Story a Day

Good News!

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She sat alone in her room when the golden light came. Shaded daylight illuminated the room from two open windows and she didn’t notice the glowing golden light at first. Instead, she was contemplating a sizable bag of clothing on her bed. About four or five feet from the floor and in the center of the room an amorphous, ethereal haze of swirling golden light grew larger and brighter.

When the young woman finally did notice the phenomenon she caught her breath. What?!

“Do not be afraid,” she heard a voice in her head say. “I have some good news for you.” The glowing light grew larger and brighter and was beginning to take shape.

I must be cracking up, she thought. This can’t be happening.

The ethereal globe of light began to solidify, arms, legs, torso, head, and what looked like wings to her on its back, a very human looking body coalesced. The light faded and a dark haired, dark complected man stood before her. He was dressed in a simple white tunic with a cincture tied around his middle.

“Are you an angel?” she asked.

“If it pleases you to think of me as such,” the man said.

“You have wings.”

“Ahh, I see you could think so. They are but receptors that allow me to be here with you at this point in time.” He smiled a charming smile and nodded. “In a way, they are wings.” He showed her the palms of his empty hands, “I truly mean you no harm,” he said. “My name is Gay Bree Al and I belong to a race of people that live very far away from here.”

The young woman knew she should be terrified by this unnatural experience but somehow, strangely, she felt great inner calm and serenity. “Why have you come?” she asked.

The charming smile appeared on the man’s face once again. “To tell you that you are about to become a mother.”

She was engaged to be married, to be sure. However, unlike many others, she and her intended had never had sexual intercourse. “I certainly hope so,” she said. “I want a great family, with many sons and daughters!”

“It’s going to be sooner than later,” the man said. “The seed already has begun to sprout in your womb. Soon you will give birth to a very special person.”

“How is that possible? I’m a virgin,” she countered.

“In your womb are many seeds in waiting. Waiting to be consummated,” he explained. “Inside them is a plan, a code, if you will, for making a human being. But it’s only part of the plan. We’ve simply provided the missing parts for one of them.”

“And that will make me pregnant?”

The dark man’s smile was soothing. “Indeed,” he said.

Infectious smile or no, she thought as a frown took shape on her youthful face, this will be a big problem. “But I’m a virgin,” she reiterated.

“Yes.”

“They’ll stone me to death in the plaza!” she cried.

He smiled once more, “No, they won’t. We’ll have a little talk with your fiance and things will work out. I promise.”

As that sank in, she thought to ask, “Why are you doing this?”

“That’s the good question,” he said, scratching at his close cropped beard. “We’ve been watching your species from afar for quite some time now. From very early on your great, great ancestors—small creatures that lived in trees—showed the aptitude for self sacrifice and commitment to each other in spite of the overwhelming influence of your will to survive.

“We wish to fortify that attitude in your species as it’s the only way you can survive long enough to grow and leave your nest, which, at the moment, is this tiny little planet.

“Most species, when left alone, will destroy themselves fighting over material possessions or even abstract ideas. We intend to keep you from doing that.

“Your will to survive, your greatest strength, is also the source of your greatest downfall.

“So what does that have to do with me getting pregnant?” she asked.

“Selfishness? . . . Everything!” The dark man grew pensive. “We can’t just come down here and tell you all you must cooperate, work together, share together—love each other, if you wish to survive as a species and go on to join the greater community that exists beyond your knowledge. Simply knowing of our existence would wreck your entire, frankly primitive, society.

“So we’re giving you one of your own, a teacher, as it were, to lead you to the proper path. To help him, we’ve given him some abilities your species won’t develop until the distant future.”

She pondered that for a moment. He’s right about the chaos, she thought. All those self righteous religious folks who think they’re running things would be left twisting in the wind if they ever found out about this. “And you want me to be its mother? Why me?”

“His mother,” the dark man stressed. “He will be male, due to the strictures of your society. It was felt a female would not have as great a chance of success in this endeavor.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said, “why me?”

“We’ve studied your psychological profile and feel confident you can follow this through without losing your mind.” His smile was beaming now. “You are a very strong woman, even if you don’t know it yet.”

What’s a ‘psychological?’ For that matter, what’s a ‘planet?’ she thought. I am losing it. This has to be a really bad dream.

“No dream, young lady,” the dark man said. His image began to glow that golden glow and fade. “You are blessed among women and your legacy will save your species!” She heard the last like an echo as the strange apparition faded completely and vanished.

She sat alone in her room, dumbfounded, for a long time. Did that really just happen? Brilliant chisels of light had come in through the windows and begun their march across the floor. She looked at the bag of laundry on the table before her. With a little shrug and a wry smile she said to herself, “Somebody’s got to do it.” She got up, hefted the laundry and left.

Story a Day

Dead Right

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We were running down the street, the safe room was in sight. It looked like we had it made when a horde of zombies came at us from an alleyway adjacent to the safe room entrance. We were pretty close together and Whammer, our point man, ran into a small shop on the right side of the street.

Trout and I, my game avatar is Condor, followed him quickly and we circled the wagons in the corner of what appeared to be some kind of coffee shop. Razer, a noob, got through the door a split second before the mass of brain-hungry zombies burst through from the street.

So what were we doing playing with a noob? you ask. It’s not something we do ordinarily but the reason is simple, really.

I’ve been trying to get my best friend Razer to play “Dead Right,” a virtual reality, first person shooter game for some time. To up the incentive to play, I gifted him with the game and, finally, he was on his first play-through. Me and the guys were determined to help him learn the ropes in spite of the consequences for us (and our stats).

Dead Right involves four players trying to escape a zombie apocalypse through varying landscapes. The particular game, or “campaign” as it’s called, we were playing was set in an urban, city environment and we were trying to get to the roof of a university for a helicopter rescue—all while being attacked by several classes of enemies. Zombies are the base class, doing the least damage and easiest to kill. They are joined by more powerful, though less numerous, ‘special’ tougher zombies that have a variety of interesting ways to kill the players. By working together the players help each other survive to the next safe room or the final escape.

So, Razer had a molotov, a beer bottle filled with gasoline or some super flammable substance, and as he made his way across the small shop toward us turned and threw the molly at the entrance. It was a good play, a wall of fire by the door would incinerate anything that tried to go through it.

Except for one thing. Razer wasn’t clear of the attacking bodies and the physics of the game caused the molotov to bounce back after striking one of the zombies. It landed about 6 scale feet in front of us and burst, covering the entire shop with inferno. The mass of attackers prevented anyone from escaping that virtual hell and, one by one, we fell and died screaming!

That was our third restart, the noob was killing us good. If he wasn’t burning us to death he was shooting us in the back of the head or running in front of us while we were shooting. Friendly fire for the game would be astronomical. He learned fast but kept mixing things up with disastrous results.

“In a situation like that,” I said, referring to our last restart, “they’re already on you. You were in a closed area. The best thing for that situation was a pipe bomb, thrown out onto the street.”

A pipe bomb is a bomb made out of a piece of galvanized pipe. Attached to it is a beeping timer that attracts the zombies and then KABOOOM! Very good for defusing overwhelming situations.

Razer acknowledged his mistake with the fire bomb and we started out on the map we had just nearly finished. Everything was going just fine, we dealt with small swarms of zombies and the occasional specials with ease and were about half way through. I thought we’d make it this time.

Of course, as soon as you think something positive like that everything goes south immediately. Razer was on the other side of the street, looking into the open buildings for resources, what we game veterans call “shopping.” He found a pipe bomb and a health kit. He had to use the kit right away because the zombies kept chipping away at him, stealing his health away one little bite at a time.

Well, he should have been on the same side of the street as the rest of us but he was a noob and we figured he’d learn faster the hard way. On our side of the street there was a handrail that guarded against going over the side and falling a considerable distance down a cliff to rail yards far below. Having the cliff edge to our backs we had a fairly good defensive position.

Then the hoard attacked Razer and he was quickly in danger of being overwhelmed. I saw him grab his pipe bomb and he tossed it in our direction. Pipe bombs bounce around quite a bit and Razer’s bounced right over the edge of the cliff. At first the zombies turned and went after the bomb but after it went over the edge they turned their focus back on Razer.

So, we had to rescue him. The lasso special, it lassos you and drags you to it, snared Whammer and when I turned to kill it I was jumped by a pouncer, which began to rip and tear. Trout tried to save Whammer but a vomit special jumped from a nearby roof and landed squarely on his head. The vomit exploded all over everything and even more zombies joined the horde. Trout was unable to rescue either of us as he was being overwhelmed and fighting for his virtual life. Razer went down.

One by one, we fell and died screaming!

“You know,” I told Razer after the level reloaded and we were back where we started, “if you would have thrown the pipe bomb down the street you would have saved yourself and we’d still be heading for the safe room.” I couldn’t help adding, “Depending on your health, of course, a good tactic in that situation would have been to throw a molotov at your feet. Fire instantly kills the zombies that are surrounding you and you can run through the fire with only minimal damage, much less than what the zombies would give you if you remain in their midst.”

“I didn’t have a molotov,” Razer complained.

“I did but I didn’t throw it,” I said. “Probably would have killed you.”

“What a stupid game,” he said, “you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’m having fun but this game would be a lot better if it wasn’t for all these damn zombies!”

After about 3 hours and 33 minutes we finally managed to get Razer onto the chopper and he got his achievement for finishing the campaign. Since then Razer’s improved considerably. He’s up to about a quarter million dead zombies and is a regular member of our cadre. He hasn’t incinerated the team lately, I must say.

But it wasn’t easy. Noooo, it wasn’t easy.

Story a Day

Mama Told Me Not to Come

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Matt and Imamu looked at themselves in the floor-length mirror. “Now we look like proper Jihadis,” Imamu said with a hidden grin. “Let’s go, the funeral’s almost over.”

Covered in black cloth from head to toe with only a small strip to see through, the two looked like they just stepped in from the desert locales where all the videos came from. All they needed was the AK47. Matt looked up at his mentor, larger and older than himself and thought they looked dark and dangerous, powerful. He liked the feeling.

Imamu owned and operated the laundromat where Matt’s mom used to do their wash, before she got her own washer and dryer. He loved his Moms; she had worked so hard, overtime every day, to save up enough for that little luxury. Matt was glad because he had to help her carry the wash down the street from their 4th floor apartment and then back again. He met Imamu at the laundromat one afternoon when the man was maintaining his machines.

Imamu took an immediate shine to the young boy and Matt, fatherless, responded in kind. Also a cleric for the local mosque, Imamu spent much time initiating the boy in the teachings of Mohammed, liberally salted with radical politics. Matt’s mom, a staunch, practicing Southern Baptist who took Matt to church every Sunday, didn’t care much for Islam but thought it was important her son be allowed to make up his own mind about what to believe. She trusted her son. Matt, basically a good kid, wasn’t ready to convert to Islam but he did find it interesting. He didn’t mention the politics to her because Imamu said not to, she wouldn’t understand.

A lot of people were on the street near the church where the funeral of another black victim of horrible police brutality was coming to a close. There were many signs, from home made jobs—cardboard and magic markers, to professionally printed placards with big red letters. “No Justice, No Peace!” most of them said.

The two black clad men went into the crowd. “Ahh, over here,” Imamu said and they went over to a group of others similarly clad as themselves. He saw Femi, one of his best friends and another of Imamu’s erstwhile disciples.

Imamu was in animated conversation with another adult in black clothing. “All we have to do is get it started,” the other said. “Then sit back and let it play out.” The man pointed to a drug store down the street. “Station some men down there,” he said. “and have them throw some bricks through the storefront windows when I give the signal.”

Imamu collected Matt and Femi and they began to make their way down the street. They passed animated protestors who faced grim, stony faced, armored police, palpable tension on a slow boil. Demonstrators shouted a cacophony, together and at random: “No justice, no peace!”, “Don’t shoot!”, “Black lives matter!”

They were almost to the drugstore when Femi said, “Hey, Matt, isn’t that your moms?”

The moment Matt looked to where Femi was pointing, he saw that it was his mother and, in the same instant, she locked eyes with him. She can’t know it’s me, he thought, not in this costume. He was wrong.

“Matthew Johnson Davis! I know it’s you!” she said as she rushed up to him like a charging bear. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She slapped him ‘upside his head’ and grabbed at his hood, trying to pull it off. She shot a glare at Imamu, “You did this,” she scowled fiercely, “I know what you’re up to and I won’t let you get away with it!” Matt had never seen his moms so angry and was afraid.

Imamu only stared back. She couldn’t see the quivering smile behind his mask.

She slapped at her son again, “You get home and get that hateful clothing off right now!” she nearly screamed. “Get moving or I’ll kick your black ass the whole way! MOVE!” This she did scream at the top of her lungs.

She harried him down the street, away from the demonstration. “I didn’t work my ass off my whole life so we could live decently, so we could have some peace and quiet, some small happiness, some kind of future, just so some moron kid can go burn it all down. What the hell are you thinking, Matthew? I thought I taught you better. I thought I taught you the important things. You’d better get your priorities straight, kid!” She went upside his head again.

Imamu watched them as they left the scene. That woman’s trouble, he thought, I’d better stay away from her . . . and her kid.

Story a Day

Hemingway’s Horror

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It might have been a dream . . . Yeah, it probably was a dream . . .

I was in the arena, the sun high overhead. The crowd in the stands, quiet now, waited with mounting tension for something to happen. I looked down at myself and saw I was dressed as a toreador complete with cape and sword. At the far end of the arena was an arched door with a carpet of roses before it—a place for winners! I felt a great need to get there. However, there was one problem.

The white bull stared at me through bloodshot eyes, fiercely red in stark contrast to the snowblinding hulk sporting them. The head, held low, swayed a little. Its nostrils flared as it inhaled and snorted. Deep inside, down where the guts are, I knew I had to get past him. It was him or me.

I began to circle to the left and its intense eyes followed me. It didn’t move to face me until I was about 90 degrees from where I started and then it came about in a single jump. It wasn’t charging me but it wasn’t letting me get past it either. It snorted again and stood there, daring me to do anything.

I couldn’t help thinking the thing was being pretty casual about this whole affair, as if it wasn’t terribly concerned whether I did anything or not. But I wasn’t going to let it beat me! I brought my sword vertically up to my face in salute and then en garde.

The bull snorted. “You’re not scaring me,” it seemed to say.

I circled to the right this time and again the beast waited for me to go 90 degrees before it quickly swung around. Maybe I could rush past him if I tried suddenly before he adjusted his position. Its head continued to sway slightly, back and forth, its bloodshot eyes still daring. “Come on,” it seemed to say, “make your move!” How could it know what I was thinking?

I circled right some more and made a quick feint and, faster than a blink of the eye, it blocked my path. “Okay,” I thought, “so that’s how it is, eh?”

I brought my sword to point at the bull’s neck, aiming for a fatal thrust. The bull just snorted and stared. I think it was laughing at me. Desperate, I tried a thrust. The bull nonchalantly swung its head, its horn deflecting my attack like shooing a fly.

I looked down, contemplating the dust on my shoes. I wondered how long this had been going on. That bull has been in my way since day one. Should I just give up and let the thing win? It’s beginning to look that way. I should just give up and go do something else. NO! I just can’t do that. I’m going for a walk in those roses!

First I had to get past that white bull and it wasn’t having any of it.

Suddenly I realized I was already 511 words past that immovable, snowblinding beast! I turned and, indeed, the bull was many steps behind me, still staring with those bloodshot eyes, its swinging head low and snorting.

So much for the white bull. I headed for the roses!

Story a Day

Grandmother’s House

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It was a beautiful spring day. The sun, high in the sky, beamed down on the bucolic scene, shadows and brilliant patches of light in stark contrast. A mild breeze kept everything dry and cool and urged the few billowing, cottony clouds to scud lazily across the blue, blue sky.

Across a wide meadow on the side of the hill waves of long grass coruscated under the whimsical wind. Trees encircled the meadow and, down at the bottom of the low hill a stream gurgled and chuckled its laconic way to the sea.

An occasional bird called out, a chirp or twitter, or even a longer musical phrase, which would often be answered in like fashion from somewhere else in the trees. A cricket sawed its continual mating beacon, and every now and then a squirrel would chime in to the languid afternoon with its raucous chitter and harsh rasping as it gnawed its way through a walnut shell.

In the distance on the other side of the little valley, set like a gem in the emerald trees and other wild flora, there was a small stone cottage, a lazy wisp of smoke issuing from a terra cotta chimney and complying with the caprice of the breeze. Clothing on a wash line also flapped and fluttered in the warm air.

The sounds of the afternoon continued undisturbed as Zerozep landed silently in the middle of the meadow in a vehicle that could best be described as an egg, no markings or protuberances. An advance scout of the Tandro Galactic Hive, she was scouring the outskirts of this arm of galaxy 2118. Her job was to survey the planets and other objects in the solar systems she found, looking for raw materials to feed the burgeoning fleet behind her. She was also on the lookout for potential food sources and/or sentient life that could pose a threat to the insurgency.

The scout looked a lot like a huge ant, about a meter and a half tall when standing at ease. Her large multifaceted eyes were set near the top of a triangular face that came to a point at the bottom with her mandibles, which she held tightly in place. Two antennae above the eyes flexed in slow motion. Six legs with articulate “fingers” converged on the underside of her thorax. Tubes that came from a pack on the scout’s back connected to spicules on its abdomen and a belt of some kind wrapped around the joint where her thorax joined the abdomen. Mysterious devices studded the belt.

She took one of those devices, waved it around a little, glanced at a small screen on it and then put it back in her belt. She removed the pack from her back and the hoses to her spicules popped off with a susurrant hiss.

The structure across the valley attracted her attention. Evidence of a sentient form, she thought.

She worked her way over to the small cottage, scanning and analyzing the various and abundant life forms that filled this world. All the forms she cataloged were carbon based. Oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, in percentages similar to the Hive world, make up the atmosphere and water covers most of the planet. This could really be a big find, she thought, a colony world!

As she approached the cottage a creature emerged from a side door carrying an empty basket. Most of it was covered with a substance made of polysaccharide organic fibers, cellulose, and showing brightly colored stripes. It was a bipedal creature. Zep had cataloged many such creatures on her watch, a wide variety of minor details, of course, but basically the same in form–two legs to stand upon, usually two arms to manipulate the extraneous environment, with a head on top.

The creature still hadn’t noticed Zerozep, not more than 10 meters away, and when it finally did it froze with its mouth open.

Zep scanned it and found nothing that could be construed as a weapon. Then she tried the mind touch and found, even though it was like sound-talking underwater, that a low level connection was possible. “Be calm, I mean no harm,” she sent in repetitive waves at the creature.

The being’s mouth opened somewhat wider as it received the soothing waves. “What the hell . . . ?” The articulated sound came from its mouth along with waves of mind fear. It dropped the basket and ran back into the house. It re-emerged carrying a long cylindrical object that it pointed at Zep.

“No harm, no harm,” Zep intensified the mind touch, “no harm, communicate.”

Without lowering what Zep’s scanner found to be a chemical discharge weapon with multiple sodium chloride projectiles, the creature sound spoke, “Go away!” Then it fired the weapon. The force of the blast pushed the scout back a step but the pellets ricocheted off the scout’s thick chitin harmlessly.

“No harm, communicate,” Zep kept repeating. She waved her empty forelegs opened wide in a universal gesture.

“You want to talk,” the creature said, more a statement than a question.

“Yes, communicate—talk.”

The creature lowered its weapon, broke it in half, removed two objects and replaced them with two others. “You the biggest damn ant I ever saw,” it said.

“Not ant, Tandro scout,” Zep mind touched. “You . . . talk.”

“I’m not sure what to say to a giant ant,” the creature said. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“Answer soon, talk more,” Zep mind spoke, her auto-link building the data base needed for speech translation.

“And why should I wish to talk to a bug? A giant bug at that, I’m feeling like Alice in Wonderland or something. Am I hallucinating? Have I finally gone off the deep end? And you . . . ” It hefted the weapon to its shoulder once again.

“NO HARM!” Zerozep mind shouted. “NO HARM . . . TALK!”

The creature didn’t fire this time, only held the weapon at the ready. “I’ve learned a lot in life,” it said, “but I’ve never heard of ants as big as you. You’re not from around here, are you? What’s a Tandro?”

Mind touch was getting easier. “Talk more!” Soon the language base would have enough vocabulary to allow Zep to communicate with the creature in its own language, proven to be best when contacting indigenous life forms.

The creature blinked the fleshy shades that covered its ocular organs then it launched into a long dissertation that touched upon “weather,” “politics,” “sex,” “men,” “taxes,” and a litany of subjects that can all be attributed to any number of social civilizations. Zep learned the creature was a “woman” and her name was Clara. She lived alone in the cottage with her 11 cats, 2 dogs, and numerous feathered creatures called “chickens.”

After a while Clara wound down with Zerozep beaming serenity at her the whole time. Finally she said, “Well, you might as well come in and make yourself to home.” Clara, intrinsically a social and gregarious person, couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Let me get my wash,” she said and quickly took down the flapping cloths.

“I appreciate your hospitality,” Zerozep sound spoke and followed the old woman into the cottage.

The inside of the house was redolent with an intoxicating aroma that had a profound effect on the Tandro scout. It was as if she had died and gone to sacred Holy Hive. All her desires, hopes, dreams, likes and dislikes, sins and triumphs melded together into a serene, harmonious whole. She liked it a lot.

One room filled out the floor plan, an iron stove on one side, a fireplace on the other. Heat emanated from the stove, the fireplace setup for a fire when the temperature called for it. The furnishings, tables and chairs, cabinets with glass fronts, were sturdy oak. Pictures, landscapes mostly, were hung upon the walls. A sink, a long handled water pump, and a nice view of the woods behind the cottage were adjacent to the stove. Laying the shotgun crosswise on the large table in the kitchen area, Clara sat down. “So, what can I do for you, my strange friend? Why are you here?” she asked.

“I’m exploring for the Tandro Galactic Hive,” Zep said. “We’re looking for fertile worlds we can colonize. Your world is perfect! I will get great rewards for delivering this system to the hive.”

“What about us humans?” Clara asked, “Just kick us to the curb?”

Zerozep made a raspy chittering sound, “Oh, no! The Hive takes other sentient life forms quite seriously and will do everything in its power to preserve any species that’s reasonably self aware.”

Clara’s eyes narrowed just a bit, “You mean put us in a zoo?”

“Technically, yes,” the scout replied. “However, it’s done in an unobtrusive way so the indigent species can feel as comfortable as possible.”

“Meanwhile you ‘Tandros’ consume the planet?”

“We’ll be responsible about it,” Zep said. “replenishable resources will be replenished with the local hive being careful to leave plenty for you humans.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of that,” Clara said, unable to stop a quick glance at her useless shotgun.

“It’s not so bad. Just think of the technological advances you’ll make as you learn of the Hive,” Zerozep said. Then, “What’s that smell? It’s heavenly delicious.”

“I’m baking today,” Clara said. She got up from her seat and went to the oven, looked inside then removed a baking tray. “As a matter of fact, they’re done. Would you like to try one?” She used a spatula to remove one of the hot objects from the tray and placed it on a napkin in front of the alien scout.

The odor from the object washed over Zep producing waves of ecstasy a quantum level greater than what she’d previously felt. Her spicules quivered. “Wha . . . what do you do with it?” she asked.

“You eat it. Go ahead, it won’t hurt you.”

The alien scout picked up the warm object, her antennae touching it lightly. She scanned it and found no inimical substances so she opened her mandibles and took a bite. “Ohhhhhh . . . “ she sighed.

*****

Zerozep awoke in her cruiser in orbit around the blue-green planet. Apparently her autonomics returned her there after she lost conscious awareness. All scouts were programmed that way; upon loss of consciousness they would automatically return to their point of origin. Depending on when consciousness is regained, that programming could drive an individual the whole way back to the home hive.

She remembered what happened. The bliss, the ecstasy! Oh, how she wanted to go back for more! She knew she couldn’t, of course, she had work to do. The first thing she did was scratch this system from the “A” list. As a second thought she placed the system on the “prohibited” list. If something like this got loose in society it could wreck the entire galactic empire. Plus, if I tell anyone about this they’ll probably ruin the whole thing and I’ll never get any more. No matter what happened, she knew she had to have more!

*****

The big ant took a bite and froze up. Its mandibles returned to their tightly folded positions, it rose, turned and slowly went through the open door. Clara wondered if she shouldn’t do something. But what could she do? If she mentioned the episode to anyone they would lock her up and throw away the key.

“Gee,” she thought, “What a fuss over a chocolate chip cookie!”

Story a Day

What’s a McDonalds?

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Today is the big day. We all graduate! Now that we’re adults, soon we’ll be moving out of the nursery to our new quarters and the new class will take our places here.

It’s been a long hard ride but we’ve all made the grade. The care-takers, large creatures that walk on two legs like we do, have given us all high praise. “Ooo, look at that one!” they say. And, “There’s a fine one! Look at its posture, look how dignified it carries itself.” “As fine a group as I’ve ever seen!”

The care-takers are our friends, they love us and do everything for us. We love them back, indeed!

We’ve been in the nursery since we were born. The care-takers taught us everything we needed to know about the nursery, where the food is, the water, where to toilet, etc. A great place, the nursery, everyone has had free run of the place, no stress, no strain, wanting for nothing. We grew up in a positive atmosphere that I’m sure we’ll look back on in the future with fond nostalgia.

The only dark cloud to ever pass by was when an individual we called “Mort” fell from the top of the sleeping quarters and broke his leg. The care-takers came and got him and we never saw him again. They never told us what happened to him. We soon forgot him.

Nevertheless, life has been good and now we’re moving onward and upward! The care-takers are directing us to the embarkation point and showing us to our traveling cars, not too spacious but open and airy.

The cars are all loaded onto a huge vehicle that will take us all to our new lives. The whole class is really excited as we all speculate about our bright future.

We travel across the countryside and see just how large the world really is–so much to see and do! Finally, the huge vehicle pulls into a large door in a cavernous building and new care-takers begin unloading our cars, placing them on a moving belt that takes us deeper into the gargantuan structure.

Then I notice something a little disturbing. There’s a guy running around down on the floor. Now usually there’s nothing strange about a guy running around except this guy doesn’t have a head!

I had to catch my breath when I saw the horrific sight. I began to look at my surroundings a little closer. In the distance I saw others hanging from a moving line, all without heads! I could feel my heart beat accelerate. This wasn’t good. The headless ones went into an enclosure and came out the other side of it completely naked, stripped of their coverings.

My mind reeling, nothing makes sense. The care-takers were so kind, they gave us everything, helped us when we were sick. Why have they delivered us to this hell?

The car in front stops and care-takers remove the individuals inside one by one. They’re putting each head through a hole in a machine and cha-ching! the head drops into a wire basket beneath it and the care-taker hangs the lifeless body on a hook. Some of the eyes in the heads on top in the basket are blinking. My heart is beating like it will explode any second.

Why are they doing this to us? I begin to scream like everyone else in the car as we realize we’re next. Above the moving line of hooks that carries our cadavers away is a legend that says “Nugget Line.”

In my hysteria, wildly looking about for some way out to no avail, I see another area where the naked corpses are being dismembered. Nearby, a care-taker sits gnawing on someone’s leg and it dawns on me. They’re going to eat us! They raised us, took good care of us just so they could kill us and eat us! I keep on screaming.

As they push my head through the hole I see another word there I can’t figure out–strange thing to contemplate at this moment but, in spite of my overwhelming fear, I can’t help asking, “What’s a McDonalds?”

Hawk Tails

HAWK WANTS A CHEESEBURGER!

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Many years ago there was a new thing out there called the “Internet.” In the beginning only the intrepid messed around with it. I was fortunate to be among that number. The amount of information available, the ability to communicate with people around the globe just blew my mind.

At that time you needed an Internet Service Provider that would connect using your telephone (you know what a telephone is, right?). Transfer speeds were incredibly slow compared to what we have now; a 100,000 kb jpeg would take a couple minutes to download. Among early Internet Service Providers were The World, Prodigy, Netscape, Oracle; some are gone now, some still remain.

The people’s choice, however, was America Online and subscribers to that service skyrocketed to millions in a few short years. High-speed Internet was still in the future and the best modem you could get was 56kbps.
AOL was pretty cool when it was ramping up in those days. They offered classes in a wide range of subjects. I took a creative writing course led by Robert Pollack, a published British mystery writer. I got a lot out of it.

Kids these days think they have a proprietary line on “texting.” Ha! A plethora of chat rooms dealing with nearly every topic under the sun, where everyone texted in group conversation, became a significant hub of the online community.

One chat room I visited regularly was a fan chat about Bablyon 5, a popular Sci-Fi television program. Emoticons, arcane text strings, and text pics proliferated through the conversation and, with wit and aplomb, everyone had a great time.

Some of us from that group got together and decided to write an ongoing story, taking turns. I thought it would be interesting to see where it would go so I pitched in.

The other day I was digging through my files looking for an article on Pythagoras and stumbled upon “Gathering Clouds,” a segment I had written for the group.

I did ultimately find the Pythagoras article but only after I had read through Gathering Clouds and decided to publish it here. What follows below is Hawk’s introduction.  You can find “Gathering Clouds” under “Hawk Tails” under “Modern Fairy Tales.” I hope you like it.   😆

Let me introduce you to Hawk:

Hawk is a supreme martial artist, having belts in every major form including several non-human ones. He acquired his expertise at the Galactic Martial Arts Dojo on Betelgeuse IV under Master Sensei Erok Velatnin and was one of the top students of his class. (Several of his competitors for top honors we’ll meet later—some are cool, some aren’t.)

Hawk thinks of himself as a “natural” man having no “super” powers or cybernetic augments. While he likes stealth and edged weapons, he’s proficient with a wide range of projectile and energy weapons up to and including the gargantuan Masur planetary defense cannons.

He’s had many adventures throughout the known systems and finally, after meeting the SuperSoldiers during a little affair on a moon of Deneb III, decided to settle down with a group of peeps (sic) he could trust to watch his back.

Hawk makes his way about the star systems in his state-of-the-art, super-hardened Mercedes “Cigarette” Fighter—almost all engines and guns. A beautiful ship, the sleek and graceful lines of its design belie its deadly nature. Polymorphic wings can be extended or retracted, in various configurations depending on circumstances, for flight in gas or liquid, even plasma. The burnished plastanium skin of the vehicle can be programmed to reflect or absorb various energies: light, electromagnetics, sound, J and T waves, and even quantum fractionals. This allows Hawk to be very stealthy indeed.

The Artificial Intelligence that controls all navigation, tactical, weapons, jump, and maintenance functions is named “Talon”. A self-programming intellect eventually develops a personality and Talon’s developed as counterpoint to Hawk’s over the years, settling into the distaff side of things. Though Talon is sometimes stubborn and willful she has pulled Hawk’s bacon out of the fire many times.

Hawk has a direct neural connection with Talon and, when they’re in a scrap, the Mercedes, with it’s dual triple tap fusion drives, is a match for any vessel in the galaxy—more than a match—to which his sad and sorry opponents would attest if they were still around to do any attesting!

Hawk is dedicated to the SuperSoldiers because of their code of honor and duty. He especially likes their slogan, taken from the Old Earth marines—Always Faithful!

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MASSACRE OF THE WEEK

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This week’s Massacre of the Week comes from the City of Light in France. It seems two young men, brothers, had an axe to grind with a satirical magazine called “Charlie Hebdo.” These two nuts, now martyrs to their cause, have brought down the wrath of Allah upon the infidels who dared make fun of their barbaric religious fanaticism. Said wrath promoted more than a dozen people to room temperature.

The free world recoiled in shock and horror as the scene, beginning to get old by repetition, played out on the International stage. Police in riot gear with automatic weapons are becoming commonplace, not only in Paris but almost anywhere you go.

One of the pictures filtering down through the Interslush depicted a crowd holding up signs that spelled out, “We are not afraid.”

Give the French some credit here. It takes some grit to get slammed to the ground, get right back up and say, “bring it, bitches.”

It’s the only attitude we can afford because we, anyone who desires liberty, are at war with an amorphous, insidious, vicious group of people bent on returning the world to the Middle Ages.

What do these people want? Do they really want everyone to carry around some beads and a little rug so we can pray toward Mecca on the hour of every day? Do they really want women to be again relegated to cattle, mentally and physically, to be owned? Will slavery once again become commonplace?

Wealthy and powerful people are financing this jihad against the bulwarks of liberty, people who, apparently, want it all. Worse, they think they have a chance to get it.

Evil often gets the upper hand in our history. There are plenty of examples and no need to go into them here. However, History shows us evil is always destroyed in the end by ordinary human beings who just want to get on with their lives and don’t give a rat’s patootie about the ludicrous beliefs of Legion.

What would be the consequences of turning the other cheek? Dire, at first, and the main reason people choose the “eye for an eye” approach being taken at present. What would be the consequences of showing love to terroristic transgressors instead of retaliation? Would the forces ranged against us just mow us down, every last man, woman, and child? Or would they?

To change a man you must change his heart. Can that really be done with oppression, barbarism, and merciless brutality? You may well be able to do it, but the change in heart you engender will not produce the results you desire.

S’all for now . . .

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OMG! IT’S SNOWING!

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I looked out my back door this morning and winter revealed itself in full glory, shaking its frozen dandruff all over like a Times Square party. About an inch had accumulated by the time I glimpsed it and I was glad I got a new snow shovel about a month ago.

Snowflake

Snow shovels are such necessary items when you live in the northern climes. There are so many from which to choose. Most of the ones I saw when shopping were made of plastic. PLASTIC??!!! Guaranteed to break after one season, you mean? I wanted a shovel that would do the job for many seasons. You could throw money at the problem but even the high-end, cleverly designed for ease of use, etc., were made of materials that would not stand the test of time.

Back in the early 1980’s I was boarding during a hiatus from the road band work I’d been doing. It was a nice break–hotel rooms, the food, the nightclubs, the road, the people, band mates, and all that blur into a treadmill and it can get old pretty quick.

My keyboard player, Lawrence Hess, a few years younger than I and gifted with musical talent as well as perfect pitch (he could tell you what tone that fart was), had joined another band and was traveling. His father, Lawrence senior, gave me a cot up in their attic and there I stayed for several months until Lawrence junior returned from the band that had crashed and burned.

(This was a pivotal point in my life because, with Lawrence and a gifted drummer named Russel Yohe, we then began a road trip that lasted several years as a trio called “Pure Magic.” More later . . . )

My duties in the household, a way to earn my keep, included stacking and moving firewood around (they had a Franklin stove in their living room that heated the entire building), shoveling snow and just about anything else Lawrence senior could think of. I cleaned and pointed his chimney during that time.

Old man Hess had a couple of coal shovels, one of which I used as a snow shovel. The handle had a T-shaped grip and you could shovel a lot of snow with it. Ordinary snow shovels have a straight handle and sometimes balancing a big shovel full of snow, due to the lopsided weight, can be problematic because the handle rotates in your wet gloves  and dumps the cargo back on the sidewalk.

I never forgot that little lesson. Coal shovels are made of steel and in consequence are fairly heavy. I was young then and the exercise was good for me.

So, there on the rack at WalMart, I spied what a sticker called a “scoop.” I believe it could also have been called a “grain shovel,” as the scoop was made of aluminum. It had a short T grip like the coal shovels but it was plastic so I rejected it at the time.

I shopped around a little more, going to hardware stores, etc., and most of them didn’t even have coal shovels, let alone a grain shovel. So I went back to WalMart, swallowed my pride, and bought the scoop, plastic handle and all. It cost about $30, the median price for a plastic “snow” shovel.

Today my new shovel, “the Iceman,” had its baptism of fire ( 😀 ) as I shoveled the 25-30 yard walk from my back door to the parking lot where I park my car. The shovel was light and so was the snow and I removed about 2 inches of snow from the walk in about 15 minutes. I’ll have to repeat that in a bit as it’s still snowing.

If I could have found my ideal shovel the handle would have been longer, the short handle of my new shovel makes me stoop a little. Being metal, snow stuck to it and I had to give it a little tap to unload it into the yard. Those issues are small negatives in my mind and, though I’m not so young these days, I can still use the exercise. I expect to have that shovel for a long time–at least until the plastic handle breaks! (I’m told there are no snow shovels in hell, so that will be a relief!)

I wrote a little poem about how I feel about snow and it appears on the poetry page of this blog. Check it out, it’s cute.

S’all for now . . .

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Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

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2014 is winding down, here in North America winter is gathering its forces, having already stretched its muscles with tons of snow in November across nearly the whole continent.

You need a couple good parties to face winter’s frigid, stalactite, stalagmite grin, eh? Indeed.

After we kiss and hug all of our loved ones, open all the presents, eat all the food, drink all the booze and generally put aside the challenges of the upcoming season, we’ll wake up on January 2, 2015, recover from our excesses, and move forward–one step at a time. You almost have to be a stoic at that point.

2014 has been a year of change–for the world and for me as well. Enough about me already.

The Internet, through social media, takes more and more precedence in our way of life here in the States and around the globe and moral questions like “Freedom of Speech,” “the right to privacy,” and “Racial Profiling” are being redefined.

It’s scary. The predictions of Orwell, Bradbury, and Huxley are becoming realities as we speak. Fear is rampant, everyone is afraid of something, eh? As we strive to make our lives safe and secure we’re giving up our individual freedoms one little bite at a time. How long before we find ourselves in a paranoid, barricaded, police state?

Add to that the impending restructuring of the global economy, good for us all in the long run but problematic for the individuals living through it, namely you and me, and the rosy future looks a little faded, to say the least.

Look at the Anne Frank quote from my post about Vonnegut’s “Galapagos.” In spite of the horrific life she led, she still believed that human nature is basically good. I must agree.

There are good, hopeful, and inspiring stories permeating the news all the time. However, the “massacre of the week,” the great catastrophe, the beheading, the hacking, and all the other evidence of our “dark side” overshadows any ray of sunshine. It’s more fun to contemplate Bill Cosby’s sexual appetite than the reason that bell ringer from the Salvation Army stands out in the freezing rain in front of Walmart.

Malala Yousafzai was riding a school bus when some maniac shot her in the head for being a female who wanted to get an education. What in the hell were they thinking? It’s much easier to control and manipulate bovine cattle than informed and intelligent human beings? Fortunately Malala survived, continued her education in spite of adversity and ultimately, as the youngest person ever, won the Nobel Peace Prize! From darkness comes light.

Secret Santas, Layaway Angels, and other philanthropists purchase gifts and give away diamond jewelry to help the poor.

A black woman extends her condolences to the families of police officers assassinated by her “disturbed” son. This is in stark contrast to the pitiful parents of vicious children, taught by abuse and neglect to disrespect and malign everyone and everything, who jump into and bask in the glory of the national spotlight.

People do good things all the time. It’s a shame that it’s unimportant.

So, what can I do? I think the answer is: “just keep on keeping on.” I’ll continue to try to treat the other guy as I wish to be treated, judge people (inasmuch as I must) by nothing more than their actions and do my best to stay positive.

So merry Christmas everyone! Have a happy New Year!

You can’t change the past. You can change the future but the only time you have to do it is now.

ChitlinChild