ARTIFICE COMICS

Anthology 2 #72: Bento Box #2

Artifice Comics — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:47:42 +0000

Anthology2 Presents
BENTO BOX #2
Bite-Sized Fiction
by Jae Lizhini, Jason Kenney, Adrian J. Watts, Emmanuel Goldstein ? starring Jacob Milnestein

HER BLACK DEVICES ‘Part two’
(with Mr. Tom Waits conducting a symphony of park benches and rubbish bins)
By Jae Lizhini

It was four-thirty in the morning, and Detective Emily Swanson found it hard to think about anything other than how tired she was. Two hours of sleep was the worst kind of tease. She’d need to do something, so she could focus. They wouldn’t keep the cadavers here for much longer. Forensics was already hounding her about their findings and what ideas she had come up with. She took another long gulp of coffee from the rapidly cooling Styrofoam cup. The bitter coffee had been doing little more than remind her how the chemical dependence on the beverage was as much as a habit as was the cigarettes.

“Barry, I need to get away from the bodies for a few moments; you mind, mate?” Swanson asked, her short blond hair lightly drumming against the tanned curve of her forehead.

The short man standing above her looked down at her squatted position in the grass. Her head was crooked to the side of her shoulder; her own cool icy gaze reflected against his thick glasses. He brought his large hand to the bridge of those lenses, pushing them up on his face. “In just a second, Emily. I had some things I wanted to go over with–” He stopped in half sentence. His brown eyes widened from behind his glasses. His lips sagged into a grimace. Folds appeared at the corner of his nose and connected to the fringes of his full lips. He had a mask of worry, which his properly trimmed brown goatee did little to hide. “Wow, you look awful.”

“Thanks for the compliment. I probably feel better than I look then,” Swanson said, looking cold. Her gaze turned back to the skull of the male subject, the whites of the bones appearing through the grotesque threads of remaining skin and muscle.

“That was wrong of me. What I mean is–”

“Its all right, mate. No harm.” The detective feigned a light smile. “Melissa had some friends over last night. They were playing Guitar Hero until midnight.”

“Sounds rough,” Barry said to her. His signature smile returning to his face. “You sure you are up to this, love? I could get someone else to work this scene.”

Swanson bit her cheeks. She wanted to say something full of vinegar and rage. However, she knew that Barry meant well and was genuinely worried. He was the closest thing to a mother she ever had. So instead, she smiled. “No, we’ll handle this. It’s just a rough go of a morning. By the looks of things, we’re going to need Scully and Moulder for this one.”

“So you’re feeling the same way I am about it?” Barry asked, finally squatting down to be at eye level with his partner. “Forensics and I have gone over about forty possible scenarios. And nothing is adding up.”

“Well, obviously, judging by the way the foreheads have the series of incisions like needles around the scalp, it was a slow job, and the killer wanted to torture his victims,” Swanson said.

“Acupuncture — we hadn’t even assumed anything like that. The way the skin is cut on the face, the killer would have also had to slice the victims with the same number of needles, and they are too deep for anything like that. Also, the damage to the tissue seems almost corrosive in nature, on top of the cutting. They found some sort of slimy residue on the victims’ mouths and on their clothing, which, according to the lab guys, looks like mucus from a slug. They are going to analyze it for us to see exactly what it is.”

“So what, then? They were attacked by gigantic slugs?” Swanson asked.

“Or maybe some sort of super powered killer that’s part slug,” Barry said, trying to hold in his snigger.

“Even for Pacific City, that seems to be stretching it,” Swanson told her partner. “But what ever the case, the way that the victims fell, they were killed before they dropped to the ground.”

“Yes,” Barry agreed. “And we won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but, by the bloating of the throat, we assume they may have suffocated on top of having a lot of flesh removed.”

“And their brains,” a smoky voice called from behind them. It was a deep tone, with the draw of the American South. Barry and Swanson both turned their heads to the figure that stood over them. A flash of recognition ran over both their faces.

The new comer was a virtual silhouette. The onyx Stetson hat was worn low to his brow, the large brim casting an impossible shadow over his face and past his neck. A tight fitting duster covered his torso and continued to the fringes of his knees. It was as though Clint Eastwood lost his shadow.

“How did you get past the guards?” Swanson asked after only a heartbeat. Her gaze went to the uniformed officers, who had started to turn around. Obviously, they were taken by surprise as well.

“Missus Swanson, you done know the answer to that, without even thinking about it,” The Man in Black said, his ghastly voice sounding like he was enjoying himself—which made it all he more creepy.

“Look, you can’t be here,” Barry said, rising to his feet. “Far as I am concerned, you are a suspect.”

The Man in Black simply walked past the portly detective, his black gloved hand pressing lightly on the man’s broad shoulder. “There is a reason I am here,” he said in a way that sent ice down Barry’s spine.

The Man in Black slowly bent down to his haunches. His brown eyes glittered past the mask of shadows that devoured his features. His right hand pressed against the deep green grasses, the blades falling under the pressure of his large palm. His left was free and gently touched the sharp incision marks on the skull’s forehead. “Res und trol,” he said under his breath. As the strange words fell from his lips, a yellow outline formed around his hand, the jagged energy reflecting on the white of the victim’s skull. The first image hit him before he even closed his eyes.

Brutal snap shots began to slam through the stranger’s skull. The Man in Black felt his legs buckling from under him, as the strong images assaulted his brain. Still images flashed in front of him. Each picture was all that was left from a dead man’s flesh.

The first image was the park, late at night, two lovers talking. Then some sort of disagreement. A black slug appeared on the girl’s leg. Then the slug devoured her head. The victim saw another appear on him. Other images of blackness and pain appeared before him. Feelings began to attack his senses, exposing the stranger to the victim’s death.

“What the hell is he doing, Swanson?” Barry asked, his eyes narrowing behind his frames. “I mean, besides tampering with evidence?”

The tawny detective hadn’t moved from her position and was only centimeters from where the man in black was planted. Her eyes were staring at his gloved hand and the glowing energy that seemed to be coming from the simple limb. She always had a feeling he was one of those super-beings, but now she had been proven right. That was enough for her to agree with Barry’s claim of him being a suspect.

Swanson slowly reached towards her holster. Her thumb guided across the chocolate leather strap, snapping it open in a flick. Her fingers slid around the handle, pulling the black semi-automatic from its home. It clicked audibly, as she righted the gun. Its muzzle pointing at the back of The Man in Black’s skull. She was about to say something, when the stranger moved his hand from the skull. The energy around his digits faded into the ether, as he turned his head to his shoulder. The white of his left eye peered from the shadows that covered his face. He looked to the detective with a softness that made her feel a hesitation.

“Your victims’ names were Peter Stallwell and Sherry White,” The Man in Black spoke, his voice firm and commanding. “They had gotten into an argument, when they were attacked by something not even I have ever seen before. You will find more about the nature of what they were attacked by after you do an autopsy. Be sure to take extra care with the remainder of the clothing, especially on the male. The substance will tell a story you might not be ready for. This case, you will learn, is best left to me.”

The black-cloaked stranger rose from his position. His trench coat ruffled audibly in the wind. The fabric swept across his legs, as he turned towards the gun and the detective. His featureless form stood stoic, the whites of his eyes flickering in the coming sunlight.

“We’re taking you in, freak!” Swanson said, her gun once again firmly aimed at The Man in Black. “Kneel on the ground NOW!”

The stranger’s eyes stared at her, through the mask of shadow that obfuscated his features. The sense of long hair seemed to flow across his shoulders, as the wind rolled across the fabric of trench coat. He could tell by the anger in her eyes she was serious.

* * *

GUN
RECOIL buy This Revolution Heima download Dragon Heat aka Dragon Squad dvd

by Jason Kenney

The officer on the other side of the table cleared his throat and leaned back.

John Franklin sat there, his hands folded on the table, and waited. He was a patient man who understood the process. His father taught him the process. He tried to ignore the dull pain in his chest, the slight warmth that had been there for two hours now, since right before he pulled the trigger, since right before he killed a man before the man could kill him.

“So, let me get this straight.” The officer was named Jones. Franklin put him a few years younger than himself. The kid tried to overcompensate by deepening his voice, but it came out forced and contrived and probably didn’t work with anyone. “You were taking your gun to a shoe store?”

This officer was the good cop. They were all good cops just trying to do their jobs.

Franklin nodded. “I was going to buy shoes and had my gun with me.”

“Why did you have your gun with you?”

“There’s nothing saying I couldn’t.”

“Open carry aside,” said Jones, scratching his head for effect, as if he were truly confused, but that also came across as an empty gesture, “why on earth does a grown man feel the need to take his gun to a shoe store?”

“Some people carry a rabbit foot.”

“You call a Ruger your good luck charm?”

Franklin smiled. Before he could answer further the door opened, catching his and Jones’s attention as two men entered the room, one wheelchair bound, pushed by another who had a smirk that seemed to be a permanent fixture on his face.

“I’d say it was pretty lucky for him today, Officer Jones,” said the pusher as he settled the wheelchair in a corner of the room, its occupant sitting there, immobile except for his eyes which bore straight into Franklin. “Mind if I have a few minutes with John here?”

Jones shrugged and stood up. “Only if he doesn’t mind. As far as we’re concerned, you’re free to go, Mister Franklin. Just don’t go far in case we have any follow up questions.”

“It’ll only be a few minutes,” said the new guy, looking to Franklin as if to ask permission. Franklin nodded.

“Thank you, Officer Jones,” Franklin said, and the officer left without another word, closing the door behind him.

“John, I’m Johann Weisz; my paraplegic friend is Tommy.” He nodded toward the corner. “We’re with DHS, Homeland Security and all. I’ve just got a couple questions for you. But first…” Weisz shifted and stuck a hand in his pocket, coming out with a lighter that he reached out and set on the table in front of Franklin. “That’s your real lucky charm right there, isn’t it?”

Franklin looked at it and then back to Weisz.

“You can take it,” Weisz said. “It’s yours.” Franklin snatched it off the table and wrapped his hands around it. “How are you feeling, John?”

“Okay.”

“Ears done ringing? No big bruises from the blast? Head feeling all right?” Franklin nodded. “How’s your gut?” Weisz asked.

Franklin instinctively moved to touch his stomach but stopped, letting his hand hover there as he studied Weisz.

When that man had looked at him with those glowing eyes, when that man had smiled and pointed at Franklin, the burning started there, in his stomach, but spread, his body on fire as he pulled the trigger.

He hadn’t told Officer Jones about it. He hadn’t told the paramedics on the scene when they first checked him.

But Weisz… Now that he mentioned it, Franklin could feel the warmth, the faint discomfort hitting for a second and then easing as he took a deep breath.

“That guy was a pomo, wasn’t he?” Franklin said, changing the subject, looking for answers.

Weisz’s smirk tightened slightly.

“He was a post modern person, yes,” Weisz said, leaning back. “Robert Worthington, wanted in connection with some robberies a lot like what you happened to get caught up in. But you stopped him. Good for you.”

“So why are you here?”

“Like I said, Homeland Security. Just want to make sure you’re doing okay and offer Uncle Sam’s assistance if you need it — getting what I need for paperwork, stuff like that.”

“What’s his story?” Franklin looked to Tommy.

“He’s taking notes.” Franklin looked back to Weisz who was tapping the side of his head.

“I didn’t give you permission to get into my head, Mr. Weisz.”

“You didn’t have to, John, and I’m sure you know that.” Weisz pushed himself to his feet and fished into his pocket, coming out with a tattered business card. “If you feel anything… well, different, you call me.”

Franklin looked from the card to Weisz. “Different how?”

Weisz shrugged and went behind Tommy, pushing toward the door. “Could be nothing. Just watch yourself. See how you feel in the morning.”

“Different how, Weisz?”

Weisz smiled and looked Franklin dead in the eyes. “Different like you start blowing shit up.”

Franklin didn’t know what to say to that.

“Keep in touch, John.”

And the door opened. And Johann Weisz and Tommy left.

* * *

DUAL

Origin #2
by Adrian J. Watts

When Kye regained consciousness, the first thing he noticed was the cold sensation of metal against his skin. His eyes were open — he was pretty sure of that — but some time passed before any light registered in his eyes and he was able to get a visual sense of where he was. Everything around him was shiny; more importantly, it was all equally shiny. A flat, consistent surface of some sort. He blinked a few times and was able to tell that the walls (which he could see out of the corners of his eyes) and the ceiling (directly ahead, he realised, meaning he was flat on his back) were made of white tiles, all uniformly reflecting the light from a bulb above and behind him, just out of view.

He tried, slowly, to turn his head but felt a quick, snapping pain. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but it hurt. A lot. He tried again, even more slowly, and the pain returned. He thought better of trying it a third time and instead closed his eyes. He opened them again a moment later, when he heard a noise that, on the periphery of his awareness, sounded very much like speech. He couldn’t make it out, but since — to the best of his knowledge — he was the only person in the room, he guessed the voices were forming a discussion about him.

To his right, he became aware of something dark moving, popping just in and out of his blind spot. He tried to call out, to get its attention, but nothing happened. He tried again to turn his head, and this time there was no pain, no snapping sensation; his head simply did not move. He tried to close his eyes, he tried to blink, he tried to change his breathing — nothing happened. For a moment, he feared his heart may burst with the fear that came with the realisation that he no longer had any control over his body, and then it occurred to him that this might include such things as his pulse rate. He was right. The fear quickly faded as his body refused to respond to his thoughts.

“Zen magale, zin giingi,” a voice said. It sounded feminine, Kye thought, but was otherwise so strange that he didn’t hazard a guess as to the speaker’s other characteristics.

“ARGH!” he heard to his right and felt something warm and wet splat against his cheek.

“The paralysis device still lets them scream?” the feminine voice said.

“Yes,” a different, more masculine voice said. “I thought you’d like that.”

“Very much.”

There were more screams, followed by more warm wetness, and then a smell — one Kye had never experienced before. He didn’t like it, but despite his conscious revulsion he did not wretch, or gag, or spit, or tense his nostrils. The scent just wafted, in and out, down his throat, through his lungs.

“Another failure!” the masculine voice said.

“But it will make the next stronger,” the feminine voice said.

Again Kye saw the dark shape just outside his vision, and this time it stayed. He tried to focus not his eyes, which remained beyond his control, but his mental energy on it, and soon he could make out the shape of a black-cloaked female figure. A few moments later, another figure — the uncloaked form of a man — stood beside her. He was wearing a tight-fitting white labcoat and a black apron, both of which were splattered with blood. Oddly, Kye found he could not see their faces, even when they passed directly through his vision. Only their clothing and the general shape of their bodies registered with him.

“Give it a moment,” the female said. Her voice seemed different now; Kye felt a tingle run through his body, as it it was responding to her. “Let the residue take a greater hold.”

“Fine,” the man said. “But if I do not secure the implant soon, the – ”

“Go ahead. Zen magale, zin giingi.”

As the woman spoke, Kye felt, rather than saw, bizarre images run through his mind. He felt the moon, shining brightly in the daytime sky. He felt the sun, dark enough not to light the night, but still swallowing a densely-populated city. He felt the throbbing hum of a factory in full life, churning out an unknown mechanical product, giving his life meaning. He felt a sequence of 1s and 0s, Alphas and Omegas, +es and -es all pour through his body, meaningless to his mind, but somehow essential to his being.

Then he saw the drill — and the blood-spattered scalpel. His mouth opened and the scalpel pressed against his tongue, twisted, snaked its way through his nasal cavity. He felt pressure, like he needed to sneeze, but nothing beyond that. A moment later his vision was obscured by a film of redness, colouring the already stained drill-head, as it passed from his view to just below his line of sight. There was a feeling of pressure against his cheek, and then -

“NO!” he shouted. “Stop!”

The drill pulled away, and he felt the scalpel wriggle its way back to his lips. The light above his head flickered, and he turned his head.

“We waited too long,” the man said matter-of-factly. “Call in Thunder Salmon.”

* * *

The Black Iron Prison tome #11: The Chain Reaction dvdrip
“a sad song, with nothing to say”
by Emmanuel Goldstein ? starring Jacob Milnestein

“If hospitals cure, then prisons must bring their pain.”
- Richey James Edwards,
‘Archives of Pain’

Blood ran down his face, a smear of carmine beetle red running from his forehead to his eyebrows. He blinked furiously, leaning against the lectern for support, his breath erratic and strained.

The Count lay to his right, his faceplate smashed and broken, revealing swollen, bulbous eyes in mimicry of the masque he once wore, skin turned purple by the bruising of acne and pustules. A mirthless smile caught Louis’ lips, inclining the corners up in a hollow smile.

For a long time, the Count’s masque had been the subject of discussion amongst the vacuous girls that crowded the school corridors between lessons, tartan skirts rolled up to reveal tantalising flesh and lips daubed with beeswax and spittle.

It had been a common rumour that beneath the Count’s obsidian faceplate there dwelt a guise of unparalleled beauty, a face that pride and familial shame prevented him from showing to his peers. Puerile schoolgirl fantasies, Louis thought with a sneer, turning once more to regard the disease-marked swollen countenance of the dead boy. Despite those hushed rumours, despite sweaty and gasping whispers made in the dead of night, the Count’s face had turned out to be exactly as he had always warned them: a face full of the anger and pain of plague, of pestilence, of disease.

“Sleep well, friend,” Louis whispered, his heart suddenly aching and his legs trembling as he clutched the gilded bronze of the ancient lectern.

With a pained grunt, he pulled himself away, staggering forward and trying not to look at the silent shapes of Rin and Haruka. Behind him, the soft light of the hole in the world continued to cast rainbows upon both the stone floor and their dead flesh, colours moving along the soft skin of legs and faces that remained forever turned away from him.

No longer would those breasts swell with the intake of breath; no longer would those now closed eyes cast him knowing looks between classes.

His right hand tightened into a fist.

“Bastards,” he whispered, his vision blurring.

Upon his cheeks, he felt the warmth of an unfamiliar moistness.

The pounding at the door began once again, the heavy weight of weapons smashing against the rusted metal of the ancient doorway.

“Open up in the name of the King!” came the cries from beyond the sealed threshold.

Slowly, Louis lifted his head, lips twitching in a snarl and cheeks red with shame.

“The King is dead,” he screamed, his voice raw and hoarse. “The King is fucking dead!”

Blood and spit stained his lips, his childish refutation of reality a stuttering declamation against circumstance.

The hole in the world seemed to swell with his lies, the fracture widening, revealing more and more of the gulf between them and the heavy curtains of that other world. From the great madness beyond, some vast unknowable entity seemed to shift on its blasphaemous axis, turning its unblinking eye towards the damp, shifting darkness that surrounded the tiny planet.

“The King is dead!” Louis screamed again, his eyes wide with madness. “The King is…”

Without warning, the door exploded, fragments of rusted metal filling the room, hot air throwing him backwards. He saw the ruin of metal and stone sail past him and into the twisting, shapeless fracture hanging in the air above the ancient lectern.

His body slammed hard against the wall, Haruka’s lifeless form not far from him now, face down against the stone, her cardigan and school shirt torn open to reveal the hole in her back where the bullet had passed through her.

Louis laughed weakly, his body screaming in agony as he lifted his pale eyes up to gaze upon the Baroque stucco decorations that covered the roof, white Portland cement now smeared with blood.

He felt a pain in his ribs, a twisting shard of metal nestling between his ribs. Again, he felt the hollow smile haunt his lips.

This is it, he thought quietly to himself, this is how it ends. Not with a bang but with the softest whisper, the colours of another world quietly playing across the ancient walls.

He laughed quietly, softly, gently.

All those years, all those long empty years, staring up at blank-eyed teachers and accepting cruelty when it was doled out to him, all those years of pointless pain and suffering, and now, just when things were becoming interesting again, he was going to die.

The heavy footfalls of military boots filled the room.

He smiled again.

“The King is dead,” he whispered with childish spite. “The King is…”

Before him, he saw velvet slippers and long, stockinged legs, and a cold terror filled his mind, his hand suddenly digging into the scars of the wall behind him, desperately trying to pull himself away from the presence of the other.

With elegance and grace, a solemn figure crouched slowly down before him, watery blue eyes staring out at him from behind a smooth fringe of ash blonde hair.

“P-Prince Baldr,” he whispered, the name like a thorn lodged in his throat, tearing at his larynx, twisting his words as they blossomed.

“Tetsuya,” the pale blonde prince whispered in reply, hir face cold and expressionless. “You have revealed too much of your weakness.”

Louis felt his heart hammering in his chest, blood from that swollen organ thundering in his ears like the crash of ocean waves. He tried to laugh, but instead all that he could muster was a nervous, churlish giggle.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he gasped, the words falling from his bruised lips like ash. “Even if you seal these doors forever. Even if you bury us beneath the foundations of this fucking place. It won’t change the fact that we have seen what you’re hiding, that we found out why they locked us away here in the dark, why they forged the Black Iron Prison.”

Tears and blood streamed down his face, smears of emotion upon his pale complexion.

“The Count, Rin, Haruka, even me… we all saw it, we all saw the world beyond the Black Iron Prison. You can keep your fucking King; you can keep your school and your cruelty and your immorality.

“This world isn’t all there is. It isn’t even the fucking horizon.”

Baldr stared at him with cold, blue eyes and then, with a sneer, turned hir head away.

“Tetsuya, do you really want to know why we were locked away? Do you really want to know what it was that the ancients knew that we’ve forgotten?”

Louis closed his eyes, feeling the whispers of dreams and the tug of those dark waters of the unconscious, its undertow willing him down beneath the waves and into timeless oblivion.

“I don’t care,” he whispered in response. “I just don’t fucking care anymore…”

“Have you never stopped to question why the King is never seen?” Baldr whispered, hir voice suddenly tremulous with suppressed emotion. “Have you never asked yourself why the King is hidden away from the people, cloaked in darkness and speaking only in riddles?”

Calmly, s/he leant forward, pushing hir face close to Louis’ own, hir breath like ice against his cheek.

“The King, Tetsuya,” s/he whispered, hir voice full of unbridled excitement. “The King… is Yaldaboath!”

Anthology 2 #71: Bento Box #1

Artifice Comics — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:01:33 +0000

First, I’ve got to explain what a bento box is. At least, to my understanding. It’s like a lunchbox. With small compartments for tiny bits of food. A Japanese Lunchable. Only more sampler and less complete “meal” (if you would call a Lunchable a “meal”). Maybe Tupperware’s a better example. Minus the burp.

So now that that’s clear (oh so clear), what is this? Tastes, teases, tid-bits of stories to whet your appetite and make you come back for more month after month like an addict to awesome. Here you’ve got yourself four starts, the first parts to ongoing stories that’ll come out in monthly segments packaged with other short ongoing bursts and maybe some oneshots while we’re at it. It’s like an anthology of serialized stories. Woah, novel idea, right?

We’ve got flesh devouring things, Shanghai in ruin, an exploding man, and a riot. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am! How’s that for a taste of great?

And we’re just getting started.

So enjoy the first installment, go searching for the pants we blew off of ya when you’re done, then hold on tight for next month when we’re back with more of what you want.

Excelsior and shit.

Anthology2 Presents
BENTO BOX #1
Bite-Sized Fiction
by Jae Lizhini, H.H. Neville, Jason Kenney, Adrian J. Watts

HER BLACK DEVICES ‘Part one’

A CLASSIC HORROR SCENE
(Music provided by Wumpscut)
by Jae Lizhini

“We gonna root or what?” an unsatisfied voice spoke, breaking the silence of night time at Reinfield Park. The moonlight’s weak rays littered the Pacific City park with a pale sheen, allowing the deep green grass to contrast from the dazzling skyline that plunged skyward from the looming shadow of the deciduous trees.

“Fuck you, Petey!” a female voice shrieked; her loud throated shrill echoed in a harsh reverb. “Did someone tell you I was whore or something?” The woman’s thin hands slammed into the Petey’s ivory dress shirt. The strike induced an audible slap across his barrel chest.

The stout man slipped his hands from the woman’s shoulder, gripping the cherry dipped backing of the bench they sat on. His wide lips instantly curled into a nasty grimace. “What you on about, Sherry? ‘Cause I want a little friendliness, suddenly a mate of mine been spreading rumours?”

“I didn’t say a mate of yours. But now you definitely have my attention,” Sherry said in the proper way, which fit neither her darkly rimmed eyes nor her layered blond hair, which looked more like a Britney Spear’s wig than something anyone would actually have attached to their scalp.

“Now don’t put bloody trite in my mouth!” Petey spat; his darkly tanned face shifted to a more reddish purple which contrasted his military-short shock of blond hair. “I didn’t hear you were easy to get in bed from anyone!”

“Then tell me, Petey, why did you think coming to Reinfield Park was such a brilliant idea? Everyone knows this is the place everyone goes to get their knickers lifted.” Her lip gloss shimmered in the moonlight; she crafted a comfortable smile. “Just tell me the bastard’s name, and things will be gold. I promise.”

“Everyone knows it, Sherry,” Petey said with a grin, but his smile quickly faded as his eyes shifted their gaze to her smooth crossed thighs, cradled by her micro black skirt. “Bleedin’ hell…,” the large man whispered, scooting a few inches from Sherry. “Don’t fucking move, shelia.”

Following Petey’s eyes, her own looked down at her lap. Her brown eyes widened in a heartbeat. Her orbs seemed to throb with a terror that plagued her entire body with a cold dread. “What…is…this?”

“It’s probably just some form of snake. I’ll just ring animal control, It won’t take a moment…” He had a bit more to say to calm her down, but his sentence was interrupted with a powerful scream.

Petey had gripped his mobile from the lump in his pocket. However, the scream brutally pierced his ear drums, forcing his gaze back to his companion. The sight caused his mouth to gape of its own accord. Australia was well known for deadly creatures, but he’d never seen anything like what he was witnessing now.

The small obsidian slug had stretched its body like elastic. Its elongating, slimy form stretched from her thigh, traversing the entirety of her chest and neck; the top of its body (what one might fashion to be its head) had enveloped her entire skull. Her head was fidgeting against the flesh of the creature. Its thin flesh inflated and deflated in small boils as though a plastic bag had wrapped itself around Sherry’s head.

Petey’s ears took in the muffled screams of help that pierced through the worm’s bulbous head. She was fighting with word of mouth. Despite the desperate cries for help, his own fear paralyzed him from making any sort of motion of rescue.

The boy didn’t move an inch, until a sound almost like the squeaking of plastic came through his ears. The boy looked down with his own shaking gaze. A second of the pliable slugs was slowly stretching its body up his large chest. Its featureless head was almost reflective due to the thick mucus coating its body. The glare was enough that Petey could see his frightened eyes staring back at him. “No… don’t come any closer,” he blubbered.

The worm seemed to have responded to his plea but not in the way Petey had hoped for. Its body stopped its crawling and stretching as it reached his collarbone. The top bit of its body seemed to angle upwards, quivering in a questioning manner. “That’s right, you twat, just go back the way you came…” He continued trying to feign some sort of bravery.

There was a silence that seemed to have lasted forever. Then suddenly the head of the body stretched upwards in a blackened blur. The formless head right in line with the Petey’s shaking lips. The head, an obsidian void slit horizontally, a gapping maul flapping backwards like loose flesh. The produced hole grew in size, both in height and width. The stretchy skin filling the frighten lad’s gaze with a new void. When jagged hooks began to form on the outer rim of the gummy hole, Petey finally let out his own scream. The black slug’s sick grimace moved forward, its gaping mouth plunging onto his head. The gleaming hooks sunk into his flesh, breaking through bone in a sick crunch.

The screams of both Petey and Sherry were soon replaced with the sucking sounds of the slugs covering their skulls. The sick noises seemed to drench the entire park, with a sort of supernatural reverie that made air thick with fear of the decidedly human nature. The lime blades of grass appeared to dive into shades of bracken. The cherry wood of the bench shifted to the colour of blood. Even the silhouettes of the welcoming trees turned into frightening sculptures of death.

“That should be enough,” a commanding voice broke through the curtain of dread. The voice was like bass dipped with honey.

A snap of twig ushered the voice’s owner as she stepped from the silhouetted trees. Like them, her body was devoid of any features. She stood tall, her bare feet stepping onto the cool grass. She, however, was careful not to step into the moon light. Instead, her piercing gaze stared at the dead couple. Slowly the slugs receded from Sherry and Petey, the obsidian forms exposing ivory skulls. Only the barest strings of flesh and muscle remained.

The cadavers fell heavily from the bench, crushing grass and peat in an earthen thud. The black slugs slid from the spent cadavers and onto the bed of green. They slinked through the grass in a slow but constant pace. Though their bodies looked no bigger, the movement was gradual and burdened.

The woman stood silently waiting. As they approached, she pulled her garment free and extended her arms to either side. Even with no light touching the woman, the outline suggested, under the robe, she was naked. The two obsidian worms disappeared as their shadow bodies met her feet. “Very good,” her Kingston accent spoke. She closed her robe in a quick flurry of black fabric. Turning on her heels, she stepped back into the silhouette of trees.

* * *

THE DEAF MUSICIAN’S MELANCHOLY ON WARPED VINYL
OTHERWISE,
ANOTHER CLAUSTROPHOBIC ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

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(Soundtrack by The Gorillaz)
by H.H. Neville

i. EVERY PLANET WE REACH IS DEAD

She sat alone in the gut of the massive transport, trying to avoid comparing it to a live beast. The metallic cargo hold was sac-like; a creature’s belly in which she now sat, its carrion. Bowed steel beams striped the length of the ship, reinforcing the exterior; a rib cage. A heavy whirlpool of air stirred by six massive propellers which she felt but could not hear; the monster’s roar. Given the circumstances, the thought seems morbid now.

A lone filament bulb in the ship that had bathed the hold sanguine red switched to green, waking her from her undesired reverie. She looked from the rear of the ship to the cockpit and found the comical features of Andy Leung, the co-pilot, looking back. He looked like an aging Hong Kong entertainer. His smashed nose that looked like a flattened tan plum swam strangely in his shallow cheeks. A wide, silly grin hung ever present from picture-railing lips. He looked hardly competent enough to run a razor over his stubbled chin, much less assist in flying aircraft.

He held his hand out, all five fingers extended for her to see. He mouthed the Mandarin word “?” for five. She didn’t hear his words. The sound-deadening buds clipped to her ears saw to that. He wasn’t dumb enough to vocalise them anyway. The People’s Republic of China had put a ban on all verbal communication shortly after the outbreak.

She steepled the points of her elbows across her knees, clasped her palms and battened her eyes. The gesture could be mistook for prayer, but she had long ago resigned from searching out help. Society’s gods, the armies of the world, even those in her teen years she battled alongside — the superpowered protectors — ultimately failed. All she had was herself. She reminded herself of that; took one long, overstored breath and rose to her feet.

Her fingers searched quizzically into the recesses of her slender frame; her gear was in order. She navigated the shivering craft, shook by turbulence toward the tail. She shot Andy a quick hand signal over her shoulder. On cue the attentive co-pilot grabbed for the lever to open the cargo doors and thrust down.

Painfully the massive doors unbarred, as if tormented by and afraid to reveal the horrors on the other side. Slowly the panorama filled with the scabbed over, picked apart leftovers of Shanghai.

To her left, a phlegmatic Yangtze River’s oily black pools burned orange like an eclipsed sun. The artificial neon of The Bund had long ago died. The remaining lights, like kamikaze moths crackling and sputtering, swallowed by flame. The Jin Mao Tower, a beacon in the Shanghai skyline – it’s needle shape commonly jabbing through cloud cover – was all but swallowed by smoke; the burning city’s ghosts.

To her right, she noticed less random destruction collecting on the flat roof of a nearby office building. Tiny sparks of fire wavered through the haze in a purposeful pattern; a signal:

S.O.S.

The word silently formed on her lips, “survivors.” At least, there were. This late into the infestation, the chances of uninfected still alive in the city were negligible.

The transmission of the virus to humans first occurred a few months prior. A popular MMO, “Capsule Takers,” was targeted for distribution. Investigations never uncovered the origin or Patient Zero, but methods for transmission were uncovered. The virus’ data packet attached itself to the physical manifestation of sound waves, infecting organic hearing receptors. From there, carriers spread the virus through further conversation.

It spread fastest and hit hardest in China, by way of the thousands of “farming” operations for the popular game.

The virus attacked communication and social constructs. By design it alienated potential survivors, made organisation impossible.

It didn’t really matter; she had to try. She had her LZ.

She rolled her neck across the valley of her shoulders, loosened her muscles. Without an extra thought, she sprinted through the hold and dove head first toward the dying city below.

* * *

GUN Dragon Heat aka Dragon Squad trailer
BANG

By Jason Kenney

The blast tossed him off his feet and into the side of a parked car. He fell to the ground, glass from the car’s window falling on him, mixing with rocks and debris that clattered across the pavement.

He tried to push himself up, his left arm giving as a shock of pain ran through his shoulder. He cried out but couldn’t even hear himself over the ringing in his ears. He tried his right arm, his shoulder fine, the glass digging in his hand minor as he clamored to his feet.

John Franklin tried to take a step but faltered, stumbled, caught himself on the car he’d hit. He shook his head, tried to clear the vertigo, but that only made it worse.

He quickly patted himself down, making sure he was all there, all parts accounted for. Keys in front right pocket, wallet in rear, gun holstered to his right hip. His cigarettes were missing from his shirt pocket, but those were replaceable. The lighter from his father was snug in his front left pocket. Minus a bum left shoulder and the ringing in his ears, he was whole.

John cursed but only heard it in his mind as he squinted through the dust at the chaos around him. Pieces of building, vehicles, people filled the street. Smoke billowed down and across the way, the gaping hole that used to be the front of a building peeking through the cloud of dust.

People were moving around him: most getting away, a few trying to get closer to see if there was anything to be done to help. No one was moving around the hole. No one could have survived whatever that was.

A hand on John’s shoulder got his attention. A balding man in glasses was at his side, mouthing something John couldn’t hear but what looked to be a question of whether or not he was all right. John nodded, gently pushed away from the man, and started toward the chaos; staggered there, paused, got his step, and kept going.

The man in the glasses grabbed his left arm. A jolt of pain brought a scream from John’s mouth, and the man let go. He stepped in front of John, seemed to want to stop him from going on, from trying to help. John shouted he was fine and pushed past the man in the glasses, who merely shrugged and followed John toward the chaos.

There was a woman standing in the middle of the street, crying, clutching something in her arms, but another man got to her before John, spirited her away. A man down the street was yelling something, pointing, seeming to take charge and try to direct those coming to help. John headed toward him but stopped as movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.

Someone was emerging from the hole in the side of the building, the dust and debris parting as he came toward the street, toward the gathered few first responders. He stepped out with a bag in one hand, another over his shoulder, a smile on his face.

The man in the glasses stepped past John, headed toward the emerging man, and seemed to be asking if he was all right. The man kept smiling, lifted his free hand, and pointed at the man in the glasses. The smiling man’s eyes began to glow, and suddenly the man in the glasses had the glasses on his face explode.

The man formerly in the glasses paused, his body hesitating a second before tumbling to the ground. The smiling man spun his arm around, pointing at another person near by. The eyes glowed again, watching as a watch exploded, removing a hand, sending another person down, making the smiling man laugh.

It was a fluid movement, one John had practiced most of his life for.

His father had taught him how to shoot a gun. Had instilled in him a respect for the weight on his hip and the responsibility that came with the right to carry it. His father spent twenty years in the force and only once had to draw his weapon while under fire.

His father drew a little too slow.

John practiced to never be too slow.

The smiling man with the glowing eyes turned his finger as John drew. A duel without ten paces. A burning rose in John’s gut, his chest, his entire body. And, for a moment, he felt like he was on fire.

And John Franklin pulled the trigger.

* * *

DUAL

Origin #1

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by Adrian J. Watts

When the first peal of thunder ripped through the quiet night of Melbourne, most people didn’t even bat an eyelid. That was, primarily, because they were asleep – but not everyone was tucked away in bed as the first crackle and boom! was followed by another, and then another.

Kye Prentice was one of those people. He didn’t sleep; not much, anyway. Instead, the sixteen-year-old sat at his desk, staring solemnly out of his window as torrent after torrent of rain ran down the surface of the glass, his own reflection flashing periodically as it was backlit by occasional bursts of lightning.

It was just another winter night for Kye. Rain pattered, lightning flashed, thunder roared, and the only thing to stand by him long enough to be considered anything remotely resembling a companion was the quiet moon, high above – and even that was often obscured by the dark clouds which hung over the city like a funeral pall, reflecting the lightning and reminded everyone and everything beneath them that that is exactly what they were: beneath them, The Things Below, the unimportant scum of the Earth.

He sighed resignedly and wondered what he could do to fill the hours until he had to get up for school. It had become a nightly tradition, but one which never stuck strongly enough with him during the day for him to properly prepare for it. Every night he cast his eyes over the rack of dusty, unwatched DVDs, the shelves of comics and novels (mostly read, but none more than once), the rarely-used television set, and the computer which busily searched the Internet for news on superheroes (of the four-colour variety, not those who had long-protected Pacific City, or the relatively new breed appearing in the United States, or even the armoured one which had recently started assisting fire fighters in his own city). Once the night came, none of it really appealed. It just sat there, looking out of place, like a solar panel buried nine feet under the ground.

The thunder roared again, but there was something different about it. It had taken on the opposite quality to the items that Kye found himself so casually dismissing once the midnight hours came – it seemed to truly belong, not just as an expected part of the ravaging storm beyond his bedroom walls, but as an integral part of the fabric of the night.

Then came the hooting.

And then the smashing.

Kye hurried to his window and yanked back the blinds. The street outside was filled by something Kye had never seen before. A cluster of people, their faces – illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning – more pale than anything Kye had seen before. Each person’s body was wrapped tightly in black-and-silver cloth, and each enthusiastically gripped a long, white, curved blade with which they hacked and stabbed at anything they found – cars, trees, fences.

It was a riot, and it was approaching Kye’s home. Fast.

Crap! he thought to himself. What am I supposed to do about this?

He quickly made his way across the room and scooped up his mobile phone, which was anchored to the wall by its charger. He dialed ‘000′ as he moved back to the window.

Someone must have called alre –

“AHH!” he yelped at fell backwards, onto the floor, the phone falling from his hand and skidding across the ground. It struck the skirting board on the wall facing the window and split open.

Something had appeared at the window, and, as Kye’s heart pounded furiously, he tried to figure out what it was. He took several long, deep breaths, and his racing mind and heart began to slow. The panic had passed, and he was able to consider the fact that what he had seen was simply one of the people marching down his street – not the hideous, terrifying, fish-like beast which flashed through his mind.

He looked around for anything he could use as a weapon and waited for the tell-tale crash! of glass that would tell him the thug was trying to get inside – but it didn’t come. The reason, Kye soon realised, was that the person didn’t need to smash the window or break down the wall. Somehow, the person was walking right through it.

A ripple effect spilled over the wall surrounding the area the figure was passing through, and Kye felt his chest tighten in panic again. He hadn’t found a weapon – the only thing his hand had been able to close around was one of the broken sides of his mobile. He cried out again and threw the plastic piece at the approaching… monster, he guessed it was – but his assailant was faster; it slashed forward with its shimmering white blade, which knocked the plastic aside.

“Stay back!” Kye yelled, but the monster kept coming, and soon the strain was simply too much. Kye noticed his vision beginning to blur, his fingers beginning to tingle – and an instant later, everything was black. He’d fainted.

Anthology 2 #70

Jason — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:39:50 +0000

“Wow, a real, live mob!”

I was stunned. Simply amazed. In all my months of being all heroic I had never stumbled across any sort of organized crime.

But, no, here I was dancing around bullets fired by some mob I happened to stumble across while patroling the harbor area of Pacific City one night.

It was pretty neat.

I leapt and rolled behind a crate and stayed there for a second while the gents on the other side cooled their jets. A couple of them decided that shooting through the crate would be a good idea.

“YOU IDIOTS!” shouted a heavily accented voice. “STOP FIRING!”

And they did.

“Do you idiots not realize what you are firing at?” said the voice again.

I didn’t, so, being sure to remain out of view, I turned around and hammered my fist into the side of the crate which broke away with ease. I quickly pulled the side apart and pushed through the packing peanuts and newspaper padding and was greeted with another case.

Only this one was perfectly labled with a completely recognizable symbol.

Biohazard.

“Find anything interesting?”

I looked up to see the man with the voice towering over me. The guy looked like a bull. A bunch of the cronies were also surrounding me, their guns perfectly aimed this time.

“You guys aren’t exactly Federal Express, are ya?” I asked, hoping that would be a nice and witty retort somewhat relevant to the situation.

It wasn’t.

Anthology 2 #70
Lost Adventures Of The ACU
Bush43
“Moist”
by Jason Kenney

The man with the voice grabbed the back of my collar, lifted me off the ground and threw me back into a pile of crates that must have been a few yards away.

My, this guy was strong.

I started to push myself up from the broken crates and felt his big ol’ fist connect with my face in a none too plesant manner, sending me back into the splintered wood.

“Get up,” he said, waiving me up.

“Nice accent,” I said, pushing myself up, “you sound like Yakoff Smirnoff.”

He punched me again, but this time he grabbed my shirt before I could crash back into the crates.

“I do not know who you are talking about, friend,” said the man, lifting me into the air, “but I do not like sound of your voice.”

He threw me again. I hit the floor and skid a bit before being stopped by a pillar. I looked up to notice the gunmen all standing at ease now, enjoying this wonderful little show.

I pushed myself up as the big guy came at me again. He thrust out his leg and kicked me in the gut, pushing me into the pillar and pinning me as he held his foot against me.

“Why must you wear silly mask?” asked the man with a grin.

“To protect you from my amazing good looks,” I said just above a whisper as I tried to breathe.

I brought my fists down into his leg and he yelped when his leg bent the wrong way.

The Russian accent guy pulled his foot out of my gut and I fell to my hands and knees on the floor, trying not to heave because, well, that’d be a mess in this Bush mask.

I sat up and pulled back as a foot whipped through the air where my face was just a second before.

“Careful,” I said, hopping to my feet, “somebody might get hurt.”

I stepped aside as he swung at me and then stumbled as he tried to put weight on his, thanks to me, sore leg. Then I just gave him a little nudge on his back and he fell face first onto the floor.

I crooked my arm, held it up, patted my elbow and fell ontop of the man, executing a perfect elbow drop into the Russian’s back.

I stood up and looked to the surrounding gun men who were not as at ease as they had been earlier.

“Any of you all want in on this?” I asked.

Then my legs were pulled from under me. My head hit the ground as I was whipped upside down and then lifted into the air just high enough to where the man’s knee fit perfectly into my face. I swung back and then forward again right into another knee that swung me far enough back to where he let me go and I hung in the air for a second before heading to the ground.

I caught myself with my arms, keeping my head from hitting the ground again, but that didn’t matter as the Russian gun stomped on the back of my head and put me face first into the concrete floor.

The man chuckled.

“I must thank you, friend,” said the man as he grabbed the back of my collar and lifted me up. “I have not had work out in very long time.”

“My pleasure,” I said as I lashed out and connected with the man’s jaw, stunning him briefly and making him drop me. I scrambled a few feet away from him and tried to steady myself in some sort of stance in case he came at me again. He shook his head and started to laugh.

“Oh,” he said with a smile, “this is good. This is very good. Let us play.”

He lunged at me and I tried to move out of the way, but he was faster than he looked and connected with a quick punch that made me stumble back. He came with another and I brought up my arm to block it, only to be hit by his other hand before I had a chance to react. He spun around with a high kick that would have hit my head if I hadn’t had fallen to the ground. I rolled as he once again tried to stomp on me.

He laughed again as I got back to my feet.

“I like you,” he said, “you do not stay down.”

“I like you too,” I said, panting for breath. “You’re like a big teddy bear. Hey, uh, mind if I ask what the hazardous stuff is for?” I asked, pointing to the crate.

He looked over his shoulder to see what I was pointing at.

“That?” he asked as he started to turn back. “Oh, that is…”

I cut him off with a swift kick in the nuts.

He stood there for a moment, his hands clutching his boys, his face scrunched like he ate something nice and tart. I just stood back, ready for him to pounce if the kick didn’t put him down.

But it did.

“No fair,” he wheezed as he fell to the ground.

The gunmen didn’t know what to do at the sight of their big leader guy falling down in horrible agony.

Neither did I for that matter.

But we all figured it out soon enough as I started to run and they started to shoot at me again.

I ran behind a bunch of crates and they stopped firing, so I assumed I was behind some forbidden goods. I stopped and listened carefully, trying to hear what they were doing. When I was sure I heard footsteps on the other side of the crates I leaned my back against the stack and pushed, toppeling the whole pile over and, ideally, pinning a few guys down.

I turned around, expecting to see chaos, only to be greeted by most if not all of the gunmen standing a safe distance from the fallen crates while the big guy pushed himself back to his feet.

Oops.

“Um, hey, guys,” I said.

They aimed.

***

She raised her head above the water momentarily to have a look around.

The docks were empty this time of night, but she knew that would change in the next hour. She looked behind her and out to sea. While she could not see it she knew the ship was there, she had been following it for the last couple of days, trying to figure out how to stop it.

The only plan that she could come up with that had a remote chance of working was to stop the boat while it was docked. And even that had a slim chance of success.

But she had to try.

She quickly looked back to the docks as she heard a commotion and then dove back under the water.

***

My ass tore from through the side of the warehouse and I tumbled down across the docks and stopped as I hit a post and bent weird backwards around it. Ouch.

The big Russian guy stepped through the beautiful hole I had made and lumbered towards me, a slight limp in his leg and grimmace on his face.

“You fight dirty, friend,” he said as he reached down for me.

“Hey, is that Millennium Man?” I asked, pointing behind the man. He didn’t even look. Eh, it was worth a shot.

His hand wrapped around my neck and he picked me up into the air. I tried to kick him in the nuts again but his hand covered his boys too quick. Then he punched me in the face nice and hard.

“You fight real dirty, friend,” he said, and then he brought me up, around and down, face first into the docks.

God, Alfonse would be so disappointed in me.

He lifted me back up and studied me for a moment, or, I think he did. It was all a blur at this point. I remember him slamming me face first into the docks again for good measure, I guess, and then I was brought back up. Now my mask was all twisted and I couldn’t see shit, but with my head reeling and little birdies singing it really didn’t matter all that much.

He shouted something in Russian I guess and some guys came running up and I felt them start to wrap something around me. I tried to struggle but a hard punch in the face stopped that.

So the had me all bound in no time.

The Russian lifted me above his head with both hands and walked towards the edge of the docks.

“You know I’m invulnerable, right?” I think I kinda slurred as if in a drunken stupor.

“But you must breathe, yes?” he replied.

Oh yeah.

And then I was in the air.

***

She heard the splash and started to panic, thinking she must have been spotted.

She swam from the docks and stopped when she felt she was a safe distance and brought her head above the water again, affording herself a look back. All but one of the men who had stepped out on the docks walked away while the one remaining looked into the water.

After a few moments he nodded, turned, and left the docks as well.

She went back under the water and started to swim towards whatever they had dropped in.

***

I was squirming like hell, trying to get out of the ropes before I died.

Crap, this sucked. So much for the superhero thing. Not even a year into it and here I am drowning.

I felt darkness starting to close in as I tried so hard not to breathe, not yet. I knew I was reaching the point of no return, soon I’d pass out and the body would inhale for me.

Thanks, body.

And then I thought I was dreaming. Or having a near death experience.

The first thing I saw was her blonde hair, shimering as the moonlight cut through the water and caught it just right. And then her face.

I swore she was an angel.

A half naked angel at that, with a fish tail instead of legs.

A mermaid?

She grabbed at the ropes that bound me and started to untie me.

I passed out before I could even consider coping a feel.

***

She knew she should have left him there. He would only be in the way and probably get hurt. But she couldn’t leave him there to drown.

She hoped he was not one of the bad guys.

They broke the surface of the water under the dock and the man gasped for air and panted. She quickly covered his mouth and lifted a finger over her lips with a gentle “shhhh”. He nodded as he continued to take deep breaths.

He whispered something to her but she ignored him, instead listening for other sounds, other people, other things.

She turned to look out to sea and could now see the lights of the approaching ship. She let go of the man and dove back under the water without looking back at him.

***

“Thanks,” I whispered, a combination of because she told to be quiet and that was all I could muster at this point. I continued to gulp for air as she completely ignored me and looked out to sea. I glanced out there as well and saw a ship approaching, a light flashing three pulses before going out.

And then she dove back into the water, her fish-like tail breaking the surface momentarily and then sinking in behind her.

“Hey!” I whispered, looking into the water while trying to tread, realizing she had been holding me up. I kicked off my shoes and still went under. I franticly shed my suit coat and then swam back to the surface. I swam towards a ladder on the dock and held on as I reached up and pulled the bottom of the mask away from my neck, letting the water drain out as I tried to catch my breath.

Damn, a suit and mask was not very good for swimming in. Not that this was a planned dunk, mind you, but I vowed to be better prepared in the future.

I looked around to try and see where the girl had gone but couldn’t see her anywhere.

And then there was a commotion on the dock above me.

The Russian was shouting something in, well, Russian. And from the tone I’d say it was a command of sorts.

Sounded like they were on the move.

I looked back out and noticed the ship approaching this dock and then knew what was happening.

Whatever that biohaz stuff was, they were getting it on that boat and gone.

***

She swam alongside the ship, following it as it slid towards the dock. She tried to think of how exactly to enact her plan and then realized that it was all too much for her. She was one, they were many, and they had weapons. But she had no choice. She must stop them, or die trying.

***

I climbed up the ladder and took a peek over the edge, quickly ducking back down. I raised my head again for another look. No one had noticed me, they were all facing the other way or towards the ship, waiting for it to pull in.

Then I saw the crates, among them the one I had torn into. They were stacked on a pallet of some sort with chains leading from the corners and connected together to the top, ready for the hook to load it on the boat.

Yep, I was right, they were getting ready to ship that stuff somewhere. And, considering it wasn’t very friendly stuff, I had to assume they didn’t have very friendly intentions for it.

I sat on a rung of the ladder and quickly removed my tie and dress shirt, dropping it into the water beneath me. Being all wet and stuff, it was only going to get in the way. I was looking less and less like a well dressed George W. Bush and more and more like some guy in a mask.

Fair enough.

I stood back up and glanced onto the dock again, trying to formulate a plan of action.

There were bad guys on the docks and the boat, but the boat was the larger threat. It could get farter away faster. I thought about running and calling the cops, let them deal with this, but they’d take too long. All the other hero folks were probably busy as well. I wonder what Romanov thinks of this stuff going on under his nose? I’ll have to remember to ask him later.

It was up to me.

And maybe the mermaid or whatever she was.

But what could she do, being a mermaid and all?

***

She grabbed onto a rung of the ladder built into the side of the boat and held on as the ship slowed while it pulled up to the dock. She started pulling herself up, emerging from the water and looking around for a moment to make sure she was clear.

She was on the other side of the boat from the dock and no one from above was looking over, so she continued to pull herself up.

To her waist she looked human, whether underwater or not, and beyond that was her tail. But as it was exposed to air it quickly changed color, texture and shape, becoming a pair of legs. She continued to pull herself up until her entire body was out of the water and then she used her legs as well, climbing up the side of the ship.

When she reached the top she looked over and around. Most of the crew was working towards the dock while one man looked out to sea and another out to the read of the harbor, both with guns, keeping guard. She ducked back over the edge when the man looking out over the harbor turned towards her.

She stayed there, quiet, hiding for a moment, listening to his foot steps on the deck. She looked up and waited.

The man leaned over, looking forward at first and then looking down.

As soon as he saw her she had grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him overboard.

***

I watched as a crane from the boat lowered it’s hook and then men on the dock attached it to the chain around the crates. One man signaled up to the boat and the crane started to retract the chain and hook, pulling the crates up slowly. I readied myself as I watched it raise.

When it was about five feet up I made a break for it.

I leapt onto the deck and sprinted towards the crates, pushing past a couple people in my way and ignoring the shouts as I was noticed. I jumped and reached out, the crates at least seven feet off the ground by the time I reached them, my hands barely grabbing onto the edge of the pallet holding them in the air.

The man with the accent shouted something as I braced for the gunfire. None came. Must’ve said don’t shoot. Smart boys. There were shouts on the deck of the boat and the crane stopped pulling the crates up and then started to lower them again. I quickly swung myself onto the pallet and climbed up the crates, bracing myself by grabbing the hook as I suddenly felt the crates lurch. I heard a grunt and looked over to see a hand reach the top of the crates and then a face.

“Hello, friend,” said the man with the accent, a huge grin on his face.

***

She was thankful that the man’s cries were muffled by the commotion on the other side of the ship. She was also thankful that she was able to grab the gun from the man’s hands as he fell into the water below. She leapt onto the deck of the boat with the gun ready, firing at the other look out before he even had a chance to see her.

She cringed at the noise the gun made and shuddered with the kick back.

She turned and saw she had the rest of the crew’s attention now, and many of them were turning to her, the rest keeping their sights over the other side of the ship.

The men on the boat were stunned at first. She was beautiful, her wet, blonde hair tousled and sticking to her head and hanging past her shoulders, resting on her naked body. Her curves were perfect, as if she were created out of imagination or simply sent down from Heaven. And many found the tool of death in her hands profoundly erotic.

When she fired upon them they came out of their daze, realizing that goddess or not, this woman was trying to kill them and, ultimately, the enemy.

She stood firm as she fired, the weapon’s automatic fire doing most of the work for her. The gun ran out of ammunition too quick for her liking, but she wasted no time tossing the gun to the side propelling leaping backwards into the air, flipping over the railing, and diving back into the water before the men on the ship fired even one shot.

***

I swiftly kicked the guy in his face before he even pulled himself on top of the crates with me. He fell back but one hand grabbed onto one of the chains supporting the crates and held on. I looked over briefly to see him kicking and trying to get back on the crates.

I jumped up and grabbed onto the chain from the crane and started to climb up. As soon as I started up someone started firing at me, the bullets hitting but falling off. Just because I’m invulnerable doesn’t mean those things don’t sting. I dropped back to the crates and they stopped firing.

The guy with the accent started climbing again and then there was a thud as the crates settled back down on the docks. Crap.

I looked around and saw the gunmen on the dock advancing and the guy with the accent finally getting back on top. I quickly crouched down and punched my hands into the crate beneath me.

My Russian friend kicked me just as I grabbed onto the contents of the crate. I fell off the stack, but held on tight to a wonderful case of that beautiful biohazardous material.

No one came near me as I stood up and lifted the case over my head.

“That’s right!” I shouted. “Who’s the bad ass now?” I looked around and shook the case, spooking everyone around as they stepped back. The Russian leapt off the crates and slowly walked towards me.

“Friend, please,” he said, his hands held out in front of him, “please put that down, you do not know what you are doing.”

“Sure I do,” I said, “stopping you. Put your guns down!” I shouted. “All of you!” The gunmen look at one another and then started laying their guns on the ground. “That’s right,” I said. “HEY!” I shouted to the Russian who stopped advancing towards me. “Stay right there.”

“Please, you are only killing yourself, friend,” said the Russian.

“And you,” I said, and he nodded with a shrug, “and I’m stopping you from using this.”

“But you do not know what you are stopping us from,” said the Russian.

“I don’t give a rats ass,” I shouted.

I looked over as the crane on the ship started to pull the crates up again. The Russian took that opportunity to charge at me. I brought the case down on his head and it split open. I leapt back as the contents poured all over him.

His howl was the most unnerving thing I had heard in a very long time. I stepped back as he reached out for me, the toxic mess running down his body, eating away his clothes, his flesh.

I ran and leapt onto the rising crates as the gunmen began to fire at me again. Even with me on the crates they kept firing.

One stray bullet tore into a crate.

There was a small explosion first, followed a second later by another. Then the entire group exploded.

I was thrown into the air and over the boat that was leaning from the blast.

Then I hit the water and blacked out.

***

The blast tore through the dock and threw burning chemicals onto the gunmen who never had a chance. The Russian was lifted into the air and landed with a splash a hundred yards away in the harbor.

People on the boat ran as the explosion tore a hole in the ship and it began to sink.

She sat and watched from a few yards back as the boat started to tip. A man aflame and flying through the air caught her attention right before he hit the water a few feet away. She quickly dove under the water.

It was the same man she had rescued earlier, she noticed as she swam next to him, though he was now missing the mask and holes had been burned through his clothing. She grabbed onto his limp body and once again pulled him to the surface and swam towards a nearby beach away from the sinking ship and the fire while he gasped for air.

***

I thought I was having a near death experience.

I was on a beach, waves gently lapping at the shore and my feet as I lay there, staring into a beautiful night sky. Then I saw her, her hair dangling down, gently touching my face as she moved inches above it.

She leaned down and tenderly kissed my forehead.

“Good job,” she said in a soothing voice so light and heavenly. And then she pulled away.

I sat up to see her running back into the surf. I watched as her naked body dove into the water and then a fin broke the surface behind her and slid back under.

A short distance away was the docks of Pacific Harbor, a fire blazing and a ship sinking. I watched as police, fire and rescue arrived and hoped that whatever that chemical had burned off.

I looked back out to the water, hoping to see the girl again.

I stared at the surface for thirty minutes before I gave up and headed back into the heart of Pacific City.Trilogy of Terror film

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Anthology 2 #69

Karl — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:19:01 +0000

“Beta testing is ready to begin Doctor Biggles,” Doctor Forbes proudly waved his arms like a game show person cheerfully displaying the product.

The blonde vet nodded in approval. “Did we have to amputate all the limbs and replace them though?”

“Yes,” he solemnly replied, “it seemed as though the gangrene was intentionally placed on specific spots to warrant amputation.”

“Bastards,” she sneered and hit the nearby cart with her fist.

Forbes continued, “Don’t worry. I have given it top of the line equipment: extensive-retractable double jointed maneuverability limbs, 40,000 pound per square inch grip in hands and feet, virtual reality display, ultra sonic, infrared, and radar detectors, a quartz memory database, 1.7 Gigohertz CPU, fiber optic processors, sign language translation protocols per your specifications, and a partridge in a pear tree. I could go on, but there are loads of little surprises I put into the cybernetics.”

“Good, at least that nature wench will leave us alone once we’ve done her dirty work. The poor creature didn’t deserve what happened,” Biggles caressed the synthetic skin covering the cybernetic arm.

Forbes nodded in agreement, “Yes, but we will learn if all this work will be worth it. We have no idea what that Ecological terrorist is going to use this cybernetic gorilla against.”

“Speak of the devil” the female vet wished for once she had the a shotgun in hand.

The antelope morphed into a male figure as the horns on his head seemed to emulate the Norse Aesir Loki.

“The very ground speaks to us, and told us of the completion of Beta testing on your part. Now, it is our turn. Testing must be done to ensure you have fulfilled your end.”

“Well, I have a few more glitches in the system that I need to correct. Your cybernetic gorilla, or Super-Ape or whatever, will be ready within the hour,” Doctor Forbes announced.

“I can bide my time for now,” the Fertile Crescent male intently watched Doctor Forbes as he made the modifications.

Biggles paced around the room as she decided to give the Fertile Crescent denizen the third degree. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell us why you chose a creature of nature.”

“There is a war which you can not hope to comprehend. A war which will only mean the destruction of our land. We once chose a human to stand for our ideals, but he soon went back to his old ways. It is now the territorial instinct of an animal that will suit us best.”

The entity produced an apple seemingly out of thin air and began to eat it.

“So, what kind of test are you planning to use?” she continued to ignore the annoyed stare of the disciple of the emerald empire.

“The Super-Ape as you call it must face the four elements of the Earth given life. If it cannot survive the elements, it would not survive the denizens of Heaven or Hell.”

Biggles gave a curious look.

“Heaven and Hell?”

“As I stated, it is out of your realm of thought. And, not quite anything like you see at the Dimensional Reality Theaters,” the entity threw the core of the apple on the floor as it melted right before the Doctors’ eyes.

“Neat parlor trick, but I’ve seen a lot better,” Biggles looked at Forbes with an impatience glance.

Forbes seemed to pick up the pace a bit, as the entity stared out into empty space. Biggles continued to pace the floor, as she was trying to comprehend what the raving revenant of nature she had stated. There was always the standard ecological battle going on in the here and now, but she saw little point of it in the afterlife.

There was no true hallowed ground to wage over in either Heaven or Hell. Then, she realized the answer was there in front of her face.

“So, I guess you’re nothing more than a combination of overactive imaginations of humans and creatures alike. Most of us on this planet have some percentage of the brain that’s not being used. I’m assuming you make up for at least some if it.”

The entity turned to Biggles as he sneered.

“I may have been a little too hasty in my judgement. Your theory is as you say… shit, but you are on the right track. As I said, it is something that you can not comprehend. Now Forbes, I trust you are done.”

“Yes, modifications are complete,” Forbes released the manacles and helped the Super-Ape down.

The Super-Ape spotted Forbes and Biggles and gave a cheerful hoot. It had been fixed again by the pair, and hopefully it would not have to come in again. Then, the Super-Ape looked at the other and it was as though a floodgate had been opened to release all the memories.

The Greyback made a motion with its right hand. As it did so, the fiber optic processors accessed information from the quart database. The CPU instantaneously came up with the best translation for what the Super-Ape was trying to sign.

“Jerk-off.”

“I guess there might be still a couple bugs left,” Forbes winked at Biggles.

The entity just stared at the Super-Ape for a moment.

“Do not be so bold. You are part of us now.”

The gorilla flashed yet another brilliant array of signs.

“Up yours ???? ????? ???? Dark Honeymoon movies

,” the computer voice droned.

Biggles patted Forbes on the shoulder.

“It’s amazing how the Super-Ape doesn’t react to the voice like some demon that’s possessed it. I think you’ve outdone yourself this time.”

“Actually, it’s a simple trick. The CPU activates neurons in the mind, and makes the Super-Ape think it is giving its normal hoots and hollers,” Forbes proudly beamed at his accomplishment.

The entity stared at the Greyback for a moment. The creature’s cybernetic arm was raised and smacked the animal in the face.

“What the hell is going on

?” the computer voice droned for the ape.

The Fertile Crescent entity smiled.

“The very metal which was made to fix you is part of us, part of our territory. We can control this as we see fit. So whether you like it or not, you will do as told.”

“You have no control over me,” the voice boasted.

The man simply smiled.

“The silicon created for your central processing unit is a part of nature. It does not matter if man has reshaped it to fit his needs.”

For emphasis, the Greyback fell to the floor and began to convulse with seizures. The entity ignored the stares of Biggles and Forbes, as he allowed the Super-Ape to reassert control.

“What happened buy The Omega Man ?”

The GreenWorlder put a hand on the ape’s chin and raised its face to meet his.

“I did. Now, you must endure our test. Or, suffer more dire consequences.”

Biggles and Forbes prepared for whatever journey lay ahead. The entity took note and stopped them from proceeding.

“You are not essential to this task. You are to stay here and await further instruction.”

Biggles and Jones looked at each then at the entity.

“Further instruction?” they chimed in unison.

The other did not elaborate on his meaning, and escorted the gorilla out of the veterinary clinic.

Anthology Two Presents…
Super-Ape:
“Weathering the Elements”
by Karl V.

The plains stretched out into a horizon of nothing but towering tropical trees. The long grass tickled the fur on the knees of the Super-Ape. The gorilla took note of another antelope appearing from what seemed out of the ground itself.

As it transformed into a feminine human form, it raised its hands to the air. A gust of wind shifted and made itself into a partly visible specter. She next pointed to the ground, as the earth that was moved took the form of a skinny rock monster. She turned up her hands as though to summon something deep within the Earth itself. A fiery form bursted forth from the hole in the ground, as it took on an apparition appearance similar to its airy brother. Again, the Fertile Crescent entity pointed to the heavens as a dark thunder cloud poured its being into another form. This one a spindly watery sprite.

The new entity spoke.

“These are the four forms of Nature given life. To survive this test, you must be at harmony with yourself.”

Super-Ape picked at its fur, to rid itself of the new fleas that began to make lunch of its life blood. It returned the favor by eating any that it got off its skin. The new entity simply pointed at Super-Ape as the four Elements began their attack.

First, Air created a vacuum beneath Super-Ape’s feet as the gorilla was literally sucked to the ground. Next, Earth opened a hole big enough for Super-Ape to fall into, and closed it on the creature.

Fire joined in the fray as it heated the ground surrounding Super-Ape thereby creating a natural oven.

Finally, Water added its own deluge of pain by creating a stream of water which forced Super-Ape right back out of the ground. The Four Elements stared as a shiny metal orb landed to the ground. Then, all the metal became lined as it resembled a huge soccer ball. As the lines continued to form, the plates began to move and shift into each other slowly revealing the ape within the shell.

Computer Directive: Initiate Alpha Brain Wave pattern. Assume full motor and processing controls. Evaluate and Assess current situation. Analyze statement by subject designated GW4 for any variance of definitions.

The animal took on a whole new demeanor. Its eyes analyzed everything about the Four Elemental Beings. The Four were taken aback for a moment, and then gave each other a nod. They knew this was Super-Ape’s ace in the hole, now it was time for theirs.

Fire shot forth a stream of cold dry ice onto the gorilla’s chest.

Super-Ape’s body flinched in agony, as its CPU was expecting a flaming red inferno and therefore setting the infrared to put up the armor over a certain degree of Celsius. The great beast’s mind trapped in the waking nightmare wanted to flee from the pain. The CPU instantly added this new equation to its fold, hopefully protecting its host more efficiently and not causing as many anomalies to its alpha pattern.

Super-Ape immediately put up protective chest armor, as the addition of nanotech acted to quickly heal the frigid burn dealt by the Elemental, while the beast’s mind wandered playfully to that of the female pink skin that helped heal it. The CPU figured out a method to quickly eliminate three of the Elemental foes.

Fire and Water dived at Super-Ape, as it dodged and made the two collide. The two passed each other, as Water turned into steam. The condensation reformed into Water, as Fire looked over its dazed comrade. Fire and Water simply shook their heads as they continued to chase the possessed Super-Ape. The beast still had nightmares cursing its forced sleep as it evaded the pink troll-like predators.

Earth was waiting for the herded Super-Ape, as it slammed a small rocky fist into its chest armor . It was forced back as Air created another vacuum which double the force of the throw.

Super-Ape landed with a Judo master’s precision, as it quickly got up from the blow with little damage done besides a dent in its armor. It noticed the trio of Fire, Water, and Earth chasing it as Air stood by for another possible set up. It activated its two spring loaded feet, as it landed right on top of Earth. Earth quickly shifted form into that of sand.

As Super-Ape sank up to its waist, Fire and Water smiled at the opportunity of free shots. As they neared within a foot of the Greyback, it activated its jet rockets at full power.

As it was lifted into the sky, Super-Ape’s arm changed into a big cannon like attachment. It aimed at Fire, who scoffed at the device. Super-Ape fired a load of sand at Fire, who let it simply burn up by increasing its intensity. It took the opportune moment and fired a shot of dry ice from the attachment.

Fire dived to avoid the vaporizing missile as it looked down and realized what it had done too late. Earth was still in its sand form, obviously shaken for the resounding noise created by the rockets. Fire and Earth collided as the sand was super heated.

Water wanted revenge for this infraction upon its Elemental brothers as it charged Super-Ape. The CPU changed its other arm into a small blender like shape. It lowered the blender attachment into the superheated sand and proceeded to mix. Meanwhile, it activated the other attachment and simply sucked the Water elemental into the cannon. As the sand turned into glass, Super-Ape applied the Water elemental to cool it down. As Water started to reform, the gorilla shaped the large glass around the orb like mist. The slumbering primordial mind imagined falling from a tree, its arm breaking with a snap, as it laid howling in pain.

Meanwhile, the CPU motivated Super-Ape proudly produced a veritable genie in a bottle, as the beast simply laid the unique artifact on it’s side.

“Now I need the ship The Blues Brothers move

,” the CPU boasted per program parameters, as it was forgetful of the last Elemental.

Air created a vacuum surrounding the area around Super-Ape.

The CPU quickly put armor stored inside the cybernetics around the rest of the gorilla’s body and a clear bubble over its head, as it was made to look like a veritable astronaut.

Air sneered and let the atmosphere back into the area. The forced implosion of air made the armor almost buckle from the strain. Air created more vacuums acting like fists for the ethereal Elemental.

Super-Ape reeled back from the blows, although the armor still continued to hold. Its CPU still acted for the brutish simple mind that its host had, but it quickly assessed that Air’s actions were primal.

Re-activate brain wave patterns to normal parameters. Manual control of outer extremities re-engaged.

Super-Ape looked dazed for a moment, as though it had been rudely woken up from a peaceful slumber. It noticed the unique clothes around it, and didn’t care much for them.

It was hit with a whip of air, as Super-Ape snorted in pain. It looked to see its enemy, as it looked like nothing more than a barely visible outline. It figured it was a pink skin predator, who was attempting to pummel it to death with its bare fists.

Super-Ape reacted with a rage as it swiped at the supposed rival revenant. Air was trying to keep itself together as the beast’s fists constantly made its form go every which way. Air tired of the intrusion upon its person and created a vacuum to send the gorilla back.

Super-Ape easily got up from the fall as the natural hone instincts of an experienced fighter resided within the beast. It quickly noticed its surroundings as open plains, and it would do better to be lost in the trees than be dead. It gave a last snort and bounded toward the closest patch of forest. Air reacted with more of it airlessness attacks, as it kept Super-Ape from going anywhere near its intended destination.

Super-Ape attempted a variety of patterns, before it realized what Air was doing. Its simple mind told it to repeat a pattern as it would repeat footsteps on the jungle ground to confuse enemies. Air was shocked as Super-Ape used one of its vacuums to send itself hurling to the foliage it so desired.

Air gave hesitant chase, as it kept a very close Elemental eye on the beast.

Super-Ape reached the trees before Air, as Air used another vacuum to pull the beast from the trees.

Super-Ape’s primitive mind easily equated Air’s dislike for heights, as it persisted to go into the tallest, biggest trees for cover. As the constant game of Cat and Mouse played out, Air became weary of the struggle. It gave up the chase as it met a big black bulge blocking its way. Soon, it realized what that bulge was.

Super-Ape breathed in deeply through its nose, as what was left of Air was processed through the beast’s lungs.

The Greyback, finally content that the pink skinned camouflaged hunter had given up its pursuit, ambled down the trees.

The Fertile Crescent entity approached Super-Ape with an impressed gaze.

“You do well for a creature of instinct. These trees need to breath as much as you do. It was only a matter of time before Air was split into so many fractions it no longer could keep together.”

Super-Ape simply plucked at an insect on the ground and promptly ate it. The CPU activated the voice.

“Thank you for the kind compliment.”

“Forbes has married the technology of the ground with the primitive mind very well. I will inform him of his success.”

The entity began to escort Super-Ape back to the lab.

The Cold Academy #5

Jericho — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:06:22 +0000

31.

Reymundo “Rey Rey” Salazar believed in the power of shine.

Painstakingly decked out in the finest gear, Rey Rey’s five foot four frame bobbed languidly on the corner decked out in crisp grey LRG jeans and the latest A Bathing Ape’s attention hungry hoodies. The severe angels of his birdlike jaw supported a pair of thirsty eyes and a stone chiseled grimace. His head moved to the beat of Mobb Deep’s “Trife Life” despite of his obvious indifference to his current situation. To him at that precise moment in time, rocking to the poetry of Prodigy’s flow was a mere formality, adornment as necessary as the ice on his ear and the platinum chain on his neck. They too were nothing more than pieces of wardrobe he slipped on like the shirt on his back.

Standing on the corner of Cleveland and Erie at three in the morning wasn’t enough for Rey Rey. With every throb of the bass, he wore the glow of probable cause with pride.

Being born into the rugged culture of Harmony projects taught Rey Rey about life as the target of suspicion, but it was the sting of the blunt handle of a patrolman’s pistol the first time he got rolled that schooled him in the futility of fighting it.

“It is what it is,” someone told him once. “Why the fuck fight it?”

Words that opened whole new worlds to the once fresh faced Reymundo Salazar, words the never came from parents or teachers. The same words that inevitably transformed an angry, naive young man with the potential in the world into the brazen, hard bitten soldier trying to keep warm on the corner in the middle of the night.

Back then, Rey Rey was intrigued by the power of developing a knee bending curve-ball. Now all he was concerned about was copping the freshest pair of dunks and the stash of crack cocaine he hid behind an empty tenement that, by the end of the night, would enable him to do so.

Rey Rey was a tout pushing for Jamal “Pastel” Perkins. His job was to stand outside key locations around the projects and rekindle to certain parts of the public a love affair with a special little something that they long thought lost. He was the pimp, the matchmaker and the lighthouse that would lead the most wayward of souls back to safe harbor.

All for a modest fee, of course.

Ever since the capes pushed the beast out of the projects during the fall of Harmony, this line of work was scarce and hard to come by. When word came down from the Heights that a new heavy was rolling into town and needed footmen, Rey Rey couldn’t pass up the opportunity. The lifestyle of his cousins before him made it impossible not to. A future bagging groceries at his uncle’s bodega couldn’t provide him the kind of glamour Rey Rey longed for.

He only regretted it for a second as he tried to breathe warmth into his numb fingers.

“Fuckin’ fiends,” Rey Rey blew into his hands. “Where they at when you really need ‘em?”

Rey Rey cursed not having cigarettes and the fact that he wasn’t addicted to them. They would’ve added that little extra juice to the thug image he so fervently fostered. They would’ve at least warmed him up a bit in the meantime.

With a quick flip of his cellphone, it was decided that it was finally time to cuts his losses and call it quits. He did have early classes to ditch after all.

After a barely audible curse at his luck, Rey Rey started his trek back to his ground stash.

It sure ain’t like this in the movies, he thought.

“Just wait ’til the real shit gets here,” Rey Rey told the empty streets. “I’m gonna be ballin’ for real.”

He crossed Huron St. without incident and wondered if last night’s sales were a fluke. Three days on the job and Rey Rey already worried if he was over the hill. One step onto W. Superior with The Diplomat’s “Crunk Musik” beginning its assault on his headphones, and a strange rattle stopped him in his tracks.

“Who’s there?”

Rey Rey turned around, stupidly hoping for a harmless customer to come stumbling out of an alley with a fistful of hundreds.

The rattle then became a series of rapid thumps, like sneakers slapping concrete. The sound surrounded him. Rey Rey’s head swung from one direction to the other, empty sidewalk to sleeping cars to darkened windows.

Nothing.

The echo of what he knew to be footsteps were replaced by the banging of his pulse in his ear. The adrenaline shot through his system, suddenly reversing his body temperature. He began to sweat inside his $400 hoodie.

“Yo, who the fuck’s there?!”

Rey Rey instinctively grabbed for the back of his jeans for a gun that he knew wasn’t there.

“I ain’t playin’ man!”

“Shhh…”

Rey Rey felt a whisper in his ear.

Nothing.

Rey Rey’s body twisted behind him expecting something along the lines of a pop followed by eternal darkness, the gangsta’s fate. He caught himself before he tasted pavement and booked it for his stash.

Rey Rey surprised himself with the speed of his retreat. He imagined himself at Wrigley Field wearing the pinstripes at the bottom of the ninth of a tied game stealing second. With each passing gallop, Reymundo Salazar suddenly regretted his choice more and more.

Pants halfway down his ass, Rey Rey grabbed at a street light and launched himself right down Chicago Ave. Hurtling back towards Harmony, his lungs in flames, Rey Rey thanked himself for not having cigarettes.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!”

When his sneakers felt the sensation of soft dirt, Rey Rey stopped and skidded on his knees. His hands dug furiously at the ground, fingers squirmed for the shape of his hidden treasure. Its bulk firmly in his shaking hands, Rey Rey yanked it out of the ground like the broken root of a tree, like his father did a million times before on the lawns of Chicago’s suburbs to put food on their table.

It was after he slammed the plastic baggie into his hoodie when Rey Rey realized that the sound of whatever was after him was gone.

As he sat there on his knees with enough weight on him to put him away for a very long time, Rey Rey held his breath and prayed.

“Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo…”

Rey Rey felt that back of his skull crack. He felt weightless as he fell face first into the hole he dug with his own hands. The last image he would remember was that of a person not unlike himself shrouded in a ratty blue hooded sweatshirt relieving him of his cargo.

It was faceless and framed in the growing darkness of unconsciousness, faceless except for the grey bandana it wore over its mouth.

As Reymundo Salazar lapsed into slumber, the hooded sweatshirt leaned down to feel for a pulse before it worked its way into its victim’s jeans. It held Reymundo Salazar’s cellphone in his hand and examined it for a moment.

Satisfied by its bounty, the hooded sweatshirt gently turned Reymundo Salazar on his back and playfully patted him on the chest.

“Fresh gear,” it said.

Three days later, the hooded sweatshirt would appear again outside the Spy Bar for two more of Rey Rey’s associates.

Out in public and against higher numbers, the results would be the same.

The hooded sweatshirt’s confidence grew with each run.

And why shouldn’t it?

Its training was finally over.

The Cold Academy #5
“The Backpack Generation”
Part Five
by Jericho Vilar

32.

Khalil Caldwell sat silently on the stoop of his apartment. His gaze boiled inside the milky white of his eyes as they scanned the lifeless crater across the street. Nothing happened, nothing changed in the 18 years worth of sleepless nights he spent on that stoop. Nights he spent waiting, wishing, hoping for something to appear, bright and new, that wasn’t there the night before.

After the first three months, he was teased by the construction of wire fencing that circled the crater. Six months after that, his heat skipped a beat at the sight of earth movers and various other machinery littering the scalded soil. Two weeks of gut churning inactivity later, his soul was broken when, in the middle of the night, the one clear cut sign of progress disappeared from right under his nose.

Khalil Caldwell was 9 years old when the city of Chicago first wounded his spirit.

Months turned into years and Khalil felt every second of it from the bottom step of his stoop. Each passing tick of the clock callously mocked his patience, yet his determination didn’t waver. They won’t leave it like this, he would tell himself as the lights of what was once the Cabrini-Green Housing Projects were extinguished for the night. They wouldn’t leave us like this.

With his childhood riddled with abandonment, adolescence provided Khalil with the gifts of height, body hair and an anger far from the standard fare usually given to young people in his age bracket. Instead of lashing out towards the world, his parents or authority in general, his anger was sharpened and focused on the void created by the crater and the specific body of government that promised to fill it. Khalil Caldwell never banged, he studied. He never slang, he worked. He didn’t write rhymes, he wrote petitions. Every one of his movements were naively calculated and painstakingly planned. Every free moment desperately chugged towards the moment when someone would finally listen to a young boy’s plea to save his dying neighborhood.

Khalil Caldwell was sixteen when the city finally broke his heart.

The letter was cold and impersonal. There were no emotions behind the blocks of type written words. It was the kind of response someone much better than you would send out to the hundreds of thousands of people who it didn’t have time for or enough status for it to care. It was crafted to appease the ignorant and sound graciously polite while doing it. To Khalil, the worst insult came in the form of the Mayor’s office letterhead emblazoned on the top.

Khalil Caldwell stood in front of the wire fence partition that separated him from the scar cut into the flesh of his home the night he received the city’s answer to his cries. Fingers locked through the rings of steel, he forced himself towards the realization that some wounds would never be healed and the only way for someone to understand your pain was to inflict it on them.

He spat on the ground where cracked sidewalk met disaster zone.

“Maybe then, they’ll listen,” Khalil uttered.

Khalil, now 26, replayed each moment from his lonely post and finished the statement he started years ago.

“Now they’ll have to.”

From behind him, the front door of his building opened allowing Tyronn Pines to reach down and slap him on the shoulder.

“E’yo.”

Turning his head, Khalil broke sight from the dream that had always eluded him to the stern menacing visage of his unofficial second in command.

“You got word?” he asked bluntly.

Tyronn motioned his head for them to head back up to the apartment.

“Rob and your man Jack are on the line. They sayin’ we got a problem.”

Khalil shook his head, he wasn’t a stranger to disappointment.

“Story of my life, nigga,” Khalil replied as he made his way up the stairs.

***

33.

Hostage movie full

Standing silently on the corner of E. Superior and Rush, Ryjan Allen knew the importance of proper accessorization. Despite the effortless elegance of how the crisp black suit hugged his frame, he still felt the nagging sensation that something was missing. After adjusting his tie for what seemed to be the millionth time, Ryjan carefully considered the lighting situation of the scene he found himself in. The warm glow from the bustling Giordano’s Restaurant behind him and the moonlit skyline above were quickly measured like stage lighting before he took a short step backwards consciously letting the clean lines of his suit melt into the shadows. Looking down towards the sidewalk and tilting the short brim of his black porkpie hat to his nose, Ryjan smirked and imagined how the angles of darkness played on his handsome features. Main in black standing on a gritty corner of Chicago with an Italian restaurant as a backdrop bathed in shadows, he mused. This is film noir at its finest.

“Sam Spade, eat your heart out,” he whispered to himself.

Ryjan secretly held the pose and hoped some quick thinking photographer would somehow cross the street and instinctively immortalize him in celluloid for posterity. He was interrupted by the cellphone pulsing from his jacket pocket.

“Goddamnit,” he hissed before putting the phone to his ear.

“Having fun?”

Rafferty’s voice sent shivers down Ryjan Allen’s spine.

“More than most, not as much as some,” replied Ryjan as he began loosening his tie. “And yourself?”

Even from the other side of the phone, Ryjan saw Rafferty pushing aside any hint of small talk.

“News?” rumbled Rafferty, more order than question.

Shaken, Ryjan stepped into the light and turned his head skyward, searching for something in the heavens.

“Not surprisingly,” Ryjan started. “Our young Mr. Street has gotten himself into some nasty business. Cruising around town with ruffians of the most alarming sort. Stopping outside of bars and watching good, honest, hardworking people walk in and stumble out. Then driving into a neighborhood with an obscene lack of property value. Plus, I have the sneaking suspicion that he neglected to do any of his homework tonight.”

Proudly, Ryjan chuckled into the phone. He was answered with silence. In his head, he imagined a packed audience, stone cold and waiting. Just waiting.

Ryjan started to grasp at straws.

“Also…also,” he struggled to continue. “We have a new player joining the stage.”

The audience waited still.

“Continue,” Rafferty finally answered.

Ryjan let out a sigh of relief.

“He wore a hoodie, department store quality, nothing fancy. Outside the Spy Bar, he pounced on two other boys and was gone. Poof, like a ghost. In a blink of an eye and all that good stuff.”

“Was this individual…gifted?” Rafferty asked, the interest in his voice obviously piqued.

“Definitely,” Ryjan stammered. “Most definitely. Fast, precise, no hesitation. So fleet, in fact, that I couldn’t even get a good read on him.”

“Sadly, that doesn’t say much to me. Regardless, in your estimation, is this whoever it is a candidate?”

Stung by the words, Ryjan took the phone off his ear and stared at it with gritted teeth. He took a moment to cool off before returning it back to its rightful place.

“Maybe. Possibly. At this point, its inconclusive.”

“And Jack. Is there a connection between the two?”

The mere mention of the name caused a sneer to form on Ryjan’s lips.

“None. Judging by his reactions…none whatsoever.”

“Excellent,” Rafferty announced with an almost giddy delight.

The blur of a dollar cab screeched past the intersection, a chorus of horns and profanity trailed behind it.

Rafferty waited for the noise to pass.

“And our other item of business?”

Completely having slipped his mind, Ryjan choked out a cough and quickly turned back to the sky.

“Well, you know, Charles. Its…”

His head rapidly shifted from left to right, up and down, until his line of sight finally locked onto its target. His squinted eyes having scoured through dozens of windows on its way to the roof of the majestic Peninsula Hotel, gratefully relaxed when it reached its destination.

“I mean considering your history…and, y’know? Yesterday…”

From the corner of E. Superior and Rush, outside of Giordano’s Restaurant to the very peak of the monolith of modern decadence that was the Peninsula Hotel, it was the faintest of shapes. Distinguishable by the fact that it was the only object in motion, Ryjan’s primary senses settled into recognition only after a considerable amount of effort.

But even from Ryjan’s vantage point, the sight of a girl ballet dancing on the edge of the Peninsula’s roof was pretty hard to miss.

“…Zoe’s being understandably dramatic.”

Almost in a whisper, Rafferty stated, “Keep me posted” before a dial tone closed the conversation.

Still transfixed by the girl’s performance even on the cusp of certain death, Ryjan stood in his black suit and black hat every bit the voyeuristic private eye that he dressed himself to be.

Suddenly, he realized what was missing.

“Huh…”

Theatricality will forever be part of Ryjan Allen’s fashion sense.

“…all I needed was a cigarette.”

***

34. Replicant dvdrip

“This is it, man! Vendetta shit! You niggas know beef?! This kind of beef ain’t never been seen!!!”

Jack leaned against the window and watched Lil’ Rob pace the length of Khalil’s living room in the reflection of the glass, like a wind-up toy permanently set on panic.

“Project beef, my ass! Y’all saw where they got hit! Out in the open like that, was no projects in sight for days!”

Jack tried to tune out the noise by looking out of the eighteenth story window hoping to find something, anything, to distract him from Lil’ Rob’s ranting. He pressed his forehead to the cool of the glass.
This was Khalil’s window in Khalil’s place, the only home he’d ever known. Jack closed his eyes for a second and opened them wanting to see what Khalil saw every time he passed this window.

Eighteen stories below him, all Jack saw was the crater.

“Pastel was project beef! Us and him, doing what we gotta do to protect what’s ours? A’ight, cool! We take care of all the shit down here, in Harmony, in our yard! But out there, in the wide white world?! Who the fuck knows what’s gonna happen?!”

From where he stood, Jack realized that the only thing Khalil ever saw was the place where his brother died. Behind him, Lil’ Rob caught what he had said and patted Jack on the shoulder.

“No offense, money.”

From that fateful day to the years and years that crawled after it, Khalil lived with this window and the only sight it afforded him. Disgusted with himself, Jack turned his back on it and went into his pockets for a cigarette.

“None taken,” he answered.

Nine minutes after the incident outside the Spy Bar, Jack, Lil’ Rob and the Walker brothers were summoned back to Khalil’s apartment. Having not made the call himself, Jack spent the whole ride back to Harmony Projects in the back seat of Marquis Walker’s Cavalier silently dreading their next course of action. Playing stick up kid with Lil’ Rob and his boys was one thing, but, with the memory of the assault on the two clockers constantly cycling in his head, dealing with the hooded sweatshirt was something completely different. Taking his first deep drag off his cigarette, Jack regretted accepting the rare piece of vinyl that Khalil offered as pay back days prior.

“Kinda funny, huh?”

Tyronn Pines’ voice had a sharp quality about it. Born and bred on the corners of the projects, it held none of the carnival barker showmanship that flavored the rap radio ready voices of most young men his age. From the get go, Jack always equated Khalil’s voice with strength and, in contrast, Tyronn Pines’ voice with speed. It was flexible and had range. It could go from street to stage without missing a beat. It was textured with a different kind of intelligence, the kind that gave off the notion that he knew something that most people didn’t.

Like a card shark or a con man.

“The second we get you on the team, they go and get one, too.”

Tyronn Pines took the slice of open wall next to Jack, close enough so that they uncomfortably touched shoulders. Never being one of his staunchest supporters when Khalil brought him into the group, Jack felt a little uneasy that it took such a dire situation for Tyronn to finally interact with him. The tangy scent of marijuana thickly hung itself next to Jack’s cigarette smoke.

Even in odor, the two didn’t meet eye to eye.

“Smart though. S’a good play. Khalil’s always clucking on about how we got all these eyes on them. He ain’t never considered them having they own eyes trained on us, know what I’m saying? Hey, s’just good business, right?”

Tyronn chuckled and softly elbowed Jack in the ribs as he took two small pulls from his joint.

“You get up on some good product, they gotta compete so they get up on some better shit. That’s just slinging 101, don’t matter what or where you slinging from, feel me? Rules of the game n’shit. Now you get some crazy ass white boy doing some off the wall stunting for you, then what? How’s a nigga supposed to answer that?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack watched Tyronn’s brows furrow and a nasty grin stretch from lips to cheek. The effects of the weed didn’t alter the whites of Tyronn’s eyes. Having felt Jack sizing him up, Tyronn Pines turned and did the same.

“They go and get themselves a Kobe stopper,” Tyronn stated between pulls from the joint. “S’about damn time, I’m thinking. Fair is fair and this is as fair as it gets around here, know what I’m saying? All this time, I’m watching these faggot ass white boys flying around the city throwing fucking lasers and cars and shit at each other. I’m like, where the brothas at? Ain’t no god I know that blesses one kind of folks with all that shit and not no one else. So I wait cause I know, we got blessed, too. Maybe we’re just smart enough not to be parading that shit in front of the evening news. I’m hoping, but now? I’m kinda hyped this new kid showed himself, man. Real talk. Not for nothing, cause this fucker’s prolly gonna be a pain in our ass, but I know he’s from the Pj’s. Ain’t no one bucks like he bucked ain’t from around the way, y’heard? He may not even be a brotha, he may P.R. for all I know. One thing I do know though to the fullest, this m’fucker ain’t white.”

Jack clenched his jaws. He thought about the window and how this joker fit perfectly through it.

“No offense, dawg,” needled Tyronn, this time he slapped Jack open palmed on the chest.

“I know you’re on our side and all,” he continued. “But I’m just saying. Y’know how genetically we’re stronger, faster, all that shit? Hell, we gots to be after all them years out on the fields and shit. Well, as fast as you are, money. How much faster you think this nigga is?”

Just as the words left his mouth, Tyronn knew Jack would bite. As casually as he could, Jack turned to face Tyronn, nose to nose with a murderous gleam in his eye.

“Jack!”

Khalil boomed from behind his bedroom door intentionally postponing Jack and Tyronn’s title bout years in the making.

“Get on back here!”

Letting the tension linger for a moment longer, the two men made sure that the message was received loud and clear, that a rain-check was undoubtedly been made. Jack broke off first, taking one last drag off his smoke before he headed towards Khalil.

Tyronn Pines took a couple careful steps towards the window and stood in the exact spot Jack had been. He even looked out the window to boot.

Somewhere in the room, Lil’ Rob sighed.

“You fucking stupid, Ty.”

The comment from the youngster barely registered in his periphery, Tyronn stared off into the distance. He didn’t bother to see what Jack saw or what Khalil saw for that matter. As he focused onto the glass, Tyronn Pines never noticed the crater or the projects or the sleeping city that loomed behind them.

All Tyronn Pines saw was the hazy reflection of his face and the knowing smile that came with it.

***

The Man from Earth trailer

35.

The line was a sliver of rooftop, the last solid piece of earth that stood between her and the night sky. From the highest peak of the Peninsula Hotel, the air tasted cleaner, better and the world below her smaller and easier to contend with. She imagined herself on the tip of the tallest mountain staring at the doorstep to heaven. A point of light pierced through the darkness, it flickered and shone greater than every star in the sky’s grand canvas. It spoke to her, beckoning her to follow as it moved slowly towards the horizon.

Breathless, she took one step up and toed the line.

The line was a sliver of rooftop.

She felt her heart beat faster as she reached for the departing beacon with an outstretched arm before a strong draft of wind pushed her backwards.

The adrenaline surging through her system, she regained her balance with a ridiculous flapping of arms. She giggled when her lungs steadied itself. The blinking light disappeared behind a monstrous cloud bank as she silently cursed the force of nature that kept her from following it. The audacity of wind, she thought. Doesn’t it know who the fuck I am?

“Don’t you know who my mother is?!” she screamed to the indifferent night.

Zoe Ahern was a girl who was rarely ever denied access.

And she was stoned out of her mind.

Not even a full week back at Winterville, Zoe was already in one of those moods. After months of peace and quiet, it only took him one day to destroy any sort of equilibrium she had built up in his absence. His name was tattooed in her subconscious, despite the handful of Xanax she took to cloud it.

Rafferty.

The powder from school already gone, Zoe was forced to cop pills from one of the Peninsula’s valets just to get through the night. Even though the haze of pharmaceuticals shielded her from the tremors of the outside world, Zoe still found herself thinking about Rafferty and the ramifications of his return.

Secretly, Zoe had hoped that it was because of the pills that she was standing on the edge of the Peninsula’s roof.

Deep down, she knew it wasn’t.

She shook her head desperately trying to free herself from the numbness and looked down to the city below. Suddenly, the breath blew out of her lips.

She remembered she was scared of heights.

Every one of her nerve endings stood on end as the sensations of being a petite girl dressed only in a white tank top and underwear dangling on the top of an extremely tall building came rushing through her senses.

Another gust of wind, the one with a sense of irony, rocked Zoe forward. The split second of panic quickly occupied her long enough to open the floodgates.

Hysterically trying to keep from falling, Zoe pleaded on quivering limbs.

“Not now. Please, not…”

The tremors from every person in a two block radius answered her.

“This is a fat tip, easy. I don’t care what you have to do, sell it! Where’s the scaloppini for one twelve?! Fuck it, I’m taking the Jag for a spin. Maid service on six. Is four eighteen clear? Gotta comp that bitch again?! Where is this fucking cab?! That ain’t his wife. Gotta be back in five. Who is it? Take it, yeah yeah! Feels so good. Who are you? Not again! Not again!!!”

One after the other, the tremors split her head wide open. She felt the rough texture of cement dig into her palms as she clung onto the end of the rooftop. She knelt on the precipice like a gargoyle of the weirdest sort and wept. Her chest tightened and the back of her head set on fire, Zoe absorbed the weight of hundreds of people’s thoughts square in the jaw. She was a girl on a beach standing in front of a tidal wave. Zoe felt a warm trickle from her nose.

“Please…stop…” she begged.

“You gotta be kidding me! Stupid rich fucks! Finally, clocking out! Dry cleaning then milk. This dog is gonna kill me. Another day, another dollar. Oh, she’s cute. Hey, mami! Party, mister, party? Gotta go, gotta go! Stay laced / well dressed with finesse in a white tee / lookin’ for wifey. That hurts, stop stop stop!!!”

Zoe was grinding teeth and rolled up eyes, her upper torso seized up in such a high rate of motion that it looked like she was about to disappear from the visible spectrum.

In the inferno of her mind, she furiously dug through the onslaught of tremors looking for something, anything, to hold onto.

“Steady breath, read the music, one, two, three…”

There!

Five stories below, Natasha Makhoulf waited for the music to start. A week away from flying to New York to audition for a dance troupe prepping a production of Phantom of the Opera, Natasha Makhoulf waited for the opening score to begin so that her third rehearsal of the day could finally get underway.

“Straight leg, straight back.”

The tremor was calm, focused. From the roof, Zoe heard the swell of the music and listened as Natasha Makhoulf mathematically broke it down to cues and movements.

Zoe found her anchor and dove straight into Natasha Makhoulf’s tremor. Completely submerged, Zoe heard and felt everything. She felt the rush of joy whenever Natasha Makhoulf hit a flawless petit saut. She heard the trepidation in Natasha Makhoulf’s heart whenever the notion of her failing the callback crossed her mind. She lived the memory of Natasha Makhoulf’s first ballet recital at Woodrow Wilson Junior High School in Glendale, CA, age eight. Lost in Natasha Makhoulf, Zoe relaxed. All the other tremors faded into nothingness.

So lost, in fact, that when she opened her eyes Zoe found herself following Natasha Makhoulf’s routine to the letter, from jete’ to reitre’ devant to pirouette and everything else in between.

Zoe Ahern danced on the cliff of the rooftop of the Peninsula Hotel.

Then she bowed.

Five stories below her, Natasha Makhoulf dreamt of the applause of a packed Carnegie Hall. Five stories above Natasha Makhoulf, Zoe reveled in silence.

After a sigh of relief, Zoe began to reconsider the good doctor’s methods, at the same time she felt shamefully disgusted of hers. Maybe its time to catch another meeting, she thought.

Maybe.

The fatigue finally settled as Zoe carefully stepped off the edge. The clarity forced through her body left her vision with blurred corners. Despite it all, she still took a moment to look back down at the city.

“Rafferty.”

Rafferty?

The voice wasn’t her own, but she still recognized it. Zoe swallowed hard and prepared herself to follow the tremor.

She closed her eyes again.

“Rafferty. Hooded sweatshirt. Jack Street.”

Zoe’s eyes snapped open, her hands covered her mouth.

“Oh fuck,” she muttered.

Jack Street, the boy with the backpack that she ran into at Winterville earlier that day.

What did he have to do with Rafferty?

The tremor subsided and left Zoe with an unmistakable taste of bile and venom on her tongue.

“Ryjan,” she whispered.

“Oh fuck.”

Then, as fast as she could, Zoe Ahern ran back to her penthouse.

***

36.

Night bled into day, moonlight to sunlight, and Jack somehow woke to find himself back at Winterville. The fabric of his blazer not feeling right, Jack uncomfortably tugged at his collar completely conscious of one undeniable fact.

Later that night, Jack would be involved in a very violent and potentially fatal incident.

Scanning the half empty classroom as it slowly began to fill with hung over skeletons in burgundy and grey uniforms, Jack knew that he had nowhere else to be. Spending the day holed up in his apartment would’ve driven him up the walls in anticipation. Hanging out with Khalil as he got his war party ready was completely out of the question, too. The thought of breaking Tyronn Pines’ face was too tempting. Jack understood enough that doing that would probably put a crimp in Khalil’s itinerary.

So off to Winterville he went.

Powered with a couple hours sleep, Jack lumbered into its halls and collapsed on the back row of first period English Lit. almost an hour before the sound of the first bell.

Jack felt out of place being right where he was supposed to be.

“Stupid tie.”

His fidgeting moving further south, Jack undid the Windsor knot at the base of his neck and relieved the top two buttons of his dress shirt.

As anticlimactic as it was, Winterville provided him with routine, calm, quiet, check your brain at the door routine. First period English, second period Physics, third period Calculus, fourth period Global Economics, lunch, fifth period Art History and sixth period study hall. Gossip, shit talking, drug abuse, lunch, then more gossip, player hating, study hall. No abrupt turns, no change of plans, no surprises and lunch. Jack wanted the certainty of routine to fill the hours of the day before the unpredictability of a night on the streets took over.

Idle hands, after all, were the devil’s playground and he’d be spending enough time there once the sun went down.

“You hear who’s back,” someone muttered to someone else as they took their places in the front row.

The news was still making the rounds, Jack thought. He figured by it should’ve reached the furthest layers of the Winterville social strata, but even a place like this still had its version of outcasts. No matter how much one’s parents made, a nerd was still a nerd regardless.

The door closed as Jack dug into his backpack and cupped one side of his headphones to his ear. His head bobbed to the final thirty seconds of The Clipse’s “Virginia”.

From behind him, a firm hand gripped his shoulder and squeezed twice. Jack turned to find Mrs. Stephanie Samuels smiling down at him. Her hand entered his backpack and turned off his CD player.

“Time for me to tell you a story,” she whispered.

Then the first bell rang.

***

“So tell me, Mr. Street. Who do you fancy yourself being today, Odysseus or Sisyphus?”

Mrs. Samuels leaned against her desk and asked with a telling hand on her hip. The second period bell left them to face off alone in the classroom. From the back row, Jack gave her a weary sideways smirk. Already three minutes tardy from sleeping through his next class, Jack kissed the idea of routine goodbye.

“I don’t follow,” he replied.

Mrs. Samuels laughed heartily at the remark, her hair swooped behind her shoulders when she threw her head back with the guffaw. She wore her hair down for some odd reason. Jack wondered how long it would take before it was imprisoned in the bun she usually sported. Having basically slept through her lecture with his eyes open, Jack resigned himself to being the reason for the bun so early in the morning. She probably hadn’t even had her coffee yet.

“Please don’t take this as any sort of offense,” she half pleaded, “but that is the exact reason why you’ll find yourself in this sort of situation time and time again, Mr. Street. You don’t follow.”

Jack let a chuckle rumble in his stomach. Self consciously, he ran a hand through his ratty nest of hair. His smirk started to show some teeth.

“So again, I ask. Who are you today? Odysseus or Sisyphus?”

“Look, Professor Samuels,” Jack began but was immediately cut off.

“The bags under your eyes, the disheveled way you carry yourself, even more so than usual, the general lack of balance you’re exuding. I’m not an idiot, Mr. Street. I’ve seen the signs before. You slept with a weight on your shoulders last night, if you even slept at all.”

Jack wanted to protest but he was only able to utter a half syllable before Mrs. Samuels raised an open palm at him.

She continued.

“Odysseus had to navigate through an entire world’s worth of obstacles, everything from the gods on down was out to get him. Sisyphus, on the other hand, was left to trudge the same boulder up the same steep hill only to have it roll back down again for all eternity. So again, considering the symptoms that are not so subtly plastered all over your face, are you one or the other?”

With that, she let the palm hang down. Now both hands were on her hips. Jack shuddered at the sight of it and considered the question as if it was one of life and death.

“I guess,” he answered. “I guess a little bit of both, Professor Samuels.”

She nodded and walked the distance toward him. Along the way, Mrs. Stephanie Samuels went from sarcastic to maternal in a matter of feet. Her features softened when she took the seat in front of Jack and twisted around to face him. Jack couldn’t look her in the eyes, his gaze quickly shifted to the classroom floor. That kind of genuine interest was alien to him.

Carefully crossing her legs, Mrs. Samuels bent her head down to the same floor.

“Is it your mother? Are you worried about her?”

The mere mention of the word hit Jack like a slap of cold water. His neck shot straight up.

“No no no. God, no,” he rattled off shaking his head. “It is not about her.”

She raised both palms to him and motioned for Jack to calm down.

“Jack. I ask because I know the situation. I know she’s halfway around the world covering all of that nonsense in Australia. I’ve read the papers and I could only imagine the things that she’s had to go
through. What I don’t know is if its affecting you at all or how its affecting you, if it did. You are one of my best students, Jack. Despite your attitude, I see it in your work. I don’t mean to pry into your family life, but I don’t know if you have any sort of support system here. For lack of a better tern, I’m concerned. I don’t want you to fall on the wayside.”

The sentiment left Jack cold. He knew she was concerned, genuinely concerned for his well being, but he just couldn’t wrap his head around it. All he thought was how much of an easy out his mother would’ve been. How 90% of the student body used an excuse just like it to justify their acting like complete bastards with no regard for anyone other than themselves. Frankly, Jack could have used his mother in that respect. He just didn’t want to give her the pleasure of it.

So Jack reacted the way Jack always reacted.

“Thank you, sincerely, Professor Samuels, but I’m fine.”

Jack flashed his trademark shit eating grin and gathered his belongings into his backpack.

“I just haven’ been home enough the past couple of days. With everyone just getting back in town, a lot of stuffs been going on, y’know? Stupid kid’s stuff and what not.”

He popped up from his seat and stood at attention, a ploy to show her how awake and energized he was.

“I promise to buckle down, get some rest and hit the books. Tomorrow, I’ll be a new man. You won’t have to worry about me, Professor Samuels.”

With his backpack firmly secured, Jack nodded to Mrs. Samuels and playfully gave a military salute.

“Scout’s honor,” he concluded before marching to the door.

Jack felt a twinge of regret at the thought of the stunt he just pulled. He really hoped he hadn’t offended his favorite instructor, but unfortunately he had bigger fish to fry. The brief sensation ended the second he slapped on his dark Aviators.

Through the crack of the closing door, Jack looked back just long enough to see Mrs. Stephanie Samuels gather the length of her hair in her hands and roll it into a bun on the back of her head.

***

Replicant trailer

Jack’s cellphone rang on the way to Physics. Bringing it out halfway from his pocket, he snuck a peek at the flashing LCD screen.

Khalil Caldwell.

After flipping the phone open, Jack ducked into an open door of the Science building’s stairwell. He hadn’t noticed how far back he passed the entrance to his second period.

The text message read: Need you at the shop ’round six.

Jack’s fingers tapped his reply on the keyboard.

Anything you want me to bring?

Jack sat on the third step of the empty staircase and waited until his cellphone rang again.

Khalil’s response: Bring your backpack.

“What the hell,” Jack asked his phone.

He typed back: Got it. See you at six.

As he sat by himself on the stairwell, Jack thought about Khalil’s order. The sound of his cellphone snapping shut reverberated loudly against the walls and down towards the floors below. If someone invited me to help assault and possibly abduct a known drug trafficker, Jack pondered. What else could I possibly bring to the party? Chips? A bag of ice? Those red plastic cups?

His backpack?

Jack cursed his naiveté.

“You ask a stupid question,” he huffed.

Jack groaned and put his face in his hands. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to smoke a quiet, uneventful cigarette.

“Hey Jack!”

Of course, if would have to wait.

His wide eyes almost popped out from behind the web of interlocked fingers when he heard the strangely familiar voice.

“How about this for a stupid question?”

The sound of the voice was so loud he could’ve sworn that it came from the back of his mind. Quickly to his feet, Jack twisted and turned in every direction looking for a face to put the voice to. No one in front and no one behind, Jack ran to the railing and leaned over to see if there was anyone on the stairs below him.

“Hey you!”

Jack turned the opposite direction and there she was. Four flights above him, a girl had climbed over the railings of the staircase and stood precariously over the edge.

Jack’s heart skipped a beat.

“Zoe?! Stop! Zoe, don’t move!”

Just like the day they first met.

“Wanna play catch?”

When Zoe let go of the railing, time stopped. Four floors above him, Jack watched her fall. Right in the center of the open that ran straight through up to the ceiling and down to the basement, Jack saw Zoe’s small frame hurtling closer and closer towards him.

Inside his chest, Jack’s lunged expanded and his joints tensed. Fueled by pure instinct, he coiled up into a starting crouch and closed his eyes. On the count of three, he told himself. On the count of three.

One.

An ankle bends to breaking and an old sneaker digs so hard into the polished floor that it cracked the tile.

Two.

An ornate steel railing will be severely damaged by the hand of a young man whose blood turned to gasoline for a few glorious seconds.

On the count of three, a girl he barely knew would die if another count of three was allowed to pass.

Two and a half.

Four floors and counting above him, Zoe wanted to scream.

Jack became a blur.

Three.

Jack wasn’t going to give her the chance to.

GO!!!

On the first set of stairs, Jack took three leaps to get to the landing, the amount of force with each footfall so great he thought it might turn his bones into powder. His sneakers screeched into an impossible turn and Jack was transformed into pure momentum, a mass of kinetic energy. Like a bolt of lightning rising from the ground, Jack crackled through another turn.

He had one last set of steps then he had her, one last point of intersection before its curtains.

Zoe flailed her arms like a dying bird.

This is it.

With both arms, Jack braced himself on both sides of the staircase’s railings and pulled his body back as far as he could.

Human slingshot.

Jack pushed, released his grip and flew. He took the last staircase in one leap, not once did his sneakers touch floor.

SLAM!

Jack crashed on the landing chest first and, with momentum still pushing him forward, he slid on the floor’s smooth finish. From his vantage point, the only part of Zoe that Jack still made out were the fingertips of her outstretched arms. Jack contorted his body sideways and went into a feet first baseball slide. The bars of the railing rushed past him, it alternated between steel bar and empty space, steel bar, empty space, steel bar and empty space.

Where’d she go?!?!?!

Steel bar and empty space, steel bar and empty space.

OH SHIT!!!

Steel bar and empty space.

Jack threw both arms into the pattern.

Steel bar and empty space. Steel bar and empty space. Empty space and steel bar.

CRACK!!!

“RRRRRRRAAAAAAAHHHH!!!”

Then it was over.

Jack felt the cold of the steel bar against his cheek. Mixed with the moisture of his sweat and the heat that radiated from his skin, Jack saw faint ribbons of steam wafting from the metal. His breath came in shallow bursts. He huffed and puffed and wondered where the feeling in his arms disappeared to. Jack grimaced and extended his tired eyes for a glimpse for something, anything, beyond the railing. He saw the downward spiral of the staircases and, from the corner of his eye, the pleating of a grey skirt.

The numbness from his shoulders clearly stated that they were both dislocated, Jack took a deep breath and pulled with whatever strength he had left.

In the most unlikeliest of manners, the frazzled bob of Zoe’s hair rose from the chasm. Her face was a mask of fear and disbelief when Jack finally managed to pull her up enough to see it. He held her like that for a second, her legs still dangled in mid-air, and thought of something witty to say.

“Hi there.”

The fact that she still may fall to her doom not enough of an issue to notice, Zoe furrowed her brow and let the cold knives of her eyes cut through Jack’s exhausted bravado.

“Whatever it is he wants you to do,” she scolded. “DON’T DO IT!”

Confused, Jack coughed out a rebuttal.

“You’re welcome?”

Zoe angrily shook her head.

“Don’t you get it, you dumbass?!” Zoe yelled.

“RAFFERTY IS GOING TO GET YOU KILLED!!!”

Ladies and gentlemen, the damsel in distress.

***

37.

Luscious “Lil’ Rob” Roberson rarely ever acquainted himself with the eight o’clock that ended in a.m. He was more comfortable with its brother that stood under the moonlight.

“Hrm…”

Laying almost comatose on the front passenger seat of the Cavalier, he grumbled like a petulant child as he readjusted the black do-rag on his scalp.

“Who in they right mind be up at this hour,” he mumbled his displeasure.

Marquis Walker drove with a crooked elbow hanging out of the window and shook his head at his fare’s incessant whining.

“Niggas that got shit to do, you little bitch,” he whispered to himself. “That’s who.”

Lil’ Rob heard the snide remark and licked his lips.

“Just drive, jeeves,” he snapped back in the same hushed tone.

For the remainder of the trip, all three of the car’s inhabitants, Lil’ Rob, Marquis and Lil’ Rob’s cousin Four Five, kept quiet. The sunlight shone brightly through the unwashed windows ungratefully received by half closed eyelids. It mixed with the sounds of traffic and the smell of car exhaust, the stew of Chicago Ave. on its early morning hustle.

The Cavalier winced when Marquis took the right on Ashland, slightly tossing everyone in their seats. Marquis gave the brake pedal an extra jolt when they pulled onto a curb. He took some pleasure at the sight of Lil’ Rob jerking forward then getting smashed back into place by his safety belt.

Marquis punctuated the “accident” with a sheepish grin and a sideways glance.

Lil’ Rob, on the other hand, threw daggers with his eyes.

Supremely proud of himself, Marquis turned back to the road ahead and thumbed for Lil’ Rob and his cousin to get the fuck out of the car.

“You ladies go make something out of yourselves,” Marquis snickered.

Lil’ Rob threw open the door and let his Jordans taste pavement. He held the door with a palm and leaned down to get one last look at his
driver.

Lil’ Rob nodded and held his fist out for a bump.

“Peace, nigga.”

Just as Marquis was about to return the gesture, Lil’ Rob turned his fist over, gave him a one finger salute and slammed the door shut right in Marquis’ face.

Lil’ Rob paid no attention to the tidal wave of curses that came from the Cavalier’s driver side, its volume muffled by the closed door. Instead, he took a step back and locked his thousand yard stare towards the palpable throb of activity across the street. His cousin, Jason “Four Five” Tavers took the patch of sidewalk next to him. The Cavalier peeled back into traffic.

Watching as a gap opened up ahead of them, Four Five slapped Lil’ Rob on the chest and crossed the street.

Lil’ rob let all the feeling melt away from his face until it settled into his meanest corner boy facade. He took the street in a slow, staggered strut. Pulling up the backside of his low slung jeans, Lil’ Rob stepped onto the other side and felt his jaws tense.

Back into the jungle, he thought and hummed a single word under his breath.

“Grinding.”

Back into the jungle.

Back into the same old song and dance.

Back into William H. Wells High School.

***

The metal detectors were still broken, just like how he left them three years ago. Unlike three years ago, the mandatory pat downs apparently weren’t enforced anymore which made sliding into the procession of William H. Wells High School student body all the more quickly. Not that either of them were holding anything more than their wallets and cellphones, Lil’ Rob and Four Five still took the time to thank the Lord for the kindness of a hassle free entrance.

Seamlessly, the two cousins disappeared into the crowd of extremely baggy pants, loudly patterned hoodies and crisp new ball caps worn extra low just above the eyelids. The dotting of colored polo shirts that were interspersed throughout the sea of bodies didn’t go unnoticed as Lil’ Rob looked over this year’s crop. The colors were an all too familiar sign of demarkation and status in the petri dish that was William H. Wells High School. Those enrolled in the business and technology programs wore blue polos, students in the law program wore grey and the lowest of the low, the freshmen, still were forced to endure their social hardships in white. Dirty snow, Lil’ Rob remembered them being called back in his day, the fresh white garments usually connected to young, snot nosed project kids he knew or grew up with in Harmony. Nowadays, he didn’t know what they were called.

Probably something worst, he imagined.

After finding each other in the slow crawl to first period, Lil’ Rob and Four Five shot the other a nod and went their separate ways.

In both their minds, the two men went over their mission.

They both recited Khalil’s orders.

The night before:

“There ain’t nothing worse than looking for a rat that don’t want to be found. It takes time, too much time, and time ain’t something we got too much of. Pastel’s smart and he runs a tight crew but to do what he wants to do he’s gonna have to reach out. Whether its him himself or through one of his boys, one of them is about to get visible. We gotta find the one that’ll lead us to the rest of them. We may not know them even if we see them right in front of us…or maybe we spot ‘em a mile away announcing they shit, whatever. But ain’t no one staying invisible, not in our hood. So we start at the start. Pastel may be smart, but I know he’s too dumb to think outside the box. He’ll do what he’s always done, the way his brother did and they pops before them. They’re always gonna get a boy to do a man’s job. So we spread the fuck out, hit the parks, all the usual spots. We get Harmony to lock all they boys for the night then we see where they at. Where will that nigga go for his army? How long before they get desperate and reach out to one of us? That’s the plan. Lil’ Rob and Four Five’ll hit Wells. Tyronn’ll get Dap and Curb to hit the Linc. Spread the word. If you of your brother or your cousin or your cousin’s cousin out on the streets tomorrow and you on the wrong side…well? You let them think on what might go down if we catch them out and about. This Pastel fucker… Man, the apple don’t fall far from the tree. I want y’all to burn down the tree and let them smoke signals blow right back to his dumbass and let him know we here. Ain’t no one stay invisible forever.”

Lil’ Rob roamed the halls of William H. Wells High School trying to trace his way back to his old homeroom. His search took him to the east wing boy’s bathroom, the locker room of the gym, the bleachers on the far side of the baseball field, the back tables of the courtyard where wannabe hard boys rolled blunts and tried to pick up chicks, the alley behind the auto tech garage. He never did recollect how to get to his homeroom, but along the way he relayed Khalil’s message to every hungry eye and interested ear who he thought knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who might have been on Pastel’s shopping list. At each stop, Lil’ Rob put the fear on the brothers, sisters, cousins, boyfriends, girlfriends or every known clocker in the projects. With each passing speech, Lil’ Rob felt the gravity of his warning grow behind him. It went from student to student, classroom to classroom, mouth to ear, ear to phone and on and on. Within a few hours, Lil’ Rob and Four Five forced William H. Wells High School to fall into silent anticipation. A fog of paranoia had engulfed thewhole campus.

Lil’ Rob’s final stop found him leaning on a bank of lockers outside a half filled study hall talking to two members of the varsity basketball team. Both of whom had older siblings Lil’ Rob knew were part of a stick up crew that worked Elkhart Park.

“We gotta stick tight on this,” Lil’ Rob ordered. “Fam gotta protect fam, know what I’m saying?”

The taller of the two, a second string center, nodded confidently and held a fist out to Lil’ Rob.

“Fo’ show, my nigga. Fo’ show,” he replied.

Lil’ Rob threw on a gangsta sneer and gave the center a pound.

From inside the study hall, a young man listened from behind an opened Algebra book.

“We the heroes,” Lil’ Rob continued. “Those assholes flying around up there thinking they the heroes? Nah, man. They just up there feeling each other up, trying to see who could throw the most cars at my building, feel me?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the smaller of the two, a back up point guard, chimed in.

“We the ones protecting the block. We the ones on the street dealing with the real shit. We the ones getting the young’ns out the way when they start dropping buses and shit on our yard. We the ones gotta take care of our own, man.”

The young man, caught up in Lil’ Rob’s soliloquy, slowly put the book down and unzipped his backpack. Calm eyed and quiet, he nodded along with the center and the point guard.

“Tonight, man. Tonight. They ain’t gonna be there. They ain’t gonna be nowhere in sight. The dope game is small shit to them. It ain’t like its they kids its being sold to, know what I’m saying?”

The young man slipped the book into the backpack and sat up straight. The calm slowly transformed into an intense focus. Unconsciously, he played with the collar of his white polo shirt.

“You with us or you against us, that’s it. Plain and simple. Tonight, everyone’ll see who the real heroes are.”

The sentiment caused a swelling in the young man’s heart.

“A’ight then,” the young man whispered.

Inside the backpack, the young man’s fingers tightened around the thick fabric of an old hooded sweatshirt. Rough, caked with dirt and torn along the edges, the young man twisted the sleeve of the sweatshirt as hard as he could.

“A’ight then.”

It wasn’t a cape, the young man thought.

But it’ll do.

( e n d o f p a r t f i v e

)

Humanity #8

ErAlex — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:09:04 +0000

“In space, no one can hear you scream” is an often-used tagline for my kind of work. It stems from one of the classical xenophobic flat flicks, dating almost three centuries back. It’s a lie. In space, everyone can hear you scream. If they care.

All you need is an operating transmitter unit. You can turn the dial to an unused frequency and scream all you want. That signal will spread out from your sender and go around the entire galaxy at 300,000 kilometers per second, the speed of light. Sooner or later, someone is bound to listen to that exact frequency when the signal passes. The universe is just too vast to think that it couldn’t happen.

I like to do that, sometimes. Flip the frequency to something between the cosmic microwave radiation and the normal communication channels. And then I just talk. I talk about life, death, how lonely and horny I am after several months in solitude – it’s become a kind of therapy for me. The radio just sits there, listens carefully to everything I have to say to it, and it never ever talks back.

My name is Marvin Darwin. I have anything from thirty seconds to two minutes before I am no longer the sole member of lunar science research team five. Do you have time to listen to me?

Humanity #8:
Shooting Stars
“Picnic on the Moon”
by Alex Cook and Erlend Larsen

Damn, it’s cold out here.

The low temperature makes my throat constrict and I choke. Perhaps I am too weak. I should clear my mind. Perhaps I should think about things I learned at school.

Earth’s atmosphere consists of 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen. The surface pressure is 1014 millibar and the average temperature is 288 Kelvin. Measured around equator, the earth has a radius of 6378 km.

Around the poles, it’s 6356 km. Earth is the third of the eight planets in the Sol system. It has one moon, Luna, which orbits in a distance of 0,3633 times ten to the power of six kilometers at perigee and 0,4055 at apogee.

The atmosphere of the moon is barely existent. The surface pressure at night is three times ten to the power of minus fifteen. Helium 4, Neon 20, Hydrogen 2 and Argon 40 make up over 90% of the lunar atmosphere. 90% of nearly nothing is nothing to brag about. The entire lunar atmosphere has a combined mass of less than 25,000 kilograms. There are vehicles on Earth that outweigh that. Seriously.

There’s nothing out there.

Just space.

But a lot of space, if you look at it that way.

On the bottom of the sheet, the last line was printed in bold and italics. “Candidates should be comfortable with enclosed areas and solitude.” Indeed they should.

Indeed, when you think about what the position entailed. Lunar research of the unmonitored areas of Luna. For “Lunar research”

, read “control and maintain scientific equipment”

. For “unmonitored areas”, read “dark side”. For me, read “didn’t exactly read everything in small writing”. I mean, I’m a social guy. I like to hang out with my friends and be around a lot of people every now and then. I’m not the type that feels more comfortable around machines than people. So why the hell did the psychological evaluation pick me for two seasons in the blot?

The blot, that’s what we call the black spot. Black because the tiny base is situated on the “dark side” of the moon, and spot because that’s how it looks when you land. A single lone ray of light sent out from the landing pad is the only thing that greets you when you arrive in sub-spatial orbit. And then you think “God, am I going to have to live twelve months in that little spot?” It’s not a spot, they tell you. It’s the blot.

The last two weeks before you go off, you spend a lot of time with the veterans. The people that have already been there and done that. They explain how the equipment work, what problems you should be aware of and the most important thing of all -they tell you how they managed to come through it all.

A woman of forty or thereabouts, Chazer Hubbard, told me she took up singing. She had never sung in her entire life before, but then she had to find a hobby. The work only takes three or four hours a day. Say you spend two or three hours daily on food and hygiene. Even if you sleep eight hours a day, that still leaves nine or ten hours in which you have to do something, to avoid going mad. Chazer picked singing. She filled half her luggage with recordings of famous singers and how-to books. The dummy’s guide to eight-octave singing. La Boheme for beginners. She brought everything she could find, and even that wasn’t enough. I think she told me that she had read every book at least three times. At the end of the season, she had developed a wonderful alt-voice along with a bipolar psychosis.

The doctors said that she would have done better if she’d picked a hobby that didn’t require an audience.

For the last three months, she wanted to have someone to hear her sing, and when she finally returned to base, she developed stagefright in front of strangers. Remember, she hadn’t been around live people in six months. That’s why she slit her wrists with a scalpel.

Oh, when I said “she told me”, I naturally mean “the debriefing tapes told me”. Chazer killed herself over ten years ago, long before I even knew I was going into space for a living.

Hers wasn’t the only case of post-blottal suicide. No one has actually bought it in the blot itself so far. They always wait until they return, as if the only thing keeping them alive is the job satisfaction. Then it ends, and they have to adjust to other people the same way the adjusted to solitude one or two seasons earlier. A lot make it, a lot don’t. Then there are the ones that can’t really make up their minds and spend the rest of their lives in reclusive, not seeking human companionship beyond that which is strictly necessary.

The blot really changes you. There’s no other way to put it.

The Strategic division wants me to keep an look out for alien forces. They are subscribing to the paranoiac illusion that suggests invaders can creep up on us in the shadow of the moon.

The Scientific division, sub-department geology, wants me to see how different metals react with the near-zero temperature and space debris on the dark side of the moon. The exact same experiments are conducted on three other locations, all with different exposure to the sun. I am the control group of darkness and light.

The Scientific division, sub-department astronomy, wants me to take a lot of photos from my position, undisturbed by other light sources. The best shots of the universe are taken from the blot.

Everybody thinks that the blot is a necessary evil, except for the people that are sent there. During the second month, the dreariness and monotony of the work has long since convinced you that these menial tasks could be performed by any number of mindless droids. You tell this to your superiors during each weekly contact, but they never seem to care. Why should they listen to someone with a 50% likelihood of suicide?

Perhaps they think it’s too expensive. Everything around and concerning the blot feels like it’s running on a paper-budget in an eternal state of recession. Travel to and from the blot is restricted to a three-day slot every six months, when the alignment of the planets makes the journey possible in as little fuel as possible.

Communication with the other world is in theory guaranteed 24/7 by small cluster of satellites at LaGrange point L2. That very same theory did not compute that the satellites were to be built by the cheapest builder. They most certainly did not compute that they were the cheapest because they left half of the advanced electronic guidance system out, causing the stabilisation rockets to misfire at the drop of a feather.

Naturally, all of this was not known when they were launched. After it became apparent, the builder was sued and the Lunar-Science division became creditor number two hundred and twelve of the three thousand other creditors in the great Leyland-Yutani bankruptcy. The already paper-thin budget hadn’t any more resources and the only thing that provides blot/base contact is the very last of the LY satellites, number 533. 533 had a failed launch from the very start, and neglected to find the LaGrange point it was designed
for. Instead, it overshot by a mile and a half and entered lunar orbit. Every other hour, it’s positioned so that I can bounce signals off it, to contact the base on the other side of the moon. Without this dirty chicken yellow hunk of poorly designed circuitry, I would be totally cut out from the rest of the world. Every now and then, I start to think that would not be such a bad fate after all.

They claim everything is going to become more efficient now that it’s called StarGazers. I doubt it. One organisation supersedes another, and the only thing that separates them is the colour of their insignias. Sooner or later, everything gravitates back into the time-honoured way of doing things. Progress by patience. If you just try enough crazy stuff, you’re bound to find something that is useful sooner or later.

Take this CHON-food, for instance. Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen particles combine to form cheap, nutritious food. Easy to produce and store. The invention gave Dr. Harland Grave the Nobel Peace Prize almost seventy years ago. It practically eradicated hunger from the face of the earth. And yet I’m told it was a fluke.

Grave worked in the research department of a best-selling softdrink beverage company. He was trying to find something that could be dirt cheap, taste sweet and still be low on nutrition value when he came up with CHON, the diametrical opposite. The only problem with CHON is that it tastes…. Yeeecckkkk.

Like freeze-dried llama droppings on rye bread. The CHON usually comes in these pseudo-flour packages, and you can do anything with it as you can with real flour. You can even mix it with water and add some flavouring to produce something faintly reminiscent of milkshake. But by itself, it’s gruesome. It swells in your mouth and you find yourself unable to swallow the bitter, fudgy mass. All the artificial flavouring in the world can’t remove the consistence of CHON. That’s why only people who are starving will eat it without complaining. However, if you’re going for a six-months trip, there is very little other food that would do the trick, so you grit your teeth and try not to think of the fact that the faux orange smoothie is partly your offal from yesterday, fed to the CHON producer yet again for god knows how many times. All waste products are carefully filtered and recycled. As perfect a system as it gets.

God, I’m sick of CHON by now.

Every now and then, the blot gets the best of me. That’s when I turn on the radio and talk to space in absentia autre persona. It feels therapeutic. I tell myself that I am never going to be Chazer Hubbard. I’m not going to overdose on tranquilisers or open up my veins. I’m just going to sit and talk to all the nonexistent green men out there instead.

I tell them everything, you know?

I tell them of what I think of StarGazers, what I think of the blot, what I think of life in general. All the details from my single one-night stand. What I dreamt when I ejaculated last month. A beautiful woman with full lips, dressed in a pale white dress to give her this ethereal quality. Silent she stood before me, motioning me with one finger to come towards her. I took a tentative first step, and then another, and yet another. I was almost touching her when I felt this tut-tut feeling in my groin, it being my throbbing testicles, pumping out semen. I awoke, and found myself bathed in sweat, the skin on my stomach warm and sticky.

She was beautiful.

I wish I knew her name, was my first thought upon waking. Never mind that she was a construct of my own mind, interpolating all the attractive qualities from women I have known. I honestly just wanted to know her name, so that I wouldn’t feel so guilty for having cum thinking of someone I didn’t know the name of. It must be the flawed one-night stand, I told myself. All of this is repressal. When you are dreaming, your mind is defragging your brain. It gives you short, random nuggets of sensation when it moves things from your short to long-term memory. Dreams don’t have to mean anything at all. But they can.

Everything falls apart. The satellites in the wobbly LaGrange points, the 533 orbiting in 100km altitude, the CHON producer – everything will fall apart, given enough time. Measured on a galactic scale, humanity has only been in vogue for the last nanosecond or so.

A billion years from now on, the sun will have exhausted all of its supply of hydrogen, and there won’t be any source of heat to support the core against the pull of gravity anymore. The core of Sol will be compressed by the gravity until it reaches a high enough density to start burning helium to carbon. Meanwhile, the outer envelope will expand and Sol will evolve into a red giant. At this stage, the outer corona will be as far away as Jupiter. Everything inside that orbit will be annihilated in a red mass of gaseous fire. Mercury, Venus, Terra, Mars, Jupiter – All destroyed. The tower of Eiffel, the Sphinx, the library of Alexandria, Mount Rushmore and Niagara Falls -likewise swept away as dust by a damp cloth.

The red giant phase of the Sun will only last a few tens of thousands of years, in which it will lose mass in a powerful wind. Eventually, the sun will have lost all of the mass that made up the envelope, and the only thing left will be a hot core of carbon, imbedded in a nebula of expelled gas. Radiation from this hot core will ionise the nebula to produce a colourful spectacular planetary nebula. This nebula will probably be observed on the other side of the galaxy, much like we’ve observed all the other nebulas out there in our brief stint in existence. Eventually, the carbon will cool off and it’ll form a white dwarf, the hyperdense and dim remnant of a once bright star.

If not already, then from that point on, everything will seem trivial.

There will be nothing left of our civilisation. Nothing to ever say that we lived. Doesn’t life feel senseless when you think about that?

This numbing, anestetical feeling that nothing is important in the long run creeps up on you and before you know it, you sit there in your lethargy, unable or unwilling to move your feet because in a billion years, none of this will matter. In a billion years.

People that stop caring because of something that is going to happen in a billion years would have stopped anyway. They just needed the excuse. In a billion years, society will be incomprehensible, seen with our eyes. In the short span of 30,000 years, mankind has already climbed from savagery to interstellar travel. The learning curve is logarithmic. Who knows what we’re capable of achieving in a billion years?

We could build a Dyson sphere. The mass of Jupiter alone is enough to give us a shell with one meter thickness. Then we’d be able to harness all the energy of the sun, by building a sphere to envelop it, the radius stretching to Mars’ orbit. From the outside, our solar system would look like a dull, red throbbing giant. Perhaps the alien scientists would look at it and think that the sun was going belly-up. But honestly, in a billion years – the devil may care.

Predictions makes your head hurt. There are just too many variables to be aware of.

I wonder why I sit here again, and then I hit myself for having forgotten.

“So, Mr. Darwin, Sir. It has come to our attention that your erstwhile fiancee fell in love with your best friend and best man to be and chucked you rather unceremonial head over ass out of the flat, if I might be so bold as to express it in that a manner. Similarly, your bank statements haven’t been printed in black letters for half a year now, and your parents participated in a popular reality television show and have been eaten by a shark. The broadcasting company rejects all responsibility, but has agreed to cover half of the costs of the funeral. Would you be interested in spending some time in seclusion, far away from society at large? It would be very lonely. That’s appreciated, you say? Well, how about we make this for twelve months instead of six, then. Excellent. I knew you were just the man for us when I read your résumé, Mr. Darwin. The shuttle leaves in a fortnight, have a good trip, Mr. Darwin, Sir.”

Woop-de-fucking-doo.

I wonder who the girl is again. Perhaps she’s the product of my repressed urge of reproduction. Five months will do that to you. She doesn’t look like Doreen, Miana, Siv or any of the girls I have been intimate with. Well, there was this one-night stand, but I was drunk and awful, and that doesn’t really matter. I would be hard pressed to give out anything but hair colour about her. She had a dido piercing? I wouldn’t have known, subdued from this world by careful appliance of high-grade C2H5OH as I was on that particular night.

Was it night? I don’t know. It was during that brief fortnight between I signed the contract and got into the shuttle for the blot. The Foundation was kind enough to advance me half of my salary, to let me take care of unpaid bills and generally drug myself into oblivion.

There was this bar. I distinctly remember this bar. Was it a part of the front base on the moon, or in Phuket? Could have been Amsterdam or Grand Rapids for that matter. If you look at the world from within a darkly-lit smoky cellar that doubles as a cheap bar of ill repute, none of the countries in the world matters. They are all alike. The same peeling wallpaper, the same watered drinks, and the same semi-frozen pupils of the girls that sit on your laps and wants you to buy them champagne. Blonde, I think she was blonde. Not really sure if it was bottle-blonde or the real deal. I remember talking to her, not what I talked about, but just that I talked to her. Then I went home with her and after that, my memory of the events starts to fade. The next morning, I awoke alone in my hotel room, and the Foundation was knocking on my door, eager to send me off into space.

They say approaching the blot for the first time is something akin to a birth-trauma. I’m sad to report that the approach didn’t do anything for me at all, but that could naturally be connected to the sizable hangover that circulated around in my body. I tried to still my queasy stomach with CHON, which proved to be a bad idea. Bad as in general failure. Bad as in not good. Bad as in running around, looking for the toilet with my right hand clamped over my mouth, trying to keep the regurgitated contents of my acerbic stomach from spilling out. No wonder I didn’t find the toilet. How many people would have thought “Oh, the toilet must be the hole on the right from where I get my food, since this is a recycling system and all?” Well, yes. Perhaps the ones that read the in-flight pamphlet or the introduction handbook for stellar living. So I was drunk. Sue me. In a billion years, the brown blotched stains on the ground where I vomited won’t matter, anyway.

Over my head, the 533 spins around, completing a full orbit in 118 minutes at 100km altitude. 59 minutes between each brief period which I can transmit messages back and forth to the outside world. The moon spins on its own axis in perfect correspondence with its orbit around the earth, so that the same side always faces Earth. I’m stuck here, on the proverbial dark side, although I get just as much sun as everybody else, once the moon comes in front of the earth and the sun hits me.

How inane this is.

Last month, I started masturbating excessively. It became a compulsion. I couldn’t help thinking of this wonderful creature I dreamed about and I couldn’t help thinking about what I’d like to do to her and I couldn’t help getting aroused. But it’s okay, it provides me with lots of exercise and I just flush the sperm right back into the CHON machine. It could be my imagination, but I think the CHON-shakes have become thicker over the last week. Hmm. I wonder if the strawberry flavouring will last until the new supplies come next month.

I dream about her every night now. I ask myself the question whether it is because I’m actually dreaming about her, or because I’m telling my subconscious that I want to dream about her. “Switch the channel. I’m not in the mood for narcissistic adventures or the resolution of my own oedepalian complexes. I want dream girl on channel twelve, please.”

For each night, she gets more complex. I think my mind is adding details. When I close my eyes and lean back, I can imagine the curve of her nose and pores of her skin. It’s incredible how lifelike she seems to me. All the time, beckoning out for me with her finger.

Radio time. I’m just that bored again. This time, I fiddle around and settle for a nice frequency around 150Hz. I’m in love, I tell the radio. Or possibly in lust. There is this girl that I dream about each night and I don’t know her name, and that fact alone is driving me insane. Insane as when the paranoia hits your brain. For a brief flash, I consider the thought that all of my random transmissions has been monitored, that I am in fact a guinea pig of human isolation. In sterile room the beady-eyed accountants sit, counting how many calories that I expend masturbating, how many times I utter the word “fuck” in a 24 hour cycle, how the chemical composition of my feces suggest a psychological unbalance. Oh yes. I think the Foundation would do such a thing.

Don’t I?

Or is it simply a faux facade that I’m telling myself, keeping up the appearance of importance? Could it be that it’s easier to believe in your utter surveillance instead of waking up to the theory that no one actually cares about what you do, or even if you exist? This job is quite literally a no-brainer. In fact, it’s a prerequisition. Having a brain in this position would be unadvantageous. You’d go insane from boredom if disillusion doesn’t do the trick properly. I think they made a mistake. I’m too smart for this job. I can feel myself slipping away as each day cycles. I so desperately want to be stupid right now.

Utter twit. Borderline imbecile.

I want to be barely cognisant, to spend my days trying to discover the proper way to breathe and eat at the same time, to think about cause and effects until my nostrils bleeds and then forget it all half an hour later. I want to be stupid. I want to be braindead. Anything. To fully realise my predicament is a fate worse than anything else.

Give me the extra chromosome I long for, I hurtle out into space. Come down, all yea gods, wave your wands or otherwise paraphernalia of similar enchantment. Make me a drooling robot, convince me that masturbation is a worthwhile reason for continued existence.

Oh, how patethic I am.

Now I’m crying over the radiowaves. What will all my listeners think of me? They’ll lose all respect for me in the future. I can’t ever see any of them in the eyes again…

I should just kill myself, get the pointless autodegredation over with. Be the first one to go tits-up in the blot itself. Get a head start on the rest of my life. Perhaps I’ll start a new trend. Yes. Yes. Yes.

*sob*

“Judith,” the radio says.

The radio spoke to me. I must be going insane. Or…or could the great statistically probable event have taken place? Did I finally stumble over someone else’s frequency?

This is moonbase Luna 5, science delegate Marvin Darwin speaking, I reply. Please state your name and point of transmittal.

“Judith,” Looking for Eric buy

the radio continues. “That is the name of your dream girl. I’ve listened to you for so long now, but I’ve never spoken up. Whenever you have reached out and touched that dial, I’ve been here. I know everything about you, Marvin. Your solitude, your desperation, how you have masturbated to the thought of this girl the last month.”

The voice on the radio is a female one. Throaty but lithe, just as I imagine Jud- I mean my dreamgirl to have. This petite whisper that just slithers up your ear and gently caresses your mind.

I repeat. Please state your na-

“Why are you afraid to talk to me, Marvin?” In the Loop divx

I’m not afraid to talk to you.

“Prove it.”

How?

“Try to turn off the radio.”

I stretch out my hand for the button, but something tells me that this is my dreamgirl, regardless of how preposterous it sounds. She is actually listening to what I have said, never mind how impossible it is in reality. I want to turn the volume up, but my vision is hazy and I press the button right next to it instead, marked “disconnect”.

There. Don’t you feel much better now? I turn around and indeed, there she is, standing right inside of my humble and cramped stellar domicile.

“But, but, but…”

Shush, she says. I’m here. Don’t you like me? And then she lets her right hand glide down her body, emphasising her attributes.

“Yes, of course… I like you….I like you a lot.”

In my mind, I am drooling. Viciously unable to form coherent thoughts except those that have to do with fucking.

Then come to me, be with me.

Still that finger that I’ve seen so often before, beckoning me, calling out for me. She’s making me come with one finger.

I’ve always listened to you. I’ve always been there, only I have never spoken up.

Do you want to be lonely together with me, Marvin?

“Yes, of course… I like you…I like you a lot.”

Brain loosing blood pressure, repeat last sentence to cover for inactivity.

Let’s find a place that we can be alone Blink download , this goddess before me says.

I think I know of one. Then she pushes me along to the left side of the observatory. Where the airlocks are.

Here. We can be alone in here, she says. Just go inside and take your clothes off. I’ll be right there. Hostage buy

And then she kisses me. This is the first time I have actually touched her, and the sensation is so delicate that my penis threaten to ejaculate on the spot. She is everything I want and more.

“But that’s an airlock. There’s no air out there.” I feebly try to assemble the shredded remains of my common sense.

Don’t you trust me, Marvin?

I am lost. Of course I trust her. How could my goddess believe anything else. She knows something I don’t. Perhaps the airlocks leads to a hidden paradise of fruit and trees. Perhaps this is all an charade, and the moon base is really a cheap stage in the middle of Utah. I trust Judith. I trust Judith with my life.

Just go in here, and take your clothes off. I’ll come after you, but only when you are ready.

“Okay,” I say, and step into the airlock.

Before the pumps have sucked out all the air and reduced the pressure to moon atmosphere, I have stripped to my underwear. When the doors slide open to let the cold in, I am naked.

I step out into the fragile landscape and look up at the sky. Above me, the sun is breaking into a burning crescent. I feel no heat. I feel no anger.

Brrr. It’s so very cold. I know she is coming. I trust Judith. I must keep my mind clear. Perhaps I should think of what I learned in school. The surface temperature of the Moon ranges from 100 to 400 degrees Kelvin. It is always turned to the Earth by one and the same semisphere. We can see only 59% of the Moon’s surface due to the irregular motion of the Moon. The magnetic field of the Moon is very weak and contains 0,1% of magnetic field of the Earth that corresponds to the intensity of the magnetic field not exceeding 0,5 gamma. The Moon shines by the reflected light. The visual spherical albedo is 0,075 i.e. The Moon reflects only 7,5 of the solar light beams.

I wonder why I’m not dead yet. Judith will know. Perhaps I should turn around and see her coming out. She’s not behind me. I look up at the Sun again, and there she is, her gown illuminated as a halo by the sun. She is wonderful. She’s an angel. She’s mine.

Suddenly I remember that I need certain essential things, such as warmth and air. It’s suddenly become so incredibly cold, and my lungs are aching. I collapse to the moon dirt, and it spreads around me. The small particles are jumping into the air with 1/6 of the mass they would have on Terra. They fall down again so slowly, making it all seem as if this is happening in a time-frame.

I look up at Judith, thinking “why the hell did you sucker me into this?”

Shush, she says, and I hear it although there is no air around us. I hear her voice perfectly inside my head.

I told you I’d come for you when you are ready. Bare Witness film

My memory is fading to black again, and I wonder if this’ll be another one-night stand and if I’ll ever wake up with a throbbing head. Perhaps I just went insane. The gods might have heard me. I didn’t even feel the wand. I wonder if I’m really on the surface on the moon or just laying comatose on the floor somewhere. Will I ever know?

I guess not. But in a billion years, none of this will matter anyway.

***

lunacy \Lu”na*cy\, n.; pl. Lunacies. [See Lunatic.]

1. Insanity or madness; properly, the kind of insanity which is broken by intervals of reason, — formerly supposed to be influenced by the changes of the moon; any form of unsoundness of mind, except idiocy; mental derangement or alienation. –Brande. –Burrill.

2. A morbid suspension of good sense or judgment, as through fanaticism. –Dr. H. More.

Syn: Derangement; craziness; mania. See Insanity.

Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary

Lunatic probably the same as epileptic, the symptoms of which disease were supposed to be more aggravated as the moon increased. In Matt. 4:24 “lunatics” are distinguished from demoniacs. In 17:15 the name “lunatic” is applied to one who is declared to have been possessed. (See DAEMONIAC.)

Source: Easton’s 1897 Bible Dictionary

FIN

Anthology 2 #68

Matt P. — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:39:42 +0000

Someone will one day record that the World conceived out of the Twenty-First Century was a corrupt, self-destructive place. Thriving, prone to friction, its very core overworked and tired. A few years following, someone else will record that this was not entirely true, that the sun did indeed set on the frantic, overpopulated landscape carved out of the Information Age and the psyches of Gibson, Orwell and Dick.

Various times, as a matter of fact, did some sort of Revolutionary or Visionary share its wisdom and foresight with the children of melting pot societies and generation gap paradoxes. But from that foresight arose something contradictory to the anything but dismal, seemingly infantile and yet apparently infinite sense of Hope. Out of the awareness of a community derived existence, flew men and women who were not harbingers of peace and serenity.

They fired beams of unfathomable energy from their hands, leveling entire cities, or skulked in tattered cloaks of shadow in alley ways, stalking their next prey; or they simply donned strange features and deceiving costumes in some hope of creating false pretenses of good and just, only to stab a trusting, hopeful community in the back. Criminals. Super Villains. Men and women who walked and lived in the gray. Sadly, this was the penultimate of human achievement and evolution and at the same time, the finest example of humankind’s haphazard, greed stricken, self serving destiny.

Perhaps the first realization fell on another day of infamy in a world of high bandwidth and splintering nations. Sand became like glass and the world economy choked and gagged on smoke plumes of thick, acrid black on a day when everyone on the planet learned at least one man could decimate a nation without Uncle Sam’s army. And that realization led to others rising into view, clamoring for attention, trying to outdo one another until the fabric of hope was a torn, bloodied bed sheet. But their stories are easily found elsewhere, in brutalizing detail, logged both from personal view and by the media barons themselves. Somehow humanity had managed to outdo themselves yet again. It would not be the last time.

The second instance of man’s total disregard for its own meager destiny involved only one man. Born on the exact day when this new cyber awareness breathed new life into a stagnant evolution, he stood separate from his predecessors and culled others to his cause. He was indeed a man of the postmodern, in ways not even the man of the millennium could understand. But this is not his story, rather the story about those who walked alongside him, in the wake of deeds that would haunt an uncertain planet Earth for decades more. This is a chokehold on yesteryear and the death rattle of tomorrow.

Anthology Two Presents…
AC: Trinity
“Sequence Broken Frame”
by Matthew J. Pierce
Note: Adapted from A:Prelude framing sequence with the utmost respect for its author, Tommy Hancock

Reflections of the Past in our Future

Manhattan Central Hub, April, 2010 Drive-By Chronicles: Sidewayz on dvd

“That’s right!” he shouted, his voice a synthetic resampling of the one he was born with despite the fact his larynx was replaced years ago. “Don’t any of you come any closer! This is the day the world as you know it ends!”

He shook his tech-infused arms in the air, his metal piston-like fingers rolled into rather formidable fists.

“The old will be overwritten! And we will rise up alongside the C0r3m1nd and build anew in his image!”

Policedrones stood all the way around him, a robotic cordon around the cybernetic madman. They’d planned to rush him originally, the bulky mass of metal interwoven with flesh standing with an golden scepter. It was quite a sight, actually, watching the almost perfect cohesion of man and technology, waving around a shaft of metal that seemed to be older than anything else in the entire New York Quadrant.

A couple of bystanders, two of them not standing back wondering what Media Baron was staging yet another newsworthy gimmick on the decks of New York, actually started toward the strange fellow, but backed away when the scepter in his hand started glowing. The young beat Cop/Controller rookie who worked the Hub had called in reinforcements and more drones from around the Hub showed up just about the time the glowing staff began emanating golden energy out from all sides. Into the sky, streams of light seemingly going and going, twisting and turning, almost as if they were traveling beyond the Quadrant.

“The Nth Daemon rises today!” Even though he appeared iconic, brightly polished and seething with strength and dignity, the man on the box radiated a certain unsettling, almost evil presence. His rantings carried a force behind them, like a verbal fist into the gut of every red blooded American within netcast distance. “We shall deliver this abomination of a world into the hands of the Mother-router! And, with this gift of destiny at our disposal, there is not one among you who can stop us now!”

“Well,” the voice registered into the cybernetic being’s audio receivers from somewhere above and behind him, a rather subdued roll of thunder sending a storm of film-spheres into action to film its arrival. “I’ll venture to say I know at least one who’s going to try, friend.”

Millennius floated forward, then down so his opponent could see him, so well rehearsed that it seemed he had done it hundreds of times before. The cyberman in the midst of the light shower saw the flying man of flesh, but showed little feeling, especially no shock or fear. Only the unadulterated hate and aggression in its all too human eyes.

“Too late, Millennius! I expected you! That’s why I chose to initiate our dominance right here! Out in the open! In your city!”

“That is one way to make sure I show up.”

His eyes studied the area quickly with his solar vision. There seemed to be no one else around in support of this cyberbeing. Turning his eyes to the scepter, he closed his left eye, focusing his solar vision into an intrusive beam that became lost in the bath of gold radiance.

“It’s already nearly over, you know that, don’t you!” the cybernetic despot continued raving at Millennius. “This device, the Scepter of Fate, has already granted the datamites of the Nth Daemon all the power they need to roust your precious, orderly Infogov and remove its blight from the planet!”

Millennius moved a few inches to the right, then the left, as he talked. “I know. Some of my friends and associates have already detected some of your ‘programs’ and the fight’s indeed under way.” Millennius cocked an eyebrow as he looked at the cyberman, then at the scepter, then back to the cyberman. “And I have to deal with you. The cybernetic monstrosity with the weapon. That staff, it gives out powers to your men at random? So, what sort of abilities do you now have holding it?”

“Idiot!” he lowered one hand, but shook the other, grasping the scepter at Millennius like an irate child. “I am at the center of the power! It is my power battery that makes this glorious weapon work! I need no other power! My followers will rise up and defend me!”

“Ah,” Millennius said, rising up above the arcing above the blasts of gold, “that’s what I thought.”

He moved above the man’s head, then just over him. Flying up about ten feet, Millennius then turned, and before his robotic foe realized it, rocketed back down at him, head first. The cyberman grasping the scepter looked up just in time to see the full length of Millennius’ body impact with the ground he stood upon. The concussive force of Millenius’ impact shattered the synthmetal surface of the street and knocked every bystander for a square mile of his or her feet.

“No! No!” he screamed, his cybernetic body suddenly convulsing. Millennius burst out from beneath the ground amidst a cheering crowd as the cyberman continued to struggle and jerk uncontrollably.

“Get on with it,” Millennius watched as this latest maniac he was saving the world from trembled as if he exploding from the inside out. After five or six seconds, it was over. The flesh aspect of the man cracked and burst from the inside out, coming free from the technological parts he was once bonded with. Millennius simply stood by and watched it end, crossing his massive arms across his chest.

“Scepter… could not let it go… after I started the process…” his digital voicebox quivered, barely able to deliver its last explanation and message at a pitch that only Millennius could detect. “He… said…. I’d… die… if I let go of it… before… it was done.”

Millennius looked over at the staff. The energy stopped radiating as quickly as the robotic man let it go and now it seemed dormant and plain. An antique. Millennius looked back to the faltering mass of automated machinery washed in flesh. “Where did you get that from? Did Doctor Creep give that to you?”

The cybernetic man’s silver head shook and then fell free from its wiry neck but still it spoke. “Not… Creep… They… They are coming… back…” his body spasmed awfully once more. “Prepare yourselves… prepare your heroes. Beware… the Magis… the Magis… the Ma–.”

Millennius nodded his chin, motioning the policedrones over to take the body. “Well, whoever ‘they’ are, they’ll find us ready. Ready as we ever were.”

Cheers and applause rumbled up and down the Hub. Under his breath and the din, Millennius added, “And Heaven help us for that not being enough.”

***

The Romantic Englishwoman movies

October, 2011 Trilogy of Terror video

Like a pot, a watched politician never accomplishes anything. Despite its age and failures in the day since its inception, the United Nations had grown, opening its doors to all nations. No longer did past transgressions matter or a nation’s inability to appease the Greater Nations, a term first used four decades ago to replace the title Super Power in order to separate Superhuman from State.

A world parliament with little in the way of true power, the United Nations met all year round in its new capital of Switzerland, relocated after the New York Underground collapse in 2008. Debating, deliberating, declaring matters of opinion and history was all the political body of senior and aged intellectuals could manage these days but once in awhile, in instances few and far in-between… it had a good idea or two.

“I would say the world cannot and should not tolerate another attack on its global infrastructure like the one in the Manhattan Hub last week! What I am prepared to propose to you, gentlemen of the Assembly, is the full and non-prejudicial separation of the superhuman criminal body from the rest of Earthen society!”

“Separation, Mr. Kensington? Isn’t that just a down-played way of saying Segregation?” the speaker from New Palestine asked a sincere question with the calmest of tones, perfectly translated by the neck and collar apparatus that was a part of his nation’s diplomatic uniform.

“Segregation is an evil of our past that my country will not revisit, Mr. Speaker. This body has taken great strides over the last several decades to eradicate racial prejudice on all levels. Segregating human from the superhuman… well I believe it to be a step in the wrong direction.” Leave it for the speaker from the United States to give an overly dramatic approach that was both self centered and unnecessary. It would have sufficed to just hear him say, “We don’t like it.”

“I thank the Speakers of Pakistan and the United States for their opinion, however, what I am proposing is not segregation in the historically defined sense. If we must give it a term that we can identify with, I believe ‘deportation’ is more accurate.”

Willem Kensington, Australian diplomat to the United Nations was a tanned man from head to toe. His hair was a light chestnut and his features a sunny brown. He moved with a young man’s grace and acted with a naivety that sometimes let him go unnoticed and yet when he spoke, none could focus on anything else but him.

He didn’t need the collar-translator to tell him what the murmur inside the Main Hall meant. In nearly every language on Earth, the same word was being repeated over and over for clarification. Deportation.

The Canadian Speaker stood up. The oldest of the UN ambassadors and the most vaunted, his charismatic leadership made him the obvious diplomatic leader even though there hadn’t been a Secretary General of the United Nations in over twenty-five years.

“Mr. Kensington, if I were to practice a certain amount of creative imagination, I might gather you intend to round up all of these superhuman criminals of yours with the intent to ship them off to somewhere. Certainly ironic when you consider the history of your nation.”

“The irony never escaped me, Mr. Atwater. And if I were to guess what your reservations of such an idea may be…”

“Please do.”

“Where is it exactly that we can send this cancer of society where it won’t come back to infest us again in the very near future. What good is an ocean boundary to one who can swim great distances? What good is a secluded and distant region of the world to one who can fly through the atmosphere? Once taken off our soil, out of our cities and societies, how do we keep them away?”

The Speaker paused for a moment of effect and listened to the steady din of voices in multiple languages, a field of Babel laid out before his very eyes. “The answer, quite simply, is to send them to a place they cannot return from. A place that superhumans would lay claim to. Such a place does not exist within the confines of our planet, gentlemen, so if you want to put your imagination to the test, do so now. Otherwise, consider the proposal now being uploaded to your diplonets.

“My government and an independent consortium have already completed the groundwork, estimations and probabilty surveys, all of which you may consider over the holiday. Upon return from our break, I will make the more official proposal: that the superhuman criminal population be deported off the planet Earth and cast away into deep space for our mutual survival.”

***

Michael Clayton on dvd

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

“Deportation,” Millennius scoffed. “What is it with humanity’s propensity for either running away from their problems or shoving them as far away as possible?” The blond-haired übermänn gave his companion a sideways glance, trying to ignore this Grim Knight’s very female features. If, over the years, she noticed his superhumanly quick undressing of her with his eyes, she never mentioned anything.

“Who knows,” she replied simply, “but if you ask me, it’s a shame they didn’t think of it sooner. Hopefully someone will have the good sense to aim their ship straight for the sun.”

The duo were positioned on the roof of the United Nations headquarters in Switzerland. Millennius relied on his augmented hearing to listen in on the deliberations inside the building while the Grim Knight depended on more electronic means.

The Grim Knight only briefly looked up from her vantage point of the street below. It was always the street with her, nothing else held her attention for very long. “I take it you don’t approve,” she said from beneath her cowl.

“Even though it’s not my place, you mean,” Millennius bitterly suggested while looking down at the Knight. He crossed his arms crossed over his chest, challenging his teammate to explain why he was no longer allowed an opinion in human affairs. “Sure, I don’t approve. This has all the makings of a bad idea.

“How’s that?” Grim Knight returned her gaze to the street below, tracking a pedestrian’s movement as he walked past the entrance of the UN building. “Because they thought of it and you didn’t?”

The displease scowl Millennius was wearing deepened. “Do you really think I’m that shallow?”

“Shallow? No. Not really. Do I think you have a crucifixion-complex? Definitely.” Knight stood, pulling her long, dark cape tighter around her. “Why is that when humanity tries to fix its own problems, you immediately think their suggestions are bad ideas?”

Millennius opened his mouth to reply but Knight showed no signs of giving him the opportunity. “Why is it that any plan that doesn’t involve a superhuman, a cape or a mask is doomed for failure? Is it so hard to believe that humanity might be capable of fixing its own problems? Or is it just that, if the great Millennius and his Federation of Heroes can‘t fix the world‘s problems, well then surely it‘s too difficult a task for normal humans to do it.”

“I don’t believe that at all,” Millennius replied.

He lowered his head and gazed intently at Grim Knight, his eyes were concealed in shadow and for a moment it seemed he was looking out from behind a domino mask.

“Let’s stop being cute with each other, Knight. You know full well the purpose of the Federation was to deal with the problems humanity couldn’t. First and foremost of those problems were super criminals. In fact, they asked us to confront that problem before anything else. Before global epidemics, before starvation… Humanity itself knew that it couldn’t deal with them alone.”

“Your whole attitude throughout all this, Millennius, is that humanity is flawed, capable of mistakes that it can’t fix because of its own weaknesses. That it has to rely on supers to deal with supers. So let’s say you’re right. Let’s say they are flawed and capable of being wrong. What’s the sin in being wrong, Millennius? The very fundamental difference between man and superman seems to be that man can admit to being wrong and apparently tries to learn from its mistakes.”

Becoming increasingly frustrated, Millennius places his hands on his hips. “What are you getting at, Knight? That somehow, they’ve had it right all along and we’ve been going about things the wrong way?”

A smile tugged at the edge of Knight’s lips. She’d thank Millennius for proving her point but it was probably likely that he wouldn’t get it. “That we’ve perpetuated the problem while attempting to solve it?”

“To a point, yes. Superhumanity’s approach to control and process super criminals has led to nothing else but violence and violence begets violence, Millennius. I honestly believe our crusade has done little more than inspire and encourage the very population we’ve tried to stamp out.”

“Incredible,” Millennius replied incredulously. “You actually believe that?”

Grim Knight left the question without an answer, knowing that Millennius didn’t need one. “My predecessor might have agreed with you on a lot of things, Millennius despite the differences in your methodologies.”

“We agreed on the end, not the means.”

“But you should know after all this time,” Knight resumed, “I am not my predecessor. He chose me to succeed him because near his end he knew he had gone about this all wrong. Just like you have; just like the rest of the Federation. He figured I had the right idea; that all I needed were the… tools to bring it about. Well, I think I have. I’ve done the research, looked at the facts and since taking on the mantle I’ve put myself right in the middle of the battlefield. I’ve seen for myself how supers react to other supers. I’ve seen their apparent answer to everything.”

“I’m not convinced it doesn’t work.”

“I think this concept that the UN has come up with might be the most original and the most innovative area that’s come out of this… war against supers… against criminals. Surprisingly enough,” Knight chuckled, “it’s not so original.”

“All right, Knight,” Millennius dropped his arms to his sides, conceding defeat. “The Federation disbanded because it thought it was only making the situation worse. That was your doing. I disagreed with you then but agreed to continue working with humans on a simpler level. I chose to work with the humans and this is what they’ve come up with. So be it.”

Grim Knight turned towards her former teammate, her features cloaked in black and shadow. “I want to hear you say it.”

“I won’t interfere,” Millennius bowed his head. “I’ll leave them to whatever… fate they’ve chosen for themselves.

“Now you see? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” The rare smile returned to her lips. “Listen, Henry, you wanted to retire years ago but criminals wouldn’t let you. Well… you don’t have that excuse any more. The criminals are leaving. Maybe you should think about kicking back for awhile, record your memoirs or… plant a farm or something, I don’t know. Whatever you capes do when you go to pasture.”

Millennius smirked for a moment and then looked out to the skyline and the moon’s distant glow. “It used to be about telling stories. I think maybe… I still have a few left to tell.”Jack-O full

Revolution Summer movie full

Anthology 2 #67

Chad — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:36:39 +0000

Paul cursed under his breath. He waved his pistols to the left. Again he cursed. He moved them right. Curse.

“Goddamned sunny days.”

Three figures stood in the middle of Fisherman’s Wharf, motionless except for their heads, which moved left to right, watching another figure waving a pair of pistols around, speaking dirty to them.

The first figure, a short black-haired man with glasses in a yellow raincoat was sweating profusely, eyes wide at the fourth figure. The second figure to his left was a Spanish woman dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, and seemed quite exasperated, shaking her head back and forth at the figure. The third figure stood seven feet tall, wore a large black and red robe accented with streaks of blood, and was topped off with a rather dashing cow’s head used as a hat.

The third figure, was so aghast that he had forgotten he was clenching a nasty looking silver dagger in one of his purple tentacles, and the fifth, as of yet unmentioned figure below him. Which in fact turned out to be a corpse, and if it wasn’t a corpse, it would probably look pretty damn confused too. But it could only look dead right now. But you would bet your milk money it was sighing rather loudly in the afterlife.

“Second.”

“Damnit.”

“Second.”

“What?” Paul looked up at the bright yellow blur speaking to him.

“Just put on your sunglasses.”

“Wha?”

“On top of your head.”

Paul stopped waving his guns, and with the barrel of one of them, pulled the black shades down from the top of his head. They slid down over his eyes, and the yellow blur coalesced into a guy named Daniel. Another, exasperated figure turned out to be a rather exasperated woman who he knew. And the last figure was a big bloody monster with a weapon.

“Much better.” Drive-By Chronicles: Sidewayz hd

Second turned, pointed his guns at the big nasty bastard and then holstered them in the old leather gunbelt hanging on his hips. He turned again to Daniel.

“Thanks Split.”

The third figure uttered an “urp” as black blood shot out his back in numerous areas, and then unceremoniously slapped dead to the wooden dock.

Juana, still exasperated heaved out a woman’s sigh and shook her head.

She muttered “Idiot,” just loud enough for Second to hear.

Paul looked at her.

“What? I hate glinties.”

Anthology Two Presents…
Inzen Kettaku:
“Second Coming”
by Chad S. Roberts

Jakob Harkes scanned the vast field of what was once corn; now a blanket of ash and stubborn remnants of stalks lying on a plain of black charcoal. Smoke hung on smoldering ground, dispersing with each of his steps; a fact which Sebastian was exploiting to his delight as he hopped from spot to spot.

Harkes swore he could see the mad grin behind the black rubber gas mask that encompassed Sebastian’s head.

Without subtlety a loud and wet explosion erupted from his boot, as it sunk into a large pile of excrement.

Abbigail and Sebastian’s heads snapped in unison to look at Jakob’s predicament.

“Horse shit.”

Harkes looked up from his foot at Sebastian with a sneer. “Thanks.”

He began to draw his leg from the stomach cavity of a barely recognizable dead horse, a horrid sucking noise surrounding it.

At the appropriate moment, Sebastian spoke, “Watch your step.”

Jakob raised his hand and displayed the longest finger on it. “Swivel on it, asshole.”

He was sure this time that Sebastian smiled, as his eyes scrunched up between his cheeks and eyebrows as he resumed his hopping, Harkes sighed and shook his head, shaking his boot off and then looking up after Sebastian.

Abbigail’s voice had none of the amazement it should. “That must be it.”

Arcs of white electricity splayed across Harkes’ eyes and on the round plastic discs which allowed him sight through the mask.

No more than twenty yards in front of him hovered a large ball of electricity, in the heart of the ruins of a farm house. In its outer rings hung five burnt carcasses, their limbs outstretched, and their mouths gaping wide, as if they still screamed and writhed in pain after death. Beyond this barrier of death, deep within the orb sat a small five year old child, cross-legged, his hands reaching out for his dead family, tears streaking down his face.

The energy emanated from the boy, cresting from his shoulders, like the beginnings of angel’s wings gone terribly wrong.

Sebastian spoke again, for comedic effect, which seemed to be the only times he spoke.

“Yeah. There’s a good chance that’s It.”

***

Antarctica

Anya gripped the edge of the desk tightly, and then threw herself left, releasing from the desk. The room circled around her, as she pulled her knees to her chest as the last bit of momentum slipped away. Her bright pigtails lowered on to the sides of her head and the computer screen crept slowly past her.

A small round emblem sat rather irritatedly in the center of her monitor. Her eyes rolled past it and she scrambled to grab the desk a second too late.

She stopped, facing the complete opposite way she needed to be. Anya dropped her feet to the floor. She scuttled her feet against it, the thermal socks slipping almost frictionless off of it. After a few sections she decided this mode of travel to be fruitless and jumped up, the chair shooting off towards the wall.

Anya, despite the short distance she had to go, ran to the computer, and her bottom half slipped out from under her. She, in the second or so it took her to get up to her knees, reminded herself to get a good pair of slippers.

Resting on her pajama covered knees, Anya dragged the mouse over to the small angry warning sign, and double-clicked it.

***

Kansas

“See. This is why I’m never having children.”

“I really don’t think it’s up to you, Sebastian.”

“Now what’s that supposed to mean, Harkes?”

“That you look like the spawn of a man named Butch and a pit bull.”

“Hey!”

“Abbigail?”

She pondered, holding her chin in her fingers. “Well…in the right lighting and pose, Sebby-boy is rather striking.”

“Hoogah! Thank you and good night.”

Harkes harrumphed.

“And I’ll be available in the Presidential Suite at the Sands from midnight to noon, for all my loving fans.”

Abbigail and Jakob looked over at Sebastian.

“Did you say something?” they both said, if somewhat non-unified.

“Yeah, I was just informing all the lovel…”

“No, not that. After that,” questioned Harkes.

“Umm…lemme think,” which he did. “Nope.”

“Huh. It sounded like you said ‘whop’.”

“What?”

A thick tendril of white energy licked out and smacked Sebastian squarely in the back, and it stood there, writhing about, as Sebastian fell forward onto the hot earth.

***

Vermont

The last few drops seared his tongue and heated his throat, sinking into his belly and making him feel uncomfortably perky. Tom looked across his desk, clenching the white porcelain of his coffee cup in a caffeine death grip. He looked into it and swabbed his finger into its stained crevices, searching out the last drops of liquid.

He sucked his finger, and turned to look at the coffee machine. Tom watched Lisa from accounting pour the last cup from it and after a short moment of pride at getting the last cup, she walked off. He started to get up from his chair, as he came to the brutal realization that the number-crunching bitch hadn’t made another pot.

Tom was gripped with the need to choke the life out of Lisa from accounting while violently raping her in front of her immediate family. But alas, Tom did not know where she lived, nor the address of her parents’ home.

And so Tom from programming stood, and walked to the coffee maker. He searched for the coffee, and found it too, was empty. So much of his life was the same. But this isn’t really about Tom, it’s about coffee. So he thought for a moment, and holding his coffee mug in an unforgiving grip walked to the elevator.

Tom stepped inside, and looked briefly at the other two people that he did not know the names of. They stared gawkingly at him, and then looked straight ahead, as did he, which is accepted elevator procedure. Tom punched the B button quickly and forcefully. It, being the bastard piece of machinery it was, didn’t light up. So he punched it again. And again. And again. The other passengers did nothing.

Tom stopped for a second, and reached into his pocket, pulling out a keyring. He singled out a small key, and slid it into the keyhole below the panel of buttons. It turned, and he pressed the B button once more. It lit up, and joined the other lit up button (a 3, in fact) and the elevator began to move downward.

6
5
4
3

The elevator halted, the doors opened, and to his delight his two elevator-mates departed. And to his even greater delight, none replaced them.

2
1
B

Again, the elevator stopped, and the doors opened to the dark concrete of the basement. Tom stepped out, and made his way into the semi-dark. A chain dangled above him, and he grasped it, yanking it downward. A circle of light soon surrounded him, and lit the door to the supplies room somewhat less than adequately. He walked to it, and pulled out the keyring again, finding a normal sized key and unlocked the door.

Inside, the decadently protected staplers hid within a locked steel box. Office products of all races and creeds surrounded him in awesome supplyness. And in a white, beaten up cardboard box, lay what he desired, which the black El Marko so divinely displayed. Coffee stuff. So simple, yet conveying so many wonderful things. His mouth salivated at the prospect of a non-empty mug.

Tom pulled the box from the shelf, and looked inside it. And although it held an ample amount of powdered non-dairy creamer in little foil packets, it held no coffee. The box nearly slipped from his sweaty grip. He looked at its vacant space on the shelf, and though there was no more coffee grounds, there was indeed a panel of photocopied oak which stood shyly behind the shelf, surrounded by cold cement.

Tom looked at it, dumbfounded. He grabbed the shelf, and pulled it from the wall. And sure enough, there was a door. In the place of a label was a small rectangular patch of dirty, used adhesive.

Had it not been that Tom was in the bowels of a caffeine jones, he would have not been foolish enough to do what he did.

What he did was he opened the door.

Stupid, stupid Tom.

***

Antarctica

Laid out on her monitor was a patchwork quilt of windows, the largest of which was displaying the depths of an east coast office building. A mere man who had made nothing of his life, stood on the edge of it, and stepped unblinkingly into the gap.

“No, stupid!” Anya shouted, and nobody was there to hear it.

The little man in Vermont stood looking at the machinery surrounding him, and finally the frost covered plastic pod which was the center of the machines, indeed, their only purpose. The man stared at it for a moment, found a can of coffee grounds in the corner, and left.

Any other person would have sighed in relief. But Anya’s heart, beneath her large gray Go Cougars! t-shirt, still beat frantically.

She knew this was not the end, even now one of the smaller windows, which she clicked, grew and showed what she feared. A small, placid alert sign flashed somewhere in Taiwan, and unfortunately, on a computer which someone was paying attention to.

Anya picked up her headset slowly, and put it on. She clicked a few things, and hit a few keys.

In bewildered calmness, she spoke.

“Chance. They’ve found Second.”

And somewhere near Knightsbridge, in a dark pub, Livingston Chance heard those words in his empty pint glass.

***

Kansas Blind Date ipod

Leui ting jin ging ipod ???????? ????? ????? ??????

The toddler’s piercing cries filled Jakob and Abbigail’s ears, as the crackling thunder of the electricity had calmed. One tendril stood angrily over Sebastian’s still, and toasty brown body, as if it were the physical representation of the child’s emotions.

Harkes turned to the orb and the child, and his left arm hissed. He opened his clenched fist, and in it sat one steaming bullet. He drew his pistol, and opened the chamber. Jakob plucked the bullet from his palm, blew on it, and loaded it into the gun. He holstered his gun again, and looked at Abbigail from the corner of his eye. She looked at him calmly, and quietly mumbled, “Don’t miss.”

He flexed his fingers, and in one smooth motion whipped out his gun and brought it up to aim.

“I don’t.”

The hammer cocked back and with a boom the sphere of energy sputtered. A small corpse fell to the ground without so much as a twitch.

Abbigail kneeled down, and proceeded to hit Sebastian squarely in the chest. He coughed violently, and began to curse in the same manner, in-between coughs.

Jakob glanced at him. “That’s why we leave you home with the little girls.”

Abbigail looked back at Jakob. “You left Sebastain alone with a girl?”

The younger man began to lift himself up, glaring at Jakob and then just narrowing his eyes at Abbigail.

Abbigail kissed him on the nose and walked up to Harkes, Sebastian following after.

The three stood around in a circle, and at the tips of their toes the charred field was burning anew, a red corona surrounding a black little dead thing.

The flames died down, and the dark lump now only smoldered.

“What is it, Sebastian?”

“It’s a dead baby, Harkes.”

“You know what I mean.”

“But I don’t want to look at it.”

“Whooptie-shit. What is it?”

Sebastian turned slowly, and unclenched his eyelids.

*** ??? ????? ?????????

From the moment they arrived, he had been watching the three figures. Even from this distance, he could hear them perfectly. He could understand what they were saying, and everything was coming along nicely.

Then, somewhere deep in the back of his mind, back in the brain leftover from his evolutionary predecessors, something became very nervous. And despite all his learning and culture, the owner of the brain he inhabited was getting scared. When his instincts started to flare up, he knew all bets were off. Something wasn’t right…and it was in the voices and actions of the three figures that he found what was wrong.

The apparent leader asked the comic relief (although such comedy was far lost on this hidden observer) what the accursed child was. How could he not see it was a child? Unless the bald man saw beneath the surface. Deduction led him to believe that the bald one had some sort of ability to identify biological makeup, or something of that ilk.

This whole deduction took about five seconds, as his genius intelligence was on par with the greatest human minds. Even though he was not human.

The ruse was soon up, the bald one would find out the child was merely human, and that would lead them to him. So he listened to his instincts, no matter how much he despised them, and did what they told him. He ran. He ran very, very fast.

***

From what was later identified to be a doghouse, a blur shot out at breakneck speeds.

“SHIT!”

The field team desperately tried to chase after the blur, burnt cornstalks beating at their knees. When it was evident they were not going to catch it, they slowed to a stop.

“It’s Harkes, get a containment field in a five mile radius around our immediate area and then send in the weasels.”

The three stared off after the blur, and watched as a crackling yellow dome surrounded them for miles around.

***

He ran, and ran. And as he neared the sound barrier something caught his eye. Something round, and rubber…and red!

It was a ball! A BALL! It was a red ball!

He stopped in front of the ball, and began to jump around ecstatically, from side to side, following the ball, yapping loudly. The ball stopped in the middle, and he jumped up and down, wagging his tail enthusiastically.

And one thought pushed aside all others. Any thoughts of world domination, personal gain, milk-bones. All fell to this one thought.

He must have that ball.

***

The three walked up, and could now make out what the blur had been.

It was tan and white, and had a big pink tongue. It was a border collie, just like Lassie. Except it differed in a few major ways from Lassie. For one, it possessed a genius intelligence. Second, it had powers to rival a superhero. Third, it was immortal. And finally, it was indomitably evil. These things led up to it being quite different from Lassie.

While Lassie saved Timmy from the well every time, this chap would have gone off and screwed some bitch at the least. Or if he was feeling particularly nasty, perhaps if they hadn’t given him wet food that day, he would have chewed Timmy’s eyes out and left him to die.

To put it bluntly, he was a bad dog.

Harkes had been explaining this to the others on the walk up, after Sebastian had identified it, and that the baby was just human.

The dog also came with a history, which Harkes knew in unfaltering detail.

***

Antarctica

“In 1949, the Commies were still a threat, and it was America’s time to shine. There was all sorts of weird shit going on in the military, just like always. But what we see here is one of the most ill-thought projects.”

Livingston stood over Anya, watching the computer screen show the field team in Kansas, and the other monitoring a hidden supplies room in Vermont. Her heart beat fast, as Chance’s ale-rich breath explained one of the two situations.

“It is what the records call a SPBC. A super-powered border collie.”

Anya snickered. Chance smirked.

“Anyways. The reasoning was, Dog is Man’s best friend, so why not make Dog smart and powerful enough to protect Man from the Red’s übermänner? But what they didn’t put into the equation is that Dog is subservient to Man because Man gets Dog food. They’re not protecting the man, they’re protecting the Food-Getter. So if a dog could start fires with its mind, telekinetically lift a house, and had a genius intelligence, why wouldn’t it just get its own food? And by nature, Man would try to subvert this new Dog.”

Chance took a sip of beer from the pint glass in his hand. He looked at it, said, “Warm,” and set it down on the ground.

“So in the field tests, Dog blew up Man’s grey matter from the inside, and eviscerated all the annoying children. And we end up with the realization that border collies are total bastards in real life. So the U.S. quickly eliminated all the dogs, the families and covered it all up.”

Livingston grabbed his pint glass again, and took another swig. Anya looked at him.

“You said it was-”

“I know what I said; I don’t care, it’s still beer.”

Anya barely shrugged.

Chance continued.

“But obviously,” he pointed to the monitor, “one or more escaped, and have been breeding.”

She looked up at him.

“So this means?”

***

Kansas

“It means we’re in the shitter. These buggers could have spread out everywhere over the world in the last two and a half centuries. But no doubt their blood has been diluted, this is just one of the purer ones. He obviously has a normal dog side to him.”

Sebastian looked up at Harkes.

“I’d hate to see the original ones. Kujo with a special effects budget.”

Abbigail smiled. She turned her eyes to Jakob.

“What now, Harkes?”

Jakob watched the containment crew chief keep the dog occupied rather easily with the ball. He would throw it, and the dog would go bounding after it. Jakob imagined it would go on like this for a while longer. He looked at the chief.

“Hold the ball.”

The Chief grabbed the ball and held it aloft, the dog sat on its haunches, watching it.

Harkes turned to the dog.

“Speak.”

And it did so, in a rather British accent.

“I want the ball, I want the ball, I want the ball, I want the ball-”

Jakob grabbed the ball from the Chief, and hunkered down, holding it in front of the dog’s face.

“Stop saying that. If you talk to me, you get the ball. Got it?”

The dog nodded vigorously.

“What’s your name?”

It looked up at Jakob.

“My now deceased comrades called me Bingo, rather unimaginative blokes. I call myself Rex Prime.”

Abbigail and Sebastian watched Harkes intently.

“Well now Rex. You set us up to believe that the kid was the one who did all that damage, didn’t you, boy?”

Harkes waved the ball around, and Rex followed it frantically.

“I rather suppose I did, didn’t I? Clever ones, you. Took you a while, didn’t it? Do I get the ball yet?”

“Not yet. Why’d you kill them?”

“Oh, I guess because they never could make a proper cup of tea. Never had quality biscuits. Used up all the bloody fresh lemon for fragging lemonade. They can shove that lemonade up their cold, charred arses, can’t they now?”

“I see,” he paused and gestured at Sebastian, “you hit my friend here.”

“I did, I did. That I did. But you three looked like you would sit there forever. I had to get something done. And he is still alive isn’t he? Rather gracious of me, if I say so myself. Don’t you think?”

Sebastian snarled at Rex. Rex did not oblige him back.

Harkes snapped a look at Sebastian, and then looked back at Rex.

“You know who we are?”

“Of course, you’re from Inzen Kettaku. We über-collies have racial memory, that. You’re here to catalog and investigate me, and then to take me back to headquarters to keep me away from the general populace. Right?”

Jakob looked at him, and stood up, hucking the ball out into the field, Rex soon following after. Harkes drew his pistol and aimed. He sent an explosive cartridge into the back of Rex’s skull which then promptly exploded in a mess of skull shrapnel and grey matter. Harkes slowly lowered his gun.

“Yeah,” Harkes holstered his pistol, “something like that.”

Sebastian looked down the horizon at the corpse, and began walking towards it, the containment team following him. He stood over it as they bagged it up. He walked back with them to the van, and stepped between Harkes and Abbigail, who were staring out at the disintegrating force field. Sebastian took a look at them both, and then looked out at it along with them.

“Well. He got the ball.”

***

Antarctica

“That he did. But it’s too late now, Anya. It’s already rolling. And you know we can’t stop it once it starts.”

She looked up at Chance sadly.

“You’ll be next. You know that Chance. Sooner or later, after you’ve served your purpose, they’ll come after you.”

Livingston nodded, and a big hyena grin stretched across his mouth.

“They can try.”

Anya smiled weakly and Chance planted a peck on her cheek.

“I have to go, love. Things to do, you know the drill.”

“Yeah. I do.”

He patted her on the shoulder and picked up his glass, walking towards the door.

Anya watched him go out into the cold.

***

Vermont

He became aware. Then he became aware that it was freezing-nuts cold. He rotated his eyes around in their sockets, and saw only frost, and blue metal. With minimal effort, he removed wrists from the shackles of stasis. He raised his hands to his face. He was still in his clothes.

Things slowly started to come back to him, and eventually he remembered where he was and why. And then he saw why he had woken up.

On the outside of the glass, a rectangle of frost had been wiped off. And through it three people stared at him. Behind them were other people in jumpsuits. He recognized the curling logo on their suits.

Maybe they had finally come with his paycheck.

*** ???? ?????

Sebastian pressed his face against the glass, checking the contents and no doubt scaring whoever was inside. He pulled himself back.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Abbigail looked over a packet of information.

“Paul Thayer. Codenamed Second. Inzen Kettaku operative in the early 21st century, confirmed SPB. Specifics on his powers are hazy, but mainly speed oriented, temporal manipulation suspected. Discovered to of the Sporophyte Generation, a potentially disastrous one if he were to be fully activated. Put simply, he would eventually become a demigod of time.”

She flipped over some pages.

“Seems he went under the freeze voluntarily. A true believer in the cause, it says. Charming. Officially he’s just laid-off.”

Sebastian smiled. He then looked back at Harkes.

“Open it?”

Jakob nodded.

Sebastian took a step forward, and located the latches.

“Warning, contents may have shifted.”

He grinned at his own joke.

***

Backdraft dvd

He felt funny as the seals began to hiss open and the stasis field properly dissipated. It felt good to hold his guns again. Paul could feel their handles cold against his palms. The door to the pod rolled open.

Second looked at them all, and smiled smoothly.

“Did they send a Hickory Farms basket too?”

The field team watched him as he stepped out onto the concrete.

“What, not big talkers?”

***

“Obviously not.”

Harkes smirked at the comment, and in a flash drew his gun and fired. The bullet whizzed by Paul’s head and sunk into the metal behind.

“Whoa whoa WHOA!” Second ducked to the side, “What the hell are you doing?”

Jakob turned and fired again, and it met more machinery.

“Hey, aren’t you listening?” Second kept weaving around as he spoke.

Harkes fired.

Second dodged to the side and Jakob’s wrist twisted angrily as his pistol dropped to the ground.

“Can’t we work something out here?”

Harkes bent down, reaching for his gun. Second kicked it away from his grasp.

“What the fuck is the matter with this century? Have all you kids fucking lost it?”

Sebastian looked at him. “No, sir. We’re here to kill you.”

“I guessed that much,” Second kicked the gun again, “but for god’s sake, why?”

Harkes looked up at him, fixing his wrist.

“God is dead, Mr. Thayer. And killing people like you is what we do.”

He lashed out with a lightning fast punch at Paul’s nose. His fist stopped in midair and cranked to the left along with the rest of his arm, dislocating it from the shoulder.

“Okay. I get it now,” Second nodded.

***

The three operatives, and the two containment crew woke up a while later, blood streaming from their noses, caked on their face, with rather nasty headaches.

Harkes got up, and felt his face. His upper lip was busted.

“Shit.”

Abbigail woke up, looking at her chest, and removing Sebastian’s hand from it. She looked down at him, “I know you’re not unconscious.”

Sebastian opened his eyes, groggily, “What? That’s how I fell, I swear.”

She narrowed her eyes and got up.

“Now what, fearless leader?”

Harkes looked around. Second was long gone. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was broken.

“He can’t run forever,” Harkes wiped blood off his lip. More blood replaced it. He looked at his hand.

“Fuck.”