his head. “Sanroya must have spooked someone.”

“Well,” she said, “then I guess it was a good thing you had me snatch those glasses of his.”

Lenny nodded. “Yeah. Not having that degree of personalized access has to make him harder for them to control.”

“So now what?” she said.

“Now I see where it leads.”

“Huh?”

He smiled. “I think I’ll pay a visit to East-Side MedCenter. As a patient, of course.”

“A patient?” she asked. “How?”

Lenny folded the flexysheet and set it down by his coffee, then pressed the circle at the center of the table to open the embedded com. “Watch.” After turning the laser target towards him, he waited for it to locate and lock onto his eyes. A moment later, the directory agent appeared to hover in front of him. “I’m sick,” he said.

HealthTech had spent an enormous amount of time and money to weasel its Interactives into the public consciousness. Ubiquitous advertising made certain that anyone capable of speech would know how to get medical treatment from them. All you had to do was open any two-way com and tell it that you were sick. So when Lenny uttered that two-word sentence, the unit placed a connection with their Interactive Diagnostic System, the café was credited for the referral, and the MedCenter’s partially unzipped DNA strand logo faded into view.

The only problem with using a public com for this kind of call was that those near enough to listen in tended to quickly leave the area, lest they catch whatever it was you were about to report. Their sudden departure was likely to draw attention to you, but it also gave you a measure of public privacy. Lenny enjoyed watching the dynamic take hold, and waited until the commotion died down before looking back into the laser’s virtual image.

By this time, the system had identified him, courtesy of the retinal map stored in his MedNet record, and had selected from the stock of diagnostic agents. Of course, if he’d been a regular user of the system, it would have had a chance to refine the interface by adjusting the agent’s personality or even switching to a different one. At least, it might have had a fighting chance if Lenny didn’t act differently each time he needed it. Consequently, each time he called it up, the Interactive started over with a randomly selected agent. Today’s choice was a middle-aged Asian gentleman in a shiny silk diagnostician’s uniform. Lenny cringed briefy at the sight.

“You okay, Lenny?” Vanessa, of course, couldn’t see the laser-generated image painted on Lenny’s retinas, so she had no idea what had caused the reaction.

He nodded. When the agent, who asked to be called Mr. Han, finished reciting the legal boilerplate and asked what the problem was, Lenny simply said, “I hear voices.”

‘Han’ paused for a suitably human time, then said, “How long have you heard these voices?”

Lenny made a point of visibly thinking. “About a year now.”

“Where do you hear them?” One of the well-known techniques used by the HealthTech Interactive was to lead the querant through the history of the symptoms being reported, so that it could observe the subconscious reflections of the remembered experience in the person’s manner, voice and eye movements.

“Pretty much everywhere. Elevators, building lobbies, commercial and private com.”

‘Han’ nodded. “Do you understand what they are saying?”

“Yes.” Lenny stifled a smile, because while ‘Han’ posed the question, the subliminal was reminding him to ignore itself.

“That’s very interesting, Mr. Aroun. What do these voices say?”

“Different things in different places, and at different times.” Lenny said, baiting the verbal hook. “At Columbia Spaceport, for example, they might say things like ‘Stay calm,’ and ‘You are safe and secure.’ In stores, they’d tell me not to steal. Things like that.”

Because the system’s heuristics library started with the assumption that such voices couldn’t possibly be real, none of the question sequences they explored led to any useful results. After all, the voices he was reporting did actually exist, he experienced them as coming from specific places, and he could recite verbatim what they said, especially the ones making it difficult to hold a conversation with the non-existent Mr. Han.

Eventually, having exhausted all of the diagnostic pathways emanating from his initial complaint, Han thanked him for participating in HealthTech’s diagnostic service, and requested that he report to the East-Side MedCenter, where his session was being forwarded, and to its professional staff who would be ever so pleased to assist in returning him to good heath.

To Lenny, the combination of legal coverage and public relations wordsmithing would have been laughable if it weren’t so repugnant. Of course, nobody else could hear the subliminal counterpoint to all that blather, so they didn’t realize how controlling it really was. Fortunately for Lenny, though, if you could hear the so-called subliminals, they didn’t affect you, at least not the way they were supposed to.

He pushed the tabletop com back into its recess. “Now, then,” he said, getting up, “I guess I’d better accept their invitation to spy on them.”

HealthTech’s Interactive was a good example of how the networked economy used cascades of opportunity. Besides providing the café with a small payment for having facilitated the diagnostic session, it also placed a request for a private autocab to take him to East-Side MedCenter. Since the possibility of a lucrative payoff made the trip a priority, HealthTech paid a small sum to the cab company for special service. This not only got it to him in record time, but also gave it an edge in route and placement negotiations during the trip. The cab company, assured of a captive audience on a mission, typically used the opportunity to pitch a variety of goods and services of potential use to the patient, such as contacting relatives, or ordering any of the licensed accommodation upgrades available to those whose diagnostic session indicated the need for a room. Since Lenny only required testing, he was instead subjected to ads for restaurants, because after the arduous hour or two he’d be there, he’d clearly be in need of an overpriced meal. But, considering the subliminals layered over the messages, he thought a headache remedy might be more to the point.

Instead of leaving him by the main entrance, or in the nearby lot where the older facility had stood, the cab pulled into the MedCenter’s emergency services bay to let him out. As soon as the door closed behind him, it rolled back outside and headed for its next destination.

As he entered the building, the security system confirmed his ID with biometrics and offered up the patient ID tag he was to keep with him during his visit. It helped the system to keep track of where he was, and ensured that mix-ups didn’t happen. Since the MedCenter’s system was expecting him, it had already scheduled the test. All that remained was to wait for his turn in the queue, follow the directions to the testing room, and get it over with.

At least, that would have been the drill if he’d actually come here for treatment. Lenny, of course, was more interested in the less obvious parts of the MedCenter’s efficient process, the subliminals. When he first came inside, for example, they directed him to take the ID, and told him not to lose it or give it to someone else. And here in the noisy waiting area, it suggested that he spend his time enjoying any of the many activities that might lead to the sale of some product or service that HealthTech could get a referral fee for. Lenny found it suffocatingly commercial.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long for the ID in his hand to want his attention. Dutifully, he went to the information counter and was escorted by a bored employee into one of the testing rooms along a nearby corridor. Along the way, the subliminals reminded him to follow directions, and to cooperate fully with the staff.

So far, everything was as he’d expected it to be. Acting irrationally worked fine in public, and even in commercial buildings, but trying that tactic here wasn’t a very good idea. Instead, he’d have to make do with sampling the normal mix, and see if there were any unusual messages in the lot.

“Please take a seat,” the testing tech said as he checked the settings on a nearby display. When Lenny was comfortable, the tech swung a sensor rig into place and switched it on. “Okay,” he said. “The unit will project a sound source next to each of your ears in turn, and use a variety of sounds to determine how your middle and inner ears are working. Just sit back and relax. You don’t have to do anything during the test.”

Combining fractional sound waves into a complete waveform at a specified location was one of the more ubiquitous bits of simple tech around. If you weren’t at the target, you wouldn’t hear anything recognizable, so it could be used for such things as explaining the displays in museums, and even for sending covert messages, but it also found a home in hearing tests. Using this method eliminated the need to sterilize earplugs between patients, not to mention the cost of making and disposing of them.

While Lenny listened to a series of tones, acoustic envelopes and other sounds, the equipment detected movement of the tiny bones in his middle ear and compared it to what ought to happen if it was behaving properly. Discrepancies were pulled out of the data, analyzed, and corrective action suggested. Similarly, the waves traveling through his inner ear were mapped to locate any abnormality in the structure of the cochlea; and a neural scan compared brain activity to what was expected based on the stimulus.

Typical of MedCenter technology, the unit made it possible to know whether the physical and neurological basis of hearing operated according to spec, but told them nothing about how it was experienced by the patient. For that part of the test, they reverted to a variant of the ancient raise-your-finger method of feedback. Since the unit knew whether the brain was receiving signals about the sound, it could use other effects of the sound on the body to determine whether you consciously heard it or not.

There are some sounds that just make people squirm. By adding these to the audio stimulus, the testing machine was able to not only characterize your response curve, but to determine at what intensity it drops out of conscious reaction and becomes a subliminal annoyance. He wondered what they’d make of his readings.

Lenny found the fact that they wanted to know this bit of information almost as interesting as the spoken subliminals that kept distracting his attention during the test, especially the one reminding the staff to ignore the center’s special advisor.

Until recently, Peter deGiaccomo didn’t have much of a life, and because of that, the fact that he seemed to have somehow acquired one of late didn’t sit well with his co-workers. Peter was one of those innocuous office drones who filled his day with the endless minutiae of the job, his off-hours with a serial plethora of hobbies, and his world with the kind of casual acquaintances that wouldn’t really notice if he never spoke with them again.

Consequently, when a stranger stopped him one day outside the building where he worked, and asked if he could get some information about a suspected murder, he froze in panicked indecision. It was clearly one of those turning points in life, a moment whose outcome would determine whether he would get caught up in a rising current of events over which he had no control, or remain safely embraced by the comfortable life that had grown up around him. Or at least that was how it usually went in the holodramas.

When court was adjourned for the day and the jury was released, Peter grabbed his book and went out for a long walk. He picked a restaurant at random for a leisurely lunch, and then continued on his unplanned way. Eventually, he ended up a few blocks from work, and decided to stop in for a while.

Peter wasn’t entirely sure why he’d chosen to help the man. It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing he’d think himself capable of. Whatever the reason, though, he had agreed, and his life hadn’t been the same since. For one thing, just working up the nerve to look in parts of the dataverse he had no normal interest in seemed to have had a lingering effect. The hobby he’d been toying with for two months suddenly stopped interesting him, and he started casting about for another. The same thing happened with the strangers he’d thought of as friends. In any event, life had changed for him that morning, and the pace of those changes was getting more intense by the day.

When he first got the notice to appear in court, he thought that spending a few days on a jury would give him a chance to get away from all the recent strangeness in his life. But then the man re-appeared, this time asking him to violate the rules of the court by seeking answers to the murder mystery from witnesses to the civil case he’d been assigned to. Then, when the man didn’t show up to get his answer, a woman appeared out of nowhere with a way to escape from his ethical quandary: enlist the jury’s psychic for the task instead.

He lingered outside the building for a moment, standing at the spot where the woman had stopped him that morning, and looked up at the grimy expanse of synthbrick facing intended to give it the kind of solid appearance appropriate to businesses like LAMM, the medical monitoring service he worked for. Then he gazed through the window into the lobby he walked through several times each day, and wondered how much longer that might be the case. The realization that this was yet another reason to need perspective brought his gaze back down to the black book in his hand.

In a way, he was thankful to her, whoever she was, because she’d given him a way to distance himself from the trouble he was certain waited for him around the next turn. At least, that was how he felt when he’d gone to court that morning. But when he thought about what happened to Administrator Apuérto on the witness stand, when he stared into the possibility that he might have been instrumental in causing that to happen, he wasn’t so sure.

Forcing all that from his mind, he entered the lobby and rode the elevator up to his workplace. The lounge area was deserted when the doors slid open, but it wasn’t silent, because someone had left the convenience newsreader running. As he passed the chair it was sitting on, the filtered stream of medical and public relations news stopped, and an ad for a new restaurant featuring the specially engineered plants and animals shipped to the GD colony at Atlan came on. The thing was still talking to itself when he opened the main door to LAMM’s half of the floor, and was surrounded by the gentle sounds of the piped-in environmental background.

Since LAMM wasn’t the sort of business that did any walk-in trade, it didn’t have a formal reception area. Instead, they gave the most junior staffers stations near the entrance, and figured that they would deal with anyone who happened to walk in. Consequently, people tended to pretty much come and go as they pleased, and the only way to know whether someone was even supposed to be there was to check the schedule. Peter, of course, was the exception to all this at the moment, because it was common knowledge that he’d been called for jury duty, and Apuérto’s attack was leading the local feeds.

“Hi Peter,” said Nola, a heavyset woman in her mid-40’s. “We weren’t expecting to see you back here today. What’s up?”

He shrugged. “Nothing really. I just missed playing with the data filters, and dropped in to see if anything needed my attention.”

Nola laughed lightly. “Since when was there ever an emergency around here? Look, if you miss the place that badly, I won’t tell anyone that you violated vacation day rules. Go on. Git!”

The holo display on his desk was idling when he walked over to it, morphing the company logo through various filters in emulation of the kinds of work that the business did. He waved his hand through the virtual image as he sat down, causing it to stop, and enabling the unit to read his prints. A moment later, his preferred entry view of the medical dataverse sprang to life.

Peter sat for a while, just staring into the virtual depths of the ocean of information characterized by the intricate pattern before him. Looked at in this way, he could see the logical network of MedCenters, each represented with meaningful colors, shapes, transparencies and sizes, as well as a glowing fog representing the myriad individual patients being diagnosed, admitted and released from them. All of it was in motion, reflecting the current state of the world as seen through the nonexistent eyes of the MedNet.

His job, at least as he attempted to describe it to people with other interests, was to play with this imagery in various ways, searching for the sorts of patterns that clients of the company paid to know about. Of course, to most people, looking for patterns meant nothing more than the kinds of analysis any good bot could perform; things like matching against static prototype structures, or even easily describable moving waveforms. And while there were plenty of useful insights to be drawn from such activities, they didn’t reveal the more subtle sorts of dynamics caused by the fact that all of the elements that made up the image represented people, and that people interacted in ways that weren’t evident in the MedNet. As a result, a lot of what he did involved computational dynamics and simple human intuition. Well, perhaps not simple, because the sort of intuition this required was more of an acquired perspective, something that thrived in the nether region between art and science.

Among the tools at his disposal was a collection of what were best described as filters, if only because the result of using them was the generation of a different view of the data. Knowing which ones to apply, and to which part of the data, was why they needed people like him. So, taking a deep breath, he leaned into the holofield and prepared to sculpt the numbers.

The first step was deciding which aspect of the dataverse to work with. Normally, he started his sessions by fiddling with the MedCenters themselves, looking for patterns in the populations passing through them perhaps, or maybe the kinds of treatments being performed over time. The court’s focus on patient transfers had made him curious about the patterns hidden in the swirling iridescent fog that surrounded the glowing MedCenter embers, so this time he began by hiding the MedCenters from view. What remained suggested the idea of a radioactive fog in the presence of bits of dark matter. You could see the fog swirling around the missing bits, implying their existence, but the motion seemed to be responding to too many other influences for him to maintain the fiction for very long.

Some of the swirling fog represented people being diagnosed by HealthTech’s Interactive; other parts of it were people being released or having outpatient trajectories; and yet others represented those few being transferred between facilities. The constant repetition of data about transfers in court had gotten tiresome, so he removed them as well. That left a much finer tracery of people entering and leaving the realm of healthcare. Since none of their customers were much concerned about what people did after completing their visit, he cut that out as well, leaving the barely perceptible wisps of people funneling towards places like East-Side MedCenter.

The data density was now so tenuous that it was necessary to start employing other sorts of filters to highlight different aspects of the patterns they made. One major way to group these data points was by how their need for care had arisen.

Some were due to accidents and incidents. When he enhanced this part of the data fog, it traced out straight lines, some with tiny branchings when they entered the now-darkened area of the facility itself. This signified the linear path that diagnosis and treatment traversed in cases where there was an easily identifiable injury, as well as the complications arising during treatment.

Peter hid these tracings as well, leaving only the barest hint of a dataglow. What remained were all the people who made use of virtual diagnostic agents. Because of the circuitous nature of the process, the swirling paths traced by these datapoints indicated which portions of the diagnostic universe each patient’s session traversed. Concentrations of similar session paths, which looked like bits of flow in a fluid, signaled a commonality not necessarily of symptoms, but of the way they were described and pursued by the system.

The vast majority of diagnostic sessions were all for the same handful of complaints, and most of these never ended with the patient having to actually visit a MedCenter. Instead, they were typically told either to go home and get some rest, or to pick up a prescription and given care instructions. Dispensing with these left him with just the patients who were told to report somewhere. It was at this level of detail that the interesting patterns began to emerge, but because there were so few of them, most of the patterns were built up over time, and made use of the historical record as well.

There were a few customers, however, who were interested in the occasional anomaly, as opposed to certain patterns of activity. Since these data could be removed prior to doing the more onerous procedures, he augmented the few anomalies in preparation for handing them off and then hiding them. When he did this, one of the data items was specially highlighted by a preset requested by a customer here in town. Peter poked the rhythmically pulsating item with a finger to open the associated data record, and leaned back in his seat.

The patient, who had run his diagnostic session a few hours earlier from a public com, looked familiar. The man’s name was Leonard Aroun, and he had been told to report to East-Side MedCenter for further testing of some sort of hearing problem. Peter stared at the picture, which was the only bit of biometric data not heavily encrypted, until he realized just where and when he had seen the man. This was the leader of the courthouse protesters, the man whose associate had smashed Frank Sanroya’s glasses, and whose conspiracy sheet made him anything but the kind of person likely to make use of a MedCenter. In other words, there was something very wrong about this.

According to the session record, he’d already been tested and released, with a prescription for anti-psychotics and instructions. He found the man’s com account number, and placed a call.

When Aroun’s face appeared, he swallowed and said, “I’m one of the jurors on the case you’re demonstrating about, and I think we need to talk.”

Aroun smiled agreeably. “Okay, but not here. It will have to be in person.”

Peter thought for a moment. “Look, I’m planning to be at Griffith Park Observatory tonight, so meet me there at 8 o’clock. Okay?”

“Fine by me.”

With that, the connection abruptly ended, and so did Peter’s interest in finishing the work that he’d sat down to do. He dismissed the data record details, leaving the scattering of anomalies to float in the air before him. After idly gazing into the sparse human starfield for a few minutes, he pushed back from the desk, wearily rose to his feet, and trudged off towards home.

Although Peter usually made a point of being conscious of his diet, he was so distracted by the prospect of speaking with both the demonstrator and with Frank Sanroya that evening that he wasn’t even aware of having cleaned up afterwards. Instead of catching up on current research, which was his usual dinnertime distraction, he’d requested an orbital view of the Earth, and just stared at it. He supposed it was related to the reason he’d latched onto the book on trials, but this offered a different kind of perspective, more a matter of size than of history. In a way, he concluded after a time, it wasn’t much different from what he did at work. Only here, he was using a different kind of filter, and thinking about a different kind of universe. He wasn’t aware of the passage of time until the reverie he’d fallen into was broken abruptly by the insistent tone of his travel reminder: it was time to catch a bus to Griffith Park.

He passed the time along the way by eavesdropping on the various discussions going on around him, and imagining the traces that their wandering subject matter would leave in his holofield. Amused at the unplanned reflection of his worklife, he shook his head and turned to watch the traffic, but realized once again that all he really saw were the patterns. Perhaps he was in a rut.

When his bus reached the Observatory grounds, he checked the time, and found that he still had about fifteen minutes before his first encounter tonight with whatever unseen pattern it was that insisted on taking over his life. He joined the spray of people that were converging on the main entrance, and started a slow meander through the exhibit area. One of the displays caught his eye from across the room, so he stepped out of the slowly flowing current of tourists and made straight for the binary star system model at the section devoted to Atlan, the GD’s colony world in the Centauri system. In particular, he was intrigued by the slowly changing pattern of daylight and seasons caused by the planet’s two suns. According to the explanation, the resulting environmental differences were why the gentech labs had developed the special strains of food plants and animals that had become so trendy lately.

He was trying to recall the name of that new Atlan cuisine restaurant whose ad he’d passed in the lobby earlier, when a quiet voice spoke in his ear. “You wanted to see me?”

Peter took a half step away as he turned to face his visitor. It was Leonard Aroun, the demonstrator he’d asked to meet him here. “Yeah. I know I’m not supposed to read the MedNet records, but when—”

“Look,” Aroun said suddenly, “I don’t mind talking with you, but we really can’t do it in here. Do you mind if we go outside? The noise in here is getting to me.”

“What noise?” Peter said, and then pointedly waited for his echo to be engulfed by the seaside environmental feed. On their way towards the door, he kept glancing around to see if they were being watched.

“Don’t worry about them,” Aroun said, “in a public place like this, they’ll pretty much keep to themselves. By the way, I find it rather interesting that you’d pick the Atlan exhibit to look at.”

They’d stepped outside by this time, so Peter stopped and turned to face him. “Why? As I understand it, Atlan was explored and colonized through the force of a public groundswell of planetary unity, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new Global Directorate.”

Aroun laughed, and continued walking away from the building. “That’s a load of crap. It was psychological manipulation, just like the space race in the 20th century and the subliminals in the com.”

“Oh? Peter countered. “And I suppose deflecting those killer asteroids and dismantling the mountain on La Palma in the 21st century were done for psychological reasons, too?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Deflecting asteroids and defusing megatsunamis were probably the only useful things that came out of the Interregional Accords.”

Peter shook his head. “Okay, I’ll buy that, but what do subliminals in the com have to do with those things?”

Aroun took a breath. “It’s like this. Because governments need to control the people, they use audacious exploration projects like Apollo and Atlan for their psychological effects. It’s not like there were economic incentives for those space projects. They were created simply to focus popular attention on something the people were led to believe was important enough to be worth discarding other, divisive issues. You know, things like having a say in their own destiny. Little things like that. But if you think about it, there hasn’t been another project like those in the past century. And I say that’s because they’ve been using subliminal messages to accomplish the same ends.”

To Peter, the thought of controlling large numbers of people like that suggested images like the one he’d been playing with earlier at work. Sure, there were patterns to all the activity, but was it really possible to direct it so easily? He mulled the possibilities as they walked.

They’d reached the lawn by this time, and Aroun slowed his pace. “All right,” he said. “Enough of the small talk. What did you want?”

“Like I said,” Peter began, “I’m not really supposed to violate MedNet privacy, but I noticed that you had a session with the HealthTech Interactive today. Having read your flier, it just seemed a bit unbelievable that you’d do such a thing. So what’s your game?”

He shrugged. “You’re right. That’s private, and it’s not your business.”

“Actually, it is,” Peter said flatly. “I told you when I called that I’m on the jury of that case you’ve been haunting, and—”

Aroun crossed his arms. “And you just though you’d violate some laws and do some snooping on your own?”

Peter shook his head. “Actually, I was asked.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Peter said. “Some guy approached me. He said he was investigating what he thought was a murder, and that he needed some information. Anyway, the accident reports I got for him didn’t help, so when he learned that I was selected for the jury on this case, he wanted me to ask the witnesses some questions for him.”

“And?”

Peter shrugged. “And nothing. He never turned up for an answer.”

“I still don’t see what you wanted to talk with me about.”

“Okay.” Peter glanced at the ground briefly, and then looked at Aroun. “This morning, after Dr. Apuérto’s attack, Healer Sanroya told us that he’d seen something suspicious in the man’s memories, that it looked like they’d been tampered with. He also said he plans to take another look once Apuérto is transferred to the Hospice Center.”

Aroun was getting impatient. “And?”

“Well,” Peter said, “my job is to look for patterns in the MedNet. Anomalies, too. And if you don’t mind me saying so, it seems pretty strange to me that someone spreading anti-technological conspiracy stories would intentionally try to gum up the diagnostic system like that. What were you trying to do, anyway? Get admitted to the MedCenter for a non-existent problem?”

“As a matter of fact, I was trying to get in there. But only to find out what subliminals they’re running.”

Peter shook his head in exasperation. “That again. Why?”

“Because they’re evil, that’s why. Or at least they’re being used for purposes that I don’t happen to agree with. Is that okay with you? Can I go now?”

Peter still wasn’t satisfied, so he persisted. “Not until you tell me why you’re really interested in these subliminals.”

“That’s personal. What I will tell you is this. I was tracking down the source of the messages, when I was attacked out of nowhere—” he stopped momentarily to stifle a grin. “—by a woman named Cynthia who said that whoever was planting them also has the tech to mess with reality.”

Peter frowned. “Like the article in your conspiracy sheet?”

Aroun nodded. “Worse. They also messed with my memories. I almost worked for them.”

“You—?”

“It’s okay, I quit,” Aroun said. “You’ve got to figure it, though. They must have a lot to hide if they’re that serious about protecting themselves against former employees.”

Peter thought for a moment. “So now what?”

“Like Cynthia told me, we join forces.”

(TOC)

John slumped down into the chair in front of him. The terminal was almost empty, aside from a few other people who looked as exhausted as John felt. As the sounds of the terminal faded away while John's eyes slowly shut, a voice rang out next to him. 

“Beautiful, isn't it,” said an old man who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere right next to John. 

“Huh?” John said in a groggy voice with a twinge of annoyance. 

“Look,” the old man said, pointing his finger towards the large window in front of them. John faced the window, looking out at the nebula before them. The swirling colors filled the terminal in a mix of blues and reds. 

John folded his arms, “Suppose it is.” He turned away from the old man and put his head down, hoping the man would get the hint.

He jumped when he heard a voice almost right by his ear, “The universe is such a beautiful place. In all my years I've yet to see a view that hasn't put me in awe.”

John didn't answer, hoping the old man would assume he was asleep. He jumped up when he heard shuffling near his bag. He looked to see the old man holding the travel tag attached to his bag. “Hey, don't touch that. Leave me alone,” he said, not being awake enough to fully confront the man. 

The old man let out a laugh, “No worries boy. I'm just a curious wanderer.”

The man gestured to the seat next to him, but John remained standing. “So, going to Proxima huh? Beautiful planet, I love hiking in the southern regions. Are you from there?”

John stood for a few seconds, not sure what was happening, “Yeah, I'm from there. Why?”

The old man laughed, “No need to get defensive, I just like chatting with folks. Especially about their home, everyone has something special to say about their home.”

John felt his body begin to relax, he didn't know why but something about the man seemed familiar. He felt like he knew him, like he was, home.

He sat down next to the man, “Ever been to Alphan?”

The man's eyes widened, “Oh yes, many times! The waterfalls there are wonderful!”

John smiled, “Oh man, I used to spend all day swimming at the falls when I was a kid. My parents had to drag me outta there.” He continued, “How about the geysers? They're about a day's drive from Alphan.”

The old man rubbed his chin, “Nah can't say I have.”

John felt excitement building in him, “Oh they're wonderful! Lots of different colors, and the water can get up pretty high. Almost took out my friends hover car once.”

“I'll have to see them for myself next time I visit Proxima then.”

“Oh definitely,” John said with excitement still in his voice, “Last time I saw em they were still as spectacular as ever.”

“How long’s it been since you were home?” asked the man.

John felt his excitement slowly be replaced by regret, “Too long. Had to find work, and there ain't much on Proxima. Been out in the asteroid fields goin on three years soon.”

The man nodded, “Never easy it is, leaving home. Feels a piece of us never leaves.”

John nodded, knowing that feeling all too well, “Where do you call home?" A wave of sadness seemed to wash over the old man's face, and John regretted asking. “Sorry, I shouldn't've asked.”

The man shook his head, “No boy, it's alright. I'm from Earth.”

John's mouth opened in shock, “Earth? I've never met anyone from Earth.”

“Not alot of us left,” the man said in a somber tone, “Not since, well, y’know.”

“Yeah,” John nodded, “Always a regret I had, not ever goin.”

The old man smiled, “It was quite a sight, before everything happened.”

John felt something stir inside him. Almost unaware, he asked, “Can you tell me about it? I've seen some videos but they don't seem to do it justice.”

“No, they don't. The beauty of Earth was too encapsulating to be captured by a camera. It surrounded us, filled the air around us. The beauty of Earth was our experiences on it.

I'll tell ya boy, everywhere I went on our home was beautiful. It didn't matter what country or continent you were on. If you stepped outside, you always had a beautiful view. I'll be damned if there ever was a spot on Earth that wasn't a picturesque moment.”

The old man’s eyes seemed to glimmer in the light of the nebula. John faced him, “So did you get to see a lot of Earth? What were your favorite parts?”

“Oh yes. I must've been to every continent on Earth,” the old man said warmly, “From the forests and jungles of the Americas, to the streets and mountains of Europe. Every single place I visited was amazing. But my favorite place, the one I miss more than anything, is-”

The man told John of a small town he'd never heard of. 

“I'm not familiar with that place,” John said, puzzled.

Chuckling, the man responded, “I'd be surprised if you had. Places like it aren't remembered in the history books.”

“Why's it so important to you?” He asked.

“It's where I grew up. I spent many hours playing in the forests around the town. Rode my bike through the city streets. That town made me who I am. Sometimes it seems a part of me is still there. Or maybe a piece of it is embedded in me. I visit it sometimes, y’know, in my dreams. I feel it calling to me.”

John nodded, he knew that feeling all too well. “I dream about Alphan sometimes too.”

The man's face turned serious, “When you return, cherish it. You never know how much time you have left with it, until it only lives in your memories.”

John nodded, “If you don't mind me asking, What exactly happened to Earth? I've always heard different stories, but never a definitive one.”

The old man shifted, as if uncomfortable.

“You'll never get a definitive answer, as it's an infinite number of things. However, in my opinion it was recklessness that caused Earth's demise. The recklessness of our species.”

“How so?” John questioned.

“We were given a great gift. Be it from the universe, God, or something else I don't know. But that doesn't matter, we were given a beautiful world that provided for us. And in return we had to take care of it. But, we became reckless. We put our needs over it, and in the end we exhausted Earth. We neglected our caring duties. And it cost us our home.

And now we drift across the stars. Moving from planet to planet, collecting resources to satisfy our needs. Not even stopping to think about what we did, how we failed our home.”

John sat silently, struggling to come up with a response. 

The old man sniffled, “By the stars boy, you should've seen our home in it’s prime. The way the Sun gleamed through the forest at dawn. The warmth flowing through the branches was a feeling like no other.

The majestic beauty of the mountains as they rose up from the earth, towering above us. Sometimes the sun would hit snow that gathered on the top, creating a beacon of light that beckoned all to admire its beauty.

In certain places, the wind would sing boy. I kid you not, the Earth would sing us songs. It would flow past us, creating currents to follow along and it seemed to guide us. In some Earth cultures it guided us to places we were destined for.

Above all though, I believe the most beautiful, most magical thing about our home is the fact that It is our home. Think about it boy, we haven't found life anywhere else in all our star searching. Earth was the only one. Somehow everything aligned perfectly and humanity was born. The Earth gave us everything, and we took it. Grasped our gift and ran away without even a thank you. 

I wish we'd appreciated that gift. That even for a few moments, we returned the amount of love our planet gave us. Maybe things would be different. But I'm eternally grateful we still have the memories of that beautiful world. Even if they are just memories, it's still a little slice of home.

Earth still exists for us, in our dreams.”

John noticed his eyes were wet, he apologized to the old man as he wiped them on his sleeve. When he turned back towards the old man, he was gone. 

John frantically looked across the station, but saw no sign of the man anywhere. He slumped back into his seat, turning his attention to the nebula. As the gasses swirled, John looked past the nebula into the vast sea of stars. He wondered if one was near Earth. 

His concentration was broken when his flight number was called. He boarded the shuttle and as he traveled home, his thoughts were focused on Earth. He pulled out his personal data pad and punched Earth into the search. Only one image was available, and he clicked on it. 

The image showed a green field of grass, and a stream running through it. Behind it were mountains rising up, the snow capped peaks shining brightly.

John stared at the picture until the shuttle he was in touched down on Proxima. He shut off his data pad and exited. Once he got to his travelpod, he punched in his destination and set off. 

An hour later, he stopped the travelpod and stepped out. Before him, about 30 feet away, a brilliant geyser of pinkish water erupted from the ground. John breathed in the fresh Proxima air. Something felt different though, the familiar feeling of home somewhat muted. He shrugged it off and returned to his travelpod.

His return was a flurry of hugs, quick conversations he barely remembered minutes later, and the ever-growing feeling that he was missing something. Something important. 

That night, he dreamed of home. It wasn't the rock forests of Alphan, or the Proxima geysers. He dreamed of a grassy field. The songs of birds mixed with the whistling of wind as he felt the grass and cool soil on his feet. The warm earthy smell of dirt and water filled his lungs as he walked by the stream. He covered his eyes as the blinding reflection of the sun shone across the water. As he watched the sun set across the mountains and the forests of Earth, at last he finally felt at home. Even if it was only a dream, it was still home.

On the sixth day of the sixth month the sun shone harsh on Vincent Yellowcloth. There he stood on the most important day of his young life, his proud parents each with a shaky hand on his frame. His time at Figripe College had taught him to be eager for his special day, the perfect moment to witness the golden sun, like a loving parent, send him on his way to destiny’s door. His eyes burned under the white-hot sun and cheek was scalded by a thick, salty tear. ‘Look John! Vincent cries tears of joy!’ his mother gushed, to the satisfaction of the onlookers.

‘You’ll set your mother off again. Do stop this nonsense Vincent for your old man’s sake!’

She scolded her husband with a slap on the wrist: ‘How cruel of you John! Have empathy for your wife and little son. The great beginning only comes around once a year, and Vincent is the first in our family to ever achieve such greatness’, she whimpered, with a soft hand on Vincent’s neck.

The truth was Vincent was crying, but not tears of joy. Instead, it was a concoction of fear, dread and disappointment. In the morning hymns at Figripe, he had come to hear of the special sun which appeared exclusively on the sixth day of the sixth month and shimmered in shades of yellow and gold. This particular sun differed to the usual dull orb that rendered in the sky above; this sun was a gatekeeper of destiny. Since the beginning of time, it had granted good luck to the rookie cliff gliders as they embarked upon their great beginning.

The sun was not gold like the hymns had professed. Rather, it was white and menacing. Vincent stood crestfallen. The sun which had guided young and hopeful cliff gliders into the misty abyss below had left him alone to fend for himself. He thought he must have angered the spirits of the sky in some way or maybe done something wrong while in his studies at Figripe to warrant such a cold send off. Last summer, when his old roommate Isaac was flung into the sea of white below, he was applauded by a roaring crowd, and it was then Vincent knew that he simply couldn’t wait for his special day to finally come.

There he stood on the precipice of an unstable stone. Despite the sun seemingly cursing Vincent’s future, he felt a sense of relief. This moment had preceded him ever since his name was drawn from The Mayor’s bicorn hat all those years ago. He was the first person in his entire family and only the second in his village to be awarded this great privilege, as his mother keeps reminding him. If he had not been so lucky, his education would not have progressed to the heights of Figripe, but instead would have ceased on the eve of his fourteenth birthday, and he would have worked the crop fields like his elder brothers.

He, Vincent Yellowcloth, son of a lowly farmer, had spent three years in deep study of the world’s greatest subjects, all to prepare him for this very moment. All the late-night readings and endless writing would now pay off. He so greatly wanted to look down on his future; he wanted to see what life had in store for him. However, his tutors had instructed him to keep his eyes to the sky, so as not to spoil the delights that awaited him. His neck ached from being so stationary, yet his mother reassured him with her palm cusping his head: ‘Are you ready sweetpea? Just think about all the things you’ll do, all the money you’ll make and how excited you’ll be to see Isaac again!’

Vincent became ecstatic at his mother’s words by panting and tapping his feet eagerly. He imagined what it would look like if just looked down. He would peek his head through the heavy clouds beneath and be enlightened by the wonders that the sky gods have prepared for him. He imagined himself levitating from the cliff and swaying down the rock face like a feather. He would arrive in an Arcady realm, an elysian green field born of peace and joy. There would be a gentle river of aquamarine, which would meander lazily around where the roses bloom. At the mouth of rivers, Vincent thought there may be a mother lake, with waters crystal-clear and effervescent to the touch. There he would find Isaac, and all those who studied at the College. Their souls are made pure and fulfilled by the shimmering minerals of the lake’s water.

Vincent thought that future was sweet, but almost too idyllic. He wanted to use the skills acquired at the College and become a man of profound knowledge, power and legacy. Thus, he hoped the world below his feet would instead be a city of gold. This city would be renowned for a commitment to luxury, fashion and the fine arts, and Vincent would be its almighty ruler. At that thought, he had a great epiphany. ‘That’s it!’ he exulted at the edge of the cliff.

‘Mother I know why the sun shines ivory and not of gold like the legends say. It is because my destiny is greater than those before me. The sun did a most noble act in gifting its beam to me and my most illustrious domain!’ He laughed that he had even found The Great Beginning frightening in the first place. He saw this event now as his marvellous coming-of-age, it was his magnificent graduation into the world of possibility.

In one swift motion, he turned from facing the misunderstood sun toward his mother and father, to which he waved his arms in celebration. As he began to jump, his parents pleaded with him to calm down and remain motionless (which was the custom of the event).

‘You’re embarrassing yourself Vincent,’ roared his father: ‘You’ve waited so long to make us proud don’t ruin it now son!’

His father jerked him back into place on the cracked stone edge of the cliff, keeping his fist lodged in firmly in Vincent’s shirt. Amidst the breakdown of the ceremonial rules, Vincent broke the greatest one of all – he looked down.

All at once, he was overcome with the same trepidation he had arrived at the cliff with. He stared down into the vast pit of mist. The fog no longer sat like an ice white cloud but a murky and soulless black expanse. He imagined the white clouds to be easily traversed when cliff gliding, but this tsunami that skulked below, patiently waiting for my foot to slip was certainly unyielding to a cliff glider.

A serpent of anxiety sent a pang of agony down his spine. He failed to tame the thoughts that tortured him with the question of ‘what fate awaits me?’ Vincent so fervently wished to believe that he attended the College in preparation to becoming a hero, and that the best of life was only about to commence. But the adder that suffocated his mind was relentless in imprinting only one feeling onto Vincent – regret. He regretted ever feeling lucky for his name being dragged out of the wicked hat and despised himself for believing the lies of his tutors.

Vincent lifted his foot to move back from the edge, to which his father thrusted him back to the edge. ‘You have not worked three long years to not see this through. Your future awaits Vincent, and there’s no turning back now,’ he whispered in his son’s ear.

Vincent recoiled into the cold hand of his father and accepted his fate. His father was right; this was a point of no return. Vincent stood in an awkward limbo, on the precipice between his old life and the uncertain future that expected him. Vincent could do no more than seal his eyes shut and wish that the rest of his life, whether that be forty seconds or forty years, be spent without fear. To the elation of his family, friends and tutors who sat in the stand, Vincent’s father released his grip on his son’s shirt. Vincent’s mother overcome with emotion, wiped her face in her handkerchief, as her youngest and bravest bird flew the nest.

On the sixth day of the sixth month at precisely six o’clock, Vincent Yellowcloth became a cliff glider and embarked upon The Great Beginning.

Lacus rode until the sounds of battle were silenced. Then he kept riding. The sun set and he did not stop. North? West? East? He just rode where the horse took him. Eventually the horse stopped listening to him and stopped; panting, irritable it went to eat whatever it could find. He climbed down off of the horse and left it to its own devices as he limped on, walking until he found a road and following it as far away from Semperia as he could manage.

His vision swam as exhaustion set in. Fires bloomed in his peripheral vision but whenever he turned to look all he saw was darkness. A distant scream as his mind wandered brought him back to the present but when he listened for more all he was met with was silence.

At one point the pain in his leg was too much and he needed to rest, so he found a tree to lean against and sat down. Lacus closed his eyes and saw Florus; smiling, laughing in his garden. He blinked and there was fire in the palace. The prince lay in a pool of his own blood; white roses stained red.

"Florus!" he shouted, running over to the prince.

"Lacus? Are you alright?" A hand shook him and Lacus opened his eyes. He jumped up and nearly slipped on the thin layer of sand between his boots and the stone. His ass hit the wall and he sat back down to avoid toppling over. Florus had a hand gripping his shoulder to help steady him, his eyes a mingled look of amusement and concern.

"What in the..." Lacus looked around. The palace. The training ground. Florus's garden over in the corner with the sweet scented flowers blooming. The prince holding him, caressing his cheek.

"You dozed off again, sleepy head." Florus leaned in and kissed Lacus on the forehead. "You were saying my name. You should be careful where you have those dreams,* he said with a wink.

"What? N-no," Lacus shook his head. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "No I...I mean we were... there was a fight and-"

"Oh no!" The prince took a seat on the wall beside him. "Did we have a fight? Was I being rude in your dream?" He squeezed Lacus's hand. "Please tell me I wasn't being my father."

"No, it wasn't that kind of fight," Lacus laced his fingers into Florus's. "There was fire and war, and the city was taken but we were taking it back, and, I, uh..." his mind was hazy.

"Ha! And you told me not to dream of those fantasy tales," the prince said with a chuckle. "Look at you with your visions of grandeur. Saving the city and your dashing prince." He winked and walked across the sand pit into the garden. "Come, rest with me." The prince laid down in his bed. Lacus took as tep towards him and thought to pluck some flowers on the way, but as he slipped on the sand and fell his knee hit a stone and pain shot through his leg.

"Ah!" he yelped, sitting up. The pain in his leg was blinding. He reached down to grab it and found a thick strip of fabric wrapped tight around his leg. He quickly realized he was no longer on the road, or even on the ground but in the back o fa cart.

"Ahh! It sounds as though my friend has finally awoken!" A voice outside said loudly. "Please do forgive me sirs, he had much to drink last night. Browse my wares while I see to him." A door opened and a familiar feathery headdress entered. Fariba shut the cart behind him and knelt down beside Lacus.

"Hello friend," they said quietly with a wide smile, "Fariba hopes you slept well. You are-"

"Where the hells am I?" Lacus grumbled through clenched teeth. As much as he wanted to get up and run he could feel his leg wouldn't be able to hold him. And with Fariba's lie, he doubted he wanted to see anyone outside the cart right now.

"As Fariba was saying," the merchant said with a patronizing smile, "you are in Fariba's cart again. Found you by the side of the road yesterday morning."

"Yesterday?"

"Yes, now if you can please lay back down for a few more minutes, Fariba can finish up this sale and get you some food, okay?"

Lacus didn't have many options or room to argue, so he laid back down on the bundle of clothing that had been propped under his head. His stomach churned as his body caught up to the fact that it had missed a few meals and he felt his throat and tongue burn for something to drink.

He listened to Fariba speak with people outside but couldn't understand what they were saying; it wasn't Haranese for sure and it didn't sound like the stuttering Sammosan or throaty, rolling Gymerian he'd been hearing in recent weeks. It was a bit more nasal and seemed to have shorter syllables. Based on how often he heard Fariba use one word Lacus assumed it meant 'friend'.

"Very good," Fariba said when they returned to the cart. They helped Lacus sit up and propped him against a box, handing him a bowl of water. "Sip slowly."

"Who were you talking to?"

"Customers, of course." Fariba was moving items around in the confined space. Lacus couldn't move easily without pain to see what all was going on.

"I mean their fucking language. Where the hells are we?"

"Ah! Yes! We are on the way to Semperia. Fariba is making a place for you to hide in case they choose to search Fariba's cart. It has never happened before but one cannot be too careful."

"What the? No!" Lacus tried to get up but pain shot through his leg and he fell down, head swimming again.

"Calm, calm," Fariba said, grabbing his shoulders. "Do not worry, Fariba will not allow you to be captured in your condition. You need only lay still and-"

"No, I can't, you don't know," Lacus stammered, blinking away tears. "The battle, the fire, the prince..."

"Calm, calm," Fariba repeated, "Fariba knows these things. The prince's army was defeated. They say he was killed and-"

"He was! I saw it!" Lacus lost his strength and fell back into the seat Fariba made him. The merchant patted his shoulder.

"Calm," they said again. "You are having a fever. Fariba will get you to healers in the city and have you sent to a safe place. Just rest."

Lacus didn't remember falling asleep, but when he woke up again for a few minutes he smelled something delicious. A bowl of soup was by his head. He was once again in a cubby of some kind, laying on his side. He sipped the bowl of soup as he heard the familiar clack clack of cobblestone against the cart's wheels. It lulled him back to sleep.

When he next woke up it was when someone pressed a literal fucking torch against his leg. His eyes shot open and he screamed before a rag was shoved in his mouth.

"Bite down!" a deep voice said and Lacus did, groaning through the pain. He looked down at a black mark on his leg surrounded by enflamed red skin. The people around him were wearing the white robes of the bastards who'd been helping the Sammosans in battle. They were muttering prayers he didn't understand and touched the fire to his wound again. He shrieked in agony and passed out.

"ugh..." Lacus groaned after he had no idea how long. There was a bowl of water and a bowl of soup by him again, but now he was in a bed. A rocking bed. He tried to sit up but his leg hurt worse than ever. Looking down he pulled the white linen sheet off of himself and saw his thigh was actually looking a bit better; a nasty scar that looked like his skin had melted over, but the redness had seemed to recede.

"Rest." A deep voice commanded. A large man with thick muscles walked over, pulling the blanket back into place. He held up the bowl of soup for Lacus.

"Who are-?"

"Rest." the man repeated. He pushed the bowl to Lacus's lips who stared to sip quickly from it. It hit his empty stomach and suddenly everything lurched. His bed rocked and he realized it was a hammock.

He was in a ship's hold.

When he sipped some water he looked up at the dark man standing over him. "Thanks," he said.

"You are welcome." The man bowed his head. "Fariba of Shen insists that you will be of great service."

Lacus was too tired to try and unravel what was happening so he just closed his eyes. "Where are we going?"

"To Chol," the man said, "We will be working off our debts to Fariba of Shen at the docks."

"Debt?"

"Rest." the man repeated. Lacus intended to rest. His head was spinning with so many thoughts. But above all of it was that he was not going to work off any debt. As soon as the ship docked, as soon as he could limp on his own two legs, he would make himself scarce. He'd survived on the streets as a child, he could do it again.

----------------
[<= Of Disciples & Death] [Chapter Index]
All crit/feedback welcome!
r/TomesOfTheLitchKing

Notes:

• Lacus will return in [Casting Shadows]

This short story is a part of the Mieran Ruins Collection. The rest of the stories can be found on this masterpost.

Most people didn’t think about where trash goes. The garbage was collected into bags and carried off into a truck. They were vaguely aware of landfills; the sites where garbage was mixed with the dirt in the hopes to never smell it again, but they didn’t care about what happened. Just that it was out of their site.

Some people did care of course. They pointed out that garbage would hurt the environment. Also, landfills made hills that no one wanted to live on. Eventually, we’d run out of space and all have to live waste mountains. As a result, people started recycling cans and paper. The rest of the landfills could stay. It was already in the ground, and it was too costly to replace what was the worst things that could happen.

Well, a lot of bad things could happen. Everyone (even the worst polluters) could be forgiven for not expecting the worst to occur. When the Mierans attacked, they unleashed a variety of weapons that were meant to destroy the majority of the population, but a select group of humans were to be left to inhabit. One particular weapon was a gas that preserved life before it died. They released it across the world.

The gas preserved and in some cases, mutated all life. Garbage contained microbes in bacteria to slowly degrade it. When gas reached the bacteria, it generated a bizarre evolutionary path. Bacteria were quicker at breaking down the contents before them. When it was turned into its components, it was reformed into a sludge. The sludge spread connected and grew. It crew until it burst out of the landfill. When it touched the sky, it was hit by a different gas that was designed to freeze the planet (Mierans liked it cold). The frozen gas prevented the sludge from taking over the world. The sludge broke into smaller sludges in a bizarre form of reproduction. The sludge crawled around the ground disintegrating all that came in its path.

The humans beat the Mierans largely through dumb luck and a few well-timed rebellions on the Mieran ship (It figures that’s what happens when they fight humans). The alien hosts of the Mierans were unleashed onto the world. Even they were shocked when they saw the sludge so different from the creatures on their planets. Yet it was entirely alien to Earth. This just goes to show the consequences of unleashing strange gases on planets during conquests.

“That one looks dangerous.” Jacob pointed in fear as the slug scooched by him. Glass shards were pointed out of its back similar to a stegosaurus. The slug was roughly the size of a small person.

“No, it looks fun.” Dorothy, a small person, cracked her neck. She jumped on the slugs tail, but it slipped out of her hands. “I’m going to get you.”

“Be careful. You might get mutated,” Jacob shouted.

“It’s too late. I had an octopus tail when I was born,” Franklin said. Jacob stared at Franklin. “I’m kidding.” Franklin laughed, and Jacob awkwardly joined. “Or am I?”

The slug turned on Dorothy and attacked her. The glass shards moved in towards her. When they struck her, they broke into tiny pieces. Either it was a weak weapon, or Dorothy had strong skin from the mutation. Dorothy laughed as she wrestled with it.

“That tickles.” She stood up with the slug wrapped around her body. The slug shuffled the glass around to cut her, but it failed. Dorothy moved towards them. “Alright that’s one down.” The slug slithered off of her and ran back to the waste pile. “Never mind.”

“I think we should try talking to them.” Franklin walked to a different slug that had torn up pages of magazines inside its body. So many famous faces were forgotten over the years, but the claims about them were hilarious. When gossip was at its most frivolous and least based in reality, it became the most entertaining. Franklin bent over to this slug and smiled. “How are you?” The slug didn’t answer. “What’s life like?” The slug moved a little. “How’s the weather?” The slug refused to respond. “You are being very rude.” The slug moved away. “Oh, that’s how it is.” Franklin began to cry. “Why can’t you be nice?”

Jacob grabbed Franklin and pulled him away. He looked at the mess that the slugs were creating, and an idea popped into his head. “Why don’t we start a fire?” Franklin and Dorothy looked at him. Dorothy grabbed his cheeks and pulled.

“Were you replaced?” Dorothy slapped him.

“No, I think this is a good idea. We start a fire on one side, and they’ll move away. With more fires, we can guide them to where we want to go,” Jacob said.

“It’s still suspicious that you suggested it,” Dorothy said.

“You two rubbed off on me,” Jacob shrugged. Dorothy always carried flammable materials on her. They poured a small puddle of gasoline and created a line far away from the site. They also created small fires along a path away from the site.

Jacob lit the first flame. Instead of running away from it, the slugs moved towards it. They began to roll around in it. A few had pieces that caught on fire inside, but they didn’t seem to care. They seemed to enjoy it. Eventually, the blaze started by Jacob was extinguished, but the slugs were still enjoying the inferno.

“Huh, didn’t expect that,” Jacob said.

“I’ll light the rest now. It may not be a stick, but it could be a carrot to draw them out.” Dorothy could’ve lit the entire forest on fire. Fortunately for the wildlife, the slugs moved to the flames and gathered them onto their body. Afterwards, they went back to the landfill.

“Well, this made our job harder,” Franklin said. Jacob began to cry. Franklin patted his shoulder. “Don’t get too upset that your plan failed. I thought it was a good idea.”

“I don’t care about that,” Jacob whimpered, “I’m upset because this place went from smelling like garbage to smelling like burning garbage.”

r/AstroRideWrites

There was once a town that knew not of recycling, but of waste. This town wasn’t poor, nor rich; aware of climate change, but not of how they affect the climate. This town had so much of what they call “garbage”, that the garbage truck would have to come often to dispose of the piles that grew in front of their houses. The issue with this is that most of what was being thrown out was not garbage, but treasure to the right person. The community lived but minutes from a donation centre; however, the people found it too much work to drive their goods over. They would rather the piles in front of their house magically disappear, to be disposed of; a norm firmly set in stone with the inhabitants of this wasteful place.

In this town, some of the people scavenged the piles, hoping to find their next treasure. Of these people was a university student, not rich, nor poor. This student believed in being environmentally friendly, to not waste, but to reuse. Sometimes this student would find old cameras, sometimes furniture, other times small collectibles. Items worth a lot to them, but not to the person who tossed them aside, the person wanting it to be taken for them by the garbage truck to magically disappear and never be seen again. What the wasteful people did not realize, was that their items did not magically disappear; they ended up in a waste dump, left to sit and rot. Thousands of treasures dumped constantly; instead of finding a new home, a new life, they found their final resting place where they would turn from treasure to trash. What the wasteful people did not realize was that, over time, their waste sites would fill up too much. New sites would be made, near poor communities, or in other countries. Their waste would become the neighbour of other people; strangers whom their trash met, but these strangers would never meet the creator of the landfills. Eventually, the treasures now turned trash will befriend the water, going deep into the ocean. The water that maintains life, now collecting micoplastics and harmful chemicals from the improper and unnecessary disposal of items that could be sitting on the shelf of someone else’s shelf, or being played with by the next generation of children. No matter the item, there is likely someone who does not believe that it is not garbage. There is a new home for almost every item. If the inhabitants of the wasteful town took a few minutes out of their day to drive to the donation centre, it could help fix the world; it can make the day for someone the wasteful people never met once the treasures find their new home; it can make all of the difference in the world.

There was once a boy who was at a thrift store. This thrift store was also visited by the university student who believed in recycling and that student had taken some of the garbage off of the streets and brought it to the donation centre. Sometimes the toys were not in the best condition, but that did not matter to the boy, who found a large toy car that he could drive. It was missing a battery, but with a bit of care and love, the boy’s parents had fixed the car. The treasure that the boy found made him years of good memories.

The boy grew up over time and eventually became a man. He was going through his childhood items one day, and found his old car in his parent’s garage. With a smile, he picked up the toy car and loaded it into his van, reliving the memories of his past. As he pulled into a parking lot, he got out of his van and picked up the toy from his back seat. He walked up to a sign that read “donation centre” and dropped it off, saying one final thing to the car that brought him so many good memories; “treat the next kid well, and give them the experiences that you gave me.” Wiping a small tear from his eye, he left the car and returned home while the toy vehicle waited for the next generation to make life-long memories with it.

Everyone benefits when we recycle. A few minutes can change the world.

#Welcome to Serial Sunday!

To those brand new to the feature and those returning from last week, welcome! Do you have a self-established universe you’ve been writing or planning to write in? Do you have an idea for a world that’s been itching to get out? This is the perfect place to explore that. Each week, I post a theme to inspire you, along with a related image and song. You have 500 - 1000 words to write your installment. You can jump in at any time; writing for previous weeks’ is not necessary in order to join. After you’ve posted, come back and provide feedback for at least 1 other writer on the thread. Please be sure to read the entire post for a full list of rules.

#This Week’s Theme is Struggle!

Image | Song

Bonus Word List (each included word is worth 5 pts) - Please list which words you included at the end of your story.

• serpentine

• sham

• solemn

• snow

Nothing great was ever achieved without trouble standing in its way. Whether it was time, nature, or just loads of pesky humans fighting and gossiping and causing trouble, there's always something that stands between a beautiful dream and the slightly shabbier reality it becomes.

This theme is all about the obstacles of life and how to overcome them. Over and over, our characters get kicked aside, roughed up, pushed down, and run over by the great semi-truck of life. Yet it's up to them to get up, wiped the tread marks off their clothing, and try, try again. Passion, persistence, intelligence, friendship, and all the other buzzwords from Saturday morning cartoons come together to help our protagonists face off against the trials of life. So grab your pen, pencil, or clicky keyboard and get to struggling! Blurb provided by u/Xacktar.

These are just a few things to get you started. Remember, the theme should be present within the story in some way, but its interpretation is completely up to you. For the bonus words (not required), you may change the tense, but the base word should remain the same. Please remember to follow all sub and post rules.

Don’t forget to sign up for Saturday Campfire here! We start at 1pm EST and provide live feedback!

###Theme Schedule:

• April 21 - Struggle (this week)

• April 28 - Traditions

• May 5 - Undermine

  Previous Themes | Serial Index
 

#Rankings for Recovery

• First - u/Tomorrow_Is_Today1
• Second - u/AGuyLikeThat
• Third - u/MaxStickies
• Fourth - u/MeganBessel
• Fifth - u/ZachTheLitchKing

#Rules & How to Participate Please read and follow all the rules listed below. This feature has requirements for participation!

• Submit a story inspired by the weekly theme, written by you and set in your self-established universe that is 500 - 1000 words. No fanfics and no content created or altered by AI. (Use wordcounter.net to check your wordcount.) Stories should be posted as a top-level comment below. If you’re continuing an in-progress serial (not on Serial Sunday), please include links to your previous installments.

• Your chapter must be submitted by Saturday at 9:00am EST. Late entries will be disqualified. All submissions should be given (at least) a basic editing pass before being posted!

• Begin your post with the name of your serial between triangle brackets (e.g. <My Awesome Serial>). When our bot is back up and running, this will allow it to recognize your serial and add each chapter to the SerSun catalog. Do not include anything in the brackets you don’t want in your title. (Please note: You must use this same title every week.)

• Do not pre-write your serial. You’re welcome to do outlining and planning for your serial, but chapters should not be pre-written. All submissions should be written for this post, specifically.

• Only one active serial per author at a time. This does not apply to serials written outside of Serial Sunday.

• All Serial Sunday authors must leave feedback on at least one story on the thread each week. The feedback should be actionable and also include something the author has done well. When you include something the author should improve on, provide an example! You have until Saturday at 11:59pm EST to post your feedback. (Submitting late is not an exception to this rule.)

• Missing your feedback requirement two or more consecutive weeks will disqualify you from rankings and Campfire readings the following week. If it becomes a habit, you may be asked to move your serial to the sub instead.

• Serials must abide by subreddit content rules. You can view a full list of rules here. If you’re ever unsure if your story would cross the line, please modmail and ask!

#Weekly Campfires & Voting:

• On Saturdays at 1pm EST, I host a Serial Sunday Campfire in our Discord’s Voice Lounge. Join us to read your story aloud, hear others, and exchange feedback. We have a great time! You can even come to just listen, if that’s more your speed. Grab the “Serial Sunday” role on the Discord to get notified before it starts. You can sign up here

• Nominations for your favorite stories can be submitted with this form. The form is open on Saturdays from 12:30pm to 11:59pm EST. You do not have to participate to make nominations!

• Authors who complete their Serial Sunday serials with at least 12 installments, can host a SerialWorm in our Discord’s Voice Lounge, where you read aloud your finished and edited serials. Celebrate your accomplishment! Authors are eligible for this only if they have followed the weekly feedback requirement (and all other post rules). Visit us on the Discord for more information.

#Ranking System

We have a new point system! Here is the point breakdown:

TASK | POINTS | ADDITIONAL NOTES |:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:| | Use of weekly theme | 75 pts | Theme should be present, but the interpretation is up to you! | Including the bonus words | 5 pts each (20 pts total) | This is a bonus challenge, and not required! | Actionable Feedback | 5 - 15 pts each (60 pt. max)* | This includes thread and campfire critiques. (15 pt crits are those that go above & beyond.) | Nominations your story receives | 10 - 60 pts | 1st place - 60, 2nd place - 50, 3rd place - 40, 4th place - 30, 5th place - 20 / Regular Nominations - 10 | Voting for others | 15 pts | You can now vote for up to 10 stories each week!

*You are still required to leave at least 1 actionable feedback comment on the thread every week that you submit. This should include at least one specific thing the author has done well and one that could be improved. Please remember that interacting with a story is not the same as providing feedback. Low-effort crits will not receive credit.

Looking for more on what actionable feedback is? Check out this guide on critiquing.

###Subreddit News

• Join our Discord to chat with other authors and readers! We hold several weekly Campfires, monthly World-Building interviews and several other fun events!
• Try your hand at micro-fic on Micro Monday!
• Did you know you can post serials to r/Shortstories, outside of Serial Sunday? Check out this post to learn more!
• Interested in being a part of our team? Apply to be a mod!

Trumpets and drum rolls roared throughout the luxurious morning lit streets of Thortica. The people of this monumental city were bustling and chattering with excitement. Preparations for the Dragons Day festival were well underway and had been for days. Men and women scrambled to finish the last minute touches to make sure the city's streets were magnificently decorated. Massive brightly colored banners hung from nearly every window, flowers and elegant pottery were arranged neatly along the sides of the freshly swept streets, ropes were strung from rooftops holding banners stitched with the finest precision across every road. The entire city was buzzing and filled with laughter, dancing, and drinking. These activities at such an early hour celebrated the start of The Dragon Days festival. At face value, with all the carefree joy and laughter, one wouldn't think this festival was tied to a horrific war that ended only three short years ago.

During this war, the dark elves of Shrineguard captured hundreds of dragons and their eggs from around the world. They raised the hatchlings from birth keeping the mothers bound in chains for milk. The young dragons were beaten and forced into submission in the harshest conditions imaginable. The hatchlings' spirits were broken at a very young age. The dark elves used fear and suffering to ensure unquestionable loyalty. Any dragon that couldn't be trusted or did not show complete obedience was killed and used to feed its brothers and sisters. The mothers who could no longer produce milk were also used as meat or ripped from their children and put on the front lines. This nearly led wild dragons to extinction, leaving only the eldest and most powerful dragons behind.

After years of scheming and secret preparations, the city of Shrineguard declared open war against all of mid-continent with a seemingly undefeatable army. The war lasted sixteen long years before the last dragon was laid to rest; followed by the Shriven elf's leader, Dreckel. Bleeding out from his deep wounds he gazed in hatred as the combined army of the mid-continent closed in around him. In a rage-filled fury at his army’s defeat, he used his last ounce of power to summon an enormous whirlwind of black and purple mists. The smoke-like mists spiraled around him creating a deadly vortex of potent magic killing dozens of soldiers instantly along with any soldier foolish enough to step foot into the hurricane of black magic. Once the soldiers in the immediate vicinity fell, A bright flash of radiant white light burst from around Dreckel blinding approaching soldiers for several moments. When reinforcements arrived and the blinded men regained their sight his body was nowhere to be found. The remainder of Dreckels army was hunted down and killed on sight. There has been no word from the scouts suggesting any kind of Shrineguard uprising since that day. And so, the festivities continue. Despite the fact that there has been no word from any scout at all in recent months.

Every kingdom on the mid continent celebrated this historic day. However, Thortica always put on an especially grand show with fireworks, music, dancing, food, and all the ale one could swallow. The festival drew competitors from all over the world to participate in its many events of skill and strength. From the mightiest gladiators to the most cunning tricksters, people travel from near and far to compete for the recognition of being the best and, a large sum of gold to the winner of each activity. But for one boy, winning will bring on the beginning of his biggest loss.

Thrane awoke to trumpets blaring from outside his window. He quickly flung his fur covers to the side and leaped from his bed to the cold wooden floor. In a daze he quickly slipped his feet into his dingy fur slippers and ran towards his wooden dresser. He slid his hand over his old leather belt that housed his mismatched collection of knives. Thoughts of finally winning the throwing competition were swimming through his mind. He had been practicing for years, with only a few minor setbacks in his self training.

'After all knife throwing was risky business, the slightest wrong move and it's all over with.' At least that's what his mother would say to him.

A queasy feeling formed in his stomach at the thought of a "a slightly wrong move" in front of the entire city. Thrane shook off the doubt and cleared his mind. Hurriedly, he threw his dark hide and cloth vest over his back, then fastened his belt around his breeches while running for the kitchen. Thranes mother made the best breakfast and not even the competition could make him miss that! His spirits lifted as he raised his nose high in the air taking in the scent of sizzling bacon. Caught up in his own thoughts he tripped over a wooden stool and fell to the ground with a thud. Thrane scrambled to his feet, brushing off the indignity of his carelessness, then ran down the long hallway lit by stained glass windows. He jetted down the old creaky staircase into the dining room where his Mother, and his bacon, waited on him. He leaped the last couple of steps to the stone floor then jumped into the old oak chair at the table.

“Morning Mum!” Thrane declared excitedly.

His mother smiled then turned around carrying a glass of milk to his place at the table.

"In a hurry this morning?'' She asked, chuckling at him as he inhaled six cuts of bacon nearly choking on them. He reached for the glass, gulping it down violently.

He inhaled deeply. "Yes mum" he replied "the Dragon Days competitions start today, and this year I’m going to win the knife throwing competition if it kills me."

His mother shook her head as she pumped water into the dish tub. "If you’re not careful it may very well" she said nervously . "You know I don't like you tossing knives at things. Do you remember what happened last time?" she asked, as she looked at the taxidermied cat on the floor.

Thrane glanced at the beady eyed cat placed "coincidentally" so that its lifeless gaze pointed across the room at his spot at the table everyday.

"Oh, come on mum, that was years ago!' He said avoiding eye contact with the stuffed calico cat. “And I've told you, it wouldn’t have happened if it wouldn’t have flinched!” The first three knives didn’t even leave a scratch."

His mother turned, grabbing dishes and sliding them into the water. “Yes.” his mother agreed. “But the fourth sent mr cuddles to an early grave.!”

Thrane glanced back at the cat, locking eyes with its vengeful stare. He then looked back to his mother and shrugged his shoulders slightly and smirked.

“True, but now you have a wonderful conversational piece,” Thrane said jokingly.

His mother scoughed. "Well, either way, be careful. I don't want to have to explain to anyone why their child is missing an eye."

Thrane stood from the table and walked towards his mother plate in hand. "I will." He insured her, then kissed his mothers cheek. He grabbed four additional throwing knives from the kitchen counter tucking them into his belt. Thrane put on his old worn leather boots and hurried out the door. He turned back and looked at his mom, then mr cuddles. He reached down and rotated the cat directing its gaze away from his spot at the table then opened the door.

“ I’ll see you tonight, with a gold medal, and a sac full of gold.!”

His mother smiled at him then turned back to the dishes. Thrane pushed open the heavy wooden door then ran down the street just barely dodging a crowd of armored horsemen rushing to the town square just ahead of the parade. Behind the horsemen, underpaid workers dressed in tattered rags rolled barrels of Ale to wooden and cloth shacks around the city. The Town square had been the most well decorated. Massive multi-colored canopies spread across large areas provided shade for spectators and competitors. Large ropes held monumental banners of each major city in the mid-continent. Horse-drawn carriages pulled traveling merchants to designated areas for business.

https://www.reddit.com/user/Thepagekeeper/

Letters to Nobody is a series of short stories presented as fictional letters.

Miss You.

Crab apples are pretty disgusting. I'm sure you could do something with them to make them edible, but I haven't ever actually bothered to look. I figured if there were, you would have figured it out. But the years of my childhood spent playing under that massive tree in your front yard, occasionally trying one and spitting it out faster than I took a bite, gave me all the evidence I needed that they were pretty damn gross.

So we played baseball with them. I have no idea how this ever started, but I'm sure it was long before I was born. Every autumn, the front yard was covered in bits and pieces of crab apples. Every year, we just destroyed the front yard. We played with pumpkins too, but little ones, and I was never big enough to either hit or throw them, so we left those to the adults. If you hit a crab apple it exploded, so someone would have to pick up a piece of the exploded crab apple and hit you with it before you ran around the bases, which were probably the parts of the pumpkins we smashed...

Did I tell you I drove by a few years after you died? The house was gone. The tree was gone. the entire property had been razed. Not even the brook was there. The plum and pear trees where gone as well. All that was left was the steep hill on the side, and the trees that bordered the back of the land. Even the barn, the walkways and the driveway were completely ripped out. Even the basement is gone, just filled in with dirt and grass grows there now.

When I was little, I remember how that brook flowed all year long and froze over when it was too cold. It had dried up already before someone ripped out the decades our family spent on that property. Your wife had moved out before you died. You lived alone in that crooked house for years. I came there as often as I could, but I was long gone before you died. You were eighty-three when you died. Lately I wonder if I will make it to eighty-three.

There's a new house there. It's beautiful, actually. You'd probably like it. It hurts that your house isn't there anymore, but it looks kinda pretty now. There's a little white fence all around the property, a two car garage. It's a cute little light grey split level with a porch on the side and a red front door. Just like the kind of house I would have always wanted to live in. I don't even know if anyone is living there, I assume a nice normal family who doesn't toss pumpkins off the roof of their garage or have most of their land as a garden or fruit trees. Looks almost respectable. Looks like the neighbors bought some of the property where the hill was and put in a pool there on the other side of the fence. Or maybe it was always there. I forget things lately, little details like that.

It's the perfect looking little house to live in now, but it will never be the chaotic, loud, random neighborhood animal filled house with cousins and aunts and uncles and friends laughing, eating and drinking most of so often throughout the year.

I don't know why I wanted to tell you this. You've been gone for years now. I miss you.

Chapter list:

https://www.reddit.com/user/Complex_Articles/comments/1ccugvw/letters_to_nobody_chapter_list/

Prologue
It was a lazy fall afternoon, the leaves were brightly colored but still mostly on the trees. The crisp air meant the fireplace was in use, the smell of wood smoke drifted through the yard and into the forest beyond. Far overhead a plane continued its trip, connecting one part of the world to the other with its contrails. Two boys kicked the ball to each other in the yard.
What do you want to be when you grow up? Andy asked John. The ball passed and caught smoothly.
“I don’t know man, I think I want to fly airplanes. It seems pretty cool.” Returned just as cleanly.
“Me too! Flying fast all over the place, doing cool stuff”
Dude, it would be awesome.”
“Heck yeah!”
“It’s a deal then.”
John stopped the ball, watching the plane finish it’s trip to the other side of the treeline, passing beyond their sight on its way to new places. Maybe the people onboard were going to start new lives, rekindle relationships, or change the world. Maybe all three.
“We’re gonna be pilots.”

July, fifteen years later
It was the first leg of the day. The crew of four running cargo to the edge of the Sahara had been flying together for a month already, and were comfortable enough to the point that most conversations centered around the next meal, and not what the plane was doing. They were on a steady descent and could see the airfield in the distance. Light sand against sand, but it was there. Today was chicken parmesan day. It was going to be a good dinner when they got back.
“Pilot, Load.”
“Go ahead Load.”
The loadmaster leaned forward in his seat, squinting out the window against the bright African sun. “I think they’re shooting at us”.
Food thoughts were gone. “Give me something Load, are they actually shooting at the plane?”
“I mean, yeah, but they’re bad at it.” The loadmaster watched the staccato muzzle flashes and occasional tracer make its way behind the aircraft. Leading a plane takes practice, and these guys had none. And then, as if they had heard him, the tracers started moving closer to the plane, furious ants speeding up to meet them.
“Uh, pilot, load. They’re getting better at it”
“Shit,” was the only response as the pilot started pulling the airplane across the sky.
John was standing with his crew chief, staring up at the wing, displeased. A single bullet had found a fuel tank, and a slow but steady drip was spreading across the scorching ground.
“She’ll be fine, it’s an aux tank sir.” The crew chief pulled on his cigarette and exhaled, sending a cloud in the general direction of the drip. John nodded, thinking about fuel consumption rates and the rest of the day’s stops. “We’ll salvage what we can by dumping the fuel into the other tanks,” he said, staring at the edge of the airfield. The low stone wall separating the field from the town was covered in people, all coming to watch the cargo being downloaded and distributed. He could see more than a few cell phones as well, taking pictures and videos of the operation. Another note for the intel folks to get excited about back home. They turned and started walking to the back of the airplane, where the loadmasters were busy yelling at the local porters to not crash the forklift into the back of the airplane. “This place sucks man. Too many bad guys.”
Crew chief nodded. “But then we probably wouldn’t be here huh. If it wasn’t for them.”
“Yeah, fair. Regardless, I thought I had saved her”
“You’ll get it next time sir”
John laughed. “Man I hope there’s not a next time.”

Hope you enjoy this one. winroberts.com

Win

:-)

He was a tailor in a world that didn’t want or particularly need tailors. Even worse, he had been a tailor for over forty years and remembered the time when people actually wanted a custom tai-lored suit of clothes. He would make suits for the business men. He made suits for kids graduating high school. These days, most of his work involved letting out pants for people who needed to go to a funeral but they had gotten fatter since the last time they wore them.

He had sold his store; he would move to Florida and take it easy. He had found a place where they played canasta every Thursday night. He loved canasta. He would move there and plant a little garden and play canasta.

He stopped at the store one last time. He had already handed the keys over to the new owners. He would make one last coat before leaving. He would make a fine and sturdy coat, maybe the best coat of his career. Maybe the most important coat of his career. The new owners were planning on gutting the place and putting in a Chipotle, they wouldn’t mind him using the store one last time.

He got to work taking the dust covers off of the machines. He would need a sturdy fabric for his coat so, selecting from the inventory in the back room, he found a bolt of worsted tweed. That would make a good start. He searched further and found some nylon thread. He would need lots of different colors of the thread to match the tweed. He gathered up his materials and headed to the sewing room.

He moved with the precision and deftness of an expert craftsman at the peak of his powers. He interwove the nylon into the tweed making a strong fabric even stronger. This was his mas-terpiece, it needed to be strong. He cut the pieces he would need of the wool and nylon raw material with surgeon like accuracy. He knew the dimensions by heart, this coat was to fit himself.

He double and triple stitched the seams and reinforced where necessary and prudent. He would not give up on style and comfort, though, no good tailor would. The lining must come out easily he thought. He sewed in a zipper system to help with its re-moval. The lining was just as important as the rest, he knew. His masterpiece must be as close to perfect as he could get. It was the last coat he would make, it was the most important coat he would make.

He worked late into the night cutting, stitching, reworking. Finally, he paused and considered his handiwork. It was good. He tried the coat on and looked at himself in the mirror. What he saw was a man of years with wrinkled skin, a wrinkle for every trial. He admired the coat, it was of exceptional construction. The coat fit his body like no store bought coat could ever do. The coat was stylish, it would not be out of place anywhere. He could wear this coat to Buckingham Palace he mused.

He knew who would appreciate his creation. There were some folks downtown, he would visit them; they would appreciate the skill and craftsmanship. He buttoned his coat to guard against the winter chill outside and with one last long look at the store, he locked the door and left there forever.

The trip downtown wasn’t long. This time of night most folks were warm and safe in their beds, traffic was light. He pulled up to his destination and seeing no obstacle parked his car at the head of the alley. He pulled the collar of the coat tight and walked in the cold night air to the hotel around the corner.

The night clerk at the hotel was a short balding fat man. He wore a tired old t-shirt that was frayed at the arms and neck. The shirt looked and smelled like it had been awhile since it had been laundered. The man chewed an unlit cigar. He looked up from his cell phone when he heard him come in.

“Hi Bub. Looking for a room?” The man had an eastern European accent.

The old man considered his response and finally said. “That girl named Tabitha still here?”

The cigar chewing clerk eyed the old man up and down. He was suspicious, he had never seen him before.

“You cop?” The odious homunculus asked.

The old man laughed. “No.” He would have to win over this turd on the shoe of life. “I’m willing to pay for what I want.” He pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket and peeled off a one hun-dred dollar bill and handed it to the man.

“She have too much party. Very groggy.” The man took the money. He was unsure if the old guy would want it back after he said that.

“That’s no problem.” He wanted this particular girl. “How much?”

The man in the t-shirt rubbed his unshaven face and folding his hands outward said. “$300, one half hour.”

“How much for one hour?” The old man started pulling bills from his roll.

“For you bro, $500”

The old man paid the man his money and the short fat man led him up a flight of stairs.

At the top of the stairs a group of four men were playing cards and drinking. They were hunched over their cards not say-ing much. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovered over their heads. What they did say, they said in a foreign language he didn’t under-stand. It seemed congruent with the eastern European impression he got from his front desk clerk ‘friend’.

They climbed a second staircase and walking down a nar-row hallway, scented in perfume and stale cigarette smoke, they arrived at their destination. The short fat man opened the door. He entered to find his purchase passed out on the bed. He nodded assent to the fat man and shut the door.

The girl on the bed was much skinnier than the last time he had seen her. Her skin was pale and almost gray. He had heard that they hook the girls on drugs to lower their sense of morality and keep them incentivized to keep working for them. He as-sumed that was why she was sleeping. Her face was painted with too much makeup and her lipstick had smeared across her cheek. The old man fought back his emotions, he had work to do.

He pulled a cover off of the bed and, folding it, placed it across the floor in front of the door. He didn’t want any unwanted attention to come from his activity. He took off his coat and un-zipped the lining. He placed the lining on the bed. He then lay the coat on the floor.

Searching the coat he found the two threads he had left strategically dangling. He pulled the threads and when the threads had finally wormed their way out from the coat, his beautiful coat lay in rags on the floor. Quickly, he took the two ropes that had previously been the coat arms and tied them around the radiator sitting by the window. First opening the window, he then threw the rest of the coat out into the night air. What had previously been his beautiful coat now took shape as a tweed and nylon lad-der.

He looked out of the window. It was long enough. He had worried it might not be.

He turned his attention back to the lining. He had sewed a double harness into the lining. Working as fast as he could, he buckled the girl into one half of the harnesses. Lifting with all of his strength, he got the girl on his back and fastened his side of the harness. Now for the ladder.

He slowly and methodically inched himself and his cargo over the window sill and onto the ersatz ladder. The going was slow, he would have had trouble doing this alone but having the extra weight of the girl made it excruciating. The motion of the ladder scraped his hands against the bricks that covered the build-ing, causing blood to flow. The viscosity of the blood did nothing to help him maintain his grip. He pressed on.

Slowly and slowly, inch by inch, the old man descended from the hell with which the girl had been living. The cold night air was beginning to revive his sleeping baggage. She was moan-ing something he couldn’t make out.

“Don’t worry tabby cat. Grandpa’s got you.”

That seemed to quiet the girl. Down and down and finally they made the ground. He turned his attention to the alley now. There it was, his car. The two made their way there. He placed the girl on the back seat and wrapped her in a blanket he had stashed there. Climbing into the driver’s seat he fired the engine to life and made his way out of town.

They had made reservations for the girl at a rehab hospital 18 hours away that would afford them anonymity from her cap-tors. She would have a new start there. He would drive all night and most of the day. He reached in the glove box for his phone. He dialed his daughter’s number.

“She’s safe.”

He knew the crying on the other end was a good thing. He could enjoy his retirement in peace now. He thought about what vegetables he would grow. Tomatoes for sure. He was excited to play the canasta.

Next war meeting we held was in castle's other courtyard. Lankensy, Seirialia, Fyregeld, Jakan and I arrived there. Taking seats at a larger rectangular table, the other heroes of the Riven War are here and the castle commanders. We place our material onto the table and which are part of the meeting.

It is mostly reports of undead army movements and few sightings of possibly high value targets involved with this crisis on the undead side. Took seats first, then the castle commanders and Fyregeld laid down on a good spot to see everything on the table and lastly, Jakan and I took seats. Salgi Zutem looked around quickly.

He is the only castle commander here who we know somewhat personally, first castle commander we talked with when we arrived here. 'I believe we may begin then?' Salgi Zutem asks respectfully to break the silence and sees that all of us are now looking at him.

'Yes, after talking with Jakan and Volarie, as I stated previously, I agree with the proposed plan of pitched battle to the north and north west of the castle.' Lankensy states calmly and looks at the castle commanders. They all look mildly relieved but, it changed to mildly concerned after a while.

'The scouting has yielded results, not favorable for the proposed plan but, depending on how events will fold tomorrow, it still can be done.' Kyrem states in official tone, which came as a surprise to me as he speaks quite little usually and, began to go through the reports, even ours.

Jakan draws onto an empty copy of surrounding areas of the castle, the movement of undead army, locations, their numbers and composition, while I draw and write to another copy of a map of the area, the sightings of the high value targets. Both of us then give the maps to be seen by others at the table. Each on the table takes a look at the maps to internalize the information displayed on them.

Then they were placed onto the middle of table for anybody to reach for to see them again more closely. 'It will be a difficult fight to organize and coordinate... Worst is that we have no time to train our troops for this all...' One of the castle commanders state in thought burdened tone, other commanders, including Salgi Zutem nod to this statement.

They are also pondering on how to execute this proposed battle plan. Jakan takes the map of the opposing force locations on his hand again, even he is puzzled, one of the castle commanders has eye contact for a while with Jakan who shakes his head to this, mostly likely because even he is unsure how to approach this situation.

The castle commander nodded to him in seemingly agreement that this is a problem... Jakan is not a commander of an army or a battalion. He is mostly an agent, with strong background from military and even if he has studied tactics and strategy, this situation is not something he could handle. Jakan places the map back onto the middle of the table.

Kyrem takes the opposing force location map to look at it, he takes another map from the middle that is empty of markings and drawings, remaining silent as I do not have any kind of command experience, what makes the proposed plan of a battle difficult. Is the fact that area there is broken ground mostly.

Hills, cliffs, open ground, patches of forest, here and there which makes coordination of troops quite difficult, what I guess... Kyrem began to discuss with Tyrelia, he took another empty map of the area around the castle, giving it to Tyrelia, and began to discuss with her, about something. Maybe troop movements?

They involved Trenon into the discussion, what are they planning? 'Pardon me for interrupting heroes but, what are you planning?' One of the four other castle commanders asks politely but, sounded interested too.

'Well, this is what we have in mind so far...' Kyrem states understanding the small mistake he made in this situation.He began to speak all of us present and started to brief us on the plan they have discussed so far. So the plan is that a cavalry battalion under command of Tyrelia would follow Jakan and I scouting around in north and north west of the castle. A cavalry archer formation would follow also, under command of Kyrem taking position to thin numbers and bait the undead to spread their attention and attack both, archers and cavalry.

If the battle becomes too big for both battalions Fyregeld would ignite the undead controlled area with fire and to allow both battalions to break off contact to regroup and fall back to area where infantry would be waiting for undead to amass to create a new attack on the cavalry and cavalry archer battalions.

Lankensy, Seirialia, castle commanders, Fyregeld, Jakan and I would take a look at the map of the suggested plan. It now makes sense why Kyrem and Tyrelia involved Trenon on their discussion. Trenon has given his acceptance for this plan to be put into action, he is a druid, nature is what he primarily protects.

'This is a sound plan, but, I have quite little involvement in it. Are you sure that I am not needed as much there?' Fyregeld asks, not being offended but, does find his part rather small in this plan. Jakan nods in agreement that it would be better that Fyregeld was a bit more involved in the battle. If not with fire, then with sheer physical opposition to the undead.

Kyrem thinks about it and had seen Jakan's nod about it, other heroes of the riven war and castle commanders also seem to think the same. 'This is a good plan to start with... Does everybody agree?' Lankensy asks, probably seeing it important to hear from all of us.

'It is certainly a good foundation to build upon.' Salgi Zutem states thinking about the plan. Other castle commanders also agree, Seirialia, Jakan and I also agree.

'Sir Lankensy, I recommend that you would take command of the infantry battalion on the left, I will command center and Tynsio would command the right. The cavalry archer and cavalry battalions will retreat to this area, where I will have forces blocking a tight space, here. We will only open our formation for the cavalry and archer detachments to go through.

I will give a signal when I see the undead are moving to assault infantry I command, for you and Tynsio to form a closed triangle and begin hammering the trapped undead in the center. Sir Lankensy for this to work the soldiers you command, must wait here hidden, Tynsio will do the same here.' Salgi proposes a plan.'What about us then?' Jakan asks pondering that, are we to only provide reconnaissance or, what is our role.

Salgi looks unsure and ponders. 'I do not know where I could suggest to have you involved in this battle...' Salgi states after thinking for a moment.

'I believe, that it might be for the better that we have, at least one reserve infantry battalion to act as reinforcements and be ready for, if more undead try to join the battle. Jakan, I will assume that you and Volarie, when the cavalry and cavalry archer battalion have initiated a fall back.

That you will move to scout the area west to the battle, and alert the reserve immediately upon sighting additional formation of undead heading towards the battle.' One of the castle commanders suggests.

'This is a sound suggestion sir. Should we signal Fyregeld to harrass the enemy formation, in case there is one?' Jakan adds.

'Yes, preferably before contact with the reserve formation.' Same commander says.'I find this plan agreeable.' Fyregeld states contently.

'Agreed, we will take part in the possible battle too.' Jakan states finding the plan agreeable too.

'May I instead command the reserve? And commander Gonzil would command left?' Lankensy asks, at first I found the question a little bit odd but, as the presumably Gonzil was about to speak, I realized why Lankensy would ask this.

'Yes sir, I will have the soldiers ready for battle. Your presence in the reserve might be more needed in case there is a battle where they have to hold the line.' Castle commander Gonzil states interested on the plan. Salgi, Tynsio and Gonzil nod to each other ready to work together.

Lankensy wants to see Jakan in battle, and as Gonzil stated, his presence in the reserve would galvanize the soldiers to fight harder in case we have to delay additional undead mass, until we receive support from the three other infantry formations, which might have finished the battle, as we are slowly loosing ground.

'What should we use as a signal for sir Fyregeld?' I ask from Jakan, he immediately began to think about it.

'Some kind of flag would be most helpful. May we borrow one of the signal flags?' Jakan says to others present.

'We have some... Is there any kind of preference, Fyregeld?' Salgi replies.

'Anything that is easy to differentiate from the topography either due to shape and or color is more than enough commander.' Fyregeld replies as it doesn't matter too much to him, just have it be good for the purpose.

'We have those plenty, when the plan is ready to be put on motion tomorrow, you will have a flag for the purpose.' Tynsio states, content with the formulated plan.

'I find it odd that you have spoken so little, is something wrong?' Gonzil asks from me.

'No sir, I have spoken little as I have so little experience of command, tactics and strategy. When subject is about three of the previously mentioned, I will refer to Jakan and stand by his words.' Reply respectfully but, also confidently.

'Ah, I understand. Well, thanks to your scouting, we have a lot of information to work with, and if all goes well tomorrow, we can resupply the town immediately after tomorrow, we won't need to conduct a risky convoy operation. This all will march us to a better ground to further secure this region.' Gonzil says calmly.

'Indeed, your efforts are important, once we gain more foothold, some scouts are able to begin shifting the priority to locate enemy bases of operation and movement of high value targets, instead of prioritizing enemy movement.' Salgi adds, slightly more confidently than Gonzil.

'I will do what I can, as best as I am able sir.' Reply with slight warmth, I still have difficulty trusting people openly but, I do find this as another welcoming sign that I am not among hostile people here.

'Let's plan for situations if it does go wrong.' Kyrem states after waiting for a moment.

'Yes, that would be for the best.' One of the two unnamed castle commanders say, we only know their names if they have been told to us and, we chose that it is better to not approach them unless we must or, it is asked of us. I might look like a rogue but, I am an agent of the shadow dragons, those that I call blood kin.

Jakan also is an agent. After talking for a long time, we end the meeting on having discussed for some of the possible scenarios we might face tomorrow and having memorized everything important for tomorrow. As Jakan and I, were walking back to our tents.

'You must find this situation ludicrous if asking from your past self.' State to Jakan, guessing that I am most likely correct on my assumption.'Most certainly, life has a habit of introducing, sometimes outright baffling turn of events, my past self would have found the idea of working with Valerians, outright ludicrous.' Jakan replies pondering about that time quickly.

'How do you feel about the realization of that you worked at the very place where Seirialia was studying at?' Ask as I am curious, of what he thinks about it.

'Mostly amused, that gentle, bright and honest little child has grown so much from that time... She has more than earned her position. Wish I knew a little bit more of Master Trenon and sir Kyrem. Have you seen him fire that crossbow?' Jakan replies, thinking about those times and interested to hear my answer.

'Yes, relatively accurate but, it is the shot hit consistency that is most impressive, even from long distances. He might not be a sharpshooter but, he most certainly is handling that crossbow lethally.' Say to Jakan when I thought about the times I practiced along with Kyrem.

Jakan is quiet for a while as we walk, little bit oddly so, wait... I think I know why. 'I know you take a while to approach people but, towards those you have interest, I find it rather odd.' Jakan says in slightly confused tone.

'Like you have experience in being flirted to?' Reply to him as I am pretty sure, he hasn't received words of infatuation.

'Not exactly sure... Maybe once... Or twice... There aren't that many draconian females, and I have only met less than fingers of one hand. Well, what I remember thinking right now about this.' Jakan states admitting that, he doesn't have that much ground to stand on talking about matters of love.

'And you know me, Jakan. With past like mine, it shouldn't come off as a surprise that I would keep it to myself. Locking it away, into my heart and wait for a good time to talk about it.' Say with some happiness and a lot of warmth in my voice. Jakan blinks rapidly a bit but, understands my sudden shift of tone.

'Hopefully, we both will find someone to spend rest of our days with... Well, this is not the right time to think about such things, we are going to have hectic day tomorrow. Let's prepare for it.' Jakan replies after giving it some thought but, changing his subject of thought to what is going to happen tomorrow.

'I agree, good thing we can fight side by side.' State to him normally.

'Indeed, not exactly sure why Lankensy is very keen on seeing me fight, he does not seem like the type of individual who would yank a knife on somebody's back.' Jakan says pondering the matter.

'When you get to cross blades with him, even if they are wooden mockups, I believe you will understand very quickly why he is so keen to see you fight.' Tease Jakan that I know something he doesn't. Jakan frowns at me, although a quick thought does seem to have given him an idea of what I am after.

'Plausible.' Jakan states, we arrive to our tents and begin getting ready to train. Jakan does tutor me when he sees something that needs to be improved on, and I watch Jakan train with his two handed sword. For such an unwieldy weapon, he uses with such expertise and ease of mind that is almost unthinkable for a human to achieve.

While it is still heavy, he can use it with almost equal precision to my handling of a short sword, just like in the battle what happened when we arrived here. He is shifting his own weight, applies just enough strength, knows exactly how much he can allow the blade to move and how to maintain reasonable amount of momentum to not leave himself open for a counter attack.

It is so fascinating to look at, for a moment I thought about lifting the blade myself and try the moves he has been doing right now. Realization that the thought is ludicrous as I probably wouldn't ever achieve the same level strength as a draconian like Jakan. The dragon blood mixed into my own, is unlikely to allow me to achieve the same level of ease of use such weapon.

Jakan's way of wielding of the weapon is more than fine retort to the words. That is a big sword, are you compensating for something? He would just ask, would you like to see it in action? Although, came to think about it. Did Jakan apply the runes himself or did somebody more skilled and learned of earth arcane apply them?

Maybe he commissioned it to be made in case he would face undead again? I break out of thinking about it and continue watching Jakan use that blade. Jakan stops after a while. 'Okay, good time for you to try your limits with the dark arcane now.' Jakan says and goes to sit down to get some rest after the training.

True, I have wondered what I can do now. 'I have wanted to try out for a while now.' Reply to Jakan with some excitement in my voice.

'Back then, I didn't use arcane, ever since becoming an agent, well, I learned that having the option is nice.' Jakan states, thinking back to the past of his attitude towards arcane.

'I thought that for me, it just a dream, before I found myself desperate for getting my mind off from how bad my life is. It was mostly just small tricks but, shadow dragon blood certainly changed things, then the agent training. I feel happy again.' Say to Jakan with some glee.

'Still surprising to think that the shy lady I usually saw you as, is you now. Life surely can be quite strange.' Jakan replies, thinking about the first time he and I met. It is indeed an incredible difference in contrast how we communicate to each other now, compared to back then.

'It most certainly is, but, I wouldn't change it now. For so long, it was awful for me, now, I live a life, I strongly believe I belong in.' Say in content tone and Jakan nods as a reply, and that I may begin when I want to.

I begin with the shadow striding as it is something that I am most adept at. I do not feel a change in it though, I still can travel mind boggling distances with it and I wouldn't at all feel tired. I try creating a dark clone of me, I noticed a small change on how taxing it is, we place a palm of our hand against each other.

I noticed that I had changed position to where my clone was suddenly and my clone has disappeared, I gasped from the surprise and look at Jakan, he is still processing what just happened... 'That was, surprising... I haven't seen a trick like that before...' Jakan says impressed and slightly baffled by what just happened.

'I, didn't know. I could do that... Woe...' Reply as I felt slightly dizzy from the sudden position shift. It stopped pretty soon, and probably it happened because I am not yet used to it.

'Can you explain, what kind of small tricks you did with arcane?' Jakan asks trying to figure out, at least relatively good reason why I was able to do what I did. This prompted me to think back.

'I, remember a trick with a mirror that I did, that I could make own image on it, do completely different things I am doing. I, also remember this one time when friend of mine was in trouble, I think I expanded a shadow to hide her just for a small moment.' Tell to Jakan what I could remember here and now.

He closes his eyes and hums in thoughtful tone. 'Some kind of adaptation of those tricks, some kind of instinct on you then triggered what just happened, to happen... As I am not that good with arcane, once we return to home, you should speak with Tregazon about this.' Jakan says thinking about what just happened.

“Deadly Attractor” (TOC)

by P. Orin Zack

[2003]

Chapter Eight

… Thursday: Los Angeles …

Despite all the chatter around him, Frank spent most of the ride to court trying to wake up. Uncomfortable in the crowded bus, he reached into his pocket and unfolded the note that Mara had left him.

Frank,

Alex called this afternoon and convinced me to visit the family. Pegwin will be staying with my folks while we’re out exploring. We’re likely to be away from a com, so don’t bother calling unless it’s important. If you’re bored, you might want to read that book you mentioned.

Mara

Anyone who knew Mara would realize that this was not her usual style. Mara being obscure was like Alex doing anything in a small way. After reading it, he was certain of two things; first, that she’d written this carefully, and had buried her meaning; and second, that Peg would be safe.

He read the note again, looking for clues to her meaning. Alex might have asked her to visit, but she wouldn’t have had to be convinced of it. That probably meant that he had some compelling news when he called. Saying that she’d be visiting the family would be redundant under the circumstances, so he suspected that whatever it was that Alex had told her meant that G’danic’s situation was related to his own in some way. She’s no stranger to that area, so telling him that they’d be out exploring could only mean that she’ll be helping Alex investigate something. She already knew that Frank was wary of leaving a trail, so she’d naturally follow suit. Making mention of the fact was probably her way of telling him that she’d be very careful.

That was all pretty easy to translate, but which book was she talking about?

Surprisingly, he was the first to arrive at the jury room that morning, so he got comfortable in one of the chairs and closed his eyes. A moment later, he opened them, reached for the paper and found a pencil. The historian had gotten some information for Jerry about Jen’s cousin Vern, and Frank needed to know what it was, but he couldn’t ask about it here at the courthouse. The only alternative was to arrange a meeting afterwards, and Frank didn’t want to try the same ruse again for fear of being noticed. So he turned Mara’s note over and wrote ‘9 @ GPO.’ He folded it back up, tucked it into his palm, and closed his eyes again.

By the time the historian arrived, three of the other citizen jurors and the apprentice had all settled in. As before, juror #7 was carrying his thick black book. Reminded of Mara’s remark, he asked to take a look at it while they were waiting. The historian handed it to him with a curious expression, and found a seat.

Holding a paper book was a real treat. Frank had seen some in libraries and museums, but they were usually protected from the public, special treasures put on display in sealed cases. If all you wanted to do was read the words, or even to see what they looked like, electronic reproductions were easily found, but the selection was limited, and you were never really sure who had decided which ones to preserve.

He opened to the title page and read: ‘A Pictorial History of the World’s Great Trials, from Socrates to Eichmann’. According to the table of contents, the latter’s trial was in 1961. An awful lot had changed since then, but he was more interested in seeing how it began, so he opened to the section on Socrates and started scanning.

Until then, Frank had only read virtual books, and found that he had to fight an unconscious impulse to adjust the thing’s contrast and transparency. This was paper, after all. Chuckling to himself, he continued to read. An item on that first page caught his attention, and he stopped to look over at the historian. He was astonished to learn that if you were found guilty in the Court of the Heliasts, which had jurisdiction over anything but homicide, you could propose an alternative punishment.

Before he’d finished wondering how something like that would work in an age when they needed people like him to monitor witnesses, the foreman walked in and shut the door behind him. For once, he was the last to arrive.

Frank laid his hand on the page as he began to close the book, and pushed the note in towards the binding. Watching the historian, he slipped his hand out, and slid the book back across the table.

“Before we get to what’s scheduled for today,” the foreman said, “I’d like to know how well the jury understands what’s been presented in this case so far. Since it’s our responsibility to ask questions about issues that neither side has an interest in exposing, it’s very important that we don’t lose perspective.”

Perspective, Frank recalled, had been the historian’s reason for bringing the book with him. He glanced at its black cover, then at juror #7, and wondered what he’d meant by that remark. He hadn’t read through the introduction, but the opening remark did catch his eye. It said that after battles fought in a war or in a courtroom, the world was a different place. Procedures had obviously changed. How long after Socrates, he wondered, did people in those Greek courts still have the right to suggest an alternative punishment? For that matter, did the people involved in any of those cases have the remotest idea that what they were doing would profoundly affect the course of the future? He doubted it. So what was the historian suggesting? That this might be one of those cases?

“Healer Sanroya?”

Frank looked up at the foreman.

“I realize that you’re not technically part of the jury,” he said with controlled cadence, “but as our employee, I expect you to at least pay attention to what we have to say. I’ll ask you again: was there anything you noticed in the testimony that might be of interest to us?”

“Possibly.” Frank thought for a moment. “While I was monitoring Mr. Haglund, I noticed an aberration in his mental imagery. Now I’m not saying that he was lying, because there wasn’t any indication of that. He wasn’t fabricating some piece of his story, either. Both of those things have very recognizable signatures, and as I said, this was like neither of them. Anyway, —”

The apprentice juror cleared her throat. “Just report your findings, Healer. We’ll be called in shortly.”

He nodded. “Well, what I saw was that one of the people in an incident he’d recalled during testimony wasn’t clear. It’s like… I don’t know. I’ve never encountered something like that before, and it only lasted for an instant, so there wasn’t enough information to base any kind of question on. So I just…”

The Professional Juror glared at him. “Need I remind you, Healer Sanroya, that it’s not your job to decide how to respond to what you observe, only to report it?”

“No sir,” Frank said sheepishly. But in the back of his mind, that one word kept repeating: perspective. Was there something important about this? “I’ve been watching for another incident like it, and if I encounter one, I will report it immediately.”

“Thank you,” Juror #1 said icily. “Now, as to today’s testimony, counsel will begin questioning managers of the various organizations involved. I would like you all to keep in mind that because these witnesses have the most at stake, regardless of their involvement or their potential guilt, they will have been expertly coached. Therefore, you should pay careful attention to both how the questions are framed, and how the answers are worded. Both counsel and the witnesses will attempt to control how you understand what they claim to be the facts in this case.”

A sudden knock on the door brought the foreman’s briefing to a close, and they adjourned to the courtroom. Frank stopped the historian as he was approaching the door. He indicated the book, and said, “There’s something in there that I wanted to look up later.”

Judging from the chatter in the gallery before Judge Bennigan entered, the court case was gaining in importance from one day to the next. When it had started on Monday, there were gaping holes in the crowd, which made it possible for Frank, from his seat at the far end of the jury, to see the equipment that the news crews had set down beside them. More people attended on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday, but today, something was qualitatively different. The crowd looked different, too. Perhaps it was that more of the spectators were dressed in business formal, which in itself could be a reflection of the fact that today’s witnesses were drawn from the ranks of management at the top of these companies, rather than from the filthy rabble actually working with patients. Amused at his own characterizations, Frank concluded that it was a good thing that he wasn’t actually a juror. His low opinion of management in general would not have made him too popular with either side’s counsel.

Once the preliminaries were dispensed with, Counsel for the Complainant was given the floor. This time, an older man got up to speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, as formal in posture as he was in tone, “we have so far explored the pattern of treatment that is given to patients whose needs lie in the gray area we have spoken so much about these past few days.”

“When these patients are brought to a Hospice, we have been told, a number of things are considered when deciding whether to begin treatment or to transfer the patient to a MedCenter.” He looked directly at Frank, as if to draw the court’s attention to the fact that he was a Healer, and worked at just such a facility. “We have been assured that there is no systemic bias in this process, and that the decision is made by balancing various needs and constraints against one another. As a result, some patients are treated at the Hospice, while others are transferred to a MedCenter.”

Counsel walked towards the jury box, stopping near its center. “When patients in a similar situation are first brought to a MedCenter, however, something entirely different happens. As we have heard, patients are rarely, if ever, transferred in the other direction. If such a patient is brought to a MedCenter, they receive treatment at the MedCenter, even if less expensive treatment for the same condition is available at a nearby Hospice Center. Today we will explore why this is so.”

He turned to face the judge. “Your honor, I now call to the stand, Dr. Miguél Apuérto, Deputy Administrator of the East-Side MedCenter, here in Los Angeles.”

Frank froze in amazement. Administrator Apuérto? He looked towards the back of the room as the door opened. What could be better? The court was handing him what he needed on a silver platter. While Apuérto was busy testifying, he’d be free to poke around in the man’s mind for information about what happened to Jerry Suus. This would be delicious payback for last night’s confrontation. Just the thought of it was tantalizing.

But then, as the administrator was being sworn in, the memory of juror #7’s black book intruded, and Frank began to wonder if he was losing his sense of perspective. For not only was he here to help the jury evaluate the truthfulness of testimony, he was also searching for another incident of that memory distortion, and now he needed information about Jerry as well. He wasn’t certain it was even possible to do all that, and keep the link open, too.

Despite his reservations, though, it was still his job, so Frank took a deep breath, tuned out the murmur in the courtroom, and psychically reached out towards the witness stand. The first thing that he noticed was that Apuérto didn’t react in quite the way Frank had expected.

Normally, when you first touch into someone’s aural field, it responds much like their physical immune system might, by attempting to determine if there was danger, and then reacting appropriately. Unless you’re working with a psychic, like Healer Korn, though, this reaction is not strong enough to stop an intruder. And in Korn’s case, it was restrained on purpose in order to permit monitoring.

In contrast, when Frank first touched Apuérto’s aural field, it offered no resistance. Instead, it smoothed out and seemed to actually soften a bit, making a path for him to enter, as if it had been trained to obey. But what could that mean?

Complainant’s counsel stepped back towards his table. “Dr. Apuérto,” he said, “we’ve been exploring how the venue for a given patient’s care is determined. Keep in mind that we’re only speaking about patients requiring the kind of care that is in the disputed gray area. In other words, the cases in which Hospice and MedCenter jurisdictions overlap. Please tell the court how physicians at your facility make this determination.”

While the witness framed his answer, Frank shared the flurry of activity in the man’s mind. From watching him at the MedCenter, Frank had concluded that Apuérto demanded unquestioning control over his staff. Now that he could see inside, however, it was clear why. His need for control was nothing more than dramatic overcompensation for innumerable incidents of bullying in his youth. But just as it gave him outward strength, it also opened a way for him to be controlled as well. And that predisposition was probably why he’d been trained by some unknown psychic to follow someone else’s orders.

“It’s very simple, really,” Apuérto said. “Medical science has known for hundreds of years now — and dozens of studies confirm this — that the first minutes are the most critical. The most important thing you can do for a patient is to start treatment as soon as possible. That is why critical care facilities were first developed. It is also why emergency centers the world over are partially funded by an agency of the Global Directorate. We all know how dangerous the world would be without all of the mandated safety equipment. And yet, people still are injured, and still require emergency treatment. How could treatment possibly be started promptly if the first thing we did was send the patient somewhere else?”

“Objection, your honor.” Respondent’s counsel didn’t even look up when she spoke. “The witness is here to answer questions, not to ask them.”

Judge Bennigan looked over at the witness. “You do understand that, don’t you?”

Apuérto clenched his teeth. “Yes, your honor.”

From Frank’s point of view, Apuérto reacted pretty strongly to having his response questioned. It dredged up several memories, including one with a person that for some reason Frank couldn’t quite make out. This was just like what he’d seen in Haglund’s mind, so he seized on the memory and followed it back into Apuérto’s subconscious when he released the past and refocused on events in the courtroom.

“You may proceed, counselor.”

He hadn’t seen the one in Haglund’s mind very long, but Frank had a sense that whoever this was, it wasn’t the same person. This was a much smaller person, but beyond that he really couldn’t extract any detail. He loosened his link long enough to make a brief notation for Juror #2, then dove back in.

Counsel for the complainant now stood between Frank and the witness box. “We all know, Dr. Apuérto, that studies, and the statistics that support them, can be crafted to say nearly anything. Is it not also true that the cases cited in these studies focused on treatment that is not in the disputed gray area that we are concerned with today? That in fact, they speak exclusively about the kind of emergency response that is within the jurisdiction of MedCenters?”

“That is true.”

“In that case, Dr. Apuérto,” counsel said calmly, as if he were a cat stalking its prey, “please tell the court how this philosophy of emergency care fulfills the requirements of the jurisdictional decrees? As you know, there are certain conditions that require treatment at a Hospice Center, and others that are to be handled at a MedCenter. Don’t any patients requiring the sort of treatment given only at a Hospice ever come to a MedCenter?”

Frank allowed Apuérto’s concentration on the counsel’s question to serve as a distraction while he hunted for something about Jerry. As the witness fished for an answer, his mind flooded briefly with glimpses of administrative reports, patient files, hallway discussions with staff, several encounters like their own the previous night, and who knew how many strangers he didn’t even bother noting.

“That’s difficult to say.” Apuérto was clearly buying some time to think. “We depend a great deal on the emergency services companies that run the ambulances in Los Angeles. Since their people are first on the scene, they make a preliminary determination, and route people to a Hospice Center if that is what is needed, but the fact is, most people requiring that sort of care simply don’t come in through emergency services. The only ones who do are those in the gray area, and since they can be treated at out facility, we do just that.”

Towards the end of his answer, Frank noticed something else. The image of one person kept appearing at odd times. The first time he noticed was during a glimpse of a staff meeting when one of these gray area patients was being discussed. But there were others as well. Yet even though Frank had a feeling that this was someone he’d seen before, he found it impossible to remember where or when.

And then, just as he was feeling the tug of a clue to who this person might be, a sudden explosion of heatless light overwhelmed him. The sensation was eerily disconnected from what should have been a devastating blast of uncoordinated neural firings. He was having another attack, and the elemental – or whatever it was – had caught it in a stranglehold. It must have begun while he was deep in Apuérto’s memories, because he’d had no warning at all.

“What the—?” Apuérto suddenly gasped and slumped over, unconscious.

Frank was still linked to the witness when his attack had started, and whatever the elemental had done to protect him hadn’t broken that link. With the worst of it past, Frank dropped the link, opened his eyes, and stared in disbelief. Apuérto had been struck hard by the battle between the elemental and Frank’s disorder. As a result, he was probably now in severe psychic shock. If that was the case, then according to the jurisdictional decrees a MedCenter could only provide immediate treatment for physical injuries. Actual treatment would have to be performed by a Healer at a Hospice Center.

A dozen spectators stood up and craned for a better look. Two bailiffs converged on the witness box. Judge Bennigan stared at Apuérto, her gavel in mid-swing. Frank’s breath became short and ragged as he struggled to decide what, if anything to do. While one bailiff knelt beside Apuérto, the other grabbed his com and ran for the door. In the hubbub, several newspeople followed the bailiff to where their com units wouldn’t be blocked, presumably to report what had happened.

“Order please,” Judge Bennigan said finally. “Everyone please sit down. While we’re waiting for emergency, is there a doctor in the room?”

Frank tensed, agonizing over what to do. He looked over at juror #2, then back at Apuérto. If he drew attention to himself, someone might accuse him of psychically attacking the witness. If he got locked up, there was no way he’d be able to find out what happened to Jerry. Considering what had happened so far, it seemed that a lot depended on his continued involvement, so he closed his eyes for a moment and sat back to wait.

A scuffle across the room caught his attention. One of the spectators had started towards the witness box, and the returning bailiff had grabbed him from behind. Once he explained that he was a doctor, the bailiff released him, and the two continued towards Apuérto.

The doctor bent close for a long, quiet moment. Then he stood and faced the judge. “He’s breathing fine, and has a good pulse. For now, the best thing to do is just sit tight and wait for emergency to arrive.”

Frank nodded. If Apuérto’s vitals were sound, the most likely diagnosis would still be psychic shock. Since this case was about how the evaluation and transfer process worked in a situation like this, it was best to let it play out. If they followed the rules this time, Apuérto would soon end up at Kübler-Ross Hospice Center, where he could do a proper job of searching through his mind. The thought sent a shudder up his spine, for here he was, relishing the opportunity to violate the oath he’d taken to become a Healer.

“May I have everyone’s attention, please?” Judge Bennigan said. “In light of what just happened, I’d like to wait until we know how Dr. Apuérto is before resuming the case.” She looked over at the foreman. “After you’ve had a chance to discuss the matter with the others in the jury, I’d like a report on how you would like to proceed with this case.” Then she raised her voice a bit and addressed the courtroom. “Court is adjourned until tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock.”

In the confusion that followed, Frank slipped away from the other jurors and left the courthouse. He bought a donut at the L.A. Pastry Parlor, an open-air café on the next block, and sat at the nearest table. He opened the napkin and put the donut down, and then pressed a round spot near the center of the table. A white plastic section rose an inch. He swung it around so the red spot faced him, and looked into its built-in laser unit. This was one of the new built-in public coms that had generated the recent resurgence of cafes as gathering spots. Once the laser had locked onto his eyes, a virtual directory agent appeared. He said ‘Kübler-Ross Hospice’ and waited for the image to change.

“Kübler-Ross Hospice, this is – oh, hi Frank. What’s up? You don’t look too good.” It was Jen.

Frank glanced around before speaking. “We just had an incident at court. I’ll fill you in later. Is Healer Gutiérez there? I don’t have much time.”

“Sure. Hold on.”

A moment later, the image changed. “Are you okay?” Carlita said. Judging from the background noise, he guessed that she was in a meeting.

“I’m fine. But I think your elemental attacked the witness I was monitoring, Administrator Apuérto from East-Side MedCenter. He’s probably in psychic shock. They’ll be taking him over to East-Side, but they’ll have to transfer him after that. I want to do the eval. Gotta go. Bye.” He pressed the laser housing back into the table, grabbed his donut by the napkin, and rose to leave.

Just outside the café, he stopped short when the mysterious woman with the weird eyes stepped in front of him. She was a few inches shorter than he was, dressed in clothing as hard to describe as her eyes, and radiated a perplexing combination of psychic influence that Frank could only describe as invincible invisibility.

“What’s going on?” He said in exasperation. “You grabbed me outside the courthouse on Monday but didn’t say anything. Then you tell that juror to hand me Jerry’s note. Who are you, anyway?”

She looked squarely into his eyes. “We’ll talk later. Expect me.” Then she spun around and disappeared into the passing crowd.

Momentarily dazed, Frank raised his hand for a sweet consolation, and found that she’d taken his donut. Frustrated, he dashed back towards the courthouse.

Frank could hear yelling in the jury room long before he reached the door. People were milling about in the corridor, some in tight conversational knots, and others seemingly at a loss for what to do or where to go. One of the bailiffs stood beside the jury room door, keeping the crowd away.

He stopped a few feet from the bailiff to listen. The foreman was trying to maintain order in the face of a vicious harangue being carried out by two of the citizen jurors, in what amounted to a verbal tag-team. Each time he got one of them to stop speaking, the other picked up the slack.

Frank looked around at a sudden sound from across the hall. The courtroom door swung open, and the emergency team floated Apuérto out on an aGrav gurney. He’d seen expensive tech like that before, but there was no way Kübler-Ross could afford one. Sure, they had several floatbeds, but they were only for special situations. For what they cost, they were a prized resource.

He turned back towards the jury room, and opened the door. The verbal melee stuttered to a silent halt as everyone in the room turned to stare at him. He self-consciously stepped in, and carefully closed the door behind him.

The foreman, who was seated towards the left end at the far side of the table, eyed him coldly. “Sit.”

Frank took the open seat at the right end of the conference table, catty corner from both the historian and the apprentice juror, and waited.

“The next time you slip out of the building,” Juror #1 said tightly, “you might want to keep in mind that your behavior is being watched very carefully. People have already begun to talk about what happened in there, and if you persist in acting suspiciously, they’re likely to conclude that you have something to hide.”

One of the citizen jurors engaged in the verbal tag team, who was sitting between the foreman and the historian, leaned forward. “Why’d you do it?”

The foreman glared at the juror beside him, and waited for him to sit back. “We don’t know what happened yet, and we are not going to make any assumptions about it either. What we are going to do here is have a little trial of our own; to find out whatever we can about what happened to Dr. Apuérto. Judge Bennigan needs us to decide how to proceed, and that is exactly what we’re going to do.”

The other member of the tag team, who sat across from the foreman, harrumphed. “And how are we going to do that?”

The foreman raised a finger, and the juror sat back obediently.

“Here’s how it’s going to work. I’ll be acting as judge, in other words, keeping order. Our Apprentice Juror,” and here he nodded towards juror #2, “will be the chief questioner. She was a researcher before she took up the blue, and has extensive experience in ferreting out hidden truths. If you want the floor, let her know. Any questions?”

“Yeah, I have one,” Tag team number one said quietly. “How do we know if he’s telling the truth? From what I hear, you can’t trust a psychic with something to hide.”

“I’ll know,” the apprentice juror said flatly.

“Okay, then,” the foreman said. “I have a few things to say before you begin. Because it was known that Healer Sanroya was in court to monitor testimony, and because there are no visible indications of what he was doing – aside from the fact that his eyes were closed – there will naturally be a suspicion that he was responsible for what happened to the witness. We’ve already seen that happen among ourselves, and you can be certain that it will happen out there as well. This suspicion will taint the court’s opinion, and the public’s opinion, of our ability to hear and decide the case fairly. If that opinion persists, it will also poison the case. Please keep that in mind when you decide what to do.” He paused briefly. “Number 2, you have the floor.”

“I don’t want us to make any unsupported assumptions,” she said, “so let’s start at the beginning. Healer Sanroya, were you, in fact, linked to the witness, monitoring Dr. Apuérto’s memories when he fell unconscious?”

Frank nodded. “Yes. In fact, I’d just dropped out of link shortly before that to report an anomaly. Someone in Apuérto’s memory was obscured. It was just like the one I saw briefly in Haglund’s mind, only this person seemed shorter.”

Juror #2 thought for a moment. “We’ll get back to the anomaly later. Right now, I want to focus on the link itself. You’ve described how it works before, but under the circumstances, I think we’ll need some additional clarification.”

“You bet we will,” tag team #1 said hotly, half out of his seat. “You told us you’d be monitoring the witness, but what else can you do? I’m beginning to think that having a psychic involved was a really bad idea. Who knows what you people—”

The foreman struck the table. “Sit down and shut up! The only way we’re going to get to the bottom of this is if we work together. I know that citizen jurors don’t have the benefit of our training, but please let’s at least conduct ourselves in a civil manner.”

The historian, who had been keeping studiously quiet, cleared his throat. “That’s actually an aberration of the process. Historically, jurors have been—”

“Quiet!” the foreman roared. He glared at each of the jurors in turn, and then calmly looked across at the apprentice. “You were saying?”

“All right,” she said agreeably, “since that seems to be on your mind, we can start there.” She looked at Frank. “We know you can monitor someone’s memories during a link. What else can you do?”

Frank thought briefly. “The intent of the link is to enable someone to observe the memories that pass through the witness’ mind while testimony is being given. Because they’re connected to one another, though, the observer shares far more memories than just those directly associated with whatever the witness is reporting.” Or thinking about, he added silently. “Deciding which memories are relevant is very subjective. This is further complicated by the fact that everyone has their own unique way of organizing the experiences they remember. And then there are other problems caused by the kind of language the witness thinks and speaks in.”

“Languages?” the historian interjected. “What does that have to do with —?”

Juror #2 watched as the historian stopped in mid-sentence. “It’s okay.”

“Well,” Frank said, stretching the moment. “The language that a person thinks and speaks in provides the raw materials for making use of perceptions, for making associations among memories, for drawing conclusions, and for projecting the potential results of words or actions.”

He thought about what Mara had told him, and wondered how they’d react to where this was headed. “When you think of a flower, you might characterize it with the word ‘red,’ and that in turn may remind you not only of other red flowers, but other kinds of red things as well. This is how the associations I mentioned get brought up. The witness may only mention the fact that a truck was red, but in the link, I’d see memories of all of the other red things that came along with it. I’d also see other memories associated with the truck, incidents involving other trucks, people associated with those trucks, and so forth. And it’s not just images either. Some people remember sounds, smells, and all sorts of things. It’s easy to get overwhelmed.”

The apprentice juror considered his answer. “Okay. But you said there were other complications due to language. All of the testimony has to be in English, so why does that matter?”

He smiled. “They may be speaking in English, but that doesn’t mean they’re thinking in English. If a witness was raised with a cultural language, they may be thinking in that language and translating it on the fly to English.”

Tag team #2 shrugged. “So what?”

“So this. There are different kinds of languages. English, for example, is what’s called a nouny language. In these kinds of languages, you construct thoughts or sentences by applying actions to objects. In other words, you use verbs to describe what happens to nouns. In these languages, nouns without verbs are inanimate. The basis for memories in a language like this are those nouns, like that flower I mentioned. In any of the languages in this group, there would be a noun that represents the flower, although some languages may have more of them than others. It’s usually no problem to translate memories between these languages, although some of the linguistic constructs may not translate when you work with the actual words.”

The apprentice juror, who had been smiling during this explanation, folded her hands. “And the alternative?”

“One alternative,” Frank continued, “is the group of verby cultural languages used by many aboriginal peoples from around the world. A person embedded in one of these languages builds their thoughts from active parts. At heart, the difference is like the distinction between the ideas of being and becoming. In a nouny language, I am; in a verby one, I become.”

“I don’t get it,” tag team #2 said. “What’s the point? Why does any of this matter?”

Frank looked at the wall briefly before speaking. “Say there’s a witness who speaks and thinks in English. While she’s talking, her mind is dredging up all manner of related memories, but the relationships that call up these other memories would all be based on the static qualities of what was being reported. If she was talking about that red flower, her related memories would be about other flowers, other red things like a blouse or a truck. She could even recall a related sound, smell or taste.”

Juror #2 nodded. “And if she thinks in a verby language?”

“In a word, process.” Frank paused to wonder whether their apprentice juror was trying to help him. “Since her internal model of the world is based on what changes, rather than what remains the same, she’d be reminded of other events that may have happened in a similar way. She’d have different ways of understanding and relating to when the event happened, and how much credibility to give to something she was told while smelling that flower. Sure, she’d dredge up other memories with red in them, but she’d have this other class of memories that the English speaker probably didn’t have.”

Nobody spoke for a moment. Then, almost as one, the other jurors all looked at #2, waiting for her next move. She turned towards Frank. “We started off asking what else you could do while linked to a witness. You’ve described some kinds of things that you experience during the link, but haven’t told us what you can do with it.”

(Chapter Eight concludes in the comments due to length.)

(TOC)

Rain bounced off the concrete and asphalt before sweeping the dirt of the city into its endless gutters and storm drains. The sheets of rain doused everything in the great city. Even now, in the small hours of the morning, the rain sloshed around the feet of hurried pedestrians, leaping between puddles in some vain attempt to stay dry. The rain cascaded down from the concrete lip of a parking garage at a point where Chinatown starts to bleed into Little Italy. Detective Ashleigh Reynolds cast a weary eye over the drenched street and managed to stifle a yawn. New York, you could keep it. It seemed that since the city didn’t sleep, she wasn’t allowed to either.
She turned back to the more grisly scene behind her. “Okay, what do we know?” She asked the tired looking forensic tech, who had been watching the handful of uniformed officers that were milling around, trying to not get in the way of his two, equally exhausted looking colleagues that were currently trying to photograph the body.

“Adult Caucasian male, somewhere in his early 30s, no wallet or ID on him and, if I were a bettin’ boy, I’d say the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the back of the head.” Reynolds sniffed.

“Stinks of booze in here too,” she wrinkled her nose “And I’d probably say stale vomit.”

The technician rolled his eyes, “What tipped you off? Was it the puddle of vomit near the body?” She looked over at him.

“No, like, it smells like what you get after you’ve been blackout drunk, gotten home and then spent the rest of the day hanging over the toilet.” The technician raised his eyebrows at her but didn’t comment.
She looked back at the body just in time to see a skinny man with messy blonde hair, a long coat that seemed to be made entirely of pockets, and soft leather boots crouch down beside the body and poke it with a noticeably un-gloved finger. Reynolds put her hand to the Glock 19 on her hip and shouted at him. The man’s head whipped round to look at her, astonishment plain on his face.

“You can see me?” his accent was British, but more the kind you’d hear in the south of London rather than on Downton Abbey. As soon as he looked up, the technician next to him yelped and nearly leapt a foot into the air. As the tech lost his balance and fell over, the man took his chance and bolted. Reynolds swore and sprinted after him. His longer legs gave him a clear advantage but she just picked up the pace and kept running. He ducked between two cars and leapt over the railing to the floor below, at street level. Without really thinking, she leapt after him. Luckily, she landed on the roof of a family SUV and was able to jump down to the asphalt without breaking her stride.

She saw the perp turn left out of the parking garage and vanish out of sight. She kept running. She caught sight of him slipping past a pair of drunkards that seemed to be making their way back from one hell of a party, judging by the way they were weaving down the street, occasionally bouncing off of streetlights. She ducked past them as her quarry sprinted across the street into an alley. She swore again and chased after him. She reached the mouth of the alleyway as he was about halfway down it. “Stop! NYPD!” she shouted as she drew her handgun. He looked over his shoulder and, at that exact moment, his foot caught on a garbage bag and he went sprawling onto the street. Reynolds jogged over to him, pulling out a set of handcuffs as he tried to disentangle himself from the bag. He gave her a slightly amazed smile as she stood over him.

“So you can really see me? Just my luck.” She hauled him up as the two uniformed officers reached the mouth of the alley.

“Yeah buddy, I can see you. I can also see that you’re under arrest for interfering with an active crime scene. You have the right to remain silent…”

---
She rubbed her temple as the coffee brewed in its glass pot. It would taste terrible but, at that time of the morning, bad coffee was the best thing to keep you going. What had that guy meant, “You can see me?” She closed her eyes and kept rubbing. He was probably just some whack-job. Something still niggled at her though. How come the forensic guy hadn’t noticed him, despite the fact the two had been practically sitting in each other’s laps? The coffee machine went ding and she pulled a paper cup off the stack next to the machine.
The door to the interview room clicked softly behind her as she sat down opposite the messy-haired man. He had been handcuffed to the table but was still smiling. “Okay buddy, answer all the questions and we can be out of here in time for breakfast, okay?” He shrugged at her.

“Fair enough. I’ve got a couple of questions meself.” She took a sip of the god-awful coffee.

“That’s not really how this works.” He just shrugged.
“So, what’s your name?”
“Felix Jones, yourself?”
“You can call me Detective Reynolds. What were you doing at that crime scene?”
“Same thing you were, investigating.”
“Are you a private investigator?”
“Nope, just a nosy bugger.”
“What do you know about the victim?”
“That whatever killed him must have planned it and worn some kind of disposable smock.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“You don’t sneak up on the God of Hangovers and leave without getting sick all over you.”
“I’m sorry? You don’t sneak up on the what?”
“God of Hangovers. How can you see me?”
“So the guy was a big drinker? Had a lot of hangovers?
“No, the literal god of hangovers. How can you see me?”
“You keep saying that, why do you think I wouldn’t be able to see you?”
At that he grinned, displaying a mouth full of surprisingly white teeth. “Now, Ashleigh, you are asking the right questions.” She froze.

“How the hell do you know my name?” The smile didn’t let up.

“Call it a lucky guess.” She was suddenly very aware of the enclosed nature of the interview room.

“Answer the question,” She said, keeping her voice level, “Why do you think I wouldn’t be able to see you?” He smiled and leant backwards as far as the cuffs would allow.

“People can’t normally see me, that forensic bloke didn’t.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a second. Okay, so definitely crazy. On the other hand, the technician had said that he hadn’t noticed the guy until she, herself, had shouted at him. She decided to humour him.

“Okay then Mister Jones, why can’t people normally see you? Everyone in this station saw you as I brought you in.” He shrugged.

“Well, now that you’ve brought all this attention onto me, they can’t help but see me.” He leant forwards onto the table again. “As far as people not seeing me goes, well, I’m just lucky that way.” She sighed and decided to change tack, but before she could ask another question, Felix had started talking again. “In fact, I’m just a really lucky bloke in general. So lucky, in fact, that I’ve been put into a set of handcuffs that have a slightly flawed lock.”
The open handcuffs flew across the table and smacked Reynolds full in the face, almost causing her to fall out of her chair. By the time she’d regained her senses, the door was already swinging shut behind Felix. She sprang to her feet and wrenched the door open. She rushed out into the corridor. Felix was attempting to walk nonchalantly round the corner away from the bullpen. He spotted her and broke into a run. Amazingly, the only person she passed was the desk sergeant who was only just looking up from her book of crossword puzzles. Felix was already moving at a dead run when she reached the street. She almost lost sight of him as he disappeared down another alley but she managed to gain some ground before catching sight of him leaping down the stairs into the subway. She dashed down after him and reached the bottom of the steps just as the skinny bastard was vaulting over the turnstiles. She didn’t even hesitate to follow, much to the annoyance of the MTA guy standing next to them.
She came out onto the deserted platform to see Felix running along its edge. She drew the Glock and shouted “Freeze!” He slowed to a halt, raised his hands and slowly turned to face her. She approached, keeping her gun trained on him. “Not so lucky now, are ya?” Felix suddenly grinned at her again.

“Oh, I dunno, I reckon I’ve got a pinch of luck left.” He took a step backwards, towards the edge of the platform.

“Stay where you are!” Reynolds shouted. Felix just kept up that grin, it was starting to really annoy her.

“What you’re holding there, is a standard issue, NYPD Glock 19. I’m not an expert in firearms, but that one seems to have a fairly good rep.” He took another step backwards. “Trouble is, you see, they still jam sometimes.” Another step.

“Stay where you are! I’m warning you!” Felix’s smile dropped into stony seriousness.

“Then shoot me. Cuz, the thing is, if I’m lucky and I mean really lucky, then that gun will jam at just the right moment. So stop with the threats Detective Reynolds and bloody shoot me.” She gritted her teeth. She was beginning to feel the tell-tale rumble of the approaching C train through her feet.

“You are under-” Felix jumped and Reynolds fired. Except nothing happened but a loud click. She looked at the weapon in disbelief before mentally shaking herself and charging forwards. Just as she reached the edge of the platform where Felix had been standing, the train roared through the station, forcing her to take a step back from the edge. The cars seemed to rattle past for an age before she could see over the edge of the platform. She looked up and down the tunnels. Felix had vanished.

---
The bar was dark and a faint aroma of old tobacco and stale beer permeated the air. Sandy sat in the only booth that still had its cushion completely intact. She stared into her mescal and tried not to look at the conspicuously empty stool at the bar. The thick-armed woman behind the bar ran a rag up and down the stained wood without really looking at anything. None of the few other patrons were saying anything. The two guys by the pool table were just leaning on their cues and staring at nothing. An old lady in the corner sat with a dog-end hanging from her lips. Sandy didn’t know any of them by name, or even by reputation, but they all knew that today was not a day for celebrations. Tonight would be for silence. That was the only real wake that their kind got. Felix had told her that, when one of them dies, the closest friends of the deceased might get together and tell a few stories but most of the others would just hold a solemn silence. The stories wouldn’t even be that big, no legends that would stand the test of time, small stories. Somehow, it fit. Sandy wanted to scream, if only to break the silence. She hadn’t even known the dead guy, no-one else in here even knew her by more than her face, and most of them wouldn’t have even noticed that. Still, she felt obligated to stay silent. She knew that the same silence would be echoing throughout the city, in homes and hidden corners, wherever there was one of their kind, the silence would be observed. There weren’t many of them, and news travels fast. They’d all know about the death by now.
The door whispered open on its surprisingly well-oiled hinges. It was a tiny noise, barely audible over the traffic outside, but it was enough. The spell was broken, and sound returned to the dingy room. The two guys standing by the pool table shook themselves from their reverie and began racking up for a new game. The old lady in the corner put the cigarette butt behind her ear and took a pull of something amber-coloured in a short glass. Felix walked in softly and leant on the bar. He and the bartender exchanged a few quiet words and she pulled out a brown glass bottle from somewhere under the bar and handed it to him. He dropped a couple of notes in front of her and wandered over towards Sandy. She took a swig of the slightly unpleasant mescal and narrowed her eyes at Felix. He slumped down into the opposite side of the booth.

“You would not believe the day I’ve had.” He pulled a quarter out of his pocket and wedged it against the cap of his beer. There was a small “ping” and the cap flew off. Sandy leant across the table.

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been here for hours!” She said in a raised whisper.

Felix waved at her, “Keep your voice down, will you? This is still a very solemn occasion.” She grimaced at him.

“Answer the question, nimrod. What the hell took you so long?”
He took a swig of the beer and sighed. “If you must know, I got arrested.” The colour drained from Sandy’s face as he took another swig of beer.

“You were what?” she eventually managed.

He shrugged, “Look, I went to have a gander at Billy’s body, right?” She nodded, she’d been there when they both found out. Felix had gone charging off and told her to “Check out the dive.” She’d managed to work out that he’d meant this particular dive bar in Hell’s Kitchen and not one of the hundred others that made up New York City nightlife. “So, I get there and it turns out that the filth are already in attendance.”

Sandy held up a hand, “Filth?”

Felix waved dismissively, “Police, cops. Anyway, I get there and I have a bit of a butchers, see what I can see, right?” She nodded, only really half following what he was saying. She’d noticed that Felix’s use of British slang went up alongside his level of stress. “Soon as I decide to have a nosey at the body, this woman sees me.” Sandy frowned.

“Wait a sec, aren’t normal people supposed to, just, not notice us? That’s what you told me.” Felix nodded.

“Yeah, that’s how it works. I wasn’t exactly drawing undue attention towards myself, I’ve done things more ostentatious than that before and nobody saw a thing. Bloody hell, the forensics bloke was close enough to me I could tell what bloody aftershave he was wearing!”

Sandy held up a hand, “So then, how the hell did she see you?” Felix shrugged and took another drink.

“Not a bloody clue. Anyway, she shouts at me, we have a little chase and eventually she collars me. I end up having to sit through enough of an interrogation to realise that she doesn’t know anything about us and then I legged it.” Sandy shook her head.

“Unbelievable. How did you get away?”

Felix drained the last of the brown beer, “By using up everything I had left, it’s a miracle I didn’t get hit by a train or fall down an open manhole on my way here.”
Felix set the bottle down on the table with a soft thump. He stared at the label for a little while, his brows furrowed. “Sandy, we do have a problem though.” He looked up at her, “Billy was murdered.”

She stiffened, “You sure? The guy was a drunk, he could have just fallen and cracked his head open.” Felix shook his head.

“No, this was murder. Billy wasn’t a drunk, he was hungover. He was in here all the time but he’s also the only reason why Rosie bothered to stock lemonade and orange juice. Someone killed him, dunno why but it can’t be good.”
“Any suspects?”
“It’s unlikely to be one of us, we don’t kill our own kind. At least, not without a song and dance about it.”
“Any other leads?”
“Not so far, I didn’t get too much of chance to look around before PC plod jumped me.”
“She was a uniform?”
“No, plain clothes. Detective, I think.”
“So you think that a human might have been involved?”
“Possibly.”
“Felix, I might have an idea.” He looked up at her, expectant. His face fell when she told him what it was. “Absolutely not, are you nuts?” Sandy drained her mescal.

“It’s our only real shot at a solid lead, what else can we do?” He gave her a dark look.

“Fine, but if this goes tits up, I told you so.”

---
“So, explain it to me again Reynolds. How, the fuck, does some skinny British guy wander onto an active crime scene, almost touching the victim’s body, then nearly manages to escape an NYPD detective on foot, ends up handcuffed to a table in an interrogation room before MANAGING TO ESCAPE AND THEN WALK OUT OF A POLICE PRECINCT?” Reynolds stood ramrod straight as flecks of spittle bounced off her face. Captain O’Hare slumped back against his desk. “Ashleigh, you’ve been here for five years and you’ve done some amazing work.” Reynolds opened her mouth to answer him but O’Hare overrode her. “Look, I understand that everyone has bad days but you’ve got a suspect who appears to have vanished into thin air.” Reynolds opened her mouth again but O’Hare held up a hand. “I saw the tape. You’ve never had a problem in interrogation but that guy wound you round his little finger.” He shook his head. “What the hell’s going on Ash?”
She stood there, hands behind her back, her clipped fingernails digging into her palm. “Sir,” she began, but what was she going to say? I’m sorry sir, but a man believing the victim to be a god somehow slipped out of my cuffs, caused my gun to jam and disappeared into the subway tunnels. She couldn’t think of a quicker way to end up back in department-mandated psychiatric assessment. She just closed her mouth and shrugged. “I don’t really have anything to say sir. I screwed up, big time. It won’t happened again.” O’Hare sighed and sat down behind his desk, leaning back in the old leather swivel chair.

“No, I hope it won’t. Go home Reynolds, you’re relieved for the day. Get some sleep and I’ll see you back here tomorrow.” He waved her away before she could protest. “With this, and the falafel incident, I think you need to be taking some time off. Start with today, do some desk duty tomorrow.” He took one look at her sour expression and sighed, “Don’t make me order you, Ashleigh.” Her shoulders slumped as if all the air was being let out of her. She left the captain’s office without another word.
The door softly clicked shut behind her. She didn’t bother with the stand by the door, just dropped her coat where she stood along with her backpack. She walked into the apartment’s small kitchen to find it exactly as she’d left it when she’d stepped out early that morning. Leon’s note was still on the countertop, next to a small pile of unopened mail. He was supposed to be back by now. She checked her phone to find a previously unnoticed text message.
I’m sorry, everything seems to be taking longer than I thought. I think I’m gonna be stuck in Iowa for another couple of days, Sorry!
She smiled, despite herself. Her boyfriend could be a bit of a dolt at times but he always tried to see the best in things. She rolled her head on her shoulders, feeling the bones in her neck crack. She groaned as they popped into place. She headed towards her bathroom, peeling off her shirt as she went. She’d clear up her coat and any of the rest of the mess later, for now, she needed a goddamn shower.
Once under the spray, she pressed her forehead against the bathroom wall. As the scalding water did its best to try and ease the tension from her shoulders, she let the morning's experience wash over her. Had she really seen a man sneak onto a crime scene so stealthily that not even the forensic tech standing next to him had seen him? Had she honestly chased the same man out of a somehow deserted police precinct, only to lose him in the freaking subway tunnels? None of this felt real. She started banging her head gently against the wall. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” She grumbled. The reports after the falafel incident swam across her vision. Maybe she was starting to crack up, she had been getting a little less sleep than the doctors had told her. She shook her head violently. No, this was just some crazy guy who’d gotten into her head a little. True, she hadn’t been on perfect form today but it was nothing like the falafel incident.
Once out of the shower, and clad in one of Leon’s overlarge old Metallica t-shirts and a pair of sweatpants, she sat on the couch and began trying to persuade her short, occasionally spiky, hair to behave properly. There was the tinny, electric sound of the doorbell and she groaned. Being able to avoid people and wind down was the only real benefit of being stuck here, now she was probably going to have to deal with the slightly pervy old greek guy down the hall asking if she’d seen his cat. A cat that, it turned out, had been dead for nearly four years. She unhooked the chain and began to open the door. “Look, mister Savidas, I haven’t seen your-”
Felix Jones stood in the doorway. He gave her a slightly nervous smile “Hello Detective Reynolds, I need your help.”

August 2017 — Journalists in the news had the world on disaster alert due to an unknown phenomenon. Something was happening beneath the ocean; in the deep —something that for now is unexplined and untraceable.

At first they described it as an earthquake; strong but localized. None of the countries near ground zero reported any structural deterioration following the incident in their preliminary press releases. Although the closest territory was about 4,000 kilometers from the point of origin, global security organizations expected records of catastrophe due to the magnitude of the event.

People all over the world were clueless and shocked by the situation. The media wasn't helping; The news was covering the story without having a solid basis of theories. News images showed worship services and congregations flooding the streets —praying in front of their buildings, police barricades in front of the nation's official properties, agendas of emergency plans, and locations of refugee camps.

Hours after the preliminary report, other agencies informed that the clouds above the epicenter of the “earthquake” showed what appeared to be a gigantic, irregularly shaped hole.

A broadcast was immediately heard canceling all international and domestic flights, sea routes were postponed, and civilians were advised to stay inside their homes.

People expressed being a little less oblivious then, but horrified by the new discovery. As expected, food and medical supplies were limited and rationed. For us islanders this was concerning, since our territory does not have a national supply reserve for these cases. Even so, our governor went on television to address any concerns, clarifying that the national inventory of food supplies was enough for no less than 1 month. The speech went as far as expected, the commander guaranteeing that things would get back to normal in a couple of days.

September 2017 —An unknown phenomenon hit our neighboring Islands.

Even though they had a well-established emergency system and the news spreading useful strategies for the safety of society, things turned out badly.

They were warned, but truth was, no one knew exactly what was going to happen.

How did it end up striking the islands of the Caribbean, almost 10 thousand kilometers away from its point of origin?

. . .

Almost a week has passed since the last time I asked my neighbor for food. We haven’t had our little talks at night; time of the day where the children also take the opportunity to chill, play and socialize with the youngsters of the closest neighbors. You can’t see anyone outside anymore, at least not in front of the houses, which is where you could see them from a distance. The backyards, on the other hand, are different; each house is fenced for privacy. A couple of us residents have a gate built into the fence to easily access each other's backyard. This, for convenience and as a gesture of trust.

As my father always said: Silence never walks alone. . .

I always thought he was referring to all of those feelings that arise when silence predominates in a place where there once was close communication.

It seemed that our fears had come true; the set of conditions turned our minds against each other. I respect their decisions, because I admit that everyone has to fight for their own interests and survival. In the end, we will all be forced to make that decision anyway.

It was 2 in the morning and I was not close to consolidating sleep. Not only because that was the only space of time where I could think without being questioned, but also because thinking about my next move caused me a lot of stress. I needed to make sure I could provide; that I could put food on the table. As for hunger, I couldn't really think about it; there was no place for it in the near future. We split food the first week, the second week and half of the third I was left out of the equation. I needed my wife and children to be calm; to be outside of it —far from reality. I was my dog's table companion during this period, occasionally taking no more than 5 pieces so as to not die. My neighbor Ernest knew about it, so I asked him not to tell my family. He agreed, but asked me to accept at least his family’s leftovers. Luckily, they were measured and grateful; so I had the opportunity to eat their leftovers on several occasions. And there I was, thinking of how easily he pushed me and my family out of his circle.

When I was ready to let go and close my eyes for a couple of hours, I heard several knocks on what seemed to be Ernest's back door. Although I was not completely attentive, I was almost certain that the knocking pattern was similar to that of Ernest with my other neighbor, Stan. I approached my window, trying to listen to their conversation; trying to hear if they were talking about food. Honestly, although I didn't hear anything clearly, I felt that Ernest was being unfair to me; I felt betrayed.

Hours passed and I just stayed there; silent and uncertain. My wife woke up and I couldn't hold it. I told her everything; my suspicions, my plans and all the nonsense you can think when you lose control. She began to argue about it, wondering how I could focus on my relationship with my neighbors, instead of thinking about my next move. I understood that she was desperate and that we, as parents, needed to provide for the young —a mentality that under these circumstances would not help much. She asked me to try harder and go to every house in the neighborhood, so we would have a better idea of what was going on; not jump to a conclusion just because Ernest doesn't call us at night anymore.

The rest of the day was a challenge, no visual interaction with my wife, the innocent look in my children's eyes as they played; oblivious to reality and the hunch that chasing the other neighbors would not bear fruit. In a desperate attempt to regain my wife's attention, I told her that my plan for today was to start asking at the last house on the road. This, following her suggestions while we argued in the morning. I was willing to yield; I always need her opinion and disunity is of no use in these conditions. She looked at me and nodded, I knew she was with me in this; she just wanted me to act.

While I was dressing, the radio station announced an out of schedule broadcast from the governor. I looked to and sighed; I felt far from optimistic. “This can’t be something good,” I murmured.

He started the announcement by saying, “Compatriots, for us to be successful, we need all of you to have an open mind and loyally believe that we are implementing the right measures.” I knew we were fucked. The governor continued the message saying that our combustible resources were close to depleting.

“That is clearly a thing that they hid from the beginning,” my wife commented, convinced. To which I replied, “Always incompetents, surely they forgot how important that was.”

Their plans were to implement controlled power supply in order to preserve as much as they could what was left of fuel. From now on, the country would have electric power from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM. The strategy behind it was to provide energy in the hottest hours, for fans, air conditioners and to preserve refrigerated goods, then let the power system rest at a cooler period. Regarding the food supply and world news, the governor did not have much to say, it was clear that he knew that no matter what your social status was, we are all in the same boat.

This was a decisive event for me, I no longer thought about going and ask the most distant neighbors, whom by the way I had never met. I was then contemplating the idea of confronting my closest neighbor, Ernest, with or without the right to complain about why he traded food with Stan.

6:01 PM —Lights off. Taking advantage of the fact that my wife was busy with the kids, I went to Ernest’s backyard and knocked on his door. I was so addled that I didn’t remember if I knocked with our secret pattern. Inside Ernest’s home I could hear his wife whimpering, and then someone uttering shush. Suddenly the door opened. It was him, Ernest, with an unfriendly face and a long double barrelled shot gun pointed at me. I whimpered myself, of fear, I couldn't even tell him ‘it's me, calm down’. He pulled me by my shirt into his house, pushing me against a wall as he urgently asked someone to close the door. His son hurriedly closed the door.

“What are you trying to do?” He asked me in a desperate murmur, as he continued holding me against the wall. “Do you want to be killed?!”

After he stared into my eyes for a few seconds, he whispered, “was it you who…” his question trailing of as his wife ran over to us and calmed him down, saying in a low voice tone,”It’s just Mike, everything is alright.”

He let go of my shirt and walked to his living room, while his wife was asking me for forgivness. From a distance; since Ernerst's house is huge, I saw Ernest lighting up some candles before motioning for me to come closer to him. I walked timidly, but more confused than frightened. We sat alone and talked, while his wife poured us a watery hot chocolate.

After saying sorry in all the ways possible, he started telling me that last night, Stan knocked on his door to let him know that his house had been robbed. That whoever was that knocked on his door, did so with a familiar pattern. Stan couldn’t give any useful information or identify the thief, but he said they were after his food; they left him with nothing to eat. I was horrified and took the opportunity to tell Ernest that I was planning to meet with the rest of the neighbors to establish a concept of mutual aid, with the purpose of exchanging food, and now, to also protect each other due to Stan's experience.

Back at home, my wife was stressed with the news of Stan’s house robbery. “Instead of food, we need a gun now,” she said anxiously.

Since the power went out, we could hear almost everything; the street was quiet, but the emptiness made it somehow noisy. My wife invited me to a small dinner of nuts mix with dried fruits; I felt she was sad about our argument and wanted to use time better. We started crying remenicing of our past, the kids growing up, the hard times and the circumstances at the time. We fell asleep in the family room; in a small couch, it's been a long time since we slept in each other's arms.

I opened my eyes in the middle of the night, the anxiety was killing me even in sleep. I felt the urge to open my eyes, my heart beat was like an alarm. I didn’t move, my wife was profoundly asleep; It was clear to me that she had more burdens than I did. I got emotional, thinking that I would like one day for her to know how important she is to me; and that I fight every day to do my part and be of help.

As I approach her cheek for a kiss, my back door sounded hard. The pattern was Ernest’s —but I remembered Stan’s case. I covered my wife’s mouth with my whole hand; Ana’s eyes went big and I felt in my gut that this was a moment to be worried. As we crawled towards my children's bedroom, we heard what sounded like a gunshot. I didn't know if I was being biased, but it sounded like Ernest's gun to me. I began to hear many noises at once; as if no less than 8 people ran, fleeing and climbing the walls of my house and the house behind mine. The knocking on my door was wild after that, no pattern at all; but I could hear Ernest’s son Damien yelling, “Help us! Someone open the door!”

I didn’t know what to do. I thought, if I open that door I will compromise my family. Ana was staring at me, she said sadly, “I know he’s your friend, but it doesn’t sound like the situation outside is over for good.”

Another gun shot was heard, this time a hard pound was felt in my roof, along with lots of strange noises; like something was defending its territory. This time I heard Ernest telling his son and wife to go back to their house.

“I need to do something!” I yelled to my wife, grabbing a machete and standing in front of my front door. I was too afraid to go out and leave my children and wife alone in the house, unprotected.

Suddenly my wife came, looked me in the eyes and said, “Go, I will close the door behind you; please don't die.”

I left through the front of the house; avoiding the back door, so as not to find myself in the middle of the confrontation. As I approached the back of my house, the shot from Ernest's gun cast a huge shadow on the wall right next to me. Although I couldn't see what it was, I could hear a loud moan. I raised the machete to intervene and as soon as I passed the wall that covered them, Ernest fell on top of me. The shadow approached us; it started making high pitched sounds and pounding with what appeared to be its feet. I picked up Ernest’s shutgun and pulled the trigger. The gun was out of bullets, Ernest was unconcious and the thing was ready for the kill. I threw my machete towards it, and started feeling a strong hold in my right leg.

Suddenly, I started feeling a burning sensation in my feet. From afar a loud screetch was heard, my leg was released and the shadow fled with what appeared to be long distance jumps. I dragged Ernest's unconscious body near my back door and asked my wife to open it. We both carried Ernest to the couch, checked for injuries, and poured water on his face. He didn't respond. My wife hugged me crying because she thought Ernest was dead.

Ernest fell off the couch and hit his head on the floor, coughing and gasping for air. I ran my hand over his chest, trying to calm him down. He started asking about his wife and son. It was 5:52 in the morning; I knew that given the circumstances, it would be a long time to wait; so I said, “In a few more minutes the power will come back on and we’ll go looking for them.” He didn’t calm down, so I added, “I heard them talking, they are fine, relax.”

I went to check that my front and back doors were closed. No more noises outside, the adrenaline started to go down as the power went on again. I helped Ernest to stand on his feet, his composure looked well. We started looking through the windows, we didn’t want to call them out loud.

“Keep quiet,” Ernest whispered to me, “those things could be on top of your roof.”

We decided to go outside, Ernest’s gun was out of bullets and he didn’t have more with him. We walked outside unarmed, attentive to our surroundings in each step. The grass in my backyard was sticky, covered in something oily; not all of it, but big patches.

Something strange could be seen from afar. Ernest ran towards it; it was a chewed up leg. He instantly ran towards his house, screaming, “Damien! Damien!”

As he was about to knock on the door, his wife opened it. She hugged him, then walked towards me, slapped me and spit in my face. I stood there, shocked, as she pulled Ernest by his shirt and yelled to his face, “Bring my son back!”

Ernest fell to his feet, put his hand on his chest and started to quiver rapidly. I looked around and saw that Stan’s fence was partially on the floor. I went to Stan's house alone, the back door was wide open and torn off at the top; it looked like something tried to tear the door off. There was a lot of blood on the door step and also a couple of fingers. Apparently, Damien was not the only one killed. I went back to Ernest’s, his wife told us that Damien was trying to distract them running back to my house; so she could go back inside. She blamed me for not opening the door for them.

Ernest told me to bring my family, and food provisions; his house was safer than mine, and together we have a better chance of surviving.

As soon as we settled into their house, Ernest's wife demanded, “No one is going to talk about Damien, as dead or missing. He's out there!" She yelled. "You two, come up with a plan, do the job a man is supposed to do!"

. . .

We have a plan now. We’re going to try to find some clues to understand what we are dealing with, and look for Damien… However, food is more scarce as time goes on. The broadcasts on the radio paint an ominous evening…